I Am the Dungeon
Clash. Clang—
The ring of steel on steel split the air in rapid succession.
"Uooooooooh——!!"
Karlson roared as he beat aside the monster's and Cecilia's attacks in a tempest of furious blows. His body felt heavy. His arms hung like lead, and with every parry, strength bled from his grip. He could feel his stamina scraping against its limit.
Blow after blow was exchanged, and wounds — large and small — opened across his body. His opponents, of course, were no less marked.
From Karlson's perspective, this had never been a fight about whether to kill the two standing in his way. Even if he brought them down, it would mean nothing if he failed to kill the monster beyond them.
Just a little... just show me a single opening...!
And so, even as he parried, Karlson watched for a gap — any gap — that would let him close on the monster.
"I'll protect the Captain——!!"
He could not properly counterattack Cecilia, who came at him with murder in her eyes, wrapped in the grip of Hallucination. She was like the village women — there was still a chance she could be brought back. He could not kill someone so precious with his own hands.
"Kihit!"
As if mocking that very thought, the monster slipped in from the flank and brought its axe down with everything it had.
KRANG—
"Kh—?!"
It was heavy. The feel of it was nothing like the monsters he had faced until now. And yet — its physique was formidable, but its movements were clumsy, as if advertising how newly born it was to the world.
SHUNK!
"Guh—?!"
Karlson knocked the blade upward and drove his sword into the monster's exposed chest. Blood sprayed. He had landed a mortal wound — but the follow-through of his own consecutive attacks left him momentarily defenseless as well.
And Cecilia, who remembered Karlson's own teaching — never let an opponent's opening go to waste — did not miss it.
"Die!"
SLASH—
"Ghhk—?!"
Cecilia's horizontal slash carved across Karlson's chest. Blood fountained from the deep gash, and he staggered backward, clutching the wound. It wasn't fatal, but the bleeding was considerable.
"Because of you...! Because of you, the villagers, the Captain, me...!!"
Cecilia leveled her bloodied blade at him, her voice trembling as she glared. Looking into those eyes — overlaid with a lie, brimming with resentment — Karlson found himself torn.
Would killing her... be a kinder mercy?
The village women were the same. If he lost here, they would spend the rest of their lives trapped inside a false reality, living as playthings for monsters. A wretched end worse than death. Perhaps granting them rest would be the greater kindness.
"Kihit."
But then he saw the monster watching from a distance, smiling — and the thought reversed itself.
Because of that devil... because of that thing that deserved to be torn apart, Cecilia had to die?
Unthinkable. It was too unjust. An evil that should never be permitted to exist in this world.
Karlson summoned his rage once more, and a single conviction took hold: that monster had to die.
Even if it costs me this life — that devil, at the very least, I will kill...!
He burst forward. He ran at the monster. He wrung every ounce of strength from his body — no, from his very soul — and ran. He knew, with the certainty of instinct, that this all-or-nothing charge would become his final blow.
SLASH!
"——!!"
He had accepted the hit in passing. Cecilia's sword carved across his back, and a searing pain raced up his spine. His body lurched, but he drove power into the foot he had planted and forced his stance back into line. That planted foot fed momentum into the next stride, and courage and will flared to life inside him.
"Uaaaaaaaah——!!"
A war cry erupted from the depths of his chest as Karlson closed to point-blank range. The thrust was simple, linear, unadorned — but he had staked his life on it, and the force behind it was anything but ordinary.
The monster, the blade rushing in with that burning roar, showed panic for the first time.
He could kill it.
He had won.
He could save the villagers. The hope flashed through Karlson's mind, a brilliant, spreading light—
"You. Idiot."
The face that had been twisted in alarm transformed as if the panic had never existed. A smile that mocked Karlson rose to its lips, and it jeered at the desperate struggle of a man who had even offered up his life.
Thud.
"...Ah."
THUD. He tumbled...
Someone had hooked his foot. His body, already committed past the point of no return, lost its balance. At the same instant, that valiant, killing thrust plunged toward the ground.
"Ugh..."
Karlson hit the dirt in sheer disbelief, rolling through the dust before he managed, with difficulty, to lift his head.
"Kihi!"
The monster that had stepped in to block him — while he had been delivering his blow against the one trying to leave the village — was looking down at him. A wound marked its shoulder, and it gazed down at Karlson with a look of thoroughly satisfied contempt.
Too late, Karlson understood. That monster had been held in reserve, hidden specifically to counter his killing blow.
He'd been had.
It had been an unwinnable fight from the start.
Despair settled over his throbbing face as he lay there.
Another presence joined the one looking down at him. The architect of everything — standing beside the other monster — described it in those loaded words.
The first monster it made...?
A monster that made monsters?
The words made no sense.
Then the monster formally introduced itself in a single, quiet phrase.
Karlson still could not comprehend what it meant for a monster to be a dungeon.
A dungeon was a dungeon. It could not be a living organism. That was as fundamental as the fact that humans needed to breathe to live.
That self-evident truth was being thoroughly dismantled, and it shook Karlson's mind to its core.
This place... this dungeon... is something that should not exist in this world.
Confronted with an existence that had stepped outside the world's very framework, Karlson felt a vast, bottomless terror.
Pitch-black darkness crashed over his vision. He did not even have time to recognize what it was.
THWACK.
A dull impact — and Karlson lost consciousness.
"Please save me, please save me, please, I'm begging you...!"
"Hic, hhck—"
"Ahh... Karlson was right... we should have waited. We should have brought the others, even if it meant being late..."
"I don't want to die! I don't want to die——!!"
"Ah-hhhk..."
The disarmed humans knelt in a ring of monsters, surrounded on all sides. They wept, or surrendered, or begged, watching the creatures' faces with eyes steeped in terror, dread, and a raw, shaking anxiety.
"Kiheheh!!"
"Kilkil!"
My monsters clutched their stomachs and howled with laughter at the sight of them. Each burst of that laughter seemed to spread the fear further; dread rippled across the prisoners' faces in time with every cackle. One of the monsters toyed with a human, playfully prodding them with a blade — but my orders held, and it went no further than that.
After Karlson had left them, the humans had lost their chain of command, and they had fallen to us without a fight. Karlson himself, the man they had aided in the hope of victory, had been defeated by me as well, and now lay unconscious on the ground.
A scant few monster corpses lay scattered about, but the human dead outnumbered them overwhelmingly.
Overwhelming Victory
Seongha reported the results of the first battle ever fought inside the Dungeon. Listening to them, I found myself stirred by a feeling I had not expected.
It feels like only yesterday that I was reborn in another world, with no idea what to do...
Room to breathe had entered a life that had once put survival above all else. The once-meager Dungeon had accumulated at least some resources, and monsters had appeared to protect me. I had even claimed my first victory against the humans who had invaded.
I — the Dungeon — was growing stronger and stronger.
Seongha paused, then continued.
I listened in silence, then let out a short laugh and answered.
No.
It's not just about surviving anymore.
Having grasped my meaning, Seongha agreed in a voice that sounded like a smile.
Humans really don't have a single part you can't use, from start to finish.
Even as corpses, they could be used to raise the monsters' stats. If they were useful even in death, I had no reason not to love humanity.
Time to enjoy life, huh... I really do love it whenever you say that.
Leaving Seongha's pleased laughter behind me, I strode toward the prisoners. As I approached, the monsters bowed in reverence and drew aside to either flank, parting like the Red Sea to open a path.
"Hhck—"
"Hik..."
"......"
With every step I took among them, I could see the humans trembling. They stole glances at me with faces full of fear, or else looked away entirely. The women in particular shrank into themselves, putting as much distance between us as they could.
It was the natural result of having witnessed, if only indirectly, what fate awaited the women who had given their bodies to this dungeon. Reduced to breeding stock who would birth monsters — and, as if that were not enough, used by those same monsters in every horrific way. No woman alive would want her life to end like that.
"Kihit..."
"Ah..."
A woman who had accidentally met my eyes went wide with shock. She seemed to realize her mistake at once — but it was already too late. Her pupils shook with urgency.
"P-please, save me... I-I want to live...!"
She dropped to her knees without preamble, rubbing her hands together as she begged. I looked down on her with arrogant leisure, and felt the blood rush downward. I drank in the thrill of it, as if I had become a god — the power to do as I pleased with a single life.
"Don't worry. I'll let you live."
I knelt so that our eyes were level. The gaze that met mine reflected nothing but terror and dread.
"Women are fine."
I stroked her lower belly, gently. Beneath my palm I could feel her trembling, the frightened stir of a body steeped in fear. Inside, she was still tantalizingly, completely empty.
"Women," I said, as she sat frozen, her mouth shut tight, "have to bear my children, you see."
"No——!!"
At those last words she startled violently and tried to flee. I turned, caught her by the hair at the back of her head, and flung her to the floor.
And then—
"Kyaaaaah——!!"
RRIIIP. TEAR—
In front of everyone, I tore her clothes apart without mercy. Through the shredded gaps, skin far softer than a man's was laid bare. Breasts that would fit in a single palm swayed into view, and her sex was exposed, lightly dusted with hair.
"Please, save me!! Somebody save me—! No!! I don't want to get pregnant with a monster's child——!! I don't want to end up like that!!"
Her voice was a scream. Her hands clawed at the empty air, thrashing to escape my hold. She wailed, her face twisted with terror, and begged desperately toward the villagers who could only stand and watch.
And then.
SCHLICK!
"Ukh..."
As a part of my body pushed inside her, she made a sound like her breath had stopped — and her struggling ceased.