The First Servant
Elisa's belly swelled at an alarming rate.
Given that she could give birth in as little as two days, the progression was only natural.
When she came to after our coupling and found her stomach conspicuously enlarged, she screamed.
She threw everything she had into fleeing the Dungeon, managed a few labored steps, and collapsed. A ruined body. The weight of two people. A mind already worn to threads. In the end she slumped against the wall, gasping for breath, and screamed — shrieked for someone, anyone, to save her.
It was loud, but I left her to it on purpose. Watching those wretched cries, watching her come apart piece by piece — I found it entertaining.
When that inhuman streak of mine stirred a fresh flicker of dissonance, Seongha spoke, almost offhand.
Enjoy it?
Yes. You've lost everything and started over. You need a reason to keep living beyond merely staying alive. Whatever that reason turns out to be, I, at least, will not condemn you for it. On the contrary — I will defend you. I will cheer you on. Helping you survive is the reason I exist.
My death would mean her death, so perhaps Seongha was only trying to give me a motive for the sake of her own life. Even so, that didn't change the fact that her words were breathing will back into me.
Thank you.
……
I put real feeling into it, and she went silent. She always fell quiet when I said something kind. This time I didn't let it pass.
Why do you shut your mouth?
…I don't know.
Don't know what?
Whenever someone… no. Whenever you say something like that to me, I don't know how I'm supposed to answer.
Seongha, who had an answer for everything, had thought it over and come back with I don't know. The novelty of it caught me off guard.
If I had to put my impression of her into a few words, it would have been this: cold, objective, affectless. What she was showing me now was no different from an ordinary human being. Catching that hidden side of her, I felt a smile I couldn't quite explain rise somewhere inside my chest.
Isn't it because you have feelings too?
Feelings? Me?
Her voice ticked slightly upward.
You usually carry yourself like an AI, or an NPC — but I can feel emotions coming off you.
……
Seongha fell silent again. This time I didn't ask why. I could tell her silence was folding into thought — and I knew that was a reaction that couldn't exist in something without a human streak.
While we talked inside my head, my eyes stayed on Elisa.
The screaming had stopped. She had realized it was pointless. At some moment she had simply closed her mouth, slumped against the wall with her body hanging loose, and stared into empty air with eyes whose tear-tracks had already dried. Strength, will, sanity, a life — she had lost all of it. Her gaze held nothing but a hollow vacancy.
A wriggle. Another wriggle.
"…Heh."
Watching the thing thrash inside her belly, Elisa let out a hollow little laugh. Resignation soaked every corner of that feeble smile.
"Heheh…"
Her mouth twisted. She stroked her swollen stomach over and over, and the touch was so full of tenderness it might have been a child she had wanted, a child she had chosen to carry.
"M-my baby… heh…"
A ghost of a smile touched those dead eyes. The expression, the behavior — none of it belonged to a mind that was still intact. She was broken. Elisa, the human being, had shattered. As a person. As a living thing.
I watched her, snickering, and when my cock stirred I pushed it up in front of her nose.
She stared at it blankly for a few seconds. Then something seemed to surface in her memory, and she broke into a slack, crooked grin.
"This… f-feels good…"
Of her own will, she took it into her mouth and sucked with desperate, frantic hunger.
"Gulp. Gulp."
And the milky fluid that came of it, she swallowed without a second's hesitation. It was a far cry from the first time, when I had forced my semen down her throat and she had choked on the misery of it.
The effect has been applied to Elisa.
"My body's burning up… m-my head's going all… all fuzzy… I'm… happy…"
A slack smile spread across her face as her body went limp. Her limbs spilled across the floor, useless. The way people drink and take drugs to forget the world — Elisa swallowed my semen and, little by little, let reality slip away from her.
I moved my fingers through the air, tracing a question toward her dazed, drifting mind.
"How large is the village you lived in?"
"Whyyy~?"
She asked it back through a pleasant haze, and her hand reached for my cock again.
More… Give me more of that good feeling… Hurry…
She didn't say it. But I could have sworn I heard her voice anyway.
I stepped back out of reach of those grasping fingers and laughed at her — at this woman already addicted to my seed.
"Answer me. Or you don't get any more."
"O-okay."
Her voice was cracked, but she answered faithfully. The size and layout of the village. How many soldiers guarded it. How many women lived there. The roads in and out. All of it.
The reason I wanted the village's information out of her was simple. Going forward, I needed to produce more monsters, and faster — and for that, I inevitably needed more women. The quickest way to get them was to take the village she had come from, the settlement closest to the Dungeon.
But I couldn't do it alone anymore. Getting Elisa had been luck, nothing more. I didn't expect that luck to come around twice. If I wanted to shape reality with my own power instead of fortune, I needed two things: information, and hands to help me.
I had the information. The hands, I was about to have.
Elisa's childbirth is imminent!
Monster Generation Rate: 99%
"Gghhk—?!"
Without warning, Elisa clutched her belly, threw her head back, and tore out a scream thick with pain. Unlike an ordinary birth, hers was over in an instant.
A heavy lurch.
"Kiii…"
Her lower abdomen heaved violently, and a living thing slithered out from between her spread legs in a single rush of amniotic fluid. It had two arms and two legs, like a human. The moment it hit the outside world it flailed and thrashed — then stood up almost at once. It even tore through the umbilical cord still tethering it to its mother with teeth that had grown in a matter of seconds, and ate it.
A Normal Monster has been born.
Personal Trait:None
It was born. My first monster. The monster that would protect the Dungeon.
The thing pushed itself up and grew into its adult form in the space of a blink. Adult in shape, perhaps — but it stood barely three feet tall. It was skinny enough that the bones showed through, slight of frame, and that slightness gave it a somewhat agile look. My first monster, born of my own seed, had human limbs, but its face and body were a clumsy, uncanny-valley imitation of a person. As if someone had roughly sculpted a human form out of flesh-colored clay and called it done.
The old me would have felt a deep revulsion. Not anymore. I was a monster too, and I knew that to human eyes there would be no difference between that thing and myself.
As I read over the status window that had appeared, Seongha began to explain.
Levels are displayed as stars, not numbers. The maximum is five. Stats rise through combat and experience, and once they've accumulated past a certain threshold, another star is added. When a star is added and the level rises, the monster either gains a new skill or becomes able to equip special items that require a given level.
Rank is something like a monster's innate quality. From lowest to highest: Normal, Rare, Unique, and Epic — with Champion existing as an exceptional rank outside that scale. Even among monsters born at one star, a Rare-rank monster is more than twice as powerful as a Normal-rank one in every respect.
Personal Traits are unique characteristics belonging to an individual monster. Abnormally high intelligence, overwhelming strength, the ability to use magic — they appear when a monster's individual coloring is especially pronounced.
I see. And the skill… Devour? Does that mean it eats things?
It's a skill that makes you stronger the more living things you consume. Most monsters have it.
So it's nothing special. Well — I suppose that figures.
As I was now, I couldn't even guarantee a win in a one-on-one fight against a single human. A monster born from something that weak had no business being remarkable.
"Kiii…"
The newly born monster watched me in silence, as if waiting for an order.
You should give it a name. …The way you did for me.
A name, huh.
I thought it over for a moment, following Seongha's suggestion, and then I said it.
Dungeon Servant.
??'s name has been set to Dungeon Servant.
"Kii!"
The monster — the Servant, for short — made a sound that might have been pleasure at being given a name.
This is only the beginning.
I looked at the Servant and grinned. Together, we would increase the number of women inside the Dungeon. And I intended to make this Dungeon — to make myself — so strong and so vast that no one would ever dare encroach upon it.