I Wanted to Be the Strongest
"Me? The dungeon? A sex slave? Training? Me?"
"Ughhh... I want to leave for an isekai where I'm the strongest!!!"
The man who stood for the average value of the world, a presence so close to zero that he vanished anywhere he went, was me—Kim Dong-wook. Kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, university, and even after I got out of the army, I had always belonged squarely to the world's standard.
So there I was, howling over a web novel about wanting to depart for some world where even a guy like me could become the strongest, when a white light began to wrap around me and I started getting sucked away.
"D-don't tell me my wish is actually coming true!? Let's go—to an isekai full of ridiculously stacked heroines!!"
"...Who are you?"
The place I'd been transferred to, trussed tight in rope, was the belly of a deep cave—cold, damp, and dark. And standing before my eyes was not the big-breasted female knight I'd been expecting, nor a big-breasted priestess, nor a big-breasted mage, nor a big-breasted lady bandit. It was a white-haired old man.
"Ohhh... At last I've summoned the hero who will fulfill my dearest wish!!!"
He was weeping tears of rapture out of a body that looked as if one more long sentence might be enough to bid this world farewell. Recalling the laws of isekai, I pushed back hard.
"Sir... if you don't untie this, you might not be able to handle what comes next."
The first absolute law of isekai: a human transferred from Earth receives a hidden cheat and a massive protagonist buff. That was one of the two pillars holding up my confidence. The other was that the person in front of me was an old man with precious little life left in him. But—
Hic.
Whether my cocky tone and attitude had angered him or not, an appalling pressure erupted from the old man, and in that instant one of those pillars shattered.
"Kah-hah-hah... It's all right, it's all right... I've no mind to harm you, lad. Heavens, no. Aren't you the hero who will fulfill the lifelong wish of my entire life...?"
The killing pressure vanished all at once, and the old man's kindly face and laughter set about soothing me. At the same time he flicked a hand through the empty air, and the ropes crushing my body crumbled into white powder and spilled across the floor.
"Don't misunderstand. I only bound you so you wouldn't bolt the moment you saw me, and I summoned you this way for fear of hurting you by accident. Do try to understand."
I still had no idea what my isekai perk was supposed to be, but I could tell the old man in front of me was no ordinary person, and a head-on escape still felt impossible. He caught my eyes mapping out a route and grinned as he spoke.
"Ah, and for the record, I know what you're thinking—but you're ordinary... no. In this world you rank among the weakest. Run off without me and I imagine you'd simply become a goblin's meal..."
And just like that, the last remaining pillar of my confidence shattered too.
"P-please spare me!!"
No perk, no ability. With the situation fully grasped, I flattened myself to the ground and started begging mercy from the strong.
"Didn't I say it? You're my hero. Would I really leave my hero to die...? Come along. There's something I must show you. Kuk-kuk..."
I briefly considered smacking the back of his head as he shambled ahead on a hunched spine, but one look at the sand on the floor—sand that had been a perfectly sturdy rope a moment ago—and I quietly followed.
The place he led me to was an enormous cave lit by countless candles, and a library besides. What set it apart from any ordinary library, beyond the fact that it was a cave, was that every single book was the sort of filthy manga and illustrated smut I'd loved back in my original world.
"Kah-hah-hah... It was here I found a rift between dimensions, one that connected to your world... and a single book fell through. Magnificent. Magnificent beyond words. Perfectly magnificent for giving voice to the desires I'd kept hidden!!"
The memory seemed to surge up in him; he was practically howling, and in his hand was a book I knew all too well.
Days of Training in the Dungeon.
Insane. A forbidden doujinshi so notorious that even the people hailed as pioneers of the high-intensity stuff—BDSM, hardcore gangbangs, deviant lust, breaking-in—had shaken their heads as one and refused to so much as sample it. Famous beyond measure, and so far past what I had the guts to look at that I'd never actually read it. That doujinshi was in the old man's hand.
"This book!! This book alone could hold me.... And then I thought, I want to try the same thing. No!! I want to try something even further.... So I kept pulling similar books out of the rift between dimensions, and they became splendid reference texts for me. And with them, I was able to complete this dungeon. Kuk-kuk-kuk..."
A... a crazy old man ruled by his sex drive. Don't tell me he meant to make me the first subject of his training.... Crazy, crazy....
I was pouring cold sweat and grinding my brain for a way out of his madness-lit face when he put on that good-natured smile again, patted my shoulder, and spoke.
"Don't you worry... I've explored and mastered every one of my tastes, but I've no interest in men... Or rather, what if I tried a little TS on you...."
"Please spare me. Please spare me. Please spare me. No—please let me live as a man. Please let me live as a man."
I hit my knees and started bowing and scraping in a heartbeat. The old man stroked his chin and pondered for a long while before opening his mouth, sounding regretful.
"I can hardly chase a small prize and lose the great one... You're the hero who will achieve my dearest wish in my stead, are you not? Kwahahaha!"
What on earth did this insane, deviant old pervert want from me, that he'd treat me like this? I swallowed dry and carefully opened my mouth.
"Um... but what exactly am I supposed to be able to do? As you can probably tell, I was average itself even in my original world... If you need someone better, I've got a friend, Sang-cheol, and—"
"That averageness! That averageness is exactly right... Truth is, it's already been ten years since I built this dungeon. And nobody comes. They won't even approach. An aphrodisiac slime hot spring, a goblin impregnation nest, a gas chamber that destroys brain cells, and so on... I made so much. But my mana frightens everyone, and they simply don't come..."
Huh...? Don't tell me the man in front of me is on the strongest-being-in-the-setting route...
"Hiding my mana does nothing. They draw a little closer, then spook themselves and flee. I even spread rumors that countless jewels and artifacts were hidden here... and on the strength of my existence alone, this place was designated a forbidden zone."
"Then you could just bring them here yourself..."
"Tsk!! You dare lecture me?! Don't tell me you haven't read this book? An innocent country girl who knew nothing, come into a cave with the man she'd promised her future to since childhood so the two of them could play with fire—kidnapped by goblins and, within a single day, turned into a goblin's breeding pouch; the man who goes mad at the sight of his lover like that fleeing the cave, the rumor spreading through the village, the nearby lord's knight order charging in high spirits to quiet the uneasy hearts of the people—only for the female knights to be pickled in aphrodisiac as well, sucking the cocks of the men who had been their own comrades while the goblins impregnate them, that scene!! And then, among the many knights of the order that never returns, one who had been secretly blossoming a love with the lord's youngest daughter, and that youngest daughter coming to the cave together with the S-rank maid who had served her since childhood—grasping the situation too late at the sight of her knight's face twisted while some other woman sucks his cock, trying to turn back, only for the maid who had been their last bastion and the object of their absolute faith to have already fallen to hypnotic gas and to be training the very youngest daughter of the lord she once served, those scenes!! Hoo... hoo... And in the end even the empire's iron-blooded empress comes seeking the cave, and you watch the scenes of her being trained by orcs—you can't tell me you feel nothing, can you?"
One casual suggestion that he bring them himself, and he answered with a speech of endless sentences. The old man was madness given flesh. More than that—that was what the doujinshi was about? Honestly, it was kind of hot. Why had it gotten a reputation like that?
"Answer me, and quickly!! Tell me my eyes weren't wrong... I don't want to have to turn you into a woman."
Summoned onto a quiz show with my dick on the line, I rewound my memory and found the common thread in the episode he'd just recited.
"They came looking on their own...?"
Fortunately, that seemed to be the right answer. The old man grinned as if to show off what few teeth he had left, and tears of emotion began to spill.
"As expected... I knew you would understand. Yes, that's it. They have to come of their own accord. But my dungeon failed. Because of my existence. That is why I summoned you. You, who don't even react to my mana—colorless, odorless, nothing at all—you are the perfect fit for this dungeon."
With trembling hands he seized both my shoulders, looking at me the way a man might look at a savior found at the very end of the world's destruction, and went on.
"Soon I will melt into this dungeon, and my life will be cut short. My flesh and my life will vanish, but my mana will become this dungeon's infinite power source, and as the dungeon itself I will be able to savor your training. What a happy thing that is."
"Y-yes...? Me? The dungeon? The training?"
"Yes, you are the one fit for it!! Beginning with your utter lack of presence and with my death, the mana leaking from the dungeon will start to thin. Then people will begin to approach, one by one, two by two. Catch those people, and fulfill my desire."
At the old man's desperate plea I nearly nodded without thinking, but I absolutely could not. I was scared. I was afraid. I, who couldn't even catch a goblin, was supposed to handle knights? Mages? No—even the adults from the nearest village could one-shot me.
"B-but I'm far too weak..."
"It's fine!! You need only make use of this dungeon. A strong opponent won't appear from the very start, so you can accumulate data slowly, can't you?"
"E-even so, I can't even catch a goblin..."
"I told you it's fine!! Hmm... yes. So long as you remain inside this dungeon, even an inexperienced lad like you—hm. Yes. So long as you watch out for the red-haired female knight called Lise, there's nothing around here to fear!"
"Couldn't you just... send me home?"
I kept refusing his offer, and the old man's face went cold as he spoke.
"Ho ho... I'm sorry, but you have no choice. The moment you step outside this dungeon you'll be able to do nothing at all—you'll become a goblin's meal, or a kobold's portable snack. So accept it. There truly is no time left."
The thought that I would have no choice but to end my life inside a cave dropped my head, and I went crestfallen. The old man spoke then in a warm voice, like a saint handing over hope.
"In exchange, if you satisfy my desire, I've prepared a device that will automatically return you to your original world. So do your best for me...."
The moment he finished speaking, his body had already begun to melt, turning rapidly to liquid and seeping into the cave. Even as he dissolved he reached out, injected his mana into my heart, and with that—having passed on ownership of the dungeon and the way to use it—the old man vanished without a trace.
I was staring blankly at the spot where he had been, sunk in panic, when a warning alarm began to blare inside my head.
Intruder detected! Intruder detected! Intruder detected!
On instinct I shut my eyes against the sudden crisis, and then—like footage from a security camera—the intruder's face and movements rose before me.
True to the name of the Golden Knights, she came charging with a terrifying momentum, swinging armor and sword that blazed with brilliant gold. A female knight with a generous chest.
And red hair.
"Don't tell me... red-haired Lise? The boss shows up right from the start?"