The Psycho Who Appeared in the Dungeon
I closed my eyes and opened them, and a space nothing like the one before was waiting to greet me.
It was a suffocating place, the kind where merely breathing left my lungs tight and heavy. Before the dungeon spawned, the System had given it a name: Cheonmandaesan Deep Underground.
Cheonmandaesan was a landform on the Moorim stratum of the Tower's fortieth floor, and also the seat of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, which worshipped the Demon God. The deepest place of Cheonmandaesan, then, was simply another way of saying the deepest place of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
Underground?
Judging by this stifling, stale air, "deepest place" seemed to mean the cult's underground — and since it claimed to be the deepest of the deep, the very bottom floor.
"Achil. Nachal."
I called the spirits' names, and two daggers settled into my hands. My right gripped a blade of immaculate white; my left, one flaunting a fierce crimson edge. Weaponizing spirits was the entire reason I had bothered contracting beings who, with a mana distribution converging on zero, couldn't use a scrap of power or ability. They didn't lose out even set beside masterworks from a decent craftsman, and best of all the spirits followed me on their own, which made them absurdly convenient to carry. Great Incarnation Era or not, who wants to haul a weapon outside every single time?
Too much of a hassle. I couldn't live like that.
Demon God of Heaven Beyond Heaven — the Constellation name of our Demon God, who was surely still lounging at home even now. Heaven Beyond Heaven felt like it had dropped out of nowhere, but apparently there was a meaning to it. The "heaven" in the name was supposed to signify god.
A god who exists above the gods, or something like that.
To my eyes, of course, it looked like nothing more than an outrageously self-satisfied, arrogant Constellation name. Peak Demon God.
"Lord Demon God, don't just watch. Save me."
Haah. I'm the idiot for expecting anything.
If you don't hope for anything, you can't be disappointed. The Demon God's overwhelming might had flashed through my head, though, and I'd gone and felt something as stupid as expectation. My fault.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm going, I'm going."
With no room left to think, I gave in to the prodding and stepped forward. Not so much as a rat's squeak stirred in the hollow passage. Only my footsteps rang out, lonely, as I walked.
Well. It was true there wasn't much of a plan besides going forward.
A dungeon doesn't clear just because you stand in one spot and wait. You have to at least subdue — and at most kill — the boss monster the System personally kidnapped. Only then does it clear.
I had walked a fair distance, and still all that met my eyes was a long corridor of stone brick. Untouched by human hands for ages, the bricks were cracked, or else crawling with vines.
"Lord Demon God, what kind of bullshit is that? Waste my stamina in a dungeon when I don't even know what's going to pop out?"
Haah. Look at that. Sulking.
It wasn't as if I'd never see the Demon God again, and the aftermath alone was frightening enough that I couldn't mouth off just because they weren't standing in front of me. I couldn't — but I was a Constellation's Incarnation. How was I supposed to waste a perfectly good chance to tease that Demon God?
"Lord Demon God, don't tell me you're actually sulking? No way~ The great arrogant Demon God, pouting because their Incarnation said a few words? That could never happen, right?"
There are times when a person has to march straight into the fire.
Even if that fire is going to burn them to ash from head to toe.
Well. I'm fucked.
Even so, talking with the Demon God and steadily putting one foot in front of the other, I found the stone-brick passage — which had looked ready to stretch on forever — finally coming to an end. And right about then, a question surfaced.
Why haven't I seen a single monster?
If a dungeon has a boss, common sense says the small fry under that boss ought to exist as well. This whole dungeon phenomenon was something the System stirred up on purpose, and a System bent on marching the people of Earth all the way up Peak Comedy Mountain would never skimp on the trash mobs. If not a single hostile creature had shown itself even so, I could think of about two possibilities.
The first: they were all waiting with the boss to welcome me together. In that case I wouldn't have to wander around exhausting myself. I could wipe them out in one sweep. A plus.
The second: in the System's judgment, the boss was so overwhelmingly strong that the dungeon was guaranteed peak entertainment even without trash mobs. The stronger the boss, the bigger the magic core it dropped, so that was a plus as well.
Whichever of the two came up, I won. So I gathered up a generous armful of expectation and reached the end of the passage.
What stood before me was an enormous door, easily three times my height. I was not overwhelmed. I kicked it open and cleared the way. My strength was far too great to be cowed by a mere door just because it was big.
Makina might have been overwhelmed, though.
Makina wasn't here, but if she had been, how would she have reacted?
"Kyaaa! Ragna! It's a huge door! Even if there were three of me, I think I could still fit through!"
Yeah. Let's not think about that.
A single thread of light slipped into a room packed with pitch-black dark.
This place was abandoned long ago. Who is it?
Everyone who knew of this place, and everyone who knew I was sealed here, ought to have met their deaths already. And yet someone had managed to find a spot forgotten by all, worn thin by the flow of time. I could feel expectation welling up inside me.
Ha! Even after everything done to me, I still look for kindness from some other being.
Truly, I could not have been more pathetic. Had this body forgotten so completely why I had been locked away here in the first place? The human who had come now would take one look at me, flinch in horror, and flee.
Isn't that right, you monster?
Ah — a side effect of being shut alone in this lightless room for decades? The longer it went on, the worse my habit of talking to myself became. Once the human who had finally come after all these years left, I would be alone again for who knew how many more. How much worse would the muttering get then? I was worried already.
Before I knew it, the footsteps were close enough to sound right in front of me. Judging by how light they were, far too light to belong to a man.
Mm... but they're too small to call a woman, either.
Almost like a child.
I lifted my head with that doubt still caught in me, and my eyes met a pair of golden ones looking down.
"What are you?"
I smashed through the boss-room door, and something weird was chained up inside.
Red eyes that glowed even in the dark. Fangs glinting sharp at the corner of the mouth. And on the back, of all things, a pair of bat wings.
There was a name for bastards with features like these. What was it again.
"What are you?"
"Eh...?"
"Don't eh me. What are you."
"I— I'm called Sugar."
Who asked for your name?
Somehow, she seemed blessed with a remarkable talent for driving whoever spoke to her straight into a rage. I tipped my face toward the ceiling and rubbed the corners of my eyes between thumb and forefinger, and the feeling boiling up like a live volcano settled, just a little.
Lord Demon God, please. I'm going to die of sheer rage.
"I asked what your species is."
The moment the question left my mouth, the air around Sugar — powdered sugar, whatever — flipped completely. A moment ago she had given off something servile and painfully dweeby. Now she was a cornered rat. A beast whose wound had just been seen.
"You too — you were planning to hurt me just because I'm a vampire, weren't you?! I'm not going to just take it anymore!!"
What is this bitch even saying.
Still, from the way things were going, I had clearly mashed her freak-out button.
And you think something like you gets to come at me?
Even with the button slammed, you ought to look at who you're lunging at. Of course, I was the only person here, so if she was going to lunge at anyone, it had to be me.
"Yeah, no. You're getting hit."
Against something like this, Achil and Nachal were pure luxury. As the saying goes, you don't butcher a chicken with a knife meant for cattle.
Wait. Did that saying actually mean using the cattle knife on the chicken? Whatever.
"Achil, Nachal, stay out of this. That one needs a taste of my fist."
"You're finished."