Zigwell had first met the boy about four years before now.
An enormous mansion that, apart from the dungeon's master, only golems went in and out of.
Standing within the fortress at the center of a desolate plain, that mansion was also the place vagrants avoided above all others.
Just as the most fearsome being to a cockroach is the owner of the house, the master of that mansion, by his existence alone, could hold the vagrants' lives in his grip.
And then a boy appeared at that mansion.
The one and only being the dungeon's master, who had made no move in centuries, had taken in.
The vagrants soon recognized the boy as the dungeon's heir.
And wrote him off as another dangerous figure to be avoided.
Filth only escapes being swept away by staying hidden.
Fortunately, the boy's attitude wasn't much different.
He seemed curious about them at first, but after a golem stopped him, he switched off his interest entirely.
The boy did, however, begin hunting the Void parasites that roamed around the fortress.
How such strength came out of that small body, no one could tell.
But the more he hunted the parasites around the fortress, the safer the vagrants gradually became.
And so a strange symbiosis began to form.
No, let me correct that.
Zigwell could not dare call it symbiosis. Their own role fit that of parasites far better.
The Void parasites the boy hunted became precious food for the vagrants, while they had nothing whatsoever to give him in return.
Perhaps thanks to that, the number of parasite attacks and deaths by starvation dropped noticeably.
And before long the population had grown enough that a faction could form.
Even then, though, the vagrants never truly banded together.
Not until the incident of that day.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH!
In truth, it wasn't a particularly grand incident by vagrant standards.
Vagrants who had only just arrived at the seventy-second dungeon didn't know the Void parasites' range well.
And some of them simply became sacrifices.
A tragedy common enough, if you called it common.
And the ones caught that day were only a pair of parents with a newborn.
CRACK!
The sound of bones breaking.
A beast's growling.
Breath blooming with the smell of blood.
The father of the family was torn apart and eaten alive.
The mother fared no differently.
She only curled her body somehow and shielded the baby.
Her back had already been half devoured by a Void parasite.
Did the child know its own mother's pain?
The newborn's cries rang out across the plain, but every vagrant there knew.
That the sound too would soon stop.
Because more parasites had begun gathering at the crying.
But the newborn's cries went on longer than that.
"Ah, this little one. What a mighty set of lungs."
Thanks to the appearance of a boy who looked barely twelve.
"Ten of them at once? Even I'll have trouble with this."
The small boy, who came up only to an adult's chest, grinned even before monsters that were objects of pure terror.
And then, as if he had never learned how to retreat, he began to fight them.
A bloody battle in which the smallest mistake would have torn his throat open.
Even so, the smile never left the boy's face.
It was…… a smile like a mask.
And precisely for that reason, so finely made that it could not be doubted.
Before dreadful pain, before the terror of death, the boy merely smiled and pressed forward.
Perhaps that was why his smile gave those who watched a strangely steadying sense of calm.
Yes, it was like…….
'The figure of a hero out of a fairy tale.'
A being who could stake his own life fighting for a vagrant's newborn whom no one would remember if it died.
That was certainly not a normal response.
That was probably why so many vagrants, himself included, had watched that battle in a daze.
And so the fight everyone called reckless, the one no one had bet on the boy to win, came to an end.
With the boy's victory.
"Oh dear, little one. I wondered why you were crying so hard. Was it because it hurts?"
His neat clothes were in tatters, his clean skin stained red, and his long-hanging hair had been torn loose into a wild mess.
That boy took the newborn into his arms.
Though the mother had protected it desperately, a deep wound ran across the baby's cheek.
The boy tore off a still-intact piece of his clothing, wiped the baby's cheek, and shouted into the air.
"I've done this much, so the rest is on you lot. If you think you've been benefiting from me, then raise a little life like this on your own. Understood?"
The words weren't addressed to anyone, but everyone there heard them.
The voice was as calm as ever, yet the quiet anger held within it taught the vagrants what 'shame' meant.
And so the boy closed the departed mother's eyes, set the baby down, and left.
After that.
The vagrants began, little by little, to give the child their attention.
And from then on, a faction began to form among them.
'Why does that day come back to me now of all times?'
And so, in the present, Zigwell thought.
It was probably because the smile on the boy before him now was exactly the same as it had been then.
***
The Outer-Dimensional Passage.
I'd read about it in the books in the underground storeroom, and I'd already known at least that it "existed."
One of the few passages linking the dungeons that make up the Demon Realm, was it?
"It was fairly close to the castle."
"……How did you get here? Don't tell me you followed me?"
While I was looking around with some interest, Zigwell, who had seemed lost deep in thought for a while, asked with a shocked expression.
What had he been thinking about so hard, anyway?
"I told you. I'm persuading you. You'll be leaving soon, so shouldn't I make the most of whatever time is left?"
"It is far too dangerous here!"
"People live here too, you said. So there must be something to count on. And honestly, you can't save everyone on your own. Right?"
"……."
Zigwell's face stiffened at that, but he didn't deny it.
In fact, the diary of his I'd read in the past included passages where he blamed himself for failing to rescue every vagrant.
'And a man like this becomes such a cruel commander in the future.'
Was it the madness the Void gives that made him that way, or merely the work of years?
Not something to think about now, though.
It hadn't happened yet, and there was work to be done right away.
"So what are you planning to do from here?"
"……Hah. I intend to provoke the dungeon's core."
"A Dungeon Core?"
"Yes. Passages like this are usually part of a dungeon that was eroded by the Void and ruined. According to research, they are a kind of empty space left behind while the Void absorbs a dungeon's core."
"So it collapses on its own once enough time passes?"
"Correct. But I intend to move that cycle up considerably."
"What if I just step in and kill the entire Warmark bunch?"
"……That is one method, but it is not clean."
We didn't even know where Warmark was, and leaving a passage like this behind would only bring harm to the dungeon.
So removing it was the better call.
That was Zigwell's judgment.
"I see. So that's why you came alone."
The diary had described it only as "destroyed the passage," so I hadn't known these details.
"Shall we keep moving, then?"
"……Understood."
We talked as we walked.
Mostly with me asking and Zigwell answering.
"If the Warmark Family is a criminal group, how is your group any different?"
"They are people who fled after being falsely accused, or who ran because the dungeon they lived in was ruined and they feared being sold to merchants."
"Merchants?"
"Yes. When that happens, families often end up scattered. Though it is not a particularly good method."
Most of my questions were about the vagrants.
There was plenty else I wanted to ask, but I judged this a moment that called for empathy rather than for using him.
Maybe because of that, his expression had grown noticeably easier.
Though he hurriedly hid even that whenever he caught me looking.
'The Zigwell of this time really does differ from the future one in a lot of ways.'
The Zigwell I faced before the regression was nothing short of a monster mad for victory.
He had the decisiveness to execute any tactic at all without hesitation, so long as it won.
The future Zigwell would have focused on wiping out his enemy, the Warmark Family, however many vagrants died in the process.
His signature tactic of giving up flesh to take bone was bewildering from the receiving end.
Of course, fragments of that remained in the current Zigwell too.
According to the diary, while rescuing the kidnapped, he coldly shook off those he couldn't save and left.
But I had no intention of weighing right and wrong there.
Zigwell had simply chosen the best option available.
In any case, we had exchanged a few more words when.
"Um, by the way."
Unlike before, when I had always been the one to ask first, Zigwell opened his mouth first.
Taking it as a positive sign whatever it was, I answered.
"Do you happen to know a young child with a wound on her cheek?"
What kind of question was that?
I thought about it for a moment, but he'd see through a lie right away.
I shook my head.
"I don't."
"……I see."
The conversation stopped there, anticlimactically.
I wanted to ask why he'd asked such a thing…… but we reached our destination first.
"So this is a Dungeon Core."
"Yes. A fragment of a dimension, left behind when a dungeon's master dies."
The Dungeon Core, which I'd only ever heard about, looked much like a heart.
It gave off light in a steady pulse, though most of it was eroded by a dark blue glow.
"Did the traitor you dealt with the other day know this much?"
"No. I merely estimated where a Dungeon Core would sit, based on the terrain."
Spread the map out in your head and you can roughly tell, apparently.
Clever bastards seem to do their work crisply too.
"So how are you going to provoke the Dungeon Core?"
"I will use this."
A platinum-colored coin came out of Zigwell's coat.
"……How do you have that?"
"I received it from a merchant. He said it is currency used by a nation of the Middle Realm called the Holy Nation."
He was right.
That coin is currency issued by the Holy Nation, marked by the faint divine power dwelling within it.
Which is why it passed for a fairly valuable item in the game as well…….
"Ah. You're planning to mix divine power into the Dungeon Core?"
"Yes."
He meant to cause a magic power rampage.
"Ordinarily this method would not work so easily. But a Dungeon Core that has lost its master is unstable in its magic power, and this one has been eroded by the Void to a considerable degree besides, so even a small shock should collapse it quickly."
Apparently Outer-Dimensional Passages are sometimes destroyed in a similar fashion.
"Then I shall carry it out."
I was on the verge of saying go ahead.
"Hah, Zigwell of all people. I never thought a coward like you would come this far."
A booming voice rang through the core room.
Warmark.
The ringleader of this affair, a Demon Realm native marked by a savage expression.
Zigwell looked at him and narrowed his eyes.
"And you have been living well enough in a place like this, a den fit for rat bastards. Frankly, I am a little surprised."
"Heh heh, call me a snake while you are at it. I have been coiled up watching for my chance. Once this job is done, the ones above will recognize my worth too."
A smile as confident as his enormous bulk.
But I knew what he really was.
As Zigwell put it, he was a sewer rat of a bastard.
A sewer rat that slinks into the shade for fear of being noticed and eyes only the offerings dropped nearby.
And the thing he had feared here was none other than me.
The dungeon's young master.
"And the brat has graced us in person too. Looks like you picked your day. Didn't you?"
And that same bastard had shown himself openly before me.
It was a fairly familiar sight to me.
Before the regression.
Even in my Hero days, bastards who had only ever run from me would sometimes start giving off a baseless arrogance.
And such bastards had, almost without exception, obtained some "forbidden power."
Just like Warmark now.
Grrrrr…….
A number of demonic beasts revealed themselves behind Warmark.
Even at a glance, their level was far from ordinary.
They gave off energy strong enough that comparing them to the dungeon's Void parasites would be embarrassing.
Warmark's trait, which I'd heard about from Zigwell on the way.
'The ability of Subjugation.'