Bell, the merchant of the Demon Realm Traders' Eighth Branch, was a tremendous chatterbox.
"So you see, the commission you want, Lord Yujin, is for gaining more varied experience within the Demon Realm, correct? And a commission perfectly suited to that just came in! Since it is not a commission just anyone can take, it carries a condition that only those of certain identity may accept it. But you are the heir of a dungeon, Lord Yujin! So I doubt there is any commission more perfect than this one. Ah! Come to think of it, I have not yet explained the dungeon that made the request!"
……That tiny mouth moved without a moment's rest, and it looked less like a merchant's professional manner than a simple love of chatter itself.
"In that spirit, the main point begins now!"
"Ah, I see. So now comes the main point."
Around the time I wondered whether my ears would start bleeding.
Bell said, with a somewhat more serious expression:
"The dungeon behind the commission I am about to describe holds a rather special position within the Demon Realm."
"A special position?"
"Yes! As I said before, a commission where you can gain the varied experience you want! There is a reason it fits that perfectly."
The explanation that followed ran far too long, so to summarize.
"So it's an academy within the Demon Realm."
"That is right! A place where the heirs of the whole Demon Realm, the children of promising houses, and pearls found in the mud all gather."
Its security was correspondingly severe, and it wasn't a dungeon one could simply visit.
The explanation had been exhausting to sit through, but it did seem a good place to broaden my experience.
"A colony of Void parasites has formed there. Because it formed deep underground, they were late to notice it."
"So monsters showed up where students are supposed to study. They must be scrambling to gather forces."
"Correct. Which is why the matter is running complicated. Since it is where dungeon heirs study, only those with guaranteed identities can be accepted, but those with proven skill put considerable pressure on the dungeon's finances. And given where the colony is, nobodies cannot easily set foot there either."
The only reason I could enter such a place easily.
Was the condition of being a Demon King's heir.
"Of course, as this is your first commission, Lord Yujin, the duty assigned to you will not be a heavy one."
Bell offered that as consolation, telling me not to be too disappointed, but for me it was better that way.
A first duty with no pressure, in a place that would let me pile up all sorts of experience.
And if I made a few connections along the way, all the better.
"Good. Shall we head out right away?"
"Ah, before that! Let us handle the contract first!"
"……Contract?"
The chatter bombardment going by the name of contract explanation ended three hours later.
***
After the contract was drawn up and Bell left, saying they would go and report to headquarters.
I went over to Blackie, who was in a staring contest with something in a corner of the underground storeroom.
"How's it going? Any progress?"
"It is very hard, yo. This soul has been left alone far too long, yo. It is not something that can be solved in a short span, yo."
"Hmm……."
What Blackie had been groaning over lately was none other than the Lich King's Life Vessel.
The item found at the site of the twisting of magic power.
If possible I wanted to know how it had ended up sealed there, but there seemed to be no great progress.
Still, a dream spirit is a dream spirit.
Blackie was burning with zeal.
"It is a task the King commanded, yo. It must be accomplished without fail, yo. Is that not a retainer's duty, yo?"
"That's…… true."
Blackie had originally mistaken Enoch's once-a-century magic power rampage for a "rest period."
A result of living buried in this basement.
When it later heard the news from me…….
'Seriously. I'd never seen anything wail like that.'
How terribly it blamed itself.
I broke a real sweat calming it down.
At any rate, Blackie had learned that Enoch's divine power was the problem.
So it was in earnest about waking the lich's soul that had been wrapped up in that same divine power.
"Fortunately it has not been a total loss, yo. This soul, for a human, understands souls to an astonishing degree, yo."
"Hm."
My head had felt ready to burst from Bell's explanation just now, but this was information I couldn't miss, so I listened closely.
"Souls lose their memories once enough time passes, yo. And then they naturally vanish, yo. But this soul saw through that and laid a suggestion on itself, yo."
"You mean he used magic so he wouldn't forget himself?"
"Something similar, yo. He twisted part of his past memories and made them repeat endlessly, yo. Of course, too much repetition would break it all the same, so he designed the history inside the memories to twist a little at a time, yo. Quite impressive for a human, is it not, yo?"
"Certainly……."
Maybe that's the level it takes to become a future catastrophe.
"In any case, the way to wake him is simple, yo. Smash head-on the seal that has been maintained all this time by false memories, yo."
"Meaning exactly?"
"Replaying everything without omission, from the moment this soul was born to the moment its last memory cuts off, yo."
"That…… wouldn't that take far too long?"
"Are you a fool, yo?"
Hey, what?
"Time flows differently in dreams and in reality, yo."
"Ah."
"A week at the longest. It will take no more than that, so go outside with an easy mind, yo."
"Hm. All right, thanks."
With that, my preparations to leave were entirely complete.
Since it was my first time leaving this dungeon since the regression, preparing without a single gap had eaten up far too much time.
Now it really was time to go.
***
Unlike the Heavenly Realm and the Middle Realm, which are each formed of a single dimension, the Demon Realm is formed of dimensional fragments, and it has two principal means of travel.
One is the Outer-Dimensional Passage, which I had experienced unintentionally.
The very place Warmark used as a hideout.
An unofficial route, naturally: you enter through a Void fissure formed somewhere in a dungeon and escape through another fissure.
Of course, it stakes your life and carries the further drawback that you cannot even set your destination, so nobody but a vagrant would choose it.
And the other one.
The effectively only road was spread out right before my eyes.
"Now, all that is left is to wait!"
"Uh…… right……."
Bell had returned after finishing the report to headquarters.
And once my own preparations were done, Bell set a single seed down at the foot of one wall of the underground storeroom.
At first I wondered why put such a thing on a marble floor rather than soil.
But astonishingly, the seed absorbed the surrounding magic power and, in an instant, stretched out stems and began transforming into the shape of a round portal.
"Now, if you go through here, you will arrive at the thirty-second dungeon! A staff member will be waiting there, and if you follow them you will receive an explanation according to the duty you have been assigned!"
At Bell's explanation, I stood before the portal with a somewhat marveling feeling of my own.
I'd used teleportation magic often enough before the regression, but this was my first time taking a fixed portal.
Perhaps because of that curiosity.
Existence Analysis worked hard to expose the portal's nature, but got nothing much for it.
This was less an ability of Bell's own than the power of a seed the squirrel beastkin had tended over a long time.
However much Existence Analysis I have, you can't analyze a thing you hold no background knowledge of.
'Still, I get a rough picture of it.'
I had the sense that some enormous energy was connected to it.
But why did it feel a little familiar?
"Then, shall we set off?!"
My thought went no further than that.
Because Bell pushed a face in close, eyes sparkling, uncomfortably so.
"All right, I get it. I'm off."
Enoch was in his room, and Zigwell was deep in the work I'd handed him.
Blackie went without saying.
So I left my farewell with Bell, the only one holding the place, and stepped toward the portal.
FWOOSH—!
"Hm……."
How to put it.
The sensation of traveling by portal was clearly different from teleportation.
Teleportation is like folding paper, so to speak.
You fold space and cross a vast distance in a single instant.
The mechanism isn't much different from the Blink I use.
But this portal is different.
This is…… a torrent.
You give your body over to some enormous current and wait until you reach the appointed place.
It is only that the current is so enormous that an absurd distance feels like an instant.
And when I opened my eyes again.
"Oh……?"
The scene before me was a space that looked like…… the interior corridor of a medieval European castle.
Warm sunlight coming in through the windows.
Beneath it, fine carpets laid at regular intervals.
A place that gave off a faint scholarly air from somewhere or other.
And there…….
"Ah, you have arrived."
A Demon Realm native greeted me.
"I heard the news just now. Heir of the seventy-second dungeon, Lord Yujin. Would that be you?"
"It is."
"Welcome. This is the Archive of the Demon Realm, the thirty-second dungeon. I am Chaeng, the staff member assigned to guide you."
The man who introduced himself as Chaeng smiled and held out his hand, and I took it.
"Good to meet you. I'm in your care."
"Yes. Let me begin with the guidance. Is that acceptable?"
"Sure."
"First, your identity is certain, but to prevent needless disputes you must wear this location-tracking brooch."
"Hmm? Well, all right."
It amounted to suspecting the person who had come to fix their problem, but I paid it no mind and pinned the brooch to my chest.
I hadn't come all this way to do anything shady, and given my position, going along obediently was the right call.
"Thank you for understanding."
"Sure."
"Yes. To continue, then: you will be assigned the duty of searching and defending the corridors of the fourth basement level."
The role of blocking the path rather than destroying the colony.
As a first duty, they clearly had no intention of handing me anything major.
But I couldn't relax entirely.
Because of the life I'd had before the regression, I had a habit of analyzing a situation completely once I was tangled up in it.
"I heard finding people to deal with the colony was difficult. Is that right?"
"It was, but fortunately that problem has been resolved. One of our graduates stepped forward herself."
"Oho. A person of some influence, then?"
"So it would seem."
There was even a hint of pride in Chaeng's tone as he said it.
Did that mean someone that strong had stepped up?
I was curious enough, but it was time to think about the duty first.
"You wouldn't hand an outsider a solo assignment. Who am I moving with?"
"Students of the graduating class."
"Ah."
The picture came together.
A situation that had been treated as quite serious was now being handled as if it were as good as resolved, because a graduate had stepped in.
And the minor duties beyond that were being handed to graduating students and outside forces.
Good for the graduating students, who build a record handling duties that are as good as settled.
And outside forces like me make for good lines to write into a report once the situation is cleaned up.
A clever piece of work in many respects.
"Then guide me there. No need to drag things out."
"Understood."