The encroachment brought about by a colony is, in a manner of speaking, a kind of "dungeon."
Not a dungeon of the Demon Realm.
A dungeon out of an RPG, with a set theme and monsters that appear to match it.
Encroachment served that dungeon role perfectly in 'Dimension Contender' as well.
And just as themed dungeons exist across all sorts of RPGs, so it went for the encroachments in Dimension Contender.
"The theme is…… fusion after all."
"So it would appear."
Thick veins wrapped the entire corridor like the roots of a tree.
And unlike the monsters we had seen until now, a change had come to the creatures' forms as well.
"They've changed into shapes that can move as efficiently as possible in a dungeon made of corridors."
The most representative example was the armor monster in front of me.
The armor, originally nothing more than decoration, was being worked from inside by writhing demonic beast flesh.
"This is a space that will fuse even a living human the moment you show an opening."
"So coming in with few numbers was indeed the right choice."
Hearing Imeln's agreement, I sketched out the scenario of the original history in my head.
The thirty-second Demon King's response, lukewarm for some reason.
Faculty moving to fill that gap, and students who'd come along for the credit.
And what unfolded before them was an encroachment none of them had foreseen.
Faculty and students would have become monsters before they could even resist, and the encroachment would have spread wider and wider until it swallowed the whole thirty-second dungeon.
'Though I still don't know why Helen alone ends up appearing in the future.'
Right now, pressing forward was the priority.
Fortunately, the situation itself hadn't run all the way to the worst.
"The armor was merely a shell to protect the body, it seems."
The armor monster had gone down quickly.
Imeln offered his assessment while watching the blood run out through the gaps.
"Though there seem to be a fair number of them."
In the shadows beyond the corridor, a great many creatures burst with hostility toward us, their eyes gleaming.
From here it was a fight against time.
From the moment we descended the stairs, monsters had shown themselves ahead of us and behind.
"All right, then……."
Shall we begin.
***
The boy's smile felt, in a manner of speaking, like the wellspring of his confidence.
It was so full of self-assurance that those who saw it came, without meaning to, to feel he was someone worth believing in.
Someone that confident, one thought without intending to, could be followed and trusted.
And behind that boy, a red carpet stretched long.
The carpet was in fact blood.
And what decorated its edges were the corpses of countless flesh-lump monsters.
'This is madness.'
Such was the impression of Imeln, following behind him.
Yujin.
The heir of the seventy-second dungeon, whose name he had never once properly heard in all his life.
Far younger than himself, at that.
And with no systematic education of the kind the academy gave.
Yet every single movement the boy made came back as a fatal result for the beasts filling the corridor.
'Could I do this? No, could my sister?'
Impossible.
The conclusion came at once.
Crushing an enemy with overwhelming force is easy, but the boy before him was nothing like that.
'An ordinary person thinks through how to handle even a single goblin in his head.'
Imeln did that systematically; his sister Helen did it by instinct.
But the boy was different.
'As though he had built his whole life on nothing but real combat.'
Something between system and instinct.
Standing precisely on that boundary, holding the sweet fruit of both sides in his two hands.
'This is past the level of having no wasted motion.'
Every movement was made on the premise that the enemy was already dead, and even the motion that followed had the next enemy's death already decided.
To Imeln, the monsters ahead looked like moths hurling themselves at a bonfire.
However they flung themselves in, the only result waiting was death.
Insects racing toward a decided future.
And Yujin had become that decided future himself, scattering death as he walked.
To some, that might be terror and fear.
Even an ally could not help feeling that way, watching carnage on this scale.
But to anyone who had ever once fought a flesh-lump monster face to face.
This blood-soaked red carpet was the one road out of a hellscape, and the monster corpses to be trodden over were the path forward.
However.
As time passed and as they moved deeper, the level of the enemies grew steeply as well.
Unlike the fifth basement's monsters, which had been mere lumps of flesh, the ones from the sixth basement had distinct forms.
Bodies protected with brick, the gaps themselves composed of material as hard as stone.
Or bodies pared down to the extreme purely for speed.
As if they had undergone change with a clear goal in mind.
And yet.
The monsters could not stop the boy from advancing.
If overwhelming practicality and disciplined movement had carried him through the earlier corridors of countless monsters.
This time he crushed them with overwhelming force instead.
Bodies of stone like golems, met with destructive magic power.
Monsters that moved fast, met by moving faster.
His response shifted moment by moment.
And by the time he had broken through dozens of such enemies and entered the seventh basement.
The number of enemies appearing had dropped considerably.
But their level had risen as much again.
Monsters complete enough to be considered entirely new species.
From here it became a matter of selection and focus.
Clearing out monsters of that level entirely was impossible.
Even Yujin had reached a domain where finishing things quickly was no longer possible.
And there Imeln's ability came into its own.
"We must turn at the next corner."
"That takes us away from the central corridor down to the eighth."
"The enemies waiting there are of a different level. Going slightly around will be faster."
"Okay."
Clearing a dungeon is, in a sense, the act of setting a board.
You grasp in advance every card the opponent can play and build your plan to match.
So Imeln made active use of his "eyes that see souls."
Encroachment means a Void being has swallowed the space itself.
Which makes the space one enormous fragment of a soul.
And with his eyes Imeln could grasp where the enemies were and how complete each of them was.
The plan is laid, and Yujin executes it.
That was the secret behind a breakthrough force hard to believe two people alone had produced.
"At last……."
And so.
The two of them reached the central staircase leading down to the eighth basement.
***
[Monstrous Strength D > C]
[Magic Power Core F > D]
[Magic Power Resistance E > D]
[You have acquired a new trait.]
[Poison Resistance]
[You have acquired a new trait.]
[Heavy Strike]
[You have acquired a new trait.]
[Weak Point Detection]
The number of monsters killed in that short span came to several hundred alone.
Taken one by one they were weaker than the Void parasites in Enoch's dungeon.
But being able to keep a cool head amid that overwhelming quantity was thanks to Existence Analysis.
You could fairly call it a gold mine of a work site.
'But the easy pickings end here, it seems.'
The atmosphere, which had shifted sharply the moment we arrived on the eighth basement, seemed to say as much.
'If the fifth floor grew veins, the sixth nerves, and the seventh muscle…….'
On the eighth, the walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of flesh.
This floor itself had become as good as a single living creature.
"What on earth…… lies at the end of this, to make a sight like this?"
"Who knows. I've got no way of knowing that either."
With every step, the unpleasant texture of flesh came through my shoes to my feet.
The environment itself wasn't a threat, but…….
'There's no change without a purpose.'
There had to be a clear purpose behind the corridor transforming into this shape.
And for all that pondering, we learned the corridor's purpose soon enough.
"O-over there!"
Something had caught the eye of Imeln, who was sensitive to souls.
Looking where he pointed, I saw a section of the flesh wall bulging out like a tumor.
"The graduates are trapped inside!"
At those words I struck the wall with a fist loaded with magic power.
SPLURCH—!
Along with a fountain of blood, the graduates buried in the flesh were revealed.
"Th-this is……!"
"The fusion's in progress."
Above the graduates, their arms and legs bound into the muscle layer beneath the skin, veins connected like nerve bundles were boring into their flesh.
"Luckily they're still breathing. But tearing them out by force would be dangerous, wouldn't it?"
"……It would. The integration has already progressed to a degree. If we pulled them free carelessly now……."
"Their nerves would be wrecked, or their selves could collapse. Their bodies and minds are still at the stage of resisting."
Unfortunately, there was no measure we could take for them.
But if you asked whether there was no gain at all, that wasn't so either.
"You said the theme of this encroachment is fusion, right?"
"I did."
"Then it's still in progress right now. In its strongest form, most likely."
"……."
The anxiety that had been on Imeln's face for some time now.
The reason for it was perfectly clear.
The one graduate who still hadn't shown herself.
"Helen. Your sister is going through the process of transforming into a host."
***
In truth, I'd found it far too easy for a place where an encroachment had taken hold.
Of course, an encroachment's difficulty varies with how strong the Void being driving it is.
But for a place where graduates, Helen among them, had been subdued, reaching this point had been comparatively easy.
"You call that easy……?"
"The graduates could have handled this much themselves."
"Even they could not do it alone……."
"Don't muddy the point."
Reasoning from that process led to one conclusion: the encroachment had thinned its defenses while preparing a final blow.
In other words, the Void was preparing a vessel to hold itself.
So it was time to prepare countermeasures, even now.
"My sister Helen's trait is the ability to devour souls."
With a grim expression, Imeln began explaining on the premise that we would be fighting his sister, eroded by the Void.
"Where I have the ability to analyze souls."
Helen, in contrast, devours souls and makes them her own.
A trait of devouring and growing stronger.
Which made her the finest possible host from the standpoint of a Void that had fusion as its theme.
"But devouring cannot be done just anyhow. It is only possible if she subjugates the target's soul completely."
"And if it's forced?"
"She would suffer endless hallucinations and voices until her mind collapsed."
I see.
The Helen swallowed by the Void in the future had no such restriction, which was how she had achieved such enormous growth in a mere few years.
"Perhaps the Void being deliberately refrained from killing the graduates in order to take my sister's body."
"Because it needs to pour the graduates' souls into her?"
"Just so."
It had already taken her body, and it had chosen the other graduates as the means to break her mind.
"A hard fight likely awaits us…… perhaps my sister has already……."
"Don't get discouraged too soon."
But as they say, the bad guesses are always the ones that land.
"……Sister."
The great cavern on the eighth basement, built for raising demonic beasts.
And inside it, what Imeln and I came face to face with was Helen, eroded by the Void, watching us with an expressionless face.
Like a robot connected to countless cables running out of her back.
The many bundles of nerves linked to her spine were forcing energy into her.
Before that miserable sight Imeln's face twisted beyond words.
"Pull yourself together. It isn't over yet."
I spoke to Imeln with a certain conviction.