The Void's soul is close to colorless and odorless.
Meaning it has nothing you could call individuality.
So they seep into another being's soul without anyone noticing, and grow their own coloring inside it.
Like a cancer.
And when their coloring finally becomes distinct, that is about when an ordinary person realizes they are there.
But by then it is most likely too late.
By that standard of mine, Helen's condition was close to hopeless.
Her body had already been moved by the Void's will.
If I had come here alone, I would have given up on Helen and ended her.
Having witnessed countless deaths before my eyes, I know that death can sometimes be a refuge.
But I wasn't the only one here.
"Sister."
There was Imeln, Helen's half-sibling.
And he, at least, might be able to help her enough.
A sliver of possibility.
A situation that Helen herself had given up on, and her family wouldn't let go of.
Perhaps because of that.
Helen's soul, which had been wishing for death, burned with will again, and that flame joined with Imeln's will and grew larger still.
'I envy him.'
The thought came to me unbidden.
Because the me of the past had no courage like Imeln's.
-Please…… end it now.
The voice of a woman who had once been my companion came back to me.
She wished for death, and I granted it.
In the original narrative she hadn't needed to die.
She was an important figure who should have stayed at the protagonist's side right up to the moment he struck down the Demon God Enoch.
But my greed, my arrogant choice, was what made her wish for death.
I still.
Don't know why she wished for it.
Only that the longing in her eyes had begged for it so desperately.
So I wrung that thin neck.
"Almost, almost there. Sister……!"
If I had possessed Imeln's kind of courage back then, would I have been spared killing her with my own hands?
I shook my head.
Even if I went back to that moment right now, I wouldn't have loosened my grip.
Because as much as she had granted everything I asked of her.
I had to grant what she asked of me.
Perhaps that too is a refuge I made for myself.
[Sudden Quest: Halt the Void encroachment of the thirty-second dungeon!]
[Quest complete.]
[Reward: KP 2,000 granted.]
***
The fierce final battle between the Void and Helen ended in Helen's victory.
Once the encroachment vanished and the dungeon regained its former shape.
The cleanup, lukewarm until then, was settled with astonishing speed.
Imeln and I, who had somehow ended up at the center of the affair, spent about two days reporting on it.
And on the seventh day since arriving at this dungeon.
I was granted a private audience with the master of the thirty-second dungeon.
"Welcome, young man."
The thirty-second Demon King, Baiarte.
An elderly man on in years, he gave off the air of a scholar by anyone's reckoning.
Had he been seated behind a desk he'd have carried the unmistakable presence of a headmaster.
But at present he lay in a sickbed.
"I am sorry to have left the man who saved my life waiting so long."
"……Not at all."
"The affair being what it was, the school has had its hands full."
The reason Baiarte was still in bed.
It was that someone had attempted to poison him.
"How is your body?"
"Better, thanks to you. Because you stopped the Void's encroachment, I was able to wring out the last of my strength."
Chuckling and stroking his beard, Baiarte looked like a kindly old grandfather, but…….
I could feel a faint killing intent in his eyes.
Because the timing had been far too neat.
"The Void's encroachment began the moment I fell. The poison itself was not particularly strong…… and yet I could do nothing against it."
A dungeon and its Demon King exist in correlation.
When the Demon King weakens the dungeon weakens, and likewise when the dungeon weakens the Demon King weakens.
The thirty-second Demon King, Baiarte, in particular has the ability to reshape the dungeon's structure however he likes.
So when an intruder appears, he can notice faster than anyone and reshape the dungeon to subdue them.
Which made the Demon King Baiarte himself as good as a walking castle.
His ailment had weakened the dungeon, and to make matters worse the Void's encroachment had come on top of it.
So there was a reason the school's attitude had been so lukewarm all this time.
Healing Baiarte would have been the first priority for getting the dungeon back to normal.
'So that's why they couldn't respond properly to the encroachment underground.'
With a poisoning attempt behind it, wariness of outside forces would have risen without limit.
It was only because I had the Demon Realm Traders' guarantee that I could enter here at all; otherwise there'd have been no chance.
"Have you not identified the culprit yet?"
"We found him."
"That's a relief."
"We lost him, though."
A delayed follow-up attack, just like that?
"Ha. Do not look at me so. You will know the face as well."
"Who is it?"
"Do you recall the staff member who guided you through the school?"
"Chaeng…… was the name."
"His body was found underground."
"……?"
"The autopsy showed he had been dead for half a month."
"Then……?"
"Meaning the one who guided you was an intruder wearing Chaeng's hide."
It was startling, but there was something odd about it too.
"Isn't Chaeng one of Your Majesty's kin-bound?"
"He is."
That Baiarte, who controls the dungeon itself like a body, hadn't noticed an intruder disguised as his own kin-bound.
"Which is why I understand the cause even less. And on the other hand……."
Since beings with disguise skill of that order are limited in number, at least they had secured a clue for inferring the culprit. That was his consolation.
"Of course, that is a matter for us to handle. I called you here purely to convey my thanks."
"……Even if you say that, I'm not enrolling."
Saying this belatedly, but.
Over the past two days I'd had to field endless offers from the faculty here to enroll formally.
The desire to experience school days did stir in me, but unfortunately I hadn't the leisure for it.
Even now, having left Enoch behind, I was terrified of what might break out.
"Hoho. My staff seem to have pestered you thoroughly. They praised you to me until they were nearly spitting."
"……Thank you for understanding."
"Though my own opinion is the same as theirs."
"……."
"Hohoho. A joke, young man."
It didn't sound like one.
Having been through countless situations like it before the regression, I could only shake my head.
"In any case…… having received help, it is only right to repay it."
The main business began here.
"The seventy-second dungeon. A place I knew of, yet never truly registered."
"Is that so."
"The site where the Heaven-Demon War was fought five hundred years ago. As a scholar I had interest, but it cut off contact with the outside long ago, so it was hard to approach."
"Do you know the reason for that?"
I know that Enoch cut off contact with the outside five hundred years ago.
But hearing Zigwell tell it, the story was rather different.
Because the dungeons all maintained contact with one another in some form.
And yet over five hundred years not one of them had shown any interest in the seventy-second dungeon.
That was hard to see as simply Enoch's doing, and Zigwell had said he had no information on that part.
At my question Baiarte gave a bitter smile.
"It is a matter of the previous generation."
"……."
"My father was a scholar as I am, and as full of curiosity. He was also present at the site during the Heaven-Demon War. And that man left me a word."
"What was it?"
"That there are times when one must suppress one's curiosity."
"……."
"That was a considerable shock to me at the time. As a scholar my father thirsted for truth more than anyone. And yet even he told me not to take an interest in the seventy-second dungeon."
Hearing that much, I thought I knew why Baiarte's predecessor had left those words.
"……So he saw it there."
"You seem to know the truth of it? My father never told me to the end. He only said not to try to learn it."
"Does that still hold now?"
"Hoho…… Look at me. Look at the state of me."
"……."
"While I wandered at death's door, this foolish body of mine was thinking even then."
Ah, had I known I would die like this, I would have explored the knowledge I kept at a distance.
Saying it, his face carried an unmistakable pride as a scholar.
"Tell me. What is in your dungeon. And why you have come outside after five hundred years."
At his offer to lend what strength he could, however slight, I opened my mouth.
Filtering what needed filtering.
Saying what needed saying.
The whole story ended around the time the sun had settled quietly into evening.
***
Only after the audience with Baiarte ended did I register that I had fully finished this commission.
'So what I've gained right now is the fee minus the broker's cut?'
In fact Baiarte had said that if I named what I wanted, he would grant it as a reward.
But I deferred that offer.
I'd decide that part after discussing it with Enoch and Zigwell (mostly I'd be hearing Zigwell's opinion).
In any case, what remained was to say goodbye to those I'd formed brief ties with.
"So you have come."
"Oh!"
"Our academy's hero!"
Before I took the portal back.
Imeln, Henry, and Grendel came to see me off.
"You seem to be leaving early."
"There's nothing more for me to do here."
"You truly do move by practicality……."
"It's just how I am. More to the point, how's Helen?"
"She has passed the dangerous point. But scars on the soul do not fade easily…… it will likely take considerable time before she wakes."
"Hm. I see."
It felt slightly strange.
The matter with Enoch had been like this too.
The sense that I, having come back to the past, had changed the future.
'By rights…….'
The encroachment in the thirty-second dungeon would have cost Baiarte his life.
And then most of the students staying at the academy would have failed to escape in time and ended their lives here.
"I still can't believe you left us behind……."
"It's infuriating, but you did help this guy out, so I'll let it slide once."
Henry and Grendel, making a fuss in front of me right now.
Their parents alone, I'd heard, held key posts in the eleventh dungeon.
Helen and Imeln needed no saying; they were important figures of the eleventh dungeon.
And considering that every student attending here held a station that would be treated well anywhere…….
'It would have caused enormous upheaval in the Demon Realm one way or another.'
Maybe that was one of the main branches leading to the Demon Realm's ruin in the future.
'And I've inserted myself into it.'
There was a high chance that whoever had orchestrated this affair would now be watching me.
'Honestly, I expected that from the start.'
Who it was that borrowed the identity of the staff member Chaeng and plotted the poisoning, I still didn't know.
It might be a Heavenly Realm pawn, or some third force that simply wanted to sow chaos in the Demon Realm.
'So, as I thought.'
I have to grow a faction.
To stop the Demon Realm's ruin, and to take revenge on the Heavenly Realm, which was behind everything before the regression.
Recalling that fact again, I finished saying goodbye to the people I'd formed ties with here and stepped toward the portal.
***
Crossing that strange space inside the portal, I arrived at my home sweet home.
It had been only a week, but the experience had been intense enough that I meant to rest for a while.
VWOOOOOOOM—
A skull floating in midair all on its own, and objects drifting through the air around that skull.
And finally.
[Ah, you're back, yo?]
A black sheep with the dead-fish eyes of a laborer who'd pulled several all-nighters in a row was looking at me.