◈ Mistaken for a Masked Monster
──────
Underground Floor 70
Purgatory.
A dungeon running a hundred floors underground.
The difficulty, broken down by range:
The first thirty floors. Upper-tier academy students can push through without much trouble. By design, it's a zone where students can safely build experience, which is why practical sessions, assignments, and exams all take place here.
'Forty and below is where it gets real.'
From that point, a supervising professor's presence becomes mandatory. The floors are simply beyond what a single student can handle.
'Fifty and below is restricted territory.'Students aren't permitted past floor fifty. Professors go in occasionally to gather research material, but even they need the headmaster's approval first. Carelessness down there can cost them their lives.
Past the sixties, even professors struggle to operate alone. Going in solo is suicide.
'Seventy and below hasn't been cleared. Not once.'
A century of attempts, nothing to show for it. Raiding parties dispatched again and again, each time forced to turn back, or not returning at all. Fifteen official expeditions on record. A hundred and thirty-seven members deployed. Survivors: zero.
The losses mounted until the academy simply sealed floor seventy off.
[Warning]
This area has an extremely low survival rate even for official raiding parties.
-Official raiding parties consist of a minimum of two professor-level fighters.
-Twenty years ago, following the deaths of five professors mid-raid, all expeditions into this area have been indefinitely suspended.
The probability of your survival is extremely low.
Do not enter under any circumstances.
That warning sign wasn't just there to intimidate. A hundred and thirty-seven dead beyond those walls, more than fifty of them professor-class.
'The keeper of floor seventy had earned that reputation.'
Once you stepped inside the room, escape became impossible. Teleportation, dimensional shifts through sorcery, all of it ceased to function. The only way to open the locked door was to hunt the floor's keeper.
"Shall we go in."
Pitch black.
Not even the faint flicker of a lantern. Just the dank, suffocating dark of a sealed space. Past the warning signs, past the gate. They were inside the boss room.
Boom!
The entrance sealed shut behind them.
No way back.
Beside him, a trembling voice.
"Vik, Viktor...?"
"Your Highness."
Carmilla, murmuring low. Her fingers wound tight around his sleeve.
With her heightened senses, she would be feeling it already. Even the faint residue hanging in the air would be enough to tell her exactly what kind of existence ruled this floor.
"I-I can't breathe... yin energy this suffocating, I've never felt anything like it..."
"Take a deep breath. Don't let yourself be swept away by its aura."
"Ugh, this is insane. We're going to hunt that thing...?"
"You're doing well. Breathe deeper."
Huu, huu.
A few ragged exhales, and she gradually steadied. Her crimson eyes were still gripped by fear. She wiped the cold sweat from her face.
"Viktor really is extraordinary..."
"Pardon?"
"Even I feel ready to buckle under this aura, yet you don't show the slightest flicker of fear."
"Hmm..."
How to explain this.
Unlike Carmilla, he wasn't picking up on the creature's presence at all. His mana sensitivity was too low for that. Grade E. Someone at that level simply couldn't register something like this. What he felt was vague unease, a chill crawling up the back of his neck. The same mild discomfort you'd get stepping into a cold room at night.
"I'm glad you're beside me. Please, don't stray from my side..."
"Of course. With me here, Your Highness need not worry."
"My retainer truly is dependable."
He didn't correct her. No need. She was relying on him, and that was enough.
They looked around.
"But... this is strange."
"What is, Your Highness?"
"I can feel an immense aura, and yet the thing it belongs to is nowhere to be seen..."
"You'll know soon enough."
Almost time for it to appear.
Before the words had fully left his mouth, a faint breeze brushed his cheek. In a sealed space, a breeze should have been impossible, but there was no time to wonder.
A violent gust tore through the room a moment later.
"Ah, aaah...!"
"Your Highness! Blood Manipulation, a barrier, now!"
"I-I know!"
Staggering against the wind, she still carried out his request. Both hands pressed together like a prayer, and the light stirred.
Dark crimson light bloomed outward like a flower, washing a faint glow across the surrounding dark. Carmilla's lips shaped the incantation.
"O scattered life, let the moonlight slake the thirst of dawn's parched throat."
Blood surged around them.
Thin-spread droplets wrapped around them both in a shimmering red veil. A clean hemisphere, a transparent shell of a barrier.
"Worship the rightful sovereign. In the night, of the night, to the night, through the night, it shall speak."
-Blandir-Style Blood Manipulation, Seventh Form-
'Crimson Canopy (赤血半天)'
"Bloom."
Boom.
At the last syllable, the gust shattered apart. Neither of them was caught in it.
The strongest barrier Carmilla could produce. Like a dome of red glass, and beyond it, something black writhed.
"There it is."
Beginning.
The gust had been nothing but a side effect of its entrance. Carmilla looked past the barrier. Her red eyes quivered.
As though doubting her own sight. As though begging it to be anything else.
"Th, that's..."
A murky, opaque green.
Wings spread wide, commanding in bearing, yet torn ragged in a dozen places. Beneath the rotted flesh, bone and muscle lay fully exposed. A rancid stench hung thick in the air, and from pupils swarming with maggots, green fluid dripped steadily down.
Carmilla barely breathed the words.
"...A dragon?"
Yes. What stood before them was a dragon.
More precisely, what had once been a dragon.
The stench of rotting meat filled the room.
[Name: Undead Dragon]
-Race: Undead
-Description: An undead entity formed from the corpse of a dragon. The keeper that governs the depths of Floor 70.
-Passive abilities: Reduced physical damage, reduced magical damage, immunity to fire-attribute attacks, immunity to water-attribute attacks, immunity to light-attribute attacks, immunity to dark-attribute attacks, immunity to lightning-attribute attacks...
A body strung head to tail with immunities.
It looked down at them. Then the rotted jaw fell open and it roared.
GROOARRR!
Like needles driving straight into your eardrums.
The ceiling shuddered. Cracks split across the barrier.
Carmilla scrambled to reinforce it.
"Vik, Viktor...!"
"It's fine. Buy us some time, just like this!"
"Against that? The, the barrier won't hold!"
"A moment is all I need. Seventy-five seconds exactly."
"Against something like that... do you really think we can..."
The next instant, a massive arm slammed into the barrier.
CRASH!
"Ugh...!"
It buckled horribly, then snapped back at Carmilla's gesture. At this rate it could take a few more hits.
The creature seemed to be underestimating them, too.
"I'll get ready."
Viktor dropped straight down. Crouched on the stone floor.
'Here. This is the exact spot.'
A claw fragment, rolling loose on the ground. A small piece, barely worth noticing. It had to have broken off from the creature's body at some point.
He picked it up and began scraping it along the floor.
'Can't make a mistake. The sequence, exactly as I have it in my head.'
Boom, boom!
Even as he worked, the barrier took hit after hit. The red shell buckled and reformed, buckled and reformed. The speed of recovery was slowing.
No. Not slowing. It simply couldn't keep pace with the rate of collapse.
"I'm, I'm reaching my limit...!"
Five scrapes to the left, seven to the right.
He rolled the claw fragment, pressed it, dragged it. Over and over, until he got the reaction he needed.
"Hff, ugh...!"
BANG!
There was no facing this creature head-on. Undead it may be, a dragon was still a dragon. The status window had made it clear: immunities to every manner of physical and magical phenomenon. That was exactly why every raiding party before them had failed.
'But.'
He was different.
The experience pressed into his fingertips. The muscle memory of keyboard inputs. The hours, thousands of them. All of it was a disaster the creature had no way to prepare for.
Scratch, scratch.
Finally, the claw fragment started to react.
Faint, but it shimmered and crackled, a heat haze rising from the stone.
'Got it.'
He lifted his head.
Rose to his feet.
"Even I... I can't hold on any longer..."
Carmilla, swaying on the edge of collapse. The barrier was past the point of recovery, nearly shattered through.
Grrr...
The creature was going for the finish. Its jaw hung open wide. Green fluid gathered in the back of its throat, condensed energy crackling at the edges of its mouth.
'Breath.'
It meant to erase them without leaving a trace.
The barrier fell apart piece by piece, unable to hold. Carmilla's eyes flooded with terror.
Had she felt it? The nearness of death.
As she sucked in a sharp breath, the dragon breathed out.
Viscous stomach acid and fire poured forth, enough to fill every inch of the space.
ROOOARR!
"...!"
Shatter!
The barrier broke apart.
Not a single scream from either of them.
Both figures swallowed whole by the acid, without a trace.
Grrk, grrr.
The undead, satisfied they were dead, let the pooled green fluid slide back down its throat. It turned to retreat into the dark.
"Oh, dear."
Unfortunately, they were alive.
More than alive. Not a scratch on either of them.
Ding!
[Item 'Evil God's Mask' has been activated.]
The mask had nullified the breath. Carmilla was tucked against his chest. He checked that she was unharmed, then looked up at the towering shape above him.
"Where do you think you're going?"
The corners of his mouth beneath the mask were stretched wide. The mask itself probably wore the same expression.
The claw fragment still sat between his fingers.
"You might not know what a clipping bug is."
Clipping Bug. The phenomenon in games where a player or NPC gets lodged inside a wall.
"That's fine. You're about to experience it firsthand."
The undead looked down, apparently not understanding what was happening.
Viktor held up the claw fragment, pinched between two fingers. He channeled a trace of mana into it and flicked it toward the creature.
"There."
Flourish. Violet.
The fragment sailed through the air, barely there. The heat haze clinging to it left a long, warped trail behind.
The undead didn't move. Couldn't understand what he'd done.
Thud.
It struck the creature's chest.
The heat haze spread to the undead as well.
"Hit."
Grrk...?
The creature stirred its flesh, sensing something had gone wrong.
Too late.
The claw was stuck fast against its chest.
Crackle, crack.
The image stuttered like a game glitch. A moment later, the creature's body sank into the floor, halfway down.
ROOOARR!
Thrashing in confusion.
That was the clipping bug in action. Manipulating a mob or NPC into clipping through the map. The dragon could go neither forward nor back, trapped in place, roaring uselessly.
'Good.'
Half of it was fully embedded in the floor.
So. If the bug released now, what would happen?
He grabbed the thread he'd pre-strung through the claw and pulled.
Snap.
A small tug was all it took. The claw came free without resistance.
That fragment had been the source of the bug. Originally part of the creature's body, stuck to it, the system had registered them as one entity. He had applied the clipping bug to the fragment, attached it to the creature, and transferred the effect across.
But now, the claw was removed.
"So... what... do... you... think... happens?"
What happens?
Stuck halfway in the floor, the bugged collision state would release. The creature's body and the floor would remain overlapped in the same space.
Only one answer.
"You get split in half and die."
RIIIP!
Blood burst outward with a wet, tearing sound. The shimmering heat haze snapped free, and with it, half of the creature's torso ceased to exist.
"Oops."
Organs scattered in every direction.
The other half, gone without a trace.
Viktor pulled an umbrella from his robe and held it up against the torrent of green fluid raining down.
Thud.
The massive body collapsed to the ground.
Messages filled his vision.
Ding!
[You have defeated the keeper of Purgatory Floor 70, 'Undead Dragon.']
[Exclusive weapon 'Dragon's Scale x1' has been obtained.]
[Mini Quest 'Small Courage' has been completed.]
[Hidden Quest 'What Matters' has been completed.]
[Hidden Quest 'Hero of the Comeback' has been completed.]
[Main Quest 'Clear Purgatory Floor 70' has been completed.]
[Main Quest 'Clear Purgatory Floor 71' has been unlocked.]
Ding!
Ding!
Ding!
.
.
.
Status window notifications, pouring in like mad.
He looked down at the girl tucked against his chest.
"Heh. Well, then."
Easy. Unbothered.
"Told you it would be fine, didn't I?"
"......"
He smiled at Carmilla, who stared up at him with a completely blank expression.