[Urgh…….]
I finally defeated the floor 90 boss.
[How did you avoid my attacks…….]
“Well.”
This is the Korean way of clearing a boss: memorize the whole damn thing, asshole.
Until now, I had moved after watching the motion that preceded an attack, but with this boss, the interval between the warning motion and the actual attack was far too short.
Because of that, I kept finding myself in situations where my mind knew what was coming, but my body could not react in time.
‘I only ended up repeating more Runs for nothing.’
So I gave up trying to predict its attacks from the preceding motions and simply memorized its entire attack pattern instead.
It occasionally acted differently and killed me anyway, but……
Whatever.
I had succeeded in clearing it in the end.
‘How many times did I challenge the floor 90 boss because of that thing…….’
No.
“Is this not breaking the genre?”
This had been a fantasy world filled with goblins, orcs, ghosts, and Doppelgängers, and now suddenly it had turned into science fiction with cyborgs and electromagnetic cannons.
Of course, based on what the woman had said and the machines that appeared on the previous floors, I had suspected the genres might be mixed to some extent, but……
“What?”
“……Never mind.”
A Doppelgänger that called humans traitors, and a cyborg that sided with the monsters.
‘What the hell is going on?’
The woman was not merely positive about the Magic stolen from the monsters' King. She practically worshipped it.
Yet she reacted with considerable hostility and disapproval toward machines and robots that, according to her, had been created purely through human power.
Considering humans were currently being attacked by monsters, should that attitude not have reversed even if she originally thought that way?
[You…… shall never escape this place.]
“Ah, sure.”
Was there another puzzle here?
On floors 70 and 80, killing the boss alone had not opened the door. I had also needed to fulfill a specific condition afterward, so statements like this no longer surprised me.
If anything, I was almost grateful that it was kindly telling me there was something else I needed to do.
Trying to solve a puzzle without even knowing there was one would probably take a while.
Especially considering what happened the first time I had to solve one……
[If you continue onward with that woman……. You will never escape this dungeon—the King's tomb…….]
At those words, I quietly turned toward the woman.
She immediately shook her head violently.
Did she even know what that was supposed to mean?
Even setting aside whether she could clearly hear the boss from that distance, he had not explained why traveling with her would prevent me from escaping the dungeon.
“It is trying to separate us!”
“Of course it is.”
It was our enemy.
Why would it say something like that for no reason?
From its perspective, we were allies and belonged to the same side.
Regardless of whether what it said was true, there was no way it did not intend to drive a wedge between us.
‘Not that we are actually on the same side, and she is not particularly useful either.’
[I do not know what purpose drives you.]
I was going to escape this dungeon.
I was sick and tired of wandering around inside someone else's tomb.
But there was no point saying it aloud when that thing would not listen anyway, so I kept the thought to myself.
[However, so long as that woman remains by your side, the ‘King’ shall never grant you what you seek.]
“That would be a problem.”
The moment it started calling that woman a traitor, I had already suspected that merely traveling with her might come with some kind of Penalty……
Seriously, what a completely useless woman.
[When I die, my body shall return to my master in accordance with the King's design, and a gift from the King shall appear to celebrate your victory.]
Kill a monster and receive a reward.
It was stating something completely obvious as though it were revealing some extraordinary truth.
[Is he not truly a considerate sovereign?]
“…….”
I was gradually losing track of whether all this lore had been invented merely to provide an explanation for the game's rules……
Or whether all these game-like rules existed because this ‘King’ had foreseen everything and deliberately arranged them this way.
“Do not listen to it!”
The woman shouted urgently as she ran toward me.
“It is obviously lying!”
“About what?”
“Th-That is…….”
The moment I asked for specifics, she immediately began stumbling over her words.
Of course she could not answer.
She had declared it a lie before she even properly heard what it said.
“Could you even hear it from that far away? How can you insist everything it said was a lie when you do not even know what it said?”
“I-It must have been saying something to drive us apart! That cannot possibly be true!”
“Ah. And you have never lied to me?”
“Th-That is…….”
“…….”
I stared coldly at the woman before turning toward the spot where the boss had collapsed.
The creature had already disappeared, and a large pile of items now occupied the place where it had been.
“At least one thing it said was true.”
“What?”
“It said a gift from the King would appear to celebrate my victory.”
Whether those things were actually what it claimed was another matter.
“B-But that always happens.”
“So that means it was lying?”
“How do you know those are really gifts from this so-called King?!”
“You do not know that they are not, either.”
Personally, I thought there was a decent chance the boss had either been telling the truth or genuinely believed the King's words to be true.
The bosses here seemed to have absolute faith in anything concerning the King.
That did not mean I had any reason to believe them myself.
“You believe it?”
“Do I look like I do?”
The woman's expression immediately brightened.
“You do not?”
“Just because I do not believe that thing does not mean I believe you.”
Why did she insist on reducing everything to two choices?
From where I stood, her side and their side both looked equally suspicious.
“B-But we have spent so much time together.”
“And during all that time, you have done nothing but hide things from me.”
For example, why she refused to go anywhere near the shop.
“Th-That…… You do the same thing.”
Her attempt to somehow shift the blame made me laugh.
It was not going to help her at all.
“I never expected anything from you in the first place, and there is nothing I want from you. I have no reason to show you my hand.”
We only became traveling companions because she forced the issue.
I could have simply abandoned her and moved on.
She was the one who stubbornly followed me all the way here.
“But you want something from me.”
“…….”
“And the only reason you managed to get this far down is because I cleared the path for you.”
The woman hurriedly turned her head away with an embarrassed expression.
I had expected her to act as though that were only natural.
Apparently, she still possessed at least a tiny scrap of conscience.
“W-We are both human.”
“Ha. We are?”
Apparently, she had decided to appeal to my emotions.
If anything, it had the opposite effect.
“So what?”
“What?”
“When we first met, you suddenly gave me your name and immediately asked me to take you with me.”
“That was because I naturally assumed you were in a situation similar to mine…….”
“Naturally?”
Was she saying the only reason anyone would ever come here was to make a wish to that thing called the ‘Will’?
Or did she mean she assumed I had also been chased here by monsters with nowhere else to go?
“Ha…….”
No matter how I looked at it, the causes, circumstances, and results that brought the woman and me here were completely different.
What part of that had made her think we were ‘naturally’ in the same situation?
“And everything you told me afterward was only because circumstances forced you into it, or because you had reached a point where you could no longer hide it. Was it not?”
“Th-That…….”
“Hey. Is ‘th-that’ the only thing you know how to say?”
“…….”
“If you honestly tell me what you have been hiding first, then I might honestly tell you my side too. Maybe I would even trust you.”
When we first met, I could be extremely generous and say she had simply never answered because I had never asked.
But afterward, she had received my help again and again while getting in my way, yet she had never told me a single truly important thing.
Whenever a question became inconvenient, she simply shut her mouth.
Could I really trust someone like that?
“…….”
Apparently, even the woman understood that her previous behavior had given me no reason to trust her, because she merely lowered her head.
Once she completely stopped talking, I sorted the items, swept them into my Inventory, and headed for the next floor.
Contrary to my expectation that a new type of Minion would appear, the creature I encountered on floor 91 was the boss I had fought on floor 10.
[Vital signs detected. Checking registration.]
It even spoke exactly the same lines it had when I first encountered it.
[Unregistered. Intruder confirmed.]
Its rounded shape still looked as though a small child had been playing with clay, which made the mechanical announcement-like voice coming from it feel even more out of place.
The fact that it sounded like a woman's voice only strengthened that impression.
[Eliminating intruder.]
“W-Why is a Gatekeeper here……?”
That thing?
The barely humanoid creature?
Unlike the floor 50 boss, it hardly even looked human.
If anything, the floor 50 boss had looked far more appropriate for something called a Gatekeeper.
[Intruder elimination. Executing Stage 1.]
Of course, the fact that it used Magic meant it was difficult to dismiss it as nothing more than an oversized doll.
Leaving the trembling woman behind, I rushed forward and swung my sword at the creature as it raised both arms.
SLASH.
A heavy resistance brushed across the blade, and along its path, a line that had not existed before appeared between the creature's head and torso.
Its head slowly slid free.
The red light gleaming from the two holes that resembled eyes gradually faded.
THUD.
The head hit the floor, and the body that had remained upright collapsed like a mound of crumbling earth.
Unlike when I encountered it on floor 10, however, the collapsed remains stayed where they were, and items spilled out around them.
“I-Is it over?”
“…….”
I could not be certain because its pattern had been different from the monsters that appeared before it.
Still, rewards had appeared, which was practically the same as announcing its death.
Did that mean I had won?
While I stared at the items and considered it, hairline cracks began spreading across the wall directly ahead of us, forming the outline of a door.
“Th-The wall……!”
The woman recoiled in horror and pressed herself against my back.
“Damn it. Get off me! You are getting in the way.”
“I-I'm sorry.”
She made a fuss over every little thing.
RUMBLE……
The section of wall outlined like a door slowly opened with a deafening noise.
“My goodness…….”
“…….”
Was that seriously it?
Something so weak that it died in one hit before it even managed to attack was the floor 91 boss?
Surely they had not simply copied the floor 10 boss and placed it on floor 91 unchanged?
“Do you think that is the way down?”
“Who knows.”
If that really had been the boss, there would probably be stairs leading to floor 92.
If it had not, there would simply be another room beyond the door.
I roughly sorted the dropped items, swept them into my Inventory, and approached the newly opened entrance.
“They are…… stairs.”
That thing really was the boss of this floor?
There had never been a floor containing only a boss before.
Not only that, but monster types had never repeated even once, yet now a creature I had already encountered appeared again as a boss.
“That thing just now. You called it a Gatekeeper?”
I had often felt frustrated that the only information available to me came from item descriptions and the Status Window, but I had never felt that frustration as intensely as I did now.
I had no way of knowing whether the thing I had just encountered was literally the same creature I had seen on floor 10, or whether, as the woman said, it was simply another ‘Gatekeeper’ fulfilling the same role.
Was this why the developers had attached that woman to me as a worldbuilding guide?
“What? Oh, yes.”
Apparently realizing that I was asking her, the woman nodded.
“The monster we just saw was the same type of monster we encountered in the largest room on floor 10, right?”
By ‘largest room,’ did she mean the Boss Room?
“They looked identical. I do not know whether they were literally the same one.”
“If the creature we just saw is the same kind of being as the monster from the large room on floor 10, then it should also be a Gatekeeper. The monster in the largest room on floor 10 was the First Gatekeeper.”
The First Gatekeeper?
“Then the Second Gatekeeper was the boss on floor 50?”
“……Yes.”
I had said it almost reflexively as sarcasm.
“The book said that the First Gatekeeper exists to filter out beings who have not been granted permission to enter, while the Second Gatekeeper is a Gatekeeper meant to administer a trial…….”
I had thought the floor 50 boss looked far more like a Gatekeeper than that doll-like thing, but even so, the method of passing it hardly seemed worthy of being called a trial.
“What kind of trial consists of doing nothing but standing still and waiting?”
I had wasted several precious candles wandering around trying to figure it out.
“What?”
The woman practically jumped in shock, staring at me as though I had said something absurd.
“What do you mean? Standing still and waiting is the trial?”
“Huh? It only attacks if you step backward.”
At those words, the woman looked at me for the first time as though I were someone from an entirely different world.
What?
Was that not how it worked?