O you who seek a shortcut,
the shortcut shall not be the path you seek.
A shortcut can never be the proper path.
O you who seek a shortcut,
the shortcut must be filled with the blood of regret.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Taken at face value, it was simply telling me not to take a shortcut.
And the only thing here that could really be called a shortcut was…….
“Am I not supposed to buy the map?”
But if I kept progressing at this rate, I felt as though I would gather enough [Maru Stones] to buy the map before I even reached floor 90, never mind floor 100.
Not during this run, of course.
“A map?”
“There is such a thing.”
The woman immediately realized from that alone that it had something to do with the old man and shot me a dissatisfied look.
But glaring at me was not going to change anything, so I ignored her.
“People have always said that dungeons are places steeped in Mana, and that anything other than clearing them by the proper path is dangerous. Dungeons were created to deceive the living.”
What ridiculous hypocrisy.
If dungeons were created to deceive living creatures—to deceive people—then the door at the end of the dungeon could just as easily be a fake meant to trick them too.
And what was this supposed ‘proper path’ anyway?
A clear was a clear.
“And the door at the end of the dungeon is safe?”
“……At the very least, the fact that someone came out through it means you do not die merely by passing through the door. And the end of the dungeon itself is not something you are supposed to clear.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
Apparently, the people of this world were completely unaware of the contradictions in their own words.
Even if this was only a game, would the setting not have been criticized for being written like this?
“You must never trust anything in a dungeon that promises a quick end.”
“There is no chance this is ending quickly.”
How many times had I died just to get this far?
The woman wanted me to ‘properly’ descend all the way to floor 100, while the old man wanted me to escape the dungeon as quickly as possible, even if that meant using the map.
The fact that the two NPCs wanted completely different things created a considerable sense of dissonance.
‘And the way she avoids the shop is strange too.’
It was obviously a Safe Zone, yet she refused even to enter it.
She seemed to know something.
“Did that thing you read about the dungeon mention the shops inside it too?”
“……I only read parts of it, so I do not know the details.”
I could not tell whether she had hesitated because she genuinely did not know or because she knew and was pretending otherwise.
I had not been looking at her face when she answered, so it was difficult to judge whether she was lying.
Not that I was confident I could have told even if I had seen her expression.
“Then who read the whole thing?”
“Among the people I know, His Majesty the Emperor, Her Majesty the Empress, His Highness the Crown Prince, my father and mother, and finally, my brother Exia all read it.”
Only a small number of people.
And considering the Imperial Family was among that small number, it probably meant the book was something only royalty could read.
In other words, the information had come from an extremely important document.
‘That makes it more credible.’
In a fantasy world like this, knowledge monopolized by only a handful of people was usually some important truth that absolutely had to remain hidden.
But I still had to be careful about the person conveying that truth.
Even if the records themselves never lied, the people who recorded them could.
‘At the very least, the shop and the old man's existence are somehow disadvantageous to her.’
My circumstances were different from hers, so there was no reason for me to accept everything she said at face value.
I was already making excellent use of the shop, for one thing.
“Well, I think I have seen enough. Shall we go down?”
This mural did not change either, so if I felt I had missed something, I could always examine it more closely another time.
But since the woman could not come back up once we descended, I warned her in advance because I expected her to complain that she wanted to look longer.
Even if I told her to go separately, it was obvious she would follow me anyway.
“Yes.”
I expected her to insist on staying longer, but surprisingly, the woman nodded without complaint.
She did keep looking back, apparently reluctant to leave behind a trace of her missing brother.
Well, that much was tolerable.
As long as she did not trail after me despite being told not to and get in my way, I could make that concession.
There was only one route onward anyway.
“What? More NPC—, people?”
And an entire group of them?
“Haah.”
One woman was already difficult enough to handle. Was I supposed to deal with all of them now?
Surely every single one of them would not stubbornly follow me around the way she did…….
No, if these people had settled here, could I simply leave her with them?
But this place had none of the distinctive feeling of a Safe Zone.
‘The room where I first met that woman was a Safe Zone……. So why is this place not one?’
And those people hardly looked alive.
Every one of them stared blankly in a different direction as though their minds had gone somewhere else, and their clothes looked as though they had not been cared for in years, so tattered that they barely held together.
They were also filthy enough to make me wonder when they had last washed themselves.
“Ah, ah…….”
I frowned at the strange sound and turned around.
The woman had gone deathly pale, covering her mouth as though she had seen a ghost.
“Monsters.”
I reached a quick conclusion, drew my weapon, and attacked the things shaped like humans.
SCREEECH!
“Hrk…….”
I had spent so long cutting through hard things that slicing into something soft and yielding felt strange.
Worse, red blood sprayed out just like a real person's, leaving me with the unpleasant sensation that I was committing murder.
“They seem too weak…….”
They were far weaker than the monsters I had been killing until now.
Judging from their appearance, I could guess what these creatures were specialized in, but they were still monsters from the seventies…….
“El…… Lisi…….”
“Hhk!”
“…….”
Why were those monsters pointlessly attacking that woman psychologically?
Was she not irritating enough already? Were they trying to help her evolve into genuine dead weight?
“Hey. Stay out of my way and get over there.”
If I could simply leave her behind, I would have ignored her, but if I died and came back to life, I would undoubtedly meet her again, so I had to look after her to some extent.
For some strange reason, whenever I revived, that woman seemed to revive too.
Was it because she was an NPC?
‘What a nuisance.’
Trembling violently, the woman immediately pressed herself against the passage we had descended through.
Once I confirmed she had retreated into the corner, I charged straight at the human-shaped monsters.
On the floor above, monsters could survive more than ten slashes, yet here every one of them split in half with a single blow.
I could not get used to it.
The stench of rotten blood was turning my stomach too.
At least it made things progress quickly.
“All right. Next.”
“What?”
“You will only get in the way if you come with me, so stay here.”
The woman looked hurt by my words, but she did not deny them.
Leaving her frozen in place, I quickly moved into the next room and wiped out the monsters there in exactly the same way.
“The first floor should have been this easy.”
Of course, maybe I could kill them in one hit only because my weapon was better now, but things would have been much easier if the beginning of the dungeon had been like this.
What kind of game killed you right from the start?
Other than this one.
‘Damn developers. Damn studio. Damn game.’
I cursed every one of them in my head as I cleared the entire floor.
“How is there not a single campfire?”
Fortunately, the monsters were weaker than expected, so my Fatigue had not risen much, and I did not particularly need a new weapon.
Otherwise, I might have died at least once along the way.
“Did you…… kill all of them?”
“What? When did you start following me again?”
She had not come especially close, but I had failed to notice her presence at all.
Had she survived until now because she had a Stealth Skill?
“If I do not follow you, you will leave me behind again.”
“Of course I will.”
It was not as though I had any reason to go out of my way to take care of her.
When I made no attempt to hide how irritating I found her, the woman looked dejected.
“But you are the only one here…….”
What kind of lunatic nonsense was she talking about?
More than the words themselves, something about the way she said them sent chills down my spine.
“If I stay here, I feel like a monster wearing your appearance will show up…….”
“Ha. What kind of bullshit is that?”
Had she been sitting here alone, thinking up strange things and wearing down her own mental state?
Was leaving her by herself a mistake?
‘Why am I supposed to care about this woman?’
She was irritating, infuriating, and unbelievably troublesome.
But I did not know what kind of Penalty I might receive for killing an NPC, so I could not even kill her.
“Those monsters from earlier…….”
“They looked like people.”
Disturbingly, they had looked even more human than the humanlike things I had seen on the previous floor.
It was almost as though actual people were being controlled like puppets.
“So what? What about them?”
“They are people who died a long time ago.”
Were these things actually moving corpses?
No.
If they were people whose deaths this woman knew about, then they must have died on floors much higher than this one.
So these could not literally be their corpses.
They were probably monsters mimicking the appearance of the dead.
‘But why bring that up now?’
……Had I shown any sign of hesitation?
“So what?”
“Y-You die too. You come back to life afterward, but……. So……!”
Hesitation, my ass.
She simply did not want another corpse puppet wearing my face added to the collection.
“You mean you think my corpse will walk around here until I come back.”
“N-No, that is not…….”
“That is exactly what you mean. Whether it is a monster imitating me or my actual corpse walking around makes no difference.”
Her reaction made me consider that these monsters might not merely resemble people, but could actually be Doppelgängers.
And if they specifically copied people who had died…….
Was that why those monsters focused their attacks on this woman, who had known the people they copied?
And because I had no connections at all in this world, they had not targeted me in the same way?
‘What a completely unnecessary detail.’
If I really died here, these monsters might copy my appearance too.
And she simply did not want to see that.
What did she even like about a living zombie that kept dying without staying dead?
Was the fact that I did not stay dead the part she liked?
“Either way, it is still something that is not me walking around with my face.”
Though if I had to look at something wearing my own face, I would probably find it genuinely disturbing.
Still, I doubted this dungeon would go that far.
“…….”
If it actually did, that would feel absolutely disgusting.
I definitely could not die on this floor.
Not that there had ever been a floor where dying was acceptable.
Perhaps it was because these monsters resembled humans more than the ones before them, or perhaps my weapon simply worked better against them.
Either way, I had managed not to die so far.
The farther down we went, the more human the monsters became.
On the first floor where I encountered them, they had all been like standing dolls.
On the next, they were like dolls repeating the same route over and over, or painfully slow zombies.
After that, they began wearing armor.
Then they started carrying weapons.
Eventually, they even took proper stances and attacked first.
Their bodies themselves were still fragile, so killing them remained easy.
The only difference was that it became increasingly difficult to actually land my weapon on those bodies.
“Ugh.”
I was an ordinary person who knew absolutely nothing about Swordsmanship.
Meanwhile, their weapons were high quality, and they used techniques that looked extremely impressive.
‘This feels fucking awful.’
They were monsters, yet they had the nerve to imitate people.
“Fuck.”
“Intru…… ders…….”
“They can talk like people now too?!”
“This is fucking disgusting!”
There were still three more floors before the Boss Room.
At this rate, they would develop even further in the meantime and eventually start speaking fluently.
Just imagining it made revulsion surge through me until I felt nauseated.
I swung my sword, and when the creature's stance broke, I kicked it away and brought my weapon down.
“Ugh…….”
It imitated a groan of pain, and I reflexively cut its throat.
“Ah, damn it.”
I had meant to split its torso.
When I cut them across the waist, they looked at least somewhat like dolls, which made it easier to bear.
But seeing one with its head separated from its body made it look far too much like an actual human corpse.
“Urk…….”
It was unpleasant enough for me to look at, but I had also been avoiding that kind of kill because that woman made an even bigger scene whenever she saw it.
“Come over when you are done throwing up.”
Just do not vomit on me.
“Urgh…….”
“Haah…….”
According to the System, I still had plenty of Fatigue to spare, but the exhaustion I actually felt was far worse.
The monsters were supposedly attacking that woman psychologically, so why did it feel as though I was taking Mental Damage along with her?
“Campfires really refuse to show up when I need them.”
The campfires I needed to reduce Fatigue only appeared one at a time when I was already close to my limit, which was stressful enough on its own.
And the deeper we went, the more the monsters seemed to take on the appearances of people close to the woman—people who had held important positions in this world.
‘Who the hell is going to appear as the boss?’
If it was someone close to the woman, then it would most likely be a member of her family.
Exia, in particular, seemed the most probable choice.
If it was simply based on social rank, then the Emperor or the Crown Prince would probably appear as the boss.
Either way, it was obvious that the woman would be even more shaken than she had been so far.
‘Please do not ask to come into the Boss Room with me.’