It's Dangerous Outside the Dungeon, Master

* * *

“Haa… Haa…”

The dungeon that was usually filled with all sorts of demons and ornaments.

However, now there was no trace of the usual haughtiness in the vampire’s steps as she walked through her empty dungeon.

Swish… Swish…

Though she was somehow managing to walk with her back straight, the soles of her feet were making undignified sounds as they dragged along the floor.

It was natural.

She had drawn out and used enormous amounts of magic power beyond her limits several times in rapid succession. Just now, she had even summoned a doppelganger using her full power to buy time against the humans.

Exercising abilities that cause great consumption even to a Dungeon Lord’s body with its fast recovery and toughness, multiple times.

It would be strange if she weren’t exhausted.

“It hurts… It hurts…”

However, worse than that consumption was the single arrow lodged in the middle of her back.

Although Linsia herself had failed to chase the vampire, the arrow she shot had succeeded in hitting her. Moreover, it was an arrow that injected a special magical poison to weaken the one hit.

The alchemically synthesized poison, costing the enormous sum of 1 gold per shot and priced the same as its weight in gold, was perfectly injected into the vampire’s body.

Linsia would surely have been furious if she knew someone else would reap the fruits of that investment.

“Ah…”

At the edge of the vampire’s vision after walking for a long time.

What appeared beyond was the sight of a half-destroyed garden.

Her precious flesh-colored garden that was originally reddish, but now had turned completely dark red.

“My, my garden…”

All sorts of ‘bonsai’ that she had captured and raised one by one according to the instincts her ‘mother’ had taught her since childhood were strewn about, having lost their appendages.

What was on the faces of those broken ‘bonsai’ was not the flashy smiles she had drawn according to her taste, but completely different faces.

Faces that humans would describe as having become peaceful, or agonized.

“You…! Did you do this…?!”

Serica’s words as she turned around with a thoroughly vicious face, gritting her teeth while creating shade with her hair as she stood there.

In front of her stood a figure.

A woman with long black hair flowing almost to her thighs, wearing a quietly smiling face.

“Pitiful, and sad.”

The two women looked almost the same age, but while Serica had a very flashy color scheme of gold and red, the woman standing opposite was dull with black and purple.

The black woman’s voice was low enough to feel comfortable and soft enough to sound affectionate.

Unlike Serica’s high voice.

“The sight of them wasting time, neither living nor dying, just frozen.”

However, Serica felt that this woman’s appearance somehow stood out sharply.

It was because of a certain atmosphere she was wrapped in.

“You strengthened your power, and that should have been enough, but you clung to memories and harbored a twisted heart on top of that.”

Nobility.

That word, obvious at a glance, rose in Serica’s mind.

She instinctively realized that this being had ‘something’ different from herself, who had forcibly adorned nobility with flashiness.

“So I granted them rest.”

The moment she recognized this, something that had been precariously holding on in Serica’s mind slipped.

For example, her ‘reason’.

“What do you know!! Weak thing…! I raised them as Mother taught me! With the power Mother gave me…!”

Serica screamed, spreading one hand wide as if shaking off her sentiments. Looking at the vampire like that, the necromancer spoke leisurely with her arms folded and one hand on her chin.

“Mother. So that’s what you call the core. How pitiful; you seem to have not escaped from being a baby. Even after gaining such power.”

“Yes… Mother. I must get Mother back. Mother…”

Dungeon Lords are, so to speak, babies with intelligence. And loneliness is poison to babies.

They need an attachment object whether it’s the first summoned being or the dungeon core.

And Serica’s attachment object was the dungeon core.

Because she felt the core gave her knowledge and was the source of her skills, she clearly seemed to think it had actually ‘given birth’ to her.

This was surprisingly a common case among Dungeon Lords. Libertas herself had seen related stories several times in ‘MilDun 1’.

“Hmm.”

“Mother… Mother, mother… Mother is gone… I have to make Mother…”

The black woman sighed and examined the vampire’s appearance as if she found her extremely pitiful.

However, the vampire, who had become fixated on certain keywords, didn’t even hear her and continued to mutter ‘mother’ while pulling her hair and hunching over.

“If I gather humans I can make a new mother… Fertilizer… I need fertilizer and bonsai to make and raise Mother…”

All sorts of insane words that could be said because she wasn’t human.

Clearly, Dungeon Lords were powerful organisms created by concentrating magic power, but their durability wasn’t unlimited.

This was a phenomenon of intelligence decline due to consecutive magic overload, having used magic resistance to its limit.

“Child. Your mother isn’t such a thing.”

“Don’t call me child-!!!”

Crash!!

Although she had poured out a considerable amount outside just before, there was still a lot of magic power left in Serica’s body. It exploded naturally in response to her emotions and scattered.

It was one manifestation of using powerful magic power simply as force, breaking space to use as blades or guillotines.

“…”

However, Libertas still didn’t move from that spot. As if she knew such a thing couldn’t harm her.

Just quietly, with a gentle smile.

Suddenly, Serica felt coldness from that gentle smile. Even in a state where her intelligence wasn’t intact, she realized that smile didn’t have the meaning it appeared to.

A moment later, when the woman who had been standing there calmly moved her arm, Serica tensed her entire body, but the next moment, what she did was not an attack or anything like that.

Slurp.

The Dungeon Lord, who touched the blood from the cut on her cheek caused by fragments of space shattered by magic power, then stuck out her unusually red tongue contrasting with her white skin to taste it.

Immediately after, she narrowed her eyes and spoke.

“It doesn’t taste much different from human blood.”

“…”

Meanwhile, Serica stopped in place with a thud due to something that had spread through the air.

The reason was the scent.

A scent of blood so thick that any vampire kind would surely be captivated.

“You…”

“Hm?”

“Even among those I’ve killed so far, I’ve never smelled such a scent.”

“Is that so?”

“Who are you? This smell is clearly not ordinary. I can tell.”

“I don’t know.”

“Who are you!!”

Compared to Serica speaking seriously, Libertas was still utterly calm.

As if she felt no value in this conversation at all.

That was an attitude that made Serica, who most likely believed the Dungeon Lord in front of her had attacked her ‘garden’, feel intense anger.

Enough to rush at her immediately if she hadn’t felt herself weakened significantly by consecutive overloads and further weakened by the human’s poison.

In other words, what was keeping Serica docile now was pure ‘instinct’.

An instinct that felt like she was sticking her head into a beast’s maw right now.

“Tell me!!!”

Bang!!

Tap.

Serica expressed her anger by stomping her foot.

The cave floor flipped over greatly and scattered debris, but this time Libertas blocked it by striking her staff on the ground.

“Is this all? The power of an Elder Vampire.”

Libertas whispered as she intently examined the ground that had burst open in a fan shape around her.

It was more as if she found it pitiful rather than ridiculous.

“If I hadn’t weakened, someone like you…!”

“If you had weakened, shouldn’t you have been more cautious? When you lost the dungeon core, if you had hidden even more, a better opportunity would have arisen. This happened because you revealed your existence with emotions and drew human attention.”

Smiling, slowly approaching.

Words, words, words continuing as if teaching.

Serica screamed a scream-like shout while convulsively clutching her head.

“What do you know…! Mother…! I have to find Mother…!”

“It’s all your responsibility. That you lost your ‘ma-ma’. That you failed at that and are falling… dying like this.”

“If you hadn’t interfered!!”

“As I said. You should have prepared. Little one.”

“Eek!!”

Bang!!

Thus, when anger finally overcame instinct, Serica leapt out from that spot.

“I told you to prepare. It was sincere advice from me.”

Libertas erased the smile she had been wearing all along.

The gentleness disappeared, revealing an icily cold indifference.

-Grr…!!

“…!”

A shadow loomed over Serica’s head as she charged in blindly.

What was reflected in her purple eyes that quickly turned her body to block the attack from above with blood magic.

It was a pair of eyes that had the same red color as her but glowed much more vividly and brightly in the shadows, and above them, silver silk rippling with a red tinge.

Swish-!!

And five blood-colored blades drawing a large straight line.

* * *

A Dungeon Lord who was thoroughly exhausted after putting her body through overload several times and finally summoning a doppelganger with half her power, versus another Dungeon Lord accompanied by a summon with abilities well-suited against that Dungeon Lord.

Serica quickly collapsed before the joint attack on Xue and me.

“Disassemble. Disassemble… Di, sassemble…!”

“Sleep well. See you later.”

“You…!!”

Bang!!

Above all, allowing the initial ambush was significant.

Xue grew stronger by absorbing blood containing the Dungeon Lord’s high-purity magic power, and Serica couldn’t recover the blood stolen like that.

“Woo-“

“It’s too early for roaring.”

“Wup.”

Xue covered her mouth with both hands at my words as I put magic restraints on Serica’s neck after she fainted under my werewolf’s punches.

Seeing that cute appearance, the smile I had lost earlier returned.

“Good girl.”

“Mm. Good…”

That ferocious appearance from earlier was gone without a trace, quickly returning to a languid face and aura as Xue crouched in a wolf-sitting posture.

However, red sparks were still rising from her head.

It was the influence of 「Madness: Blood」, the werebeast-exclusive characteristic she possessed.

『Madness: Blood

■ Madness

■ Blood-craving Beast

■ Symbol of Life

■ Demon Beast’s Claws

A composite characteristic combining the above four characteristics.』

Unlike my 「Nobility」, 「Madness: Blood」 was a legendary-grade characteristic that seemed to have a lot of things.

In fact, there were many such composite characteristics in ‘MilDun 1’ too.

No.

It was normal for most users’ main characters to have at least one such composite characteristic each, so it’s not just many, but most.

Rather, my 「Nobility」 was rarer.

These composite characteristics are usually created by combining characteristics related to combat / support / survivability into one, and likewise, the combat core of this characteristic was handled by ‘Madness’.

『■ Madness – Health and Magic Power increase up to 50% the longer combat continues. The head becomes redder as it activates, and reason is lost at maximum.』

This was the secret to how Xue was able to subdue Serica after several exchanges.

The ability Xue gains when exerting this characteristic to just before maximum is over 50 Health and over 40 Magic Power. A level of ability difficult for a high-rank Dungeon Lord who has used more than half her strength to withstand.

[Huhuhuhu…]

[Haha… Hahaha…]

The material that maximized this characteristic like that was none other than Serica’s garden.

The ‘bonsai’ were all flesh-colored monsters shaped like plants using living people as materials.

It was truly a disgusting sight to behold.

The most moderate-looking ‘bonsai’ had limbs sprouting from ears and eyes, spread like flowers, and smiling.

[Haa…]

[I think it’s better not to look, Lady.]

[It’s alright.]

Anyway, since this garden had all its sculptures biologically alive like this, we used it to charge this characteristic while granting rest to the victims who had been suffering there for a long time.

There was concern that Xue, who was originally humanoid, might show reluctance to execute the neutralized ‘bonsai’.

Fortunately, that was a needless concern.

[I’ve seen people like this before… It’s better to kill them now. Their intelligence has long since worn away; they’re just suffering. Even if freed, they can’t live normal lives.]

As if she had experienced this a few times before, there was not a trace of hesitation in her hands. Rather, she had to give tempo to her killing hands to maintain ‘Madness’.

It was fortunate that my guess was correct that Serica would have separate means to detect the destruction of the ‘garden.’

I thought there was a high probability of this, as vampires often have characteristics that use living creatures like this.

Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered, even if that wasn’t the case.

There were many corpses around, and if urgent, we could have raised and used them.

『■ Blood-craving Beast – When absorbing blood during combat, Health and Magic Power recover quickly, or the combat power increase rate of 「Madness」 accelerates.』

However, in that case, we wouldn’t have obtained such high efficiency as now. After all, it seems to be an ability created with real combat or killing in mind.

And in that case…

“…”

“Hey hey. What’s going on here? Hm?”

“An adventurer I’ve never seen before. To have come in ahead of us and hunted the Dungeon Lord, you must be quite skilled.”

There would have been difficulties in dealing with the adventurers who had just arrived.

Once again, I think it was good to use this dungeon as the final trap. There were ‘unexpected gains’ too, and a good situation like this was created.

“Why don’t you say something?”

“If you speak well, I might consider sharing the reward. Miss. I’m not sure about Alexis, though.”

“What? Are you trying to trip me up again?”

About a dozen adventurers.

The three at the front were faces I knew well.

Jin Kyung, Alexis, Linsia.

They were the elite adventurers that Knight Elias had introduced as individuals to be cautious of in their own ways when we arrived at the camp.

Though their expressions differed, they seemed to share the common trait of confidence in their skills, as there was at least no ‘tension’ despite looking quite exhausted from both physical and magic power consumption.

Is that why?

“It must be unfortunate for you all.”

“What?”

“I came to save this child.”

Seeing their faces distort simultaneously after that, I felt something like pleasure somehow.

Whoosh-!

“Fuck…!”

No further conversation was necessary.