"Damp."
That was Haimer's verdict on the Dungeon.
The air in the underground passage was not merely humid — it carried a thick, earthy reek of wet stone and rotting soil. The flagstones underfoot were uneven and broken, and every few steps his boot would find a patch of slick, faintly phosphorescent moss.
Haimer followed behind Fels.
About half an hour passed.
The surroundings began to change. The width of the passage started expanding and contracting at irregular intervals, without any discernible pattern.
It was clear that this covert route, secretly carved out by the Guild, had now fully merged with the Dungeon's own labyrinthine structure.
"From this point on, there will be monster spawn points mixed in with the path," Fels said, her low, muffled voice drifting out from beneath her oversized hood.
"It's a concealed route, but the occasional stray monster does wander through. Please stay close."
The words had barely left her mouth.
Several dark shapes burst from a crack in the black rock ceiling above — accompanied by sharp, shrieking cries. The monsters plunged straight down.
Fels didn't even look up. The right hand sheathed in her black glove swept lazily upward.
The monsters disintegrated into a cloud of dark ash mid-air. Three Magic Stones the size of quail eggs clattered to the ground with a clear, ringing sound.
Fels drew her hand back and was just turning around to warn Haimer to watch the blind spots —
She stopped.
Her movement froze in place.
Her gaze dropped to Haimer's right side.
There, in the shadow of the stone wall to Haimer's right, an Almiraj had materialized without a sound — a stocky, muscular specimen. But this rabbit monster, which should have been limited to charging with the spike on its head, was clutching a rusty hand axe with a curled, notched blade.
Its crimson eyes blazed with feral madness. Riding the momentum of its full sprint, it brought the axe crashing down onto Haimer's raised left forearm.
However.
Haimer tilted his head slightly, raised his right hand, spread all five fingers wide, and closed them around the Almiraj's horned skull.
Crack.
The fingers applied the faintest inward pressure.
The sound of a skull shattering rang out.
The Almiraj's body instantly crumbled into a shower of dark ash in Haimer's hand.
A single Magic Stone chimed against the floor.
Haimer dusted the residual ash from his palm and looked up at Fels, who stood utterly motionless ahead of him.
"Don't worry."
"I'm not nearly as fragile as you seem to imagine."
Fels held his gaze from within the shadow of her hood for a long, measuring moment, then said nothing more. She turned back around and continued leading the way.
The two pressed onward, descending through the winding passage.
The light grew dimmer with every step.
Haimer walked just behind and to the side of Fels, his gaze drifting over the black robes that concealed her completely from head to toe.
"Come to think of it," Haimer said suddenly, breaking the sullen quiet.
"From the moment we met at the Guild altar to right now, you've kept yourself wrapped up like a ghost that can't stand the light."
"I don't even know," he continued, "whether I should be calling you Mr. Fels — or Miss Fels."
The question came entirely out of nowhere.
Fels, who had been maintaining a perfectly steady pace, faltered with unmistakable abruptness. Her right foot hung stiffly in the air for a full second before it came down again.
She turned her head with a certain stiffness, the gaze hidden within her hood finding Haimer.
Her tone carried a distinct undercurrent of displeasure.
"Haimer-sama." "My voice…" "Is that really so difficult to determine that you need to ask?"
Fels spoke — and from beneath that wide hood came a voice that was unmistakably a mature woman's: low and throaty, slightly husky, but unambiguously feminine.
Which made the question rather absurd.
Fels did her best to disguise it at all times, but anyone who wasn't deaf could tell it was a woman's voice. And for a creature like Fels, who had lived for over eight hundred years, almost no one but Ouranos had ever dared address her gender in such a flippant, familiar tone.
And yet.
Faced with Fels's barely-concealed irritation, Haimer didn't drop the subject. He gave an unbothered shrug instead.
"A voice doesn't tell you everything."
He quickened his pace by half a step and drew up directly alongside Fels, close enough to be almost invasive.
"What I'm actually more curious about," he said, "is what sort of face is hidden under those robes of yours."
"Let me see."
Those words from Haimer left Fels at a complete loss.
Over the centuries, she hadn't been without people curious about what lay beneath her robes. Even Ouranos-sama himself had once wondered.
If it had been anyone else who dared speak to her like this, Fels would have buried them in curse spells without a moment's hesitation and thrown them into a monster den.
But of course — this particular individual was someone even Ouranos-sama was going to great lengths to cultivate and couldn't afford to antagonize.
With that thought, Fels let out a long, resigned sigh.
"Since you're so interested."
"Then have it your way."
Fels's voice carried a note of throwing caution to the wind. Slowly, she raised her hand — the one clad in a glove patterned with black designs — and took hold of the edge of her wide black hood.
Then.
She pulled it back.
As Fels's hood fell away, what had been concealed in shadow was fully exposed to the passage.
No skin.
No flesh.
No hair.
What stood before Haimer was a pale, hollow-eyed skull.
The surface of the bone had taken on an ivory hue, worn smooth and yellowed by the passage of centuries.
"Do you see clearly now, Haimer-sama?" Fels's skull-face turned to regard him directly.
"This is the price I paid in pursuit of immortality." "A body stripped of every sense, every human trait — nothing but bare bone, through and through."
"This form has no warmth. There is nothing about it that could hold any appeal for you."
As she displayed herself, Fels's words carried a thread of self-mockery.
She had lived for over eight hundred years, after all. She had long since grown numb to this skeleton of a body.
She knew perfectly well that anyone — anyone at all — upon seeing this walking framework of bones would have but one instinct: to get as far away as possible.
She had already braced herself to watch Haimer's expression fall.
What she did not expect —
Was that upon seeing the skull, Haimer showed not a single trace of revulsion.
Instead, his eyes ignited with a fervent, almost electric fascination that sent a crawling sensation straight across Fels's nonexistent scalp.
"Oh ho…"
Haimer stepped directly up to Fels until the distance between them was close enough to feel the cold emanating from her. He extended his hand — and took her jaw between his fingers, the bones standing out in sharp, unobscured detail without flesh to soften them.
"What are you doing?!"
Fels recoiled in alarm. With her skull caught in his grip, she instinctively tried to pull back.
"A truly extraordinary arcane structure," Haimer murmured, turning her jaw this way and that, his voice rich with genuine admiration.
At those words, Fels's skull went completely rigid.
Her mind went utterly blank.
What kind of depraved, twisted god IS this?!
Even as a skeleton — even as bare bone — she felt profoundly, acutely uncomfortable.
"P-please — let go!"
Fels wrenched herself backward with a forceful step, finally tearing free from Haimer's grasp.
Then, with fumbling haste, she yanked the black hood back into place and pulled it down hard over her head, burying herself once more entirely in shadow.
"Haimer-sama, please conduct yourself with some propriety."
"We have actual business to attend to."
"There is no time for these pointless distractions."
With that, Fels didn't dare spare Haimer another glance. She spun around and broke into a stride that was, frankly, indistinguishable from a full retreat — practically fleeing toward the depths of the passage.
Watching Fels's routed departure, Haimer let the corner of his mouth curl into a satisfied arc.
Plucking at other people's composure like this — it was a petty amusement, a way to pass the time. A bad habit, perhaps, but a satisfying one.
Still. He didn't push Fels any further. He followed.
For the remainder of the journey, Fels maintained absolute silence — and deliberately kept a wider gap between herself and Haimer than before.
Even so.
After following Fels through several expertly concealed branch passages and past a series of natural rock formations used as cover —
"You know this route to the deep floors with a thoroughness that's genuinely impressive," Haimer remarked, unable to hold back.
"The entire way, you've avoided every adventurer without exception."
"And several times, when I sensed large-scale monster movement ahead several hundred meters out — you had already changed course before I could even register it."
Haimer stopped walking and fixed his gaze on Fels's back.
"So then, Miss Fels — you must have placed some kind of device throughout the hidden corners of the Dungeon's various floors. Something that provides real-time surveillance of the entire map?"
Faced with Haimer's inquiry, Fels rounded a bend ahead and slowed her pace slightly.
She stopped and turned.
After a moment of silence —
She reached into the wide pocket of her black robe and slowly withdrew something she held in her open palm: a blue sphere, approximately the size of a fingernail.
"This is the device in question." "They are scattered covertly throughout key nodes across the Dungeon."
"They serve not only to monitor monster movements — more importantly…"
Fels lowered her voice.
"They allow us to track, at any moment, the position of any adventurer whose path might expose the Xenos."
"Through these, Ouranos-sama maintains awareness of every anomaly that occurs within the Dungeon."
Haimer's eyes narrowed slightly. His gaze settled on the small blue sphere.
The mana signature woven into the thing was, he had to admit, impressively refined.
"I see," Haimer said, giving a slight nod.
"With something like this, you can indeed provide the Xenos with the most comprehensive guidance possible to keep them out of harm's way."
"You're holding quite a few cards, aren't you."
"Let's keep moving."
Haimer didn't press further.
Now that Fels had laid her hand on the table, the two of them picked up their pace considerably.
About another half hour passed.
After passing through an enormous cavern filled wall-to-wall with luminous crystals, the two arrived at a concealed alcove near the edge of the twentieth floor.
Moss grew thick and damp everywhere here, and threads of groundwater seeped down through cracks in the rock.
Fels approached the stone wall. Reaching out with her gloved hand, she knocked three times against a specific raised stone in an unusual, deliberate rhythm.
Click — Hmmm.
A deep, grinding sound of hidden gears turning rang through the rock — and then the massive wall, which had looked utterly impassable, groaned open in a cloud of dust, splitting apart to reveal a passage wide enough for several people to walk abreast.
— A secret realm.
This was unexplored territory — ground no adventurer had yet set foot on.
Ordinary monsters did not spawn here.
Such places existed in many corners of the Dungeon — completely sealed off from the outside world, a sanctuary in the truest sense.
"We've arrived, Haimer-sama."
Fels turned and gestured in welcome.
Haimer looked at the passage, didn't hesitate, and walked straight in.
After approximately ten or so meters, the view suddenly opened up before him.
What spread out before Haimer was an enormous oval plaza.
Tiered ledges rose up around its perimeter on all sides.
At the center of the plaza burned a campfire.
And gathered around it — a remarkable company.
— The Xenos.
Unlike the mindless monsters outside, they did not go berserk at the sight of a stranger and throw themselves forward to tear and bite.
On the contrary — they stood quietly in place.
And more strikingly: every single one of these monsters was wearing armor — clearly crafted and modified by human hands.
Some held broad metal shields. Some had great swords hanging at their waists.
At their head stood a Lizardman — enormous in build, covered from head to tail in crimson scales, with a physique that bordered on the colossal.
The Lizardman, Reed.
The fully armed Xenos had already risen to their feet and taken up defensive positions the moment they detected movement from outside.
But when the first figure to emerge from the passage was Fels in her black robes —
The Lizardman Reed's face broke into a broad, easy grin. His body visibly relaxed.
"Hey! Fels!"
"You finally made it!" Reed called out in perfectly articulate human speech, giving an enthusiastic wave with the massive blade in his hand.
"The medicine you sent last time is almost gone — did you bring more?"
The Xenos trusted Fels completely — she had been their supplier for over a decade, an old companion they knew well.
However.
That easy atmosphere lasted less than two seconds.
Because the tall figure following behind Fels stepped into the sanctuary — and as the light of the campfire fell across him and revealed his face —
— the air in the entire plaza seemed to be sucked dry in an instant.
To behold a god's face is to know divinity.
Even with Haimer suppressing the overwhelming divine aura that belonged to a god, the transcendent quality that could not be put into words was impossible to conceal.
Monsters bore a natural hostility toward gods.
But the Xenos possessed reason.
— And reason granted them a far deeper understanding than any ordinary monster.
"!!!"
The moment they recognized Haimer, every single Xenos was struck speechless.
None of them had imagined, even for a moment, that Fels would bring a god — a being of the highest order — down into this unexplored region of the Dungeon.
"Everyone."
Fels spoke up at once, her voice filling the space.
"This is Haimer-sama."
"He is not like those adventurers who hunt you for wealth and glory."
"He is, at this moment, the god in this Labyrinth City whom even Ouranos-sama is going to great lengths to keep close — and cannot afford to make an enemy of."
"And Haimer-sama already knows of your existence. He requested to come and see you for himself."
Fels turned and extended a hand toward Haimer, using the fewest possible words to establish his identity — and to make clear that he came without hostility.
Among the Xenos, Reed was the one who had interacted most with humans — and the most resolute champion of peaceful coexistence with the surface-dwellers.
At those words, the tension that had locked his body rigid finally eased, just a fraction. A flicker of hesitation crossed his face.
After all — the appearance of a god had shaken him to his core.
But at the same time, Reed also sensed something.
An opportunity.
Because if yet another god was willing to come and learn about them of his own accord, then perhaps — perhaps — they truly had a chance, someday, of escaping this sunless existence.
With that thought in mind, after a brief moment of deliberation, Reed made his decision.
He drove the broad longsword in his hand deep into the rock floor with a heavy thud, making plain that he was putting his weapon aside.
Then he stepped forward on his clawed legs and walked until he stood less than three meters from Haimer.
"It is a great honor to meet you, Kami-sama!"
Reed bent his massive frame in a bow, lowering the crimson-scaled head on those broad shoulders, and with his thick arms delivered a chest-clasping salute — precise and formal, more disciplined than many human adventurers in the Lower World could manage.
"My name is Reed."
"As you can see, I am a Lizardman — my level is around Lv.5, I'd say… which makes me one of the leaders among everyone here."
As he spoke, Reed stole a glance upward from beneath his heavy brow ridges, his slit-pupiled eyes watching Haimer's expression with nervous intensity.
In the few encounters he had managed with surface-dwellers over the years, even the rare adventurer who approached without killing intent would still let slip a gleam of revulsion upon seeing their monstrous faces.
And yet.
Reed saw no such thing on Haimer's face.
Not even a hint of it.
In fact, Haimer showed no defensive posture whatsoever.
Instead, he was studying the scales that covered Reed like heavy plating — with what appeared to be genuine interest.
And then — before Reed had even processed what was happening —
Haimer took a step forward.
And extended his right hand, offering it directly to Reed.
Reed froze.
He stared at the hand, dumbstruck.
"A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Reed."
"M-Mister?! Ah — yes! Yes! Of course, Kami-sama!!"
The word "Mister" hit Reed like a jolt of lightning. He snapped back to himself — and was suddenly, visibly overwhelmed.
He rubbed his clawed hand vigorously against his battered leather armor, then carefully, cautiously extended the rough, scale-covered paw — its fingertips tipped with sharp talons — and laid it gently against Haimer's hand.
He was terrified of accidentally injuring a god with even the slightest miscalculation.
Seeing this, Haimer gave a soft smile, pressed his palm forward to meet the grip, and closed his hand around Reed's clawed fist — then gave it two firm, deliberate pumps.
At that, Reed was utterly overcome. He couldn't help but scratch the back of his head, his great tail swinging behind him in uncontrollable excitement, smacking the stone floor several times in succession.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan ;)🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
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