Dungeon Hunter - Chapter 53

Chapter 53: Episode 14. Where the Gods Fell (6)

‘A creature made of combined parts?’

It was a mutant that was created by a killer. The abilities of the monster were equivalent to a monster at Level 5, which couldn’t be found at the shop for everything… which was understandable when I checked the ingredients.

‘He must have used at least 700,000 points to create that one.’

It was a waste to make such a monster with so-so abilities for 700,000 points.

There was some potential, but with 700,000 points, he could have bought two much better and more useful monsters at a similar level.

It had only one skill—instant recovery—which was a pity. It would be useful for a one-on-one fight, but dungeon fights were usually a war.

‘And there are high-level monsters.’

An Orc Lord was Level 2, while Giant Trolls were Level 3. They weren’t high-level monsters, but Adol had been able to collect them while creating Onish.

My original plan was to start raiding other dungeons after three or four years, because I was spending so many points at the Auction of Devildom to build up strong awakened heroes around me.

But having eight high-level Golems and a Griffin saved me a lot of time.

“Isn’t he glorious?” Adol asked me with full confidence visible on his face.

Pfft!

That was bullsh*t.

I laughed a bit and channeled my rage, then ordered my monsters, “Sweep them all.”

Kaboom!

Every time my eight huge Golems stepped ahead, more than a dozen Orcs were smashed to death by the Golems’ feet.

An Orc Lord tried to stop them with a gigantic axe only to struggle.

Some monsters that couldn’t be repopulated, such as Golems, were slightly stronger than the average of their kind, so lower-level Orc Lords couldn’t really fight against the higher-level Golem.

Crash!

Pshhhhhh!

The Griffin breathed fire and lightning. More than a few hundred Orcs evaporated.

“What are you doing?! Stop the Golems! Drop that Griffin!” Adol was shouting with anger.

It was right after the fight started.

Adol seemed to be shocked that his monsters were so much weaker than mine.

‘Quality over quantity.’

A large number of unorganized monsters wasn’t a very useful tool, and a few thousand Orcs were just a dinner buffet to Griffin, a monster specialized in mass killing.

An Orc Lord? It was a high-level monster but only Level 2. Lychi and Golems were higher-level monsters, and they were the nemeses of Orc Lords. Lychi and Golems could easily overpower living monsters.

Adol was trying to defend himself with Giant Trolls, but he only had two of them, and the other monsters could be cleared by Griffin…

This was why I decided to raid other dungeons as soon as I had a Griffin.

Adol ground his teeth in anger.

“Onish! Kill the Griffin! Stop that f*cking b*stard flying in front of me!”

“Kuuuueek!” Onish started to move while drooling.

When I started to move toward Onish, Krathra approached and kneeled. “Dungeon Master. Please let me have a chance to fight it.”

I stopped and asked it, “Krathra, are you talking about that mutant Orc?”

Krathra bowed down and answered, “Yes, Master. That’s a mere mutant Orc, you don’t need to get blood on your hands for that thing.”

It was clear that Krathra would defeat Onish without any struggle. Their abilities were quite similar, but that Onish thing looked insane.

There was a 60 percent chance of winning if Krathra used his skills.

“Do it.”

“I will bring us victory!”

Chuck! Krathra gripped his spear and ran toward Onish.

When Krathra appeared, Onish had to stop its attack toward Griffin.

‘Well, then…’

Now, I didn’t need to handle Onish, so there was only one thing left: Adol.

I should pick on someone of my own size, not Onish.

Army against army, king against king. It made more sense for me to fight against a dungeon master.

When I started to move, Dark Elves cleared a path around me.

I kept walking forward to face Adol. “Only the two of us left here now.”

“H-huh…!” Adol became red with rage, which was a natural reaction from him.

He was so confident, but he didn’t know the nemeses of his monsters or the power of a Griffin at all. He was just a low-level Count who couldn’t reach higher positions such as Duke or Archduke for a good reason.

I kicked off the ground to jump up and slashed his shoulder horizontally with my rage.

“Ugh!”

It all happened in the matter of a second.

Adol looked at his left arm that was about to tear away from his body in disbelief, but my total ability was 60 points higher than his.

And 400 was the ability point called ‘the turning point,’ which I had passed, so even ten of Adol couldn’t really fight against me and have a chance.

I channeled my rage into my shoulder and asked him, “Do you know why Archduke Ufa let me go at the Auction of Devildom?”

“What?” Adol glanced at me with a look of pain on his face.

I moved my shoulder up and down. “He’s egoistic and never pays back his debts while living for revenge; do you really think he let me go just because there was a fairy who tried to stop us?”

“I don’t trust a word from your mouth!”

“When Duke Pagan and Duke Grewoolly tried to stop me, I leaked my Mana only to Archduke Ufa, and he realized that he was the only one there who could stop me.”

Adol’s face became even angrier.

“Bullsh*t! Archduke Ufa wouldn’t even look at your kind of low life. You cut me once, but that was the last time you’ll ever touch me!”

His blind faith wasn’t a bad thing, but I ignored his anger and continued, “There were three Archdukes looking at us, and if Pagan failed, Ufa would have to step out. And if he didn’t defeat a devil without any backing force, he would have lost the title of Archduke, so Ufa decided to let me go, because he wasn’t sure if he could defeat me.”

“You…!”

Four Archdukes.

Devils under each Archduke had eternal loyalty and faith toward their Archdukes, but it was not all nonsense.

Although fairies had tried to stop them, Ufa changed his mind so easily at the end to make everything stop as if nothing had really happened.

However, Adol’s anger was based on his loyalty, not logic. Even in Adol’s perverted soul, there was sincere loyalty and faith toward Ufa.

‘That’s not a lie.’ I smiled.

Ufa hadn’t wanted to make a scene out of nothing anyway.

Besides, it was true that I let only Ufa sense my Mana and that triggered Ufa to step back.

If I hadn’t, I was sure that fairy and Deboron wouldn’t have been enough for me to walk out of the auction without any trouble.

That was almost like I had declared a war against Archduke Ufo, and I declared verbally, “You are just the beginning. I’m going to cut off his arms and legs from the tail up. Ufa is such an annoying thing to let be.”

“I will tear that dirty mouth apart!” Adol’s body started to change to form more muscles, and he was becoming huge.

It was his Body Manipulation (U) Skill, but I was looking at him trying with my ice-cold eyes.

“What a joke.”

I secured my rage again.

It was so easy to bait him.

Adol gave me nothing but disappointment.

***

[Unbelievable achievement! You hunted down a devil for the first time!]

[2,000,000 points are granted.]

When I cut off Adol’s head, a message window appeared from thin air and granted me 2,000,000 points.

‘Huh!’

I had spent a little less than a year and a half to earn 2,500,000 points until then, and now, I just killed Adol and gained 2,000,000 points with one kill.

Probably it was because that was the first achievement I’d made… But soon, I was able to understand, thinking of the time when the devils fought against each other.

It was probable that a human awakened hero had made this achievement last time.

While devils were trying to check out each other’s abilities and strength, awakened heroes trained themselves to become stronger, and with my dungeon as the start, human heroes started to conquer dungeons.

It was natural to think there had been dead devils along the way.

“Kig, kieeeek!”

I looked toward the strange sound.

Onish started to go on a rampage as soon as its dungeon master was dead. It began to move in order to follow its last order from Adol, but it was suicidal to run into the enemy line simply trusting its recovery skill.

Soon enough, Krathra’s red spear cut Onish’s head into two.

Griffin cleared a few thousand Orcs and, the Orc Lord and Giant Trolls were killed by Golems.

But I also had some damage on my side.

Nine Dark Elves were dead, and we lost three Golems.

“Not too bad.” I nodded lightly.

This was much better than I had expected, and I had a handsome reward for my achievements.

It was much better result than I’d expected to have.

When I stood in front of the Dungeon Core on the top floor of the dungeon, the fairy started to shiver with fear.

“What’s your name?”

“G-Guyo.”

Guyo?

His name was Guyo because he kept making sounds like ‘Guyo’ at the end of his sentences.

That was the way a fairy was named in general.

I told him with confidence, “Guyo. Be my fairy. Your former master, Adol, was a piece of trash. There was no chance for him to become the Dark Lord, but as you have witnessed, I’m different.”

When I finished my words, Guyo looked tense and took some time to decide his own fate.

Gulp!

Guyo was holding his breath.

A fairy’s duty was to make its master become the Dark Lord so the fairy could become a fairy king. That was the reason that fairies were bound to their Dungeon Cores.

There were only two choices a fairy could make when its master died.

There was no such concept as a death for a fairy, but in the Dungeon Core, there was something called Fairy Power. When the Dungeon Core was destroyed, all the Fairy Power inside the core would be lost as well, which put the fairy in a near-vegetative state, and the fairy had to accumulate their power from scratch, which would literally take an eternity.

So, the first choice was to lose the core and go back to the Fairydom to start over again.

The second choice was to take a new master, but that meant the fairy had to make a brand-new contract that bound the fairy with something else. It was a double contract, so the second contract would bound the fairy with its self-destruction in the case of its failure.

If destroyed by the second contract, that was it. There was no way back to start again. It meant complete disappearance. It was a different concept with death. This was the fairies’ greatest fear.

So… making a choice was something a fairy couldn’t do lightly.

If it accepted another master, the new master had to become the Dark Lord. If the second master died before becoming the Dark Lord, there was no third chance. The first contract was bonded by Fairy Power, and the second one was bonded by the soul. There was no third chance.

Guyo looked up to see the guy, then looked back at the battle.

Adol had brought out an outnumbering army, but this guy had turned the tables and killed Onish and the dungeon master. This guy already had a top-notch Griffin, and his eyes looked like he could see through Guyo and everyone else.

But this was something Guyo hadn’t felt from Adol.

When Adol found the intruder, he was furious. He mentioned Archduke Ufa and was hostile towards this guy.

This guy was standing against an Archduke, yet he was so confident.

He didn’t hesitate, and his words were mesmerizing.

Maybe this guy… he could be the one to become the Dark Lord.

Guyo realized it was the moment of truth, and he had to make his choice.

***

I waited and waited without rushing him. I knew the importance of his choice, so I didn’t want to push him.

After a few dozen minutes, Guyo asked me as if he had already made up his mind, “You aren’t going to torture Guyo, right?”

“If you don’t neglect your duties, I won’t.”

“Th-then… Let me meet the other fairy. I will talk to her before I decide.”

It seemed like he had already made his mind up, but Guyo was careful.

“Sure.”

His request wasn’t a difficult one. I understood him and thought of Lyhee in my head.

She was connected to me, so I was able to talk to her if I wanted to.

‘Lyhee.’

― Hello?

She responded quickly.

I checked the connection and asked her, ‘Can you come to where I am?’

― Ah, Master. I thought I was starting to show signs of schizophrenia. I suddenly heard an inner voice. I’m so happy that wasn’t the case, but it isn’t my fault, right? It’s the very first time Master connected to me with inner voice. This is something new to me, so I was so surprised, which is unlike me. But aren’t you in the Japanese Dungeon? I’m sure there’s some kind of a spell that stops me from going to that area if you’re inside the dungeon. Oh, yes. What happened? I was so anxious that I had to torture the honey bees. Of course, I know you will win…

I cut the connection off.

I nodded and told Guyo, “She is telling me to open the area.”

“Ah…! B-blessed! I can smell the scent of a fairy on your lips, my goodness!”

Guyo’s eyes became huge. He looked at me, flapping his wings as if he was excited.

“Hmmm, then okay. I will sign the contract. You are a friend of us, the fairies. I can trust you.”

He changed his attitude in a second. It seemed that having a master was an incredibly important thing for them, and for me, an easy solution was the best thing I could wish for in this situation.

Soon, Guyo started to fly around. The fairy dust from his wings started to make letters, and when a long paragraph was made, Guyo asked me, “What is your name?”

“Randalf Bruciel.” When I opened my mouth, the letters started to shine with intense light.

Guyo opened his mouth with an extremely serious face. “Randalf Bruciel agrees to become the new master of fairy Guyo?”

“Yes.”

“And you will do your best to become the Dark Lord as the Dungeon Master?”

“Of course.”

“The contract is signed. I wish the Master well on his way to become the Dark Lord!”

Was that it?

I’d lost my dungeon before, but it was my first time winning a new one.

The contract was simpler than I expected it to be, which confused me a bit.

Thwaaaaack!

A massive Mana wave came out from the Dungeon Core, and…

[A unique achievement! Taking over a dungeon for the first time.]