Episode 4 – Jaw
The day after forming the contract with Kanon, Nada dove into the dungeon at dawn since there were no classes.
Maybe because of his childhood working on a farm, Nada was an early riser. After shaking awake the short-haired, brown-haired receptionist—who was sleeping at the counter with her head resting on her arms—and making her handle the preparations for him to enter the dungeon, he was, of course, met with snark. “With all due respect, please think about how it feels for me to have to wake up just for your sake. Really, nothing good ever happens when you wake up early, so please be careful. If you get yourself injured again, my workload goes up, you know,” she said, lips jutting out in a pout.
Nada simply replied with a curt “I’ll be careful,” and then headed inside.
Naturally, the dungeon he entered was Podie—the one he was familiar with.
His armor had all been destroyed in the fight with the gargoyle, so he was wearing a different set now, though the durability was roughly the same. Over a black coat, he wore a chainmail shirt of carefully hammered steel links. It covered his head as well, making him look odd, but Nada wasn’t the type to care about appearances.
On his right hand, he wore a light gauntlet shaped from bent iron plates, and on his left, he wore the gauntlet he had received from Kanon the previous day.
That gauntlet apparently had no name, so they decided to call it Solideum, the name Kanon hastily came up with. Compared to the one on his right hand, it was a bit heavier, but considering it could serve not only as armor but also as a weapon, Nada found the weight tolerable.
Around his waist, he had simply wrapped an inexpensive, leopard-patterned monster hide as makeshift armor. It was made from the tanned hide of a monster he himself could easily hunt alone. Right after defeating the gargoyle, he had gone into the dungeon, hunted a monster he encountered there, and tanned the hide himself.
Since he made it on his own, it was also asymmetrical and unimpressive in appearance—but Nada didn’t seem to care in the slightest as he continued his adventure.
By now, he had grown fairly accustomed to adventuring solo.
Nada swung his Green Dragon Crescent Blade boldly.
His current opponent—yes.
The monster in front of him was called an Ipopotamo.
It had a rounded body, short legs, and a stubby build. Its appearance resembled a pig, but its mouth could open a full 180 degrees. Inside that mouth were sharp canine teeth like a gladius—four on the top and two on the bottom—more than enough to shred unprotected flesh to pieces.
But in the end, it was just an early-floor monster.
It was no threat to Nada, who had been to the mid-layers and even deeper floors in the past with a party.
Nada firmly gripped the middle of his Green Dragon Crescent Blade with his right hand.
The blade, which had been twisted by the gargoyle, had been restored to its original shape thanks to Balba’s help. Its distinctive wood-grain-like pattern had regained its mesmerizing beauty—and incidentally, it showed monster blood very vividly.
As the Ipopotamo charged at him with its jaws wide open, Nada swung the blade down carelessly.
He was getting used to this weapon by now.
Through experience, he already knew how much strength to use—or not use—to easily kill monsters of this level.
The Ipopotamo before him wasn’t very large, maybe two meters long. Its only real attack was charging in to bite, so Nada timed his swing and brought the blade straight down, splitting its skull clean in two.
It wasn’t the technique of a skilled spear fighter.
It was brute force—Nada’s absurd physical strength combined with the weight of the weapon, driving it straight through the monster’s skull.
Naturally, blood, brain matter, and even fragments of bone burst outward, splattering him.
His dull-colored armor quickly became dyed crimson with monster blood, and his Green Dragon Crescent Blade looked as though it were drinking the blood itself.
In that moment, Nada looked every bit like a demon that hunted monsters.
Inside the wide corridor, he swung his weapon freely in every direction.
It resembled a violent storm as he crushed one Ipopotamo after another that charged him.
Some were struck by his wild swings, hurled into walls or ceilings, and died from the impact alone.
It must have been ten-odd minutes since he first encountered them. Nada slaughtered every monster—more than a dozen in total.
By then, he was soaked in blood, but none of it was his own. He had finished the battle without a single injury.
It hadn’t even been two months since he began solo adventuring, but compared to the early days, he had grown much more proficient.
Was it since he defeated the gargoyle?
Ever since then, Nada’s adventures had been going well.
You could say his instincts were sharp.
Even now was proof of that.
While he was using a kukri knife in his right hand to carve out the Ipopotamo’s Calvaon, a monster suddenly attacked him from behind.
It was a monster known as a Baphomet.
Its face looked as if it had been twisted in a grimace, with drooping ears like a pig’s—though the right ear had rotted away halfway. From its back trailed a serpent-like tail. Its legs were like those of an antelope, yet it had thick, bear-like claws, and despite these mismatched features, the creature was a grotesque being that stood upright like a human.
On top of that, from around its shoulder blades sprouted bat-like wings covered in faint fuzz.
Although Baphomet was bipedal, it wasn’t particularly skilled at walking. Instead, it repeatedly jumped and glided, using its inhuman musculature to slice adventurers clean in half. It was also adept at crawling along the ceiling, so it had apparently crept up quietly behind Nada while he was harvesting the calvaon.
“Tch—”
Noticing the Baphomet in time had been good.
But the problem was that Nada had left his Green Dragon Crescent Blade lying nearby. He obviously couldn’t hold such a large weapon while butchering a monster, and since he didn’t have anything that allowed him to sling it on his back, he always set it down nearby while harvesting Calvaon. That gap was exactly what the monster had targeted.
Nada tried to block the descending right claw of the Baphomet—which had leapt down from above—with his kukri held in a reverse grip, but his hold slipped.
The kukri flew off into the distance.
Though he managed to escape the first strike, the Green Dragon Crescent Blade was far away, and so was the kukri.
With Nada weaponless, the second frenzied claw attack came.
—At that instant, Nada pulled his clenched left hand sharply toward himself.
From the wrist area of the gauntlet on his left arm, a straight, beautiful, silvery-white blade burst forth from the battered metal housing.
It was thin and translucent like ice, and the blade somehow gave off a sensation of coldness.
Unlike the one he had produced at the mansion yesterday, this one was about seventy centimeters long. Even with the blade extended, the weight of the gauntlet didn’t change, making it a reassuring weapon for Nada.
As the Baphomet swung its crude claw downward, Nada knocked it aside with the gauntlet—Solideum.
Its blade, slender like a rapier rather than a sword, looked unreliable in terms of durability, but it surprisingly didn’t break.
Nada launched a counterattack with Solideum.
But his offense was too light.
With a blade no thicker than a fine thrusting sword, he could only inflict shallow cuts—nowhere near fatal.
Immediately, the Baphomet’s antelope-like front kick shot toward Nada.
The monster’s powerful leaping legs drove deeply into him, the chainmail scraping harshly as it absorbed the strike. Chainmail could block slashing attacks, but sadly, it wasn’t built to lessen blunt impact.
Nada endured the blow, barely keeping his footing.
The Baphomet then swung a large arm in a wide arc.
Nada stepped in even closer and raised his right arm to block the attack. With strength enough to cling to the ceiling, the Baphomet’s strike rattled him to the bone, but he clenched his teeth and held his ground.
Then—at point-blank range—Nada thrust Solideum straight into the Baphomet’s heart.
The thin blade pierced it cleanly.
The pressure weighing on Nada’s right arm faded as the stab cut through, and the Baphomet eventually collapsed as if its strength had drained away.
Even then, Nada kept Solideum extended and continued staring down at the fallen monster, refusing to lower his guard.
A moment of carelessness in a place like this could easily lead to death.
Some monsters pretended to be dead and attacked the moment one tried to harvest their Calvaon.
Without taking his eyes off the Baphomet, Nada retrieved his kukri and Green Dragon Crescent Blade.
Then, as a final confirmation, he smashed the Baphomet’s head with the polearm before moving on to collect its calvaon.
Undead monsters were a different matter, but for most creatures, crushing the skull or destroying the heart made them stop moving entirely. No one knew why, but it was said that monsters in the dungeon had biological structures close to surface-dwelling animals.
Nada wondered whether a twisted creature like this Baphomet was the same, all while resuming the harvesting.
It was said that there were scholars researching monster classifications, but their progress wasn’t going well. One reason was that bringing a monster to the surface in a complete, intact state was extremely difficult. As a result, the deeper and stronger the monsters were, the less anyone knew about their weaknesses.
Baphomet—what was its deal again? Nada tried to recall, but then remembered that although he had taken that specialized class, he hadn’t really listened to the lectures.
“…Well, whatever.”
After thinking for a few seconds and still failing to recall Baphomet’s traits, Nada switched gears and returned to harvesting the calvaon.
◆◆◆
Even after defeating the Ipopotamo and the Baphomet, Nada continued his dive into the dungeon.
About half a day, perhaps. He couldn’t tell the exact time. Many adventurers brought clocks with them when entering the dungeon, or so he’d heard, but Nada didn’t own such a luxury item. He couldn’t afford one anyway. Judging from how hungry he felt, he figured it was probably past noon.
He decided to rest for a bit, drinking the water he carried and eating some preserved rations.
The water was just plain water, and the rations were a little dried meat and hard bread. Neither could be called tasty, and both were so tough that he had to soften them in his mouth with water before chewing over and over again.
He rested in the corner of a wide room, where the entrance and exit were right next to each other. Around him lay the corpses of monsters he had killed earlier—wolf-type beasts, boar-like creatures, and various others.
Nada chose this place as a rest spot because, by watching in a single direction, he could keep watch easily. Not having to constantly turn his head was a blessing.
It happened then.
—An internal shift occurred.
Internal shifts in the dungeon weren’t anything rare. They happened often.
Sometimes they caused cave-ins or collapsing ground, and there were more than a few adventurers who lost their lives to such misfortune. But most of the time, if you moved into a corridor or hugged a room’s edge, nothing would happen.
“…I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
The internal shift from when he encountered the gargoyle—that horrible memory of getting caught in a cave-in resurfaced vividly.
Nada hurriedly finished his meal and braced himself on one knee against the shaking floor as he prepared for the ground beneath him to suddenly collapse.
But his footing never gave way, and the shaking gradually subsided.
Hearing an unpleasant sound nearby, Nada looked up at the ceiling. A large crack had formed, slicing through the uneven stone.
“That’s a nasty sight…”
Muttering that, Nada exhaled in relief as the internal shift seemed to have ended.
—However, he felt another heavy tremor from the floor.
Startled, he looked down, but the floor was perfectly intact.
Still there—but the strange sound made him immediately realize the source wasn’t below.
It was coming from above.
The crack in the ceiling grew wider and wider, spiderwebbing out from the center.
And then—from the opening—the crimson jaws of a dragon burst through.
Its massive eye, far larger than any human’s, overwhelmed Nada’s imagination.
He had never seen a dragon so enormous.
It opened its maw wide enough to swallow a person whole.
Nada saw white fangs many times longer than his Green Dragon Crescent Blade, and a rough tongue covered in countless protrusions.
He tried to run—tried to escape the dragon lunging toward him—but there was no escaping it.
Slimy saliva and the revolting sensation of elastic flesh enveloped him from head to toe.
As that sickening contact swallowed him whole, Nada was seized by a deep despair—his terrible premonition had been right.
Nada was devoured by the dragon.
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