“Finally done with the 2nd level,” I grumble. Beside me lay several of my classmates panting heavily. “We still have 18 more levels to clear,” a voice resounds. I am too tired to trace the owner of the voice, but it sounded feminine. Currently, we are inside the Fritzy Dungeon. It is a narrow space of around 10m diameter, and the air is heavy. It is also hard to see, and even though we have been in the dungeon for two hours, our eyes have not yet adjusted. I’m sure I wouldn’t even have dreamed of doing this a few days ago. I mean, I did not even imagine that such a thing exists.
A few days ago, Deml and some other people summoned us inside a mythical place. I really have no idea why our class was chosen, but everyone from my class was summoned. What happened later still remains a mystery to me. I somehow fainted due to exhaustion then and did not listen to whatever Deml was saying. Basically, this country, Napja, is in a dire situation.
It somehow has miraculously managed to provoke all the superpowers of this world. How they did it, neither concerns me nor interests me. I sigh, my friend beside me watches me sigh, and pats my back. I’m sure he said something along the lines of ‘Keep it up’, but I didn’t hear it. Deml is right in front of our squad. He always wears a grey robe and hides his face. I’m guessing he has some sort of burn over his face, but I don’t dare ask him that.
Most of the times, he speaks so strongly that I can visualize his expressions even if I cannot see his face. Somehow, he, who always remains hidden, is really strong. I’ve never heard him praising himself before, but the sentences "Deml is one of the best swordsman of all Napja" and "Without Deml, Napja would have already been done for" found their way into my brain. I do not remember who spoke them, but wherever I go, people know Deml.
Deml announces that it’s the end of the break, and we start advancing downstairs to the third level.
At the front of the squad after Deml, there always is Iou and his friends. Iou is pretty much the daredevil of our class. However, he is also strong. His friends, Clair, Rudolf and Shizu are all strong too. Clair is a female who excels at healing. When in trouble, she increases the health of a person and, well, she just saves them. It must be mentioned that she easily gets tensed. I’m not counting on her to do any miracles when it’s a tight situation. She easily loses her cool.
Rudolf is perhaps the second strongest person in this dungeon, first being Deml. Of course, outside dungeon, most of the people are stronger than him. But taking into consideration that he’s only started training four days ago, he is strong. To be honest, I had expected Iou to be strongest, but it seems Rudolf is stronger than Iou by a fair margin. Rudolf is hot-blooded. He easily flares up and is easiest to make fun of. He’s perhaps the most dedicated out of us students. Due to his arrogant personality, he often ignores what Deml tells us. He’ll be one of the first to die.
The last one is Shizu. There is probably no one in this dungeon as trustworthy as her. She has been practicing sword in a dojo since she has been five, so her swordsmanship is no joke. She and Deml talk often. I guess swords-freaks get along well. She has participated in many kendo battles, so she always has her cool. Always calm and collected, she accurately strikes the weak point of the enemy. Apparently, her strength seems to be at par with Rudolf’s at a glance since they pretty much get rid of the lesser demons in a single stroke. But when some strong demons appear, it is clear that who punches in most of the damage. However, she is not inferior to Rudolf in any sense of fighting. She makes up for her lack of strength with her speedy agility and finishes striking the demon more than five times when Rudolf only manages four.
These four are always the vanguards of our squad. Clair stays a bit behind than the other three though, because she doesn’t have any strength or agility. She can only heal from a distance the injured allies. Apparently, all four of them have been friends since they were children and can coordinate easily.
By the way, currently in my hand, I have a dagger. When Deml had asked me which weapon would I prefer, I had chosen a dagger. I wield a dagger in my left hand as well, although my dominant hand does most of the work. I’m not used to dual-wield daggers. My stats, at the very best, are average. As such, I stay in middle of the formation and when a demon strays out from its gang, I ambush and quickly finish it off. We clear the third level. Practicing against these demons gives us experience, and so, increases our stats.
The reason that I’m average is not because I am weak. I am simply not interested, and hence slack off from practice. After all, there is no need for me to work hard for a country that I do not even belong to. I’m not sure why the others are doing it. Perhaps for a stupid reason. Maybe they think it is cool to be summoned in a different world and then fight like the heroes of various fairy tales. I will definitely not spend my time supporting this country. However, Deml forces everybody to enter in a dungeon, even if they are not practicing.
On the fourth floor, I get to finish off three demons. On the fifth, I manage to kill two. The demons get stronger as we advance downstairs. As such, the top most floor is the first floor, and the down most floor is the top floor. Advancing downstairs rather than advancing upstairs is always creepy. There’s this kind of eerie feeling that you can’t get rid of. When we reach the sixth floor, there is a large demon waiting for us. Sometimes, Deml had said before, strong demons appear even in the dungeon of small. After all, there are bosses that control the areas. “Every place has a food chain, and some demons love to eat the flesh of their fellow race,” Deml had said when he was explaining stuff about the dungeon.
Well, I wouldn’t go as far as to classify demons as a single race like Deml. There are demons that look like bats, and there some that look like wolves. It is just too rash to call every creature that has grayish skin covered with black lines as a demon. There must be demon species, and races.
What we have in front of us was, without a doubt, boss of the sixth floor. However, we had the numerical advantage. Beating all thirty of us would be impossible for it. Despite that fact, I cannot disregard the thought that he might gravely injure or kill two or three of us. Although I’m sure Deml will jump in and kill the demon in one strike if he sees that somebody is in danger. The first one to charge in is Iou. He quickly rushes and pierces the knee of the large demon. Iou is a lance-wielder. He carries a long lance with which he pierces his opponent.
The demon is not only strong, but also agile. He speedily kicks Iou with force, causing Iou to fall back several steps behind. Clair quickly rushes to him while Rudolf guards her.
Watching the scene unfold, the group rushed in. Except me, I’m dumbfounded and busy. I’m busy figuring out the structure of the demon. It looks like a standing goat, maybe. No, I’m sure that I’m wrong. I thought of goats because of the horns on the demon’s head. But, I’m undoubtedly wrong. After all, the demon cannot be compared to any structure, pattern or life form that I know. Yes, the demon is not like anything. Like how all people are dissimilar. So what do you do when there is a lifeform like anybody else? You have no choice but to acknowledge them as a new lifeform. A new species. A different kind.
When I clear my thoughts, I am staring up the demon. All my classmates have surrounded it and are attacking his knees like crazy. Mages, behind me, launch some spells at the demon which are aimed for its head. I should attack a bit. Thinking that, I rush in as well. Half of us are divided at each leg of the demon. The struggle continues for a while, and I manage to hit the demon some dozens of times. Still, to me, it seems that we have only half-killed the demon. When I think that we will need about ten more minutes to finish him, Shizu poses herself and her sword in a weird manner.
She is directly pointing the sword at the demon’s head, even though her sword possibly cannot reach the tall demon’s head. The next instant, she lowers her sword and shouts “Blossoming Petals”. Her sword gets replicated into several swords and they fly in the air while she holds her original sword. Without waiting for a moment, the swords fly to the head and pierce it while she jumps on several people and deals a heavy blow with her sword on the demon’s stomach.
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With this, he is done for. While I appreciate her for pulling out such a flashy stunt, I’d rather prefer that she would have struck a place from where the blood wouldn’t fall on me.
Having black demon blood fall on you can never be good. And it’s not that easy to get rid of. But ah, well, that was splendid. What she just pulled out was a magic called “Blossoming Petals”. All of us can train for a skill and acquire it. There are no status windows here to inform you how powerful your skill is or how efficient it is. You just have to imagine the skill, then train it until you master it. I take a look at Deml. He seems to be pleased, I think, even though his expression can’t be seen. While Deml annoys me to some extent, I also agree with him. She must have invested a good amount of time and effort to learn that skill.
After we rest for a few minutes, we continue and clear the sixth floor, too. The campaign proceeds without any events until the 20th floor. We encounter a boss again, on the twentieth floor, the last floor of our campaign. Fritzy Dungeon does continue downstairs, but Deml has decided that for today we’re only going until the 20th floor. It was a really good decision. Because I can clearly see that all of us tired, exhausted and want to get out of here as soon as possible.
How I wish he had made it the 19th floor. Because what awaited us on the 20th floor was the boss of the dungeon. All of us knew that the boss of 20th floor is at least three-fold times stronger than the one on the 6th. The level of our opponent was increased, but we had not grown much. We only had few of our stats raised that were not even comparable to our opponent. The demon boss raged at us, and we started fighting it.
While we were struggling, many students looked at Shizu. They were expecting for the spell to occur again. However, that spell requires a lot of magic power. It would take a long time for Shizu to reassemble that much magic power in a short time. Besides, this boss wasn’t going to go down with only one fatal blow. We will need more than five “Blossoming Petals” to finish him off completely, and that isn’t possible.
Iou climbs the leg of the monster and runs up towards its shoulders. Then, he takes his lance and pierces it several times on its shoulders until the demon roars and goes berserk. It makes hasty movements, trying to make Iou fall, and it succeeds. Then, when it was about to stomp on him, Iou pierces the lance in its leg. The demon groaned, while Rudolf jumped at Iou to clear him away from the demon’s foot. Clair quickly followed and healed Iou.
The demon cries out, enraged at Iou, brings his hand down and easily sweeps , both? Clair and Iou. They both collide into the wall on side and groan out loudly in pain. It was a good thing that Iou was the one to take the direct hit, and not Clair, because then, Clair ? who was with a low defense ? received much less damage. Rudolf rushes to their help, while Delm quickly unfastens his bag and took out some containers. The containers were potions. You could always rely on them when you were hit. They heal you to some extent. He quickly made Clair drink the potion, and then did the same with Iou.
While three of vanguards were away, only Shizu was defending the front-line. Some male classmates of mine tried to move in front but the demon let out a roar and dealt a blow with its hand which made the others retreat. While the demon was about to land another blow, I rushed in.
I jump on the hand that it has lowered and run on it to his shoulder, imitating Iou. And then, I strike the wound Iou had inflicted several times. The demon gets so enraged that he starts shaking me much more violently that what he had done with Iou. I know that if I get flown away, I will hit the wall. Then, Deml will interfere and kill the demon instantly to save me, so I do not hesitate. Everybody quickly gets away from the demon because of its aggressiveness.
I continue to slash its shoulder, but then he thinks up a very, very heinous parting gift. It deliberately falls on the ground with full force, breaking down the floor, and the floor below it, and many floors below it, and we fall down rapidly some several floors down. It was good that everybody had moved a fair distance away from the demon, or they would have been involved in this mess too.
However, I soon regret the decision. When I open my eyes, I am alone in deep down in the dungeon. There is nobody but me and the dead demon here. Although I’m sure that there are many demons lurking out on this floor too. There is no doubt that I’m in a fatal situation. My body is exhausted and there are many enemies out here. From the looks of it, I must have fallen some 15 floors down. Okay, this is bearable. Help will arrive in some hours.
So, I wait. I wait for a long time.
A day has passed.
Another day has passed.
This is weird. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with climbing down 15 floors and rescuing me if Deml’s with them. So why is that no one has come to my rescue? Please, come fast. I’m hungry too. I haven’t eaten anything for two days now. What is wrong with all of you?
This is wrong. This is not how you deal with these sort of situations. I’m hungry. I want to eat something, anything, however bad it tastes. But I have nothing. For some reason, demons here do not approach me. I’m not sure whether the reason is that a boss has fallen beside me and hence do not see me, or whether they think that I’m not worth eating.
The third day passes. I’m really hungry now. And I haven’t drank anything either. My throat is dry, and my stomach grumbles every hour. My limit is approaching. And I feel as if I’m being driven at insanity. Please, just come, everybody, anybody, somebody and help me.
The fourth day passes. I’m really at my limit now. I’m breaking, both physically and mentally.
On day five, despair is all over me. They say you can live for weeks without food, but for me, someone who hasn’t really went through any hardships, even five days seem hard. I cannot continue. I open wide my mouth and bite the demon’s flesh. It tastes horrible. But I don’t care. I continue eating it until I’m satisfied.
And then, I scream. My entire body hurts, and my throat is literally crying. My chest feels heavy and my vision gets blurred. I pant heavily. I can’t stop this pain, this pain which is like my insides are turning upside down. I want to vomit, but my body won’t let me.
I curl up like a small ball, tears in my eyes, hugging my knees, still feeling the pain as intense as before. This pain won’t even let me sleep. All I can do is to close my eyes, wishing the pain to end. If I had known that eating demon flesh or drinking demon blood would have such adverse effects on me, I would have never ate it.
Why is that I only felt this pain when my meal was over? Probably, the reason is that as long as I continue taking in the demon meat, I will not feel pain. So, I get up, and grab a bite. Yes, I affirm, I was right. Completely right. The pain stops momentarily. I was right. Why was I right? Why couldn’t I be wrong? My being right affirms a completely detestable fact.
I suffer for another six hours before taking in another bite. And I continue the entire schedule every day. And, at end of two months, I end up eating every single part of demon except his skeleton. Black lines start emerging on my arms. My eyes turn blood red, and my hairs grow long and turn red too. My height increases by some 15 cm, my insides cry out as they adjust to the tremendous change in my body.
And then, I am reborn. Not as a human, but as a demon.
Next Chapter
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Thank you Coreh_ for proof-reading