Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-One: Unconquered
“Karen, your face has gone completely red.”
Julius took off his glove and placed his hand against Karen’s cheek. It was a smooth, unblemished hand—nothing like Karen’s own. The large hand was almost hot to the touch, and Karen let out a soft breath of relief and leaned into it.
Then gentle warmth spread around her ear. Julius must have channeled magical power into his earring as well. Unlike Karen, he did it with careful restraint, and the warmth crept slowly through her body from the ear outward.
Tears had been welling at the corners of Karen’s eyes, and Julius quietly wiped them away with his thumb before they could freeze.
“Your lips have cracked too. Do you have a healing potion? If not, I brought some—”
“I have one, but I thought I shouldn’t drink it in case something urgent came up.”
“Drink it now. You look terrible, Karen.”
If Julius was saying that, perhaps nothing urgent was happening after all. With a sideways glance at him—clearly deeply worried—Karen took a mid-grade healing potion from her pouch and drank it down. The bitterness barely registered as the pain throughout her body faded with startling speed.
Clinging to the riding dragon had shredded the inner skin of her thighs. When she had run headlong to throw herself at Julius, she had felt countless wounds tear open all at once—and now, as they healed, she felt nothing but relief.
Healing potions—magical medicines in general—were truly incredible things. Just what exactly were medicinal herbs? As Karen drifted into pleasant contemplation, Julius spoke in a dangerous tone beside her:
“Licht, why did you bring Karen here?”
“I was the one who got brought. Right, Karen?”
“That’s right, Mr. Julius. I was the one trying to enter the dungeon because I wanted to see you, and Master Licht was kind enough to come with me.”
“You told me yourself not to get in Karen’s way, didn’t you, Julius?”
Julius stopped glaring at Licht and turned to Karen with a complicated expression.
“You don’t need to cover for him.”
“I’m not covering for him at all. I never intended to bring Master Licht in the first place—the knights happened to be free, so I negotiated and asked if someone might be willing to accompany me… I wanted to move quickly, so I left them all behind midway.”
“I’m glad you wanted to see me, but this was reckless, Karen.”
“You’re right.”
Karen grinned.
“But I just had to come and meet you, Mr. Julius!”
She deliberately left unspoken the fact that Julius had once been abandoned before this very boss room door on the tenth floor. She simply spoke her own feelings. And when Julius’s eyes went wide, and he drew a sharp breath, she deliberately chose not to ask why. Swallowing down the anger and sadness she had secretly carried inside, Karen smiled and leaned close to Julius.
“So here I am.”
“I’d like you not to do something like this again… though perhaps saying that is pointless?”
Julius had tried to caution her with a stern expression, but looking down at Karen’s smile, he gave up halfway through.
“Probably.”
Karen said that with an emphatic nod.
“Just as you support everything I do, I won’t try to stop you from doing what you want, Mr. Julius. But if I end up worrying about you as a result, I’ll go and come to meet you, or make potions to cheer you on.”
“You know there’s no need to worry. I’m the conqueror of the twentieth floor of the Ehlertt territorial capital dungeon.”
“Even so, hasn’t this taken rather long?”
“There was something I wanted to do, so I stayed behind. I defeated the wendigo several days ago, though.”
The fallen monster was apparently called a wendigo. As she recalled, it was the name of a demonic monster in a state of perpetual starvation, one that hunted and devoured people. Now that she looked more closely at it, the creature did have pale blue skin, gaunt as a hungry ghost with its ribs showing, and a strangely distended lower belly. Its monster rank was C, which amounted to a natural disaster by the standards of most ordinary people.
A chill ran down Karen’s spine at the realization she had walked right past the thing’s carcass, but Julius looked entirely untroubled.
Every rise in monster rank meant an overwhelming leap in strength—tenfold, or even hundredfold, impossible to summarize in simple terms. The same was true of humans. For Julius, who had cleared the twentieth floor, a monster at the tenth floor level was barely worth noting.
“Hey, Julius. You defeated the dungeon boss on the tenth floor, but there’s no sign of it being cleared. What’s going on?”
“That would be—”
Julius had started to answer Licht’s question when the entire dungeon suddenly lurched like an earthquake, cutting him off.
Karen flinched. Licht drew his sword in an instant. Julius didn’t move a hair.
“A powerful monster from the lower floors is attempting to cross through the gate leading to the eleventh floor. Since a monster with magical power equivalent to S-rank is present on this floor, the dungeon likely does not recognize it as conquered.”
“An S-rank crossing over?! That’s a full-scale Great Collapse stampede! This is a serious situation! We need to call for reinforcements immediately—or wait, should we get out of here first?!”
“Calm down, Licht.”
“How am I supposed to be calm about this?!”
“It’s all right. This is different from an ordinary Great Collapse.”
Julius spoke with an air of odd composure, his tone carrying a certainty that went beyond ordinary confidence.
“The monster is forcing its way across floors in defiance of the goddess’s order. To make that crossing, it has had to destroy its own soul. When you consider how much a monster that should be on the fiftieth floor would have had to wear itself down to reach the eleventh—its strength is not something to be terrified of.”
“…Julius, when did you come to understand all this?”
Licht looked at Julius with something close to awe. Simply being told something was not enough to ascend the steps—it required genuine comprehension. Even so, those who heard Julius speak could apparently tell that his knowledge was a form of “understanding” granted by the goddess.
Karen had a good idea of when Julius had come to understand it. After resolving the incident in the royal capital dungeon, Julius had ascended a step. He had come to understand how monsters crossed floors—so that he could follow Karen wherever she went.
Julius didn’t answer Licht’s question. He looked at Karen instead.
“That said, this monster is far beyond you. We will defeat it once it crosses the gate and reaches the tenth floor, so Karen, please stay back.”
Julius’s tone remained completely unhurried. There was likely very little actual danger within the scope of his understanding. That must have been why he had told her to drink the potion too. Karen felt a wave of relief even as she asked:
“What kind of monster is it—the S-rank that’s about to cross over?”
“A black dragon. The black dragon said to have been defeated by the Ehlertt ancestors—the one that supposedly dwells beyond the Thorn Forest.”
The moment Julius said it, a flash of razor-sharp fangs burst between the two black pillars. The black dragon thrust its snout through the dungeon gate from the other side, and its roar split the air, reverberating through every wall of the tenth-floor boss room.
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