Chapter 10

Chapter 10

“C-Captain! That guy really went in alone...!”

“......”

“As expected of Senior Johan!”

Among the hundreds of expedition members gathered around the area, only thirty-nine people, including Danforth, had entered the dungeon two or more times.

And even by their standards, entering the dungeon alone was nothing short of suicide.

So when Johan Blake became the first to jump in by himself, everyone reacted with stunned disbelief.

Danforth stared down for a while at the place where Johan had vanished after falling through the dungeon entrance.

Then he quietly spoke.

“...We’re going after him too.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’re following him?”

“Before the Weres or the elves?”

“That’s the only way we can keep the distance between us and that bastard as small as possible! When I give the signal, everyone jumps at once! Understood?”

“......”

“Why aren’t you answering?!”

“Y-Yes, sir!”

Danforth barked at his still-dazed subordinates until they finished preparing for entry.

Then he stared down into the pit.

The size and scale of each floor and stage differed greatly.

Some were even vast enough to cover an area comparable to the entire Darklands.

Worse still, the summoning location changed every minute and every second depending on exactly where a person fell.

At this point, it wouldn’t be strange if Johan had already been dropped hundreds of kilometers away from them.

Even so, if they jumped now, before the other factions began pouring in, they could shorten the time needed to meet up with him.

All the expedition members linked arms so they wouldn’t be separated during the fall.

If each person jumped with a different amount of force, their landing positions could vary.

Because of that, they had created a manual assigning numerical values to how much strength should be used when jumping.

The landing point Danforth estimated for Johan was...

Five meters toward the center from the southern side.

“Jump strength five! Don’t loosen your grip, any of you!”

“......”

“Now! Everyone jump!”

A group of humans shouted loudly and leaped into the pit at the same time.

Murmurs immediately spread among the other races.

“...Commander-General.”

“Mm.”

The Fairy Kingdom of Ferda was the only united nation of the elf race and was considered the most influential of the Four Great Factions.

Its strongest expedition force was Uel Ferda.

“W-We should go in quickly too! R-Right? Nuadilen!”

Nuadilen gently patted Aren on the head.

Then he asked,

“That man who jumped in earlier... Was he the human who approached you, Aren? The one who said he had business with the expedition?”

“Yeah!”

“What did he say his name was?”

“I-I don’t know! He didn’t tell me!”

“...You said he encouraged you. And you didn’t even exchange names?”

“H-He didn’t encourage me! He taught me something!”

“What did he teach you?”

“He said if there’s something I’m c-curious about, I should g-go and face it myself!”

“Oh? Were you interested in the dungeon, Aren?”

“N-No! I’m curious about th-that human! So I-I want to follow him!”

“......”

Looking at his friend and sworn younger sister, who was staring at him with bright, completely innocent eyes, Nuadilen could already feel a headache coming on.

He swallowed his sigh and turned toward the current expedition leader.

“That’s him. There’s no doubt about it. The sighting reports match, and he certainly has enough strength to deal with those remnants.”

“Then that man is the worst-case possibility you mentioned, Commander-General...?”

“Yes.”

Nuadilen turned his head.

“Johan Blake. The strongest dungeon conqueror in human history, and the first person ever to challenge the sixtieth floor.”

Elves lived long lives.

As long as they remained under the protection of the Outer Gods and were allowed to live out their natural lifespan, an elf could live for an average of two thousand years.

That stubborn vitality also showed itself in the Darklands.

Despite having his lifespan heavily reduced by countless expeditions, Nuadilen was already 319 years old.

If a human had possessed as much dungeon experience as Nuadilen, that person would have died before even reaching thirty.

That was what elves were like in this world.

And even from the perspective of such a long-lived race with such a vast history, Johan’s existence was abnormal.

“Even 284 years ago, when I first joined an expedition, he was already challenging the dungeon alone.”

Just remembering the time he had fought alongside Johan for the first and last time made Nuadilen shudder involuntarily.

“I never imagined he had truly returned to the Holy Land... This is troublesome.”

“What should we do, Commander-General?”

“......”

Nuadilen looked once more at Aren’s bright, innocent eyes.

Then, as though he had made up his mind, he spoke firmly.

“We’ll enter around fourth, Albern.”

“Fourth... That’s rather early.”

“The Were side will keep watching the situation. One Sapien team, one dwarf team, and then we’ll go.”

“I have no reason to doubt your orders, Commander-General... but is there a particular reason? Could it be because of that human...?”

“Curious?”

“Yes... Compared to our previous entry, this feels noticeably early.”

Nuadilen covered Aren’s mouth with one hand as she tried to demand that they enter immediately.

His gaze remained fixed on his young sworn sister.

“This little one is telling us to hurry.”

“...Pardon?”

“Aren’s instincts are usually accurate.”

“Ah...”

“Don’t worry about Johan. That man is basically a natural disaster. The best option is not to provoke him. If he comes crashing into us, then we’ll deal with it.”

Johan had jumped in almost the moment the dungeon opened.

The Ascartier Empire expedition hurriedly followed him soon afterward.

The other expedition groups had essentially treated those two as a single group and had been watching each other cautiously for more than ten minutes.

Just as Nuadilen expected, another Sapien expedition team and a dwarf expedition team eventually lost patience and jumped into the pit one after another.

The moment that happened, every member of Uel Ferda activated flight magic and entered the dungeon together.

With that, one expedition group from every race except the Weres had entered the dungeon.

At that same time.

Isabella and General Kalkerak, members of Vika Harad, the largest and self-proclaimed strongest expedition force among the Weres, had spent more than twenty minutes analyzing the other factions.

“...That should cover the major threats from the dwarf side.”

The general looked over the parchment filled with dense writing.

He nodded and gave a faint smile.

“Impressive... You investigated all of that in such a short time, Isabella.”

“You honor me.”

“Now then, it appears our old rivals have entered as well... It’s about time we moved. Prepare yourselves, everyone.”

“Yes!”

As the expedition members quickly gathered into formation, Isabella briefly fell into thought.

She had already lived in the Holy Land for twelve years.

Among the Weres, that was considered an extremely long stay.

She had only entered the dungeon twice.

Even so, among all the Weres currently living in the Holy Land, only nine had explored the dungeon more than she had.

Part of that was because Isabella had always been eager to learn.

When it came to information about the dungeon, she knew more than most elves.

The dungeon was both a treasure house of the unknown and a land of terror.

The intelligent races still did not know what kinds of disasters lurked within it.

Over the course of hundreds of years, the Four Great Factions had sent well over a million expedition members into the dungeon.

Yet less than two percent had officially returned alive.

The average death rate on the first floor was thirty percent.

On the second floor, it was fifty percent.

That meant one out of every two people died there.

And yet, compared to an overall return rate of less than two percent, those numbers were strangely generous.

Which meant one thing.

There were many people who had not died...

but had never left the dungeon either.

Dungeon residents.

That was also why the Sapien faction had usually chosen to enter first during the last fifty years.

Among all the factions, the Sapien race had sent the largest number of expedition members into the dungeon.

These days, their investment in dungeon exploration had nearly disappeared, and the number of their expedition teams had fallen to one-tenth of what it once was.

Even so, there should still be a considerable number of Sapien dungeon residents inside.

Their usual strategy was likely to reunite with those residents as quickly as possible and find a path forward together.

The Weres and elves, on the other hand, had relatively few dungeon residents.

Because of that, they usually moved only after the Sapiens and dwarves had established their footholds.

At present, the Four Great Factions were competing for survival.

But when it came to conquering the dungeon itself, all four factions ultimately had to cooperate.

Though who knows how many lunatics still genuinely want to conquer it...

Isabella stared at the place where Johan had jumped earlier.

She muttered,

“That must be him... The one who crushed my younger siblings.”

The Mad Savior.

Johan Blake.

One of the central members of the strongest expedition group in history.

One of the legendary Seven of Miracles.

His existence was so legendary that his name had spread regardless of race or faction.

However, contrary to Isabella’s expectations, the Sapien faction did not seem to remember him quite that way anymore.

Was it because human lifespans were so short?

Or because they no longer had any real desire to conquer the dungeon?

Either way, the Johan of the present was more famous as “an incomprehensible creature that saves humans” than as “the legendary conqueror.”

Even so.

No matter what kind of reputation surrounded him, the weight of his name had never truly faded.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Johan, the Mad Savior, was the central figure of this expedition.

The Ascartier Empire expedition had entered so quickly.

The first elven expedition had also gone in unusually early.

Perhaps both decisions had been made because of him.

In the end, the most important question was simple.

What was Johan’s objective?

If he only wanted to gather information, contact a certain faction, or search for the countless treasures hidden inside the dungeon, there was no reason to care much.

The dungeon was fundamentally a place where everyone fought for themselves.

It was far too vast for actions like that to cause serious problems for everyone else.

But if...

His objective was the Great Remains...

Then they had to stop him, no matter what it took.

The cursed holy vessel that devoured all living things.

That was the true nature of the Great Remains.

All preparations were complete.

The general looked one by one at his expedition members, all of whom were burning with fighting spirit.

Then he raised Bonhert, the famous sword left behind by the previous Divineheart.

His voice thundered across the area.

“Glory to our journey toward paradise!”

“Glory!”

And with that, every corner of the Four Great Factions had finally entered the dungeon.

Johan had been fighting enemies since an age when everything about the dungeon was unprecedented and completely unknown.

Memories of his days as a player refused to return no matter how hard he tried to recall them.

Even after some unknown force pulled him into this world, nothing truly changed.

The world tried to kill them.

And they resisted the world.

Everyone eventually broke.

Everyone except one person.

One man refused to give up until the very end.

And then the world gave Johan eternal life.

Whether that was a rightful reward for one who resisted...

or the cruelest punishment imaginable...

He did not know.

But if he had to summarize the journey of the last six hundred years from his blurred memories, that would probably be the closest answer.

Drip.

Drip, drip.

Johan stood alone somewhere in a vast forest, facing enemies just as he always had.

Blood from a magical beast ran from his forearm down to his wrist.

Its stench was revolting.

“...Sixteen.”

Johan’s unfocused eyes stared beyond the pack of magical beasts, which still had not recovered from their confusion.

[You really are at your sexiest when you’re ripping magical beasts apart, darling.]

“You said I was sexiest when I insulted you.”

[Aww, that’s different. This is this, and that is that. Hehehehehe.]

“......Tch.”

Kyaaaaak!

Another magical beast screamed and charged at Johan.

Johan responded immediately.

The battle resumed.

Beneath a land covered in darkness, hundreds of species of trees rose in every shape and size, forming an enormous forest.

Surrounded by vegetation more numerous than even the magical beasts, living creatures filled the forest with countless different screams.

This place resembled darkness itself.

As a warning to those who would come after him, the Apostle Randolph was the first to give it a name.

The starting point of the dungeon.

The very first floor.

Downwood.