Chapter 2
[But why did you ask that at the end?]
The Goddess asked again as Yohan picked up a piece of charred monster meat.
[Most of Dagon’s people are from Innsmouth, aren’t they? The 16th Floor, Downcity.]
Crunch. Crunch.
After greedily finishing his meal and replenishing his calories, Yohan answered.
“Probably not.”
[Hmm? They’re not?]
“If they came from Innsmouth, they wouldn’t have been that incompetent.”
[…True. They claim to worship Dagon, yet they were performing a fire sacrifice. That’s beyond ignorant, isn’t it?]
Dagon was, fundamentally, a god of water.
There was no way he would favor a fire sacrifice, where the offering was burned alive.
He much preferred a water sacrifice, where the offering was bound to the altar and drowned together with it.
It was only natural.
“They didn’t even know something that basic. There’s a good chance they’ve never met Dagon, or even one of Dagon’s Apostles.”
[…Wait. So they really did come from the Dungeon, but they weren’t from Innsmouth? Then what happened?]
Yohan did not answer the Goddess’s question.
Instead, he simply turned his head toward the distance.
“The faith has spread to the upper floors.”
Wherever there was water, Dagon could expand his influence.
That was the purpose behind his overwhelming reproductive instinct.
And the creatures known as the Deep Ones were the result.
However, the fact that his servants and followers had now climbed beyond the Dungeon and reached the Dark Land and even the Holy Land was not something that could be ignored.
According to the butcher, they had emerged from the Dungeon less than six months ago.
After coming up, they had hidden their faith for some time and lived quietly in the Holy Land, helping with the supply of goods.
Karaam was both the entrance to the Dungeon and once a holy land belonging to the Inner Gods.
It had already been several hundred years since the Four Great Powers took control of it.
The simple fact that followers of the Inner Gods were beginning to operate in Karaam again was enough to show how serious the situation had become.
“…Looks like they’ve made quite a mess while I wasn’t paying attention.”
It was nothing new for the Four Great Powers to send expedition teams into the Holy Land and the Dungeon beneath it.
The history of those expeditions stretched back eight hundred years.
During the era when Yohan had been active as one of the Seven of Miracles, countless extraordinary heroes had joined those expeditions.
Among them was a Guardian Saint who had single-handedly saved an entire nation.
There had also been a Great Mage who had mastered every school of magic.
There was even a berserker whose overwhelming strength could shake mountains and dominate the world.
And yet, even with all those people, no one had ever reached the end of the Dungeon.
No one had ever discovered the Great Remains, the legendary object said to be capable of saving an entire race and even granting the wish of its owner.
Time passed mercilessly.
The very first expedition had long since become history.
Even the strongest expedition force—the one joined by the six Players, including Yohan—had become nothing more than a legend from over six hundred years ago.
The expeditions continued.
And the failures continued piling up.
Eventually, even members of the expedition teams began voicing pessimistic thoughts.
Perhaps this was simply how the world was meant to be.
Perhaps struggling against fate was meaningless.
Perhaps they were simply creatures destined for extinction.
It was around that time that Yohan had begun challenging the Dungeon alone.
As the years passed, both the number and quality of expedition members declined.
Even the grand cause of saving and liberating their races could no longer survive.
Those who had willingly risked their lives fighting the enemy were all dead.
The only ones remaining were bands of thieves who possessed no real convictions, and corrupted believers who had willingly surrendered their sanity to the Inner Gods.
The price of falling for the sweet words of those ancient beings, who preyed upon their desperate desire to survive, was steep.
They would slowly descend into madness until even their own consciousness no longer belonged to them.
Some would sink into swamps filled with maggots and insects, where creatures would crawl inside their bodies and eat away at their brains until they died.
Others would sink beneath boiling lava, their flesh and even their bones melting away.
And even when their bodies and minds were finally freed through death, that still was not the end.
Their souls would remain trapped forever.
They would spend eternity as worshippers alongside companions who had met the same miserable fate.
That was the life they had chosen.
Well, whatever happened at the end was another matter.
The benefits they gained before that could not be denied.
To them, the Dungeon was a new home.
The Dungeon belonged to the Inner Gods.
Unlike the Dark Land, the monsters living there would never attack their followers.
In any case, if the corruption inside the Dungeon had begun leaking outside, it meant that even the Holy Land was no longer safe.
Those elf believers from earlier were probably another example of that.
In other words—
There was no longer a single safe place anywhere in this Dark Land.
That was Yohan’s conclusion.
The long history of struggle was coming to an end.
Death was spreading across the world.
Everyone was slowly becoming free.
Before death, everyone would eventually meet the same equal ending.
Everyone...
Except for him.
That fact left Yohan feeling unbearably empty.
[Just as I wished.]
As if she had been waiting for that exact thought, the Goddess narrowed her eyes with a satisfied smile.
[The moment this world becomes a graveyard for all intelligent life, every method capable of freeing you from life will disappear.]
[And from that moment onward, our eternal paradise will finally begin.]
Her ice-cold hand touched him.
His skin began to freeze, and every nerve in his body stood on edge.
Yet Yohan did not even flinch.
[You were the only one who took my hand back then.]
[I’ll never let you go.]
[You belong to me.]
[Hehehehehe.]
He should never have made that choice back then.
He should have fought alongside his companions.
And he should have died alongside them.
...But at the time, such thoughts had never crossed his mind.
Even when he occasionally tried to remember those days, nothing meaningful returned.
His memories had become too blurred.
The only thing that remained clearly within them was her wicked smile as she reached her hand toward him.
If he had known beforehand that the price would be this great, what would his past self have done?
Could he really have rejected her hand and accepted death?
Those thoughts suddenly passed through his mind.
But he never voiced them.
There was no way to turn back time.
So Yohan merely clicked his tongue and looked away.
Nearby, the human man who had narrowly escaped death was lying sprawled across the ground, drool leaking from his mouth.
And then—
Less than five minutes later, the unconscious man’s eyes and lips began to twitch faintly.
“Ugh... Wh-What happened...?”
As the man slowly regained consciousness, Yohan approached him and held out a hand.
“You’re with the Ascartier Empire Expedition, right?”
It was time to have a conversation with the man who had nearly become a sacrifice.
Dexter Boyle becoming rescued by Yohan had been pure coincidence.
If those people had not been carrying out their ritual in the middle of the Dark Land...
If they had not been worshippers of Dagon, whom Yohan despised...
And if the sacrifice they intended to offer had not been human...
Yohan would never have interfered.
In some ways, it was difficult to even call it a rescue.
Yohan had destroyed the altar and fought the believers.
While he tore every single one of them apart, Dexter had simply been thrown aside in a corner.
Immediately after waking up, Dexter had been convinced that the one who saved him could not possibly be human.
Anyone who saw the horrific scene around him would have thought the same.
Corpses lay everywhere with their organs and bones exposed.
