Chapter 13 - Livestock
"Ahhhhhhhh... It's so vast~ so vast~, I am...! Vast...!!"
Peta-chan was flying around the 9th-floor grassland, utterly delighted.
"Hmm...? So you can enter the dungeon like that, huh?"
I watched Peta-chan from the Master Room through the monitor as she soared around, enjoying the 9th floor.
Thanks to the monitor's smartphone and tablet-like functionality, I could easily converse with Peta-chan even from a distance.
"Well, this body isn't real—it's just a conscious illusion. We can never leave that Master Room... or rather, the Master Room itself is us. My real, unconscious body is still there, right?
And I don’t do this often, you know. It’s a waste of points. The last time I did this was 40 years ago when my 8th floor was completed."
Is that so...?
I checked the point cost for a Dungeon Core to explore its own interior. It displayed 50,000 points per hour.
"Expensive... Well, I guess it’s fine for now."
I said something that would probably make other Dungeon Cores furious if they heard it.
50,000 points is roughly what an average-sized dungeon (Peta-chan says around 5-6 floors) earns in a month.
Spending that much just to experience your own dungeon for an hour is something no one normally does.
"Ahh... It’s so big... so vast... wonderful..."
Peta-chan flew around the vast grassland, utterly entranced.
Yeah, yeah, as long as you’re having fun, go ahead and enjoy yourself.
"...What is that?"
One of the female knights noticed something dust-like flying through the air at high speed.
At first, she thought it might be a fly or a mosquito, but it was clearly different. Something was flying around in the distance.
The dungeon’s absurdly vast size made it impossible to gauge distances, so she couldn’t tell the creature’s true size. It might have been a small bird-like monster, or it could have been something much larger.
Flying monsters were troublesome. Unlike land-based beasts, they wouldn’t conveniently tire themselves out by the time they reached you even if they flew towards you as fast as they could.
The knights stopped and prepared to defend themselves, keeping a close eye on the flying creature.
"Hey, Niko, you’ve got good eyes. What is that?"
"Hmmm? It’s too far to see clearly, Captain...
But that speed at that distance is really strange... Huh? Wait... it’s coming this wa..."
The moment they thought something was flying toward them from afar, it was already within a hundred meters.
By the time they hastily raised their weapons, the creature had already flown past them and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
They couldn’t clearly see what it was, but it seemed smaller than them. However, that wasn’t the issue.
It was fast.
Unbelievably fast.
The moment they thought it was flying toward them, it was already right next to them.
Then, in an instant, it flew off in the opposite direction and vanished.
Even if they optimistically assumed it had the same combat strength as the other monsters here...
If that thing attacked while maintaining that speed, they wouldn’t stand a chance. It was that unnaturally fast.
The thought of being effortlessly decapitated by something moving too fast to see sent shivers down their spines.
"...Niko. ...Did you see what it looked like? Hey? ...Niko?"
Niko, the knight with the sharpest eyes, had gone pale.
"Hey... what’s wrong?! Niko?!"
She trembled as she answered.
"Th-that was... a demon... with wings... that looked like a young girl..."
A demon?!
Tension spread through the knight corps.
Humanoid demons appearing in dungeons wasn’t unheard of—there were several such sightings worldwide.
The problem was that most of those sightings occurred in the deepest parts of the world’s largest dungeons, those with over 20 floors.
It was thought that perhaps that was the condition for them to appear.
While they were an elite unit among female knights, their primary duty was guarding princesses and noble daughters. None of them were dungeon exploration specialists with experience delving as deep as the twentieth floor.
If that creature was the boss of this floor, then their fifteen-person squad, split into two groups, was woefully unprepared.
Wouldn't it be wiser to halt mapping the area, retreat for now, and reorganize into a larger force?
As the captain pondered the decision to retreat, Niko recalled the demon’s face, which she had seen clearly.
...It made eye contact with me.
I didn’t sense any hostility from its eyes... no... rather.
It looked at us with such gentle eyes.
"Ah... I see... So that’s what a dungeon is."
Niko, who had grown up on a vast livestock farm, remembered.
Its eyes were the same as my parents’...
The same eyes my parents had when they cared for the cows and chickens...
Yes... My parents raised the cows and chickens with great care, looking at them with such gentle eyes.
The eyes of absolute benevolence, given by those who would one day slaughter and consume them.
In other words, to that demon, we aren’t enemies.
We’re just creatures, carefully lured in and raised to be eaten someday.
We’re livestock...
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