“Oh — a new menu option, finally.”
Recover mana, create a monster, occasionally create a trap, get pestered by Lady Fiona into creating a treasure chest.
Apparently all of that has been adding up, because a new entry appeared just below the monster creation option.
Create Intermediate Monster: Mana Cost 10
Mana cost of 10. If I max out my mana first, I can technically select it.
But doing that would mean collapsing again, and I can already picture Lady Fiona’s expression.
Come to think of it, all the monsters I’ve made so far can be individually selected from the menu — except for the Toxic Slime, which costs 10 mana to re-create.
Maybe that slime was a jackpot pull — an intermediate monster that slipped through somehow.
Its stats didn’t look different from the others, so I didn’t notice, but its poison ability apparently hits well above what the numbers suggest.
Which means the intermediate monster gacha would produce things in the Toxic Slime tier…
I want to try it. I could spend dungeon mana… but no, better to conserve.
And honestly, if I start now I’ll get hooked. I need to exercise some self-control.
“Rei! Please make a treasure chest! I really think this time — this time for certain — we’ll get a resurrection elixir!”
“Lady Fiona, please calm down. Thanks to you, we now know the chest’s contents are random based on mana input. That’s progress in itself.”
Yeah. Getting too deep into the gacha spiral is not good.
The dungeon’s mana is still under 50, and my own mana needs time to grow. Best to wait.
◇
“The underground demon realm is growing.”
“Growing? The humans were saying they’d killed the dungeon. Reviving this fast shouldn’t be possible, let alone growing — that’s supposed to be much further off. Think they were lying?”
“They’re human. Short-lived creatures in the end. A foolish race whose ambitions far outpace their brief lives.”
“Still, at least they’re more charming than mindless animals, aren’t they? The fact that they think they can match us — it’s a kind of adorable stupidity. Don’t you think, Jino?”
“Indeed. Unlike the long-lived races, they lack experience — which is what makes their thinking so reckless.”
When they addressed him by name, there was no deflecting it with a polite smile.
He said what was expected of him. The elves seemed satisfied with the answer and continued their conversation in good spirits.
Same as before. So far, nothing deviates from what was set up.
Elves who look down on short-lived races and consider themselves the superior species.
Identical to the world-building of Lunatic Abyss — the game the goddess mentioned.
Which means… that monstrously powerful Demon Lord is out there.
A Demon Lord so far beyond anything encountered before — beyond the dungeon monsters, beyond even the Four Heavenly Kings — that the only explanation is a balancing error. And she exists in this world.
And even after defeating her, there’s still the Destroyer — a true hidden boss that can literally end the world.
No. Impossible. Even in the game he lost count of how many times he died. What was that goddess thinking, sending him here to defeat them after reincarnating?
“It’s quite helpful that Jino, for a reincarnate, is so capable. The body may be different, but right now he’s an elf. If properly cultivated, he’ll one day become the sage who defeats the Demon Lord.”
“Ah — th-thank you…”
“Yes. We’ll begin with several centuries of study in magical theory.”
Thank goodness elves are a long-lived race.
By the look of it, his development is going to take an incomprehensibly long time.
Best to keep flattering these elves and avoid doing anything to provoke the Demon Lord…
“Um… by the way, what became of the human and beast-kin Heroes?”
“Oh, they seem to have revived. Which is probably why the humans were trumpeting that they’d killed the dungeon.”
“Turns out that was a complete lie, though.”
So the Heroes have already been resurrected.
Which means the protagonist group is still out there.
They’ve probably taken a level penalty from dying, but from where he stands right now, they’re still a welcome presence.
He wants to make contact with the protagonists first. And the other reincarnates.
From what the elves were saying, this period is apparently when several reincarnates get dragged here by the goddess.
Ideally ones who know the game. But even those who don’t — if they came from the same world and share the same goal, coordinating shouldn’t be difficult…
“I’d like to meet the Heroes sometime.”
“No.”
“Honestly. What are you thinking? Meeting with humans or beast-kin — we can’t have you picking up strange ideas.”
You’re the ones trying to instill strange ideas…
This is tricky. Ingratiating myself with the elves worked, but these elves are far too protective.
Getting permission to visit another country won’t come easily.
In that case — maybe one of the other reincarnates would reach out to this country on their own.
Surely many of them would arrive at similar conclusions.
Surely no one would treat this world as a game and do whatever they please.
Before the Demon Lord brings ruin, before the Destroyer tears the world apart — if the reincarnates could build some kind of cooperative network as quickly as possible…
◇
“It’s a game, right? And we got cheat abilities from the goddess, so we can probably take anything down if we just fight.”
“B-but… I’ve never fought anything before.”
“Neither has anyone here, but in these kinds of stories the reincarnation destination is always somewhere you can manage with the ability you’re given.”
“That old guy was definitely planning to use us and then get rid of us, right? We should deal with him too.”
“Hey, can’t we just get all our stats maxed out? Why do we have to do this boring combat training?”
One day, our class was transported to the goddess’s domain.
Granted special powers by divine will, reincarnated into another world.
The body didn’t quite feel like his own, but aside from that, it was more or less the same setup as the stories about being transported to another world as a whole class.
Classmates who were familiar with that kind of story explained the situation to those who were confused.
Naturally, some of them got excited about wielding overwhelming power in another world and doing whatever they liked.
I want to go home. I don’t want to do anything dangerous. Opinions like that got read as cowardice.
To avoid losing standing in the class, everyone started putting on a show of embracing the new world.
But… this world is bad news.
The human king who was obviously planning to exploit them, the verbal promises with no guarantee of a way home — those things barely registered.
Well — they registered, but they’d have to be dealt with later.
Lunatic Abyss.
If this world really is that game, then fighting to survive with everything they have is the only option, because their lives could be snuffed out without a second thought.
Losing to the Demon Lord, living under demonic rule — that would still be manageable.
But if the Destroyer appears, the world itself ends.
“Hey, apparently there’s a dungeon the Hero was partway through. Grinding levels the boring way is annoying — wouldn’t it be better to level up there?”
“If we can get to a late-game dungeon, someone could’ve mentioned that earlier.”
“With cheats, taking on late-game enemies is just more efficient, right?”
Unbelievably, some of them were apparently going to head for the dungeon where the Hero had been defeated.
He tried to stop them. Getting called a coward didn’t matter at this point.
Watching someone familiar die would haunt him, and even these reckless people were valuable resources. Dying pointlessly would be a waste.
But predictably, he got written off as a coward, and the volunteers set off for the final dungeon on their own.
God. He can only curse that goddess for calling it a game world.
Because she called it a game, they underestimate how cheap life is here.
Do they understand there’s no continue screen?
They don’t. Of course they don’t.
Dear god — not that awful goddess, but a real god —
Why is this happening to us…