“Ido?! Why is he here…”
“That one… the strongest beast-kin warrior, if I’m not mistaken.”
“As dangerous as the hero, right~… though he seems a little weaker than last time?”
“What would you like to do? Shall we deal with him now?”
If even the Heavenly Kings knew him, Ido was definitely a major figure.
Stay calm. Not much time had passed since Lady Fiona defeated him.
Looking at his status — his old strength hadn’t fully returned.
Ido — Mana: 50 / Strength: 80 / Technique: 65 / Fortitude: 80 / Agility: 75
Still strong, though.
At this level he’d probably clear the dungeon outright.
But was that even a problem? Maybe it was better to let him push through and be done with it — ideally, never come back.
The monsters were getting wiped out without much resistance, and even the traps were being forced through.
The maze walls weren’t breaking, though? He’d smashed through them easily enough when we were testing things, but he seemed to be struggling now.
He gave up. Sent the cat beast-kin ahead of him.
…She’s passing through the walls?
Could someone actually do that? Or was this a goddess power?
“That cat beast-kin could be a problem.”
Phase ability? If she could pass through walls, the dungeon became nearly meaningless.
Gargoyle attacks passing through her suggested it might extend to all physical matter.
What about living things? If it worked on those too, there might be no way to actually hurt her at all.
And she could potentially phase into someone and attack their organs directly.
“Should we capture her? Ido is still buried right now — we could handle them separately.”
“Just ahead of her is the Gargoyle zone and that fresh boulder placement…”
Pure physical zone, that section. Magic, poison, fire — all effective against beast-kin, which was why I’d deliberately designed the post-maze area to favor physical resistance.
Still shouldn’t have been easy to push through. My goal was tuning it tight enough to feel beatable, but not quite.
Without that ability it would have worked.
“This doesn’t look good. Let’s move.”
“Lady Fiona—”
“My liege is resting at the throne.”
“I’ll send an instance to let her know~”
Fast decision-making and information sharing — always exactly what you need in a moment like this.
I left the report to Pilukaya and we headed for the dungeon at speed.
If Ido was still buried then we had some time, but there was no way a trap like that had taken him out for good.
◇
“Did Rei really need to come? Just handling the entrance wall could’ve been enough.”
“My job is opening and closing the passage, but if things go badly I can build walls to block retreat and carve an escape route at the same time.”
“Don’t do anything reckless, all right? Fighting is our job. You don’t need to be part of that.”
“I’ve got the phoenix feather from Lady Fiona — worst case I’ll survive.”
“The phoenix feather activates automatically when vital signs fail, in addition to any intentional use. Rei-sama’s life is protected once, but please still try not to push it.”
“Sorry. I know I’m worrying you.”
I’d have preferred to stay somewhere safe, but these weren’t normal opponents.
If those two cooperated and Ido ignored the dungeon entirely and came straight for us — even the Heavenly Kings could conceivably lose.
If everyone fell, Lady Fiona would be devastated again. Everything we’d worked to build back would have to start over.
And more than that — I didn’t want to lose any of them.
So the cat beast-kin at least needed to be dealt with now.
“This should be the area. Pilukaya, can you see inside?”
“The warrior’s still buried. The cat made it to the room past the collapsed corridor — looks tired, taking a rest. We got here in time.”
“I should have set the whole room to collapse…”
I’d tested once using the overflow mana to build a corridor, and it had eventually sealed itself when it expired.
That had been incidental — not aimed at Ido or anyone.
But thinking about it now, if I’d rigged something wider-scale, those two could have been handled together.
Nothing to be done about it. We went in quickly.
Primila in front — she was the most durable. We entered the room and spotted the cat beast-kin immediately.
She’d noticed us too. Stats-wise we had the advantage. Physical attacks might not land, but Pilukaya’s fire—
I should have worked all this out before walking in. The fact that I was working through it now probably meant I was more rattled than I’d realized.
The cat beast-kin moved. I tensed — she was getting low, dropping toward the floor like she was about to phase underground. That actually might work — anything that wasn’t yet designated room or corridor was hard to excavate even for Lady Fiona.
…Wait. She wasn’t going underground.
Was she unconscious? Had the exhaustion just hit all at once?
No — stop. Now was the moment. While she was—
“I surrender! Please help me!”
…That was almost exactly what I heard not long ago.
The cat beast-kin dropping low had been a bow. A very deep, very fast bow.
So maybe… she wasn’t the threat I’d made her out to be?
The Heavenly Kings were still on guard, so I stayed alert too — this could easily be performance — but I decided to talk.
◇
Oh no oh no oh no oh no.
Ido was buried, so I took the opportunity and ran for the room past the corridor.
I was sitting there having a perfectly normal rest when suddenly the door opened.
I looked up. Standing there: superarmor-no-mercy loli, AoE-spam spirit, and no-checkpoint stamina slime.
No sign of the wide-range homing dragon — but who was that demon? Standing with those three, unknown character, possibly a hidden boss?
While I was still processing this, I caught something I recognized.
One of them started to move — the windup to an attack, one I’d seen kill my characters more times than I could count.
Oh no. I’m the intruder. They’re the boss characters. They’re going to kill me!!
“I surrender! Please help me!”
I dropped into the deepest bow I could manage.
Obviously they were demons, obviously they might not listen. But it was a start.
Primila and Rigma’s attacks I could phase through.
The problem was Pilukaya’s fire. Wide-area attack at this range — one hit, I was done.
But crouching should dodge it. In theory. Assuming the hitboxes here matched the game, which I had absolutely no guarantee of.
Either way it was the only move I had.
…If I was wrong, I’d burn to death.
Even Rigma and Primila’s attacks might kill me depending on what they used.
I was running options when I noticed something unexpected — they still hadn’t attacked.
“…You can just phase through everything we throw at you, can’t you?”
…They knew about my ability. Not precisely, but close enough.
Was this demon the strategist type the game never showed? Some behind-the-scenes brain the story skipped over?
He was also the only one who hadn’t moved to attack.
If I was going to beg, it was this one.
“There are limits to it, so I’d really appreciate if you didn’t attack me…”
I couldn’t lie, and I genuinely didn’t want to be attacked, so I went with honesty.
But how much of the limit I wanted to keep hidden for now.
Why did I have to be choosing words this carefully while scared out of my mind.
“…You’re a reincarnate.”
“Yes. A beast-kin reincarnate. My name is Okui Eriko…”
He seemed to think it over.
…Was there an opening here? Would ‘reincarnate’ read as useful enough to matter to a demon?
I didn’t have the same prejudices as the other beast-kin. Living under demons versus living under beast-kin — it didn’t make an enormous difference to me.
…Well. Demons were somewhat more dangerous.
Hair-trigger tempers, and I couldn’t predict what might get me killed.
Then again, the current situation was also getting me into danger for completely unpredictable reasons, so maybe that was a wash.
“Do you know of any other reincarnates among the beast-kin?”
“N-no… I’ve never met another reincarnate.”
The beast-kin generally weren’t interested in reincarnates, and even the elder who’d arranged for me to stay in town had never mentioned one.
Maybe reincarnates just weren’t important to them.
“…In that case—”
“You absolute PIECE OF—!!!!!”
Right as the demon opened his mouth to say something.
Ido’s fury-soaked voice exploded through the room.