「 ✦ Rimuru Tempest ✦ 」
To say I had a plan would be an overestimation.
Honestly, I'd just been walking. Well, fighting and walking. But mostly walking. After the whole "fall through the floor into a new environment" thing, my sense of direction had sort of given up on me—and I couldn't blame it. My friends back in Tempest were probably freaking out. Shion was probably charging across continents looking for me. Benimaru was likely trying to act responsible but definitely getting dragged into Shion's chaos.
But that's only if they're still alive…
I sighed. "Where do I even start finding a way back?"
Not like there was a dimensional map posted at the last boss room.
And speaking of boss rooms—
I blinked.
The floor beneath me was slick, coated with a thick tar-like ichor, steaming and hissing. Around me, bodies piled high like broken statues carved from flesh and nightmare. One had too many limbs, all jointed the wrong way like someone had taught a spider yoga. Another looked vaguely humanoid if you squinted and ignored the fact its mouth wrapped around its entire head like a blooming flower of serrated bone.
They were still twitching.
I hadn't even realized I was fighting again. My hands were stained with a pulsing black ooze that smoked when it touched the air. A low rumble echoed from deeper in the corridor ahead. Another wave.
They were coming again.
Their shadows stretched across the walls, flickering in the dim, flickering light of half-shattered magic crystals embedded in the stone. I could hear them now—wet, dragging steps. Bone grinding against stone. That awful, wheezing breath some of them made, like dying whales gargling molten metal.
One of them stepped into view. Or… maybe "stepped" was the wrong word.
It slithered. Crawled. Dragged itself forward with arms made of mismatched wings and insectile pincers. Its torso was wide enough to crush a small mountain range, and on its back were countless faces—screaming, moaning, eyes twitching. One of the heads looked like it might've once been a dragon. Another looked vaguely like a human girl, weeping blood.
And I just stood there, lost in thought.
"This place is just so damn big."
The thing roared—a deep, seismic cry that shook the ground beneath me and split the ceiling above. Chunks of rock rained down.
I looked up. Then back down. Then sighed.
"Right. Focus, Rimuru. Existential crisis after the giant meat-caterpillar is dead."
··—–—⚜—–—···
The monster lunged, but I didn't move.
At the last possible moment, I stepped aside. Just a little. Its colossal mass hurtled past me, crashing into a pillar with unworldly force. The stone exploded in a shockwave of dust and shattered crystal. The whole dungeon groaned like a beast.
"Yeah. That's more like it."
I dashed forward, wind whipping around me as my fist lit up with black lightning. Crack—BOOM! My punch connected with one of its many chests—wait, was that a heart beating in its ribcage? Didn't matter. The impact sent the beast careening backward, smashing through three more natural-formed pillars before it tumbled into the abyss of whatever this massive open floor was. The echoes went on for minutes.
I flexed my arm, letting the black sparks crawl across my forearm and arc up to my shoulder like living threads of power.
"Still not tired. Being a slime really rocks."
Another roar. Another one of those nightmares barreled through a side tunnel, its eyes burning like twin suns sunk into a bloated mass of muscle. It leapt—a building-sized frog-beast with armor plated along its limbs, its tongue flickering like a lightning whip.
I jumped to meet it midair. My knee smashed into its snout. Then, in a blink, I was behind it, slamming both fists downward like hammers of judgment. It plummeted, belly-first, and I followed, planting my foot in its back and riding it down, flesh burning as friction scorched it. The crash cratered the dungeon floor, shattering stone for dozens—hundreds—of meters in all directions.
Black flame burst out of my hands, igniting the beast's body in silent, seething dark fire. It didn't scream. It just twitched. Then melted. Like wax under the sun.
Dark Plasma.
The synthesized skill of Dark Flame and Lightning.
Even now, it felt calm. The black lightning arced across my body again, eating the blood and slime staining my coat. The flames coiled up my arms like affectionate serpents, licking the air, waiting for the next enemy to feed on.
I didn't wait long.
They came in waves. Some the size of ships. Some serpentine, stretching up into the dark where the ceiling had collapsed. One had no face, just dozens of massive tendrils like whips, each ending in gnashing teeth. Another had arms made of petrified corpses strung together, flailing like it was trying to claw its way out of its own madness.
And I fought.
I punched. I kicked. I got thrown through walls, through pillars, even through another monster at one point.
I regenerated limbs, annoyed more than anything. An arm grew back mid-punch. A chunk of my torso reknit itself while I dodged a beam of searing bile. My right leg had been severed, so I hopped and still sent a behemoth sprawling with an uppercut.
Hours passed.
I didn't count. Great Sage kept track. Twelve hours and forty-three minutes. Forty-four. Forty-five.
"Let me know when we hit twenty-four, just for fun."
<
The dungeon floor looked like a battlefield out of some ancient myth. Broken towers, shattered runes, mountains of monster corpses that didn't even smell anymore—they'd been burned too clean by the black flames and lightning. My body smoked with leftover energy. My coat was in tatters, but self-repair had already started stitching it up. Slowly.
And still—I wasn't tired.
I didn't even feel the weight of what I'd done. There was no strain in my limbs. My breathing was perfectly calm. No adrenaline. Just... momentum. Like I was still falling.
Then the rumble came.
I blinked. Looked down.
"...Oh, damn. That's not good."
Cracks raced across the floor, glowing red. The earth groaned. And then—
Collapse.
The floor gave out beneath me. The entire level caved in with a thunderous roar, and I fell into the chasm. I crossed through layers of barriers like sheets of glass. Some magic tried to stop me, but I brushed it off with a burst of black flame. Debris spun around me—bones, rubble, even a few monsters that had been too unlucky to die fast.
"Again? Seriously?"
Down, down, down. How far had I fallen? Half a thousand meters? Maybe more. I landed feet-first, a crater forming around me. Dust blanketed the area. I stood up, brushing some ash from my shoulder. My wounds knit together in seconds. My coat, which had assimilated with my haki, repaired itself with quiet snaps of fabric and thread. I glanced around.
Then I saw it.
A gate.
The gate.
A massive, obsidian door, carved with unholy madness. Symbols I couldn't read shimmered in a language I wasn't sure even existed, and it pulsed, as if it had been waiting for someone.
The air was different here. Every breath tasted like final warnings.
I didn't flinch. I didn't pause. No fear. No hesitation.
I just dusted myself off.
Rolled my neck once.
And grinned.
Boss room, huh? Took you long enough.
The door began to open, inch by massive inch, without a single push. And I smiled wider. "Let's see what's behind curtain number hell."
··—–—⚜—–—···
The obsidian doors creaked open.
Darkness spilled out first—thick and alive, crawling along the stone as if even the shadows feared what slumbered beyond. I stepped in.
The room was enormous, cavernous, endless—but undeniably polished and distinct. A pitch-black lake stretched across the expanse right in the middle, its surface a mirror of the void above. In the center stood a small islet of scorched stone—and on it, coiled and asleep, was it.
Six heads.
Six necks.
Each unbelievably thick, crowned with jagged horns and flame-scorched bone. The creature's body was a tangled mass of serpentine muscle, wrapped around itself in hibernation. Its scales shimmered with a sickly iridescence—black, purple, deep crimson—like something that had crawled out of a nightmare.
The Hydra.
The final guardian of this damned hellhole.
I took one step onto the stone, and the silence shattered.
Its eyes opened.
All twelve of them.
Each head rose in a different direction, moving with sinuous grace, an impossible synchronization of hunger and intelligence. One head hissed, its breath warping the air with sheer heat. Another rumbled, dripping venom that melted the stone beneath it. The largest head turned to face me directly, its eyes burning.
I took the first move.
The first lunge came like a thunderclap, jaws wide, fangs glowing with poison. I ducked low, sliding beneath it. My foot struck the ground and I launched upward, twisting midair—my knee collided with the underjaw of a second head, shattering teeth and knocking it off balance.
Before I landed, the third head came from the side. I flipped, midair, twisted again—my heel crashed into its snout, sending a shockwave of black lightning across its face. The force flung me backward, skidding across the stone, but I used the momentum to propel myself into a sprint.
Black fire erupted from my hands and legs as I shot toward the body like a comet of rippling dark flame. I vanished, reappearing just above the Hydra's coiled mass. My fists crashed downward with explosive force—twin pillars of black flame spearing through scale and sinew.
But it wasn't over.
Four heads descended at once—biting, clawing, seething with magic. I deflected one with a rising elbow, slid under another, and redirected a mana beam with my forearm, the impact sparking an eruption of elemental lightning that cracked the far wall.
One bite caught my left arm.
My limb flew across the chamber, disintegrating in midair.
I didn't flinch.
<
My arm was back by the time I landed, black plasma humming along my knuckles. I spun—my foot connected with the Hydra's massive torso, sending tremors through the floor. The beast reeled, two heads snapping at each other in confusion, black blood spraying like geysers.
The battle became a dance.
Every punch was timed to the rhythm of the heads' movement. I used their own momentum—sidestepping one, riding another, springboarding off one snout to slam a foot into the eye of another.
We clashed.
Again.
And again.
And again.
It struck with the wrath of a thousand storms. I answered with fists wreathed in flame and lightning. At some point, my body a blur, a phantom between its strikes. I had no sword (I lost it somehow). No magic circles (I deliberately didn't use magic). Just raw, brutal skill and strength.
And it was then that I failed to realize, I was trying to reaffirm to myself that I was strong. With all that I had lost and all, I guess we could think of it as a coping mechanism.
"I have no interest in the words of a monster."
[—SNAP]
I broke its rhythm.
One head lunged too slow.
I grabbed it—pivoted—and slammed it into the others like a whip. The impact caused a ripple through the Hydra's body, and for one breathless moment, the beast faltered. I took the opening.
I dropped into a low stance, every muscle in my body charged with mana. Then I exploded forward—my punch landing square in the Hydra's core.
Black lightning detonated. Black fire consumed.
The center of its chest caved in.
The creature roared—all its heads shrieked in unison, an earth-splitting scream that cracked the chamber walls. It writhed, burning from the inside out. Its massive body buckled and collapsed. Its regeneration failed as one by one, the heads dropped.
The Hydra stilled.
Dead.
A silence followed.
I stood amidst the steam and ash, breathing evenly. The tips of my coat fluttered with lingering sparks of black lightning. One of my boots was half-melted. My cheek was torn open—but already healing.
And then... for the first time since arriving in this world, I felt it.
Hunger. True, unfiltered hunger—not from lack of sustenance, but from instinct. Something primal. Something I had ignored until now. I raised my hand.
"...Gluttony."
The air warped.
A vortex of absolute consumption erupted around me, focused on the Hydra's corpse. An invisible force began pulling the colossal mass into nothingness. No bone, no blood, no resistance. Just absorption. The power of the beast spiraled into me, consumed entirely.
The flames vanished.
The floor was clean, and I stood there—still and silent. Staring at the space the Hydra once filled.
"Do you know what Aconite symbolizes?" I asked quietly, to no one in particular.
My voice echoed. Behind me, the massive gate reopened. I didn't turn yet. I kept looking at the place the Hydra had been. The absence it left behind.
"Aconite... symbolizes 'deadly secrets' and 'caution against touching the untouchable.'"
I turned slowly toward the entrance. Hajime and Yue stood there, bathed in the shadows of the shattered doorway. Their expressions were unreadable.
I smiled.
"But it also means, don't come any closer. I think it's kind of poetic, don't you think?"
Just then, the ground pulsed. Behind me, a gurgle. Bones cracking. Flesh reforming. The Hydra's six heads began to rise again—now slower, almost lazily. Like it was waking up from a nap, not rising from death.
But it didn't face me. It turned toward the new arrivals, snarling. Then paused. All six heads tilted. And it lowered its body into the lake, silently curling up on the stone. Its gaze slid past me without a hostility.
And that's because my trial was over.
It would fight again for others, but never again for me.
I'd already passed.
"Good luck, fellas."
I walked away, hands in my pockets, not looking back.
··—–—⚜—–—···
「 ✦ Hajime Nagumo ✦ 」
Blood.
Black, steaming, thick like tar. It coated my boots, my coat, my hand. Beneath it, I wasn't sure what color I was anymore. "Another one…" I murmured.
Before me lay a twitching carcass—a beast that might've once been called a Chimera, though it barely resembled anything natural. A mess of horns, wings, and teeth. It was still dying, too slow for my taste. I stepped on its skull.
Crack.
Then I opened my mouth. No words. Just hunger.
The crimson of my irises pulsed as I hungrily devoured the corpse. Faint lines of light rippled from my chest, and in the next moment, the monster's body was digested. I closed my eyes, letting the power crash through my nerves like wildfire.
"Still not enough," I muttered.
Yue descended beside me,. She was splattered too—red and black streaks down her pale skin, the hem of her cover shredded by claws and acid. But her eyes never lost focus. She was watching me more than the monsters. That had been happening a lot lately. Not that I blamed her.
We'd been following that guy for hours. Days? I didn't know anymore. Time lost its meaning down here. The deeper we went, the less humane things became—not like this place was anything remotely humane in the first place. The less real would be more apt.
Every floor was a battlefield.
But we didn't fight the monsters.
We walked through a graveyard.
Corpses littered the ground in masses—things that shouldn't have been able to die laid broken and silent. Some were split cleanly, bisected. Others looked like they'd exploded from within. Some didn't have bodies left at all—just shadows burned into stone.
That guy had passed through.
A storm wearing the shape of a young boy.
Yue had stopped speaking the names of the monsters we passed. I stopped counting the corpses. We followed his trail like scavengers, where I consumed what he discarded. He didn't devour them—he didn't need to.
But I did.
And I grew stronger.
Faster.
With each corpse I absorbed, my body adapted. My stats skyrocketed and new skills popped up on my status plate. Mana structures that no human had any right possessing fused into my being. I could feel it—my mind stretching to accommodate instincts not my own. Every new ability I gained changed me. I wasn't just a human anymore, and I long accepted that fact—and its consequences.
But I kept going.
Because I needed to see it through.
I needed to see him again.
And finally, we reached it.
The last door.
A black gate embedded into the earth like the lid of a coffin carved for gods. I pushed it open with Yue at my side. The room beyond was devastation incarnate. Cracked walls, floor, and ceiling. Burnt stone. Air pulsating with the residual static of a battle that had bent the standards of battle. The air tasted like thunder. Like ash. Like annihilation.
And in the center of that stillness stood that guy.
Back turned.
One hand still smoldering with traces of black lightning.
The corpse of what I could only call a Hydra—if you could still call it that—was erased just as we arrived. Not even bones remained. Only a strange warmth in the earth. Like something had been buried there and fed to oblivion.
He didn't look at us when he spoke.
"Do you know what Aconite symbolizes?"
He stood in the center of the room, framed by smoke and faint embers. His clothes were scorched, but there wasn't a scratch on him. His expression wasn't smug, or tired. Just plain and impassive and awfully unreadable. Almost detached.
The black lake behind him still steamed, not fully dried. From it, we saw the six monstrous heads of the Hydra—the guardian of this floor—rising once more, slowly curling around the platform like snakes around a crown. And yet, they didn't move to strike.
The boy didn't look back. His gaze was fixed on us.
"Aconite… symbolizes deadly secrets, and caution against touching the untouchable."
He stepped forward, just once, the echo of his footfall deafening in that wide, dead chamber.
"But it also means… don't come any closer. I think it's kind of poetic, don't you think?"
I didn't speak.
Not at first.
I wanted to.
Wanted to bark something, crack a smirk, pretend I wasn't rattled. But standing there—watching him, surrounded by a worldly monster that feared him—I felt it again. The difference. The same way a bird feels standing in front of a hurricane.
Yue's hand was still in mine. Warm. Real.
We weren't enemies. Not yet.
But we were chasing something that didn't belong to this world anymore.
I grit my teeth.
"...Tch. You could've at least left us a few stronger ones, you know."
It wasn't bravado. Just honesty… on second thought, maybe it was bravado. He glanced sideways. That unreadable expression cracked—just a little.
A smile.
The kind of smile that felt distant, like we were bugs trying to scale a mountain, and he respected the effort enough not to step on us.
"You got here, didn't you?" he said. "That's more than most."
He turned away then, dark, navy-blue coat swaying with the movement. The Hydra shifted slightly, making room for him like a beast moving for its king. He started walking—toward the far door.
"Good luck, fellas."
And just like that, he was gone.