Chapter 233 – Entering the Dungeon (2)

The gate that the Demon King had recreated was close to the dungeon entrance.

Naturally, the area near the dungeon entrance was filled with undead that had emerged from the gate. Zombies, skeletons, ghouls, and even corpse golems.

Of course, the undead that came out of the gate didn’t stay in place; they flowed like a wave down toward the entrance of the ravine. But it was impossible to enter the dungeon without being detected by those undead.

So we decided not to sneak in.

We chose to simply break through the wave of undead with a direct assault.

“But this is too crude a method!” I heard Yerim grumbling from behind, but I paid no attention and swung my sword at the approaching undead.

Actually, it wasn’t the undead approaching me, but rather me cutting through the middle of the undead horde.

Either way, it didn’t change the fact that the undead were being shattered in real-time by my sword.

Rotten limbs flew through the air, and shattered bones soared into the sky.

My powerfully swung sword returned corpse golems—amalgamations of multiple bodies—back to individual corpses, and finely sliced through the intestines of ghouls.

It was really nice not having to worry about breaking my sword.

Even when an undead tried to block with its own sword, or a skeleton with its shield, I could simply cut through both the weapon and the wielder.

Like a prophet of an Earth deity parting the sea with his staff, I was able to split the great army of undead in half and advance forward.

Of course, unlike that prophet, I had no way to keep the parted waters at bay, but I had companions.

As I wedged my way into the undead army, my companions—the mages following behind me—widened the gap I had created with their magic.

“Spatial Severance!”

“Rise up and form a wall!”

On my left, Yelena blocked the undead from approaching with spatial magic, while on my right, Zahina moved the earth to erect a wall.

“I can’t hold it for long!”

There were too many undead for Zahina’s wall or Yelena’s spatial shield to last long, but that brief moment was enough.

While their magic was breaking, we pushed further ahead.

As the two mages blocked the undead attacking from both sides, the two saintesses, protected by Irene’s shield in the center, drew forth their divine power to burn the surrounding undead.

If seen from a distance, it must have been quite a spectacle.

A party of heroes penetrating through the center of an undead army while raising flames.

If a bard had witnessed this scene, they surely could have written a masterpiece that would go down in history.

It was such a magnificent sight, but as the one who created it, I could only listen to the saintess’s complaints.

“Argh! I was prepared, but isn’t this too much? Without Uncle Hoffman, you’re being too reckless!”

Yerim’s screaming complaints continued to reach me from behind.

Right now, only Yerim was shouting, but judging by the glances from my companions amidst the undead surrounding us, it seemed the others felt the same way.

I had no response to Yerim’s words or my companions’ gazes.

I was too busy fighting to answer, but more than that, Yerim’s words and the women’s glances weren’t wrong.

Though I was framing it as a brilliant battle in my mind, objectively speaking, the current fight was a horrific one that was hard to watch.

When you think about it, we were advancing through mountains of skeletons and fields of corpses, which would be difficult for people with sensitive dispositions to endure.

‘No, maybe it’s difficult even for those who aren’t sensitive…’

I seemed to have been thinking too much from my own perspective.

Moreover, this charge was, as Yerim said, a method with no way back.

By charging straight through like this, we would inevitably be trapped within the undead army once we entered the dungeon.

I was prepared for that.

And there were no undead here that could stop me after I had made that determination.

My party and I broke through the wave of undead and reached the dungeon entrance without losing a single member.

I, who had been clearing the path at the front, stopped at the dungeon entrance.

“I’ll hold them off, everyone get in!”

As I said, my companions rushed into the dungeon, with only Zahina remaining behind me, placing her hands on the stairs leading underground.

“Is it possible?”

“Yes, it’s possible! Just hold them off a little longer!”

“Don’t worry!”

If the problem was that the undead army would follow us into the dungeon, then the solution was to prevent them from following.

Of course, this was the Demon King’s dungeon, a dungeon full of tricks, where even slight modifications would be difficult for an ordinary mage. But the mage behind me was no ordinary mage.

Though we had parted ways before, she was the first daughter of the Divine Tree who commanded the forces of nature, a great mage, and unlike Earth, this place—Ea—was where she could use her powers to their fullest.

“Move! Please move!”

Unlike other times, she cast her spell not as a request but as a command.

Rumble.

With her words, the stairs at the dungeon entrance began to shake.

As if refusing her command, the shaking stairs soon began to surge upward.

“It’s done! Step back!”

As soon as Zahina’s words fell, I kicked away an attacking skeleton with all my might and leaped backward.

The moment I fell down the stairs like I was plummeting, the stairs I had just passed rose up one after another, blocking the entrance.

After dozens of stairs shot up to form a wall, Zahina removed her hand from the staircase with a tired face.

“Whew. The trickery is too thick down here. This is the best I can do.”

I nodded at Zahina’s words.

“This is enough.”

The dungeon entrance was now blocked for about ten meters.

Honestly, I didn’t know if it was truly enough, but with the entrance blocked like this, it seemed difficult for anyone to enter directly from outside.

We only needed to buy time anyway.

As I helped Zahina up, the companions who had entered ahead approached us.

They looked at us with relieved faces, then sighed as they saw the dungeon entrance that had become a wall.

And Yerim expressed their collective sentiment.

“If we block the way back like this, it’ll be impossible to escape midway.”

“Anyway, if we can’t kill the Demon King, escape is impossible.”

Everyone sighed at my response.

They all knew. That there was no way back in this battle from the beginning.

As the mood seemed to sink, the princess who had been quiet spoke up… “But if we can defeat the Demon King, the undead on the surface won’t be a problem. I saw in the writings of my ancestors left in the imperial palace that after the death of a previous Demon King who led the undead, all the undead returned to being corpses.”

It was certainly an encouraging statement, but unfortunately, this Demon King was exceptionally unusual.

It was difficult to be confident that things would happen the same way as before.

However, there was no need to dampen the mood with such words.

And it seemed Yelena thought the same as I did.

“Don’t worry. After we defeat the Demon King, I can create a gate or portal. The trickery is deeply embedded in the dungeon, making it difficult to set portal coordinates, but a gate should be possible.”

She also seemed to think things wouldn’t turn out as the princess said, but instead, she offered a much more plausible alternative.

The assurance that if we defeated the Demon King, we could at least escape.

With hundreds of thousands of undead swarming above our heads, there was no better thing to hear.

As we encouraged each other, I looked around.

The dungeon was well-lit by torches on the walls, burning on their own, perhaps due to magic, making it easy to survey the surroundings.

The Demon King’s dungeon, certainly a place I had visited not long ago.

The place I had entered when chasing the fleeing Demon King to Earth.

Being the Demon King’s dungeon from the start, it had a bizarre appearance, and moreover, it looked half-ruined with traces of battle between the Demon King and the hero.

But the dungeon I was seeing now was not such a ruin.

If I wasn’t mistaken, this dungeon had changed from what I had seen then.

“It’s different from before.”

“So I wasn’t the only one who thought so.”

Fortunately, Zahina was thinking the same as me.

Hearing Zahina’s words, Yelena placed her hand on the dungeon wall.

As she infused mana into the wall, she said:

“It seems the Demon King or his subordinates repaired the dungeon after occupying the Grand Battle Gate and sending forces to Ea.”

Yerim tilted her head at Yelena’s words.

“Can it be fixed that easily?”

Yelena removed her hand from the wall and answered Yerim’s question.

“It’s the Demon King’s dungeon. He probably fixed it with magic.”

At her words, Zahina pointed to the far end of the corridor shrouded in darkness.

“It’s still moving.”

Rumble.

As she said, a sound came from far away in the darkness.

It was the sound of walls moving.

The Demon King, who had regained his senses, seemed to have become a conventional enemy.

“This isn’t just conventional, it’s like he’s become a fossil.”

After experiencing the changed dungeon, it was understandable why Yerim would say such a thing.

The returned Demon King had restored his dungeon to its former state.

The Demon King had reverted this place back to a conventional dungeon with traps, undead, and subordinates stationed throughout to block enemy intrusion.

“This doesn’t even seem rational, it’s like it was mechanically repaired.”

Everyone had to agree with Yerim’s comment after seeing the arrow traps and skeletons hiding behind walls on the very first floor.

This was treating the heroes who entered as fools.

Even Hoffman would curse at such traps.

Traps that made even tense people relax.

As everyone shook their heads in disbelief and walked on, I could sense a faint line of mana flowing from the wall.

An ordinary line of mana that couldn’t cause any harm,

Like a thin laser beam, an invisible line of mana was passing through the middle of the corridor.

The companions who had let their guard down couldn’t sense that line of mana.

No, even if they had been on guard, they probably wouldn’t have noticed.

It was such a faint mana that only someone extremely sensitive to mana, like me, could detect.

The kind of mana that couldn’t trigger any magic.

But sensing that mana, I immediately shouted:

“Stop! Slowly back away!”

Fortunately, the party members heard me and stopped immediately.

They slowly backed away, and after retreating a considerable distance, I had Irene shoot a fireball in the direction of the mana line.

Whoosh.

Irene, with a puzzled face, launched a fireball, which flew forward and passed through the invisible mana line.

At that moment.

BOOM!

The entire corridor exploded.

An explosion with not a trace of mana.

That wasn’t magic, it was a bomb.

“Good heavens. He hid a bomb?”

“And instead of a laser, he made a detection device with mana.”

Now I realized that the traps so far had been decoys.

The kind of traps meant to make us let our guard down.

“Perhaps highly advanced magic is no different from science.”

The Demon King, who had visited Earth, had upgraded his dungeon to a whole new level.