Dungeon Odyssey [EN]: Chapter 111

Dungeon Journal – Episode 112

#45. The True King

“Ugh.”

Kim Jin-woo woke with a low groan, blinking in the dim light. After a moment, his eyes adjusted, and he could make out the objects around him.

He seemed to have fallen asleep in the labyrinth’s bedroom again.

Lately, he’d been eating and sleeping in the labyrinth so much that he wasn’t sure if he was a creature of the underground or a human of the surface.

Moreover, since meeting Dinariōn, he’d been having nightmares more frequently.

No matter how much he slept, it was his mind, not his body, that felt tired. He furrowed his brow and took a deep breath.

The stuffy air of the underground, which he thought he had gotten used to, felt particularly suffocating today.

‘I can’t die until I leave this damn hell and see the outside world.’

Jung Young-tae’s last words, which he’d heard in his nightmare, remained like a brand, burning around his heart.

Was he really doing well? He asked himself, having learned about the warm sunlight of the surface, only to return to the underground.

He pondered for a long time, but no answer came.

“Master?”

At that moment, Dominique entered. Seeing her pale skin in the dim light, Kim Jin-woo felt a strange chill and quickly sat up.

“You don’t look well. Are you not feeling well?”

Her gentle voice was filled with deep concern. But instead of answering, Kim Jin-woo lowered his head and pressed his eyes.

“I think I have a fever.”

At first, he made it up as an excuse, but now that he thought about it, he felt like he had a fever, and he was short of breath. His condition wasn’t good at all.

“A fever?”

Dominique, a creature of the underground, tilted her head, not understanding the symptom of a fever.

“I need to go out for a while.”

He thought he should go to a hospital on the surface, and when he said that, Dominique looked troubled.

With the Parthenon’s invasion imminent, she seemed worried about the gap in their forces during the transformation process and any accidents that could happen in his absence.

But because she cared so much about her master’s well-being, she told him to be careful instead of trying to stop him.

“I’ll be back soon.”

Kim Jin-woo left the labyrinth and went to a hospital on the surface.

“What’s wrong?”

A middle-aged doctor in a white coat with a cold expression asked with a friendly smile that seemed out of character.

“I have a fever, I’m short of breath, and my body feels heavy.”

“Hmm. Do you have a cough or phlegm?”

“No.”

After a formal exchange of questions and answers, the doctor prescribed cold medicine without much concern.

“Well, it seems like a common cold these days, but take the medicine I prescribed and come back if it doesn’t get better.”

The doctor left a very cliché comment instead of a greeting and buried his head back in the chart.

Kim Jin-woo frowned at the sight, feeling subtly annoyed, and nodded before leaving the office.

‘I must be more sensitive because I’m not feeling well.’

He hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and he desperately needed rest. So, instead of going to the underground, he went home and went straight to bed.

He fell asleep quickly before even taking the medicine the hospital prescribed, and he woke up a long time later.

“Hmm?”

He grabbed his throbbing head and got up, belatedly taking the medicine. But as he closed the water bottle, he noticed something strange.

There were unknown crumbs on the bed he had been lying on.

He wondered if it was just dust since he hadn’t been home in so long, so he brushed it off with his hand, but the crumbs quickly stuck to his hand.

He frowned as he lifted his hand to check the strange, crunchy texture.

The strange crumbs, which felt like dead skin cells or flimsy vinyl, looked familiar. But he didn’t think much of it and shook the crumbs into the trash can.

“Kkeuaaaa.”

Kim Jin-woo stretched with a bizarre groan and went to the bathroom.

He had sweated a lot while sleeping, so he took off his clothes to wash, and when he saw the dead skin cells on the inside of his t-shirt, he reached out to check his back.

The foreign sensation felt between his skin, he stood in front of the mirror and looked at his back.

The stains on his back, covered with various scars, caught his eye like a sting. In contrast to his flesh-colored skin, they were blue. He widened his eyes and froze.

What he thought were dead skin cells were pieces of skin that had peeled off. And what was visible under the peeled skin were scales with fine textures.

“Scales?”

He felt like his heart was dropping. Scales, which he had become accustomed to because of Dominique and the Nagas [a race of serpent-like beings], were attached to a place where they should never be.

“Ah…….”

Just in case, he ran his hand over his back several times, but the scales didn’t come off as if they had been one with his skin from the beginning.

The hand that stroked the scales became more and more violent. And at some point, it became fierce and brutal, as if tearing off the skin.

The skin turned red, and now even blood was visible, but the blue scales were as stubbornly the same as when he first saw them.

***

The scales that suddenly appeared on his body must be related to the labyrinth. So, Kim Jin-woo went straight to the underground without taking a break.

“Master, you’re here?”

As he barely acknowledged Dominique’s greeting, he found himself staring at her shimmering, scaly tail.

“Master?”

Dominique twisted her body at the blatant gaze, but his eyes didn’t leave her. After staring at her tail for a long time as if possessed, he finally cursed.

“Damn it.”

Although the color was different, it was exactly the same as the scales on his back. He felt like he had been given a death sentence, and his body trembled with a sudden chill.

And something sour rose to the tip of his chin and poured out with a foul odor.

“Kyaa! Master!”

Dominique’s scream seemed to fade away, and soon complete silence came. And then, everything went black, and he couldn’t see anything.

That’s how he lost consciousness.

***

Kim Jin-woo had a dream. A very long dream.

But when he woke up, he couldn’t remember anything. All he could remember was the strange coolness and softness that cooled his boiling body.

So, he unconsciously hugged and held onto the cold, soft thing.

“Umm…….”

But the cold, soft object made a strange moan. At the sound that made his heart flutter subtly, he opened his eyes wide.

“Dominique?”

Black and shimmering hair like a 펼쳐둔 [spread out] night sky, a small, round forehead and beautiful features located below it, what he had been desperately hugging and caressing in his dream was Dominique.

The moment he realized that, he froze.

“Master?”

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Dominique, who had been fast asleep, woke up and looked at him.

“Ah, why is Dominique here…….”

He was flustered for no reason because she woke up before he could even figure out the situation. Dominique blinked at him and burst into tears.

“Master!”

***

“So, you’re saying it’s been two weeks?”

“Yes. I was so worried because you had a high fever all over your body.”

He groaned, looking at Dominique’s face, which was still teary. He felt a little dizzy, and then two weeks had passed.

It was almost absurd.

“You’re really okay now, right?”

His condition, which had been a mess with fever and dizziness until he lost consciousness, had returned to normal.

No, he felt several times lighter than before he lost consciousness. And in reality, he was full of energy.

“I’m so glad. I’m so glad.”

As he watched Dominique repeat the same words to herself, he belatedly asked about the situation.

Until just before, he had been very worried about the Parthenon’s invasion, so he wondered if anything had happened while he was unconscious.

“The Parthenon’s army has already been defeated.”

“What?”

Kim Jin-woo’s eyes widened. He couldn’t understand how they had stopped the army dispatched by the Count of the 11th floor’s depths.

Dominique explained the situation to him.

“You weren’t here, Master, but we had no choice but to execute the plan. We leaked false information to the thieves on the 10th floor, and Boreas himself stepped in to deal with those who didn’t listen. That’s how we blocked the Parthenon army’s advance.”

It seems that the false information operation, which claimed that the Parthenon’s army had set out to subdue the thieves at the request of the 10th floor nobles, was effective.

She said that the thieves desperately attacked the Disciples of Despair and succeeded in delaying their advance.

“But I never thought that they alone could stop the 11th floor’s army. In reality, they didn’t show any more activity than holding them back.”

Indeed, there was no way that the thieves, who were cowering because even the 10th floor nobles couldn’t do anything about them, could stop the Parthenon’s elite. She continued to explain how she and the Nagas had stopped the Parthenon.

“Around the time the thieves were making their last stand, the Invincible Mercenary Corps set out. And Boreas’s Blizzard Warriors were with them.”

Kim Jin-woo could finally nod at Dominique’s explanation. If it was the Invincible Mercenary Corps and the Blizzard Warriors, they could have held their own against the Parthenon’s army on the 10th floor to some extent. But there were still questions.

“Who moved them?”

The contract with the Invincible Mercenary Corps was entirely entrusted to Kim Jin-woo, and there was no way they would have allowed the dispatch without a request from the client.

Moreover, Boreas, although defeated and cowering now, was a being with more pride than anyone else, and he was not someone who would easily listen to orders.

“The King of the Mirror Specters.”

Dominique smiled brightly.

“He used Espesto.”

***

“Ah…….”

He had mentioned Espesto’s story in passing before, and she must have remembered it and come up with a trick.

Kim Jin-woo felt a strange feeling at Dominique’s words and made an ambiguous face that was neither smiling nor crying.

“That worked?”

“We earnestly asked Boreas for cooperation, and the Invincible Mercenary Corps seemed to have easily fallen for it because they had little contact with you, Master.”

Although they overcame the crisis thanks to Dominique’s wit, he didn’t feel good. It wasn’t a pleasant experience to have someone completely replace his position.

But it was definitely necessary. So, he tried to calm his expression.

“Anyway, the Disciples of Despair saw the Invincible Mercenary Corps and immediately retreated. It seems they weren’t willing to take damage against such a strong mercenary corps just to punish our fortress.”

It was a somewhat anticlimactic ending. It was a hollow retreat and defeat compared to the name value of Despair.

But it was also a victory gained thanks to Dominique’s wit, and it was by no means a free result.

If she hadn’t stepped up like that, the fortress might have had its heart pierced without even using its powerful force encompassing the entire 9th floor in the worst case scenario.

“I will gladly accept the punishment for daring to impersonate Master’s name. Please punish me.”

She knelt on the floor and volunteered for punishment.

She was willing to pay the price for daring to borrow the master’s name. It was definitely a dangerous thing, but instead of punishing her, he praised her instead.

After roughly sorting out the situation, Kim Jin-woo finally asked why he had collapsed.

“Why did I collapse?”

If he had been unconscious for two weeks, there must be a reason. He thought that Dominique, who had been watching by his side, would surely know the reason. And she knew the reason as he had guessed.

“You are now…….”

Dominique’s purple, shimmering eyes lit up as she moved her lips.

“You are in the process of becoming a true king.”