TN: Please read my translations only on my website nyx-translation.com since I never give my permission to any site to host my translations. And if you like my translations, please support this site on Ko-fi, and join our Patreon to read up to 12 chapters ahead for this novel!
Enjoy~
TL: ALT
Chapter 166 – Central Dungeon Strategy・Makyo and the Others Part 4
“This way.” Oh, this way! Oh, it’s this way. Please.”
Sati was a satyr, a half-human, half-sheep creature, and he was trying hard to speak politely. I told him, “Don’t worry about how you speak.”
“Yes, sir!”
The result was that it ended up sounding like neither one thing nor the other.
We proceeded down the passage behind the Demon King’s throne and entered another large room.
The ceiling was twice Treant’s height, and there were several thick stone pillars.
Wyverns, Rock Crocodiles, Meashitsukawazu, and other reptilian monsters familiar to the demonic land gnawed on the stone pillars.
“Director! We have guests! It’s the lord of the demonic land, the knight of Yggdrasil, and…”
“It’s the candidate for the demon king of the neighboring country.”
Chel replied.
“What? The candidate for the demon king?”
A lizard-like human approached us after hearing Sati’s voice.
The term “lizard-human” might be rude, but she had the head of a lizard and the body of a human. A presumably female beast-person wiped her hands on a brown apron and approached us.
She probably looked like what a person from a rural ranch would look like if you called out to them. They are less wary than farmers.
“Hello.”
I greeted her as politely as possible.
“Hello. Are you from the outside?”
“Yes.”
“Then you came through the forest?”
“Yes, I live there.”
“I see. That’s good. This is a relief.”
The director, who was a lizard woman, closed her eyes and smiled with relief.
“You can take anything you want from this research facility. But could you spare some food or magic stones?”
As the Demon King had said, food and magic seemed to be in short supply. I handed over the magic stones and the lunchbox I had in my pocket, and they were very grateful.
“I’ll go hunting later. Can you teach me more?”
“Sure, but what do you want to know?”
“I want to see a dragon.”
With Yggdrasil gone, the clan descended from dragons formed a country, and the elves invaded in search of dragon bones. I’ve seen Wyverns and Maeashitsukawazus, which are sub-dragons. Are there any real dragons?
“They’re here. Look.”
The director pointed at a Wyvern.
“So there aren’t any real dragons, just sub-dragons?”
“Ah, you mean like child dragons?”
“No, I’ve seen child dragons before.”
“He was talking about real dragons. You know, like fire dragons and flying dragons.”
Ka-Ryu, who had been listening to the director and me, interrupted.
“Are you a golem?”
“Yes, I’m Ka-Ryu, a knight of Yggdrasil and the Keeper of Time for the giant magical beast.”
“Well! I’d like to hear your story!”
“That’s fine. We’ll talk after we’re done here. Are there any dragons?”
“Yes, there are. But they’re all asleep right now. Almost all of them…”
“Why are they sleeping?”
Chel asked the director.
“I think it’s probably due to the decline in the dungeon’s magical power. They’re in a state similar to hibernation and haven’t been able to move for hundreds of years. Want to see?”
We were led from the pillar room to a vast room covered with dried plants. It was chilly, but perhaps the temperature was just right for hibernation.
Just as in fairy tales, there were several dragons sleeping with their wings folded and curled up.
“In the past, the dragons here used to hunt prey from outside and protect the dungeon from attacks by other dungeons. They’ve been in this state for about 600 years.”
“Were the dragons born in this laboratory?”
“Yes, that’s what the records say. If possible, we’d prefer if you left them be…”
To the researchers, the dragons were both a means of protection and a vulnerability they didn’t want the outside world to know about.
We quickly left and returned to the room with the pillars.
“By the way, do you recognize this?”
I asked, taking out an egg-shaped leather pouch and showing it to the director.
“A dungeon egg? Where did you get that?”
“Someone exploring the demonic land 100 years ago left it behind.”
“Don’t open it here.”
So it’s not an option to hatch a dungeon inside a dungeon.
The golem at the military base said the same thing.
“Because records indicate that it could cause us to lose track of which dungeon we’re in, and the dungeon itself might collapse.”
Apparently, there was an accident in the past.
“Is there no way to open or hatch it?”
“When the time comes, it should hatch naturally once it finds its master. However, it’s been at least 800 years since the dungeon egg was created.”
“Oh, so it’s probably rotted inside?”
“Hmm, I don’t know. It’s a basilisk-slime hybrid, so I wonder if it rots.”
“I thought it was a snake and slime hybrid, but is it a basilisk?”
“Is that right? According to the records, it should be a basilisk. Oh, look! There’s one over there.”
The director pointed to a large snake wrapped around a pillar.
“Do you want to become a dungeon master?”
“No, not really. I just think farming in the demonic land is tough, so I thought it’d be nice to create farmland inside a dungeon.”
“Ah, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but there used to be a dungeon in the botanical garden.”
“Oh, we excavated it the other day.”
“What!? You excavated it!?”
“Yes, and the inside was even worse than the demonic land.”
“I knew it! Dungeons are hard to control in terms of magic power. It depends on where you place the entrance.”
“Does it go out of control if there’s too much magic power?”
“Yeah, you know that? That’s right. If there’s too much, it goes out of control. If there’s too little, it ends up like this research facility.”
The director answered while eating lunch with Sati, saying, “This is delicious.”
“So, the demons’ dungeons must be really well-designed.”
“Demons are good at magic, you know.”
“That’s right.”
With her stomach full, the director seemed to have calmed down. She began examining the dungeon egg.
“Ah, this is a dungeon for sale. Look, there are traces of paint on it.”
Sure enough, there were traces of paint on the surface of the leather pouch.
“Were dungeons sold so easily?”
“Well, after the Midgard transfer, it was lawless, so anything went.”
The director wasn’t alive at the time, so she didn’t know the details.
“However, it seems that several researchers took dungeon eggs made here. There are many records of complaints and grievances.”
If a dungeon egg stolen from this laboratory was stolen from Paul 100 years ago and is now in my hands, then it could be stolen again.
“That egg hasn’t found a master in 800 years, so it must be a very eccentric dungeon,” the director said with a laugh.
The inhabitants of the demonic land are mostly eccentric, so perhaps someone there is a good match for it. Let’s hope it hatches in someone’s hands.
The egg doesn’t seem to be breaking easily, so I decided to hang the leather pouch around my waist for now.
We were hungry, so we left the dungeon for a while.
Although it is in the center of the demonic land, it is on the east side, so the types of monsters are slightly different. There are many insect-like monsters, and hunting half-human, half-beast monsters has become difficult.
As we approached the center, the “migrating” monsters that were raising their young in the ruins of Midgard were noisy, so we headed toward the east coast.
We hunted a subspecies of Gibier Deer and a Field Boar. We butchered them and wrapped them in butterbur leaves. Carrying them was more difficult than hunting them. It wasn’t their weight; it was their size that made them difficult to balance. Magic stones also seemed important, so we put them all in our bags.
“We’ve found more refugees from the past.”
Ka-Ryu muttered to me as she tied the meat to my back.
At the military base in the desert, we found golems with souls from 1,000 years ago. Today, we found the descendants of the demonic beast disease patients at the research facility. Like the golems, they cannot live in the demonic land and are refugees who somehow manage to survive in the dungeon.
“I’m the lord of this demonic land. I suppose I should make sure they have something to eat.”
“You can’t just let them live here for free! They have to work for it!”
I can’t keep taking care of them forever, after all.
I took a large amount of monster meat and cam fruits to the genetic research institute’s dungeon.
My second visit was greeted with cheers.
“What do you usually eat?”
“Monsters that fall off the cliff.”
“Tree roots and bark.”
Sati and Arachne, who had received food and magic stones from us, answered.
“Don’t you eat sub-dragon meat?”
“Sometimes.”
“Just a little.”
The sub-dragons on the ranch are managed by the director, so they rarely have the opportunity to eat them.
“Why don’t you raise them for food?”
I asked the director directly.
“The dragons at the ranch have almost no meat. They’re mostly experimental monsters for the dungeon. They live off a little organic matter and magic power. If we kill them, all that’s left are the items they drop.”
Come to think of it, considering the number of monsters on the ranch, there wasn’t much of a smell of feces and urine.
“I heard you sometimes provide meat?”
“A few genuine ones with physical forms have slipped through. But they take a long time to grow, and their magic power is weak.”
There seem to be a lot of problems.
“Where does the dungeon get its magic power?”
“It’s drawn from the magic flowing underground. Dungeons are supposed to be built above magical rivers, but the rivers change course. This area has a lot of fissures, so the terrain has probably changed from 1,000 years ago.”
Ka-Ryu nodded at the director’s words.
“Does that underground magic affect the vegetation and monsters?”
“Of course it does. Otherwise, the outside wouldn’t have changed like that.”
Indeed, Cliff Garuda’s great hole was completely different from the others.
“Demonic beast disease is caused by magic, too.”
“What?! Did the genetic research institute discover the cause of demonic beast disease?”
Ka-Ryu asked loudly.
“It’s an extreme supply of magic to the mother. When a pregnant woman suffers a serious injury or illness, the priests use healing magic, and magic power is supplied to the mother all at once, right?”
“The magic power of healing magic shouldn’t make much difference, should it?”
Chel, a demon, asked the director.
“In a normal place, yes. But in a place with a lot of magic power, the cells are already saturated, so when more is supplied, it exceeds what’s needed to heal them. If all the excess magic power is directed toward the fetus, it can be affected by demonic beast disease, according to geneticists at Yggdrasil. Normally, temples maintain a constant level of magic power, so priests and monks who can control the land’s magic power should perform healing there. However, there seems to have been religious conflict in the past.”
“So it’s not a plague?”
Ka-Ryu pressed the director.
“It’s more accurate to say they became monsters due to how the plague was handled than because of the plague itself.”
“What…?”
That must have been shocking for Ka-Ryu.
“But I think the people in this research facility would have gone extinct if they hadn’t become monsters capable of surviving on magic alone for a certain period of time.”
“I see. All right!”
From now on, as the lord of the demonic land, I will treat them as such.
“This is the demonic land, so everyone should learn to hunt outside. You can all go outside, right?”
“We can go outside…!? What? Go outside!?”
Sati and the director are wide-eyed. Apparently, those who can understand the language are real.
“It’s okay! The survival techniques of the demonic land are well-established now!”
“They’re not established yet!”
“If we all stick together, there’s nothing to be afraid of!”
“We almost died a few times, though!”
Chel laughed, and the people at the research institute cowered.
Once again, the population of the demonic land had increased.
After carrying monster meat all day, we returned home.
The dwarves who were supposed to be at the training ground were covered in medicinal herbs once again and laid out in front of the cave.
I reported to Sylvia and Hel about the genetic research lab.
“W-what? Are the natives of the demonic land monsters, too?”
“Earth veins, huh? Considering how many fissures there were, the flow of magical power must have changed considerably.”
Elves refer to the underground flow of magical power as “earth veins.”
“You can sense that?”
“It’s usually impossible, but Makyo should be able to do it. Why don’t you try?”
As usual, I scanned the ground, but there were small monsters around, and I couldn’t tell if magical power was flowing anywhere.
“It’s flowing everywhere, isn’t it? There aren’t any particularly dense or thin areas.”
“What about the ruins of Midgard?”
“Yeah, I know there’s nothing there. Maybe someone stole the magic there?”
“Could it be a supply point for the giant magical beast?”
“That could be.”
“The bread is ready.”
I was handed my dinner bread.
It’s hot. But it’s delicious.
We’ve been exploring the dungeon, gradually uncovering the secrets of the ancient world. However, we still haven’t found any wheat fields.
“I don’t know. Is growing wheat really this hard?”
Looking at the freshly baked bread, I thought of my parents’ farm.
If you like my translations, please support me on Ko-Fi and subscribe my Patreon to read up to 12 chapters ahead for this novel!