by Fuse
I had to admit, this labyrinth was starting to look pretty forbidding.
“Hey, you think this dungeon might be a touch too difficult?”
“Really?” Veldora replied. “I fail to see the problem.”
“Yeah, Rimuru! This is no big deal at all!”
Ramiris and Veldora were just laughing it off. Maybe I’m fine after all, I said to myself as I switched my focus to maze design.
Several days passed. Ramiris buzzed around, crafting all the traps we’d need, and Beretta and Treyni installed them for us. Veldora and I, meanwhile, brainstormed ideas for the mazes, coming up with several patterns and setting them up so we could easily change them in and out. Things were going smoothly, but once we began considering the ground effects we could add to floors, Ramiris brought up an issue.
“Oh, no, I can’t do that. I don’t have the massive amounts of energy it’d take to keep it all going!”
She quickly threw in the towel, and she had a point, admittedly. Basically, I was picturing floors where you’d potentially run into natural disasters—fires, floors covered in ice, howling winds. I guess volcanoes were asking a bit too much. I was assuming we could do anything with magic without considering the practical issues.
“Yeah… Sorry, Ramiris,” I apologized, throwing in the towel. “I probably went too far—”
“Well, how about we find some Fire or Frost Dragons, tame them, and bring them in here? I could even catch ’em for ya!”
This voice sounded familiar to me. It belonged to someone who shouldn’t have been here. I turned around to find a pair of platinum-pink pigtails framing a face staring right at me. It was Milim.
“Uh… What are you doing here, Milim?”
This was, I remind you, the hundredth floor, the bottom of a freshly designed dungeon. It wasn’t open to the public; there shouldn’t have been any way to get inside. So why was the demon lord Milim grinning at me in here? (Raphael apparently noticed her but didn’t report to me about it because she didn’t pose a threat. I know I gave the initial order, but maybe I should reconsider. Raphael was so inflexible like that. It annoyed me.)
…
But that could wait. I had Milim to deal with.
“Ha-ha!” She met my eyes as she stood proud, sticking out her nonexistent chest. “You looked like you were doing something interesting here, so I stopped on by. You got guts, y’know, trying to shut me out of the fun!”
Her wardrobe was as revealing as always, but it actually covered more of her body than before. Shuna and the goblinas had been designing her outfits, so maybe she’d developed a shred of fashion sense. The massive Dragon Knuckles dully shining on her hands didn’t match too well, though.
Very Milim-like was all I could say. She really was still a kid. But I didn’t mean to keep her away from the action. If she wanted to help out…
“Heh. Milim, huh?” Veldora gave her a glance. “This is noble work, performed by grown-ups; it is far too complex for children like you. This is not a playground. Stay out of our way!”
He shut her down before I could even respond. This was work, more or less, but it sure didn’t feel that way to me.
“My master is right!” shouted Ramiris in a fury. “We’re on work duty right now, so go away and bother someone else for a change!”
Alas, Milim simply snatched the pixie out of the air.
Ramiris needed courage to try that with her, but she also needed strength to back it up. I’m sure not that brave.
“What do you mean, it looks ‘interesting’?” I retorted. “I’m planning a huge festival, remember? And I’m even gonna accommodate the request you gave me in your letter, too.”
“Huh?! You didn’t ignore my letter?!”
“Of course not. I’m inviting demon lords to this event, y’know. I’m not about to piss them off for no reason.”
Milim looked a bit peeved, although contented that I didn’t forget about her request.
“Wait a minute, Rimuru!” Ramiris shouted, livid about this treatment at Milim’s hands. “I’m a demon lord, too, you know! Part of the Octagram with you and Milim!”
“Oh yeah, Ramiris, I didn’t even need to send you an invite, huh? Not after you decided to just up and move here!”
“What? You moved here? Wait a second… Ramiris, are you living with Rimuru?!”
Ramiris began to a panic a bit. “Y-yes! Yes, I moved here, okay? So the invitation doesn’t even matter! I’m not alone any longer, and I’m living with Rimuru and everything, too!”
Great. Panic or not, that statement was bound to be misunderstood.
“Aw, that’s no fair! I wanna live here, too!!”
“Ha-ha! Tough luck! I’ve got a job here, remember? I’m helping out Rimuru! I’m not some overbearing, unwelcome houseguest like you!”
“What? How dare you say that! Why, I oughtta—”
Milim was ready to duke it out right now. Ramiris, despite how hopeless her chances were, refused to stand down. Me? I just watched it unfold.
Fortunately, this was just a verbal spat, limited to the two trading insults with each other. Neither had the vocabulary for this kind of contention, which made it kinda cute in a way. Ramiris occasionally accentuated her disses with a flying kick to Milim, who kept trying to grab her out of the air. It was kind of like a game of tag, and from the side, this almost looked like they were playing at recess. Apparently, they’ve known each other for a while, so perhaps this was just their way of expressing affection.
Their squabbling came to a close within moments, however—Shuna had just arrived with some sweets in tow, took one look at the two demon lords, and shot them a firm rebuke.
“No sweets for anyone who’s bickering!”
That immediately shut them both up.
A couple slices of cake later, and everything was roses. They were awfully chummy now—but more importantly, I needed to grill Milim over why she came here in the first place.
“So, Milim, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“Hee-hee! I told you! You looked like you were up to some fun stuff!”
“Um, is that really it?”
“Uh-huh. But now I’m really glad I came. This cake tastes so good, and I like what you’re doing with this labyrinth. I had no idea Ramiris could make herself so useful!”
“Ha! Sure showed you, huh? I’ve got untold powers at my disposal, you know. You just never noticed!”
You didn’t, either, Ramiris, I thought. But…man, Milim really has a keen nose for underground scheming like this. You literally can’t hide anything from her. She had two ex–demon lords in Carillon and Frey to deal with, but she still had the time and wherewithal to look into stuff all the way over here. Logic just didn’t work with her. She shouldn’t be able to get in here, but maybe it wasn’t unusual at all for Milim. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“All right. We have had our dessert— How about we get back to work? You can enjoy this, too, Milim, if you stay out of the way.”
Veldora was being unusually mature and accommodating. Come to think of it, a fight between him and Milim would be a serious problem. Milim was going easy on Ramiris, I could tell, but it’d be a different story with this dragon. If they started to tangle, this whole labyrinth would fall apart. Good thing she was on Veldora’s good side for now.
“No complaint there, Master,” Ramiris said. She and Milim actually got along pretty well, in my eyes—that fight just now must’ve just been some friendly teasing.
“All right!” exclaimed an excited Milim. “I won’t get in your way. Gimme all the work you want!”
I figured I was safe in accepting that offer, but one concern remained—something I needed confirmation for.
“Well, I don’t mind if you join in, but—”
“Great! This looks like so much fun! I wish you called for me back when you were planning it!”
“Right, right. But Milim, what about the people working under you? Did you get permission from Carillon o
r Frey to come here?”
She was a free spirit, to be sure, but she was also a demon lord—one with two ex–demon lords in her stable and all of Clayman’s old land to rule on top of her own. Even with Carillon and Frey running things in her territory, she had to be a lot busier than before. Did she really have the time to go poking around my domain for fun?
…Huh? Me, you ask? Hey, I got talented people working under me, so I got time for projects like this, yeah. I’d just get in their way if I bothered them. Besides, I had a fully valid motive for this plan—a desire to attract more visitors to Tempest. This wasn’t playtime for me, I promise.
But who cares about me? Milim was the issue right now, and my question had just caught her out.
“Well…y’know. I’m really smart and stuff, so… Not like I ran away from my place ’cause I don’t like studying or anything!”
…Aha. Frey must’ve been researching the state of Milim’s domain and teaching her about it. That must’ve bored her so badly that she fled her own country.
“Wait, no!” she blurted out before I could even answer. “Don’t say it! I’m staying here and helping you, and that’s that!”
Sharp as a tack, that girl. I should really contact Carillon or Frey about this, but…ah, who cares? Not like they’ll get angry at me. I’ll just pretend I didn’t know any better.
But back to what she said earlier…
“All right! That’s your mess to clean up, as far as I’m concerned. You’re the one who’s gonna get yelled at, not me,” I said to her. “But what about those dragons you mentioned? You said you could bring them over and tame them? Is that really possible?”
“Huh?! Y-you really think they’ll be angry at me? Um… Eh, whatever. It’s not an adventure without a little danger, as they always say!”
She was acting like a child willing to do anything to avoid doing their homework. But that was the path she’d decided to take, and I suppose it was my job to watch over her. She may’ve been conflicted over it, but she elected to goof off anyway.
“But dragons, huh? Sure, you can tame ’em. I can do it for ya, if you want!”
Now her mind was entirely on our project, talking about taming dragons like it was catching butterflies with a net. I couldn’t ask for anything better.
“You’ll do that for me? So what types of dragons are there? Will they be anything like Veldora, or…?”
Hey, if she’s offering, then I’m happy to take her up on it. I kept my questions pretty casual as a result, but Milim and Veldora were quick to respond almost in unison.
“Um, Rimuru, those are two completely different things.”
“Very different,” Veldora intoned. “I will not allow you to bunch me in with those lizards the way Luminus does!”
They both had strong objections that then segued into an equally intense explanation of the nitty-gritty of dragonkind.
“The draconic species of this world is nothing more than monsters created from broken-down elements in the body of Veldanava—my elder brother, the Star-King Dragon, and the most powerful of our kind,” Veldora began.
Basically, the difference between regular dragons and Veldora’s kind involved the difference between a material life-form and a spiritual one. Regular dragons, as monsters, have a physical presence in the world. They were called dragons since they resembled the ones of myth and legend, but in essence, they were closer to dinosaurs—big, mean lizards.
There were only four True Dragons in the history of the world, three of which currently existed. The Star-King Dragon Veldanava—Veldora’s older brother and Milim’s father—perished following certain unspecified events, and he hadn’t shown any signs of reviving ever since. Dragons had eternal life, so something really serious must’ve gone down with that guy…but that was outside the scope of this conversation.
Veldanava was the origin of the monsters known as dragons—or to be exact, the Spirit Dragon that he gave Milim as a pet. With what I heard from Elen before, I suppose this Spirit Dragon died and subsequently became a Chaos Dragon, and then the essence of its body spread far and wide. The remnants of this essence were still birthing Lesser Dragons to this day in areas with high magicule concentrations; if you had enough bits from the Spirit Dragon to work with, they could even create Arch Dragons.
The most powerful among these Arch Dragons were called Dragon Lords, which came in four types depending on the element it was affiliated with. These Dragon Lords, who boasted human-level wisdom, had spent several centuries as Arch Dragons before making the evolution, and with their strength, they could tap into some of the powers of the original Spirit Dragon. With their extended life spans, Dragon Lords were a step closer to spiritual life-forms, although they couldn’t resurrect themselves from death the way Veldora and his ilk could.
The Sky Dragon I defeated a while back was one of these Arch Dragons, classified as a Calamity-level threat. A Dragon Lord would be even stronger than that, maybe up to a demon lord’s powers—about as strong as Clayman or a high-level spirit. That level of magicule energy should be more than enough to wrangle the floor effects I wanted for this labyrinth of mine.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Milim interjected. “I may be incredible, but not even I can tame a Dragon Lord!”
Getting an intelligent being like a Dragon Lord to cooperate with us would be pretty fruitless, now that she mentioned it. Maybe we could get one to agree to the job if we asked them nicely, but it wasn’t that worth it to try, I thought.
“Guess not, huh? So what’d you mean when you said you could catch one?”
“Well, there are some Arch Dragons with elemental attributes to ’em, even if they aren’t quite Dragon Lords. If we catch some and let them run free in this dungeon, they’ll eat up the magicules and change the landscape around them, I think.”
I see. Dragons were in the habit of creating nests for themselves, so wherever they decided to set up shop, they’d transform the local environment for us. We had tons of magicules for them to chow down on, so no issues there. Let’s go with Milim’s offer.
“All right. Can you do that for me?”
“You got it! I’ll grab you one from each type, right on the cusp of becoming a Dragon Lord.”
As she explained, dragons derived from that original Spirit Dragon came in just four types. At the top of the pyramid, you had your earth, water, fire, and wind Dragon Lords, with the element-infused dragons below them. They also came in four types, known as Earth Dragons, Frost Dragons, Fire Dragons, and Wind Dragons, respectively. The Sky Dragon I tangled with was a rarer case, a would-be evolution into a Wind Dragon that missed the mark for some reason. There was no sky type to these guys, unlike with elemental spirits, although there were other variations and special types—little things that occasionally made the resulting dragon unique, kind of like with humans.
This sounded like the perfect engine for giving our labyrinth some nature-based spice. Let’s put those dragons in the deeper floors once Milim picks them up. These element-infused dragons, by the way, were stronger than offshoots like the Sky Dragon, maybe a Special A in terms of ranking—not a match for Charybdis, but still packing a big punch. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I supposed one of those rarer offshoots would be a good, even match for six paladins. Upgrade that to an element-infused one, and you’d need a whole Crusader platoon to stand a chance, apparently… But hey, this is my dungeon, and I get to decide what goes in there.
With spirits, the five elemental attributes work like this: Earth is strong against sky, sky against wind, wind against water, water against fire, and fire against earth. This, however, didn’t apply to dragons. Battle experience was more important than elemental attributes—in essence, older dragons were stronger than younger ones.
As a result, I decided to order the elemental floors like so:
Floor 99: Fiery Hellscape
The final challenge, encased in raging flames. Fire-resistant equipment is a must. What could be waiting beyond…?!
Keep moving or die instantly. Will your cold-resistant equipment be able to save you from this?
Floor 97: Electric Skies
Lightning rains down from above. Only luck can decide whether you’ll survive or get singed!
Floor 96: Raging Earth
A punishing quake sorely tests anyone who makes it this far down. Behold the blind rage of the dragon!
These four element-themed floors would serve as the last challenge before the final boss, Veldora himself. It was perfect. I saw absolutely no way anyone could beat it.
“Not bad, Rimuru!”
“Heh-heh-heh… Placing those half-breeds ahead of me, eh? I imagine you’re trying to put adventurers off their guard with those also-rans before encountering my full might!”
“Aw, why does Veldora get the coolest part? You oughtta put me in as that final boss thing from time to time!”
All three seemed to like the concept. Good to see—but we still needed to get those dragons worked out for it. Flattering Milim ought to ensure she’ll get the job done.
“You’ve already got a vital role in this, Milim. If it wasn’t for you, this final set of traps never would’ve existed.”
“!”
“He’s right, Milim!” exclaimed Ramiris, probably picking up on my intention. “I really hope you can get some strong, mean-looking dragons for us!”
“No problem, guys!”
She looked motivated enough. That was good. If I had the dragons, I had the traps I wanted—and the way Milim described it, the dragons would do all the interior decoration work for me.
Not long after, Milim set off to capture the dragons, the latest members of Ramiris’s rapidly expanding band of underlings.