CH 107

[Door to a New Area!]

“—Run, run, Urutaro!”

“Eeek, aren’t we going a bit too fast?!”

It was a while after I’d met Pinko, the guild master of ‘Serpent of Wisdom’, an informant guild.

We were cutting through the black forest on Urutaro.

Why, you asked? Well, because I’d made a small deal with the good-looking pink dude.

“Alright, Pinko. I’ll escort you during your investigation, so you’d better hold your end of the deal and tell me some useful hidden info!”

“Got it! Then, would you be a dear and shoot some arrows behind the surrounding trees for me?”

Hmm?

A weird request, nevertheless I complied and shot several arrows while still on Urutaro.

Then, several black canines leaped out from behind the trees with “Gyaun?!” in a startled manner.

“Wait, have they been following us…?!”

“Yeah. They’re Black Hounds, monsters unique to this forest. They tend to sneak attack players venturing here by blending into the black trees.

“—Why haven’t they attacked us? You may be wondering. Well, we have our lovely Urutaro-chan to thank for that♡.” Pinko reached out to stroke Urutaro’s head.

…The moment his hand touched him, Urutaro cried “Gyauuu~…!” I got a feeling that meant he hated it.

“When you’re accompanied by a boss monster, you’ll be less likely to get attacked by lower-level monsters of the same type.

“This can come real handy when you want to keep away low-level monsters, which don’t give you exps, and when you want to hunt a dungeon boss only.”

“I see~, that’s certainly hidden info worth knowing! You got more?”

“Well, let’s see. Monsters generally can only evolve once, but there are rumors that some can evolve twice by using special items…!”

“You’ve gotta be kidding?!”

――And so, Pinko told me various info while I escorted him to his destination.

◆◆◇◆

“—We’ve finally made it!”

“Wow~…!”

Pinko and I were now in a limestone cave with ominous purple crystals growing all over it.

I was surprised, to say the least. Pinko had led me by hand into the hollow of a large decaying tree and the next thing I knew, I found myself here.

“This is a hidden dungeon. As I said previously, there are countless dungeons—monster-producing furnaces—scattered around this world. But there seemed to be none in ‘Murk Forest’, and that made me suspicious.”

“Oh, I see. The forest is home to various monsters like Black Hounds. If that’s any indication, there’s gotta be a dungeon here. That train of thought led you to investigate the forest, right?”

“100 points for Yuri-chan! After several days of exploration, I happened upon the hollowed tree we came in from, monsters coming out of it.”

Wow~. Just knowing that ‘dungeons were furnaces that produced monsters’ could help you find hidden dungeons like this.

Untouched hunting grounds were very useful for grinding exps and rare items. The power of information sure was amazing.

“Oh, you can also watch how monsters are born here. Look over there.”

In the direction Pinko pointed to, I found several big chunks of purple crystals clustered together.

After a few seconds, they broke with clear shattering sounds, only to reveal Black Hounds covered in mucus…!

“Eww… that’s kinda disgusting. So all the crystals in this dungeon are monster eggs?”

“Yup. Which makes dungeons essentially monsters’ moms. Incidentally, the purple crystals will keep on regrowing from the walls no matter how many times you destroy them, so you’d best save your energy.”

“I see, I see~…”

It was a disgusting but rare scene.

As I was thinking so, I summoned ‘Wolf King’ again.

At the sight of him, the baby Black Hounds were startled “Gyauu?!” then they hurriedly hid behind the intact crystals. Damn, they were cute.

“Oh, you immediately put my teachings into use, Yuri-chan! You’re the only one who has tamed boss monsters, so you should be the only one that can use this trick!”

“It’s really useful. Thanks for teaching it to me, Pinko!”

“Don’t mind it. Well then, let’s head deeper, shall we? I’ll tell you what I’ve found while we’re at it.”

While we walked deeper into the cave, Pinko raised his finger like a teacher.

“The world of BSO is based on ‘Norse Mythology’ and ‘Cthulhu Mythos’. You’ve heard of them, I presume?”

“Sort of. Both are tales about battles between gods, aren’t they?”

“…That’s a very you interpretation, but you’re more or less correct.

“Going back to the topic, this world was created by ‘Mother Earth Ymir’, and it developed similarly to the world in Norse Mythology. But then, the big boss of Cthulhu Mythos ‘Demon King Azathoth’ invaded, throwing the world into chaos.”

Hmm, I see… that reminded me, my ‘Cthulhu・Replica’ was supposed to be the replica of an evil god.

These days he was becoming more and more like a house pet, and a pat from Grimm was all it took to make him overjoyed, so the fact that he was a super big deal kinda slipped my mind.

“The invasion of ‘Demon King Azathoth’ occurred a very long time ago, but according to my research, he had brought with him super advanced technologies. You can find still find remnants of these technologies in the form of items full of rust with ‘Ancient Super Civilization’ in their name. Do you know them, Yuri-chan?”

“I do! In fact, I have several items named ‘Ancient Super Civilization Remnant Machine’ or something…!”

It was the item I had used to create one of my chimera monsters, ‘Chimeratic Machine Goblin’.

I had used it because it was one of the rarest mechanical items, but I never imagined it’d date back to the Demon King era.

“Ahaha, I’d expect no less from you, Yuri-chan. Even among ‘Ancient Super Civilization’ items, that’s one of the rarest!”

“I used it to create a chimera monster!”

“Ehh, that’s such a waste… we may need Ancient Super Civilization relics left behind by the Demon King to go past the ‘checkpoint’ ahead.”

“Checkpoint?” I tilted my head.

“You’ll understand when you see it,” Pinko said, so I obediently followed him for a few minutes.

We eventually arrived at the deepest part of the dungeon, which was illuminated by the purple crystals—there, I found something jaw-dropping.

“…I was a little taken aback myself the first time I laid my eyes on it. What do you think, Yuri-chan?”

“I can only say… what the hell?”

The thing was very out of place…

I mean, it was a freakin’ gigantic super-futuristic door with lines of light all over it, for god’s sake! What the hell was it doing in a medieval fantasy world…!!!