Reverse Dungeon

“W-What?!”

“We’re dead! We’re all dead!”

“We survived!”

The people who had been forced to obey the tyrant cried out in disbelief. They stared at Ian as though seeing him for the first time.

Royal bastards came in two kinds: those the king acknowledged, and those he did not.

Ian, of course, was the latter.

His mother had died early, leaving him to grow up at court, but he had never once caught the king’s eye, let alone been granted a proper title. Since no one knew how he ought to be addressed, people had settled on “Lord Ian.”

Everyone had thought him nothing more than a pretty-faced wastrel. Who would have guessed he was this shrewd?

True, his temperament seemed far fouler and more violent than the rumors had suggested. Even so, he was the man who had just saved their lives.

The survivors came to themselves and threw themselves to the ground.

“Long live Lord Ian!”

“Thank you for saving us, Lord Ian!”

Ian dismissed their cheers with a look of utter disinterest. One hand pressed against his temple. He looked like a man nursing a splitting headache—because he was.

‘This is no joke...’

Something was wrong. Could this really be a dream?

The stench of burnt fish flooded his nose. The thought that it was the actual smell of fish-bodied creatures roasting in the corridor made bile rise in his throat.

He was almost impressed that the others looked unbothered.

Dream or not, there were still things that had to be done.

“Sema.”

“Yes, Lord Ian! Just give the order! What should I do next?”

The mage hurried over, all but wagging his tail. It was the first time his magic had ever saved anyone. Emotion shone nakedly across his face. What command would his terrifyingly capable master give next?

Ian jerked his chin toward the corridor strewn with charred monster corpses.

“Douse that area with water. Some of them may still be alive.”

“Yes, sir. Shall I kill them?”

“...”

Ian studied Sema’s guileless face for a moment.

“No. I have a use for them.”

The ease with which these “characters” spoke of killing was unsettling enough. But Ian had something he needed to test.

A little while later, Sema splashed the corridor with the miserable remains of a failed , turning the soot and ash into a black, soggy sludge. From the drenched cinders, the scales of half-burned monsters began to twitch.

Ian crouched and laid a hand on one of them. It was cold and reeked of fish. Suppressing a grimace, he concentrated and called up the dungeon management window.

‘Register.’

This game had a system that let you capture enemies and turn them into dungeon defenders.

A faint light rippled over the monster’s body and vanished.

Ding!

[Warikka Warrior #1 has been registered to the waiting list.]

“W-What did you do?! The monster vanished! Was that magic? Lord Ian, are you secretly a mage? I knew it!” Sema cried.

Ian did not answer.

‘It works.’

Every last system from existed in this unnervingly vivid nightmare.

And the more he thought about it, the less it felt like a dream.

Ian was a modern man. He usually killed time on his commute by reading webtoons. He even knew the label people used for stories like this.

‘Game possession.’

Those stories where some gaming addict woke up inside his favorite game and somehow thrived.

Was that what this was?

The unfairness of it hit him all at once. He wasn’t even a hardcore gamer. He hadn’t been obsessed with this game, either. So why him?

More than anything, he had absolutely no confidence he could clear the Ian route in a single run.

“Damn it!”

Thud!

Ian drove his fist into the wall. Pain shot through his hand hard enough to make it feel broken. He shouted all the louder.

“Status Window! Game Over! End Game! Hey! I’m done with this!”

“L-Lord Ian?!”

Ding!

[Reputation is decreasing.]

[People are becoming uneasy about your actions.]

Ding!

[Reputation is decreasing.]

[People are beginning to label you ‘unstable.’]

Ding!

[Character]

‘Tyrant’ Ian (★★★★☆)

[Reputation]

Tyrant, Bastard, Playboy, Lavish, Hedonist, Strategist, Mentally Unstable (+NEW)

Thus the mentally unstable tyrant Ian became the master of a small dungeon, with twenty-one residents and four monsters under his command.

—

Meanwhile, in the forest.

Another Warikka pursuer led the warriors who had split off from the main force deeper into the trees.

A handful of warriors was more than enough to hunt humans. Once the human scent trail split, the monsters divided their forces and gave chase in both directions.

The pursuer who chose the forest had wagered that more humans would flee into the woods than into the cave. His hide was keener to scent than that of the pursuer headed for the cave.

With those sharpened senses, he caught not only the damp human smell, but the scent of a beast as well—a creature humans tamed and rode, the sort around which dozens of them gathered.

He was a clever hunter. With a signal to the warriors behind him, he led them forward.

Screech!

His instincts had been right. For the warriors following him, the reward was a feast.

“Aaaah!”

“Save me!”

“It hurts! It hurts!”

The shrill screams soon faded, and silence fell over the forest. Only the wet sounds of his kin feeding remained.

Screech?

No. Wait.

The Warikka pursuer stopped in the middle of his meal. His sharp teeth stilled. The scales along his body parted slightly, drinking in the moisture beading on the leaves. For an instant, his body swelled as it absorbed the water. Then the wind shifted.

The pursuer made a sound like laughter.

Screech!

A living human was nearby—hiding behind a tree, holding its breath, waiting for the predators to leave.

The human already dead at his feet would have been enough to sate him. But the pursuer was not a creature that spared prey. He was greedy. Why stop when there was still blood to spill and flesh to tear?

Leaving his feasting companions behind, he slipped deeper into the forest. He had no intention of sharing what he had found. Then, farther in, he saw a human walking in the distance.

The figure was dressed entirely in white.

It did not even try to hide its presence.

The pursuer stopped dead. For a moment, he did not understand why.

Why am I not moving?

The monster wondered.

Do not move. Do not let it see you.

His heart hammered. Something primal screamed a warning from the core of his being.

But the monster did not understand.

All he saw was prey. A human. Something he should devour.

And yet he knew, with a certainty deeper than thought, that he could not take this one alone.

Screech!

Abandoning his greed, he spat a jet of blood high into the sky.

Pop!

The blood burst overhead, and through the trembling scales of his body he felt the response of his comrades ripple back to him.

Only then did he truly look at the human.

The white-clad figure was carrying a smaller human in its arms—the half-dead prey he had been tracking.

Then... where had the white-clad human come from?

How had it hidden itself from his senses?

At that moment, the white figure spoke.

“Monster.”

That was the last thing the Warikka pursuer ever heard.

He fell in two clean halves, blood spraying across the forest floor.

—

The paladin blessed by the gods thought:

Foul creatures.

They were beings abandoned by the gods—things that had cast away faith and virtue and wandered too far from the divine.

The paladin hated monsters.

The signal from the dead Warikka brought the others rushing in. The paladin did not move.

Kraaargh!

The monster that lunged at him never even understood it had been cut in half until its severed body struck the ground.

Clang.

The paladin sheathed his sword.

“Am I too late?”

He had left the Vatican the moment he received the Ferentz Kingdom’s plea for aid, only to arrive after those cries for help had already been silenced. The air was too thick with blood for this slaughter to have been the work of one or two beasts. Many human lives had ended here.

Paladin Keith gently lowered the priest he had been carrying and propped him against a tree. Then he let a single drop of holy water fall onto the man’s lips.

The glowing liquid slipped into the priest’s mouth, and, as if by miracle, his eyes fluttered open.

“Priest, can you hear me?”

The priest, who had been at death’s door only moments before, opened his eyes to find a knight in white armor leaning over him.

Backlit by the sun, the knight’s platinum-blond hair shone like a halo. His deep blue eyes were so shadowed they seemed bottomless.

He was so beautiful the priest could not tell whether he had awakened in heaven or on earth.

But the armor he wore was unmistakably that of the Vatican.

“W-Who are you...? Did the Church send you?”

“Yes.”

“You came to save us! Ah, praise the gods!”

“No. I came too late. You are the only one left. I’m sorry.”

The paladin lowered his head in grave, sincere apology. The earnestness of it left the priest flustered.

And before he knew it, words he had never meant to say were spilling from his mouth.

“No, you did nothing wrong, Sir Knight. We should never have abandoned the castle. His Majesty said that if we survived, then the kingdom would survive—but what of the people who remained behind because they trusted him? What crime had they committed to deserve being forsaken? We are all guilty of leaving them there. Ah... this must be divine punishment.”

“Is that true?”

The paladin’s voice turned cold.

He reached out and closed a hand around the priest’s throat.