Dungeon's Final Boss: Banished by My Boss, the Goddess, to Earth—So I'll Continue My Past Life - 13

Chapter 13: Rinko Samejima

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The moment she stepped into the mist, Rinko Samejima was seized by a strange sensation. It felt as if her life was being forcibly dragged into the open—an unsettling, inescapable feeling.

Rinko’s hatred for dungeons had begun when she was in middle school. The Overload had occurred in a certain prefecture in the Kanto region—where she had lived at the time.

That day was supposed to be a special day for her. It was her birthday, and she had received a present from the boy in her class she had a crush on. He had confessed to her. It had been the best day of her life, and when she got home, her parents and older sister were going to celebrate with her.

When should I tell them about the confession? Mom and Big Sis will probably tease me.

She had been thinking about such happy things as she walked home when suddenly, the sirens blared. She hadn’t been allowed to have a smartphone until high school, so she had no way to check what was happening. Frozen in place, she had no idea what to do. The boy who had just said goodbye to her had come running back. Thanks to him, she had returned to school and learned the situation.

An Overload. Monsters had begun spilling out of the dungeon.

“Damn it! They should’ve cleared the dungeon faster!”

“But having a dungeon nearby lowers the taxes…”

“And this is the result?!”

In the gymnasium, where people from the neighborhood had taken refuge, panicked voices clashed in heated arguments. Most of the voices blurred into indistinct noise to Rinko. The boy had managed to reunite with his family. Rinko had not.

Big Sis is probably still at high school. Dad is at work. Mom…? She has a part-time job in the morning, but she should have been home by noon. Why Mom isn’t here yet?

She searched for her mother to no avail, just as she started to think that her mother might not be here at all…

A scream.

A roar.

The sounds echoed into the gymnasium. Beyond the school’s perimeter walls, a horde of monsters had appeared. Well, this outcome was obvious enough. The monster could sense the humans inside and were coming straight for them. The school’s defenses meant nothing to them. It didn’t take long for the monsters to break into the gym. People tried to flee, but in the panic, the crowd crushed together, pushing and shoving, making it impossible to move. And in that chaos, the screams kept getting closer.

Someone called Rinko’s name. She turned and she saw him. The boy who had confessed to her, along with his family standing beside him. And in the next instant… A single swing of a massive weapon sliced through them all. His body was no longer whole. His figure dissolved into the red liquid that splattered across the gym. At that moment, something inside Rinko shattered.

Shattered, and then overflowed. She would later come to understand that this was her awakening. But at the time, she didn’t know. She didn’t realize. She just lost control. She couldn’t remember what she had done. By the time she came to, she was standing alone in the gymnasium. No one else was alive. The only thing on her mind was that now, she could go home.

Is Mom safe? What about my home?

Her house… Her house had been consumed by flames, along with everything around it. Rescue came while she stood there watching. She had no idea how much time had passed. All she knew was that when she finally came to her senses again, she was in a hospital. A blanket had been draped over her shoulders.

Her father and big sister were by her side. And at that moment—only then—did she finally cry. That was the beginning of Rinko Samejima, the Awakened.

Dungeons. Overloads.

She would never forgive them. Never. Because of that…

“Rinko.”

That voice pulled her consciousness back from the depths of her thoughts.

“…Mom?”

“What are you doing over there? Come on, come here. Today is your birthday, isn’t it?”

“Huh? What?!”

“You promised we’d bake a cake together. I don’t want to have to go buy one now.”

“Oh… ah…”

Right. That day, I was supposed to go home early. I had promised to bake a cake with Mom for my birthday, but instead, she had gotten carried away after the confession and completely forgotten about the cake. Had her mother waited for her, expecting her to come home early, and ended up failing to escape in time?

No… no, it can’t be…

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Now, come here.”

“…Okay.”

Rinko wavered as she stepped forward toward her mother, and then—

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“I do have to say, this is making me sick in the stomach.”

I grabbed the arm that had been about to pierce Samejima-san’s stomach, stopping it in its tracks.

“I stayed silent as a courtesy, but this is too much. As the guardian of this final threshold, you should have more pride than this.”

The thing that still bore the form of Samejima-san’s mother looked at me with a shocked expression. I pushed her back, away from the creature, as she was still in a state of mental distress from the mist.

“I’m not blaming you, but whoever placed you here… They have a truly nasty taste.”

There was no point in blaming the monster itself. This was simply the nature of its abilities. Calling it unfair for using them would deny its very existence. Which was precisely why the placement of such a monster was a test of judgment.

To force someone who had fought their way through hordes of monsters into suddenly facing a completely different kind of illusion-based assault… This was nothing but a foul move. 

“Good grief. What an absolutely unforgivable sense of design.”

“Guh…”

The form of Samejima-san’s mother—her trauma that had taken shape—crumbled into mist.

“You cannot probe my memories. There is no way someone of your caliber could ever invade my mind.”

Even if we were both dragon species, the difference in level between me and this creature was vast. Our rank as species, our strength—everything was entirely different.

I took a deep breath and then exhaled. The wind from my breath swept away the surrounding mist. What remained was a rocky summit. And there—completely out of place—was an enormous bivalve shell.

It was a monster called “Shin.” Despite appearances, it, too, was a dragon species. A dragon that used mist to create illusions, deceive its prey, and then devour them. That was its nature. Inside that shell was a form compressed into the vague semblance of a dragon. I focused power into my right hand, altering its shape. My hand turned into a secondary head, a trait of the multi-headed dragon species.

Before becoming the Ex-Magnifique Dragon that I am now, I had taken on the forms of many different monsters. Among them was the multi-headed dragon species, from which I had obtained this ability. I directed my dragon-formed right arm forward, biting down on Shin, crushing its shell, and tearing into its flesh.

Once swallowed, it was over.

“Ah, right. I can’t retrieve the magic stone like this.”

Oh, well. I could always find a way to trick her later. 

“Come on, we’re leaving.”

I called out to her, but Samejima-san still had not fully returned to herself. For her, the vision that Shin had forced upon her must have been unbearable.

“I really don’t like this kind of thing.”

I didn’t think deception itself was necessarily wrong, but using someone’s trauma against them… That was unforgivable.

With that thought in mind, I picked her up and carried her away. The dungeon had begun to collapse.

“Samejima-san!”

The forceful call finally brought Rinko Samejima back to her senses. The voice belonged to her colleague, the one who had been driving the car.

“Huh? Why am I…?”

“You defeated the last monster, but it seems like something happened to you in the process.”

“Something…?”

She tried to remember what had happened and then realized she had been sat down near an ambulance. A blanket, likely from inside the ambulance, had been draped over her shoulders. The familiar sensation triggered a memory.

“–Tch, damn it.”

She had been hit with a mental attack. She couldn’t believe she had been affected by something like that.

Was it carelessness? Or had it been an existence so powerful that it could bypass even an S-Rank Awakened’s defenses?

“Speaking of which… Where is he?”

“Him? Oh, you mean Hasegawa-san? He already left. He said, ‘I wasn’t needed after all.'”

“That’s not true-“

She started to say, but stopped herself. She had no memory of fighting while under the illusion. Which meant he must have been the one who had defeated the monster. And yet, he had left all the credit to her.

Why? Because he isn’t an Awakened? If he’s not an Awakened then… What is he? Someone as strong as him… Just what is he exactly?

“I should keep an eye on him for a while.”

But for now…

That night, alone in her apartment, Rinko wept. The image of her mother that she had seen after so long refused to leave her mind. The next day, she returned to her hometown. She visited the graves of her family and lit incense at the family altar.

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