Chapter 49 – Saving My Villain

Reina was going to murder my revenge plot.

The camp was dead silent. A couple of snores from Kenji were the only proof I wasn’t totally alone. The air was cold. It had that sharp, pre-dawn chill that sinks right into your bones. I stared at the spot where Reina’s bedroll should have been. It was empty. Not just empty. It was neat. The blanket was folded. Like she’d tidied up before heading off to commit a murder.

My murder.

Okay, not my murder. But she was definitely going to kill Siegfried. Which was, in a way, murdering my future self. My cool, edgy, betrayed-by-the-world future self. That guy was my entire reason for being here. Reina was about to stab him in the heart with a cute smile on her face.

This was a disaster. A legit, five-alarm, everything-is-on-fire disaster.

I had to move. Now.

My limbs felt like lead. My brain was a frantic mess of curses and bad ideas. Trying to explain this to Kenji and Daisuke was a non-starter. They’d just give me that look. That “Wow, Ryuuji is so wise, he’s worried about Siegfried’s lingering evil” look. They wouldn’t get it. They wouldn’t understand that I was trying to save my villain. You can’t have an epic revenge story without a villain to get revenge on. It’s basic narrative structure.

I grabbed my pack. My hands shook, making the simple task of buckling a strap feel impossible. I fumbled with the leather, my fingers clumsy and stupid. I took a deep breath. Panicking wasn’t going to help. I needed to be cold. Calculated. Like a hero. Ugh. The thought made my skin crawl.

The dungeon entrance loomed in the darkness. It wasn’t a cave. It was a proper, chiseled stone doorway. A perfect, gaping maw of trope-filled doom. It was exactly the kind of place you’d go to get betrayed. And now I was running into it to stop my number one fan from killing my designated betrayer. The irony was so thick I felt like I was choking on it.

I crept past Kenji’s tent. He muttered something in his sleep about justice. Of course he did. Even his subconscious was a cheesy shonen protagonist. It was almost impressive how completely on-brand he was at all times. I just hoped his heroic instincts didn’t wake him up. I didn’t have time for a heartfelt speech about friendship.

My plan was simple. Get in, find Siegfried, and get him out. Or at least hide him somewhere Reina wouldn’t look. Maybe I could disguise him as a rock. A really pathetic, whiny rock. It was a terrible plan. It was the only plan I had.

I reached the dungeon’s threshold. The air that drifted out was stale and cold. It smelled of damp earth and something else. Something metallic and vaguely sweet. The smell of old magic and older blood. It was the smell of my dreams turning into a nightmare.

One last look at the sleeping camp. It was so peaceful. So blissfully unaware of the yandere-fueled crisis currently unfolding. For a second, I actually missed being the quiet guy in the back of the classroom. Life was so much simpler when my biggest problem was avoiding group projects.

I stepped into the dark.

The heavy stone door swung shut behind me with a deep, echoing boom. It was the kind of sound that screamed “no going back.” The kind of sound that usually kicked off the first act of a tragedy. My tragedy, apparently. A faint, greenish light pulsed from glowing moss on the walls, casting long, weird shadows that danced just at the edge of my vision.

The silence in here was different from the silence outside. It was heavier. Pressing. It felt like the whole dungeon was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for me to screw up.

Where would she go? Reina was smart. Scary smart. She wouldn’t just wander around. She’d be efficient. A smiling, bloodthirsty shark homing in on its target. That meant she’d take the most direct route. But what was the most direct route in a place designed to get you lost?

I started walking. My footsteps echoed way too loudly in the corridor. Each step sounded like a dinner bell for whatever monsters were chilling in the dark. I didn’t have time for side quests. I needed the main quest line, and I needed it five minutes ago.

I had to think like Reina. That was a terrifying thought. My brain just wasn’t wired for that level of cheerful, homicidal devotion. What would she be looking for? Tracks. Signs of passage. Siegfried was injured. He would have been slow. He probably left a trail a blind goblin could follow.

I scanned the floor. The stone was covered in a thin layer of dust. And there, just barely visible in the green glow, were scuff marks. A trail. Two sets of feet. One dragging more than the other. Siegfried and that weird priest guy he was with. This was it.

My pace quickened. I broke into a jog, my pack bouncing awkwardly on my back. The corridor twisted and turned, a maze of damp stone. Every few feet, I saw them. The bodies. Goblins, mostly. Not just dead. They were… disassembled. Clean cuts. No signs of a struggle. It was like a surgeon had passed through, and her only instrument was a sword.

This was her work. It had Reina written all over it. Efficient. Brutal. Terrifyingly neat.

She wasn’t just on the right path. She was clearing it. It was a good sign, I guess. It meant I was going the right way. It was also a very, very bad sign. It meant she was moving fast. And she was in a killing mood.

I pushed myself to run faster. My lungs started to burn. The air was getting thinner, colder. The green moss was less frequent now, plunging stretches of the hallway into near total darkness. I stumbled, catching myself on the cold wall. My heart was pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. This was so not me. I was the guy who planned from the shadows. The schemer. The mastermind. I wasn’t supposed to be doing a cardio workout in a death trap.

The layout of the dungeon started to change. The rough-hewn corridors gave way to smoother, more deliberately carved stone. There were carvings on the walls. Faded images of forgotten gods and epic battles. It felt like I was moving from the dungeon’s crappy suburbs into its historic downtown district. Deeper. Older.

And then I heard it. A faint, rhythmic pulsing sound. It was soft, like a distant heartbeat. I stopped, straining my ears. The sound was coming from up ahead. It was a steady, powerful hum that seemed to vibrate through the very stone beneath my feet.

What was that? A boss monster? Some kind of weird dungeon alarm system? Maybe it was Siegfried’s ridiculously heroic heart, beating loud enough to be heard through a quarter-mile of solid rock.

Probably not.

I started moving again, slower this time. More cautious. The humming grew louder, stronger. The air crackled with energy. A pale blue light began to bleed into the corridor from around a bend up ahead. This was it. The boss room. It had to be.

Please don’t be fighting. Please don’t be fighting. Please let me find Siegfried sitting alone, nursing his wounds and writing bad poetry about his tragic downfall. Let Reina be lost somewhere, distracted by a room full of puppies or something.

I peeked around the corner.

My jaw dropped.

It wasn’t a boss room. It was a cavern. A massive, echoing space so big I couldn’t see the ceiling. The blue light was coming from the center of the room. A colossal crystal, easily the size of a house, pulsed with a soft, inner light. It was floating a few feet off the ground, rotating slowly. The source of the humming.

The Dungeon Core.

I had read about these. They were the heart and soul of a dungeon. Its power source. Its central nervous system. Destroy the Core, and the entire dungeon collapses. They were supposed to be hidden in the deepest, most secure part of the labyrinth, guarded by the most powerful monster.

This one was just… sitting here. Out in the open.

The room was empty.

I stepped into the cavern, my boots crunching on loose gravel. My eyes darted everywhere. There was no sign of a fight. No bloodstains. No scattered equipment. No neatly bisected bodies. Nothing.

“Siegfried?” 

I called out. 

My voice sounded small and stupid in the vast space. The only answer was the echo and the steady, deep hum of the Core.

Where were they?

I circled the Core. It was beautiful, in a terrifying, all-powerful kind of way. Facets on its surface showed distorted reflections of the cavern. I saw a thousand tiny, panicked versions of myself staring back. This was bad. This was really bad.

They weren’t here. They couldn’t have just missed a room this big, this important. Did they find another way? A secret passage? Or… or was Siegfried already dead? Had Reina found him, finished the job, and then just… left?

No. There would have been a body. Reina was neat, but she wasn’t a miracle worker. She couldn’t just make a person vanish. At least, I hoped she couldn’t. The list of things I thought Reina couldn’t do was getting shorter by the day.

I ran a hand through my hair, my mind racing. My perfect plan. My carefully constructed path to becoming a cool anti-hero. It was all falling apart. I was supposed to be the one pulling the strings, but I wasn’t even in the same puppet show anymore. I was lost, alone, and my main character was about to be written out of the story by a yandere with a god complex.

I looked around the empty cavern again. There were other tunnels leading out of this chamber. At least three of them, dark and uninviting. Which one? Which one did they take? It was impossible to know. A total crapshoot.

I was completely, utterly lost.

The Dungeon Core pulsed. It seemed to mock me with its calm, steady rhythm. I had stumbled into the very heart of my planned betrayal stage, but the actors were gone. They had gone off-script.

And I had no idea where the story went from here.