Reincarnated as a Dungeon Master, I Became Unstoppable by Doting on My Monsters—My Gorgeous Monsters Have Started to Conquer the World on Their Own! - Chapter 58: Rhapsody - Part 2

Yes, that’s right. Trana Spoonbender also reincarnated. Please wait a moment. I will explain everything from the beginning.

At that time, I was a B-rank Grimlich, but I was already conscious. I don’t know the details of the DP that led me there, but it must have been when Ryuujou-sama conquered some dungeon… The sisters wandering the current Great Tower of Nadinalezre have no proper consciousness, but well, different times have different circumstances.

Now, Ryuujou-sama made a significant mistake.

Firstly, he detested monsters. Monsters are biological weapons specialized in killing, created by the gods. It’s not surprising that he thought they shouldn’t be loved.

Therefore, he was very strict in managing them. You remember, don’t you, Wito? Monsters automatically kill other animals unless they are given precise orders and managed well. He perfectly managed ‘what is an enemy and what is an ally’ to prevent tragedies.

His next mistake was repeatedly resetting the monsters. In the past, he would eliminate monsters that didn’t seem like they could become Trana.

It was truly terrifying. Writing configuration scripts for hours, and if they failed, he would delete them. Of course, G-rank monsters don’t have much consciousness, so it might not have been so tragic. However, seeing his actions, I was filled with fear that if I did something un-Trana-like or unjust, I would be easily erased.

Well, maybe I didn’t need to worry that much. After all, look at my face, isn’t it cute? I was a successful creation. His favorite.

He might have thought that the spirit of Trana would descend if I ranked up.

The story again begins with his mistake.

One day, he ordered me, ‘Go to the Doitomo region and kill the dungeon master who is committing murders there.’ It was quite a journey, but there were no enemies for me, who was B-rank at the time.

I, as a dungeon monster, couldn’t refuse the order, but punishing a murderer is a task of justice. Maybe I imagined the enemy as a low-ranking member of an evil organization, like a dungeon master.

The Great Tower of Nadinalezre… it wasn’t called that at the time, but anyway, this dungeon was still keeping humans away then. Really. So, naturally, I had little understanding of humans.

During the journey, there were various interactions with humans, but well, let’s skip that.

Now, deep in a mixed forest, I finally reached a temple-like building underground where the dungeon was located.

But there, I saw a black mask. The symbol of justice is a black mask.

Trana Spoonbender was there, just like in her previous life, wearing a mask to conceal her identity while raising children. What a coincidence.

The black mask was to avoid the curse of being disliked by the Goddess Nanaya. Even after becoming a dungeon master, she was a troublesome person, using all her DP for the sake of the world and people. Her income came from defeating nearby villains, just like before.

When I arrived, Trana Spoonbender was playing tag with children in a well-maintained space in front of the temple.

I immediately knew. She was the real deal. If I hadn’t heard about her characteristics from Ryuujou-sama, I might have been moved by that idyllic scene, informed Ryuujou-sama of her existence, and ended up happy.

But, the contract of a dungeon monster isn’t so flexible. There’s no room for making such discerning judgments.

I knew it. The existence of a dead person from another world in this world meant that she was a ‘dungeon master.’

Without being ready to accept my fate, I burst in front of them. Or perhaps, I was desperately trying to stop myself, gritting my teeth.

She looked at my face, which resembled hers, froze for two seconds, and then shouted, ‘Who the heck are you!!!’

“I am a B-rank monster. Please never reveal the location of the core and defeat me! If you run away, I will start searching for the core.”

“I’m glad I can speak Etina. When Trana-san heard my words, she immediately let the children escape.

“That said, I am bound by a Dungeon Monster contract and cannot disobey orders. I have been commanded to eradicate every master in this region. Do you have any countermeasures against a B-rank monster?”

“There aren’t any. As you can see!”

After saying this, she properly fled.

Wito-san might not have seen many dungeon monsters who obeyed orders, but my body was beyond control. Any action I attempted turned into an attack, that was the situation.

I didn’t act overtly maliciously, but instead, I followed her while explaining properly. I thought maybe she could do something about it.

“I am a Dungeon Monster created in your likeness by Ryuujo-sama! He is targeting dungeon masters who are murderers.”

“Ahaha. Ryuu?”

At that time, I was in perfect health, so normally I could have caught up with her in an instant. However, she must have honed her status and knew the mountain as well as her backyard.

While pursuing her, I deepened my understanding of the effects of the Dungeon Monster contract.

It’s okay not to always use maximum firepower, but any action against the orders is not allowed. It felt like a flexible contract. At least, it seemed there was no way to avoid the fate of trying to kill Trana.

“Please cooperate! I have the racial skills of stealth and simple regeneration! I’m good at magic, but I’m not very hard! I don’t have many resistances!”

Since I could move my mouth freely, I told her my weaknesses, hoping to be killed.

“Probably I shouldn’t say the plan! But leave it to me!”

Even in such a critical situation, I remember she had a bounce in her voice.

“Please, I beg you. Help me! I’ve never killed anyone. I hate both killing and being killed.”

Then, as she declared, she led me to my doom.

The place she guided me to was like a warehouse, filled with beer. At that time, I didn’t understand what was happening, but now I realize. She was trying to invoke the protection of the goddess Denibaji, whom she worshipped.

“‘No fruit comes from a human banquet,’ ‘No seat for an uninvited guest,’ ‘No seat for us either,’ ‘Now…’

Surely she had some secret plan, and as a true hero, she must have been trying to use it to defeat me, a B-rank monster superior to her. But that didn’t happen.

The scene from that time is still etched in my retina. When Trana was chanting, a child burst out from the shadows of the warehouse. It was a character who should not have changed the situation at all.

However, I knew too much about Trana-san. To obey the command of the Dungeon Monster contract to “kill the enemy’s dungeon master,” the best decision I could make was to ‘take the child as a hostage’.

It was the most efficient way to defeat her, a champion of justice.

I desperately tried to shake off that idea, but a dungeon monster doesn’t have the right to choose defeat.

I dashed towards the child, and as Trana-san leaped out to protect the child, I stabbed her defenseless body with a hand sword, ending the battle.

“…Do you have any last words?”

In the confusion of having destroyed my real self, I desperately tried to do what I could.

She must have seen the sadness on my face. Even while bleeding from her stabbed abdomen, she smiled at me. Can you believe it?

There’s a phrase ‘lukewarm,’ but her blood felt boiling to me.

“Tell Ryuu, ‘Don’t push yourself too hard.'”

“I’m sorry. I can’t leave a will that reveals I killed you… I would be erased.”

If I had told the already mad Ryuujo-sama such a thing, he might have gone into a frenzy and killed himself, and I thought it wasn’t right to choose such an ending that wouldn’t make anyone happy for Trana-san’s sake.

Even when she realized her will wouldn’t be fulfilled, she smiled again. She was like the hero of a story until the end.

“Too honest, huh? Well then, could you protect these children instead?”

“…I can’t do that either. As a dungeon monster, I can’t frequently leave Nadinalezre.”

“I see. Then protect Ryuu. And sometimes come to offer me a beer.”

With those words, she passed away. Her strength gone, she seemed to slip from my hand sword, a memory I still recall.

After that, I took her dungeon core… and vowed to fulfill her last wish.

That’s the story. And burdened with her thoughts, I immediately returned and was rewarded with an A-rank, gaining the ability to connect corpses, though not a unique monster. Perhaps because I saw Trana-san directly, my face became just like hers.

Using that ability, I grafted her legs onto mine and offered her beer every day…

…and her legs carried the blessing of the goddess Denibaji, so I never lacked beer.

It was about a hundred years later that Ryuujo-sama went mad. As the dungeon grew, many hunters appeared trying to kill him… and the children too. So, as he kept killing, he eventually went mad.

Well, that’s the story of Ryuujo-sama, Trana Spoonbender, and me, Jacqueline.

XXX

“So, up to here, the story maintains its narrative, right? A typical tragedy. A misunderstanding. If only the story had ended here.”

Jacqueline-san sighed and shook her head. I’m not a priest, so there’s nothing I should say in response to her confession. But as a friend, I can offer encouragement.

“I understand your situation, Jacqueline-san, but now you’ve been freed from that fate, haven’t you?”

“That’s the story of Ryuujo-sama so far. Now comes my story.”

At this moment, I had never seen Jacqueline-san look so frail. As she touched the core, the core room writhed and changed into a modern-looking space with a desk and tiles.

“After killing Trana-san, various things happened to me. Resolution, inherited will. But I didn’t confess to Ryuujo-sama that I killed a woman, so I began to receive more and more orders to kill dungeon masters.”

Then the core room changed into a vibrant dressing room.

“Of course, not all of them were as good as Trana-san. I wanted to inherit the wills of the dungeon masters I killed, but most were impossible. Wishes against justice, contradictory wishes. Even Ryuujo-sama’s wish to resurrect the dead was originally forbidden.”

She manipulated the core, changing the core room’s shape like a kaleidoscope, all reminiscent of the dungeons she had traversed.

“Moreover, after joining Trana-san’s body, my consciousness became increasingly muddled. I felt a protective urge, wanting to shield the weak as if my lower body was pulling my consciousness. Despite not having a brain in my lower half, it seemed like a sense of justice was welling up from there. Yet my job was to kill.”

“Then, unable to endure it, I decided to sacrifice Ryuujo-sama to break the situation… but during that time, I met you, Wito-san.”

She slowly lifted her head to look at me.

Even though we were not in battle, as she spoke, she seemed to weaken and fade. Even her upper body appeared aged.

“Until then, I had never met a dungeon master who hadn’t killed. At that time, I didn’t think deeply about killing… but spending time with you all, partying, I realized the existence of a ‘spiral of killing.'”

“A spiral of killing?”

To my interjection, Jacqueline-san nodded.

“It was strange. Why weren’t you dead despite doing things against the world’s order? Why did Trana happen to live in the area targeted by Ryuujo? Why did I have to be involved in all this?”

As she repeated ‘why,’ she finally showed some anger, but it soon disappeared.

“I realized the answer when Margarita-san began taking over the forest. It started when Trana first killed a bad person, and that sin spread as fate to those around her. Because of my arrival, that dungeon suddenly became a battlefield of killing.”

“…That’s not your fault, Jacqueline-san. After all, you killed because of orders.”

“I thought so too, but Trana, who killed for justice, Ryuujo, who killed for atonement, and I, who killed for self-defense, all ended up spreading death around us. The same with the Zameli Quickdoyle case. If I hadn’t approached you, things wouldn’t have turned out this way.”

“…”

“I thought I should end this spiral. After hearing Nanaya-sama and your conversation, I finally found out how. To break this spiral, someone who is outside the spiral of killing must rule the world.”

For the first time, her expression brightened.

“Wito-san. There has never been a ruler of the world in Etina. Not even the gods. Many have tried and failed. The reason is, to rule the world, you need not justice, popularity, or benevolence, but to have never killed. It seems difficult for gods, heroes, or kings, who are living beings.”