~ Side Story: What could have been ~

[Dark Illsyore’s point of view]

Even now, I remember the moment when I first opened my eyes in this strange new world... I thought like a naive little human, constantly worrying about little things like the lives of those beneath me.

How foolish...

Still, if I were to tell how my life began and ended, I would say it all started after I was summoned and took over the Crystal Body of a Dungeon. I changed my sub-species to Godlike and then began my growth and dominion.

During that first night, there was an attack upon Fellyore Magic Academy. I used the best skills I had at my disposal and began to slaughter the fools who dared trespass on my territory. There could have been only one survivor, a woman... I had a choice back then of whether to end her life or spare her.

I chose the first option, after all, I had not proof that this one wouldn’t eventually kill me by stabbing me in the back afterwards, right? Besides, it was just a meager assassin. What use could her life have brought to one such as I, a Godlike Dungeon Lord?

And so, I watched as the last red dot slowly vanished from my map. The body of the woman was soon engulfed by flames, and I returned to my Crystal Body. That night, I felt so sick that if I had a stomach, I would have spilled all of its contents on the floor. It was the first time I killed someone, and... although it wasn’t so bad, my human side of me highly disapproved of it.

The following day, I learned that the fire I started nearly burned down the entire forest. The teachers at the academy were able to save it just in the nick of time. I could have helped them, true, but I was feeling too sick to even think about doing so. It was a good excuse from my point of view, so I didn’t let the ‘what if’ bother me.

Later that evening, Nanya came to my room and asked what really happened. I told her nothing, only that I heard a big explosion outside. I was afraid of what she might do if she found out I killed so many people. Maybe if I spared that woman and brought her in for questioning, things would have been different?

I highly doubted it would have been so. A meager assassin like her would hold no important value to either me or her. Even if I allowed her to live, she would have certainly taken her own life afterwards as their code dictates. Well, I only presumed that because all assassins thought the same way, right?

Since I knew things could turn bad if I didn’t grow in strength, I decided to start building an underground dungeon. It was right beneath my Crystal Body, and I prepared a special shaft just in case I needed to flee. With great consideration for the traps and how deadly they should be, I built floor after floor.

One day, a draconian escort arrived at the academy. It was a man named Dankyun. Apparently, he was a Supreme. He came here to ask about his future wife, a draconian princess named Ayuseya Pleyades. I quickly searched my Dungeon Territory and found her trying to escape through the back together with her personal escorts.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to make this guy mad, considering how powerful he was. There was also something about him that scared the hell out of me. I decided to play nice and told him about the escapee.

Dankyun thanked me and went to retrieve his fiance. When I saw her, I found her to be rather cute for a draconian, but apparently, she was cursed or something. There was nothing I could do about something like that. There was no [Dispel] skill in my list. Even if I wanted to help her, I couldn’t.

Thus, ratting her out saved not only me but the academy as well from the wrath of this Supreme. Who knew what sort of powers he held? If he could make even me shiver in my boots, then certainly he was not one to joke about.

On another note, that night he called Nanya to his room... Her life sign vanished around 4 AM in the morning. I flew there and found them naked. He was strangling her, but I was too afraid to move a muscle. Besides, it was too late for her... I turned a blind eye and flew back to my Crystal Body.

That night, I realized the truth of this world. This place wasn’t like the cool and fun worlds I read about in novels or explored in my games back on Earth. No, this place was a real savage land filled with monsters who took the shape of man. Even Nanya wasn’t a human. As for the draconians, they were on the very edge between monster and human.

That night, I was also contacted by the minds of the Dungeons who remained locked away in my body. Among them, the most powerful one was probably the Primordial. I pleaded him to teach me the ways of the Dungeons so that I may survive in this brutish world where I had no friends or allies alike. They agreed and showed me wonders I could have never discovered on my own. The price for all of this was to accept them as a part of me and let them guide me from the background as my teachers and masters.

Thus, after Dankyun left with his fiance, and we buried Nanya, whose death was ruled out as an unfortunate accident, I began to focus on my dungeon even more. Then, a week later, the bodies of the assassins I killed had turned into undead and attacked the academy.

During the first wave, seventeen students died, including an el’doraw boy who was once Princess Ayuseya’s escort. Then the teachers were able to dispatch the zombies, but because of the loses, some of the students withdrew.

Before they left the academy, the Primordial came to me and told me to kidnap one of them to show me something interesting. I obliged and kidnapped a young draconian woman about 20 years old.

According to his advice, I dragged her to my dungeon and watched as she struggled against the monsters and traps. She eventually died impaled by a spike trap. When I saw this... I felt... happy.

The lesson he wanted to teach me was this: In this world, organics were the food of Dungeons.

After absorbing her remains, I gained a boost in Magic Energy, which I used to drag other students here. Basically, I waited until they left the academy and were away from the eyes of the teachers and then opened a pitfall underneath them, dropping them straight into my dungeon. Their death was sweet, and I gained many levels like this. Using my spells, I also hunted monsters around the academy and gained even more strength, but I made sure to leave their corpses behind, so that they would eventually turn into zombies and attack the academy. The more students that died, the more XP and power for me.

This was exactly what happened, and after the students started to disappear, the teachers finally began to wonder if maybe it was all my doing. When they went to check my room, my Crystal Body was already gone. Oh, you should have seen the look on their faces!

Their first order was to call for an evacuation, but I already foresaw this and raised a wall around the academy, effectively trapping all of them inside. Then, I began my hunt.

Since they couldn’t see me, I was free to just snipe them with an [Ice Spear] one after another. Their Magic Armors were nearly non-existent, but I kept strengthening mine ever since my teachers came into contact with me.

By the end of the day, half of them were dead. Their bodies were neither burned nor absorbed, they were left there to rot and change into zombies. At night, another wave of monster zombies came, and I also unleashed several monsters in the school, bringing absolute chaos to them.

If I felt anything for them? There was no need to. I was a Dungeon, they were a different species than me. Besides, I was also seeing all of this through an interface similar to that of a game. Who ever felt sorry for the mobs they kept grinding in a game in order to gain a few level up and maybe a good drop or two.

During that raid, most of the non-adventurer teachers died. Paladinus kicked the bucket as well, and I stole his body before the others could do anything about it. He had good gear on him. I could use that as bait in my dungeon.

Two days later, most of the students were dead, but following the advice of my teachers, I spared a few women to use them as breeding nests for some of my monsters. Those scenes, I didn’t watch, but I did order the monsters not to kill them. As for the teacher at the academy, all but Tuberculus were left alive. The old man tried to use a crystal to flee from me, but I cut off his hand before he could use it.

I had no idea where it would have sent him, but there was no way I was going to let such a good bag of XP escape my grasp. It was like letting the boss live with only 1% Health Points. It was madness!

Anyways, a few months later, the dungeon turned out to be quite powerful, and I was storing up Magic Energy to increase my Dungeon Territory to overlap the nearby town as well. Thanks to me, the Primordial also merged with the other remnants of the Dungeons inside me and became The Darkness. The two of us were a team of sorts.

Before we managed to attack the town, a group of adventurers was sent to crush me. I ate them. Then another group came and another... For several weeks afterwards, adventurers kept trying to reach my dungeon, but they were all killed along the way. I had the upper advantage and used it to my liking, this was all just like a game and these adventurers were the bonus the stage.

Eventually, I reached the town and consumed it at as well. The invasion took me about three months because I killed only the strong males. The women, I kept them alive as breeding nests, the old men and children were turned into Magic Energy farms, and I remodeled the town into a mini-dungeon of sorts. By this time, I was level 245. It was nice.

Oh, what was a Magic Energy Farm? Basically, a living being kept in a cell and allowed to live only with the minimum requirements. If they wanted food, each day they would have to push all of their Magic Energy into a small collector crystal and that was it.

A few months after I finished the town and the minds of my prisoners were all but broken, I decided to use the able males to mate with the females. This way, I would gain in a few years more able Magic Energy Farms. As for who mated with who, I didn’t care. I just tossed them all together and ordered them to do it if they wanted to live. This would end up as a grind and repeat process to increase the number of ‘batteries’. The Darkness saw this move as a stroke of pure genius.

Well, all things were nice and good for several years, but then I began to grow bored. I wanted to move like any other organic out there. So, I talked it over with The Darkness, which by now was almost indistinguishable from myself. I could swear that most of the times it felt like I was talking with myself.

The body was decided upon based on several species we had collected over the years. I changed a few things about it to make it stronger and better, but I didn’t really have the know-how of making it even better, so I gave up on any advanced and complicated things like bio-engineering.

Using this body, I was able to walk around and do stuff as I pleased. With a level of 874, I was literally among the strongest on this continent. Who could stop me? But as it was with having an organic body, I also explored my own sexuality and used the ‘batteries’ as practice.

The Darkness told me about the ‘Wife System’, but I didn’t bother with it, I just wanted some fun, not to sire an offspring. There was another game for that.

By this time, I really saw all of my interactions as simply a very advanced Virtual Reality System with incredible graphics and multiple gameplay modes.

Using this body, I went straight to the Shoraya Kingdom’s capital and infiltrated the castle. There, I defiled the queen and princesses, then I killed them and hung their bodies at the entrance to the castle. The king went mad when he saw them. I laughed my ass off when I witnessed this.

As a result of my ‘joke’ he sent his Supremes after me. I killed them and gained a decent amount of experience.

It was then when I remembered about that crystal Tuberculus tried to use. There was one that was already filled and another only partially filled. I grabbed the one with less Magic Energy, filled it to the max and used it. The next thing I knew was that I landed in some desert of sort. I laughed my ass off when I saw this, but all fun and jokes had to come to an end.

With all the power I had, I went to the first human settlement and... destroyed it. Out of curiosity, I also tried human meat for the first time. I couldn’t tell if it had a good taste or not, but the nekatar one was like chicken, and the draconian was quite stringy. Even so, I made it part of my menu from then on, after all... they weren’t of my species, so it didn’t count as cannibalism.

I strolled through the continent for three years, slaughtering everything in sight, but I didn’t bother to make a dungeons here. I had the one back on the other continent, so it was only a matter of time before I returned there.

Speaking of which, during this time, I also annihilated several kingdoms as well. I believe one was called Cordina, another was called Tesuar, there was one that was called Aunnar that had a nice slavery system. After I destroyed that one, I used the slaves in the capital for human experiments with my weapons. The way they splattered all around the place was fun. This was seriously the best game ever!

The last thing I did in this place was visit the Temples of the Gods. When I checked my own status window, I saw that the Allegiance thingy was empty. At one point, I do remember there was a god there, but maybe that was just my imagination playing tricks on me.

Even so, I didn’t believe there were any actual gods around this place, so I did my best to destroy and defile those buildings, which in turn pissed off several of the so-called Apostles.

Of all those I fought, the woman called Zoreya was the hardest to defeat, but after cutting off her arms and legs, there wasn’t anything else she could do, so I gave her a taste of what it meant to be a woman. The tears on her face and screams were absolutely divine! They seriously made me laugh.

When I got bored with her, I killed her and tossed her remains to the monsters to feast upon. With this final act, I began to set myself loose upon the continent, destroying and slaughtering everything in sight in an attempt to reach level 1000. It made me curious if I would get a bonus or achievement. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be...

My killing spree came to an end when several Supremes and Apostles from all three continents banded together and came to attack me. Dankyun was the one who led them... Thanks to that disgusting sword of his, they were able to defeat me. It was a shame, but I wasn’t able to reach level 1000. Maybe I could reload at one point? Hm, no?

Meh, who cares? It was just a game... just a game... nothing real. Nothing! Hahaha!

[Illsyore’s point of view]

“Why do I suddenly have the feeling that our current situation is far better than the alternative of me going full Dungeon Mode on this world?” I asked as I scratched my chin.

“I don’t care! Just keep running! The Giant Spider is gaining on us!” shouted Nanya at me.

Yes, we were currently running through the forest on that remote island I teleported us to two years ago.

“Nyaaa~! I don’t like spiders! They taste awful!” Tamara complained while running next to me.

Hm... those mountains jiggle nicely! I approve! I said in my mind.

“Did you just think of something perverted about Tamara?” Shanteya asked as she was running backwards in front of me.

Seriously, this el’doraw’s agility was off the charts!

“Erm...” I looked away.

“Illsy! FOCUS!” they all shouted at me.

What was a Dungeon supposed to do? I let out a sigh, raised a wall behind us and then trapped the boss in an enchanted Inconel Cage. Now, the hunter became the hunted. It was Spider Steak tonight! Ugh... Tamara was right about the taste though.