Chương 56: Chapter 57: I Was Forced to Confess

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles It was my first time in a cave, and it wasn't pleasant. It had been fine near the entrance, with the sunlight and sea breeze at our backs. But the deeper we went, the darker it got, the air thick and hard to pull in, and being this near the sea meant everything had a damp, sticky feel that clung to my skin. Lunessa led with her glowing orb, and I kept close behind her.

Every so often she'd glance back to check on me, probably because she could hear me stumbling over the uneven floor, which was sweet of her.

"Careful, the ground here gets— kyah!" Her foot came down on a slick patch of stone and shot out from under her. She pitched sideways with a startled cry, arms flailing for a hold that wasn't there. I was close enough to move. I caught her under one arm and around the shoulders, hauling her back upright before she hit the ground. The orb bobbed in place above us, unbothered, and in its light I caught the faint red climbing up her cheeks.

She got her feet back under her fast, and I suspect the flush was less about the fall and more about being the one who had slipped.

"T-thanks."

"Yeah, no problem. You sure you're all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine. Let's keep moving." She pressed on, and I followed. A few more minutes of walking brought us to a door; an actual door, tall stone set into the rock, with gemstones ringed around its frame. It looked like something out of a gacha game, which struck me as odd. Come to think of it, I did not see a single monster despite this place being a dungeon.

"This is the entrance," Lunessa said. Oh, that explained it. She laid her palm flat against the stone, murmured something under her breath, and the ring of gemstones lit one by one. Then she stepped back and to the side.

"All right, Milo. I'll need you to push it open." Was opening a dungeon door dangerous? Were there ambushes waiting on the other side, monsters lurking to catch fresh adventurers the moment they stepped through? And if not, why did she want me doing it? Still, complaining would only make me look more useless than the flying-taxi role already had. And I was Level 9999. Unless there's a sudden burst of holy light, there shouldn't be anything on the other side of that door that could take me out in a single hit.

So, armed with self-issued courage, I stepped up and shoved the door open. What waited on the other side was... nothing. The space beyond didn't look like a cave at all. Neat grey brickwork, a broad corridor wide enough for ten grown adults to walk side by side, and it was somehow well-lit without a single torch or lamp anywhere in sight. Lunessa traced a small spiral in the air with one finger, and the glowing orb wound in on itself and winked out. Then she reached over and patted my shoulder.

"Thanks! It's a touch too heavy for me to manage on my own. A Dark Lord really does come in handy." Right. It had simply been heavy. Of course. She took the lead again, and I fell in behind her. She didn't walk down the center of the corridor, though. Instead she moved to one side and kept close to the wall as we went. Before long, stones began to appear jutting out of the brickwork—bright, colorful things, greens and reds and oranges catching the strange ambient light.

It was like walking past a jeweler's window that someone had shattered and pressed into the walls. Lunessa didn't take any of them.

"Why aren't we grabbing those? They look expensive."

"Some of them are, but most are fairly common, adventurer-tier stuff." She didn't slow down.

"With only so much room in the pack, we want to hold out for the genuinely rare ones." Now that she mentioned it, our entire storage situation was a single backpack she had been carrying. Shouldn't a Dark Lord have some kind of dimensional pocket? An inventory? Anything better than a bag?

"Milo."

"Yeah?"

"Ooh, this one's worth the trip. Lucky us." She plucked a diamond-like crystal straight out of the wall. I half-expected her to strain against it, but it came away easily, and she tucked it into the pack without effort. If it was this simple to walk out of here with a fortune, why wasn't the place crawling with people? The access was hard, sure, but once you were inside you could just help yourself to the walls and leave. I still hadn't seen a single monster.

"Anyway, what was I saying?"

"You weren't saying anything. You just said my name."

"Oh, right." She kept walking.

"I was going to ask what you think of Eve." I nearly walked into the wall.

"W-why are you asking that now? We're in the middle of a dungeon!"

"I'm curious, that's all." Her tone stayed easy, conversational, like we were strolling a market.

"Eve's done an awful lot for a Dark Lord she barely knows." Which was... true. Evelisse had known me less than two weeks, and in that time she had done things a longtime couple might have balked at. When you look at it that way, of course it looked like I'd done something to her. But I hadn't. I don't think I had. The Eye of Love shouldn't have worked. I didn't want it to have worked, but… what if it had, somehow, just not fully? What if it caught, only a little, only enough to—"Hellooo? Mr. Dark Lord?"

Lunessa had stopped several paces ahead and turned to face me.

"You seem to space out awfully often."

"O-oh, sorry. Just thinking on how to answer that." I realized I'd stopped walking entirely at some point, and jogged to catch up.

"So?" She watched me, one brow raised.

"I think... she's a good woman." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Lunessa's face went flat, the anticipation draining out of it into something between disappointment and pity.

"What? Did I say something wrong?"

"Milo." She sighed.

"That's the sort of thing you'd say about a shopkeeper who gave you correct change. I'm not asking whether she's a good person." She turned and started walking again, tossing the rest back over her shoulder.

"I'm asking how you see her. What she is, to you." What Evelisse was... to me? How was I supposed to answer that? There'd been a time I thought of her as a threat, plain and simple. Someone I could try to manipulate into not killing me, and—if the Eye of Love worked—net myself a girlfriend in the process. Two problems solved with one artifact. Though, I knew now that wasn't the way.

Watching her, over these past several days—the earnestness, the stubbornness, the way she'd throw herself in front of anything to protect the people she cared about, up to and including me, it made me disgusted by the version of me that had reached for the Eye of Love. I thought back to the inn in that village, after the holy troll had put me down. Evelisse had sat with me while I was out, tending to me. She'd told me she didn't want me to die.

She'd told me she was tearing herself apart over it, because she couldn't just turn her back on the Church. And then she'd turned her back on the Church anyway. For me. Someone who hadn't earned a scrap of it. I still didn't know the real reason. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was that sense of justice she couldn't switch off since I hadn't actually murdered anyone directly, yet the Church wanted me dead regardless, and that wrongness was the kind of thing that would eat at her.

Maybe both, but whatever it was, she'd looked the consequences dead in the eye and chosen my side anyway. And now, after all of that, once this loot run was done, she wanted to sit down and talk about the terrorizing. There was probably a wanted poster with her face on it going up across Lycora as we walked, and she was still spending her energy on how to make me stronger.

"I think she's..." I reached for it.

"A good friend." Which I realized, the instant it left my mouth, might actually be worse than 'good woman.' So I kept going before Lunessa could pounce.

"More than I deserve."

"So you see her as a friend? Just a friend?"

"No—I mean, yes, no, but…ugh." I dragged a hand down my face. Lunessa said nothing. She just kept walking, waiting, letting the silence do the work.

"I'm trying to be better," I said finally.

"Better?" I nodded.

"Better. I admire her, Lunessa. Genuinely. She does things I never thought I could. She knows what she wants, she thinks it through, and then she actually acts. Even when she's confused, even when she's scared, when it matters, she pulls it together and does the thing."

"As for me..." I exhaled.

"This isn't really the time or place for the whole story, but I'm nowhere close to that. I don't know what I want. I thought I knew, but I never do anything that would actually get me there. I make excuses to avoid trying, and then when things fall apart, I blame everything but myself. The world, the circumstances, bad luck, other people." The words were coming easier now, tumbling out sideways.

"Honestly, I've been carried to this point by Nyx, Evelisse, and by you. All I've done is get saved." Lunessa glanced back at me. Whatever she'd been expecting when she asked the question, a Dark Lord picking himself apart in the middle of a dungeon clearly wasn't it.

"So I'm going to be better. Someone worth standing next to. Worth standing next to her." I shook my head.

"Right now, I don't think I'm in any position to sit here and pass judgment on people. Not when the rest of you are doing all the actual work."

"And what if I want you to answer anyway?"

"... That's—""Milo." She stopped and turned to face me, and her voice had lost the teasing edge.

"I'm her sister. I need to know." I held her gaze, and I made myself say the true thing.

"I want to stand by her side. The way she decided to stand by mine. Even after everything I've done." Lunessa studied me for a moment.

"And if the two of you became more than friends?" Huh? Was that even a question she was allowed to ask?

"W-well." My face was going hot.

"If—if things went that way. And if I actually became someone worthy of it. And if she's okay with it." I forced the last part out.

"Then I think that would be... that would be good." Lunessa smiled. Not teasing this time, something quieter.

"All right." She turned back to the corridor.

"Let's finish this and get out of here." That was it? After all of that, she was just going to keep walking? At the very least, tell me what you thought of the answer! Well, not that I could say that out loud at this point. As we moved through the dungeon, the air kept getting heavier. Not suffocating, more like the sense that something big and dangerous was nearby, and every step was bringing us closer to it. Maybe it was just my videogame instincts talking. I really hoped it was.

Lunessa plucked a few more gems along the way, none of which I could have named, and somewhere around the fifth one I heard a sound. Deep, rumbling, drawn-out, almost like a snore.

"Okay," I said.

"What was that?"

"That would be the dungeon guardian." Dungeon guardian? She hadn't mentioned a guardian. What kind? A dragon? A golem? Some ancient vampire? Or was it going to be one of those boss monsters that turns out to be a beautiful woman like in most manga?

"You didn't imagine a dungeon full of priceless gemstones would just be sitting here unguarded, did you?" Lunessa asked, reading my face.

"I mean—I figured there'd be monsters. I just hadn't seen any yet." I glanced back the way we'd come.

"Do we actually need to keep going? Can we not just head back with what we've got?"

"These few stones won't come close to clearing Arkhay's debt. We came here for one thing in particular." She said it like it should be obvious.

"A Pyrathite." That sounded appropriately legendary.

"So we'd have to fight whatever's guarding it?"

"Not necessarily. If we're careful, we grab the stone and leave." That sounded low-risk enough. And even if it did come to a fight, I had my Level 9999 strength to fall back on. Whatever was down here, I'd probably be able to handle it. Probably. We pressed deeper, and the snoring grew louder, until the corridor finally opened out into a wide circular hall. Orange gemstones ringed the walls, each one about the size of a basketball, arranged in a neat arc all the way around. Were those all Pyrathites?

Then my eyes reached the far end of the hall, and every other thought evaporated. It was a dragon, a big one; easily as tall as a two-storey building, curled up on itself, its scales a deep smoldering red like coals that hadn't finished burning. It had wings and a pair of thick, ridged horns curved back off its skull the way a bighorn ram's did. Even asleep it looked like something that ended arguments permanently.

Each time it exhaled, that rumbling snore rolled through the hall and I felt the wind of it push against my chest. Lunessa scanned the walls quickly, then pointed out three specific gems.

"One of those three is the Pyrathite," she murmured.

"The rest are decoys. Similar look, fraction of the value." She frowned.

"They're set high, though." Which meant I was the only one getting up there, since I was the only one who could fly. So I did. Quiet as I could manage, I lifted off the ground and drifted up to the nearest of the three, closed my hand around it, and plucked it cleanly off the wall. And then—"Milo!" Lunessa's voice cracked across the hall. My whole world went orange.

It came with a warmth that was almost pleasant, for about half a second, before my brain caught up and informed me that my upper half had been completely engulfed in fire. A wall of it, roaring, wrapping me on every side. My shirt was gone, and that was embarrassing. If I'd been anyone else, anyone who wasn't sitting at Level 9999 durability, that would have been the end of the story right there. A very short story.

The flames guttered out, and I turned around, still hovering, entirely unharmed and gently smoking, to find the dragon wide awake and staring directly at me. Its expression, if a dragon could be said to have one, landed somewhere between outrage and personal betrayal; the specific fury of a creature that had been having a lovely nap, only to wake and discover some idiot burglarizing its walls. It narrowed its enormous eyes at me. A thin curl of smoke leaked from one nostril. I was still holding the gem.

"... Hi there," I said.