“There’s a mirror over there, isn’t there? Try using Clairvoyance on yourself with it.”
Where the girl pointed, there stood a massive mirror—large enough to reflect an entire grown adult without difficulty.
Wait… is that thing even there when I came in?
“Why would I need to use Clairvoyance on myse—”
“You can’t see your past life just by checking your own status normally, can you?”
…She really does know everything.
Dungeon Master, huh… terrifying.
The thought that I’d basically been watched this whole time left me with a faint sense of unease, but I did as I was told. Facing the mirror, I activated [Clairvoyance] and examined my own status from an outside perspective.
| Name: Daishi Ajiri Class: Cleric Level: 20 HP: 999/999 MP: 999/999 Strength: 999 Endurance: 999 Agility: 999 Intelligence: 999 Burial Power: 999[4817] Skills: 【Burial Fist (LV1)】 【Retribution (LV2)】 【Requiem (LV2)】 【Return (LV2)】 【Cremation (LV2)】 【Clairvoyance (LV4)】 Unique Skill: 【Hell Gate】 Past Life: Daishi Ajiri |
…I mean, I’d kind of expected something like this given how things were going—but actually seeing it laid out like that felt deeply wrong.
My past life… is me.
Even if it came from someone who could probably tamper with my stats however they pleased, seeing it with my own eyes made it impossible to deny.
Then… I really had died once.
And yet, I’m still here. My memories are clear. I remember everything—even things from before five years ago, when I supposedly died.
“Do you understand now, Ajiri Daishi?”
The girl stood beside the mirror, gazing up at me with a smile—young, yet strangely bewitching.
…No. Honestly, I didn’t understand a thing.
“Were you the one who brought me back to life?”
It was the most natural question to ask.
“I suppose you could say that. Half right, at least.”
She frowned slightly, as if troubled.
Half? What does that even mean?
“I handled the soul. The body, however, wasn’t my doing.”
…Yeah, there was no way I’d follow any of this if I kept interrupting.
Better to just listen.
“Heh. That look—you’ve finally decided to keep quiet and hear me out, haven’t you? Good. Obedience suits you, Ajiri-kun. Especially for an M.”
You’re getting dragged straight through the Hell Gate for that one.
“Now then, with the understanding that you’ve already died once, I’ll explain the important points in order. Just the essentials. If you think you won’t remember, feel free to take notes. I’ll take questions at the end. So… let’s begin with who I am.”
And with that, the girl began to unveil the truth.
◆◆◆
“…That about covers it. Do you more or less understand now?”
After speaking for about fifteen minutes straight, she paused and looked at me expectantly.
Understand?
Nah. Not even close. But even so, there were parts I couldn’t help but accept, as if they simply were that way. I remembered most of it, at least.
To organize my thoughts, I decided to mentally go over what she’d said one more time.
The little girl’s identity and the origin of dungeons
・ The girl is a fallen goddess. She was once one of the gods responsible for overseeing humanity, but after committing some grave offense, she incurred the wrath of the chief deity and was cast down into the human world. (She refused to say what exactly she had done.)
・In order to secure a place for herself in the human world, the fallen goddess created a dungeon. This West Tokyo Fourth Beginner Dungeon is that very place—the origin point of all dungeons.
・At first, she entertained herself by creating monsters within the dungeon, but eventually grew bored. Seeking something more interesting, she decided to pit the humans created by the gods against the monsters she had made, and thus unsealed the dungeon’s entrance.
・What began as a game gradually escalated. The fallen goddess started generating dungeons all over the world. As a result, humans known as “explorers” began to appear, guilds were formed, and dungeon exploration flourished into what it is today.
I took a breath and continued organizing everything she had told me, piece by piece, trying to force it into something resembling understanding.
The System of Monsters and Explorers
・Monsters don’t reproduce like humans. Nearly all of them are generated randomly through an automatic creation system devised by the fallen goddess, while their souls simply circulate.
・In a dungeon, when someone dies, the soul is sent to the [Selection Domain].
・The [Selection Domain] consists of seven layers. By overcoming more trials, a soul determines the strength and type of its next reincarnated body. Incidentally, Rakshasa was a “selector” from the fifth layer. These “selectors” are directly managed by the fallen goddess and can be regenerated almost instantly—meaning the Rakshasa will revive soon as well.
・Souls that surpass the trials from the fifth layer onward are granted individually customized bodies. Most boss-class monsters in high-difficulty dungeons fall into this category. Up to the fourth layer, they instead become unique-type entities within a dungeon.
・When an explorer dies inside a dungeon, they are absorbed into the fallen goddess’s system.
The Three Great Abysses of the World
・Bosses of the Divine Realm and Abyssal Sea classes are powerful beings who have surpassed the sixth layer of the Selection Domain. Only two such individuals have ever existed.
・The Nether King of the Nether Class is the only known entity to have transcended the seventh layer—a truly monstrous existence.
・Apparently, all of them were originally human explorers.
・These three dungeons operate independently. They’ve broken away from the fallen goddess’s control and now function under their own separate systems. She compared it to a subsidiary company tricking its parent company and going independent… though honestly, I didn’t fully get that analogy.
Unique Classes
・ [Unique Classes] are just labels humans assign within the status system, but to the fallen goddess, they are unknowns—entities beyond her understanding. In other words, they may exist under entirely different laws and causality than either the dungeon system or the human world. Because of that, she constantly keeps them under observation.
Ajiri Daishi (Me)
・Apparently, the place where I died five years ago was exactly at the boundary between the dungeon domain and the human world. As a result, my soul was sent to the Selection Domain, but my body remained human—making me an extremely irregular existence.
・As for why my body was resurrected… it was because I wasn’t originally destined to die there, or something about the Six Realms of Reincarnation, but I have absolutely no idea what that mean.
・Incidentally, although I have no memory of it, my soul apparently easily cleared the hidden eighth stage of the Selection Domain—making me an extraordinarily rare existence.
・This West Tokyo Fourth Beginner Dungeon was essentially a training ground, designed from the moment I entered it to allow me to wield my soul’s power in the real world. After all, even with an exceptional soul, proper trials were necessary to manifest that strength in reality.
・The reason she trained me was to reclaim the Nether Class Dungeon. The Nether King poses a threat to the Dungeon Master’s position, so she intended to turn me—someone who cleared the eighth stage—into her assassin.
・She originally wanted to start five years ago but claimed she couldn’t because my body was still bound by the causality of the human world. Again… I didn’t understand that part either.
・And apparently, me becoming an explorer was pure coincidence. I could have ended up just being an ordinary salaryman my whole life.
…Yeah. Laying it all out like this didn’t exactly make it easier to understand. But one thing was clear. Whether I liked it or not, I had been dragged into something completely insane.
“Have you managed to organize your thoughts a little?”
It seems the useless little goddess sensed that I was trying to sort things out and waited for me, but honestly, I’ve only managed to organize the general outlines. There’s just too much information, and I’m getting tired of thinking about it.
I think I’ll organize the remaining details by asking questions.
Right. It would be so reassuring if the viewers were listening along with me at a time like this…
I wonder what everyone’s doing now…
| > Next… episode… connect…? |
This is translated by Yume Neiji. Kindly read at yumeneijiworks.com
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