One of Us

The gargoyle soared across the Skyline, and every monster it passed bowed its head as if kneeling before their ruler.

Clutched in its hand, Jack screamed again and again. The moment he opened his mouth, raging wind rushed in, tormenting him terribly.

When he was set down at the dungeon entrance, he felt the relief of having survived a disaster.

But when he thought of how he had signed a Slave Contract with the gargoyle and become a monster's slave, his feelings remained complicated.

His backpack was filled with all sorts of items the gargoyle had given him. There were more than a dozen kinds after counting them, all things he had never seen before. There was even a weapon rarer than a greatsword. It could be called a tremendous haul.

And the other party had saved him and let him take revenge. By all rights, that made it his great benefactor.

But being a monster's servant was a little hard to explain.

Whenever Jack thought about killing his companions, his hands and feet trembled. He could no longer tell whether he was afraid or feeling something else.

Perhaps excitement?

Making it safely out of the dungeon was certainly worth celebrating, but how was he supposed to explain this to everyone else?

Especially Sackman. So many people had died; his fury was easy to imagine.

Jack, Jack... Whether you survived depended entirely on your silver tongue. You had to come up with a good excuse.

After the gargoyle flew away, he lingered by the Teleportation Gate at the entrance for a long, long time. Unable to think of a perfect excuse, he finally left the dungeon with a miserable expression.

The perspective returned to the Hero Gargoyle.

After seeing Jack off, he returned to where he belonged—the BOSS room.

His enormous body had to bend down to pass through the fortress gates, but there was another way that did not require him to stoop.

"Cancel Mimicry."

At the command, the gargoyle's body dissolved into specks of light, leaving behind a withered, swaying living corpse.

It was Gong Qiying!

"Even changing back feels unfamiliar now." He looked at his thin arms and legs, which seemed like they could snap in the wind. The difference from the all-powerful feeling of becoming the Hero Gargoyle earlier was immense.

So it had been Gong Qiying himself all along who crippled the black market dealers and signed a Slave Contract with Jack.

But why had he gone to such lengths?

"I haven't tried it since unlocking transformation permissions. I need to find someone to have some fun with."

Gong Qiying also wanted to experience transforming into a Thunderwolf Dragon, but unfortunately, it was too expensive.

However, killing the black market dealers had not been a spur-of-the-moment decision. He had planned it for a long time. He had observed this group for quite a while and learned their identities through their conversations.

At first, he had only intended to use them for practice and had not planned to actually kill anyone. But when they plotted to get rid of Jack, Gong Qiying changed his mind. He wanted to completely kill these morally bankrupt people.

It was not because he had any friendship with Jack. He simply found it unpleasant—unpleasant to watch these people's ugly betrayal after crossing the river.

But the Teleportation Crystals on adventurers seemed to be protected by some kind of restriction. As a monster, he could not even touch them, much less remove them.

Only other adventurers could touch and remove the crystals.

As for Jack, he had been fraternizing with black market dealers. How could he possibly be a good person?

Signing a Slave Contract with him, showing him the map, ordering him to bring more people, and so on were all sudden ideas Gong Qiying had come up with.

He wanted to cultivate one of "his own."

Since Slave Contracts involved the soul, even he could not sign more than three.

Jack did not need to do anything major. He only needed to lead the way.

As more and more people came to raid Sain Underground City, its maps would sooner or later be fully explored. Rather than let adventurers produce guides, he might as well cultivate one of his own and reveal map information to Jack in advance.

When adventurers had gained considerable experience exploring the map of a certain area but were not yet especially proficient, Jack could directly release a complete guide and establish prestige among the adventurers—something like a "Dungeon Exploration Master."

A map that was about to be fully explored was already becoming less valuable. He might as well squeeze out its last bit of worth.

With Jack, he could also keep track of the adventurer community's every move at any time. For someone like him, who could not freely leave the dungeon, information from the outside world was crucial.

If Gong Qiying came up with new map, trap, or monster designs to test in the future, he could also have Jack bring people over directly.

There were surely other uses as well, but this was only an experiment Gong Qiying had thought up on a whim. He could slowly consider the rest later.

"The dungeon automatically cleans up corpses. That's not bad." He turned back to look at the black market dealers' bodies, but once he looked, he could not take his eyes away.

"Ghru." He swallowed involuntarily.

An instinctive urge drove Gong Qiying toward the corpses. He gathered the bloody chunks of flesh together, then took a deep breath.

White streams of light poured from the corpses and flowed into Gong Qiying's body. His withered skin suddenly gained a sheen!

Though he still looked skin and bones compared to a normal person, at least he appeared to have some moisture now. He was no longer a dried corpse.

"My strength has increased a little?"

The living corpse race could absorb the residual life force in corpses to grow stronger. Many necromancers liked summoning living corpses as cannon fodder.

It was said that a Legendary Rank necromancer had raised a cannon-fodder little living corpse into a King Rank greater undead. No stronger living corpse had been heard of since.

It was certainly good that his strength could increase, but—

"What use is that to me?"

Gong Qiying's expression turned strange. As a dungeon master who hid behind the scenes, the chance of him fighting others was even lower than a Meteorite precisely crushing a particular ant to death.

Besides, apart from today's unexpected situation, what he needed was for adventurers to die and revive in his dungeon, dying and living, living and dying. If he killed people just to improve his own strength—

It would be somewhat not worth the cost.

If he could leave the dungeon someday, this ability might find a use.

"Bzzzz—"

At that moment, the Crystal Ball in his arms suddenly began buzzing. Gong Qiying tossed it into the air, and the fist-sized Crystal Ball immediately grew larger and taller, displaying images of the adventurers.

He had marked Sithran's group as a priority concern. Any change would alert him.

Gong Qiying did not know why he cared so much about this group. There were countless teams stronger and more interesting than them.

Yet somewhere deep down, a feeling urged him to pay attention to them.

One look at the Crystal Ball showed that Sithran's team had already been scattered.

Verde and the surviving experts, Sithran and the big Shuen, Aili and Charon—the entire team had been scattered by the tide of monsters. Split into three small groups, they ran around like headless flies in utter disarray.

Shuen had lost an arm, and his combat power had plummeted. If Sithran had not protected him, he would have long since been torn apart by monsters. The monsters chasing them were also among the strongest.

Aili and Charon, who belonged to the team's second tier in strength, had already shaken off the monsters and rushed deep into the swamp.

As for Verde and the surviving experts—

[Teleportation Trap triggered!]

"Waaaah!"

Verde screamed without a shred of elegance, wildly swinging his shortsword around. With a bang, it smashed into the rock wall, and flying fragments struck his forehead.

The pain brought him back to his senses.

"W-where is this?"

His eyes abruptly widened, because the scenery before him was completely different from the foul-smelling swamp.

Towering giant trees, dense Jungle, fresh and humid air, singing birds, and a town faintly visible among the distant forest—this was unmistakably the Middle Level region of Sain Underground City.

"Is this heaven?"

For a moment, he was dumbstruck.

"Rustle, rustle—"

Just then, a disturbance suddenly came from the bushes behind him. Verde's newly relaxed heart tensed up again!

What was inside those bushes!?

"Pika pika."