The Dungeon's Kindness

The dungeon beneath Glory Kael Magic Academy.

A raging underground river flowed along the rocky bank, and flickering firelight painted the surrounding stone walls a warm orange.

[Your willful degeneracy has tarnished the family's reputation. Effective immediately, Duke Sass's House has decided to expel you from the family. Reflect on your mistakes, you worthless fool!]

"Fuck, they kicked me out just because I skipped a few days of class? Guess they really do hate me."

The old Greg Sass would have sunk into deep despair after reading this letter, because he had lost his greatest source of support.

But the current Greg was different, because he had transmigrated into this world.

After reading the letter, Greg casually crumpled the envelope into a ball and tossed it into the underground river beside him. While he was at it, he washed off the blood he had gotten on himself while hunting monsters near his camp.

"Whatever. This family's going to be wiped out midway through anyway, so I don't give a flying fuck whether they acknowledge me or not. Besides... whether I can even fucking survive that long is a whole other problem!"

Greg was falling apart inside.

He couldn't understand why he had suddenly transmigrated while playing his eighty-first run of "Would You Like a World Where Even Girls Can Have Fun Queuing Together?", a game focused on girls getting cozy with one another.

And of all people, he had become Greg Sass, the only male character in the original game with a character portrait.

Of course, make no mistake: the developers hadn't given him that portrait out of favoritism. Quite the opposite-it was full of malice!

Although he was incredibly handsome, the developers seemed to have programmed every important female character in the original game to feel an inexplicable, deep-seated disgust at first sight of him, rather than be captivated by his looks.

So despite being the only male character in the original game with a portrait, he had absolutely no chance of winning any of the heroines' hearts.

And the developers' malice didn't end there.

In this world full of possibilities, Greg Sass alone was a villain doomed to die.

He had 1,386 CGs in the game, the most of any individual character, and 1,380 of them depicted his various deaths. Players who had tried to collect them all back then had suffered no end of misery.

If a beginner had transmigrated here, they would probably have already died without even knowing why.

Fortunately, the current Greg was a veteran.

After playing the original game eighty-one times, he knew there was exactly one place where Greg Sass had no death CGs.

The dungeon.

Every dungeon in this world was extremely dangerous. Although they contained gems and items that could enhance magic, very few people willingly entered them even so.

That went double for Greg Sass, a textbook villainous noble. He had never entered a dungeon at any point on any route, making it the only place where he had no death CGs.

So the moment he realized he had become Greg Sass, he had sprinted straight out of the classroom while class was still in session, only stopping once he had entered the dungeon.

"Good thing I got a cheat along with transmigrating. Otherwise, I'd have become death CG number 1,387 the moment I entered the first floor."

After tossing the inedible monster corpses into the underground river beside him, Greg opened his basic status panel for a look:

[Name: Greg Sass]

[Race: Human]

[Level: LV15]

[Constitution: 2 → 3]

[Agility: 2 → 3]

[Intelligence: 1 → 7]

[Charisma: 10 (?)]

[Willpower: 1 → 6]

[Luck: 10 (black)]

"Yep. Aside from charisma, my original stats were pure small-fry material. My luck was even worse than a small fry's."

What Greg felt grateful for were the talents listed below.

[Dungeon Explorer (Upgradeable): While you are in a dungeon, damage dealt to any entity increases by twenty percent.]

[Praise the Dungeon (Upgradeable): While you are in a dungeon, your actual luck value will never fall below 0.]

[Dungeon's Charity (Upgradeable): While you are in a dungeon, experience gained increases slightly.]

[Digestive Bacteria (Fixed): When you kill an enemy in a dungeon, you have a chance to obtain a random skill or skill fragment from that enemy.]

[? (Awaiting activation)]

"I could never repay the great dungeon's kindness!"

Greg couldn't help marveling once again.

Setting aside the question mark, the other four activated talents weren't just absurdly powerful in his eyes-they also perfectly suited his current needs!

The fourth talent in particular had let him pick up some decent skills while he hunted monsters to survive in the dungeon.

[Acquired skills: Whimpering LV3, Blunt Impact Resistance LV2, Burrowing LV1, Earth Magic Resistance LV2, Earth Mana Affinity LV1, Underwater Adaptation LV3, Water Magic Resistance LV2, Water Magic Affinity LV1, Cold Resistance LV1]

These skills gave Greg greater confidence that he could survive in the dungeon.

Granted, the living conditions here were truly harsh.

But as long as he could hold out until the heroine reached the ending, there would be no more death CGs waiting for him when he returned to the surface. He would be free to live however he pleased!

So his main objective now was to find a way to keep surviving in the dungeon.

"Still, I have no idea how far along the plot is."

He had been in such a hurry to escape danger that, aside from confirming he was now Greg Sass, he had learned almost nothing about the story's current progress.

The one thing he could be sure of was that the original game's plot had already begun. He had taken a quick glance while running out of the classroom and seen that it was a second-year classroom, so the story had definitely started.

"I have to hand it to the family. They actually figured out I was in the dungeon and even had someone deliver a letter. That's a villain boss who survives until midgame for you. Pretty impressive tricks."

After roughly tidying up his camp, Greg got up and walked over to the fire. While waiting for his meat to cook, he continued writing his Academy Dungeon Survival Guide (Diary).

His gaze swept over the preceding entries.

Day 1: Hungry, surrounded by darkness, and miserable all over. Luckily, with my cheat backing me up, I've managed to scrape by in the outer section of the dungeon's first floor. I have to keep doing my best to stay alive. Hehe.

Day 2: Found a natural cave today. It's the perfect campsite! No monsters spawn here, and the ground is hard, so I don't have to worry about Horned Rabbits burrowing up to ambush me. The only things I need to watch out for are the monsters lurking in the underground river beside it. I'll make this my permanent camp.

Day 3: Ventured into Devil Flower territory to scout it out. Just like the original game said, even I can easily beat these monsters once I know their weaknesses. I also found chunks of salt in their nest, and their buds actually secrete a powder similar to Sichuan pepper! Now I feel even more confident about surviving!

Day 4: While clearing monsters around camp, I noticed a team of three upper-year girls passing along the main path. I overheard them gloating about me. Looks like news of my sudden disappearance has already spread throughout the academy, but from what they said, whoever started those rumors clearly had bad intentions.

"Time really flies. It's already day five."

Greg sighed softly, lowered his pen, and began recording the day's events.

Day 5: Received a letter informing me that I've been expelled from the family, but that isn't really bad news for me. What I need to watch out for today is the group of goblins I found at the entrance leading from the outer section to the middle section. Normally, they never appear in the outer section, so this is really unusual. I don't know whether it has anything to do with that upper-year team that passed through earlier. Either way, to avoid unnecessary risks, I'd better steer completely clear of that area for now.

Once he finished writing, he picked up a skewer of Horned Rabbit meat that was almost done cooking. He was just about to take a bite when a somewhat familiar female voice suddenly rang out nearby:

"Sylvia! Grab my hand!"

"Pfft-?!"

Greg choked and whipped his head around. Two beautiful figures came into view.

On the narrow passage, a girl with long gray hair lay flat on the ground, desperately reaching out toward the underground river beside her.

In the raging river was another girl with pink hair. Something seemed to have tangled around her feet, and she was drifting farther from the bank as she began to sink.

"...Huh?!"

Greg's mind went blank for a moment.

If his memory served him right, the gray-haired girl a short distance ahead was Victoria, the game's protagonist.

And the pink-haired girl was Sylvia, the game's second heroine.

But why were they here?

And what was this scene where Sylvia looked about to die right on the spot?!

Nothing like this had ever happened in the game!!