The campfire flickered in the cave, stretching the shadows of Greg and the black cat sitting opposite him across the uneven rock walls, like two ancient statues confronting each other in silence.
After hearing Greg's pointed questions, Nightmare, the Goddess of Night, did not answer immediately.
She rose gracefully, padded silently over to Greg, then began slowly circling him.
Once, twice.
In the firelight, her emerald eyes gleamed like gems in a deep pool. She studied Greg intently, as though inspecting a complex, precision-crafted instrument-or confirming some invisible quality.
After her third circuit, she stopped beside Greg, and her ethereal voice rippled directly through his mind:
"Because thou art special, Greg Sass."
"Special?"
Greg raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate.
Especially unlucky?
Especially good at keeping my head down?
Or especially prone to attracting death CGs?
Nightmare continued, her tone carrying the insight unique to a deity:
"I can sense what appears to be a powerful talent within thee-the potential to conquer the Five Great Dungeons."
Greg was no stranger to the term "Five Great Dungeons."
In the game Do You Like a World Where Even Girls Can Have Fun Queuing Together?, they were practically the most central-and most headache-inducing-hardcore content outside the main storyline of cozy intimacy with beautiful girls.
The Glory Kael Magic Academy dungeon-the damned place he was currently holed up in-was only the first, and also the most accessible.
The Ducal Dungeon lay beneath the Everfrost Glacier in the northern duchy of ice and snow, a paradise of extreme cold and ice-type monsters.
The Imperial Dungeon hid deep beneath the Imperial Capital of the Central Empire, heavily guarded and brutally difficult.
The Undersea Dungeon lay submerged in the deepest trench of the Endless Sea, with environmental penalties cranked up to MAX. Only top-tier water specialists or those with special adaptations could hope to reach it.
The Demon Realm Dungeon lay in the heart of Demon territory, awash in demonic energy-a map straight out of hell for humans.
These five dungeons were enormous, their mechanics complex, their monsters growing stronger at an exponential rate.
In the original game, they were less "clearable instances" than "ultimate challenges for the most hardcore players."
Before Greg had transmigrated, not a single complete walkthrough for clearing all Five Great Dungeons had ever appeared on the game's forums. There had not even been a full walkthrough for any one of them.
Most players, himself included, had only dipped their toes in, messing around on the first few floors, grabbing some rare materials or special gems, then getting out.
After all, this was fundamentally a dating sim!
Wasn't spending your time and energy figuring out how to trade barbs with the tsundere princess, raise the aloof saintess's affection, or trigger special events with the merchant heiress far more appealing than repeatedly dying horrible deaths in dark, damp, monster-infested dungeons?
As a result, Greg's knowledge of the Five Great Dungeons extended only to the rough layouts of the first few floors and the early monster types.
The deeper floors?
Those were unknown darkness steeped in death.
"No, hold on."
Greg pulled himself out of his memories, his grave expression giving way to much more obvious confusion and resistance:
"What does my potential to conquer these dungeons have to do with you, Your Divine Highness? And why would I want to conquer these damned places anyway?"
Greg was rather puzzled.
When a goddess chose someone else, it was usually because they had the power to save the world. When a goddess chose him, it was because he was good at skulking around dungeons like a rat.
What the hell was that supposed to be?
"Of course it has to do with me."
Nightmare seemed to have anticipated his reaction. Her voice remained unhurried.
She returned to the fire and sat down gracefully, curling her tail around her front paws.
"Though the long passage of time and the severing of my worship have left my memories tattered, certain essential impressions remain clear. I remember... these five dungeons were not formed naturally, nor could the beings of this world readily have built them."
She lifted her emerald eyes toward the boundless darkness deeper in the cave, as though she could see through the rock to somewhere far beyond.
"They are seals-and tombs."
Greg's heart gave a slight jolt.
"Tombs? What's buried there? Powerful ancient beasts? Fallen heroes? Or... legendary treasure?"
He tried guessing along conventional fantasy lines.
Nightmare slowly shook her head, rejecting every one of his guesses.
"They hold... certain exceedingly dangerous beings. Their nature, forms, and purposes are wholly incompatible with this world. Should they fully awaken and break free of their bonds..."
For once, the black cat's voice carried a trace of gravity, and even a hint of... wariness.
"This world may face its true... end."
"Destroying the world?"
Greg froze for a moment, then seemed to think of something. An expression of understanding crossed his face:
"Oh, you're talking about the Demon King. You can relax about that. Sure, that guy is trouble, but someone will take care of him."
According to the original plot, the Demon King's army would ignite a war in the middle-to-late stages, but the heroines would ultimately grow strong enough to defeat him together.
The road would be full of twists and turns, but a bright ending was assured.
That was main-quest business. As a former villain, all he needed to do was cheer from the sidelines and stay alive.
Yet after hearing him, Nightmare the black cat visibly froze.
A clear trace of... confusion appeared in those emerald feline eyes.
Along with the subtle sentiment of, What nonsense are you talking about?
"The Demon King?"
She repeated the term in an odd tone, the tip of her tail twitching unconsciously. "What... random nobody is that?"
Now it was Greg's turn to be baffled. "Wait, are you sure this world-destroying guy you're talking about isn't the Demon King who's holed up in the Demon Realm, building an army and constantly plotting to conquer the human world?"
Following the formula of practically every fantasy work, wasn't the ultimate world-destroying boss always the Demon King?
"Of course not."
Nightmare sounded utterly certain, even faintly disdainful:
"In what remains of my memories, I can find no trace corresponding to this Demon King thou speakest of."
"Such a being may stir up trouble in your present age, but in the far older-and far more... dangerous-era when I was active, he would not even have ranked."
"What I speak of are those buried at the hearts of these five dungeons-the Outer Gods."
"Outer Gods?"
Greg mulled over this utterly unfamiliar term, his brows drawing tightly together.
He was one hundred percent certain that the concept of Outer Gods had never appeared in any of the text, dialogue, fragments of lore, or even hidden backstory of the original Do You Like a World Where Even Girls Can Have Fun Queuing Together?
This was a premise completely outside his knowledge of the game.
"I've never heard of any Outer Gods. Are you sure you aren't so old that you're remembering things wrong? Or did you just make this up to trick me into going on an adventure?"
After all, this goddess did not seem particularly reliable, and she already had a history of forcing a bond on him.
A note of genuine emotion and loneliness entered Nightmare's voice:
"To think that after such a long slumber and so much forgetting, the beings of this world have not even heard the name of the Outer Gods."
"Then I suppose no one now willingly explores, much less conquers, these five prisons that suppress calamity."
Greg nodded. "Dungeons are full of unknowns, after all. If I weren't trying to avoid a few flags, I wouldn't want to spend another second here either."
That was the prevailing attitude among players, and an accurate reflection of most adventurers in this world.
Dungeons were treasure troves of resources, but also tombs of death.
At his words, Nightmare seemed to sigh softly.
In a slightly puzzled tone, she said:
"How strange. I have observed that when you humans face the unknown sights beneath a beautiful female's skirt, you often display astonishing courage, wisdom, and yearning, undaunted by hardship, pressing onward one after another."
"Why, when the object becomes a dungeon, equally full of unknowns yet potentially holding the key to the world's survival, does only fear and retreat remain?"
Greg said, "How on earth did you connect those two things?"
Nightmare blinked her emerald eyes innocently, as though saying, Am I wrong?
Greg pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling that discussing this with a goddess whose mind worked in such peculiar ways would never end.
He decided to get the conversation back on track.
He picked up a few dry pieces of firewood and tossed them onto the campfire.
The flames surged higher with a whoosh, crackling more loudly and dispelling the cave's chill along with the oppressive weight of the darkness.
Greg brushed the ash from his hands, his tone turning firm again:
"Anyway, if you're looking for someone to conquer the Five Great Dungeons for you, you've got the wrong person. I'm not going to go looking for death."
He would only tackle a dungeon to stay alive. He would never set out to conquer one of his own accord.
The brutal difficulty of the Five Great Dungeons was universally acknowledged.
Although this black cat really was a goddess, Greg had no way to verify any of the endless stuff she had rattled off. None of those elements had ever been mentioned in the original game.
Besides, as long as he followed the original plot, wouldn't peace return to the world once Victoria defeated the Demon King?
Even if he conceded every point-even if there really were Outer Gods buried down there, and even if they really would awaken someday... when would that be?
A hundred years from now? A thousand?
By then, even his bones would have turned to dust. What the hell would it matter to him whether the world was destroyed?
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