Out of the Belly of the Beast

The hand groped this way and that, as if desperate to claw its way out, searching for something to push against. Watching it, Ezra came to his senses and drew close to the hole.

"Step back. I'll cut the opening wider for you."

Drawing the small dagger at his waist, Ezra drove it into the hole just below and slowly carved upward. True to its nature as a monster, the creature's hide was tough, and cutting through was no easy task.

He could have heightened his blade with aura, but the person inside might have been hurt in the process.

Gritting his teeth, Ezra had no choice but to widen the hole with nothing but his own raw strength.

At last, when he had torn it completely open, the person inside crawled out through the gap.

The woman soaked head to toe in sticky slime was Daisy.

"Why are you coming out of there?"

Daisy tilted her head up to look at Ezra and let out a sigh. Relief at being alive warred with a creeping disgust that her rescuer turned out to be Ezra.

"I was dragged in here too, you know."

"So you really were. I suppose neither of us expected to take a tour of a monster's stomach today."

"Please stop talking. I don't feel great about it either."

Ezra could see that Daisy was in bad shape. Her hands and stomach looked scalded, as if by acid, and a shard of a broken potion vial was still clutched in her fingers.

Looking at her hands, a mangled mess of burns and blood, Ezra exhaled shortly. Had he not seen it, he would have ignored it—but now that he had, he couldn't very well look away.

He rummaged through his subspace pocket and fished out a few healing potions. Watching him do it, Daisy went blank for a moment as a similar scene from her past life surfaced in her memory.

"If you're going into a dungeon, why didn't you take the potions out in advance?"

He raised an eyebrow and said, "Fighting with potions jangling all over your belt isn't stylish."

"Ha."

At that absurd answer, a hollow laugh escaped Daisy.

Ignoring her reaction, Ezra crouched down in front of her and began carefully extracting the glass embedded in her hands. Even the tiniest slivers had to come out—flesh that regenerated around embedded glass would be a genuine headache later.

"Honestly. You're a high-maintenance stalker of a lady."

He uncapped a canteen and poured water over the smaller cuts, rinsing them clean.

"Ow."

Daisy flinched her hand back at the sharp sting, instinct driving her, but Ezra remained unmoved.

"Hold it flat. If the flesh regenerates with glass still in it, that's far worse."

"Could you at least be gentle about it?"

"For a woman who's been trailing at my heels, this is downright courteous."

His words left her speechless, and fury boiled up inside her. Who would chase after him because they wanted to?

But she knew exactly how that protest would land: he wouldn't believe a word of her explanation, and she'd just get written off as a lunatic.

When Daisy went quiet, Ezra gave a small, satisfied smile. He used up an entire canteen washing her hands, and finally poured the potion over them.

Watching her hands return at last to their original porcelain smoothness, Ezra rose from his crouch in relief.

"Let's go."

"Ah—yes."

Daisy nodded and finally got to her feet.

Only to collapse right back down. With a soft, crumbly fwp fwp, the clothes draped over her body rotted away and fell entirely to pieces.

"KYAAAAAH!"

Daisy's scream rang through the empty chamber of the monster's lair.

Daisy was certain this life was the worst regression she'd ever endured.

"Here. Put this on."

Ezra stripped off his outer coat, doing his utmost not to look in her direction, and held it out to her.

"Th-thank you."

Taking the coat from his hand, Daisy felt tears spring unbidden to her eyes at the utter wreckage of her situation.

"Turn around and keep looking that way. Do not look over here until I say so."

"Hah. As if there's anything worth looking at."

Ezra snapped the reply, sounding wounded in his pride. He honestly didn't know what she took him for. Among all the people who had thrown themselves at his beauty, more than a few had resorted to outright physical assault.

And yet Ezra's mind kept unhelpfully summoning the glimpse he'd caught of Daisy's body. He'd whipped his gaze away in shock, but the things the ruined clothes had betrayed—assets far more generous than her loose garments had let on, a slender waist, flawless porcelain skin—had left a rather deep impression…

"Hmph."

Ezra shook his head and drove the vulgar thoughts from his mind.

Sniffling, Daisy pulled his oversized coat tightly around herself. Thank goodness he was taller and broader than she was—otherwise it wouldn't have covered her at all.

"Count yourself lucky I'm the only one who saw."

"That's exactly what makes it worse."

Daisy muttered in a sullen voice. Ezra couldn't make sense of her answer at all. Hadn't she watched him and followed him around every day because she adored him?

The countless people who coveted his beauty had all schemed by any means to climb on top of him. It was hardly rare for someone to show up already naked and throw themselves at him, so her state hadn't particularly shocked him. She'd clearly been trying to get close to him, hadn't she? A little skin was nothing, he'd figured.

What actually flustered him was that she had collapsed to the floor sobbing in shame.

"Getting out of here comes first. The dungeon's master is dead, so it'll start collapsing before long."

Daisy gave a silent nod. But she made it barely a few steps before crumpling to the ground again.

"What's wrong?"

Ezra, who had been walking ahead, turned back. She held her silence, biting her lip, before finally opening her mouth.

"My feet hurt."

Ezra's gaze fell on her small, pale feet. The monster's digestive fluid had been merciless, dissolving even her sturdy boots.

Trying to cross this rough terrain on soft, bare soles, of course she couldn't stay upright.

"Honestly."

Ezra understood her situation perfectly well; he simply found it an enormous nuisance. Daisy, equally aware that she now had no choice but to lean on him, forced herself up and managed another few steps.

The sight of it irritated him further, so Ezra strode over, swept her up into his arms.

"H-hey, put me down! I can walk on my own!"

"At that pace, you'd be buried alive when the dungeon comes down. So."

Clicking his tongue lightly, he started back along the path he had carved, Daisy bundled in his arms.

Perhaps because of her small frame, she weighed almost nothing. Thanks to that, he nearly flew back up the route he'd descended—while Daisy, terrified by his speed, clung to his clothes all the harder.

Feeling the desperate grip she had on him, Ezra let out a short laugh.

He truly could not figure this woman out. She'd chased him half to death, then turned around and guarded herself against him at the first turn, and now she was clinging to him as desperately as if letting go meant dying.

'They do say the human heart is impossible to know.'

He couldn't fathom what went on inside that little head of hers.

Daisy, clutching Ezra for all she was worth, sensed that something was off. The dungeon should have been showing the first tremors of collapse by now, yet it looked far too solid.

Unease loosened her tongue.

"Your Highness, why isn't the dungeon showing any sign of falling apart?"

At her question, Ezra came to a stop. It was strange, undeniably so. Daisy had devoured every book on dungeons across her countless regressions—she'd even imported tomes from continents across the sea.

She could say with confidence that no one alive knew more about dungeons than she did. Recalling one of those many volumes, she voiced her hypothesis.

"It's an insect-type monster. If there's a clutch of eggs somewhere—"

Ezra squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn't thought of that.

"We'll have to go back and check. You wait here, and—"

He couldn't leave the Grand Duke alone; he might fly into a rampage the moment no one was watching. The regression had already shifted so far off its rails that nothing could be trusted anymore.

"I'm coming with you. I don't want to be alone."

At Daisy's words, Ezra reluctantly nodded. In her current state, running into a surviving monster could cost her her life.

And so the two of them had no choice but to return to the master's chamber.

Back in the chamber, the two searched every corner for anything resembling an egg.

After a long, careful examination, Daisy noticed that the wall she'd been tapping was a false wall woven from spider silk—and that the sound behind it was hollow.

"Your Highness, over here!"

At her call, Ezra hurried over and split the surface open in a single stroke, following where her finger pointed.

With a cracking sound, the seam parted—and beyond it lay a number of eggs beyond all imagination. Both Daisy and Ezra went speechless at the sight.

When Daisy pictured what would happen if those eggs hatched, terror wracked her body.

"How are we supposed to destroy all of these at once?"

Smashing them one by one would take far too long. And if they brought people in from outside, who knew whether the eggs would start hatching before anyone could contain it. Ezra clicked his tongue in resignation.

He glanced sideways at Daisy and spoke.

"Never breathe a word of what happens here to anyone outside. If even a rumor gets out, I'll kill you myself."

At the lethal edge in his voice, Daisy shuddered—and then it struck her that this might be the very reason he had gone berserk.

At last, she had closed in on the cause!

Utterly unaware of her thoughts, Ezra simply assumed she was cowering before his killing intent.

He dropped his sword, spread both arms wide, and closed his eyes. At once, an enormous magic circle rose into the air before him, hovering over the floor where the eggs lay.

This time, Daisy was truly afraid.

Blind to her half-lucid state, Ezra stayed focused on condensing his mana. The vast torrent of power gathered above the magic circle, then erupted into a ferocious blaze.

"Magic…"

Daisy murmured under her breath. The mages of the present age were not true mages. The mages of antiquity had wielded the power of the elements themselves.

Over the long centuries, that magic had been stripped down for practical use, leaving only the school of manipulation—artifice that moved and reshaped other objects.

And yet here was Ezra, casting true magic.

Daisy had already suspected that magic lay behind the reason he'd gone mad.

Even as the thought formed, Ezra's incantation ended, and in an instant the eggs were swallowed by the flames.

As the foul stench of burning life washed over her, Daisy finally understood why Ezra had been so insufferably confident.

This man was no ordinary human.

In that moment, Daisy turned her head toward the source of that otherworldly power she had felt just before his rampage began.

Her eyes met the Grand Duke's vivid yellow ones.

And in that instant, the window she had been waiting for so long finally materialized before her.

The window, which should have glowed a calm blue if things were merely routine, had turned an alarming shade of red. The danger was real.