Even in This Dungeon, I Still Want to Stay
No matter how comfortably we live here, this place is a dungeon. Full of monsters, a place where humans should never be. Yet here I was, thinking of staying like this forever, surrendering to my monstrous self.
As I snapped back to my senses, memories of those I had forgotten long ago surfaced. Reina, Cynthia, the other purifiers who had followed me, and the growing circle around us. How had I forgotten it all?
Even if there was no way out, I should not have given up. Why had I assumed it was perfectly natural to live here for the rest of my life?
“Irene?”
Michael noticed the change in me immediately. The beast-like rigidity I had felt earlier had faded.
“Are you all right? You suddenly… why…?”
I was still stiff below, yet he paid no mind to such carnal urges and simply checked on me.
“Michael, why are we not even thinking of leaving this place?”
“…”
“I clearly went looking around and told you stories about old records, but when did…?”
I expected Michael to share my shock at our own change, but his reaction was different.
“Is it not right to be here?”
“…Irene?”
“Why do you want to leave this place?”
I found myself at a loss for words. It was only natural for everyone to want to return to where they had lived. But how was I supposed to explain that natural feeling?
“It’s because all my friends are out there, and that is where we originally lived in this world…”
I had barely explained when I changed tactics and asked him.
“Don’t you want to go back, Michael?”
I knew he would say he did. Instead he answered simply,
“There is no reason to.”
“What?”
“All that matters to me is here. So I have no need to return. But…”
He gently wiped away the traces of our passion as he spoke.
“If you wish to go back, I will follow you at once.”
The moment his words left him, the dungeon began to tremble as if in response.
“Irene!”
Reina rushed over the moment she saw me, tears streaming as she pulled me into her arms.
“Irene, are you all right?”
Not only Reina— Cynthia was crying as she hugged me too.
“How many months did you suffer inside that dungeon! Really, truly, we were so happy to see you again!”
Her fierce emotion made me feel a little embarrassed. I had not suffered much. I had run like a madwoman after the initial massacre in the raid and taken a monster’s attack just before escaping. But after that, with Michael by my side, there had been nothing worth calling suffering until we left. The hardest part had been spending hours lying with him in slow, deep intimacy.
‘Thinking about it…’
I touched my exposed neck. Hours before we exited the dungeon we had been entangled. Every time, Michael had left marks—hickeys and bruises all over me like proof.
“Why? Did you get hurt somewhere?”
As I panicked and touched my neck, Reina yanked my hand away.
“No, this is…”
I was still stunned, trying to explain the bite marks, when Reina tilted her head.
“I don’t see anything. Does it hurt inside your skin?”
“Eh…?”
That could not be. The marks had been clearly visible in the water. I had even rubbed one while worrying about how red Michael’s face looked right before we left the dungeon. Yet nothing showed.
I checked my neck in the nearby glass window. The marks were not sharp, but I really saw none at all—not even the others on my body.
‘How?’
I had not applied any ointment. Even if I had, such marks would not vanish in mere hours. What I remembered was that before leaving the dungeon Michael had rubbed the spots that still carried traces. But he could not possibly have power to heal wounds like that.
‘While leaving the dungeon, did some unknown power act on us?’
Either way, it was fortunate that the embarrassing marks were hidden from others.
“There is truly no injury. Everyone, calm down.”
“How can we calm down! We only just got back after a month!”
“A month?”
I tried to count the time I had spent inside. Even if generous, it had been no more than a week. Yet outside a month had passed.
‘Now that I think about it, time inside that dungeon flowed differently.’
We had spent mere hours there, while the princess’s group had endured far longer. That was why we did not rush to eat the moment we met.
I shuddered. Time had flowed differently, yet not by too much—this was fortunate. If hundreds of years had passed and all my acquaintances were gone…
As I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms, Cynthia, who had finally stopped crying, asked.
“Then how did you come out? What happened inside? The outside was chaos. A distortion dungeon suddenly appeared right in front of the fortress and the two of you fell from mid-air.”
“I… don’t know either.”
The instant Michael said he would follow my wish to return, the dungeon shook violently.
Panicking, we hurriedly dressed and fled toward the lake shore along the path.
While the two of us lingered by the lakeside and among the trees, the dungeon had already changed shape.
‘Moreover, strangely, the monsters had not chased us.’
Monsters in dungeons always attacked humans on sight. Yet while we ran toward the entrance they had come from, the creatures we met paid us no mind at all, as if they could not see us.
The path was led by Michael. He held my hand with surprising familiarity, even though it was the first time he had seen this route.
And indeed, at the end of the path he led us to was a collapsed entrance. Just before we stepped through, I had hesitated.
Like all dungeons, the distortion dungeon wandered between dimensions. If we returned to a world that was not our own, what then?
As I hesitated, Michael pulled my hand and said,
“It will be fine. Everything will turn out as you wish.”
His words had barely left him when we passed the dungeon entrance. A brief falling sensation followed, and when I opened my eyes I was in Michael’s arms.
Looking up, I saw the familiar sight of the fortress.
Naturally, our return became the biggest topic of conversation at the fortress. After the Unlabeled Healing and the Transparent Purification Ring, this was another miracle: people who had disappeared inside the distortion dungeon had come back alive.
Scholars and fortress staff alike could not hide their excitement. Normally they would have dragged me in for hours to recount every detail.
“Michael does everything for me, so I have nothing to do.”
Reina burst out laughing at my words.
“That’s good, isn’t it? Michael-ssi takes care of everything troublesome. Irene, just relax and rest.”
“Still… he’s out there all day while I stay comfortably here. Is that allowed?”
After returning to the room, Michael urged me to rest in the room for now.
His voice dropped to a whisper only I could hear.
“I held you for so long… you must have been exhausted. Rest well.”
His hand roamed over my belly.
“I don’t want to forget you completely, so please wait for me sometimes.”
Why did those words, more intimate than crude talk, make me feel even more embarrassed?
I fanned my flushed face with my hand.
At that moment Cynthia remembered something and said,
“By the way, did you hear about Princess Cecilia?”