So I can summon monsters.
I reached for the golden, gleaming words, [Dungeon Monsters].
Ding!
With a notification chime, a bluish UI panel popped up before the words.
[Summon Dungeon Monster]
◈ Slime Cleaner Lv. 1 [Energy: 50]
◈ Skeleton Worker Lv. 1 [Energy: 50]
◈ Gazer Watcher Lv. 1 [Energy: 50]
▶ Monster Encyclopedia
There were three types of monsters I could summon.
I inspected the Slime Cleaner first.
When I touched its name, a hologram of something shaped like a water droplet appeared before me, and writing began to form beside it.
[Slime Cleaner]
A janitor slime that absorbs trash from the dungeon floor.
◈ Level: 1
◈ Can swallow anything classified as trash on the floor.
Just as the description said, it seemed to be a cleaner.
Its trait was even called Cleaning, so it did not appear to be a monster with any connection to combat.
The second was the Skeleton Worker.
A skull appeared in the hologram: a squat, two-head-tall skeleton that looked as though it had been super-deformed, like Professor Luke.
The text beside it read as follows.
[Skeleton Worker]
A cheap skeleton laborer you can work without pay.
◈ Level: 1
◈ Does not have stamina.
◈ At its current level, it can only carry out simple commands.
This one looked more useful than the slime.
Judging by the hologram, I could not expect any combat power from it either, just like the slime.
Still, I liked that it had no stamina, as befitted an undead creature.
The phrase saying it could only carry out simple commands bothered me, but since it specified its current level, that presumably meant it would be able to follow more commands as its level rose.
The problem was...
That this thing was a skeleton.
There was the Holy Kingdom, after all...
It was an incredibly broad-minded place, one that even recognized black magic and necromancy as legitimate branches of magic.
Even so, there had only ever been one case in which the Holy Kingdom recognized the existence of naturally occurring undead.
That was how firmly the Holy Kingdom treated all naturally occurring undead as heretics, even if it acknowledged magically created undead.
Well, it did look different from an ordinary skeleton...
I would put off thinking about that for later.
The last one was the Gazer Watcher.
The hologram showed exactly what I had seen in the game: an eyeball with bat wings attached to its front and sides.
An exposed eyeball flapping bat wings as it flew through the air ought to have been unpleasant to look at.
But perhaps because something had been done to it, it had been super-deformed into a rather cute appearance.
[Gazer Watcher]
A Gazer, the dungeon’s CCTV.
◈ Level: 1
◈ Can share its field of vision.
This one seemed useful.
It did not look like it had any combat power either, just like the other two, but that was not what mattered.
What mattered was the line saying it could share its field of vision.
If that description was true, did that not mean I could use it for reconnaissance, like a drone?
The slime looked useless for now.
But the skeleton and the Gazer seemed usable.
The question was whether they were aggressive or not.
Still, they were only level 1 and did not seem dangerous, so I was not worried.
Then... what was this Monster Encyclopedia?
I next placed my finger on the words Monster Encyclopedia.
At that moment,
text began to appear beneath the words Monster Encyclopedia.
[Summon Dungeon Monster]
◈ Slime Cleaner Lv. 1 [Energy: 50]
◈ Skeleton Worker Lv. 1 [Energy: 50]
◈ Gazer Watcher Lv. 1 [Energy: 50]
▼ Monster Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia storing the dungeon monsters defeated so far.
◈ Goblin Lv. 5 [Energy: 100]
◈ Goblin Shaman Lv. 10 [Energy: 200]
•
•
•
The names of the monsters that continued to fill the list were all very familiar.
They were the names of monsters I had defeated so far.
Could it be that I could summon these monsters by using the dungeon’s energy?
I swallowed hard.
Then I looked at the very bottom of the list of monsters.
◈ the Body of the Lionheart Knight Lv. 54 [Energy: 1080]
I still remembered it.
"■■■■■■———!!!"
That lion-headed thing, roaring as it charged at me with an axe even after losing its left arm.
It had been the strongest monster I had fought in the dungeon.
Even now, unless I received the [Flower of Chivalry] buff, I could not confidently say I would defeat it.
Of course, it was naturally weaker than Arghalia, whom I had fought yesterday.
But that lion was like that in my memories.
I did not have nearly enough energy right now, but...
Could I really summon even something like that, so long as I had enough energy?
My eyes widened as I stared intently at its name.
This was incredible.
The Monster Encyclopedia contained the monsters I had defeated so far.
Which meant that the more monsters I defeated, the more would be stored here.
And if I had enough energy, I could summon any of those stored monsters.
But...
I gradually calmed my racing heart.
Because there was a catch.
Everything sounded great, but how was I supposed to explain monsters suddenly appearing in the dungeon to the club members?
This dungeon was not my private space alone. It was a space intended to be used as the Ancient Documents Club’s research room.
It was a place the club members used too, not somewhere only I could enter.
They came in the next day, and monsters had naturally spawned inside the dungeon?
The only ending I could imagine was, "Closed down the very next day!"
It was awkward to explain this, too.
After all, nobody else knew the status window existed.
And there was no guarantee the monsters would even listen to me.
The biggest issue was that I did not think I could summon the Body of the Lionheart Knight.
This was a monster whose very owner had requested its extermination, even at the cost of accepting penalties.
If I summoned it, I had no idea what other bullshit that peeping creep upstairs would put me through.
On top of that, since it could arguably be classified as undead, there was the headache of possible friction with the Holy Kingdom.
Was this not completely useless?
What was I supposed to do with this?
As I rested my chin on my hand and merely scanned the monsters’ names,
"Looks like something’s troubling you."
The shadow beneath my feet bubbled, and Kafka emerged from it with Niklas in her arms.
Looking into her narrow, slitted eyes, I nodded.
"Something troublesome came up."
"Something so troublesome that furniture moving on its own and being teleported into a dungeon do not even faze you?"
"Well, I suppose... so?"
She had been awfully observant.
Since she could not see the status window, it was not strange for her to think that way.
But...
Why was she trembling like that?
She stood there pretending to be perfectly calm, but her ears were pinned tightly back against her head, her once-swaying tail hung limply down, and the arms holding Niklas were trembling faintly.
Shadows covered her entire face, making her expression subtly stiff.
And most decisively,
[Kafka]
◈ Level: 44
◈ The target is currently afraid.
[Insight Eye] had exposed that she was scared.
It was certain.
She was definitely afraid of something.
"Why are you shaking?"
"W-what? I’m not scared?!"
I had not said a single word about being scared...
What was she afraid of?
As my eyes narrowed at Kafka,
"Hic!"
She suddenly hiccuped.
"I-Ian, aren’t you... scared?"
Trailing off, she slowly parted her tightly closed lips and spoke in a small voice.
"Of what?"
"B-but..."
Kafka slowly approached me with an expression as though she would burst into tears if I so much as touched her.
What was wrong with her all of a sudden?
"The desk moved."
Excuse me?
"I’m telling you, the chair moved by itself! There’s definitely something in this clubroom..."
Her voice dwindled away, and I felt slightly dazed.
So this was what she had seen and gotten scared over.
She had been frightened by the chair and desk suddenly moving on their own.
"So you mean the desk and chair moved by themselves?"
"That’s what I’m saying...! You saw it too! There was nobody there, but they suddenly moved on their own! Then the moment I blinked, we were transported into the dungeon!"
"Are you afraid of ghosts?"
"N-no?! I only came out because I was worried about you..."
That explained it.
I had wondered why she had not reacted from the shadows at all when the desk and chair suddenly moved.
How absurd.
This was a world where undead existed, and even Specters, a type of ghost monster.
Besides, Kafka had been unfazed by Professor Luke, a skeleton, and there had even been a time when she was roommates with that lion, which could be called undead.
"Can’t we leave now...?"
Kafka loosened the arms that had been holding Niklas and began wrapping them around my arm instead.
Seeing my unimpressed expression, she looked even more anxious and wrapped her tail around my leg.
Niklas climbed onto Kafka’s shoulder and rubbed against her cheek as if telling her to calm down, but her anxiety did not seem to subside at all. She looked as though she might cry at any moment.
Niklas had definitely only been born yesterday.
It felt as though their ages had been switched.
Looking at Kafka’s face, I figured that if I left her like this, a real disaster would occur and she would actually start crying.
Even so, she had stubbornly refused to flee into the shadows and had remained outside.
She must have been that worried about leaving me alone in a place with ghosts.
How admirable.
"If you’re scared, go into the shadows..."
"The shadows are scary because they’re so dark. What if a ghost suddenly jumps out at me from inside them...?"
Give my heartfelt feelings back, you bitch.
I sighed and looked at the status window.
I should summon a monster, both to change the atmosphere and to show her the problem.
I had originally intended to summon a skeleton or a Gazer, but Kafka really looked as though she would die of a heart attack if I did that.
So the monster I intended to summon was a slime.
"Ian, over there!"
Where Kafka pointed was the dungeon core.
Blue light began to flash from the core.
The dungeon core was making an enormous fuss just to summon one slime.
As the blue light continued to flash, I could feel Kafka’s arms tighten around mine as she stared at it.
I yawned in boredom as I watched the dungeon core make such a ridiculous spectacle of itself.
Boing!
Something sprang out of it with that sound.
Splat!
Just like Niklas had, it slammed straight into my face.
Fuck.
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