Chapter 105

Chapter 105: Double Dungeon (4)

The tunnel—or burrow, I wasn't sure what to call it.

For a dungeon where everything was oversized, the entrance was surprisingly narrow. Barely wide enough for two or three people to squeeze through.

I suspected it might be a passage used by small insects like ants, but saying that aloud would send Do Yeonha into hysterics, so I kept it to myself.

Thankfully, the enormous mana emanating from inside had commandeered her attention, so she hadn't thought that far.

We agreed to retreat immediately if danger struck, and the party entered with me as the tank at the front.

Going deeper, the environment only got worse.

Dark mana, fetid air.

This was a space that immediately registered as somewhere an Evil God would dwell.

"Cough, cough! What on earth is in here?"

"Seriously. This place is absolute shit."

Do Yeonha in particular looked especially uncomfortable.

A priest who served a god naturally reacted poorly to demonic energy—the standard lore explanation at work.

I worried that having our strongest fighter struggle from the entrance onward would hamper the raid, but she assured me it was just a slightly scratchy throat and nothing wrong physically.

The tunnel I'd assumed was an ant burrow grew wider the deeper we went.

Eventually, it opened into a vast underground plaza.

"A door."

"Looks like we found the right place. Something's definitely in there."

The stone door had pillars flanking it, topped with torches.

And the Evil God's mana radiating blatantly from within.

It was obviously a boss room entrance.

Moreover, the door looked quite familiar.

Squiggly alien script etched into gray stone. It was unmistakably that door.

The moment I saw the familiar form, a landscape surfaced from memory.

How had I not realized sooner?

This entire dungeon was a place I'd already seen. A place I knew.

"Twilight's Rest!"

"Twi... what?"

I had no time to repeat it politely for Do Yeonha.

My heart hammered and my mind whirled, dredging up a chaotic flood of knowledge.

EX-rank dungeon—Twilight's Rest.

Along with the final boss's dungeon, it was the hidden boss's lair—a place even veterans dared not touch lightly.

It existed on an entirely different plane from the S-rank and SS-rank dungeons that had appeared on Earth so far.

Even Lie Xiao, even Edelin. If they came here, they'd die.

Not even a party of fully maxed Playable Characters could guarantee a clean victory.

The questions piling up had no answers.

First—how had the Evil Gods summoned this insane dungeon?

Evil Gods were near-absolute beings in this world, yes.

But "near" was the operative word—they were not truly absolute.

If Evil Gods could summon high-difficulty dungeons without restriction, they would have won long ago.

If they could use their full power, even a maxed Park Seohu or Seo Dayun would be helpless.

The setting the game had introduced to balance that was the Dimensional Restriction.

The Evil Gods' dimension was different from ours.

Cross-dimensional intervention came with staggering restrictions.

So the Evil Gods started by opening weak Gates, gradually assimilating their dimension with ours.

Centuries of effort had made dungeons, Gates, and monsters—things that shouldn't exist on Earth—seem natural, and that familiarity signaled dimensional assimilation.

By any logic, summoning Twilight's Rest at this point in time should have been impossible.

My existence as a variable might have accelerated the timeline somewhat, but this wasn't "somewhat"—this was absurd.

Why they'd specifically summoned Twilight's Rest was also a mystery.

It was certainly the game's strongest dungeon, but at this point in time, even the Evil Gods couldn't easily control such a place.

And yet—while this was Twilight's Rest, it was also far too alien to be Twilight's Rest.

What I mean is: the door and the dungeon's structure matched my memory exactly, but everything else was different.

The Twilight's Rest I knew was a far more barren, desolate place.

Like a future Earth—a dungeon befitting a world on the brink of annihilation.

And there'd certainly never been giant animals.

I'd traversed Twilight's Rest enough times to say that with absolute certainty.

Two pieces of evidence pointed to a single conclusion.

Whatever the future might hold, at least in the present, this place might not be the EX-rank nightmare I knew.

In the end, there was only one way to learn the truth.

See for myself.

I approached the door, and the stone slab violently repelled me with a forceful rejection.

I was flung clear across the cavern and slammed into the wall.

CRASH—!

The impact shook the entire cave.

The shockwave sent the bats clinging to the ceiling into a frenzy.

─SCREEEE!

"P-Professor! Are you okay?"

"Yes. No injuries."

Same reaction as in the game.

Those without qualification couldn't enter.

"I request the trial!"

Then I just needed to earn it.

At my shout, black fog began seeping from the door.

The startled party members fled to avoid the fog.

"Eeek! What is this?"

"R-run!"

It carried an ominous aura, but it was harmless to the body—I paid it little mind.

Shortly after, the black fog coalesced into a humanoid shape and greeted me.

─A challenger, after so long. Do you possess the qualifications?

"I do."

─Then I shall test you!

The hidden dungeon, Twilight's Rest.

Officially, its difficulty was rated equivalent to the final boss dungeon.

But that was just the game's classification—player perception told a different story.

The final dungeon was a grueling fifty-stage labyrinth, while Twilight's Rest had an extremely simple structure.

Only two stages.

Stage 1: from the entrance through the door trial.

Stage 2: the boss room.

Simple in structure, but its difficulty was light-years from simple.

A fifty-stage dungeon—the most complex in the entire game—and a dungeon with the simplest structure in the game, both rated the same difficulty.

What that meant was straightforward.

Twilight's Rest's boss was insanely, ludicrously hard.

That was why most veterans skipped it entirely and went straight to the final boss dungeon for the ending.

As a hidden dungeon, it wasn't mandatory for clearing the game.

In a permadeath game, with the ending within reach, very few would challenge an optional boss that was unfairly hard.

So the developers had also built in a gate to prevent casual entry.

That was the Gatekeeper's entire purpose.

─A strong challenger must also possess the wisdom to match! Can you answer my questions?

Wisdom.

To enter the boss room, you had to answer the Gatekeeper's quiz.

The quiz consisted of questions that only a player who'd played diligently could answer—essentially, trivia from side quests that only completionists would know.

"Fine."

─First question! Among the following, select the substance that cannot be used as a medium for illusion magic. Option 1: Sahal Powder. Option 2: Rahil's Orb. Option 3...

However, while that was the developers' intent, players didn't cooperate.

Side quests? Sure, cleared them all.

But how many people actually read every line of NPC dialogue—let alone remembered it?

So I didn't know the answers either.

"Sahal powder? Rahil... what?"

"What even is any of that?"

The party members were equally lost.

Those materials were probably things discovered as the story progressed—at this point in time, nobody would know they existed.

Which meant my current-world knowledge was equally useless here.

─Heh heh, it seems you lack the qualifications after all. Begone!

Not knowing was not knowing—but that didn't mean I couldn't answer correctly.

If it did, I could never have attempted this in the game either.

"The answer is 3."

─Wh-what?

The Gatekeeper's smug expression crumbled for the first time.

Surprise was written all over its face.

─A-AHAHA! The first question was merely a warm-up! Now it begins in earnest! Second question! Among the following, select the monster with a different attribute...

The Gatekeeper forced composure and lobbed the next question.

I let the content go in one ear and out the other.

I wouldn't understand it even if I listened.

"2."

─C-correct... next question...

The same pattern repeated.

The Gatekeeper posed questions; I called out numbers.

The secret was simple.

There existed a legend passed down since the dawn of this game.

The magic password to open the hidden dungeon's door: 32154 12534!

Every veteran gamer had it memorized.

After I rattled off all ten answers without hesitation, the Gatekeeper was drenched in cold sweat.

─C-correct.......

"Good. Now may I enter?"

─Y-yes, but... how do you know these things? You're a being from this dimension, are you not? Then you should have no way of knowing...

"Wasn't the purpose of the trial to identify the wise? Then just accept that I'm sufficiently wise. Why so many questions?"

─I-I just...

"Open the door."

─...Very well.

The Gatekeeper pushed the massive door by hand, and the grinding of stone filled the air.

The party members stared at me with sparkling eyes.

"Wow! How did you know all that?"

"I couldn't recognize a single question—my brain completely froze!"

I tapped my temple with feigned nonchalance and answered.

"It all comes from up here. I'm a professor—I've seen and learned a lot."

Ignoring the Gatekeeper still muttering 'that's impossible,' I stepped into the boss room.

Everything I'd seen of Twilight's Rest so far had been nothing like what I knew.

A dungeon brimming with life and active fauna was a far cry from the hellscape I remembered.

So I harbored a vague hope that the boss room would be different too.

That the game's ultimate hidden boss wouldn't be waiting here to kill us.

Considering the character of 'that one' who appeared here, the hope felt even more justified.

The boss room was empty.

Pitch darkness was all that filled the space—nothing but the floor beneath our feet.

The floor stretched in a straight line, as if saying 'walk forward.'

"Holy shit. Gives me the creeps."

"Isn't this insanely dangerous?"

"What if we get ambushed?"

The party members fretted needlessly as we pressed on.

Soon, we arrived at the boss room's innermost sanctum.

"O-over there!"

"A monster......!"

A colossal throne, and seated upon it, a giant.

Every time I'd met the giant here in the game, it had looked like staring at a madman—but this giant's eyes brimmed with lucidity.

As expected, it was different from the game.

When appearing as the hidden dungeon's boss before the player, it had been nothing but a deranged Evil God—but the Thanatos of right now was sane.

【Welcome, guests who have come to my temple.】

Evil God Thanatos.

The strongest Evil God—and the only Evil God who opposed the plan to conquer dimensions.

He had revealed himself before me.