novelShaman Ko and the Dungeon Mole, Part I
| ← Ch.182 | Ch.184 → |
Translator: HunterW
Editor: RED
Shaman Ko and the Dungeon Mole stared dumbly at each other for a while, but it was the Dungeon Mole who made the first move.
-There's a lot of tasty-looking stuff here. - The mole ignored the Shaman Ko on the ground and walked around, licking here and there.
"Don't eat it! It's mine!" Shaman Ko yelled when the strange newcomer began to eat its food. This was Shaman Ko's domain, which it had created for itself and itself only. Shaman Ko was also selfish. It was the epitome of greed. It screamed and screamed at the mole even though its body was in tatters and dying. The mole ignored Shaman Ko, however, and continued to eat the food on the floor.
Shaman Ko started to twitch. Shaman Ko was dying just a little while ago. Its body was so damaged that it couldn't possibly move, but Shaman Ko floundered and used its chin to drag its body over to the mole.
Shaman Ko wanted to eat the mole for eating its food. All of the anger and frustration it felt from losing both its arms were gone and replaced with a single determination to stop the mole from eating all of his food. Shaman Ko crawled like a worm over to the mole and bit the animal's behind. The mole was too distracted by all of the treats around it to notice Shaman Ko and get away.
Once the mole was in Shaman Ko's mouth, Shaman Ko bit down hard. It was fully intent on ripping the mole in half.
"Hehe." Shaman Ko laughed as it felt the mole struggle to get out from inside its mouth. It would punish the little rat for coming to its home and eating its food without permission. Then, as it continued to bite down hard, it fell hard on its face.
The only sound that could be heard was its snoring. It had exhausted itself from stopping the mole when by all rights, it should have been impossible for Shaman Ko to even move an inch. Once it stopped the mole from eating its food, Shaman Ko fell asleep.
Shaman Ko's body had stopped dying as well once it had forgotten about its anger over losing its arms. Shaman Ko could not recover what it lost, but no matter how much it hurt its body, its wounds would heal. That was the power of Shaman Ko, the entity that stole Equality and devoured Predation.
-I want more sweets. - The mole crawled back out of Shaman Ko's mouth as if nothing had happened and scampered back to the food on the floor.
——
"Holy crap." I had no idea I could actually eat the Dungeon Mole. As small and cute-looking as it was, it was still a monster. Then again, if eating would have killed it in the first place, I would have done so sooner.
"But... what will happen to me now?" I had just force-swallowed a Dungeon Mole that could not die. It was probably sitting in my stomach right now, still alive. Monsters disappeared when they died and only left behind items and golden rings, just like a video game. As such, there was never a reason for anyone to try eating monsters. Only the Predator Duke was exempt from this case.
"And no matter how many times I think about it, I'm not a special case like that." I had never heard about or experienced anyone eating a monster in the past.
"Will I die?" Dying wasn't really a problem. I had more than forty penalty restoration gems in my inventory. I also had the Bracelet of Eternal Fire to save me one life. If I died more than forty times here, I could also buy more. I had more than enough money to buy as many as I needed, and I even had a couple of large guilds that would be more than enough willing to give me some.
"Right. Dying isn't the problem here." I was probably going to die in some weird fashion. I had swallowed a monster whole after all. But that worry quickly disappeared.
"There's an even bigger problem in front of me, " I said as I sat back down on the floor. I hated the fact that I couldn't do anything to fix Shaman Ko's Roulette Wheel. Losing Shaman Ko wasn't going to be something I could easily brush off.
—
"Huh?" Shaman Ko woke back up and looked around its domain, and not at its body. Before it had fallen asleep, it remembered that when it bit down on the soft and squishy mole, it felt as if it were chewing on a rock. Shaman Ko quickly confirmed its suspicions when it saw the mole still alive.
"No! You damned rat!" The mole was again licking at the food on the ground. Shaman Ko wriggled to get back on its feet and charged at the Dungeon Mole, headbutting it. The force of the attack threw the mole ten meters away, but the mole wasn't fazed.
-There are so many tasty things here. Is this heaven?- The mole slowly continued along, eating the food. No, it only seemed slow to Shaman Ko, but this was as fast as the mole could move.
Shaman Ko got back up and headbutted the mole repeatedly, but the result was the same.
"Hehe." Shaman Ko was having fun. Every time Shaman Ko headbutted or kicked the mole, it would go flying a few meters and get back up to move again. It was the perfect toy, even though Shaman Ko didn't like how it kept going around eating its food.
"Stop eating, you pig!" After kicking the mole around a few more times, Shaman Ko got on its belly and drank from its water bowl. Then, it used its thighs to trap the mole and prevent it from moving. It held it there for hours before letting it go and kicking it around some more. It repeated that again and again for the next couple of days.
-Let me go. Let me go. -
Kyuu! Kyuu!
"No. You keep taking my stuff and I can't do anything else to you, since you can't die." Shaman Ko didn't have time to be angry over its lost arms anymore. It was too busy trying to figure out how to eat the mole. Shaman Ko hadn't realized that, however. Shaman Ko was so selfish that what he was doing was more of an instinctual response.
During this whole time, Shaman Ko's body had just about fully recovered, although it didn't seem like it would regrow its arms ever.
——
Two months after Lee Jiwon was imprisoned by the Dungeon Creator at the now-abandoned Makarov town of Sakhalin Island, Russia...
"It's done!" Kazunari shouted out as a dungeon he had been painstakingly molding was finally completed. This project had taken him a year and a half.
This dungeon wasn't completely finished, to be exact. The physical parts of the dungeon were completed, but Kazunari couldn't flesh out the dungeon's functions quite yet. He still needed one thing to be done that only the Dungeon Mole could do.
"Damn it. Why now of all times?" The Dungeon Mole that was with him at all times was instead being used to hold Lee Jiwon imprisoned right now.
"Check Dungeon Mole's Status." Kazunari checked on his mole's status daily and today was no different.
==[Unable to check Dungeon Mole's status. ]==
"Huh?" The Dungeon Mole was all Kazunari had. He needed the Dungeon Mole in order to completely finish his dungeons. That was why he constantly checked up on it at least ten times a day; to make sure it was alright. As the weeks passed, Kazunari grew relieved and positive that nothing would happen to it and that not even Lee Jiwon would ever be able to do anything to it.
"What the hell is this? Check Dungeon Status!"
==[Unable to check Dungeon Mole's status. ]==
"Summon: Dungeon Mole!"
=[Unable to Summon Dungeon Mole. ]==
"..." Kazunari was beginning to break out in a cold sweat. This had never happened before. Kazunari could always check on his Dungeon Mole, and always Summon it. The Dungeon Mole was practically a part of him. These messages told Kazurari that something had gone terribly wrong.
"Shit!" Kazunari got up and left to head for Benten-jima. To him, the life of his Dungeon Mole was much more valuable than stopping Lee Jiwon's unnatural growth. All this would have been for naught if Kazunari lost a key part of his abilities.
"Lee Jiwon, you son of a bitch! What did you do!?" Kazunari headed to Benten-jima as fast as possible. Only two months had passed. He had promised Cheng Long and Okamoto, who had invested heavily into this, at least one year, but that didn't matter right now. The Dungeon Mole was far more important right now. Losing it meant the end of him, as well!
——
Benten-jima...
Kazunari stood outside the only dungeon entrance."Shit." As soon as he arrived, Kazunari realized that he couldn't open it without the Dungeon Mole. He had forgotten, as it had gone everywhere with him.
"No...it can't be, can it?" He had no idea what was wrong, but for his sake, it could not be anything serious. If it wasn't for Lee Jiwon, Kazunari wouldn't be this nervous about not being able to contact his Dungeon Mole.
This was Lee Jiwon, after all; the man infamous for being able to make the impossible possible. Kazunari stared at the dungeon gate for a while, filled with anxiety and fear.
——
A little more than two months had passed since I was thrown in here.
"Is this a blessing in disguise?"
==[Shaman Ko's Selfish Prick Roulette Wheel will now spin. ]==
I had been paying careful attention to it and was able to notice recently that the almost broken wheel was beginning to fix itself. Many of the cracks had miraculously sealed themselves, but I had no idea why. I hadn't done anything to it.
"Well, that's not completely true, is it?" The only special thing I had done was swallow the mole whole. I hadn't even thought that eating the mole was going to repair the wheel. I just did it because I was mad.
"I have no idea where that little thing went, either." I knew for a fact that it was no longer in my stomach. If it was, then I would have died a pretty embarrassing death by now. And yet, nothing really happened for two weeks now.
"Did Shaman Ko eat it?" That was entirely possible, but either way, I now had two problems to face. One was that the dungeon still wasn't cleared yet. The other was...
==[You are unable to leave the boss room. ]==
"Ha..." Now I couldn't leave the boss room, just like how the mole couldn't. That meant it was still somewhere in my body.
"Man, things are getting weird." Coming back to the past was the only other event that could top this.
"It's a good thing I have plenty of Bread and Drink." I had contemplated committing suicide after I had eaten the Dungeon Mole. A single death penalty wasn't a big deal for me. However, I decided to keep going when I noticed the next day that the wheel hadn't broken yet, and then it started to slowly repair itself the following days.
"Huh... should I foster a normal mole when I get out of here, or something?" To me, it was all thanks to the Dungeon Mole that the Roulette Wheel was beginning to repair itself. All of my fear and uneasiness had disappeared now so I wanted to thank it, kind of. I smiled as today's wheel landed on 3 once again.
| ← Ch. 182 | Ch. 184 → |