Translator: HunterW
Editor: RED
The Dungeon Mole was a precious and valuable thing as only one existed in the world, just as only one Dungeon Creator existed.
The Dungeon Mole’s role was quite simple; it existed to breathe life into the dungeons the Dungeon Creator created. How? By digging like any other mole. The Dungeon Mole dug out the tunnels and chambers of a dungeon, and connected it to a real dungeon. It didn’t exactly dig through the earth. It wasn’t like it had the stamina or the strength to actually do that. What it really did was create a false space beneath the earth and connect it with the outside world, which would then allow Kazunari to flesh out the insides however he wanted. The tunnel it dug to connect the created dungeon with a real dungeon would also serve as a conduit that transferred energy from the real dungeon to the created one. That was all there was to it.
Just like that, Kazunari could create dungeons that were as close to the real thing as possible. Then again, when real dungeons lost their energy, the items and golden rings the monsters drop decreased as well. However, these created dungeons were around 10%-20% the size of a low-grade dungeon. If they were connected to a high-grade dungeon, no one would ever notice anything was wrong. It would be like taking a couple of buckets of water from a lake.
The dungeon Kazunari had just created was 20% as big as a low-grade dungeon and had taken him a year and a half to make. That was enough for about a thousand people to easily hunt in. The dungeons Kazunari created in Japan were mostly connected to the high-grade dungeon on Mt. Fuji, since it was the biggest dungeon in Japan. Connecting his dungeons to a high-grade dungeon also meant that his dungeons could actually become as strong as a high-grade dungeon. They just didn’t have elite monsters or boss monsters.
Also, since his dungeons were smaller, they were also much safer. There was never a chance the monsters could ever overrun the hunters inside. Furthermore, Kazunari could use his skill, Grant Dungeon Traits, which was a type of blessing that raised either EXP or the amount of monsters in the dungeons.
If creating dungeons was all he could do, Kazunari wouldn’t be going around creating as many dungeons as he could. Every time he created one, he received a large amount of EXP and bonus Stat points. The bonuses he got were actually more than from hunting for the same amount of time. He would also sell these dungeons to large guilds to fund himself and create more dungeons by using their high-grade dungeons.
All of this was why the Dungeon Mole was such an important entity to Kazunari. Without the Dungeon Mole, all of Kazunari’s skills were pretty much worthless. No matter how many he made, they would always be sealed off and powerless. That was why Kazunari spoiled it so much, feeding it thirty banana candies a day.
But now, that Dungeon Mole was suffering from a long stretch of torture after being spoiled for too long.
——
-Let me go! I said, let me go!-
-Kyuu! Kyuu!-
“No! I’ve got you now, you little thief!” Shaman Ko said to the mole it had between its thighs. If it took its eyes off the mole for even a second, it lost another piece of food to the mole.
Shaman Ko had tried many times to kill the mole to punish it for stealing what belonged to Shaman Ko, but it failed each time. No matter what it tried, it just couldn’t kill the mole. Eventually, Shaman Ko began to warm up to it when its attempts to kill it turned into playing around with it. Of course, none of this was play to the mole. Either way, the more Shaman Ko warmed up to the mole, the more Shaman Ko bothered it.
But at the same time, Shaman Ko didn’t stop trying to figure out how to kill the mole. It stole its food and Shaman Ko had to properly punish it for its sins.
Shaman Ko kicked the mole across the space like a soccer ball.
-Leave me alone!-
-Kyuu! Kyuu!-
“No!”
—
About a month after the Dungeon Mole ended up in Shaman Ko’s domain…
The Dungeon Mole couldn’t take it anymore. Shaman Ko was just bothering it way too much. It decided to search for a way to get rid of that annoying thing so that it could go back to eating the sweet and tasty food all around.
It didn’t take long for the mole to notice a stupid habit Shaman Ko would occasionally make. Shaman Ko would sometimes fall over on its face, just like now. It was moving around as if it still had its arms, but since it didn’t, it obviously lost its balance and fell over. Every time it fell over, it would remain focused on the mole, in case the mole went back to eating during that time.
The mole remembered how Shaman Ko looked when they first met. Shaman Ko was a bloody pulp without arms and the mole had thought that it didn’t have arms in first place. But recently, the mole realized that Shaman Ko had lost its arms and wasn’t adapting well.
-Is it that angry because it lost its arms?-
That was what the mole thought. There just wasn’t any other explanation for its temper. The mole stared at Shaman Ko. The mole’s ability was to breathe life into created dungeons. That was a figure of speech, but it basically dug through space. It couldn’t dig through real earth, but it could dig through false spaces, like the spaces around real dungeons. It was difficult to do, but it was possible to break through spaces that weren’t around dungeons as long as it could see it.
The Dungeon Mole realized that the space of Shaman Ko’s space was similar to dungeon space and was able to see that Shaman Ko’s arms still existed inside Shaman Ko.
-Did it eat its arms because it didn’t have anything else to eat? But there are so many things to eat here. It’s weird as it looks.-
At that moment, Shaman Ko kicked the mole again, sending it flying. “You were trying to steal more food without me knowing, weren’t you?”
-Kyuu! Kyuu!-
As the mole flew around, it began to think that it might just have to just extract those arms. Doing so might just calm Shaman Ko down and it might let the mole eat the food as thanks.
—
The next day…
When Shaman Ko fell asleep with the mole between its thighs, the mole began to get to work to connect this space with Shaman Ko’s insides. It failed that day, however, and continued to fail each day after that. It was to be expected, as this space was different from dungeon space, but the mole kept trying. By this point, the mole was pretty fed up with being stuck here with Shaman Ko.
On the seventh day, the mole succeeded.
Shaman Ko was still asleep. The Dungeon Mole carefully watched the tunnel it made as the arms inside Shaman Ko floated out of the tunnel as if they were being pulled by magnets. In less than five minutes, Shaman Ko’s arms had reattached themselves to Shaman Ko’s body, as if they were there all along.
The Dungeon Mole chattered with excitement. It could only attempt to open a tunnel once a day and it finally succeeded after seven tries. The Dungeon Mole closed the tunnel and drooped its head between Shaman Ko’s thighs, exhausted. It didn’t even notice the large black spot that had formed on one of Shaman Ko’s hands.
—
The next day…
The first thing Shaman Ko checked on when it awoke was the Dungeon Mole, in case it slipped away and was eating its food again. Once it saw that the mole was still asleep between its thighs, Shaman Ko tossed it aside and started to pick up the food around it and ate. When it was done, it decided to play by itself by swinging around in the trees it had made in its domain. All the while, Shaman Ko stole glances at the Dungeon Mole, but the mole hadn’t moved from its spot.
Shaman Ko went over to the mole and kicked it like it had before. It should have gotten back up like nothing had happened and went around scavenging for food but again, it remained still. Shaman Ko didn’t like this one bit and went over to the Dungeon Mole and picked it up.
It was then Shaman Ko finally realized it had its arms back. It couldn’t believe it took this long to realize its arms had returned, even after it had used its arms to eat and play. This was Shaman Ko’s domain. Even while it slept, Shaman Ko knew what happened in its domain. It looked through the domain’s memories and learned what had happened.
Shaman Ko picked the mole up and started to cry. It believed that the mole was dead it just wasn’t moving at all. Shaman Ko carefully picked up a piece of food on the floor and brought it to the mole’s mouth. It had never shared its food before, but it felt sorry for not letting it all this time.
But when it did, Shaman Ko noticed the mole start licking the piece of food with its eyes still closed.
Shaman Ko began to laugh even as tears dripped down its face. “You’re mine now!” Shaman Ko carefully placed the mole back on to the ground and grabbed a clump of its hair. It rubbed the strands of hair together to make a long piece of rope that wouldn’t ever break. After it wove a rope at least ten meters long, it tied one end of the rope around the mole and the other around its own waist.
“You belong to me now! You’re going to stay here with me forever!”
——
Back at the town of Makarov, the day after Shaman Ko tied itself to the Dungeon Mole…
“Shit!” he yelled as he slammed a wall. It had been a month since he couldn’t check on or summon his Dungeon Mole. If he could, Kazunari would have sprinted off to find Lee Jiwon and beg for his forgiveness. Unfortunately, Lee Jiwon was trapped in Kazunari’s created dungeon. Kazunari knew there was no way to contact Lee Jiwon. He knew full well that Comm Links didn’t work inside.
“Ha… calm down. It might not be a big deal. No matter how great Lee Jiwon is, the Dungeon Mole still belongs to me.” The Dungeon Mole belonged only to Kazunari and there was no way for it to be stolen away, but he was dealing with Lee Jiwon, of all people. Uneasiness remained at the back of Kazunari’s mind when a message appeared before him.
==[Your ownership of the Dungeon Mole has been lowered by 1%.]==
“…” Kazunari stared at the message in front of him, his mouth gaping in shock. This was the worst case scenario!
“Fuck…”
——
The boss room in Benten-jima…
“Ah…I’m so bored.” At least when the Dungeon Mole was still around I could play around with it. But now, I was going crazy with boredom after being left alone in the boss room for more than a month.
“Just you wait until I get out of here.” All I did was imagine ways of how I would exact my revenge on the Dungeon Creator. At least Shaman Ko’s Roulette Wheel was almost fully repaired now.
==[Shaman Ko’s Selfish Prick Roulette Wheel will now spin.]==
“Yeah. If I lost this too… ugh.” It was obvious the Dungeon Creator threw me in here to slow my growth for a long as possible. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know about Shaman Ko. No one did, as I told no one about it.
“At least I’m getting Stat points every day.” That was the one silver lining I had, but I was still frustrated and angry. I haven’t leveled up for over two months now.
“Huh?”Just then, I felt that something was off with the wheel. It was almost fully repaired, but still had cracks here and there yesterday. Today, however, it didn’t have a single scratch on it. It looked just as it had when I first got it. The shiny, new Roulette Wheel spun once again. It would land on 3 again, like it always had before.
==[You have obtained Predation.
You have received a one-use Predation Scroll in your inventory.]==
“What?” I had given up on it all this time. I thought that the wheel was going to land on 3 until the end of time. I couldn’t believe it actually landed on Predation.
“What the hell is wrong with this thing?” Nothing made sense with the Wheel ever since I had come to this dungeon.
