Now I'm a Demon Lord! Happily Ever After with Monster Girls in My Dungeon: Volume 9 (eBook)

Ryuyu (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-9063-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Reborn in another world as a demon lord, Yuki is managing his newly-and accidentally-acquired phantom ship dungeon. At the same time, he's steadily working on expanding and strengthening his existing territory. Then, one day, he thinks it's about time for him to stop neglecting his duties as the Dragon King, so he decides to visit the Dragon Hamlet and introduce himself to its residents.

He and Lefi take to the skies to get there, but on the way, they encounter a massive airship under attack by monsters. After helping the humans operating it, they resume their journey and finally arrive in the Dragon Hamlet, where they're greeted by the elders. He pours his magic into a stela to carve his name into the dragons' annals as their newest Dragon King, but then...

Textauszug

Chapter 1: Infected Beast

“Grr!!!”

Rir’s lightning magic struck. For a moment, a brilliant flash of light blinded me.

“Haah, haah... Rir, move!”

As soon as he heard my words, instead of checking the area around him, he activated his special ability, Super Speed, and ran far away. A second later, something black and fuzzy rushed into the spot where my pet had just been. Everything within a thirty-meter radius instantly fell into decay.

It was just like the dark magic used by the No Life King, the demon lord I’d fought not too long ago. But the effect of this went way beyond what his had been capable of. Even if I didn’t take a direct hit, just being in that space would strike me out.

As for Rir’s lightning magic, it’d dealt no damage despite having landed a direct hit.

“Holy hell, this is ridiculous!”

I swore without thinking.

In terms of appearance, the monster that was currently chasing us could be best described as a creature. Its head sported dozens of eyeballs along with a bizarrely huge gash for a mouth. And instead of a mane or whiskers, it had dozens of tentacles growing out of it. Truly a horrifically disgusting sight.

Yeah, it really was less a monster and more a creature.

Its four-legged body resembled that of a beast of prey like a wolf or a leopard. Of course, it was freaking huge—pretty much twice Rir’s size—but the most glaring difference between it and my pet was its complete lack of skin, which totally exposed its muscle fibers. Reminded me of one of those anatomical models of the human body. I could not emphasize enough how absolutely gnarly the thing was. I could literally see its heart.

Wasn’t skin an insanely vital organ since it protected the body? So what the heck kind of evolution would something have to have undergone in order to have turned into that? It was the kind of enemy that would make you kiss your sanity stat goodbye just from looking at it. Instant cremation without a funeral service. If someone told me it was a clone of the evil god Cthulhu, I would totally believe them.

Race: Parasite Lion

Class: Infected Beast

Level: ?10

The creature was powerful enough that I couldn’t view its stats with Analysis, something that hadn’t happened in a while. I didn’t even know where in the hundreds its level was. Three hundred something? Four? Maybe even five? As things were, I could see levels in the two hundreds with the ability, so it was definitely higher than that.

My money was on it having been taken over by something to transform it into what it was now. Normally, I would’ve used the dungeon return device to escape the minute I’d laid eyes on it. That was the kind of enemy it was. But it would be very, very bad if I left the thing alone.

For reasons unknown to me, it had left the western area of the Demonic Forest and traveled far enough to invade the southern part. If I ignored it, chances were good that it’d keep heading south until it hit the nearest human settlement, the town of Alfiro. If it ended up getting there, I knew the humans had no shot of killing it, which basically assured the town’s destruction.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that leaving the creature unchecked would lead to an insane amount of damage being caused. In that case, the humans would definitely form a strike team and dispatch it. The people on that team? Ninety percent chance Nell would be one of them. This thing outclassed her so hard that there was no way she could manage against it.

Frankly, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the humans. Yeah, sure, I’d feel sorry for any of them who died, especially if the few I knew were part of the fatalities. That was hardly reason enough to challenge someone so much more powerful than me, though.

But if it was dangerous enough to hurt Nell too, that was another story. That made this creature an enemy I absolutely, positively could not overlook.

A little background. The monsters in the Demonic Forest rarely left the regions they inhabited, the ones I’d roughly divided into east, west, north, and south. Why? Because of the mana density in each specific area. Monsters loved places with rich concentrations of mana. The reverse was true as well, then—they hated places where the mana was thin. And the western area in the Forest had the densest concentration of mana.

This was all just my own personal theory, but I believed that the monsters living in the Forest had first gathered in the western part, lured in by the thick mana soup. But those who couldn’t keep up in the vicious struggle for existence there had been forced to move elsewhere in order to survive. In this case, “elsewhere” was the eastern area, which had the second highest level of mana after the western. And then, finally, the monsters who couldn’t even hack it there had headed to the southern area, where the mana density was the thinnest.

Incidentally, the northern area was Lefi’s former territory. Although the monster population was higher now than it’d been before, the stronger ones still didn’t come this way. Probably because they still sensed her power even though she was cooped up inside the dungeon.

Getting back to my theory, I was of the belief that mana was the reason monsters in the Demonic Forest were clearly segregated based on their strength. According to Leila, there were a few secluded regions in the world with extremely concentrated mana. The monsters living in those places rarely left their habitats there, which pretty much confirmed my theory. It also explained why humanoid species took advantage of monsters’ behavior by building their settlements in places where mana density was low.

In conclusion, the stupidly powerful monsters inhabiting the western area had no reason to migrate to the other areas on purpose. They’d basically created their own ecosystem in the western part of the Forest. At least, they should have.

But. Sometimes. Sometimes, there were monsters like this one that tried to move to other areas. Usually, it was due to hunger. Or because they enjoyed the thrill of slaughter.

Whatever the reason, it was nothing but bad luck for us now. I just needed the damn creature to go back to where it’d come from and leave us the hell alone. It can mow down other monsters in the western area for all I care.

“Orochi, Yata, get rid of any monsters along our escape route! Byaku, Seimi, we can handle things here, so help them!”

I used the dungeon’s Remote Communication function to basically shout my orders at the rest of my pets. Though they were a lot stronger than when I’d summoned them, it would be impossible for them to take on this disgusting thing. Rir was the only one who even came close.

A single hit from the creature would definitely send them to the next life. You might wonder how I knew this. Well, I’d actually seen with my own eyes what one instance of its magic did to another monster in the western area. It’d snuffed out its life in an instant.

I wanted nothing more than to get the fugg outta here too. If shit really hit the fan, though, I planned on throwing away my pride and running back to the dungeon to ask Lefi for help.

If I was being completely honest, though, the situation was already incredibly dicey. The Rot had actually gotten me once. It’d eaten away at my right foot, reaching up to the ankle before I’d hurriedly used a Super Potion to heal myself.

But this was par for the course as far as battles in the Demonic Forest went. Every monster’s attacks were crazy lethal, so my job was always to figure out how to avoid those attacks while landing my own. All of which to say that my ability to dodge an opponent’s attack had naturally improved. As of right now, I still hadn’t sustained a fatal wound. Not even once.

Even so, I was dealing with an opponent whose stats I couldn’t check despite me being stronger than before. And I’d learned something else too. Based on the battle so far, this thing didn’t give a shit about us. It used its ridiculously powerful magic recklessly against us like we were just annoying, buzzing mosquitoes to crush. But it wasn’t actively trying to kill us. Thanks to its sloppy offense, Rir and I could pick up on the moment it entered attack mode, which allowed us to run like hell and avoid it in the nick of time.

Damn. We’re nothing more than a housefly to this monster, huh? So far, all we’d been able to do was pester it like this. It’d essentially amounted to buying time since we didn’t have a decisive move.

But I decided it was time to mount a hasty—albeit temporary—retreat. Unlike other monsters, this creature didn’t even register us as a threat. That meant we had a good chance of being able to escape easily.

“Gargoyle! Kraken! Go after it from a distance using a ranged attack! Doesn’t matter if you hit it, just harass it and stall it! If it gets too close, run!”

I gave my magic to earth and water spirits suitable for stopping the thing in its tracks, then used spirit magic to create two pseudo-life-forms capable of attacking automatically. They obeyed my command immediately, spreading out around us. After that, I downed a bottle of the incredibly bitter Super Mana Potion to recover the magic I’d supplied to the spirits and gave an...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.6.2024
• Reihe/Serie: Now I'm a Demon Lord! Happily Ever After with Monster Girls in My Dungeon
• Illustrationen: Daburyu
• Übersetzer: Kashi Kamitoma
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Game elements • Harem • Isekai • Light Novel • Magic • Overpowered • Slow life
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-9063-7 / 1718390637
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-9063-8 / 9781718390638