Chapter 126

Enter, The Boss Monster

It was an unexpected reaction.

“Surrender?”

Nate and Hibiki glanced at me with confused looks as if to ask me what they should do.

I yelled at the opponent without releasing my hands from the bowstring.

“Slowly approach towards our direction!”

In my head, I inferred the intention of the opponent.

A dragon that declared its surrender was an event that I had never experienced in my past life.

‘Is it because it had just moved on from being a hatchling? It must have judged that there was simply no way that it could win by fighting us.’

Could a similar thing occur to the Chinese hunters that Cleared the dungeon in my previous life?

I didn’t know if it surrendered or not, but what I was sure of was that they killed the dragon in the end.

Originally, it was an event that’s supposed to unfold two years from the current time.

Shhh!

The scarlet dragon received the rich light of the sunset on its back and slowly descended. As if to show us that it had no intention to threaten us or that it didn’t have any hostile feelings, it gradually lowered its altitude.

-Can I make my body small so that it is easier to talk?

It asked for my permission before it touched the ground.

The moment I nodded…

-Hmm… It’s been quite a while since I last used Polymorph to turn into a mammal.

The giant eyes that shone in amber rolled then stared at Hibiki.

-Excuse me, but I’ll borrow that for a while.

“?!”

Hibiki glared at it since she did not understand the meaning of its words.

[Polymorph!]

Paht!

After the light flashed, the dragon that had assumed the shape of a human was in front of us.

The thing put on an object that lazily wrapped around its body like a long cloth. It was embarrassing to be called clothes.

But the real problem didn’t lie with the clothes.

Hibiki’s face was distorted messily.

Nate and I, who saw that, also felt a slight shock.

“That face… That’s me!”

As if it was too lazy to imagine a human’s looks, or as if there were no unique entities that it remembered, the dragon picked Hibiki as the polymorph model; its method was quite peculiar.

If it had just copied her face, it wouldn’t have been that weird-looking.

The dragon, which imitated my colleague’s body and face, had removed all the hair that was seen, including hair and eyebrows.

Thanks to that, without wanting to, we got to know what Hibiki would look like if she had shaved her eyebrows and became bald.

The dragon cited a translation spell. Then as if it understood our reaction, it shrugged.

“The species like you that are used to hairs growing out of your body wouldn’t understand… But I can’t handle the itchiness and tickling feelings of such things brushing on my skin.”

Just because the body changed, it didn’t mean the mind would change as well. The dragon, which was used to its scaly body, expressed its uncomfortable feelings regarding having fine hairs on its skin.

From the human perspective, it must be of a similar sensation that one got when the tag on the clothes roughly brushed through our skin and to the point where it became annoying. Was that also because it’s only a young dragon?

The dragon, who asked for our understanding like that, introduced itself.

“I’m Euclid. And you guys are?”

“I’m Nate!”

Looking at Nate, who happily stated his name, I shut down any further conversations.

I asked a question without letting my guard down.

“Surrender? It’s different from the reactions of the dragons that I have experienced so far. How can I trust you?”

Then the dragon spoke, blushing a little.

“… Well, It’s not like I have any choice. No matter what the ego of a dragon may be, I have to live first.”

As it said that, it spoke while pointing at the [Sephirot Guardian Bow] that I held.

“That thing, that’s the bow that the tree protecting ghosts carry around, right? I can’t tell if that’s real or fake… But if the system had touched it, it would have surely recreated the performance. How can I win against people who carry those around?”

Then, it lamented about its situation, trembling.

“Oh, how am I so unlucky… Of all occasions, at the timing that it’s not even been a few years that I got involved in dimensional interference… This is a dungeon, right? Is that the case?”

An ironic situation occurred where the boss monster of a dungeon asked the expedition team that came to its territory if it was in a dungeon.

‘This is all possible because it is a dragon and not any other normal monster.’

Most of the dungeon monsters were always cast in a frantic state. They revealed vicious hostility and aggression toward the Awakened as if its calmness and judgment had been detached.

But a creature at the level of a dragon was different. That was evident on the entity in front of me right at that instant.

“It is.”

“Am I… Are we in a situation where I’m the boss monster of this dungeon?”

Nate replied in a cheerful voice.

“Yup! They said this dungeon would be Cleared by killing you!”

As if the dragon was experiencing migraines, it frowned deeply and touched its head.

“Damn it…”

In fact, a Clear wasn’t only possible by necessarily killing the boss monster.

The Clear condition actually explained it in this way: ‘Handle the dungeon’s boss monster.’

The word ‘handle’ was usually understood as getting rid of it by killing it, when in actuality, a trick or… exceptions existed.

While I was lost in my thoughts for a while, the dragon muttered, complaining.

“No wonder I couldn’t move even if I tried to fly beyond the horizon. It was as if I was blocked by an invisible wall. The boundaries that the gargoyles, which were my subordinates, easily passed through that is. That is why I was staying put in this place. I have been locked up in here for a year without being able to do anything!

It was of a different case from the black dragon that had become Nate’s subordinate. Since he wasn’t the boss of the dungeon he was staying at, he could run away beyond the boundaries. Although, he did get caught and became my colleague’s subordinate before he could do that.

Nate fixed his gaze in the air and spoke.

“What should we do? I can still see it. The system message says we need to get rid of you.”

Then suddenly, the dragon desperately spoke.

“Don’t do that!”

“…”

“Why should you commit such a barbaric act between intelligent beings? Do you need to kill me because the system says so? I’m sorry about sending the gargoyles a while ago. As soon as you guys came near, the lunatic voice went feral and told me to kill all of the intruders… I had to do something about it.”

Nate said that the black dragon had experienced a similar experience when he browsed through it using the [Memories of the Dead].

It was the voice of temptation that told monsters to capture and kill the Awakened that had entered the dungeon.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you guys were such powerful beings.”

The dragon in front of me spoke so calmly to the point that we couldn’t imagine that its life was in danger.

In that attitude, there was no servitude, despair, or fear. It was a tone that was trying to make us think logically about how it could live and how we could benefit as well.

It was too different from the black dragon that we experienced.

‘Listening to what it said, it appears that it had been staying in here for more than just about a year. Is it because of the difference in the duration of stay in the dungeon? Or is it the difference of how long one is exposed to the voice in their heads?’

The dragon gave a proposal.

“Alright! How about this? If you let me live, I will give you all the treasures in the lair to you!”

Then the dragon began to speak passionately, saying that it could help us with anything that we wanted for as long as we didn’t kill her. It said that it was such a waste for a young dragon that had only lived a few hundred years to die like that.

Hibiki talked to the dragon, who mimicked her face, with a look of embarrassment still lingering around her expression.

“The problem right now our main objective is to Clear this dungeon without fail. If you can’t escape beyond the boundaries because you’re a boss monster, there is no other way…”

” I even tried to change my approach. I attempted to go out of the Gate polymorphed to a gargoyle, but that didn’t work either.”

“Yes, that would’ve been the case. Dungeon creatures or monsters can only go out of the Gate by being judged as a ‘possession’ of an Awakened.”

If not, all the monsters could have freely escaped the Gate. All the dungeons out there would have collapsed as well.

“Possession?”

The dragon frowned a bit.

“A human… will own me?”

Having listened to that point, I made a decision. If I wanted to hunt a dragon, I could indeed do that as much as I wished to. However, since the situation turned out like that, there was something that I wanted to experiment with.

‘I remember a case in my past life where a hunter with a tamer-type skill had tamed the boss monster. The hunter then brought it to the Earth while it was in contact with his body. Even if he didn’t necessarily kill it, the dungeon was Cleared when he succeeded in taming it. The change in its state that made it unable to attack the Awakened had been judged that it was subdued. According to the dungeon, he had neutralized it.’

The problem was that nobody had a skill at a high enough level to tame a dragon.

Since I had never seen it, I couldn’t even reenact it.

‘However, I don’t necessarily need to follow the same method.’

“Then, let’s do it like this.”

I took out a special paper and pen from the snake inventory. Recognizing its identity, Nate and Hibiki spat out an exclamation, saying, ‘ah!’

“We need to Clear the dungeon. It means that we will have to neutralize you. What I mean by neutralization here is that you’ll be entering a state wherein you can’t harm any Awakened by your own will.”

I started to write down long sentences in the contract with the pen. Of course, I wrote it using the devil’s language.

I handed the completed contract to the dragon.

“If you want to live, sign here. The only method that I can think of right now is this.”

The dragon’s face was dyed with terror as it was scanning that.

“Devil language?! You… you were a devil?”

Then, it looked at Hibiki and rolled its eyes.

“No wonder… I thought that it was an impossible magic circle management for a human at a glance… Were you a dragon as well? Are you being enslaved by this devil, caught in the same manner?”

It mistook her for a dragon after seeing her transcendental state wherein she invoked several giant magic spells in unison.

Of course, Hibiki replied with a straight face as if wondering what nonsense it was spouting.

“No, I’m a human, not a dragon.”

“I’m also a human, not a devil.”

I continued my words, pushing the contract towards the dragon.

“For the Clear, you must choose one between being killed or neutralized. What do you choose?”

“… Alright.”

The dragon’s contemplation didn’t take that long.

No matter how it thought about it, there was only one way out of it.

With an expression that told me it had solidified its determination, it looked at the contract for a long time, then looked at me again.

“Huh?”

A baffled voice-

“Wait a minute… This isn’t a slave contract?”

Somehow, it must have misunderstood.

‘What kind of determination did she even make?’

I asked it back, raising my eyebrows.

“Why would I do a slave contract with you? Where would I use a dragon that’s only 300 years old?”

Then, as if Euclid’s ego must have been hurt, its face reddened.

“I’m 325 years old! Also, how can a human guess the dragon’s age that well? Indeed, you are a devil…”

Cutting off its words, I spoke.

“As you can see, the content of the contract is all about you becoming unable to act hostile against Awakened without my permission.”

I thought about limiting the target to the three of us, but I determined a bit wider would be a safer bet.

It was so that the system could identify it as a dungeon boss’s neutralization.

“But…”

The dragon muttered.

As it was lost in thoughts in that state-

It spoke, looking straight at me.

“What one more thing I want to add.”

“What is it?”

“I will sign this… I’ll do it, so…”

It spoke, pleading to me.

“Please bring me out of here with you!”

Nate and Hibiki made an expression that told me they did not expect that.

But I could guess what the dragon was thinking about.

“If I sign this contract, the dungeon will be Cleared as you wish. But after that, I’ll be stuck here with an attack restraint against the Awakened!”

It spoke urgently.

“Even if you close the Gates of your world, what if they open up again later? Unless I can fight back, I’m going to die! It’s meaningless to stay here with the contract signed!”

Nate looked at me and spoke in favor of it.

“… I think that sounds right as well. Jin-Wook, why don’t we take it out with us since it turned out like this? You said that if it’s judged to be a ‘possession,’ it can go out of the dungeon with us.”

The dragon’s face glowed as he spoke.

“Yes! I can turn smaller than this! It doesn’t matter where you keep me in!”

I shook my head.

“No, even if you just contact with a human in this state, you can go out of the Gate.”

“Ah… Then?!”

I decided.

If the opponent couldn’t harm me anyway…

Shh! Shhh!

I added few more sentences to the contract.

If I was going to take it out from there, a couple more constraints were necessary.

At that point, it was genuinely similar to a slave contract. It couldn’t be helped since the other party had caused it in the first place.

The dragon read the meticulously revised contract.

“… Yes, there is no way other than this if I want to live.”

It looked at the sky once, then the ground, and turned its glance to the contract again.

As if it was convincing itself, it muttered silently.

“Alright, I agree to this contract.”

At that moment-

Paht!

Light seeped in between the dragon and me.

Contract granted.

The dragon, from that point on, had to be obedient to my command, whether that might be inside the dungeon or when we got out of the dungeon. It applied wherever we could be.

It was a powerful prohibition stronger than most taming skills.

At the moment that the contract had been finalized, signed, and established-

-The dungeon has been cleared!

The uplifting system message that we had been waiting for rang out.

*

After telling the dragon to wait for a while, I went in to receive the reward.

‘It should be better to go through the [Door of Hope] when returning as well. I don’t want to get entangled with annoying people in Chinese territory.’

One thing that worried me was how much of a toll fee the door would require me to pay for the dragon’s passage.

Paht!

Additional compensation options unfolded in front of me.

I looked around slowly.

It made me naturally frown.

‘What, is there no EX-Class this time?’

Since an SS-Class was Cleared, I expected a similar situation to unfold like the last time I got the ‘Tactical Fort,’ but it seemed like that class was out of the question.

It was true that the reward item rating could be set at the level above the dungeon difficulty, but it depended on probability, which meant it wasn’t 100% guaranteed.

If the odds were unfavorable, situations like the one I was in could happen.

‘At least there is one SSS-Class.’

It was not even an item but a skill card.

If it’s a skill that I saw in my past life, it would be no different from stepping on crap…

‘I don’t know if this is fortunate or not, but it’s a skill that I’ve never seen in my past life.’

It’s a standard SSS-class skill card that I couldn’t reenact by remembering it.

I contemplated for a while, but…

‘I don’t have anything else to choose, anyway.’

The Mana movement that was much more complex and sophisticated than other SSS-Class skill cards slightly raised my expectations as well.

“I select that one.”

I chose it as my reward.

Boosh!

The powder of light shone, and the card appeared in front of my eyes.

“… What the… hell is this?”

Unbeknownst to me, I spoke to myself.