The cave stretched on and on.
Even after walking for roughly thirty minutes, the underground cavern showed no signs of ending. Just how massive was this cave, anyway?
But I had no leisure to leisurely marvel at nature's wonders.
A few moments ago, a brutal conversation had begun drifting from up ahead.
"How about we just kill him right about here."
That's what one man said.
"We're not common thieves, you know — we're adventurers, for crying out loud. Do we really need to be that obsessed with loot? The bounty on that Demon Lord bastard's neck is more than enough."
"You've got an ass where your mouth should be, you know that? Every time you open your mouth, it reeks like a fart. Do you really not get why I'm pushing for this? After all the hell we've been through, it's only a thousand gold. Even if we cut that bastard's head off and present it—"
Leaf pointed at me.
"A measly thousand gold! You lazy piece of crap, move your legs for once. Your wife's tits aren't gonna run away just because you get home a day late."
The men snickered. The newbie who was half-carrying me shook with laughter too.
A chill ran down my spine.
'These lunatics!'
They were treating my life and death as nothing more than a joke. This wasn't something any decent human being would do.
They kept chatting away with their banter.
"That's not quite it, Captain Leaf. Word around the village is that his wife's got a spectacular pair. I was thinking it'd be nice to have my face buried in those melon-sized tits just once — see what it's like to suffocate a little."
"To be honest, I have to confess I felt the same way. The guy's probably going out of his mind worrying that his wife's chest is gonna roam all over the whole village."
"You perverted bastards!"
I kept dead silent, as still as a mouse.
Once the threat to my life subsided, I slowly began to piece together what was going on.
For starters, they weren't speaking Korean. Yet I understood every word they said as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Waking up in a cave when I was pretty sure I'd died — that was strange enough, but from head to toe, every last inch of me felt wrong.
'Calm down… just think calmly.'
I deliberately took a deep breath. Slow and measured, in time with a rhythm.
I'd seen it on some TV show once — if you focus on your breathing, your mind can shake off the shock. Information I'd never once considered in my entire life had surfaced out of nowhere. That had to mean my brain was running on pure desperation.
They'd revealed quite a lot of information. I'd been too shaken to notice before, but now it was clear.
— They called this nameless cave a Dungeon.
— They said they were raiding the Dungeon.
— They called themselves adventurers.
— And last of all, they called me a Demon Lord.
Dungeon, raiding, adventurers… Demon Lord.
Even though it already felt like something from the distant past, just moments ago I'd been completely hooked on *Dungeon Attack*. The game surfaced in my mind on its own. And right after that, so did whatever incident had followed.
'I'm pretty sure I died.'
I silently reviewed everything I'd figured out so far. I moved my lips, working my mouth open and shut. The stinging from my wounds made it hard to keep thinking without doing this. Dungeon, raiding, adventurers, Demon Lord, death. I repeated those five words over and over.
Good. My head felt much clearer than before. At least that's how it seemed.
But there was one crucial piece missing. It felt like standing in front of a math problem and realizing you'd skipped a step in the final calculation.
"I don't trust that guy. If he's putting on an act with some hidden agenda, we're the ones who'll lose out. There could still be Goblins left somewhere in this Dungeon for all we know."
"Well, well. When did our comrade turn into such a coward? Every monster in a Dungeon unconditionally obeys the Demon Lord. Got it? Once we've captured the Demon Lord, they're useless. Tell a Minotaur or an Ogre to come at us — I dare it."
Voices echoed rumbling through the cave.
"Hoo… huff…"
I pretended to be groaning from my injuries while my mind raced. What had I missed? I definitely knew something—some scene that fit this situation perfectly.
I carefully retraced my memories. Getting hit by an arrow, the first time I woke up, the car accident. Then, a scene surfaced from the sea of my consciousness like a submarine.
The sequel.
"…!"
Why hadn't I realized it sooner? Venus Panties, that guy had told me he would send me the sequel to Dungeon Attack.
Suddenly, my vision sharpened. I began to understand the true nature of that group and the words they were using, piece by piece. Careful not to be hasty, I silently rehearsed the sentences in my mind.
- Venus Panties told me he would send me the sequel to Dungeon Attack right away.
- Strangely, he asked me several times if I wouldn't regret it.
'Crazy! Damn it!'
My breathing grew heavier. Could all of that truly be a coincidence?
Someone told me they would send me a game's sequel. Immediately afterward, I died. When I opened my eyes, I was dropped into a world strikingly similar to that game.—And this was all just coincidence?
Even as my heart raced, my mind calmly judged the situation. No way.
Damn it! I didn't know I had this kind of talent until well past my mid-twenties! The ability to think calmly even with my right foot completely shattered and my body ruined. I was so grateful that this event had revealed my talent that I wanted to find the culprit right now and slap them across the face.
I quickly brainstormed possible answers.
1. I've entered the world of a game.
2. I've been possessed in a world similar to a game.
3. It's an illusion, or a dream.
4. I died and fell into hell.
I slowly steadied my breath.
Four possible answers.
At first glance, the number of possible outcomes seemed enormous. Don't panic, I told myself. Just eliminate the options one by one, and that would be it. Nothing was truly difficult. Whether something was really hard or easy didn't matter. In moments like these, simply believing that it wasn't difficult was what counted.
'First, let's start with the first answer sheet.'
How could I verify this? At that moment, the novels I'd read throughout my life turned out to be surprisingly useful. If this world was indeed a game world, it would definitely respond to these words.
"Hey, Your Majesty the Demon Lord. Your body feeling a little off anywhere, huh?"
A newcomer spoke. His tone was more mocking than concerned.
"If you go down, Your Majesty, we all go back to being commoners. Not exactly a fun prospect. It's bad news for us too, but for you, Your Majesty, it'd be truly disastrous! Chief Rift is pretty cruel, you know."
"I'm fine… huff… I'm fine…"
"That's the spirit. That right there is what really matters in life. Haha. A slightly broken foot, that's all. Just put a needle in it and it'll heal, right? If you call yourself a man, you've got to tough it out."
Since when was this only slightly broken?!
Rage surged inside me. But I kept my composure and agreed with a nod.
I pretended to moan in pain and mumbled in a voice no louder than a mosquito. In truth, every time I stepped on my right foot, it hurt terribly. The Acting came easily.
"Status Window."
Nothing happened.
It wasn't time to panic yet. I murmured quietly in Korean.
"Status Window."
Then, a cheerful sound effect rang out.
─ Ding!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
True Name: Dantalion
Race: Demon Lord Affiliation: Dantalion's Demon Lord Army
Attribute: Neutral (0)
Level: 1 Infamy: 7
Class: Dungeon Operator (F), Demon Lord (F)
Command: 11/15 Might: 2/5 Intellect: 25/25
Politics: 10/15 Charisma: 3/10 Technique: 1/10
*Title: None.
*Abilities: None.
*Skills: None.
[Achievements: 0]
[Subordinates: 0/20]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"......"
A translucent blue hologram flickered to life in front of me.
I stood there, speechless and dazed. The newbie shouted.
"Hey! Why are you standing there like a scarecrow with your mind blank!"
He looked ready to punch me if I didn't move right away. The hologram probably wasn't visible to him at all.
"S-sorry. My foot hurts."
"Tch. Seriously! What kind of Demon Lord can't even walk properly."
I hurriedly got my feet moving.
The emotion I felt in that moment wasn't pride in maintaining my composure at a critical juncture, nor joy at finally figuring out the answer, nor bewilderment at the sheer absurdity of the situation.
It wasn't rage toward Venus Pants, who was probably the root cause of everything, nor was it murderous intent toward the adventurer who'd fed me an arrow snack.
In this moment, nothing but pure despair surrounded me.
'Goddamnit.'
Even curses I rarely ever uttered came spilling out.
'This is so...this is so freaking screwed!'
Dungeon Attack. An adult-oriented simulation game released in Korea.
The genre was "Simulation RPG where you assault dungeons." That was literally what it said on the official website. Their developers were always coming up with ridiculous genre names and slapping them on their games. They probably thought it was funny.
The protagonist of the game is a sturdy mountain village youth.
Put bluntly, a country bumpkin.
One day, a Demon Lord's army razes his hometown to the ground, and he swears revenge against every Demon Lord out there! Up to this point, it sounds like a typical Hero protagonist—but the defining feature of Dungeon Attack is its difficulty. The Hero protagonist is literally just a somewhat strong country bumpkin, nothing more and nothing less.
The emperor's secret child? The last descendant of a dragon? A chance encounter with a master who turns out to be a grand sorcerer?
None of that exists.
The protagonist is genuinely a country bumpkin who grew up in the sticks and can't even read—dead honest to goodness.
Naturally, on a first playthrough, you'd be hard-pressed to take down even three or four Demon Lords. You need five or six playthroughs before you can get into the real meat of the scenario. It takes roughly ten playthroughs before you've seen almost everything the story has to offer. If you want to uncover the hidden scenarios too, you'd need at least seventeen playthroughs, like me. And that's only something a hardcore player like myself could pull off. If that's not insane difficulty, I don't know what is.
Now, the Demon Lords here are exactly the kind you see popping up in every RPG like pennyroyal. The protagonist is a Hero, so the enemies are Demon Lords. Simple enough logic.
The Demon Lords build dungeons to live in, swarming them with monsters that guard the place like a labyrinth within a labyrinth. The player has to conquer those dungeons by throwing everything they've got—skill, manpower, and strategy—at them.
It's a tired setup, but Dungeon Attack does have its own twist. In most RPGs, there's only a single Demon Lord. But in Dungeon Attack, there are multiple Demon Lords—seventy-two of them, in fact. The player has to defeat every last one.
Rank 1: Bael. Rank 2: Agares. Rank 3: Vassago. Rank 4: Gamigin...
Rank 71: Dantalion.
In the game, the Demon Lord known as Dantalion is hands down the absolute worst, the weakest, the lowest of the low!
No matter how utterly talentless a beginner is at gaming, anyone can beat Dantalion on their first playthrough. Of course. He's a Demon Lord made specifically for beginners. To put it in terms of other games, he's no different from rabbits at a newbie hunting ground. If you know how to click, anyone can beat up a rabbit.
And that's not all. To show you just how badly Dantalion is treated... every other Demon Lord gets a gorgeous, stylish illustration when they appear, but Dantalion alone has none.
He's treated as a complete extra. He may carry the title of Demon Lord, but he's weaker than your average mildly tough monster.
The stats of the Rank 1 Demon Lord, Bael, whom I crushed in my final run before dying, looked roughly like this. I checked those stats hundreds of times while planning my assault, so I remember them exactly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Bael
Class: Dungeon Master (SSS+), Demon Lord (SSS+)
Level: 389 Notoriety: 8,700,078
Command: 356 Strength: 402 Intelligence: 311
Politics: 287 Charisma: 210 Technique: 109
*Titles: 1. Great Demon Lord 2. Legendary Dungeon Master 3. Legendary Slaughterer
*Abilities: Tactics SSS+, Strategy SSS+, Imperial Arts SSS, Swordsmanship SSS+, Magic S
*Skills: Demonic Sovereign's Decree, Fatal Damage Nullification (Rev.), Magic Nullification (Rev.)
[Achievements: 2,500]
[Subordinates: 7,500 entities/7,500 entities]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Absolutely dazzling. The title of Great Demon Lord is well earned. It's the kind of presence that practically screams, "Now THIS is what a real final boss of a game should look like."
Matching those monstrous stats, his illustration is equally impressive. He's a handsome middle-aged man. Plenty of gamers have even said the Great Demon Lord looks cooler than the protagonist.
Now, contrast that with what Dantalion's stats looked like just moments ago.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Real Name: Dantalion
Race: Demon Lord Affiliation: Dantalion's Demon Army
Alignment: Neutral (0)
Level: 1 Infamy: 7
Job: Dungeon Operator (F), Demon Lord (F)
Command: 11/15 Might: 2/5 Intelligence: 25/25
Politics: 10/15 Charisma: 3/10 Technique: 1/10
*Title: No title.
*Abilities: No abilities.
*Skills: No skills.
[Achievements: 0]
[Subordinates: 0/20]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The pose practically screams, "Every game needs a punching bag at least this tough"... Unbelievable. What even is this?
Not every Demon Lord is the same. The difference in power between Bael and Dantalion is roughly the gulf between the United States and Nepal. No matter how many times you die and come back, you couldn't close that gap.
For the record.
After the first playthrough, Dantalion doesn't even appear starting from the second playthrough onward. The developers mercifully left him out so players wouldn't be annoyed.
For example, imagine a level-20 swordsman getting a quest that reads "Catch a rabbit in the beginner hunting grounds!" How mind-numbing would that be? The developers should just quietly skip over that kind of quest. Demon Lord Dantalion is exactly that—a rabbit so pathetic you can't even be bothered to fight him. Judging objectively, the role Dantalion fills in Dungeon Attack is probably about that much at best.
The problem is that now I'm that rabbit.
It was enough to drive someone completely insane.
============================ Author's Afterword ============================
That's all for today.
Faves, recommendations, and comments are the driving force behind extra chapters.^^