5-5 Beyond The Blazing Inferno

First, I teleported straight to the dragons on the lowest level.

I had already stacked physical enhancement, barrier, shield, and magic shield to the maximum.

I had also put on that nostalgic old suit of forged orichalcum armor.

And on top of that, I deployed my magic armor as well.

In the overwhelming storm of mana, I lopped off the heads of the three dragons—almost fully revived—one after another with a gigantic orichalcum blade ten meters long.

The pressure of that mana tempest was so heavy it threatened to throw my spellwork into disarray, but I shut out external mana and forced my way through using only my overwhelming internal magic power.

Normally, in a dungeon overflowing with mana—where you could unleash bottomless magical power—this would be an absurd way to fight, but today I had no choice.

Whenever there was a brief moment I didn’t need to cast, I took in mana like catching my breath and restored what I’d spent.

Honestly, the smarter play would have been to deftly ride and redirect that mana gale, but I wasn’t that skilled with magic yet, so for now I pushed through with brute force.

Dragons, thanks for the trouble of reviving.

Your timing was perfect.

If I didn’t crush you first, you looked ready to come roaring back as over-S-rank monsters, empowered by the rampaging mana.

I made sure to recover the dragon corpses, too.

My title changed from “Solo Dragon Slayer W (Double)” to “Solo Dragon Slayer T (Triple).”

Then, I flooded this place with an incendiary gel.

I had prepared an improvised, napalm-like compound in advance.

I ignored complicated, proper manufacturing methods and brute-forced it using the item box’s functions while referencing information I’d seen online.

With things like this, if you feed the item box the concept and the relevant chemical framework, it would assemble it on its own.

I’d had a feeling I’d need it someday.

That was one of the terrifying strengths of the Seventh Sense—preparations like this got made with no warning.

That gel was a nightmare-grade substance.

It was extremely viscous—sticky—and once it clung to flesh or clothing, it wouldn’t come off.

As an anti-personnel weapon, it was the worst kind of thing.

Naturally, it would be just as horrific for monsters.

Trash-tier monsters would be burned down in an instant.

While pouring it in vast quantities—enough to carpet every floor—I advanced upward.

The monsters became coated in the thick fuel, and if even a single flame-breathing monster appeared, the place literally turned into a sea of fire.

As I made my rounds, I cut down the monsters that attacked and continued through the dungeon.

Monsters also struck between teleports, but my defenses were set with S-rank threats in mind, so their attacks didn’t become a crisis.

If S-ranks and higher variants had been spawning nonstop, it wouldn’t have been this simple.

This was probably the benefit of stopping the sabotage from the forty-seventh floor downward.

If the deeper layers had been fully compromised, I might have had to brace for a solo fight against an SS-rank dragon.

That was still unknown territory even for me.

Not the kind of event I wanted in the middle of a stampede crisis.

As for the small fry, an invulnerable combat pod—made of ultimate magic metal and unaffected by flames or monster attacks—mowed them down with autonomous fire.

As long as there were no humans in the dungeon, I could use that kind of “problematic” hardware as much as I wanted.

A-rank monsters were spawning in swarms all over, but I had also loaded the combat pod with max-level advanced magic, so it became a complete extermination campaign.

Whew—under no circumstances could I let those advanced monsters escape outside.

It was here that I realized just how exceptionally abnormal a chimera’s durability was.

Even A-ranks usually got erased by one or two advanced spells, but chimeras didn’t go down that easily.

I occasionally ran into upper variants of A-ranks—absurdly tenacious cases—but I forced my way through with overwhelming HP, brute combat, and magic power backed by massive MP.

Whenever I could, I recovered the corpses of upper monsters.

Time was precious, so I only snatched what I could in a flash.

Maybe next time I’d build an auto-recovery system into the item box.

I also kept checking whether any people were present as I moved.

That system helped, because I’d built it on my last return from the dungeon.

Eventually, I finished dispersing the incendiary gel across every floor.

Only then did I finally escape the dungeon.

Man… it was a horrific sight.

I had been blasting spells nonstop and carving through everything that came at me amid a monster parade that could have lasted forever.

I looked so drenched I wouldn’t have been surprised if I earned the nickname “Bloodstained.”

Starting from the lowest depths, I fought stubbornly through what felt like eternity, and when I was finally sick to death of it all, I at last reached the top.

It helped that I’d started from the wide bottom; as I climbed, the passages narrowed, the monster levels dropped, and things became easier.

The deeper floors were spawning upper monsters endlessly, so progress was slow.

I had to prioritize exterminating them—if they escaped outside, the adventurers waiting in Adros would face a nightmare—so I absolutely had to wipe those out first.

It was also fortunate that the stampede “go signal” hadn’t been given yet, because the monsters weren’t trying to exit the dungeon.

Since I planned to burn the rest of the small fry with the gel, my goal was to eliminate the big ones—while making gel dispersal the highest priority.

Then, from outside, I began sending enormous amounts of an oxidizer into the dungeon via teleportation magic.

I had mastered a new way to use teleportation.

It was like some kind of subspace weapon from a science-fiction story.

That was why I’d roamed all over every floor, creating countless teleport points as I climbed.

If I’d thought of this earlier, I could’ve made things easier and wouldn’t have had to fight like a man possessed today—but I only decided on it just now, so it couldn’t be helped.

Using oxygen-consuming fire inside a cavern risked oxygen depletion, so I fed in more oxidizer.

In high concentrations, it also had lethal effects on its own.

And on top of that, under certain conditions it could ignite when mixed with fuels.

For floors that still didn’t catch properly, I teleported in burning tinder from my item box’s “Firestarter Inventory.”

I named this technique “Blazing Inferno.”

After everything burned out, an oxygen-starved hell of carbon monoxide poisoning would be waiting.

That was the terror of this kind of attack.

If you dumped this volume across an entire dungeon all at once, even the dungeon’s “air conditioning” couldn’t keep up.

It was the kind of inhumane weapon that had been condemned internationally, to the point that even militaries had been forced to shift to different arms with similar effects.

No matter how powerful they were, any blood-bearing, active creature could not escape this hell.

A thoroughly anti-monster weapon.

Unfortunately for them, there were no lawyers in this world to argue for “monster rights.”

I checked the firepower in sequence, and wherever I felt uneasy, I added more fuel and oxidizer.

No mercy at all.

I felt like I’d become some Ifrit, guardian of a flame hell.

It was a devil’s festival that would send even the demons of hell fleeing barefoot.

I sealed the entrance with an extremely heavy shield, then waited just outside it—monitoring shield integrity—until everything finished “baking.”

If monsters could speak, they’d probably be screaming, “It’s hot! Let us out! Save us!” while pounding on the barrier, but I didn’t care.

In a sense, it was the world of “kiln-firing.”

The raw materials were living flesh—well, living monsters.

I had the smoke automatically absorbed into a dedicated inventory I’d set inside the item box.

If I let that vent outside as-is, it would become an environmental catastrophe.

“Hey. How’d it go?”

Antonio teleported beside me before I even noticed.

And right after that, Mari appeared on my other side.

“I’m waiting for the entire dungeon interior to finish burning.”

“I see.”

Antonio, remembering what I’d said earlier, accepted it immediately and replied flatly.

Beyond the dungeon entrance, everything still burned crimson.

Since the first floor acted like a lid, I kept adding fuel and burned it especially thoroughly.

A curtain of flame—so that any monster that crawled up here in desperation would find its path blocked.

Not a single monster came out.

Or rather, I made sure none could come out.

Most likely, every monster failed to reach the entrance, got swallowed by smoke and flame, and burned out before being absorbed into the dungeon floor.

Any truly powerful monster with the durability to climb that far—I had already exterminated myself.

After that, the three of us calmly drank tea while we waited for the flames to die down.

On an aluminum table, we boiled water on a cassette stove with a double windscreen, and I even had the leisure to brew black tea in a slightly fancy pot.

For snacks, we had muffins Eri had made and thin, crisp biscuits.

In the meantime, I was thinking about how I’d apologize to Mari.

I’d burned down the house filled with Take’s memories—the one she’d cherished for a thousand years.

Yeah… I’d have to prostrate myself.

But please, no “burning prostration”!

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about the house.”

Mari said that, apparently guessing from how I kept glancing her way.

“Are you sure?”

“That place was just… somewhere I stayed because I had nothing else to do—just a place to keep a promise. I’m grateful to you. My thousand-year wish was fulfilled. And that place won’t be undone by something like this. Probably not the dungeon, either.”

Yeah.

The gel wasn’t an absolutely “fatal” weapon.

Used like this, it would wipe out any oxygen-breathing life—including monsters—but a dungeon probably wouldn’t die.

Apparently dungeons had something called a dungeon core.

Unless you destroyed that, the dungeon wouldn’t vanish—that was something I’d heard from Berglit, the dungeon specialist.

Still, I wondered what the outcome would be.

I checked the radar map, and it looked like every monster had been beautifully roasted.

As far as the map showed, the red marks had been completely erased.

Super well-done—more like nothing but charcoal.

A dungeon also served as a resource mine.

If it became unusable, it might deal this nation a major blow.

Had the enemy planned even that far…? Probably not.

They couldn’t have predicted the existence or actions of someone like me.

And Mari had said it would be fine, so it probably was.

After waiting a while, I made a fully protected sweep through the floors, and the monsters were indeed completely exterminated.

Parts of the dungeon had already begun restoring themselves.

It felt like severe burn wounds rapidly healing—like scar tissue peeling away to reveal fresh new skin underneath.

Before long, monsters would likely revive at normal levels as well.

I didn’t sense any unusual mana.

Those strange stones had probably fulfilled their role.

Or perhaps they’d been absorbed by the dungeon as waste.

Whew.

Seeing everything so thoroughly roasted made me start craving BBQ.

Come to think of it, I’d gone to that campground to do BBQ—and that was how I ended up in this world.

If I was going to hold a BBQ, I’d have to invite Amon, Leg, Mari, Antonio and Andre-shishou, Berglit, Team Edo, Eri’s family, Grandpa Ruba, and even Prince Emilio.

Maybe I’d invite the kids from the Elmia church too.

Ah—speaking of Elmia, I had to go pick up Eri’s family that I’d left there.

When I arrived at the Elmia church, it was already a festival.

Eri had set up food stalls and turned it into a fairground.

I got carried away and set up ring toss and yo-yo fishing, too.

I’d even made things like that ahead of time to kill time.

Someday I wanted to do goldfish scooping as well.

“It’s handled over there. I’m going to report to the king and the others now, so I’ll be late picking you up. Wrap things up by evening. You can all eat together. By then, things should settle down.”

“““““Okaaaay!”””””

They were all so energetic.

Good.

The dungeon gate guards had watched everything.

They were living witnesses of history who had staked their lives.

The faces that had upheld their duty and pride shone with a strength I couldn’t quite describe.

The adventurers at the Adros guild were also laughing loudly, still in full gear with weapons on their shoulders.

“We didn’t even get our turn!”

Whew—what a bunch.

“Everyone, thank you. I’m leaving this behind—use it to drink on my tab. Sorry you couldn’t earn, even though it should’ve been a good payday. We were desperate to protect the city, too. We moved early, so we managed to make it in time. If they’d gotten out and scattered, we would’ve been completely finished. This whole city would’ve become a battlefield. If that happened, it would’ve been your turn.”

I left a heap of high-rank materials I’d gotten at the dungeon’s bottom as a donation for tonight’s victory party.

“It’s fine. Life comes first. A stampede isn’t something you joke about. I never had a shred of intent to run, but just seeing that mountain of high-rank monster materials makes me want to vomit. If things went wrong, the whole guild getting wiped wouldn’t have been strange. Honestly, that almost feels like what should’ve happened.”

“Yeah. No kidding. And that’s still only a fraction. Even among the monsters I fought directly, I recovered only a small amount of materials. I didn’t have time for more. Most of them I burned alive with absurd amounts of fuel.”

“Ohoh—now that’s ‘touch wood, touch wood.’”

Even as he said that, the Guildmaster Kenny’s belly shook with laughter.

Maybe all guildmasters were like this.

Then the adventurers finally eased out of combat posture and shouted in high spirits, still wearing their battle gear.

“That’s enough for every adventurer here to drink for three days and three nights and still have change left. Alright, everyone—we drink! Hey, server! Bring all the alcohol you’ve got!”

“You all worked hard. Drink your fill today. I’m going to report to the royal palace.”

“Yeah. You’d better show your face later, hero.”

“Yeah. I will.”

With the adventurers’ cheers as my BGM, I teleported to the royal palace.

Then I reported everything to the king.

His Majesty, who had listened with a stern expression, finally broke into a smile.

“Well done. Your reward will come later.”

I also reported to the Royal Capital Adventurers’ Guild.

The adventurers there had been fully assembled, ready to face the monster horde.

That was where I saw the Guildmaster in full armor for the first time.

He was sitting like a knight, clad in what looked like a custom full-mithril suit of armor with ornate decoration, holding a massive mithril greatsword in both hands, braced in front of his legs.

His helmet wasn’t a knight’s helm, but a simpler adventurer-style type.

Even as an old man, he looked pretty cool.

As expected of a former S-rank adventurer—the dragon slayer.

“Guildmaster, it’s all over. No monsters are coming.”

“I see. Good work.”

He let out a long breath and offered brief words of praise.

I handed over a set of donations here too, exchanged greetings, and took my leave.

“Alright, I’m going home. Everyone’s waiting. I’m exhausted today.”

After that, I went to pick up Eri and the others, and in the end I ate with them too.

Everyone looked like they were having fun.

In Elmia, they made me promise we’d all come visit again.

For me, it was a promise that made me happy.