Chapter 7

I headed toward the transfer room located just off the entrance of the Somalia Dungeon and placed my hand upon the transfer stone. Numbers one through five floated into my mind. They represented the strata I had reached thus far.

I strongly willed for [5]. My body was enveloped in light, and my vision turned pure white for an instant.

Looking around, the room’s appearance was slightly different. This was because this was the transfer room of the fifth stratum.

I took the drone camera out of the backpack I was wearing and booted it up. Then, syncing it with the smartphone attached to my left arm, the uncensored dungeon stream began.

“Today, I think I’ll take on the floor boss.”

Glancing at my smartphone, the concurrent viewers exceeded ten thousand in an instant and were still climbing. Evidently, people were truly interested in the uncensored stream of the Somalia Dungeon.

“I’ve spent my time operating in countries in Africa and Central/South America that don’t coordinate with the Japan Adventurer’s Association. That’s why my rank hasn’t gone up.”

“Hmph. Who cares about a qualification from the Japan Adventurer’s Association? If anyone has complaints about what I do, they can come to the Somalia Dungeon themselves. Well, I doubt they have the backbone for it, though.”

Curious. The comment reading kept going.

“That’s right. Let’s focus on the boss battle.”

I fiddled with my smartphone to turn on the comment-reading feature for “ExtremeChat.” All subsequent comments were read aloud by the voice of Zunda-mon.

Leaving the transfer room, the path to the boss room was a straight line. I could tell the sound of heartbeats growing louder the closer I got to the door.

Old as I was, my heart was racing. With the boss battle on the fifth stratum of the Somalia Dungeon, which humanity was facing for the very first time.

I stood before a massive black door etched with eerie carvings. I could tell the door itself was pulsing like a living creature.

Prompted by the viewers, I pushed the door with my hand. The black door suddenly dyed crimson, and with a heavy vibration, it split in two and began to open.

Inside, a space large enough to swallow the Tokyo Dome stretched out. And deployed on the ground was a magical circle so gigantic and ominous that I had never seen its like before. Purple lightning struck the magical circle, shaping a monster’s body.

Could its body length be twenty meters? Wearing a crown and hiding its entire body in a cloak, a pig-faced monster appeared.

“Could that be an Orc King…?”

Just as the chat section said, an Orc King was dangerous. There had been an irregular occurrence in a German dungeon once. Back then, it broke out of the dungeon and destroyed an entire city. It was said that nearly a thousand adventurers were sacrificed during the subjugation.

However, the option to run away simply didn’t exist.

I gripped my longsword tightly and stepped foot into the boss room.

The Orc King twisted the corners of its mouth in a smile.

“What’s so funny?”
“Buiiiiiii…!!”

The scream made my skin prickle. It forced me to realize the sheer pettiness of humanity.

I braced myself and held my longsword in a Seigan stance (mid-guard posture).

The Orc King whipped back its robe and drew a sword from its waist. To it, it probably looked like a short dagger, but the blade was nearly ten meters long. It was an absurd size.

As if matching me, the Orc King also took up a Seigan stance. I had the illusion that a giant wall had appeared right before my eyes. I couldn’t move carelessly. The corners of the Orc King’s mouth curled upward in a grin.

“Buiiiiiii…!!”
“Wha…!?”

The moment the Orc King swung its sword, something like a shockwave passed right through my body.

A beat later, my left shoulder grew hot.

The sound of something dropping to the ground. When I looked, it was my left arm. The screams of Zunda-mon and the others could be heard from my smartphone.

“Buii buii buii…!!”

The Orc King opened its wide mouth, shaking its colossal body as it laughed. It pointed at me, who had lost my left arm so effortlessly.

“My bad. I was holding back. I should have gone all out against you right from the start.”
“Bui?”

I casually crouched down on the ground and fiddled with the smartphone still strapped to my severed arm.

“Fighting an Orc King means taking off my briefs and going all out. Sorry, but from here on out, it’s going to be paid content—meaning a ticket chat.”

Declaring that to the drone camera, I tapped the button to “Start Ticket Chat.” Then, with one hand, I stripped off my briefs and unleashed my true power.