Chapter 59
#059
1.
“Wake up, Cedric.”
Tap tap.
“Cedric. I said wake up.”
“Uuugh, no. Cedric’s going back to sleep. Five more minutes...”
I was about to bury my head in the pillow, wriggling around, when I suddenly opened my eyes.
Because the voice ringing in my ears was extremely familiar.
“Huh?”
When I sprang upright, I saw thick blond hair like flowing honey and lovely golden eyes.
Even her delicate, cute features still had that aristocratic elegance.
The one who woke me was Arbel in a school uniform.
“It’s first period today. You’ll be late at this rate.”
“First period?”
Ah, right.
This was Crowley Academy.
A place of learning where noble children and talented commoners gather to awaken their latent abilities.
The finest educational facility in the ark city, training Arden’s future.
Why are we wearing uniforms when we’re not even high school students?
This question is meaningless.
By genre convention, especially in 18+ genres, even adult students show up in school uniforms for some reason.
If they don’t, the world can even be destroyed by some unstoppable ████.
Truly a terrifying story.
“Cedric, are you even listening to me?”
Arbel planted a hand on her hip and struck a huffy, light-novel-style pose as she spoke.
......
Okay, situation understood.
It’s a dream so sad it hurts to the bone.
Because in reality I’m currently rolling around in goddamn Shitropolis.
“Ha... fuck...”
Why am I so quick-witted and smart?
If I were a little dumber, I could’ve enjoyed this peace for a while.
Ahhh.
Outside the dorm window, I can see a clear blue sky and the sun.
I can hear birds chirping, and fresh greenery swaying in the breeze comes into view too.
Nothing like that exists in Necropolis.
So, fuck, this is the scenery I would’ve seen if I’d picked the first-run choices right.
Though Arbel wouldn’t have been there.
Of course, since this is a dream, Arbel is here too.
“Arbel.”
“What?”
Arbel, the sort that squeaks even without being pressed.
Since the save point changed, a perfectly normal Arbel is truly a long time coming.
Cedric. I’m deeply moved.
“Come here for a second.”
“Kyaa!”
“I missed you! Arbel!”
I hugged the tilting Arbel and pulled her onto the bed.
This is a dream anyway?!
It’s a lucid dream, right?
“W-what are you doing, mmmph?!”
“Heh heh, so feisty.”
Then it’s fine to do all sorts of lewd things to Arbel, right?
“Mmph...! Mmmph!!! Mmph...!!!”
Holding the struggling Arbel in my arms, I kept up a deep kiss to my heart’s content.
Ahhh, this feeling.
It’s been so long...!
Moist, soft lips,
A tongue that was soft and slightly teasing.
At first Arbel had been startled, trembling as she tried to push me away, but gradually the strength drained from her body.
Her resisting hands lost their place, gripped my clothes tightly, and then...
Soon, they loosened.
I could feel Arbel wriggling in my arms becoming a little more docile.
“Mwah... mwah...”
But why is this dream so damn real?
Could even that clumsy tongue play, suckling at the tip like a nursing baby, feel this vivid?
If anything, even Arbel clinging tightly to me was rendered vividly.
“Mmmwuuup... smooch...”
Were dreams always this delicately interactive?
Is my imagination really this good?
Well, whatever.
It wasn’t a bad dream.
2.
After last night’s sweet stupid dream.
I opened my eyes.
Every morning I wake up, it’s like hell.
What I do after getting up is the same every time, anyway.
Wash up, kiss Arbel on the cheek, and buy dumplings for breakfast.
I think about where to dig today.
“Does this really even exist...”
I’m starting to get anxious.
The expected point in Sector C has already been torn through like a mole’s den, but the treasure hasn’t even shown its face.
I do like gacha, but real-life gacha wasn’t fun.
“Boksoon, don’t you have any more likely spots? Especially places that seem promising. You should know better than I do.”
......
“Boksoon?”
......
Sion, who had drained an entire blood pack for breakfast.
She stares blankly straight ahead, not even noticing I called her.
“Boksoon. If you’re not asleep, answer me.”
......
Look at this bitch? Is meeting time a joke?
Her master’s skull is about to split open and she’s sleeping with her eyes open.
This won’t do.
“The bad child shall receive the belly warralala punishment.”
Oh? You still won’t answer?
“Hey, hey.”
When I snapped my fingers in front of her, Sion flinched.
Focus returned to her red eyes.
“Hah...! W-what is it?”
“You just made a serious mistake.”
“Was it this servant who said that?”
“You dared ignore your master three times. As punishment, three belly pokes.”
“W-when did this servant ever ignore you! Don’t lie!”
“That’s an excuse, so one more. Four. Hurry up and lift it.”
Sion wrinkled her brows and lips in protest, but...
There was the result of the painful education I’d drilled into her all this time.
“Ugh... I-I am prepared.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Sion lifted her pajamas and exposed her pale belly.
“Heh heh.”
As always, just as I was about to do the belly warralala, I noticed a strange sense of wrongness.
Why is she so...
weird today?
I couldn’t put it into words, but there was just this odd atmosphere.
Even now, in her belly-poke waiting pose, it was obvious.
Her head was turned sharply to the opposite side.
The fingertips clutching her clothes were stiff with tension.
Every time my mouth was about to touch her stomach, it twitched.
“Ngh...”
Tears were even welling up at the corners of her tightly shut eyes.
Like a mochi about to be eaten.
Ah, come to think of it...
There had been that issue yesterday where Sion got all damp.
The same action could definitely be interpreted differently.
“...No.”
No, fuck. That’s fucking unfair!
She was the one who rushed in first, and now she’s stealing my happy belly poke too?
-Thwack
“Agh?! W-why are you hitting me!”
“Because it pissed me off.”
“?????”
I gave her a forehead flick and let her off.
3.
Once some time had passed, I set out on a bumpy Necropolis treasure hunt with a somewhat normalized Sion.
There was a strategic change, though.
“Come to think of it, I think I was being too shameless.”
I kept telling myself there are no free lunches in Necropolis, yet I still couldn’t shake the freebie mindset.
Up until now, I’d mostly been searching the easy-access spots Jjapjo had pointed out, the ones that seemed a bit more comfortable.
But now I needed innovation.
Everything had to change except Arbel and Sion.
A place you’d never want to come to if you had even a shred of sense in your head.
A place even a fixer who didn’t shy away from dirty work would start avoiding.
Treasures in a place like that were the ones that would’ve survived 200 years, right?
With that mindset, I grabbed a gas mask and boots and rushed out full of grand ambition, but...
“Wow, fuck...”
Now that I was seeing it in person, my heart was starting to break.
I was standing before a massive drainage pipe on the outskirts of Sector D.
To call it a drain pipe is generous; it’s practically a tunnel over 10 meters in diameter.
The only difference from a tunnel is that a green liquid is trickling out of it.
And the smell is so bad I don’t even want to describe it in detail, seeping through the gas mask’s filter.
“...H-here...”
Sion’s pupils quaked at the smell wafting up from the sewer.
I get it.
Me too.
I was wondering if we really had to go this far.
“My lord.”
“What?”
“This servant suddenly has a stomachache... Go on without me, master. I’ll be doing belly massages at home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You wretch! Making a noble being like this servant enter a place like this. Are you insane?”
“Then why the hell did you hide the treasure in a place like this!!!!”
“I-I didn’t hide it myself! Nghh!!!”
I forced a gas mask and boots onto the struggling Sion.
So where is this place, you ask?
-Ding!
======
:: New Area Entry (NEW!):::
A sewage treatment system that runs 24 hours a day without stopping!
The unsung hero responsible for Necropolis’s sanitation!
A stinking maze that swallows every bit of filth in the city!
This is a surfaced fissure, ‘Depth 2: Old Sewer’.
You can throw away anything here.
Trash or corpses alike.
*** TIP ***
- The number one rule here is ‘What sinks belongs to the sewer.’
- Never get submerged in the wastewater.
- Beware the cleaners. To them, you’re just organic matter clogging the pipes.
- Sometimes shiny things gather in the settling tank. Of course, they’re ownerless.
- Sewer fiddler crabs are a delicacy among delicacies.
:::Challenge (New!):::
- Enter the Old Sewer. +2pt
======
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a new-area entry notice.
Though a bit more explanation is needed.
As the notice said, this sewer is a ‘surfaced’ fissure.
And not just any fissure—one massive enough to span the entirety of Necropolis’s underground.
When this old sewer first appeared, even the rulers of the city were said to have had a headache over it.
‘What are we supposed to do with that surfaced sewer? Give me a solution.’
‘Uh...’
‘Hmm...’
‘Let’s just leave it be and use it ourselves?’
And so Necropolis eagerly adopted this month’s model employee’s idea.
They’ve been making good use of it as the sewage treatment system ever since.
There might even be a Sunming made from poisonous gejang, sunk somewhere in here.
Anyway.
No matter how much this city is overrun with hyena-like petty thieves and criminals.
There’s no way they found what was hidden deep in the sewer, right?
“No no no no! This servant will not go in!”
“Fuck! I don’t want to go either, you bitch!”
I hoisted the struggling Jjapjo over my shoulder and entered the sewer.
A maze of intricately tangled passages.
Kind of like a subway track that got way too curvy?
“Ugh...! Ugh...!”
“Boksoon, if you throw up, we’re fucked. You’re wearing a gas mask.”
Only, in the center, bubbling wastewater flowed instead of tracks.
So we had to walk along the narrow shoulders on either side.
The shoulders narrowed and widened, and the heavy dampness made them slippery.
Naturally, if you slipped, it was straight into fondue.
Light poured in from the occasional holes connected to the surface, giving us some visibility, but...
“Ha... should I just leave now?”
Honestly, I was getting a huge urge to just turn around and leave.
How long had we walked like that?
-Splash
Something fell from the ceiling into the middle of the sewage.
The splash echoed through the wide cavern.
Judging by how far the filth splashed, it was a fairly heavy object.
“Eek...”
“God, I fucking hate jump scares.”
If we’d been even a little farther ahead, that shitwater would’ve splashed us too.
I went over to take a look.
It was the corpse of a man beaten so badly his face had lost its shape.
“Damn, what a waste.”
You could sell that to the ossuary for a lot of money.
Then came the surprising twist.
“Uh.”
The man thrown from the surface into the sewer was still alive.
Half-submerged in the wastewater, he spotted me and spoke in a dying metallic rasp.
He desperately reached out his arm toward me.
“P-please, save me...”
But it was already too late.
Because in this fissure, ‘what sinks belongs to the sewer.’
-Whoosh!
From the boiling black wastewater, a sticky shadow surged up.
A toad’s tongue? Or a giant cephalopod tentacle?
A bizarre mass of slime coiled around the man’s body.
“Uh, agh?!”
He didn’t even have time to scream.
His floating body was shoved beneath the surface in an instant.
Even the blood that rose with the bubbling foam quickly diluted into the black water and disappeared.
“Damn...”
Yeah, yeah, I’d kind of forgotten lately.
This city was like this from the start.
I’d forgotten because things had been somewhat livable lately.
I tossed off the cumbersome gas mask without hesitation.
I brought it just in case, but it wouldn’t stop the smell anyway.
Besides, toxic gas here? The narrowed field of view from the gas mask would be even more dangerous.
“I’ve been living way too girly lately.”
I let out a bitter laugh.
A gas mask in this Necropolis, of all places.
It’s like wearing a mask because the fine dust is bad and putting on lip balm because your lips are chapped.
-Click, hiss
When I lit my cigarette, the acrid smoke stabbed into my lungs.
The nausea eased a little, and it felt like my rusted mind was sharpening up.
“Hoo...”
The long trail of smoke dispersed without a trace.
“Shall we go?”
I gathered my resolve grimly.
No matter how fucked it is, I have to keep moving forward.
So I won’t be swallowed by this city and digested.
“Why are you suddenly acting all cool?”
“Ugh...”
I bonked Sion on the crown of the head.
“W-why are you hitting me!”
“Seems it’s because of this bitch.”