TDH Vol. 1 pt. 28

“You’re seriously more threatening than your name implies!” I barked back at Cheese as she chased me around the room, swinging around her remaining tooth like a sword to try and slice me with it.

While I was able to outrun her thanks to the boost to my speed, there was still the problem of my endurance. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to outlast her. I was already getting tired while she didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by how much running we were doing.

At least being faster didn’t reduce my endurance. Part of me was worried that, because I was moving faster, I might tire out faster, too. But no. I had just as much stamina as before.

The problem was simply not having enough stamina in the first place.

There was also the problem of the audience. Running around the entire time without doing anything else wasn’t going to be entertaining. I had to do something.

That was why I tried running over to where the broken tooth was. Unfortunately for me, she realized that was my intent every time and always cut me off.

“Aren’t you getting tired at all?! How can you be that big and run so fast?!” I shouted at her. It seriously didn’t make any sense how she could be as huge as she was and still be so fast and have so much stamina. How was she not breaking her legs underneath the weight of her running on them?!

Shouting about her size probably wasn’t the right choice, either, considering that she screeched at me and glared at me with her red, beady eyes.

Alright. Don’t bring up her weight unless I want to die even faster. Got it.

What if I could get on her good side?

“You know,” I shouted, “my mom went through a fat phase herself! Became seriously massive! But she lost it and is the thinnest woman in our village now! If she can do it, I believe you can, too!”

Would being supportive help?

Cheese lowered her head, scraping her tooth against the floor with an even more intimidating ferocity than before as she started gaining on me.

Trying to be supporting and encouraging her to lose weight was, obviously, not the solution.

Just as obviously, I had no idea how to talk to women.

It was a good thing Elanah couldn’t understand me because I probably would have screwed things up already if she could.

Seriously! What am I supposed to do?! I can’t keep running or else I’m going to bore every—… wait. I’m pissing her off. If I can piss her off, then… I’m sorry in advance for this. I don’t mean it, I promise. I’ll bring you cheese the next time I see you if I can.

It was her feelings or my survival.

I chose my survival.

I took a deep breath and barked, “What’s wrong, you fat bitch?! I’m barely even trying! Too much cheese weighing you down in all those rolls you’ve got?!”

I’m a horrible person. I’m sorry.

As bad as I felt, though, my plan worked. Cheese became even more enraged as she screeched and squealed in her pursuit. She even began swinging her head around despite not being within reach of me. As far as I could tell… she was losing it—losing herself to fury as she wanted nothing more than to kill me.

Just as planned.

“Come on! Keep it up! All this running is good for you! I bet you’ve done more running today than you’ve done in the last ten years!”

I knew that my insult game wasn’t the best, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that my childish insults worked against her.

“You’re gonna be mistaken for livestock if you don’t lose some weight! You could feed an entire village for a month!”

Alright, she’s getting close. I just need to keep running. Keep her nice and distracted…

“What’s wrong? Are you mad? Gonna eat me like you do everything else?!”

Just a little bit more! Wait. I know. This might be the worst one yet, but… it needs to be done.

“Cheese doesn’t even taste good!”

I never expected to see such a burst of speed come from such an oversized rat, but there it was. Cheese put so much power into her legs that she practically threw herself at me as fast and as hard as she could.

She only cared about catching and killing me.

She didn’t care about the fact that I stopped right in front of the wall, nor was she able to stop herself once she thrust herself at me.

I jumped out of the way and ran toward the broken tooth as quickly as I could. Meanwhile, she slammed face-first into the wall. The force at which she hit it with was way greater than what I had when I hit her with the observation orb.

That bought me more than enough time to safely reach the tooth. Upon reaching it, I picked it up between my fangs and wielded it like a sword to the best of my ability.

If it wasn’t for the adrenaline surging through my body, I probably would have cringed before picking it up, but I couldn’t be bothered to cringe. I needed to win the fight.

Cheese was still trying to recover from the blunt trauma to her head by the time I reached her with her tooth. Not wasting any time, I went for the backs of her rear legs.

The tooth proved sharp enough to slice through the rolls of fat protecting her legs. I didn’t know if it cut deep enough to reach anything important, but a good amount of blood seeped out from the cuts.

That was when I discovered something very important about Cheese.

She was smart enough to use her tail as a weapon unlike the normal rats in the dungeon.

And her tail hurt.

A lot.

She whipped her tail into me with enough force to break a few of my ribs, sending me flying away from her.

All I could think of as I skidded across the ground was that I missed a perfect chance to deal some serious damage to her. If I would have known to expect her tail, I could have used the tooth and countered it. I basically could have made her cut her own tail off using the tooth.

But it was too late for that and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get behind her like that again.

What I was sure of was that I was tired… and that she was slower. My attacks must have worked because she was nowhere near as fast as before when she tried charging at me again. Potentially damaging her brain with that earlier trick might have helped slow her down, too.

Alright. I’ve slowed her down and grabbed her tooth. Time for my original plan… I think. Please work.

I ran to the nearest wall and waited for her by it.

Unfortunately, she had no interest in approaching me for as long as I was near the wall. I already took advantage of the wall twice: once to get on her back and once to trick her into crashing against it.

She knew that the wall was my friend, not hers.

And that ruined my original plan.

Unless… I could figure out another way of getting onto her back.

I was reminded of when the coin got stuck on its side in a crack in the floor.

The tooth was thin enough that it could potentially get stuck in a crack like that.

And it just so happened that there was a large enough crack between me and Cheese.

Maybe fate exists after all.

I turned my head to the side so that the tooth would be pointed toward the rat… and the crack. And then, I ran.

Cheese charged at me at the same time, but I reached the crack before she could reach me.

I stabbed the end of the tooth into the crack and jumped.

The tooth became a pole to lift me up and fling me onto Cheese’s back.

That seriously worked?! I’m not going to complain, but seriously?! Wait, no time to think! Go!

I returned to her neck and sunk my fangs as deep into it as I could while keeping my head turned enough to watch her tail. I was afraid she might try whipping me with it again, but she either couldn’t reach or couldn’t swing her tail hard enough in the direction to hit me. That meant all she could do was try to shake me off of her.

Or…

She could try to crush me.

Cheese fell onto her side and immediately attempted to roll onto her back as quickly as she could.

But because my entire plan was to get her on the ground, I jumped off as soon as she landed on her side to go and pick the tooth back up.

She tried standing back up before I reached her, but the injuries I left her on her back legs made that difficult and bought me enough time to thrust her broken tooth straight into her abdomen.

Originally, I planned on trying to bite her stomach or the underside of her neck since I thought they might be less protected than the rest of her which was covered in rolls of fat. Thanks to the broken tooth, though, I could do one better. I pushed that tooth as deep into her abdomen as I could before backing away.

The next time Cheese tried standing up right, all she ended up doing was pushing that tooth even deeper into her body by pushing her weight down against it.

I took a deep breath and sighed.

I won.

She tried using her legs and tail to get the tooth out from her stomach, but she couldn’t. She was stuck on her side squealing and screeching in pain, only able to drive the tooth deeper into her body every time she tried getting up.

That was when I started to feel horrible. Seriously horrible. I didn’t want her to suffer.

The battle’s already over! You can’t get—

The squealing and screeching came to a sudden stop as her body went limp, her eyes… lifeless.

I blinked.

The dungeon’s master was standing over her by the time I opened my eyes again. Swirling around his left hand was a collection of wispy flows of energy. Like hundreds of thin strings swimming together around his hand. They didn’t look physically connected to each other, but they were twisted and intertwined around one another.

“Congratulations,” the dungeon master said. “You conquered her on your first attempt. A feat not many before you have accomplished.”

“Is she alright?” I asked. “You said you’re going to revive her, right?”

He grinned at me. “I like you. The first thing you ask is out of concern for her. Yes, she is alright.” He held his left hand out to me. “See? A soul made visible. Burn the sight into your memory for I doubt you will ever see it anywhere else. Those watching through that orb are not able to see it, either, for it is a beautiful sight only visible to the true eye. Well, and only visible because of me.”

“Then… that’s her soul?”

“That is what I implied, yes.”

I felt like I was looking at something I shouldn’t have been. Something that was both beautiful and impossible. Something that made a person who they were.

And the dungeon’s master kept it around his hand with no effort.

“I will heal her body and revive her once you have left the room,” he said.

That was a relief. “Thanks.”

“It is nothing to thank me for. If anything, I should thank you for giving her such a delightful fight. However… I would appreciate it if you do not insult my beasts again. Not my soul beasts, rather. They do have feelings and my Cheese here has always disliked others talking about her weight. Only I am allowed to tease her about it.”

“G-got it. I won’t insult her next time. And… can you apologize to her for me? I felt pretty bad about insulting her.”

“I will let her know.”

“Thanks. So… is there a reason you came here?”

“Ah, I just wanted to congratulate you on your victory. Well, that, and I wanted to show off my ability to physically manifest souls. I deserve no short amount of praise for it, after all.”

“So, you showed up to show off.”

“Yes. Praise me.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“You’re seriously weird for somebody as powerful as you.”

“It is because I am powerful that I am allowed to be however I wish. After all, who is going to stop me?”

“That other guy you always bring up that you sound jealous of.”

“… I am done here.”

“Sounds like somebody’s mad.”

“You brought up the one person in the world who could stop me, so of course I am! That is unfair! Absolutely, unforgivably, unfair!”

“Alright, Number Two.”

“Number Two?”

“Yeah. You know. Since you’re only the second strongest dungeon in the world.”

A vein popped in the dungeon master’s forehead as his lips curled into an angry smile. “I have not been talked to this way in hundreds of years. You… are an absolute delight. I will look forward to our next meeting.”

“Can’t say I feel the same.”

I blinked again and he was gone.

The observation orb flew around the room again, making sure to get a close-up of the defeated boss before flying all around me.

At the same time, I heard something from the middle of the room and looked over to see what it was. It turned out to be the ground parting to allow a chest on a stone pillar to rise up from below.

The dungeon master appeared right next to it once it was fully above the ground.

This time, though, the orb was still moving around which meant that time wasn’t being messed with.

“Congratulations on your victory!” the dungeon’s master said with an accompanying applause, acting like we didn’t just go through all that. “Now, you see, there is a… hidden benefit of sorts that comes with your new body. I always thought it would be fun to turn somebody into a beast and then evolve their body the deeper they make it into my domain, but nobody willing to accept the transformation ever acquired it as a choice. You are the first one to become one of my beasts.”

“What?” I asked, since that was all I really could ask. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“You did not expect to stay stuck in such a tiny body forever, did you? It is a natural progression for beasts with souls to acquire new souls and then use the strength from them to evolve their bodies. Cheese, for example, evolved to grow larger and purposely extended the length of her teeth while growing them sharper. That was how she wished for her body to change. You may not be a soul beast, but I can still allow you to evolve in a similar manner at the cost of transfusing another soul to yours.”

“Transfuse a soul to mine?”

He nodded. “Beasts become soul beasts by killing a living being. Somebody—anything, with a soul. The emptiness within them then absorbs that soul to become a truly living being. However, unlike normal people with souls such as yourself, they can continue absorbing more and more souls. Every soul they absorb gives them another chance to change their body however they most desire. Some become monstrous soul beasts. Others become transbeasts mimicking the bodies of Chosen. Then there are divine beasts and… as I am sure you have heard, astral beasts. All of them become what they are by acquiring new souls. You, however, still have the soul of a Chosen. You cannot simply absorb souls like true beasts do. That is why I must forcibly transfuse one to yours.”

“Wait—but… I seriously have a hundred questions I could ask you after all of that.”

“Ask only the most relevant one. You have an audience waiting for you, after all.”

“The most relevant? Then… uh… alright. You transformed me into a beast without doing that, right? Then why can’t you change my body without adding another soul to me or whatever?”

“Because you will not grow stronger if I do not. Transfusing another soul to yours will increase your level cap just like how soul beasts gain higher caps. Furthermore, transfusing another soul to you would allow you to truly change in the way that you desire to change. If I did it on my own, it would be a forced change and not true to your soul’s desires.”

“Wait—wait. Where are you even going to get a soul from?”

The dungeon’s master smiled and held his arms out, prompting countless thousands of souls to swarm around his body. “I assure you that I have no shortage of foolish souls who have tried to slay me. They forfeited their lives when they came after my domain and my creations. It is only right that I do whatever I wish with them now.”

“What’s… what’s it like to have somebody’s else soul transfused or whatever to mine? What will—”

“You are taking too long, so I will sum everything else up with, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

“There’s a lot here to worry about!”

“And I am telling you not to worry about it. Will you accept this or not? Will you grant yourself a higher level cap to become more powerful than the world ever intended for you to be, allowing your body to grow and change how your soul most desires it to, or will you deny these gifts?”

There was too much to think about. Everything he explained made my head spin and I had no idea what I was really getting myself into.

But I did know that accepting would make me stronger, and I needed to grow stronger if I ever wanted to get out of the dungeon and earn my freedom.

So, I nodded. “I’ll… I’ll accept it.”

All but one of the souls disappeared from around his body as he smiled once more. “Good. Then without further ado, let us see the form of your soul’s desire!”

I wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but… it was time to “evolve.”