Vergil settled deep into the heavy tactical seat of the Eagleplane, his armored shoulders dropping as he let out a long, heavy exhale.
Beside him, Freya leaned over with a cheerful, knowing smile. "Feeling relieved, darling?"
Vergil chuckled, the battle-ready adrenaline finally beginning to fade from his system. "I am. But more than anything, I am just glad I finally had the opportunity to deploy on an active field mission alongside the Grey Knights."
Across the aisle, the towering Chapter Master Mikami let out a low, rumbling laugh. "If I may speak freely, Grand Master... I was actually quite anxious having you in the field with us. Escorting the Supreme Commander is a heavy burden. But now that we are successfully airborne, I can admit I am incredibly relieved as well."
Vergil smiled, turning his gaze toward the small viewport. Far below, shrouded in the darkness, the Black Hole Palace was shrinking rapidly. The extraction was flawless; now, all that was left to do was wait for the Luminara Kingdom to trigger his lethal, biological parting gift.
Seated across from them, Demon Queen Lucia also stared out the window. Her crimson eyes were silent and unreadable as she watched her grand palace—her home for centuries—slowly fade away into the shadows of the night and sun start rise.
As dawn broke over the horizon, the Luminara Kingdom's grand army mobilized. War horns blared through the morning mist as thousands of heavily armored soldiers fell into formation. Massive wooden siege towers and heavy battering rams were wheeled to the front lines, ready to break the demon stronghold.
At the vanguard of the army stood the Knight Commander, flanked by the kingdom's pride and joy: the Hero Party, led by Princess Alexia Luminara herself.
Drawing her gleaming sword, Princess Alexia pointed the blade toward the dark fortress. "Advance! Bring down the gates!"
With a deafening battle cry, the vanguard charged. The heavy battering ram slammed into the palace's main iron gates. On the very first strike, the massive doors groaned and burst wide open, offering no resistance.
The Luminara soldiers poured into the courtyard, their weapons raised and their battle cries echoing off the stone walls. But as they flooded into the palace grounds, their shouts quickly died down, replaced by a tense, eerie silence.
The Black Hole Palace was a ghost town.
There were no Minotaur guards. No dark mages on the battlements. No demon infantry waiting to ambush them. The entire stronghold was completely abandoned.
Princess Alexia and her hero party remained stationed just outside the main gates, awaiting a status update. Moments later, a breathless scout ran out of the courtyard and knelt before her.
"Your Highness! The palace is completely empty!" the scout reported, thoroughly bewildered. "The only people we found were our own captured Luminara soldiers, locked away in the subterranean dungeons."
"Are the prisoners being freed?" Alexia asked, her brow furrowing in suspicion.
"Yes, Your Highness! The vanguard is cutting them loose now," the scout confirmed.
Before Alexia could process the strange retreat of the demon army, another knight rushed out of the palace gates, his face pale.
"Commander! Princess!" the knight yelled. "A scouting squad reached the throne room! They found Demon Queen Lucia sitting on her throne... but she is completely alone, and something is terribly wrong with her body!"
The words had barely left his mouth when a deafening BOOM shook the very foundations of the palace.
A massive explosion violently blew out the stained-glass windows of the throne room. Instantly, a thick, unnaturally vibrant green smoke began to violently billow through the palace corridors, flooding the halls with terrifying speed.
Inside the walls, the trap snapped shut. The Luminara soldiers caught in the blast radius immediately dropped their weapons. They collapsed to their knees, vomiting violently as their strength was instantly sapped from their bodies. Severe, bone-rattling chills wracked their limbs. Knights desperately tore off their heavy visors to gasp for air, only to begin violently coughing up blood as the weaponized virus ravaged their systems.
"It's a trap! Fall back!" Princess Alexia screamed, watching the horrifying green smoke pour from the palace windows. "Sound the retreat! Evacuate the palace immediately!"
Panic erupted. The Luminara army scrambled over itself to flee the cursed grounds, retreating to the safety of the grassy plains far outside the palace walls. The caustic green smoke seemed designed to stay contained within the structure, but for the soldiers who were too slow to escape the interior, their fate was sealed. Hundreds of men lay writhing on the stone floors, coughing blood and falling completely limp.
Standing safely in the fields, Princess Alexia looked upon the devastation. In a single, unseen strike, nearly twenty-five percent of her entire grand army had been completely incapacitated by this horrifying sickness.
Gripping the hilt of her sword until her knuckles turned white, Alexia glared at the ruined throne room.
"Coward..." Alexia spat, her voice trembling with absolute fury. Convinced that the devastating biological weapon was a desperate, dark magic suicide tactic, she screamed into the morning air. "Is this your final, dying curse, Demon Queen Lucia?! You will pay for this!"
Far in the distance, Chapter Master Mikami's advanced optical sensors zoomed in on the Black Hole Palace. He watched as the virulent green cloud of the Virus Bomb violently breached the throne room, confirming the trap had been sprung.
"The payload has detonated, Grand Master," Mikami reported.
Vergil gave a grim nod of satisfaction. "Excellent." He immediately tapped his radio, opening a direct line to the capital. "Shiroi. The VIPs are secured and we are currently en route to Project D2-A."
"Understood," Emperor Shiroi's voice crackled back from the Imperial War Room. "I am leaving the palace now. I will meet you at the site."
Moments later, the pilot of the lead Eagleplane spoke over the intercom. "Approaching the D2-A coordinates. Initiating descent."
Vergil felt the subtle shift in gravity as the massive gunship lowered into a concealed, heavily forested valley. The Eagleplane touched down smoothly on a hidden landing pad, where Mina and Lira were already standing by to receive them.
The heavy ramp lowered. Vergil gestured politely for Queen Lucia to step out. Freya disembarked effortlessly, immediately utilizing a small squad of worker golems to help Lira organize the arriving equipment.
Lucia looked around the valley, taking in the massive, reinforced hillside entrance. "Where exactly are we going?"
"This location is the Dungeon we are currently constructing," Vergil explained, leading her toward the entrance. "We are making the final preparations for its grand opening."
Lucia's crimson eyes widened with genuine intrigue. "A dungeon? How fascinating. Natural dungeons simply do not form on the Distopi Continent." She paused, recalling an old piece of intelligence. "I have heard rumors, however, of a legendary, bustling dungeon within the Kainaldia Empire. They say any adventurer fortunate enough to reach the final floor faces a near-impossible battle against a terrifying dragon."
Freya couldn't help but let out a soft, amused chuckle.
Lucia raised a delicate silver eyebrow. "Is something funny, Lady Freya?"
Freya smiled warmly. "It's just that the man who rescued you tonight happens to be the former Head Manager of that exact dungeon."
Lucia stopped dead in her tracks. She stared at Vergil in absolute shock, needing a moment to process the fact that the legendary military Grand Master was also a dragon-taming dungeon administrator. "Is... is that true?"
"You will see how we operate soon enough," Freya answered playfully, gesturing for the Queen to follow them inside.
They walked through the heavy doors and emerged into a colossal subterranean grand hall. It was bustling with life, packed full of diverse monsters and Demons. The moment Lucia stepped into the light, her evacuated demonic subjects and servants immediately dropped to their knees in deep reverence for their Queen.
The other feral and recruited monsters in the room, however, merely whispered among themselves, wondering who the imposing, silver-haired woman was.
Kurogami, who had been overseeing the monster recruitment from a nearby table, noticed the commotion and strolled over casually.
Lucia turned. Her breath hitched in her throat. Recognizing the supreme, overwhelming aura of the entity standing before her, the proud Demon Queen immediately dropped to one knee, bowing her head in absolute submission.
"It is an unimaginable honor to meet you... True Demon Lord of the Demon Realm," Lucia greeted, her voice trembling slightly with awe.
Kurogami sighed, waving a hand dismissively. "Stand up, Lucia. Emperor Shiroi will be arriving any minute now. Please don't kneel on the floor—it won't look good for our corporate hierarchy if the new dungeon staff sees you doing that."
Shortly after, the heavy double doors of the grand hall hissed open. Emperor Shiroi strode in, followed by Risa and Yuna.
"Emperor Shiroi has arrived," Vergil announced to the room.
Lucia turned. The moment her crimson eyes locked onto Shiroi, a flash of profound recognition crossed her face. Memories of their past encounters flooded back to her. Entirely abandoning her freezing, regal persona, she sprinted forward and threw her arms around Shiroi in a tight, affectionate hug.
The entire grand hall fell dead silent.
Vergil, Freya, their seven children, and Kurogami stood completely frozen in shock. Aeka and Valkrieya, who had just walked in from inspecting the training room, stopped dead in their tracks, their jaws hitting the floor.
Shiroi's imperial aura immediately softened. Recognizing the woman he had a complicated history with, he gently returned the embrace.
Behind him, however, the temperature in the room seemed to plummet. Risa and Yuna stared at the Demon Queen currently clinging to their fiancé, their expressions shifting rapidly from shock to intense, radiating jealousy.
Vergil crossed his arms, an amused smirk breaking across his face. "Well," he quipped softly. "Old love truly is hard to forget."
Sensing the impending romantic crossfire, Freya immediately went into survival mode. Like a seasoned mother herding a flock, she frantically shooed Mina, Lira, Sylvy, Aria, Chloe, Fenrir, and Camilla toward the control room. As she pushed them through the doors, she also had to physically grab Anastasya by the collar, holding back the Head Manager who was desperately trying to peek outside to watch the drama unfold.
Kurogami awkwardly cleared his throat, slowly backing away toward the training wing. "Right. Well. I have a... a dragon I need to go train. Excuse me," he muttered, quickly escaping the awkward tension.
Shiroi gently patted Lucia's back and pulled away. "That is enough for now, Lucia," he whispered with a nervous smile. "Risa and Yuna are starting to look at me like they want to commit treason."
Realizing she had an audience, Lucia stiffened. She instantly snapped back to her freezing, stoic persona, smoothing out her dress and clearing her throat as if nothing had happened. "I see. Then... where exactly are my people and I right now?"
"We are in the primary common hall for the dungeon's monsters," Shiroi explained professionally. "Project D2-A is the second official dungeon being constructed under Kainaldia's jurisdiction."
Seeing that the situation had de-escalated, Vergil gave a subtle hand signal. Freya and a slightly disappointed Anastasya stepped back out of the control room.
Vergil walked over to the Demon Queen, getting straight back to business. "Lucia, I need you to select the five most capable generals from your army. They will serve as the floor bosses for levels sixty-five through sixty-nine. Your absolute strongest general will be stationed as the ultimate vanguard boss on floor seventy."
Lucia gave a sharp nod. She immediately turned and summoned her six most elite warriors from the crowd, officially binding them to the dungeon's service.
With the boss roster filling up, Vergil turned to Anastasya. "Is the dungeon officially in its final stage of development?"
"Almost entirely," Anastasya reported, checking her clipboard. "The infrastructure is complete. We just need to fabricate the physical replacement bodies for the monsters and the managers, and then..." She trailed off, hesitating slightly.
Kurogami, who had poked his head back out from the hallway, finished her thought. "There is a strict testing phase we have to complete before we can officially submit the operational report to Lord Andrew."
"I am ready to assist with the testing," Lucia volunteered immediately, eager to prove her worth to Shiroi.
Not wanting to be outdone by the Demon Queen, Risa and Yuna instantly stepped forward as well. "We will help test it, too!" they declared in unison, glaring slightly at Lucia.
Vergil suppressed a laugh at the fierce competition. "Alright. Where do we begin, Anastasya?"
"The entrance," Anastasya replied, tapping her pen. "We need to install and calibrate the teleportation crystals. They are designed to look like decorative lanterns, and they must be perfectly aligned at the dungeon's front gates."
Vergil crossed his arms, looking around the staging hall. "Which system should we stress-test first?"
"Let's test the ascension protocols," Shiroi suggested. "We need to verify the stairwell system that automatically routes retreating adventurers back to the surface. We can also install the primary teleportation crystal at the entrance while we are up there."
"That is a practical starting point," Freya agreed.
Right on cue, Bromir pushed through the grand doors, wiping soot from his beard. "The surface gates are fully constructed and operational!" the dwarven smith proudly announced.
With the target set, the team split up. Anastasya hurried back to the central control room to manage the magical routing. Meanwhile, Vergil, Shiroi, Risa, Yuna, and Lucia—accompanied by a small escort of worker golems carrying equipment—used the maintenance shaft to descend to Floor 6.
Stepping out onto the sixth floor, Risa instinctively gripped Shiroi's arm, looking nervously down the dark, cavernous hallway.
Shiroi patted her hand reassuringly. "Don't worry. The floor is completely empty. The monsters haven't been deployed to their respective biomes yet."
Up in the control room, Anastasya's fingers danced across the glowing runic consoles, calibrating the dungeon's complex spatial magic. She was weaving a dimension-warping spell directly into the stairwells: the moment an adventurer attempted to walk up a flight of stairs to a previous floor, the system would immediately eject them from the dungeon.
Freya stood nearby, watching the monitors alongside her children. In the corner of the room, Fenrir and Camilla were happily hyper-focusing on rigging fake treasure chests with all manner of traps, with Mina enthusiastically helping them test the tripwires. Lira, Sylvy, Aria, and Chloe simply leaned against the consoles, watching the live feeds of their father.
"Spatial routing is locked in and active," Anastasya reported into her headset. "You are clear to proceed, Vergil."
Down on Floor 6, Vergil tapped his earpiece. "Copy that. I am initiating the ascent."
Vergil turned and began walking up the main adventurer stairwell. Shiroi followed closely behind, trailing Yuna, Risa, and Lucia.
Vergil climbed the stone steps, passing through the threshold of the floor. In the blink of an eye, the dark cavern environment vanished. Vergil stepped forward and found himself standing outside, bathed in the natural sunlight of the surface world, right in front of Bromir's newly forged dungeon gates.
Shiroi stepped out of the spatial distortion a second later, looking around the surface courtyard. "Flawless," he noted. "The exit routing works perfectly."
A moment later, Risa, Yuna, and Lucia stepped out behind them. The three women blinked against the sudden sunlight, looking around in absolute bewilderment.
"Wait... what just happened?" Risa asked, thoroughly confused. "Weren't we just deep underground?"
"Is this some kind of illusion trap?" Yuna asked, cautiously poking the stone gates.
Lucia crossed her arms, analyzing the magic in the air. "We were displaced. But how?"
Shiroi turned to face his three future wives—a complicated romantic dynamic that Lucia seemed to have seamlessly inserted herself into. He smiled, explaining the dungeon's core mechanics.
"It's a spatial displacement system," Shiroi explained. "If an adventuring party decides to retreat by climbing the stairs back to the previous floor, the dungeon will instantly eject them to the surface. Furthermore, all of their progress will be completely reset. To conquer the dungeon, they have to push forward. There is no backtracking."
Lucia's crimson eyes widened in understanding. "A brutal, but highly effective way to prevent invaders from establishing forward supply camps."
"Isn't that a bit extreme?" Yuna asked worriedly. "What if they are badly injured?"
"That is where the checkpoints come in," Risa realized, putting the pieces together. She looked at Shiroi. "Wait. If going up the stairs kicks them out, couldn't an injured party just cheat by walking into the exit doors located behind the boss rooms?"
"They can't," Shiroi answered, shaking his head. "As we established in the planning meetings, the 'exit' doors behind the boss rooms only lead to designated Safe Areas. There is no physical doorway leading from the deep floors to the surface. The only physical way out of the dungeon is to trigger the spatial ejection by walking up a flight of stairs."
As Shiroi finished explaining the brutal reality of dungeon exploration, Vergil walked over to the side of the massive stone gates. Taking the heavy, lantern-shaped teleportation crystal from one of the worker golems, he securely mounted it into the stone pillar.
Vergil tapped his communicator. "Anastasya. The primary surface crystal is installed. Run the diagnostic."
From the control room, Anastasya ran a rapid diagnostic on the primary teleportation crystal. "The entrance crystal is fully integrated and functioning normally," she reported over the comms.
"Understood," Vergil replied. "Shiroi, the girls, and I are heading back up to the control room."
As the Emperor and his three future wives made their way back, Anastasya directed her attention to Lira and Aria, who were currently manning a different console. "Girls, I need you to head down to the Floor 5 Boss Room. It is completely empty right now, but we need to simulate a boss clear."
"On our way," Lira said, grabbing her sister. The two assassins sprinted toward the maintenance shaft.
By the time Vergil and Shiroi's group returned to the control room, the rest of the family was already deep into their own testing protocols. In the corner of the room, Fenrir and Camilla had set up a prototype wooden treasure chest.
"Auntie Anastasya, Mina and I are ready to test the chest traps!" Fenrir called out excitedly.
"We will run that test the moment the teleportation trial is finished," Anastasya promised, her eyes glued to the magic mirrors monitoring the dungeon. "Just hold tight."
"No problem," Camilla chirped. She reached into her bag and handed out heavy tactical gas masks to Mina and Fenrir. "Let's put these on first, just in case the CS gas is a little too potent."
On the main monitor, Lira and Aria had arrived in the center of the massive, empty Floor 5 Boss Room. Anastasya quickly tapped a sequence of runes on her console, manually triggering the dungeon's "Boss Defeated" protocol for their specific location.
Down in the dungeon, Aria gasped. "Lira, look!"
A glowing magical crest slowly materialized on the back of Aria's right hand. It faded into her skin, leaving behind a dark, stylized tattoo in the shape of a beast's claw.
Lira inspected an identical claw mark forming on her own hand. She tapped her earpiece. "Auntie Anastasya, is this the magic tattoo you mentioned? The save marker?"
"Correct," Anastasya confirmed. "The claw motif is the standard mark. The deeper into the dungeon you progress, the darker and more intricate the tattoo will become. Now, I need both of you to exit the dungeon and stand by the entrance crystal."
While the girls ran for the stairs, Anastasya turned her attention to the trap-testing corner. Fenrir, Camilla, and Mina were completely geared up in their gas masks. Vergil and Freya walked over to observe.
"You are cleared for the trap test," Anastasya announced.
Fenrir reached out and boldly flipped open the prototype chest's lid. Instantly, a thick, violently green cloud of CS Stink Gas blasted out of the chest. Mina and Camilla reacted with lightning speed, slamming the lid shut before the gas could completely flood the control room.
Vergil waved away a faint wisp of the green smoke. "If I recall, the trap chests were supposed to carry more than just stink gas."
"They will," Anastasya nodded. "This is just a non-lethal prototype to test the trigger mechanism. The only way to safely bypass the trap is to pick the lock. It is designed specifically to give the 'Scout' class a mandatory role in adventuring parties."
"As it should be," Freya agreed. "Every advanced Scout should know basic lock picking."
Fenrir pulled out a set of thieves' tools. Instead of lifting the lid, he carefully worked the tumblers. A moment later, a loud click echoed from the chest. When Fenrir opened it this time, there was no gas—only a pile of glittering, perfectly safe loot.
Sitting at a nearby table, Chloe was silently, furiously sketching complex magical runes into a heavy notebook.
Anastasya glanced over. "Are those elemental magical traps for the higher-tier chests, Chloe?"
Chloe nodded shyly. "You requested magic triggers, so I'm designing a few."
Vergil looked surprised. "It is rare to see you this quiet, Chloe."
"She is struggling with the arcane mathematics," Freya explained gently. "I requested that the magical traps only knock the adventurers unconscious rather than kill them, which requires very precise magical output control."
"I can help with the math, Chloe!" Aria's voice suddenly crackled over the radio. "I can show you my notebook!"
"No need right now," Vergil spoke into the comms. "Focus on your current test."
Suddenly, Aeka raised her hand. "Anastasya, may I test something as well? I found a deer corpse outside, and I want to see how efficient the cleaning slimes actually are."
"An excellent idea," Anastasya agreed. "Where is the corpse?"
"I already brought it down to Floor 5," Valkrieya reported over the radio. "I have two worker golems and a specialized cleaning slime standing by."
"I'll be right there!" Aeka cheered, running out of the control room to join the experiment.
Anastasya pressed a button on the console. "Lira, Aria. You should be at the entrance by now. Approach the teleport crystal. Press your tattooed hand against the glass and clearly say 'Save Point'."
On the monitor, Lira and Aria followed the instructions. The moment the words left their lips, a flash of light engulfed them. They vanished from the surface gates and instantly reappeared inside the heavily fortified Safe Room located just behind the Floor 5 Boss Room.
"Teleportation successful!" Aria cheered over the radio. "Can we come back now? I really want to help Chloe with her elemental runes!"
"Return to the control room," Anastasya confirmed, checking off the teleportation test on her clipboard.
Just then, the control room doors opened. Kurogami strolled in, casually dragging a massive, terrified-looking Nine-Tailed Fox by the scruff of its neck.
"How are the tests going?" the Kurogami asked nonchalantly.
Vergil raised an eyebrow. "Where have you been?"
"Looking for a suitable vanguard boss for the upper floors," Kurogami said, dropping the legendary mythical beast onto the floor like a misbehaving puppy. "I figured a Nine-Tailed Fox would do the trick."
Freya smiled, looking at the glowing monitors showing green across the board. "Technically, we are just about finished. The core systems are fully operational."
"Just one final test," Anastasya noted, switching the main monitor to Floor 5.
Down in the dungeon, Aeka and Valkrieya were standing over the deer corpse. Aeka carefully tipped a bucket, dropping a translucent, trembling slime directly onto the carcass. Instantly, the slime rapidly expanded, stretching its gelatinous body until it completely swallowed the deer.
Within exactly six minutes, the organic matter was completely dissolved, leaving the slime at its normal size.
"The organic matter is completely gone," Valkrieya reported, poking the slime with a stick. "However, the scraps of steel and leather armor we stuffed inside the deer's stomach are completely untouched. The slime spat them out."
Vergil smirked. "Perfect. That means any weapons, armor, and gear dropped by dead adventurers can be easily recycled and put to treasure chest."
"Exactly," Freya agreed pragmatically.
"Shouldn't we just leave their gear where they died?" Mina asked, tilting her head. "Like a warning to other adventurers?"
Anastasya sighed, her voice dripping with corporate exhaustion. "Adventurers are incredibly careless. If we don't clean up after them, the hallways will be cluttered with junk in a week."
"She is right," Vergil added. "It isn't just 'some' adventurers who are careless. It is almost all of them."
Sylvy leaned over the console, looking at the completed checklists. "Since all the tests were successful, does that mean we are officially done?"
Vergil nodded. "Technically, yes. The dungeon's infrastructure is perfect. All that remains is the physical placement of the monsters into their respective biomes."
Anastasya clicked her pen, her eyes gleaming with managerial pride. "The final step before the grand opening."