Dungeon Defense (WN)

Chapter 29: A Season Spent in Hell (1)

“I’d like to request for some leisure time.”

I spoke in an incredibly serious tone.

The time was the middle of the day. The location was My Pretty Home, in other words, my Demon Lord Castle. Despite it being late summer, the cavern provided an appropriately cool environment. Even though I was spending my summer in the greatest summer resort, also known as my dungeon, I constantly felt somber.

“……Pardon me?”

Lapis, who was now in charge of managing things like the collective cultivation of black herbs, looked at me with a gaze that appeared as if it were asking what nonsense His Highness Demon Lord was saying now.

“I want to rest. I want to play. I want to laze around.”

“Haa…….”

She now looked as if she were looking at a piece of trash. Despite this, my sincerity didn’t change one bit. Before I knew it, three to four months have passed since I found myself in the world of Dungeon Attack. I’ve been working earnestly all that time. Excessively earnestly.

I dealt with adventurer parties, mined for ores, disguised myself as a merchant, and scouted a talent. As someone who was no different from being unemployed in my original world, this was more than enough work to make me feel as if I’ve overworked. To be honest, I actually belong to the type of people who are rather far away from the adjective earnest.

‘I was able to endure it back when I was worried whether I could live to see tomorrow, but……sheesh.’

Recently, the threats known as the adventurer parties have also decreased. Only F-ranks come here anyway. I gave Laura the authority to control my unit of monsters as a way to give her actual experience using tactics and this resulted in the adventurers being wiped out masterfully. The number of tasks I had to manage had gone down a fair bit.

I’ve been feeling strangely bipolar as well. This started happening after I discovered Jack’s corpse. I’ve been having emotional ups and downs about everything. All things considered, I’ve been slaughtering heaps of people⎯⎯adventurer parties invade the dungeon every other week⎯⎯so there’s no way that I wouldn’t have some sort of mental problem by now. I came to a completely rational decision. I need a break right now.

Once I explained my condition to Lapis, she nodded.

“Demon Lord Syndrome.”

“Huh?”

“This has not been formally acknowledged by the academic world, but it’s a temporary title that has been attached to these symptoms. As you know already, Demon Lords empathize with other races, monsters, and so on without any restrictions. Because of this, Demon Lords periodically become bipolar.”

Dear Lord.

Come to think of it, Demon Lord is a triple D job. Death is always drawing near, you have to constantly make dough, and you have to manage a dungeon, but to top it all out, it also has an occupational disease like becoming bipolar?

“Have you perhaps been going through completely random moods as of late?”

“……I have. I suddenly feel elated and then I promptly feel sad.”

“As Demon Lords feel the emotions of others incredibly vividly, the boundaries of their self-consciousness are very unstable. It’s only natural since the various thoughts and emotions of others are inside of them. This is why other Demon Lords utilize all sorts of methods to maintain their ego. It seems that Sir Dantalian does not possess such a remedy.”

They also suffer from multiple personality disorder.

I quickly became depressed. It made me even more depressed to think that this depression was also caused by my occupational disease. I won’t make it…….

“Huhaha. I’m a piece of trash. How could scum who helped absolutely no one in his original world kill someone like Jack just so they can live a more comfortable life? Trash worse than trash, the king of trash. Hehe, I’m the king of trash……I’m sorry, mother…….”

As I started digging in the corner of my Demon Lord room, Lapis spoke as if she were my medical attendant.

“This appears to be a serious case.”

“That’s why I’m requesting some time off!”

I cried out.

“I’m beyond depressed! Life doesn’t feel like life anymore. Why do those adventurer bastards keep invading this place when the most you can get here is some leg hair!? Every time you guys die, something gets shaved away from my heart!”

Laura entered the room at that moment. Ever since the door was torn down by Riff’s axe, the Demon Lord room has been boasting a refreshing and comfortable entryway. She was holding a round object in her hand.

“Miss Lazuli, it has been a while.”

After giving Lapis a short greeting, she tossed the round object towards me. It rolled all the way to my feet.

“I dealt with the intruders.”

It was a human’s head.

“He’s the leader. He resisted rather tenaciously. Hmph.”

But he obviously couldn’t win again me, Laura added as she smiled. The girl who was about to become 16 years old in three months proudly talked about how she had tactically wiped out an adventurer party with no less than 25 members.

“⎯⎯They then tried to hastily back away. Once I smacked them on the backs of their heads with the ambush I hid beforehand, their formation promptly fell apart. It was as I had planned. Honestly speaking, this young lady never knew that she had this much talent in strategy. My heart is pounding because it feels like I’ve discovered a new side of myself that I never knew about. Dantalian, I must admit my admiration for your insight.”

In the blonde hair of the girl who was smiling as she spoke, there were blood splatters smeared through it. I looked down at the adventurer’s head. A look of fear and despair looked back up at me.

I became plunged in despair.

“No……this isn’t life, there’s no way something like this could be life…….”

I jumped into the bed in the Demon Lord room and rolled around. I could hear Laura and Lapis hold a conversation behind me. The two of them have been maintaining an amicable relationship. Should I call it a bond between two subordinates who shared a foolish boss? That sort of relationship seemed to have been established.

“Hm? This isn’t the response this young lady had expected. Did something happen?”

“It seems that His Highness Dantalian is suffering from a slight case of depression.”

“What is depression?”

“……Right, the human world has yet to understand the concept of mental illnesses. In the demon world, we generally believe that, similar to how your physical body is susceptible to diseases, the mind is susceptible to illnesses as well. Depression refers to a symptom that distorts and twists a certain part of the patient’s mind and induces gloom.”

Laura let out a small sigh of grief.

“Huh, how bizarre. Why would you separate the body and mind into two separate things? A mental problem is a problem within the body. If your mind is weak, then, by extension, that means your body is weak as well.”

She approached me and grabbed me by the collar.

“Get up. Overall, you do not exercise nearly enough. The most you do for exercise is shoot your crossbow a couple of times a day, so it’ll take years before you gain any muscle and increase your stamina.”

“No! I don’t want to get up……!”

I held on to my blanket and held my place on the bed.

“A healthy body makes a healthy mind. Now then, Dantalian, exercise with this young lady. I shall teach you an exercise regime that has been passed down for generations in my household. Even a scrawny man like yourself will be able to become a muscular man who can sweep women off their feet as long as you work hard and follow this regime for 2 months.”

“You’re a muscle brain for thinking that exercise is the cure-all for everything! I’m currently mentally exhausted. I need a break!”

Once I shouted that, Laura responded cooly.

“You can rest for all eternity after you die.”

“I want to rest while still alive!”

Our struggle unfolded on the bed. As our might stats were similar, our battle was a constant seesaw. After a while, the two of us fell over on the bed.

“Huek, you aren’t, haaa, that impressive either, Laura, haaa.”

“How can a man and a girl, haa, haa, be the same, hooo?”

Once our cockfight had finished, I panted heavily like a chicken. Only Lapis remained standing properly as she gave the two of us a disapproving gaze. For comparison, it was like she was a person who found a potentially good part-time job, but her work environment turned out to be at a mental ward and she was constantly surrounded by lunatics.

“……The Keuncuska Firm will decide where the black herb will be grown. As Sir Dantalian is the consultant, you will receive 5% of the total yield. The duration of the contract will be 2 years. Is this all right?”

I waved my hand as if I didn’t care what she did.

According to Lapis, the Keuncuska Firm believes that, similar to other diseases, the Black Death will not last that long as well, so they’ve been constantly buying black herbs from the Herbalists Guild. However, I know that the Black Death will torment the continent for almost another 10 years. Rather than selling all of the black herbs at once, I proposed to the Keuncuska Firm a medium and long-term plan to gain profit by growing the herbs ourselves. The other party immediately agreed. Through this, I have established a periodic source of income.

‘Everything is proceeding mostly smoothly.’

Laura, who was busy trying to catch her breath in front of me, suddenly entered my line of sight. There were drops of sweat trailing down her white forehead. Her skin made it seem like her sweat was white as well. I wonder if it’s because I haven’t been able to properly release my sexual desires in a long time. My nether region felt tingly even though all I had done was look at her skin from up close.

I chuckled.

‘There’s nothing to fuss about now that my living conditions are stable.’

Be it Lapis or Laura, not only were they young, but they were also beauties. My pathetic perseverance is nearly at its limit since I’ve been practically living with the two of them. If I hadn’t visited a brothel during our previous trip, then I might have exploded already.

Laura must have felt my gaze as she looked back at me. I shook my head to let her know that I didn’t mean anything by my gaze.

‘Don’t tell me she noticed.’

It’d be embarrassing if she did. I decided to check Laura’s status just in case.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Name: Laura De Farnese Race: Human　　 Faction: Dantalian’s Demon Lord Army Attribute: Neutral(-10)

Level: 7　　　　Fame: 520 Job: Scholar(D), Intrigant(E), Sex Slave(E)

Leadership: 30　　Might: 10 　　Intelligence: 33 Politics: 9　　Charm: 49　　Technique: 1

Affection: 21 Current thought: ‘Hm, I’ll definitely force him to exercise tomorrow.’ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Even though her level was only a single-digit number, her stats were dazzling. As expected of the girl who was going to become an intrigant and leave her name in the history books, not only were her leadership and intelligence stats high, but, it may be unrelated, her charm was almost at 50 as well. If you only looked at her stats, she was a typical Femme Fatale. Although she used to be at Neutral(0), it had dropped to Neutral(-10) because she had killed humans recently, but this didn’t matter to me.

‘Okay. There’s no issue.’

Laura’s current thought put my mind at ease. Regardless, I furtively turned my head away just in case.

I then immediately made eye contact with Lapis.

“……”

Oh no. She’s doubting me!

An emotion mixed with slight scorn and disregard was transferred to me without restraint.She may only be half a succubus, but was it because they’re demons that control carnal desires? Lapis managed to quickly see through me.

Have I ever been looked at scornfully by a girl who looked as if she were around 16 years old? To put it simply, I wanted to bite my tongue and kill myself. I wanted to crawl in a corner and become a shut-in, but if I admit to it, then my pride as a man will obviously crumble into pieces.

“What’s the matter? Is there something more you want to say about the contract?”

“……Certainly, it seems that Sir Dantalian requires a ‘break’.”

For some reason, Lapis put an emphasis on the ‘break’ part of her sentence. I could tell that she was telling me to stop going out of my way to scurry away since she had already seen through me. Guh.

“Next month, a conference between Demon Lords will be held in the demon continent.”

“Hm? Was there something like that?”

“It’s a tradition for the Keuncuska Firm to hold the conference as a neutral party since they do not cater to the Demon Lords. This meeting is held every 10 years and Your Highness Dantalian will also receive an invitation this year.”

Lapis glared at me impassively.

“At that time, how about we visit the demon world while we also deal with Her Ladyship Farnese’s slave brand? Coincidentally, I have searched for a mage who knows how to handle human slave brands. I can assure you that your break will be satisfactory in many ways.”

“……Uuh. How about we just go to the demon world now? Come to think of it, I’ve never been to the demon world before and I don’t think my mind could endure another month.”

As you wish, Lapis answered. Like so, a vacation to the demon world during the summer had been added to my schedule.

***

TL note: Thanks for reading the chapter. Like last time, I sort of wound up translating an extra DD WN chapter before going back to Handholding. I didn’t have immediate access to my Handholding raws after I finished the last chapter, so I sort of started working on this one.

In any case, time to start working on Handholding again. See you guys then! It’ll probably take more than a week since those chapters are long.

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