"London Bridge is falling down… falling down... falling down..."
The haunting melody echoed through the narrow dungeon passage, bouncing off damp stone walls that glistened with an unnatural moisture.
Claude's voice carried a hollow quality that suggested his mind was elsewhere—perhaps lost in the fragments of memories that weren't entirely his own.
He abruptly stopped singing, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Eh, wait... why do I sing this song again?"
The question hung in the stale air, unanswered. Was it a memory from one of his alternate selves? A remnant from some childhood he'd never actually experienced?
The lines between his own memories and those of his other selves had begun to blur after months in this accursed labyrinth.
No time to dwell on such questions. A skittering sound approached from the darkness ahead.
"Tatakae! Whooo Hooo!" Claude roared, his voice transforming from confused to manic as he plunged into the writhing mass of Vorpal Rabbits that flooded the chamber like a living tide. "Die, you retarded bunny!"
He swam through the sea of creatures, each one individually unremarkable but collectively deadly. Vorpal Rabbits—deceptively cute monsters with blade-like horns and unnaturally agile bodies—were classified as C-rank threats individually. In a swarm, however, even a skilled warrior like Paul Greyrat would struggle to emerge unscathed.
For Claude, who lacked Paul's physical prowess but compensated with cunning and desperate ferocity, the encounter was a calculated sacrifice. Blood flew in crimson arcs—mostly from the rabbits, but not exclusively so. One of Claude's fingers was severed as he hacked and slashed his way through the mass of fur and horn, his vision blurring as the creatures swarmed around him.
When he finally staggered out of the seething rabbit mass, he was drenched in blood—both the rabbits' and his own.
The metallic scent clung to his skin and clothes, marking him as a predator and prey simultaneously in this unforgiving environment. He glanced down at his mangled hand, where his pinky finger had once been, now just a ragged stump still leaking blood.
Thankfully, the regeneration spell he'd perfected worked particularly well within the dungeon's mana-rich atmosphere. Already, the wound was closing, cells multiplying at an accelerated rate as the missing digit slowly reformed. Claude watched the process with clinical detachment, having grown accustomed to such sights after his time here.
Even with his enhanced magical healing, the larger wound on his left arm remained only partially recovered. The stump where his forearm had been severed weeks earlier was gradually regrowing, but the process was agonizingly slow. The phantom pain sometimes woke him from what little sleep he managed to get, his missing hand clutching at weapons that weren't there to defend against enemies from timelines that had never existed.
In just one month since being teleported into this dungeon, Claude had already endured the loss of his left arm.
His once-imposing weapon box, originally weighing more than a ton, had been reduced to a fraction of its former glory. The enchanted container that had once dragged behind him like an anchor now hung from his shoulders like a backpack, containing what few weapons had survived his desperate battles.
"Kill all the Titans! Leave no one alive! Argh!"
The battle cry tore from Claude's throat as he fought against a troll, a seven-meter monstrosity of muscle and regenerative flesh.
The fragment of memory—from where, he couldn't say—gave him strength even as the creature's club-like arm swept his leg out from under him. Bone splintered, flesh tore, and Claude found himself one limb lighter.
Claude's mind registered the loss almost abstractly. Another casualty of this place. Another piece of himself sacrificed to survive one more day.
Thankfully, this particular encounter involved only a single troll. The behemoth's strength was immense—even five A-ranked adventurers would struggle against such a creature.
Paul himself would likely retreat rather than face such odds alone. The troll's godlike regeneration made conventional attacks nearly useless; wounds sealed almost as quickly as Claude could inflict them.
It took Claude four days of guerrilla warfare to finally bring the creature down. He used the terrain to his advantage, attacking vulnerable areas with precise strikes before retreating into narrow passages where the troll's bulk became a disadvantage. Slowly, methodically, he whittled away at the creature's stamina and sanity.
As the troll grew increasingly exhausted by Claude's relentless attacks, Claude himself was horrified by the seemingly inexhaustible regenerative power of his opponent.
Every destruction spell he cast closed within minutes. Every wound healed before his eyes. It was like fighting against life itself.
In his desperation, Claude discovered something unexpected—troll blood had properties similar to healing potions. Each time he wounded the creature, he collected its blood, drinking the viscous fluid to replenish his own body and accelerate his regeneration.
The battle became a grotesque dance of attrition. The troll, despite its fearsome regeneration, eventually began to falter. It had minimal opportunity to rest or feed, while Claude sustained himself on the very blood he spilled. The troll's movements grew sluggish, its attacks more desperate and less coordinated.
An idle monster suddenly attacked by a persistent predator might initially respond with fury, but creatures accustomed to dominance quickly find themselves overwhelmed when that dominance is challenged. The troll's immense size, once its greatest asset, now worked against it as fatigue set in more rapidly.
Unlike Claude, who could sustain himself with the troll's blood, the troll gained nothing from consuming parts of Claude. When it bit off Claude's leg in a desperate attempt to end the fight, all it received was a stomachache from the foul-tasting meat.
The troll's eyes widened with disgust as it spat out the severed limb. Heck, what is this thing? Is this even edible? its expression seemed to say.
"F*ck, you chomped it for free, and you dare to complain?! Urghh...." Claude snarled through gritted teeth, cauterizing the stump with a Fire Palm spell to stop the bleeding.
The sizzling sound of his own flesh burning was followed by the acrid smell of charred meat, but Claude had long since moved beyond such mundane concerns as pain or disgust.
He dragged himself away from the troll, leaving a smear of blood on the stone floor as he retreated to recover.
His healing magic slowly regenerated the stump of his leg while accelerating the regrowth of his previously severed arm. The troll's blood, despite its revolting taste, provided the raw materials his body needed.
Unable to wait for his leg to fully heal, Claude fashioned a crude crutch from a blade taken from his weapon box. He used this to support himself as he continued his assault on the increasingly weakened troll.
After days of conflict, Claude emerged victorious, though his victory left him immobilized beside the massive corpse of his defeated enemy. For an entire week, he did nothing but drink the troll's blood, using it to fuel his regeneration. The foul liquid worked miracles for his healing but tasted like sewage mixed with rotten eggs.
By the second week, Claude could move again. His stomach, tired of liquid sustenance, demanded solid food. Remarkably, the troll's flesh hadn't spoiled, protected perhaps by the same magical properties that had made the creature so difficult to kill.
Claude retrieved condiments from his dwindling supplies and cooked chunks of troll meat over a fire conjured with magic.
He conjured fresh water as well, gulping it down greedily to wash away the lingering taste of troll blood. The sensation of clean water—even magically created—was so blissful that tears formed in his eyes. Such simple pleasures had become rare treasures in this place.
Thus ended the fourth month of Claude's imprisonment in the dungeon, with him resting and feasting on troll and vorpal rabbit meat.
The irony wasn't lost on him—the very creatures that had tried to kill him now sustained his life.
"Yah, this is truly an odd gourmet I had..." he muttered to himself, tearing into another chunk of surprisingly palatable troll meat.
In the flickering light of his magical fire, his gaunt face showed both exhaustion and grim determination.
"Sigh... How long will it take to get out of this place?" He gazed up at the ceiling, its details lost in shadow. "I wonder how on earth this place got this big..."
His sense of time had become distorted in the perpetual darkness. "Cr*p, it must be a year since I've entered this place."
Without natural light or any regular markers of time, Claude had lost the ability to accurately gauge how long he'd been trapped. While objectively only four months had passed in the outside world, subjectively, each day felt like an eternity when spent fighting for survival. The constant state of heightened awareness, the need to remain vigilant even during rest—it all contributed to a distorted perception of time passing.
In the world beyond the dungeon walls, chaos still reigned. Rudeus remained stranded in the Demon Continent, slowly making his way back with his unlikely companions.
Mike, who had taken leadership of the search party in Claude's absence, showed visible signs of premature aging.
Despite being only twelve years old, stress had whitened patches of his hair, making him look like a child touched by time itself.
As days passed within the dungeon, Claude's condition gradually improved. Once he had healed back to full strength, he put his forced downtime to productive use.
He fashioned new clothing from the troll's tough hide and crafted weapons from its massive bones.
The once-empty weapon box began to fill again with bone-enchanted weapons of his own design. Each piece represented not just a tool for survival but a triumph of human ingenuity over desperate circumstances.
"Who would've thought that on this life and death occasion I'd be enlightened to create more enchantment and weapon design..." he mused, examining a bone dagger inscribed with runes of his own creation. "Sigh, so this is why the main character in the story gets better once they survive death."
He laughed bitterly, a sound with no humor in it. "D*mn this plot armor..."
The laugh devolved into a sigh as he tested the edge of the dagger with his thumb. "I wish I could get more docile plot armor where I don't lose a part of my body... sigh."
Despite his recovery and the new weapons at his disposal, Claude found himself hesitating before the downward staircase that led deeper into the dungeon.
The thought of facing even more formidable creatures than the troll made his recently regenerated legs feel like lead.
"Cr*p, will there be a flock of trolls next?" He shuddered at the thought, absently rubbing the leg that had been bitten off. Although it had regrown completely, the memory of the pain remained vivid. "I really am scared to go down... Having my leg chomped isn't a great memory, even if it grew back."
His fear kept him from descending further. For another two months, he remained on that floor, hunting smaller monsters and improving his equipment.
He built a small sanctuary around the troll's remains, a bizarre monument to his most significant battle yet.
Claude caressed the weapon box as he stood before the grave he had created for the troll. The crude tombstone bore the inscription: "Trolly the one that chomps my leg." The gallows humor was a small comfort in this place of endless darkness and death.
Nearby, he had erected a stone tablet cataloging his abilities—part inventory, part desperate attempt to remind himself of who he was amid the chaos of fragmented memories and constant battle:
-Claude The Handsome-
-Peak Advance rank 4 attribute Magician-
-Peak Advanced Rank North, Sword, Water God Swordsmanship-
-Low Advance Enchanter-
-Master Smith-
-Intermediate Time and Space Magician-
-The most handsome in the world-
The last line brought a ghost of a smile to his face. Vanity, it seemed, survived even in the depths of hell.
After reviewing his capabilities one last time, Claude stood up and grasped the handle of his weapon box. Now weighing nearly two tons again with all his newly crafted weapons and gathered monster materials, it was a testament to his increased strength that he could drag it at all.
Fear gnawed at him like a physical presence. Each step toward the downward staircase felt like wading through tar. His body seemed to resist his mind's commands, understanding on some primal level that what lay below would be more terrible than anything he had faced thus far.
His breath grew labored, not from exertion but from mounting anxiety. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the dungeon's chill. His eyes darted nervously from shadow to shadow, imagining horrors lurking in every dark corner.
His PTSD—born from countless deaths experienced through the memories of his alternate selves—threatened to overwhelm him. The knowledge that he could retreat to this relatively "safe" floor offered some comfort, but the thought of what awaited him below sent tremors through his newly regenerated limbs.
"Claude, move!" he commanded himself, his voice echoing in the empty chamber. "You're the handsome and amazing Claude, not some futuristic cat who is afraid of mice!"
The bizarre self-encouragement, referencing something from another life, another memory, seemed to break through his paralysis. With agonizing slowness, he began his descent into the unknown depths.
Each step down the stairway echoed like a funeral drum. As he reached the final stair and peered into the darkness beyond, a single phrase escaped his lips:
"D*mn it..."
The words hung in the air, swallowed by the encompassing darkness that awaited him—darkness that held challenges he couldn't yet imagine, but would soon face with the same desperate determination that had kept him alive thus far.
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