Epilogue

“You defeated me.” Following the battle, Haku visited our [Ordinary Cave] once again. Chloe was of course with her, wearing the same butler outfit as always.

“I may have lost, but that was a battle with much for me to learn from. Never would I have thought that gray rats had so much potential within them. Both as scouts and as warriors...” I had known the rats would serve as excellent scouts, but I honestly hadn’t expected at all that they would beat the boss on their own. By the way, I sent the surviving rats into the forest and ordered them to survive for as long as possible. I might end up using them again sometime. I’m sure they’ll... grow in numbers if I leave them alone for a bit.

“I truly did not anticipate being unable to find even a single one of your Dummy Cores. Where did you end up hiding your Dungeon Core? Would you be kind enough to tell me?”

“Sure, if you pay me an extra 50,000 DP.”

“Oh my, that little? Very well. Please tell me. I won’t be able to sleep at this rate.” Whoops. I said that as a joke, but she’s actually planning to pay me. Guess I have to tell her now. I’ll keep where I hid the Dummy Cores a secret for now, though. But I had actually hidden the real Dungeon Core in such a silly place that I was worried Haku would get mad at me. Fearing the worst, I answered her.

“...Well, to tell the truth, our Dungeon actually wraps around the outside of the mountain. There’s a small room about one kilometer away from here. I put the Core in there.” I pointed in the direction of the Goblin room from forever ago. My initial plan involved Haku noticing that immediately and going straight towards it, but in the end, I never had to move our Dungeon Core even a single time. And as expected, Haku was stunned to hear that. But... She didn’t seem mad at all. Rather, she just seemed to be sincerely impressed.

“...It’s true. Now that I’m paying attention to it, I can sense the mana in that direction. I can’t believe that you extended your dungeon not only to the field outside of the cave’s entrance, but that far around the mountain as well... I didn’t notice that at all.”

“In other words, you put the Dungeon Core in a single room connected directly to the outside... What a bold move. My lady, I am quite surprised as well.”

“I knew Number 89’s strategies were right!”

Uh, I don’t know how you came to that conclusion, Rokuko, but you’re definitely wrong. There’s a big difference between using a hidden room off to the side and having your whole dungeon just be a single room. C’mon.

“Sigh... Your labyrinth was impressive as well, filled with tricks even I’ve never seen before. Even your pitfalls were cleverly inventive. Though I do wish to note a flaw in placing weight-based pitfalls on your first floor. I used Minotaurs as my primary offensive might this time, but I also have armies based on weightless Wraiths. I believe it would have been better to place those pitfalls on the second floor and with plans to adjust them according to which troops I sent out.”

Weight-based pitfalls...? Oh, those broken covers I made. Those... Those were just an accident. I accidentally doubled the thickness of the Golem covering a few times due to lack of sleep. The fact they wouldn’t break under Goblins but would under Minotaurs was basically just lucky. I’ll keep quiet about that, though, since she went out of her way to give me advice. And it would have been fine for me even if those pitfalls never activated. She just never would have found the secret path in one of them.

“And also... ngh! Was that riddle you used with the [Gate of Wisdom] from your world?”

“Yep. Honestly, I had a tough time getting that gate thing ready. Not a lot of my riddles worked with it.”

“You know other riddles like that...? Well, either way, it was quite a clever trap. May I please punch you in the face just once?”

“Hahaha, nope.” She still looked pretty frustrated about getting tricked by that riddle. I decided not to tell her that Rokuko had solved it in three seconds.

“...I’m interested in those riddles you didn’t use.”

“They’re basically just little word games. Though it looks like they’re being translated into your language without my input, so...”

For example, if I were to say “Go break a leg” to Rokuko, she would hear that as me saying “Go snap the bone in your leg” without comprehending the “good luck” nuance of the phrase whatsoever. She often just wouldn’t quite understand what I was saying. Unfortunately, that meant that even legendary puns were completely lost on her.

Following that, a riddle like “What time do you have to go to the dentist?” (answer being “tooth hurtie”) wouldn’t work with the [Gate of Wisdom]. The first riddle I went with was “This word becomes shorter if you add two letters to it. What is the word?” The answer was just “short,” but that didn’t work in this world’s language, because according to Rokuko “shorter” and “short” didn’t share the same relationship somehow.

To take things a step even further, a riddle based on making letters out of matchsticks wouldn’t work either. The shape of letters in this world was completely different, after all. Pictures in general still worked, though, so I was planning on doing something like that next time.

Learning about all this was the moment when I simultaneously thought “Magic is incredible!” and gave up learning this world’s language. So much stuff is being auto-translated that I had no way to study it. I might have been able to manage it if I tried really hard, but come on. I wasn’t gonna do that, especially not when I was managing just fine as is.

“Oh yeah! Guess what, Sister! My name right now is ‘Rokuko.’ This comes from the number 695 in Keima’s language! ‘Ro’ is six, ‘ku’ is nine, and ‘ko’ is five!”

Yep. Thanks to auto-translator stuff, Rokuko hadn’t noticed the logic behind the name I gave her at first. I told her what was up after noticing that, and it made her super happy. I thought she’d be ticked off that I just straight-up turned her number into a name, but that actually ended up being really important to her. I couldn’t have picked a better name, basically. Yeah, I don’t get Dungeon Cores at all. It seemed they even had special rules regarding their names, like attaching “Dungeon Core Number” before the number itself as a sign of respect or something like that.

“Oh my! That’s wonderful! Aaah, what a splendid name... I’m quite jealous.”

“Uh-huh! Please call me ‘Rokuko’ from now on, Sister!”

“Certainly, Rokuko. Haaah... That name truly is wonderful. My former master named me Haku just because my hair is white, you know? He truly was the worst master imaginable, without a speck of good taste within him.”

Despite all I said earlier, there were some words that coincidentally were the same in both Japanese and this world’s language. For example, “Haku” could mean white in Japanese as well.

“...Wait, what? Haku, your name doesn’t come from your number? 89?”

Haku blinked in surprise after hearing me say that. “How would Haku come from 89? Wait... Is that how it works in your world’s language?”

“There’s a lot of different ways to interpret it... but yeah. Haku can mean both ‘white’ and ‘89’ in my language.”

Haku closed her eyes briefly and put a hand on her head. It looked like that revelation was giving her a lot to think about. After a minute or two, she opened her mouth again. “...Rokuko. Would you please call me Haku from now on as well? That way, both of our names will come from the numbers of another world.”

“Okay, Haku!”

She still seemed to be a little conflicted, but Haku nonetheless rubbed Rokuko’s head while smiling a somewhat pained smile. “Ah, it seems we’ve gone quite off subject. There is still much I’d like to discuss with you, but I am unfortunately a fairly busy individual. I built an entire dungeon for this, which I now need to take care of. And although I am concerned about that last trick you pulled, it would be exceptionally boorish of me to pry that far into another dungeon’s secrets, wouldn’t it?”

That last trick...? She must be talking about my secret weapon. I wouldn’t mind telling her at this point, but she may want to have some fun by trying to figure it out herself.

“Now then, Rokuko. It’s about time for us to... exchange DP, isn’t it?”

“Y-Yeppers!” Haku took Rokuko’s hand and gave her a gentle, pleased smile. She paid us 150,000 DP in total. Despite talking about how busy she was, she really took her time with the mouth-to-mouth DP exchange. I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, Haku.

Day 34

Haku went home the next day. With the Dungeon Battle over, I made the decision to get serious about my duties as Dungeon Master and focus on managing our dungeon... not. I actually decided to just sleep for a while.

“Wheeew. I should be able to kick back and relax for a while now.”

“Uh-huh. I’m totally spent after all that.” For some reason, Rokuko was resting in a futon laid out next to mine. Eh, whatever. We both worked a lot. I’ll let her sleep by me just this once.

“Master...”

“Huh? What’s up, Niku? Are you getting too hot?”

“No. I want you to squeeze me tighter.” As requested, I hugged Niku tightly. Her skin was as smooth and pleasant to the touch as ever.

“Hold on, Keima. Listen to what I’m saying too.”

“And what exactly do you have to talk about? I’m pretty sleepy right now, y’know.”

“...Seriously, why do you sleep that much? I’m really surprised you actually managed to beat Haku like this...”

“What can I say? I won because I’m in love.”

“UM?! Wh-What’s with you all of a sudden?!” Rokuko began to panic a little, stammering nervously.

“Huh? You’re the one who asked how I can sleep so much. I just love sleeping.”

“O-Oooh, that’s what you were talking about. I totally thought, um... you were saying you loved me or something.”

“Well, yeah. I love you too, Rokuko. Mind if I rub your feet? Actually, just let me rub your feet.”

“...No way.” Rokuko turned me down, blushing.

“Eh, alright. I’m gonna sleep then.” I could make joking orders like that because I had gotten rid of my Absolute Authority. If I hadn’t, Rokuko would have held out her feet without a word and let me rub them... Wait, crap. I feel like I’ve made a huge mistake here. Oh well. I was just joking around when I said it, anyway.

“Hey, Keima... Are you going to stay with me? You’re not going to go anywhere, right?”

Rokuko spoke to me in a sweet voice, as if seeking comfort. My heart thumped.

“What, do you want me to leave?”

“...No way. [Melon Rolls] don’t taste as good without you around, Keima.” I dunno what she’s talking about, but alright. I feel like I could sleep all day today. So let’s do it.