Dungeon Diary

It had been days, maybe weeks, maybe more—they had lost count in the thick silence of the dungeon, where time hung as heavy as the cold air. The walls pressed in, damp, sour, with a dullness that clung to the skin like a second layer of grime. The ground, a graveyard of dirt and stone, shifted underfoot, brittle and heavy. Robin had grown used to the slow decay of his own body in this place—his hair wild, tangled like the roots of some dead tree, nestling Minona like a strange, living ornament. She perched there now, as if she belonged, no longer floating, no longer shifting, content to rest atop him like the weight of all that had passed, and all that had yet to come.

He’d gotten used to it, her light bobbing gently just above his head, the quiet sound of her small movements, almost like breathing. It was an odd comfort, a light in the dark, but also a reminder that there were things here waiting, watching, things in the walls, in the shadows. He couldn’t tell if it was her presence that steadied him, or the weight of knowing she too was trapped, like him, in this stone cage.

"Hey, human," Minona's voice broke the silence, a lazy drawl of boredom draped over her words. She shifted slightly in her roost, nestled comfortably in his mess of hair, like some overconfident bird perched on the ruins of a man. "When are we getting back to slicing throats again? You've been killing more Hundsteins than you've avoided lately."

Robin's jaw tightened. "Blame the damn Dang-goras I ate," he muttered, the weight of exhaustion evident in his voice, but laced with a bitter edge. "Since then, every Hundstein in this cursed place has refused to leave me alone."

It was true. The new innate he'd gained from consuming the screaming roots, Fragile Façade, had stripped him of any threatening presence. Made him look like an easy kill, a lamb among wolves. Except the lamb had knife for teeth.

Minona's light flickered with a smug glow, bobbing slightly above him. "I forgot to mention that, human. You were starving, and I had to feed you, after all." She sounded pleased with herself, her tone lilting with false innocence, as though her forgetting was some grand act of mercy. "You’re welcome, by the way," she added, preening in her own peculiar way. "Now thanks to that new innate of yours, those Hundsteins see you and think, easy pickings, instead of sounding the alarm."

Robin held up his hand, the dried blood a sharp reminder of just how "easy" the fights had been. The deep claw marks still stung. "Look at this," he grumbled, voice thick with irony. "Good thing they didn’t get a bite out of me. Their claws were bad enough."

Minona’s chuckle was soft, dancing in the shadows above him, her light flickering like a laugh in the darkness. "Oh, poor human," she teased, unbothered by his visible frustration. "All you do is whine. If you think that's bad, you should’ve seen what they did to the last idiot they cornered."

He rolled his eyes, the cynicism bleeding into his voice. "I’d never eat meat after that sight."

But Minona just giggled, settling deeper into his hair, her smugness radiating. For her, this dungeon was just another playground. For Robin, it felt like a slow descent into madness, one claw mark at a time.

“Don’t be like that,” Minona teased, her voice light as ever. “You haven’t even tasted Hundstein yet. They’re practically venison with anger issue.”

Robin grunted, wiping the back of his hand across his sweat-streaked forehead. The air in the dungeon felt like it had weight, pressing down on his skin, thicker than any heat he’d known in the forests where he’d once roamed free. “My father always said, ‘you don’t eat something that eat flesh or has fangs.’ Dogs are trouble, always have been. Nasty things. But they’re still friends.”

“Nothing about Hundsteins is a friend,” Minona quipped, her flickering light catching the edge of his brow as she tilted, curious now.

"The nasty part’s still the issue," Robin muttered, voice low as if the weight of the dungeon pressed the words out of him. "Dogs are trouble with legs, a disaster if you don’t keep them in check." His eyes wandered the dim, rocky corridors, but they weren't really seeing the dungeon anymore. Perhaps they returned to the Dang-gora area again.

"Jagataru?" Minona’s voice softened, her curiosity like a flicker of light, probing, pushing past the defenses he'd built so carefully. “What was it like?”

He didn’t answer right away. His grip tightened on the hilt of his dagger, the rough leather biting into his palm. The silence stretched out between them, as endless as the stone walls that surrounded them. Minona hovered, the air still, waiting.

"It was..." Robin’s voice came low, rough like the crumbling stone under his boots. "It was home." He stared at the dungeon walls as though they could speak back to him, tell him how far away that home was now. "But that was a long time ago." His words trailed off, but the silence that followed was louder, echoing through the empty halls of memory.

The dungeon pressed in tighter around them, its cold breath on his neck, the moss-draped stones like the faces of strangers he had once known. He looked away from Minona, but she didn’t stop watching him. Her light dimmed, as if sensing the change, as if the weight in his words had stolen some of her spark.

"We were chased," Robin finally said, his voice thickening, his eyes hollow and distant. "Chased from the land that was ours. My father—he worked that soil like it was an extension of his own hands. We were farmers once. Now it’s all gone." His fingers reached out to trace the jagged wall beside him, and for a moment it was not stone he felt but the soil of Jagataru, rich and full of life, slipping through his fingers like ash.

"The government took everything from us." His voice dropped even lower, as though the dungeon itself were listening, an unforgiving witness to the past. "The village turned noisy. The fields where we grew food became houses, crammed full by strangers. Our river—once so clear, you could see the stones at the bottom—it turned black with the garbages they brought with them."

The weight of it all seemed to crush him now, his chest tightening with each word. The warmth of Jagataru, the life he had known, had vanished, replaced by strangers who looked through him like he was the ghost. “We lost everything,” he claimed, his voice no longer Robin’s but something older, something cracked and worn from time and regret.

Minona was quiet now, her teasing long gone, her light flickering faintly like a candle about to go out. She hovered there, waiting, but the playful edge had left her, replaced by something almost tender, like a companion who finally understood the silence between words.

Robin kept walking, but the weight of Jagataru hung on his shoulders. "It wasn't just the land," he said softly. "It was us, our tradition, custom, and culture, as our identity. Before we realized, we became the strangers in our own village. I don’t even remember the last time when I pray to what entity."

He pressed his palm against the dungeon wall, feeling the cold seep into his skin, the roughness cutting into his calloused hand. "It all started there... the loss, the anger, the blood. It all came from that. From home."

“And you went out there, killing people?” Her voice was lighter than the weight of the words she threw at him, probing, slipping through the cracks of the silence that followed.

Robin clamped his lips tight, but the silence spoke for him—he didn't need to answer for her to hear what had already been said. “Not just people," he muttered at last, voice low like a growl, "the officials. The ones responsible for Jagataru’s destruction.”

“And did you gain anything from it?” Minona’s tone shifted then, sharpening like a blade that had been hidden until now. Robin saw through it too late—realized too late that she had been leading him here, step by step, her questions dripping with that curious edge she always carried. This wasn’t about Jagataru. It was never about Jagataru. She wanted something else, something deeper, darker, buried in him.

He stopped walking, the dungeon air thick around him, his breath coming out in slow, measured grunts. He could feel her watching him, hovering too close for comfort, her light casting shadows on the walls of his mind. She wanted the secret of Dungeon Walker, wanted to peel back the layers of his power and see what lay beneath. It wasn’t concern, it wasn’t sympathy—it was hunger. Her curiosity had teeth, and they were sinking into him.

“I told you we’re not going there,” he spat, the words heavy with warning.

“Oh, human,” she floated beside him, her voice like a whisper that held too much weight. “How long do you think you can keep it hidden?”

“None of your business.” He kept walking, faster now, but she darted ahead, her glowing form dancing just out of his reach, out of his control.

“Dungeon Walker,” she said, her voice lilting, teasing, but there was something hard behind it now, like steel under silk. “It lets you gain power from killing dungeon monsters, eating their flesh to take their innates. You know what I’m talking about, right? You kill, and you take something for yourself. Is it revenge? Or is it something more? Power? Wealth? What drives you to keep doing this?” Her words circled him like wolves around a wounded deer, taunting him, pulling him apart piece by piece.

“Why would you care?” he barked, his hands tightening on the hilt of his dagger, his heart pounding louder now, anger coiling tight in his chest.

“I do care,” Minona shot back, without hesitation, her voice cold and sharp. “Before it gnaws at you from the inside. Secrets begeth weaknesses. Your past is a weapon, human, one that will be turned against you.”

He opened his mouth to shout, to tell her to stop prying, to leave him the hell alone, but the sound of something else filled the air. A low, savage growl, closer than it should have been. They’d been too loud, too careless, too caught up in words that carried too much weight. It crept closer, as if mocking his very existence.

Robin turned, saw the beast—a Hundstein, eyes gleaming, teeth bared—and in that moment, he felt it. The anger, the frustration, the damn hunger in Minona’s voice—it all snapped. The beast charged, blind to him, as if Fragile Façade had made him too visible, like a white moth on a dark tree bark.

But it wasn’t Robin who was easy prey.

“Stop thinking you know everything!” he roared, his rage exploding, hot and wild, his heart pounding like war drums in his chest. He lunged, dagger in hand, fury guiding his every move. The Hundstein never stood a chance. Robin’s hand moved before he even thought about it, the blade slicing through flesh, through bone, with a force he hadn’t known he possessed.

The beast’s head fell before him, severed clean with a single blow, its body crumpling in a heap. Robin stood there, chest heaving, blood dripping from the edge of his blade. He hadn’t even realized what he’d done until it was over—the weight of the kill settled in. It came like a shadow creeping over him—slow, suffocating. His legs weakened beneath him, knees buckling as he collapsed back against the rough, jagged wall. He slid down, the cold stone biting into his back, but it was nothing compared to the thing gnawing inside his chest. The Hundstein’s severed head lay still in the dirt, eyes wide and empty, but Robin swore it stared at him—judged him. Mocked him. It had no voice, but he could hear it all the same. A silent condemnation. His mind twisted it that way—perspective, angle, things he’d never learned, yet things that betrayed him now.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Minona’s voice slipped in through the quiet like a needle through cloth. She drifted closer, but this time she didn’t hover in the air above him. She came down to his level, roosting lightly on the ground near where he sat slumped against the wall. “My, my, human… no, Robin.”

The sound of his name caught him off guard. She’d never called him that before. Always ‘human,’ a detached, almost mocking label that kept her distant. But now—now she used his name, and the weight of it hung heavy in the air between them. It was personal. Too personal. Yet there was something else in it, something twisted behind the warmth in her voice. Her tone was playful, but it slithered through his defenses like poison.

"You kill those people, not for revenge, right?" The way she spoke shattered the silence, the words darting out like sharp stones, bouncing off the walls of the dungeon and ringing in his ears. “Your anger, your avoidance, the fear I see in you now… it tells me everything I need to know.”

Her words hit him like blows, each one landing with precision. Robin felt his jaw clench, his eyes narrowing, but it wasn’t anger—not anymore. Something else gripped him, something darker, heavier. His fist tightened at his side, but it wasn’t for her. She was right. He knew she was right. He was an open book, and Minona had started reading aloud from the pages, tearing through his defenses with an ease that unnerved him.

Robin’s eyes dropped to the Hundstein’s lifeless form. The power—the raw, terrifying power that coursed through him, that he could feel pulsing in his veins, still vibrating through the blade in his hand—it horrified him. This wasn’t justice. This wasn’t revenge. He’d told himself it was, but now, faced with what he had become, with what Minona saw in him, he realized the truth he’d been burying for so long.

“You fear what you did, dinn’t you?” Minona’s voice danced through the air, light and lilting, but there was no mercy in it, only cruel curiosity. “You killed them because you—”

“Wait, no—” Robin tried to cut in, but his voice faltered, weak against her onslaught.

“—because you were scared.” She pressed on, her words a knife twisting deeper. “That fear forced you to hunt and kill those people, right, Robin?”

Minona’s voice carried an almost singsong quality now, as if she were enjoying every moment of this, watching him unravel before her. Robin’s breath hitched in his chest, his mouth opening but no words coming out. His heart hammered against his ribs, each beat louder than the last, filling his head with noise. Her playful tone held him like a vice, squeezing until there was nothing left but his bare, raw fear.

And he saw it now—saw that Minona wasn’t just curious. She was something more. Something dangerous. She had led him here, carefully, like a predator playing with its prey, waiting for the moment when it was too late for him to escape.

She knew.

She knew his secret, even if she hadn’t spoken it aloud. Knew the darkness he had tried to bury, the truth he had kept from himself for so long. And now she was peeling it away, layer by layer, until there was nothing left but the man he feared he had always been.

The man who killed, not for justice, not for revenge, but because he had no control. Because something inside him had snapped long ago, and the Dungeon Walker’s power—no, the very essence of what he had become—was feeding on it.