The training field was quiet except for the steady sound of footfalls and the rhythmic clash of impact against bark and earth.
Trees bent under the strain of cursed power, air humming with tension as Divine Dog: Totality lunged forward, an obsidian blur of fangs and raw malice.
Lefiya rolled across the grass, sweat plastering her golden hair to her forehead, eyes wide but resolute as she drew her staff to deflect the next assault.
Toji watched from a sun-dappled boulder nearby, arms crossed, expression unreadable. His jacket fluttered lazily in the breeze.
The scars on his forearms caught the sunlight, pale marks that betrayed countless battles.
He didn't yell.
He didn't cheer.
He simply watched, and Lefiya, in some strange way, found that more terrifying than if he had been shouting commands.
Her breathing was rough, but controlled.
Weeks of training under his brutality had hardened her.
She no longer flinched at pain or feared defeat.
The moment Divine Dog: Totality leapt again, she summoned a warding barrier, cracked but firm, just long enough to dive under and retaliate with a wind spell, sending dust across the clearing.
Toji didn't react. But he noted the control. The adjustment.
She was learning.
Just behind the training ground, nestled against the stone ruins of a half-fallen wall, Kuro laughed.
The small girl twirled, now free of her claws and newly tailored into a light white dress Lefiya had found in the market.
The faint shimmer of her forehead crystal sparkled in the sun again, healed and reset by Round Deer's reversed cursed technique.
A boy tossed her a ball.
She fumbled it, surprised, then giggled as it rolled past her and into the hands of another child. The human children didn't scream. They didn't run. They played.
A few parents watched cautiously from a distance. But they didn't stop their kids.
Among the hilltop, two harpies soared.
Their wings glimmered with a gentle sheen, feathers drifting lazily down like petals.
One circled before descending, talons folding in as she landed before Toji.
She bowed low, silent respect painted into the small smile on her face. In her clawed hand, a bundle wrapped in linen.
Toji took it without speaking.
The harpy bowed again, then took off, wingbeats lifting dust in her wake.
Lefiya noticed, even as she staggered back from another blow, panting.
She looked toward the kids, then toward Toji.
"You never told me you were feeding harpies now," she said between breaths.
"They're better than most people," he muttered. "At least they don't pretend."
She didn't respond. She couldn't argue.
Toji opened the bundle, a simple rice ball, a few strips of dried meat, a cluster of fresh berries. Enough to keep him going. He didn't need luxury.
He'd lived too long on scraps and the rhythm of kill or be killed.
He bit into the rice and watched as Divine Dog: Totality shifted, vanishing back into his shadow with a low growl.
Lefiya dropped to her knees, drenched in sweat, but with no complaint.
"She's improving," Kuro whispered, sidling beside him with wide orange eyes. Her hand tugged at the edge of his sleeve.
She always walked on the balls of her feet, claws trimmed so blunt now they barely clicked on the stone.
He didn't reply. Just grunted and passed her the remaining berries. She squealed in delight and skipped back toward her playmates.
Lefiya crawled toward him, flopping beside the boulder. "I don't think I've ever... been pushed this hard. Not even Riveria-sama..."
"She coddles you," Toji said simply. "Kindness has limits. Power doesn't."
"You're not kind at all."
He shrugged.
But she looked past him, toward the small figure now being braided by two young girls, as Kuro sat still, letting them gently twist her long blue hair.
"You don't have to be kind," Lefiya added, her voice softer now, "but you did protect her. And them. The harpies, the other Xenos. You're not pretending either."
Toji's jaw shifted. His gaze slid toward the horizon. For a moment, silence fell.
"I was supposed to die," he muttered. "I did die. Came back to a place with gods walking around like they own people. Thought I'd hunt. Get by. Then that damn lizard girl cried."
Lefiya looked at him, surprised.
He wasn't the type to say something so raw.
"She reminded me of someone," he added, as if hating himself for admitting it. "So I cut off her claws, taught her to kill and not be killed. That's what I know."
"But she's smiling now."
"That's not my fault."
"But you didn't stop it either."
The wind rustled the grass. Kuro laughed again.
A harpy soared overhead with another, younger one in tow, maybe a daughter, or a sibling.
They perched along a nearby ruin, watching the children without fear.
The sun broke through the clouds.
For the first time, the Dungeon-born basked under sunlight without chains or shadows.
Toji stood.
His presence still cast a heavy shadow, but the children didn't flinch.
Neither did the harpies.
"You done for today?" he asked Lefiya.
"...Yeah."
"Good. Tomorrow, you spar Nue."
She paled. "What?! That thing with lightning?"
"Maybe it'll fry the laziness out of you."
...
A few weeks passed quietly, though "quiet" in Orario had taken on a new definition.
The tremors of Toji's declaration still rippled through the city, but the initial chaos, the fear, the outrage, the scattered cries of blasphemy, had begun to dull into wary acceptance.
Adventurers now passed Xenos on the street with cautious glances instead of drawn blades.
Children played in alleyways where harpies perched on rooftops, chirping stories in soft tones.
Merchants grumbled, but some had begun offering fruit or cloth to monsterkind, if only to keep Toji's shadow from falling over their stalls.
Toji noticed all of this as he walked through the street that morning, a paper bag slung lazily over one shoulder, packed with materials Kuro might use for a new change of clothes, a book Lefiya had recommended, and something sweet she hadn't asked for but he knew she'd like.
The city was still tense, but the panic was ebbing. His threat, his promise, had bought the Xenos time. And time was all they needed.
Satisfied, he turned and left Orario behind once again.
The descent into the Dungeon was wordless.
Floor after floor blurred by. Monsters died before they could howl, their bodies cut open by a swing of Playful Cloud or pierced through with a cursed spear.
Occasionally he'd pause to loot magic stones, stashing them away for later sale.
It wasn't glorious, but it was clean, efficient, and enough to buy more for Kuro, and maybe a few extra things for the harpy who had learned to brew tea.
By the time he reached the 25th floor, the air had grown colder. Denser. A long-forgotten weight settled over the stones, and Toji's pace slowed, not from fear, but caution.
Something was off.
The monsters here weren't reacting the same. Some had wandered too close to the far end of the floor and simply vanished. No signs of struggle. No blood. Just absence.
He noticed it near the west edge of the cavern.
A hole.
Roughly torn open through the earth, almost like something bored its way upward from beneath, leaving clawed gashes in the stone.
It pulsed faintly, like the Dungeon itself wanted to hide it, then failed.
Toji knelt at its edge. Peered down. Too dark to see the bottom.
He grunted.
From his shadow, a ripple emerged, then a faint croak.
"Toad," he muttered.
The shikigami appeared at his feet, a grotesque creature with bulging eyes and a bloated body, tongue lazily flicking through the air.
With a gesture, Toji directed the shikigami to anchor its tongue to the stone behind him.
The wet, thick muscle extended like a rope, coiling out, then latching onto the opposite wall.
He gave it a testing tug.
Firm enough.
Without hesitation, Toji wrapped one gloved hand around the toad's tongue, secured Playful Cloud across his back, and slid into the dark.
He descended silently, the walls of the tunnel brushing his shoulders.
The deeper he went, the more unnatural the air felt, wet and warm, like the breath of something ancient.
No monsters. No wind. Just silence and the drip of distant moisture.
He didn't know how long he was sliding, only that the tension in his gut didn't fade. It twisted tighter.
Something was wrong.
And then he reached the bottom.
The space opened into a chamber unlike anything he'd seen in the Dungeon. Fleshy walls pulsed faintly, veins glowing beneath the surface with a dull red light.
It smelled wrong. Not like rot, but like something not meant for this world had forced its way in.
Toji stepped onto the soft ground, his boots making no sound.
He reached into his shadow and summoned the rabbit, the weakest of his shikigami, but perfect for sniffing traps.
Nothing moved.
No response.
But the deeper he stepped into the chamber, the more certain he became.
...
Beneath the Dungeon's crust, where few dared tread and fewer still returned, silence had a weight. It pressed against the skin, sank into bone, and dared even the boldest to speak.
But Toji Fushiguro wasn't one for words.
His feet padded silently across the moist, uneven floor of the unexplored cavern.
His breath was calm, as if he weren't walking deeper into the unknown heart of the world but simply heading to a market stand.
The air had grown heavier.
His Divine Dogs prowled at his sides, black to his right, White to his left, their shoulders rippling with cursed energy, hackles raised.
Ahead of them, a flicker of movement signaled the return of his Escape Rabbits, flickering out of shadow like phantoms, their message relayed wordlessly.
They had found something.
Toji paused, crouching briefly to touch the stone. Warm.
Too warm for this depth.
The rabbits vanished again, slipping into the darkness, scouting the path ahead with their silent grace.
Rumors had begun to trickle out from lower-tier adventurers, whispers of something ancient stirring below.
Something that made even the Dungeon itself recoil.
A dragon-like beast, seen only in desperate tales passed around bars with too much ale and not enough sense.
The Juggernaut.
A creature born of the Dungeon's will, manifesting only when the balance had been shattered, when the laws of its sacred silence had been broken.
Toji didn't know if he believed in myths. But he did believe in the instincts of his shikigami, and they didn't report back lies.
He straightened.
A faint thrill sparked in his chest.
"Killing a legend, huh," he muttered, hand brushing Playful Cloud at his hip.
Money wasn't the only reason he was down here. But it helped. Kuro had been begging for a new stuffed animal.
If this thing really was the Juggernaut, and if it dropped anything worth selling, he could buy the whole damn street and let her pick her favorites.
As he walked, the tunnel began to shift.
No longer a straight path, it spiraled, tightening, the ceiling sagging with roots and old stone like the Dungeon itself was trying to pull him back.
But nothing could turn him now.
Divine Dog: Totality let out a low growl. The air ahead shimmered with bloodlust.
He had entered its domain.
A shadow passed overhead, massive and brief.
The Divine Dog barked once, alert, and in that single bark was everything Toji needed to know: they were being hunted.
Toji exhaled.
His smile returned, small and joyless.
"Let's try something new this time, i'm feeling lazy" An idea spark in his head, he has learn more about his cursed technique with Lefiya lately.
And for that, he already got some good trick ready to use.
Why do you need to work your ass off to raise a monster when you already got a crazy strong shikigami obeying you?
Seem to understand what his master's planning, Divine Dogs : Totality look at him, deadpanned.
"...what? It's not fair that you and Nue get summoned everytime time right?" The shikigami nudge lightly at his arm, surrendered at his master's laziness.
"I know you're curious too, beside, seem like the little drago is coming this way" It then sit down, Nue hop on it's head, watching what Toji's planning. Escape Rabbits also went back after researching the area.
Toji raise his hand, but this time, with a little bit of modification to the general. Nue watch him with a curious eyes, Divine dogs just sigh, doesn't care much, Escape Rabbits still playing with each other behind him.
"Mahoraga : Totality"