Ryu, whose daily routine involves diving into dungeons and hunting monsters, possesses the ability to teleport from the city into the dungeon at will.
He picks a random floor, enters, annihilates the monsters, and stores them.
Every monster on the floor Ryu visits is instantly killed, its magic stone extracted, and its body stored in a subspace.
This entire process takes mere minutes. In a matter of minutes, an entire floor of the dungeon is cleared of monsters.
Facing Ryu, who wields the power of the goddess of time and space, the dungeon monsters never even get a chance to fight.
The subspace created by Ryu's magic is a storage space where time is frozen, preventing the stored monster corpses from rotting. The storage capacity is practically infinite, allowing him to continuously store bodies and sell them to the commercial guild in small batches.
For Ryu, the dungeon is no longer a "hunt." It has become a simple, routine task like any other aspect of his daily life.
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That day, an adventurer named Saru decided to bother Ryu. While most adventurers had stopped trying to provoke him, Saru had just returned from a long-term escort mission and refused to believe the rumors about Ryu's newfound strength. He foolishly believed he could easily handle Ryu.
Of course, Saru was kidnapped by Ryu's teleportation magic and brought to the dungeon.
Coincidentally, the floor Ryu randomly chose was the same floor where Kate and the others were attacked and captured by spiders.
Immediately upon arriving, Ryu "stored" all the monsters on that floor to prevent any interference. This included the spiders that were holding Kate and the others captive.
Saru had been so arrogant about Ryu's strength that Ryu decided to engage in a fight to demonstrate his true power.
The adventurer, who had initially put up a good fight, was eventually overwhelmed by Ryu's increasing strength. The difference in power became clear, and the battle ended with Ryu's victory.
In reality, Ryu could have instantly killed Saru without him even noticing, but that wouldn't have allowed Saru to fully understand the difference in their abilities.
Instead of simply obliterating his opponent with overwhelming force, Ryu chose to defeat him by matching his fighting style and surpassing him. He wanted to let Saru see his own strengths before crushing them with absolute power.
After demonstrating the gap in their abilities, Ryu's punishment began…
Saru, having arrived in the city only last year, hadn't participated in any raids and focused on escort missions, so he wasn't involved in the incidents of being left behind. Ryu confirmed this through his divine eyes by reading Saru's mind, and decided to only inflict a minor punishment.
Of course, picking on newcomers or weaker adventurers wasn't something to be praised, so Ryu wasn't going to let Saru off completely.
Saru, for his arrogance and ignoring the advice of other adventurers, was forced to deeply reflect on his foolishness and learn a painful lesson from Ryu.
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After finishing his punishment and taking a subdued Saru back to the city, Ryu used his divine eyes to scan the dungeon for any respawning monsters. He noticed a life sign within the dungeon, but hadn't noticed it earlier because he had been working through the monsters quickly, storing only those with magic stones.
Leaving Saru in the city, Ryu headed towards the life sign and found Kate and the others tied up.
"H-help us!"
Mark, despite his weakened state, managed to cry out desperately.
Kate also desperately pleaded for Ryu's help.
But Ryu's response was cold.
It was only natural. It was Kate, who had cut Ryu's leg tendons to prevent him from moving before leaving him behind in the dungeon. The rest of the group had known about the plan to abandon Ryu and remained silent.
Kate desperately apologized, begging for forgiveness. She explained that she hadn't wanted to do it but was forced to follow orders.
But Ryu's answer was cold.
"I'm not going to forgive you."
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Despite the cruelty he had suffered, Kate was someone he had once loved, and the others were his former classmates. It was true they had been forced to act under orders.
He couldn't forgive them, but should he simply end their suffering and give them a quick death? As he considered this, Ryu noticed something in the back of the spider room – a mass of spider eggs. He could see through the translucent exterior and realized a large number of spiderlings were about to hatch.
The spiderlings would need food, and the mother spider had likely stored food for them.
Ryu informed Kate about the spiderlings and told her to experience the feeling of being left behind.
He told them that he would return tomorrow. If they were still alive, he would save them.
The group's faces twisted with despair at Ryu's words. If the spiders hatched before his return, Kate and the others would become their food, their insides drained alive.
All they could do was pray.
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"It's about time."
The next morning, Ryu returned to the dungeon. There, many spiderlings had hatched, feeding on the hanging food: Kate and the others.
The spiders had inserted tubes into their bodies and were draining their fluids.
Ryu defeated all the spiders. Kate and the others, their bodies shrunken and drained by the spiders, were left behind.
But they were still alive.
Ryu had intentionally let the spiders consume them slowly. He knew the spiders wouldn't kill them immediately.
He used his recovery magic to save them.
Ryu's recovery magic differed from healing spells like "Heal." It was a time-reversal magic, capable of rewinding time and restoring anything to its original state. As long as they weren't dead, he could restore any injury.
Kate and the others were revived.
Ryu felt a pang of guilt, thinking he had been too lenient. He had initially planned to kill them for cutting his tendons and abandoning him. But they had invited him to join their party as classmates.
He had been fired because of his own incompetence, and it wasn't entirely their fault.
Even if he held a grudge in his heart, Kate had been kind to him on the surface.
Kate and the others, having experienced the terror of being consumed by spiders, surely understood the fear of being left behind.
After being rescued and teleported back to the city by Ryu, the "Dawn Star" party members were broken by their ordeal and decided to return to their hometowns to take a break from adventuring.
Kate showed subtle signs of lingering feelings for Ryu, but after hearing about her true intentions after the firing, Ryu no longer felt the same way about her. He couldn't imagine going back to being her lover.
In truth, Kate had always loved Ryu.
But when she heard that he had been sold into slavery, she panicked and froze. She was helpless, and time slipped away. By the time she heard about it, it was too late.
She felt overwhelmed by her inaction and couldn't bring herself to talk about it when Ryu returned to school as a slave to the Sanders family. She simply pretended to be friendly and made small talk, avoiding any real conversation about it.
Then, Ryu was sold to another noble and disappeared from her life.
She thought she would never see him again. But when she met him in Mimul City as an adventurer, it was a true joy. But by then, she was already dating Mark.
Mark had a faint suspicion about Kate's feelings for Ryu and was jealous. He encouraged her to officially break things off with Ryu, to convince him to give up on becoming an adventurer, for Ryu's own good.
Kate agreed. She felt that Ryu lacked talent and could have a happy life with a different profession, even if he wasn't an adventurer.
To achieve that, she acted cruelly and rejected Ryu.
She believed she was doing it for his sake.
Somewhere along the line, she had lost her way. Perhaps she was driven by guilt over her hurtful words, or perhaps she was simply desperate to survive and grow as an adventurer. But that was just an excuse.
After everything that had happened,
Kate returned to her original feelings for Ryu, but it was too late. It was all over.
She was sure that Ryu would view her as a cruel and shameless woman.
She had done such terrible things.
Even if she tried to explain that it wasn't her true intention, she couldn't undo the actions she had taken.
She had cut his tendons, left him behind in the dungeon, and tried to kill him. She didn't deserve to be near Ryu anymore. Kate knew this deep down.
Their lives would never intersect again.
Kate wept in private.