These people had only died recently.
Even so, resurrection was hopeless.
Still…
Why was there a child here?
Kanzaki Rei surveyed the surrounding scene, reconstructing everything in reverse within his mind. As an Enigma Scholar, he drew information from every subtle clue in the environment, gradually restoring the full sequence of events that had taken place in this area.
The boy behind him was so terrified that his legs gave out.
Thump.
He collapsed to his knees on the ground.
"It's all right now."
"I've already dealt with all the monsters here."
Ripples of tranquil mental magic spread outward, soothing the boy's heart.
By all rights, he should have been paralyzed with fear, but under the influence of Kanzaki Rei's spell, he felt an extraordinary calm instead.
The child looked up at him, still slightly dazed.
Kanzaki Rei explained gently.
"I was passing by and noticed something was wrong here, so I came."
"But it seems I arrived too late."
The boy opened his mouth, his expression twisting with pain.
He was suffering, but under Kanzaki Rei's enforced serenity, those emotions were suppressed.
"They… are they all dead?" the boy asked.
Kanzaki Rei nodded.
"Yes. From what I can tell, there are no survivors."
"Why…"
Kanzaki Rei replied, "This is a dungeon. As adventurers, they should have understood the risks involved in entering a place like this."
Then he asked:
"But why are you here?"
"You're not a class holder, are you?"
Kanzaki Rei examined the child's body.
The boy appeared to be only nine years old—far too young to undergo a class advancement.
Even among those who awakened early, it was rare to receive a class at such an age.
And there was indeed no trace of a class-holder's aura within him.
"Big brother… you're not from around here, are you?"
The boy clearly had many questions he wanted to ask.
But he chose to answer Kanzaki Rei's question first.
"We… we live inside this dungeon."
Kanzaki Rei froze for a moment.
"You live in a dungeon?"
"Yes."
"Dad said that once a dungeon is fully cleared, monsters won't respawn."
"If we lived inside a dungeon, we could avoid monster attacks from the outside world."
"Dad also said that the world outside was full of monsters now. It was too dangerous to stay out there, so we had to move here."
When he mentioned his father, the boy's expression dimmed.
His gaze drifted to one side.
Following the direction of his eyes, Kanzaki Rei's perception found a corpse that shared the boy's bloodline.
This should have been his father.
Judging by the condition of the body and the stage of decomposition, he had died three days ago.
"I see…"
Ten years ago, no one would ever have considered living inside a dungeon.
After all, dungeons were monster strongholds. Staying in one was far too dangerous.
Yet ten years later, the outside world had become so perilous that people were now choosing to shelter inside dungeons instead.
What a disaster.
Generally speaking, once a dungeon was completely cleared, monsters would no longer appear there.
The vast majority of dungeons closed after being fully conquered, becoming completely isolated from the real world.
According to Kanzaki Rei's years of research, dungeons were indeed fragments of the Nest.
If Earth were used as an analogy, then the Nest was a country.
Nest zones were its provinces.
And dungeons were its cities and villages.
Each "village" existed as an independent space, separated dimensionally from the others.
Clearing a dungeon was equivalent to wiping out an entire village.
Afterward, no monsters would be seen again.
As for what eventually happened to those dungeons, even Kanzaki Rei did not know.
Even with Future Simulation, he had never intended to live inside a dungeon for an extended period.
Still, he estimated that in the short term, this place should remain empty.
After thinking for a moment, he asked:
"How were you attacked?"
"We…"
"I don't know."
"We moved here three months ago. Dad kept saying that after we came here, we wouldn't have to see monsters anymore."
"We'd finally be able to rest."
"But three days ago, a monster with bat wings suddenly swooped into our home and my father… died…"
Kanzaki Rei felt a pang of sorrow.
He thought of his own parents.
Two slimes, still living happily inside his ring.
Fortunately, monsters did not require food or water to survive.
Otherwise, he would have worried that they might have starved to death over the past ten years.
He had even considered whether he could use Reforged Reincarnation to send them directly into the cycle of rebirth.
If he could awaken the memories of their previous lives, perhaps they could become human once more.
But after some thought, he shelved that outrageous idea.
"I understand…"
He now grasped the full situation.
A dungeon that should not have contained any monsters had suddenly become dangerous again.
And the monsters that appeared were strong enough to massacre the entire settlement.
It was more or less exactly what he had expected.
The Enigma Scholar had already reconstructed nearly everything that had happened here.
While a few fine details remained uncertain, the overall picture was almost certainly correct.
"Since you happened to meet me…"
"You could say it's your destiny."
"I can send you somewhere safer."
"You'll probably have to begin a new life there."
"A new… place?"
The boy's eyes were filled with confusion and uncertainty.
Hum—
Kanzaki Rei casually tore open space, and a dimensional rift appeared before them.
"The Moon Sea. The Land of Moonwatch."
"I'll entrust you to the king there. To be honest, it isn't exactly a wonderful place either, but compared to here, it should be much safer for you."
Kanzaki Rei had no foundation in Boundless Mountain.
Dropping the child into some random city there would be little different from sending him to his death.
In a land where even adults had to hide inside dungeons to survive, how could a lone child possibly endure?
And when he looked at the boy—
Kanzaki Rei could not help but think of himself.
He, too, had once been picked up by Izparut and the others inside a dungeon, knowing nothing about this world.
This child likely knew no more than Kanzaki Rei had at the time.
"The Moon Sea? That's a very, very distant place, isn't it?"
"My father told me about it."
"He said it was so far away that even if we walked through three lifetimes, we would never reach it."
For ordinary people, even leaving a single sea region was often an impossible dream.
The size of one sea region was greater than hundreds of millions of solar systems combined.
Without methods of spatial movement, even a Level 7 class holder could spend an entire lifetime trapped within a single sea.
Unless they relied on unstable methods such as random teleportation.
"Yes."
"It lies far to the east."
"Very far to the east."
"Do you want to go?"
The boy looked up and asked suddenly:
"If I go there… can I become stronger?"
"Strong like you?"
"Strong enough to kill so many monsters in an instant?"
"If I had power like yours… could I have saved them?"
Kanzaki Rei opened his mouth, then paused.
He examined the child's spiritual nature carefully.
The boy's spiritual potential was not low.
"Yes," he said softly.
"You can."
His voice became gentler.
"In the Moon Sea, there is an Early Awakening Ritual."
"I can personally oversee your awakening, and it won't leave any aftereffects."
"But what kind of strength you ultimately achieve…"
"That is a path you must discover for yourself."
The boy glanced toward where his father had fallen.
He looked over the scorched earth littered with corpses, then turned back to the young man he had only just met.
"I want to go."
"Please… no…"
"I'm begging you to take me with you."
"I want to become stronger."