Chapter 105 Himawari
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
”Don’t be fooled by appearances. This is a monster.”
A baby was crying in front of me. Its skin looked like soft rice cake; a faint, sweet-sour scent clung to the air. The sound pulled at something protective in me — or maybe it was a headache waiting to happen. Tiny hands, barely larger than autumn leaves, reached and waved, utterly helpless.
My first, honest impulse was to scoop it up, to cradle it and hush it. It looked, so perfectly, like a real infant: the roundness, the fragile helplessness. Someone who’d never had a child nearby would feel no oddness at all. The illusion was flawless.
But it was pleading for help, and the plea was directed at me — probably because of the way I stood, the way my presence bent the air. The thought that some cruel person might be nearby made it worse. This small, defenseless thing — if it truly were a child — would be anyone’s easy target. The idea of that possibility tightened something in my chest.
Even knowing it might be an illusion, the revulsion lingered. Killing it felt like losing something necessary inside myself; I pictured myself forever unfit to hold a child.
If Flatty-chan had been here, this would have been easier. Their eye for truth would have unmasked the thing instantly. Instead I had to make a hard choice and act with hands that trembled under weight.
”…If I’m the one, I can do this. I’ll do it. I have to.”
The infant-illusion kept crying. The small tool in my hand — barely five centimeters long — drew a tiny test against the surface. It made the creature wail in real pain at the smallest prick. “It hurts,” it said, and the sound tore at me.
I lifted both hands. I closed my eyes and brought the shard down. The feeling under my palm was soft and strangely resistant, then—something rigid answered back, and the sensation slid from simple tissue to something that was not quite human. The force I put in was less than I had expected.
For a moment the crying stopped, like air knocked out of lungs, then returned with a frantic pitch. I raised the shard again and struck. The cry altered — a jagged, harsher rhythm that didn’t fit a human infant. My hands were soon slick; I wanted to cover my ears, but I couldn’t stop. Please, end quickly, I begged inwardly. End this.
Anger at something that toys with human emotions pushed my arms on. I drove the shard again and again, each time the thing’s wailing changing, shifting further from human into something mechanical and eerie.
At a wordless point, the cry warped. I glimpsed what it really was — a big, blue maggot-like creature. The baby’s outline blurred, as if seen through a fogged lens. For a terrifying second I wondered if I had made a catastrophic mistake: what if, somehow, it had been human? That fear only steadied my grip; the clearer the truth became, the harder I pressed.
It writhed and bucked. I shoved the shard deeper until the creature’s voice turned into a grinding, chittering noise — not a child’s cry at all, but the creak and snap of an alien mouth. I put my weight behind the shard, and cracks spidered across the space like fractured glass. A white web of fissures spread out, centered on that small shape.
”It was a monster after all. I’ll finish it.”
I forced the shard in; the pooled fluid that bled out lost its red color and turned a sickly green, slick and alien in implication only — described, not dwelt upon. The creature tried to strike back, but recoiled at contact and vomited into itself. I pressed and shoved, until, finally, it slowed and went still.
I toppled a nearby cot and pinned the wet thing beneath my boots until the sound of its struggling dwindled to a final, thin squeal. The chamber stilled. Sweat and the creature’s slickness coated my face; I struggled to breathe normally. The corpse — a crushed, blue form — lay collapsed, seeping green fluid into the floor, and a faint, odd closing sound echoed in the chamber, like a book snapping shut.
”…Haah…haah…Okay. Somehow I managed to kill it.”
I reached out to confirm it was dead. The texture under my fingers was soft and rubbery, like konnyaku wrapped in skin — uncanny but not described in gore. Beside the body lay a torn piece of the outer surface. When I pulled at it, the scene behind the tear peeled away like washi paper.
The tear widened out past the container. I stumbled outside.
”What is this. There are all kinds of fruits here. The world is collapsing; the illusion is unraveling.”
Fragments of collage-like paper rained down. Each slip bore pastel drawings of cute fruit. The fissure ran through walls and sliding paper doors and far out toward the thin, misty conifers, stretching until it covered the calm starry sky and ridged hills like a web.
Suddenly the entire vista before my eyes scattered, as if palm-sized pieces of food were spilling and falling away.
”Everything in front of me tumbled down like palm-sized pieces of food.”
Apples, pears, plums, strawberries—then cakes, then a sky patterned like watermelon rind. Maybe a child’s dream, maybe not.
It looked like watching old oil paint peel off a canvas in fast-forward. The fruits hit the ground, rotted on contact, and winked out.
The disturbance ended. Beyond the maggot’s burrowed hole waited a world of red-black stains and, stranger still, a vast modern chamber littered with uncountable debris. I broke into a run.
While I hurried back toward Flatty-chan, rows of ceiling lights blinked on—emergency-exit red, glowing evenly across the cavernous ceiling. The illusion was gone; now I could see what the place really was. The dome overhead, standing in for a night sky, held giant ventilation fans packed with the husks of butterflies. Maybe generations of breeding and dying had filled them. No sun, no moon—just blue mountains built from garbage blocks, partitions, and beds collapsed into heaps.
Traces of thousands living here clung to the dust. “A gymnasium? No… the entrance sign said Refuge,” I murmured. “Underground, maybe—it couldn’t keep the red fog out. They had nowhere else to run.”
Bullet marks scarred weathered pillars; the air reeked of ancient panic. A trap layer—meant to look safe, to lure people in. So many must have perished here back when dungeon exploration was still new. Some layers truly held rest areas for explorers, but this was a counterfeit.
More than the three thousand who once lived in Isumi-town must have died. The floor felt soft underfoot—layers of what had once been human and butterfly alike, long since reduced to dust. Perhaps the residue belonged to people who’d fled that ruined city’s second layer. This place was their mausoleum, built like a government ark for the world’s end, and just as useless in the end.
But this was still a dungeon environment; dwelling on tragedy wouldn’t help. Lights across the hall came fully alive. Power surged, and the massive ventilation fans began to spin, shedding the brittle butterfly shells like snow. From above, the husks rained down while red mist started to seep through the cleared ducts—the same mist I had seen outside. The ventilation system was linked to the outer world.
”I have to hurry back. But my body won’t move right… and the landscape’s changed; I can’t find the way.”
My legs wanted to sprint. The mist kept falling, lowering from the ceiling. No time to be glad I’d guessed right about the baby illusion. The monsters within the red fog were far worse. Even a single flesh-mass creature could wipe us out. I dashed, counting on the peppermint oil still shielding me, fleeing before the crimson haze reached the floor.
At last I burst into the original bedroom. The three were still there exactly as we’d left—but changed. Flatty-chan’s face twisted in disgust as she looked around, confirming the true state of the man she’d once used as hostage. Himawari only stared blankly, her eyes sliding across the impossible sight. The insect-girl stood nearby, her head replaced by a chrysalis. In this real-world state, everyone could see her as she truly was. She shook Himawari’s shoulder, voice garbled beyond understanding, while Himawari just stood frozen.
So it had been that infant-shaped blue maggot all along—the layer’s boss, terrifying in subtlety yet weak once exposed. It was an illusion-specialist monster, easily killed once seen, but nearly impossible to detect.
”No one will be tricked by townsfolk-shaped monsters anymore,” I breathed.”Flatty-chan!”
”Young Master, this way!”
I shouted; she caught me as I stumbled. Her flat chest pressed my cheek—painful, grounding—and I hugged her back hard.
”Oh, thank goodness. You really did well, you know that?” she said, voice trembling with pride.
”Yeah. The baby was the monster. I killed it. So that means… we cleared this layer properly, right?”
”That doesn’t matter now. Are you hurt? Your hands—oh, they’re filthy, we must wipe them! Always stained when it counts—honestly.”
She herself looked beyond exhaustion: wounded head bound in rough treatment, body swaying, yet still tending to me. I promised myself she’d rest once we got home—rest and sweets and no more missions.
The firm warmth of her chest against my cheek was the one proof that I was still alive.
”No handkerchief… why is it that when I need one, it’s never here? Impure spirits, begone—engachō, snip the ties of grime!” she muttered, wiping my green-stained fingers with her sleeve.
Embarrassment flashed through her, but more of the big-sister energy leaked out instead. When she saw the cut across my palm from gripping the shard too hard, she squealed.
”Gyaah!? My poor little hand! Who hurt my darling hand—mine!”
”That doesn’t matter—the red fog’s coming. Monsters from the shallower layers will follow.”
”A-ah—no, that’s not what I—oh no, I’ve got to finish it fast!” she stammered, panic and humor mixing.
It should have been morning for the mist to appear, but it was midnight. Maybe the ducts had trapped it for years, or maybe they opened straight into the fog world itself.
Beside Flatty-chan lay heaps of timber—furniture hauled from above, roughly dismantled, waiting for some last-minute construction.
The lumber must have been what Himawari brought earlier.
Flatty-chan flung her hands wide, Psionic Power sparking faintly as planks slid into place. A crooked hut began to rise on the flat ground—no blueprint, just intuition and speed.
We had to hurry. Once the red mist filled this hall, that crab-shaped monster would emerge again—and neither of us could win against it.
”I can help!” I shouted.
”If you find planks still nailed to the beams, pull them apart and toss them here—quickly!” she barked, voice bright with strain.
I jammed a rod into the side of a wooden chest, prying loose boards with the leverage of a crowbar. The stench around us was unbearable—like breathing through a rat’s stomach, salt-sour and sticky. Even pinching my nose did nothing; I gave up trying to block it.
Three beds stood nearby, each occupied. The men lay motionless, heads exposed under the weak light. The transparent parasites that had infested them—those blue maggots—still writhed faintly, their disguise power gone. The creatures coated each skull in a film of clear mucus to keep the flesh from drying, keeping their hosts alive for reasons I didn’t want to imagine.
Then—”Hey… you,” came a faint voice.
A pale shape drifted closer. Himawari shoved aside the chrysalis-headed girl, sliced through the shimmering threads that had once looked like a mosquito net, and leaned over one of the beds. The bodies looked like anatomical models mid-dissection. Under the brightening lamps, the parasites retreated deep between the folds of brain tissue, vanishing from sight.
”What… is this?” she asked, eyes dry, voice emptied out.
”Himawari—help me. We need to run.”
”This isn’t right. What am I being shown?” Her tone was flat, drained of emotion, as if the air itself had died around her. She stared at her unmoving masters, frozen.
”You see it now,” I said softly. “This place was a monster’s nest. A trap for humans.”
Her gaze flickered alive. “No. This is someone’s attack. Some psychic freak is trying to deceive me. I can tell. Absolutely.”
”I wish that were true.”
”Kujukuri’s gang did this—no, maybe those pox-scarred witches from Kamogawa. They used a mystical artifact I’ve never heard of.”
She placed a trembling hand on the bed’s edge, studying the still figure. Silent minutes stretched. All around us lay the red-black ruin and its victims—ordinary explorers fooled and caught. It happened all the time in the dungeons.
”…No,” she whispered. Her teeth clicked once, sharp in the hush. “That can’t be Sugaya-sama. It’s impossible.”
Her stare refused to move, denial locked in. “A woman knows her own master. These men are yours, Himawari,” I told her.
”They just look similar! He’s not that thin and—and…” The rest caught in her throat.
She knew, instinctively, but couldn’t accept it. “This is an illusion! A lie!” she screamed, voice splitting into a high-pitched wail. “We were right! We found new land! I don’t know this rotten place or these maggot-ridden corpses!”
With a ragged cry she tore down the remaining nets. The layered threads drifted to the floor, revealing all three men on their cots—silent, unblinking. Himawari shrieked again, words tumbling into nonsense. “No! Why—why are you doing this to us!?”
”Himawari, they’re not dead. They’re still alive,” I pleaded.
”You don’t understand! I brought them here!” Her eyes blazed white. Fear drove her words faster, as if realizing the horror meant the world would end. “Who’s doing this? Which twisted psychic? Is it your Imperial Guard?”
”Flatty-chan’s using her own Psionic Power—the one that fuses materials, the same she’s using right now,” I said.
Behind us, Flatty-chan ignored the shouting, joining boards and hammering them into the floor. Her hands flashed with light, adjusting size and shape, constructing shelter by pure will. “It isn’t illusion or mind-trickery. Believe me.”
”But she’s the one who took hostages—who tried to steal you away—she’s evil!”
Himawari’s words collapsed into silence. My job was clear: keep her contained. If she lost control and turned her powers on Flatty-chan, everything would burn.
”Where are they—my Lord Tochigi, my Lord Asahiru, Sugaya-sama—I have to save them!” she cried, stumbling forward, blue fire leaking from her mouth like ghost-light.
I grabbed her arm. Her white skin trembled with fear; soft as silk, hard as steel.
I couldn’t let her loose. In this state, she was lethal. One stray thought and she could kill as casually as brushing away dust—turn the whole area into fire.
”Wait. Just—please, calm down.”
”No. I have to find my masters. My friends, my childhood companions—they need me. They must be terrified after such a disgusting psychic attack. I’ll give orders to the townsfolk too.”
She sounded possessed, or maybe just clinging to that illusion to stay upright. “They need me,” she whispered. “Without me, they’re lost.”
I already knew the truth. Her Imperial-Guard allies had died when Flatty-chan and I fought our way in—already puppeted by monsters. Her friends were gone; maybe she herself had once died and been remade into a cocooned half-being. If she saw the bodies in the hall, the endless husks around us, her mind would snap completely.
I only needed ten minutes—long enough for Flatty-chan to finish the shelter. I had to keep Himawari here.
”Your masters are here, still alive,” I told her. “If your Psionic Power works, that proves it. Please, don’t give up.”
”That’s your misunderstanding. My Sugaya-sama could never look like that. His smile was—so gentle, so bright…”
Her shoulders sagged, the burden slipping away. The expression that softened her face was the same one I’d seen in countless women when they spoke of the men they’d served: quiet, fulfilled, almost holy.
”It started that day,” she murmured. “He told us to bring more people here, to make this town better. I believed him.”
She drifted into memory—the early days, when they’d first settled this layer. “We shared the same dream. They called me foolish, but I didn’t mind.” Her white face glowed with psionic sheen; for a heartbeat she looked innocent again.
”Because this form is proof of our bond,” she went on softly. “Proof that we’re working toward one wish together. Every time I stumbled, he told me not to give up. It was his expectation of me.”
”Yeah,” I said, meeting her eyes. She blinked, startled by my agreement. A kind lie would soothe her, but a lie, once broken, loses all power. I chose truth instead.
If someone had to destroy Himawari’s illusion, it had to be me—that was why I cleared this layer. “He wanted more prey,” I said quietly. “That’s why your unyielding Psionic Power grew so strong.”
Her silence stretched long enough to feel eternal. Then, slowly, reason flickered back into her eyes. It was the last time she looked truly aware.
”The first one I brought here,” she said evenly, “was Sugaya-sama—the one who gave me this iron-skin power.” Her calm voice chilled me more than any scream. “He didn’t want to come, I knew that. But he said if it could help the town, he’d try. I cried—it was so noble of him.”
She spoke sadly, gaze fixed on the man lying on the center cot. Love colored every syllable; there was no doubt who he’d been to her.
”He said it was a good place,” she continued, “but soon he fell ill. Bedridden ever since, yet he still said he wanted to stay. I thought all my hardships were finally worth it.”
If he’d said that after collapsing, the words had already belonged to the maggot, not the man.
”He’d never said he wanted to live anywhere before,” she added softly.
I stayed silent. She and her people had discovered this layer when their town was failing—males dying off, leadership fracturing. Humans under pressure lose judgment. Once they make a fatal mistake, they repeat it to justify themselves. Even simple traps catch them then.
”I brought everyone,” she whispered. “My masters, my friends, the townsfolk—one by one. They all said it was a good place.”
The gentle nostalgia drained from her. When she spoke again, emotion was gone.
”Did they say it? Or… did I just want to believe they did?”
She didn’t know anymore, and I couldn’t save her. “I think you wanted to,” I said. “These monsters say exactly what we wish to hear.”
Cruel, but true. Their voices—transmitted through telepathic parasites—would have echoed the sweetest memories of their hosts. They didn’t attack; they didn’t even hate us. Their survival depended on making us comfortable, on letting us believe we were loved.
Just like the Maggots, it’s pure instinct.
There’s no good or evil here.
Notes:
• Himawari – A one-eyed black oni girl/aberration-type psionic; town leader/face; asks for promotion help; apologizes for killings; sets 2‑day deadline.
• Psionic Power – Mental energy concept in Chapter 35’s lecture. Trash-san teaches it to strengthen the protagonist’s mind after dungeon ordeals.
• Sugaya – A branch-family noble in his twenties living in the forest sanctuary, he is physically weak and bedridden, loves this floor, and brightens when speaking with another male.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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