I'm Not an Earthworm, I'm an Earth Dragon

The snake’s body sometimes twitched, sometimes shook, making an eerie and ominous sound. It was clearly dead when it was above, so why was it alive below?

“…wasn’t that thing dead up there…?”

“Yes. It was definitely… dead. But now it’s alive…?”

I stared intently at Akash, but he just shrugged and said he didn’t know.

“No matter how much I know and how smart I am, there are things I don’t know. That’s one of those things. I’ve never seen anything like that before. It’s not an undead, judging by the mana reaction. Anyway, how did those gods end up with such a headache-inducing lizard as their agent?”

He suddenly complained about the gods and looked at the snake’s body as if he was dumbfounded. However, one question crossed my mind.

“…what would happen if I touched that?”

Common sense would dictate that one would be crushed by the movements of the body reacting to the pain. But since common sense had already been shattered once, I wondered what would happen.

“What? Were you the kind of scumbag who gets off on watching people get squashed? If so, go ahead and touch it. Oh, it would be pointless. Everyone would be flattened like paper in an instant. I don’t know about that earthworm, though.”

Akash threw a sarcastic remark, asking if I was crazy, and then withdrew the light that was illuminating the snake’s body. I wondered if he needed to say it like that, but his opinion was valid. There was no need to throw away my life to satisfy my curiosity.

“…Altera. I know it’s fascinating, but let’s get moving. It doesn’t seem to be hostile to us, so we can just ignore it and go.”

I told Altera, who was staring at the place where the snake’s body was with wide eyes, that it was time to go. She said okay and moved, but she looked back at the place where the snake’s body was one more time.

“Why is something like that even here? I wouldn’t put something like that in my nest…”

She seemed to be wondering why something like that was in a home. Yuna, although she didn’t say it, seemed to have a similar question in her eyes.

However, since there was no way to find an answer, we all went down in silence again. Then, suddenly, Altera stopped us.

“…there’s something clattering ahead. Should I drop it?”

So that was it. We could drop it after we saw it, so I asked her to wait a moment and then slowly approached.

Altera also held the spear with both hands again and carefully moved forward, aiming ahead. Then, the identity of the clattering thing she mentioned was revealed.

A skeleton with a pale skull wearing a black wooden coffin and a body covered in beautiful but worn-out wool was periodically clacking its jaw and turning its neck.

“A skeleton? No. That’s…”

-You, who are about to descend below. You, who dared to deceive the eyes of death with the body of the living. My name is Neti. According to the laws of the underworld, you must pay a price to pass through here.

Akash looked at it and seemed to recognize what it was, with a slightly hardened expression. However, before he could say what it was, the skeleton looked at us and spoke in a hollow voice.

“Should I push it? Or do you plan to pay the price this guy is talking about and pass?”

Rather than speaking, it felt like it literally embedded the meaning into our heads.

Altera asked me what to do. In the past, she would have just pushed it without asking or arguing and then said something, but I was glad that she had changed a bit while being with us, and I told her to at least listen to what the price was.

“…Neti! Then what is the price you desire!”

-The dead are powerless. But the living are not. Therefore, you wish to descend into the underworld with your living bodies. Offer your two arms and two legs.

“…push it.”

As soon as Altera heard my words, she immediately moved the wall next to Neti and pushed him down to the bottomless pit. We waited for a while to see if it would reappear or if something strange would happen, but nothing like that happened.

“So, what is that thing? Akash. You seemed to know. And what’s this about the underworld?”

Akash, with a much more relaxed expression than before, said something ridiculous.

“Oh, that? It’s a gatekeeper of the underworld. This is the underworld.”

Since gods existed in this world, it was natural that the underworld also existed. However, unlike the gods who could be chosen or reached through prayer, the underworld was not a place that could be mentioned so carelessly.

The gods of the underworld did not respond to the voices of the living no matter what they did, and entering the underworld was synonymous with death.

The final destination of all life, from which no one could escape, and no one was allowed to return. That was the underworld.

“…if it’s the underworld, aren’t we in big trouble…?”

“Like Myungho said! If this is the underworld, isn’t there no way out?!”

Even the dead could not come out of the underworld. Only during the one day when the boundary between the underworld and the present world became blurred were they allowed to go out for a while.

“Ah, that’s okay. Strictly speaking, this underworld is not the real underworld. It’s probably a fake that the dragon below is clumsily imitating. If it were the real underworld, our limbs would have been chopped off as soon as we pushed the gatekeeper.”

Still, it seems that they put some effort into it, preparing even a gatekeeper. Akash evaluated this fake underworld as casually as if he had entered his own living room.

“We can get out, right…?”

“Ah, don’t worry about that. This body has even escaped from the real underworld. A fake is nothing difficult.”

It seemed like he just said something incredible so casually. If I tried to listen to that too, there would be no end, so I decided to cut it off here and go down again.

“…you were talking about the underworld or something earlier. So, are you saying we’ve come to the underworld… the afterlife?”

Altera asked me from behind while keeping an eye on the front. So, I summarized Akash’s words and relayed them to her.

“…it is the underworld. But it’s probably a fake underworld created by the Great Worm below.”

“I see. I was hoping to find my mother. Was it a fake…”

I couldn’t see her expression, but judging from the deep regret in her voice, her expression must be the same.

“I understand your disappointment… but your mother probably wouldn’t want her child to enter the underworld just to see her. The living should live.”

“I know. I was just saying, if.”

Altera answered dryly and continued to descend. Along the way, whenever they encountered a gatekeeper, we would push it off the cliff and continue.

This time too, Altera stopped, and I thought it was another gatekeeper, but she said something unexpected.

“There’s a snake ahead. Should I push it off again this time?”

“A snake? How big is it?”

“…big enough to swallow a human.”

Since it was the first non-skeletal being we would see since coming here, I told her to approach and see. Yuna also seemed a little excited, perhaps because she was bored.

“I have a bad feeling about this…”

“I didn’t expect to hear that from you.”

Only Akash said he felt uneasy. However, both by majority vote and considering his karma, there was no need to reflect his opinion, so I told Altera to go a little further.

As Altera said, there was indeed a green snake blocking the way, coiled up in front.

The head was fine, but as it went further, its condition worsened, and by the time it reached the back of its body, it was nothing but bones. It was a strange snake that looked familiar.

-…Greetings. People of unknown names. My name is Musgalaki. Turn back. It is not too late. If you turn back now, you will be able to save your lives.

“I think it would be better to just push it off.”

What? It was just a different form, but it was still a gatekeeper. I told Altera to push it off, but Akash stopped her with great urgency.

“…push? Or not.”

“Wait a minute. It seems like Akash has something to say.”

“Hey, you there. Let me ask you one thing. That thing in the center of the pit, is that you?”

Come to think of it, the condition of the snake’s body was somehow similar to the condition of the big snake in the center of the pit.

-…Yes. It is me. It is my body that has been transformed into an underworld dweller by the hand of the mistress of the underworld, by the hand of my wife.

“An underworld dwdweller! So that’s why your body was in that state! I wondered why you were alive, but it was because you had turned into a being of the underworld…! Then the back part of you is dead because it’s straddling the present world! Then what’s this about a wife? Are you talking about the Great Worm?”

-Are you a mage? Or a scholar? You know a lot. Yes. It is my wife with whom I swore to be together forever. Unfortunately, she became obsessed with the oath and ended up like this.

“…to discuss eternity in front of a dragon. Huh, I don’t know if you knew what you were saying, but you’ve had a rough fate.”

-No. She revealed that she was a dragon midway. And I knew the weight of the word ‘eternity’ that she spoke.

“You were quite a madman yourself.”

“…if it’s a wife, then it’s definitely not my father.”

While Akash and the snake were talking, Altera, who seemed to have heard the snake’s story, spoke as if she was both relieved and dejected.

“Right? Then… I don’t think there’s a need to go down. Do you want to go up?”

“That’s… well. I still want to see what the Great Worm looks like. Is that too much to ask?”

Honestly, I just wanted to run away. Just hearing the conversation between the snake and Akash made it clear how insane the thing below was.

It disguised itself as a giant snake and went out to enjoy itself, and then it met a giant snake along the way, fell in love at first sight, revealed its true identity, and they swore to be together forever.

The snake agreed, and when it died, the dragon created a false underworld, modified its corpse, and bound its soul to be together forever.

Just hearing about it made my head spin, and she wanted to meet that thing.

“I can’t go with you, but at the very least, I can pull you back from afar. Akash has a reverse summoning spell among the magic he can use…”

“That’s enough. I’m not trying to win.”

“…win? Wait a minute, Altera. Are you planning to fight the dragon?”

“Yeah.”

That was a problem. It was obvious that Altera would die or get hurt, so I couldn’t just let it happen.

“If you know its real name, you can just say it yourself. Why aren’t you doing that?”

-…that would be betraying her trust. She trusted me and told me her name. I can’t betray that. The best I can do is wait until her madness subsides, she regains her reason, and corrects her mistakes.

“Hah. You idiot. The more you stall, the greater your lover’s sins become. Do you want your lover’s soul to be thrown into the bottom of hell where it can’t even reincarnate?”

-That’s…

“That’s enough. Shut up. Hey, hero. We have something to do. Use the brush to tell that guy to confess his lover’s name.”

While I was pondering how to stop Altera, Akash suddenly told me to use the brush.

…why?