Okami Wa Nemuranai

Two adventurers are gazing at a hole under their feet on the 38th floor of Dungeon Bacrad.

A hole suddenly opened when they beat the boss here.

"See anything?"

The one asking is an adventurer with the alias <Maneater Bear>, Boudo.

"None. There's a mist hanging over it."

Responding him is the adventurer with the alias <One-eyed Wolf>, Lecan.

"Even your ability can't see it eh. Then this must be the <Black Hole> no?"

"I think so."

Lecan's left eye is hollow. It was scooped out when he was bathed in the venom of Tritail Serpent on the 42th floor of Dungeon Tantran. In exchange, Lecan obtained two powerful abilities when he killed the Tritail Serpent.

<3-Dimensional Perception> and <Life Detection>.

Even with these two abilities, he cannot perceive what lies beyond this black hole.

"Going?"

"Yeah."

It is said that those who jump into the <Black Hole> shall obtain vast wealth, and mighty powers. Many country's founding fathers, and heroes narrated in legends are said to have acquired fortune and powers from the <Black Holes>. Perhaps it's only natural for a <Black Hole> to manifest itself in this turbulent times.

A <Black Hole> shall open every once in several decades once a dungeon boss is killed, but no one knows which dungeon and which boss room will it appear in. Neither anyone know what awaits at the end of it.

Any adventurer dreams for an encounter with <Black Hole>. However, that doesn't mean that all of them will jump into one even given the opportunity. Since it's said that there's more people that didn't come back than those who had jumped.

Lecan choosing to jump without any hesitation must be due to his spirits of a true adventurer, his completeness of strength and willpower, and partly because he has no relative in this world.

Boudo who's been acting together with him for the past two years is also a natural-born adventurer.

That is; he's a man who carries strong curiosity with him, doesn't care about something unless it's profitable, and has discarded the concept of living somewhere, this man would gladly bet his life to make a quick killing. Boudo is also a man without family and overflowing with powers.

Lecan jumped into the <Black Hole>

Boudo followed.

As if waiting for them, the <Black Hole> closed right after.

Only a scenery of an ordinary dungeon remained.

Lecan comes to his sense.

Astonished to find himself sound asleep.

Lecan usually never sleeps too deep. Even if he did, he would immediately woke up when someone approached him, or if there was a sound nearby. To the point that he couldn't remember the last time he slumbered this deep.

Even while surprised, he performs enemy search in full alert. Lecan is detecting his surroundings as natural as he's breathing.

<3D Perception> to detect short range, <Life Detection> to detect long range.

There's no animals nor human within 50 steps. There's about 20 green points within 1000 steps, but no blue nor red points.

That's good and all, but the green points are extremely dim. When he tried to raise the sensitivity a bit, it was suddenly shown clearly. This never happened before.

He abruptly raised his upper body and stood up.

It's inside a forest.

Why is he in such a place.

He remembers clearly when he jumped into the <Black Hole>.

Then he lost consciousness while falling inside the hole.

And then he found himself here.

In other words, this is the world at the end of the <Black Hole>.

However, trees and mountains spread out as far as his eyes can see, with endless sky above.

It doesn't look like a world inside a hole no matter how you slice it.

He observes the surroundings with his remaining right eye while slowly turning around.

He's never seen the shapes of the leaves and grass here.

Lecan has traveled all over the places around the world, yet the trees and grass in this forest are something that don't exist in his memories of his travels.

His physical condition is extremely well.

The air is nice too. But he feels that this air is nothing like any air he knows.

All of Leican's keen senses signal that he's in an unknown foreign world.

He enlarged the range of <Life Detection> to try to search wider, but no red point is displayed.

Which means there's no human nearby. In other word, Boudo isn't here.

Looks like he fell in an awfully far place.

--No... Perhaps.

Perhaps, Boudo fell in another place, an entirely different place.

This isn't the time to worry about Boudo. First things first, I've got to secure my safety.

<TLN: This author tends to suddenly mix up third and first person perspectives, but the novel is mostly told in third person.>