Vale was clothed, mostly, and somewhat comfortable.
He took this moment of respite to inspect his body in depth.
While he didn't have a mirror or anything like that nearby, he could easily tell this body was not his own. The highlights of purple in his long black hair that nearly fell to his shoulders and the tattoos adorning his body.
Before he was kidnapped and brought here, he was fairly in shape, but nowhere near as toned and muscular as he was now. Not to mention his height, which was once 180 centimeters, was now about 187cm… or perhaps a little more.
Vale focused on his black tattoos.
The one on his right shoulder was the biggest and had the clearest design. It depicted a rose bush.
The other three were a little harder to decipher.
The one on his left shoulder and the one on his right hand looked nearly identical. As Vale stared at it, he couldn't help but conclude that it was a crest…
'The crest of Lust?'
It was a spiky formation of two separate prongs that arched parallel and connected at the base, where a small, almost human-like figure with two spiky wings dangled.
Finally, there was the tattoo in the center of his chest.
It, for some reason, was the same design as his pendant, just a little bigger, while surrounded by two lines.
While it wasn't identical, Vale couldn't help but ponder that there was some connection between his tattoo and the Nexus of Beginnings.
Not only that, each of his tattoos definitely had a hidden meaning or purpose.
'I'm sure of it. I just don't know it yet.'
The next thing he noted about his body — and maybe Salome's too — was that he had no body hair, not even facial hair.
He rubbed his hand along his cheek and under his chin, which was smooth as the day he'd been born.
'Odd…'
Vale shrugged it off before once again exiting into the main room of the dungeon via the pink portal.
Once he did, he looked over toward the naked demoness who still lay unconscious with her breasts mushed against the smooth rock floor.
Her left leg slid to the side just a little, but it was enough that Vale could glimpse the promised land.
'Should I waker her up?'
She was his Champion, after all. Should she not help him right now?
Vale sighed. He wanted help, but…
'She looks like she needs rest.'
Vale reached into the small pendant and pulled out the pickaxe, defying every known law of mass and matter.
Then, he walked over to the wall furthest from the entrance and began swinging, humming a slight tune as he did.
Each swing that bit into the rock made a somewhat sizable chunk disappear.
It wasn't as if the broken rock was falling to the ground, but literally disappearing.
Where it was actually going was the Dungeon Core, if Vale understood correctly. At least, if the knowledge that entered his brain when he first equipped the pickaxe was correct.
Any rock extracted would be placed in the white void, where it could then be employed for building new walls and formations, and also enable the dungeon to fix any damage it might incur.
He didn't grasp the reason yet, but his mining was restricted to a horizontal plane. If he attempted to dig downwards, the pickaxe would simply rebound without effect.
Laboriously, Vale kept swinging and swinging, eventually creating a sizable indent — the start of the path to where he was going to hide the Core.
***
'That's a wash…'
Vale's first plan failed.
Using the map function, once he had the stone, he was able to place it back, or so he thought. Instead, it just outlined a blueprint as if expecting him to do it himself.
He had actually gone into the Dungeon Core and witnessed all the stone he mined that was sitting in a huge pile, but decided otherwise.
'Now I see the need for workers…'
His failed plan was to tuck the Core away in a corridor cut off from the alcove by a wall, effectively making the Dungeon Core indestructible.
Yet he found he wasn't allowed to do so.
Whenever he tried to cut off the path to the Core, the blueprint function wouldn't allow it.
He tried to stack the stones there, but if he laid a piece of stone down without setting the blueprint, it would disappear and return to the pile.
[First challengers: 0:15:13]
Though fretting on it wasn't something he felt inclined to do at the moment.
His first battle was coming.
After realizing he wasn't going to be able to do much in terms of altering the dungeon to his benefit. He placed the Core at the end of the short corridor and was intent on defending the only entrance to the bitter end.
To that end, he used the blueprint function to create a tiny stone pillar and practiced using the razor whip against it.
While Salome, who'd redressed and was making the corridor a little longer.
When he was finished practicing with the whip, Vale sauntered over nearby where Salome was mining, and watched.
"Are you sure you'll be okay alone?"
That was their plan; Vale would block the path to the core while Salome alone killed whatever appeared from the other side of the black wall.
The succubus chuckled.
"I'll be better than okay."
"Why do you seem excited?"
"Oh? I seem excited. I guess that's because I get to take all my decades of anger and sexual frustrations out!"
'Anger?'
The succubus didn't seem that angry.
And…
'Decades?'
How old was Salome?
As for the sexual frustrations part…
Salome was going to attempt to Charm an attacker.
"I see."
"You seem nervous, Master Vale."
Vale leaned against the stone wall and cast a glance black one.
"Of course I am. My fighting experience amounts to back alley thugs. I've never held a weapon against any—"
After Vale's abrupt pause, walked out and looked around.
"Why'd you stop? Did you notice something wrong?"
"Nothing. I just remembered when I was a baby my dad made me stab a man."
Salome's face went blank.
"Oh…"
Then she turned and went back to mining.
"Well, if you could stab someone as a baby, you can do it as a man."
She went back to swinging the pickaxe.
'I don't think…'
Vale shook his head.
'Whatever.'
When the timer ticked down to the last minute, the two stood side by side, facing the translucent black wall.
The wall which was losing its opacity by the second, revealing human-like silhouettes on the other side.