Chapter 54 – Floor 9. Make an Offer That Can’t Be Refused

Lizard. In English, Lizardman.

Although the trend was to translate most terms into Korean, it seems that even so, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to translate it as “lizard warrior” or “lizard shaman,” so as a compromise, it became “Lizard” – this was the mainstream opinion in the gallery.

The same applied to Orc and Alraune.

This Lizard pointing a sharp spear at me was a guard belonging to the Lizard faction, which, along with the Orcs of the 8th floor, divided control over the tropical rainforest region.

Of course, if it had been a Lizard follower with crazed eyes like those Orcs, it wouldn’t have bothered threatening me but would have stabbed first and asked questions later.

“Whoa- surrender, surrender!”

I raised my hands toward it, showing with my entire body that I had no intention to resist.

Please look at me!

I’m helpless without weapons or armor!

The Suspicious Merchant, seeing me surrender, also raised their hands and shouted surrender.

“I surrender too.”

“Hmm… suspicious humans, what business do you have here?”

The Lizard guard, perhaps deeply impressed by my fervent intention to surrender, looked at me intently with somewhat suspicious eyes before withdrawing the spear blade.

Only after the sharp edge that had been poking my skin disappeared did I finally heave a deep sigh. I told the Lizard guard about being attacked by Alraune, how I happened to be defenseless at the time and lost everything I had, and how I had “kidnapped” the Suspicious Merchant.

“No! I keep telling you it wasn’t kidnapping?”

“That’s usually described as kidnapping, customer.”

The last part was arbitrarily added by the merchant.

Although I felt incredibly wronged, I decided to endure it since I was confident I’d be defeated within 3 seconds if I fought.

“To think the Flower Queen has moved! Humans, what exactly did you do?!”

“I told you I was attacked while sleeping?! You bastard..! How dare you try to falsely accuse me!”

“The normally docile Flower Queen wouldn’t move without reason! Tell the truth right now!”

The Lizard guard suddenly lunged forward and struck with the shaft of the spear.

Thwack-

“Guwet─”

With no warning, that heavy spear shaft hit me squarely on the head, and my vision turned black.

***

“Never thought I’d be locked up in an animal cage-like box like this in my life.

I rubbed my still-aching head from the blow and looked at the creatures visible through the wooden bars.

Every one of them was a Lizard, naturally walking on two legs while maintaining the appearance of a lizard.

While I was unconscious, the Lizard guard had tied me and the merchant tightly with rope, brought us to the Lizard village, and imprisoned us in what appeared to be a cage used as a jail.

I was still completely naked without a single piece of cloth, and the merchant, having lost their backpack, was sitting quietly in a corner.

“The hospitality here is terrible. If someone’s naked like this, they should at least provide some clothes to wear…”

“Customer, right now you’re not a customer.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Through the bars, Lizards who paused their journey to observe us would flicker their tongues before unceremoniously continuing on their way. I simply lay down comfortably on the floor.

It was a difficult situation, but still better than being chased by Alraune while naked, and I would have had to enter the Lizard village at some point anyway.

Let’s just think of it as entering through a different route.

‘If I could get these lizards to cooperate well and recover my onaholes, that would be perfect…’

The concerning thing was that the Lizard village was originally in a neutral state toward players. But judging by the Lizard guard’s reaction, they definitely weren’t friendly.

Like meeting the Orc search party on the 7th floor, when you met the Lizard guard on the 9th floor, instead of the sharp conversation we just had, you would have a somewhat friendly dialogue, which would lead to a sub-quest to deal with Alraune threatening the village. Once solved, you could freely enter and exit the Lizard village and use the objects within it.

But seeing how the one who appeared to be a Lizard guard immediately pointed a weapon at us, something must have changed.

To be honest, I was quite bewildered.

“Let me out~ There’s no human as harmless as me in the world, so why are you doing this? I’m in no state to resist.”

The Lizard guard who had struck me was standing guard in front of our cage.

“Be quiet, human. The Great Warrior is coming.”

With a threatening growl, the Lizard guard glared at me, and I responded by raising my middle finger.

“Having lost even the children I had left, I have no strength, customer.”

“When you say it like that, doesn’t it sound a bit strange?”

The Suspicious Merchant, having had their backpack confiscated, was whining, perhaps feeling anxious. Item dependency? Separation anxiety? Being a merchant, they probably had something like that.

Well, I also felt quite anxious without any items, equipment, or onaholes. It felt like being thrown naked into the wilderness.

As we waited, after quite some time, a red-scaled Lizard, at least a head taller than the other Lizards, approached with heavy footsteps – thump, thump – carrying a massive spear over his shoulder and covered in blood.

With the arrival of the Lizard Great Warrior, the Lizard guard watching over us straightened his back as if suddenly disciplined and saluted.

As I thought about how strange it was to see a bipedal lizard saluting, the Great Warrior’s gaze fixed on me.

The sharp, metallic gaze of a reptile.

I trembled as that gaze seemed to contemplate whether I was prey easy to swallow in one bite.

“Customer, even if you have an interspecies preference, getting aroused in this situation seems a bit inappropriate.”

“Eh. No, this is more like the survival instinct for species preservation awakening due to feeling a threat to my life. It’s definitely not a preference for wanting to stick it in scales?”

Ignoring the meaningful glance the Suspicious Merchant was sending me, I casually gathered some fallen twigs around me to cover my lower body, which made me feel much better.

Indeed, humans need something to cover their bodies.

“We don’t have a culture of wearing things on our bodies like humans do, so we don’t have clothes to give you. I apologize, human.”

The Great Warrior addressed me with a rumbling voice. Surprisingly, the content seemed friendly without any apparent hostility.

“Ah, well… don’t worry about it. It feels nice and cool.”

Please DO worry about it! Give me something to cover myself with! I tried sending telepathic messages to the Great Warrior, but evidently lacking such abilities, he simply nodded and slightly turned his head, gesturing with his snout for the guard to go away.

The guard saluted vigorously again as if apologetic and disappeared, and the Great Warrior sat down heavily in front of our cage.

“I’d like to apologize for the somewhat forceful approach due to some unsettling recent events.”

“…Why are you being so gentlemanly?”

Despite looking ferocious like an evolved Tyrannosaurus, he was far more polite than uneducated humans of the 21st century.

“Then shouldn’t you just let us go? We haven’t done anything wrong.”

My only crime was desperately fleeing from Alraune!

But the Great Warrior shook his head and refused.

“The residents are anxious. Recently, a one-armed human has been causing a great commotion.”

“Ah, that one.”

“No, I don’t know that person.”

It seemed that Albert, who had fought with the Orcs on the 8th floor, had eventually caused trouble against the Lizards on the 9th floor as well.

I wondered what kind of person he was – a man of his age being so belligerent. From the occasional stories I heard, it seemed like he was fighting to die.

Thanks to him, I was receiving this kind of treatment, which was certainly a nuisance.

“Just hear me out. If you listen to my unfortunate tale, you won’t be able to hold back tears from your eyes.”

***

“Hmm…”

Perhaps having succumbed to my perfect tongue work, the Lizard Great Warrior seemed lost in thought, propping his chin and humming.

“The Flower Queen. It seems she has only now noticed that the Guardian has disappeared.”

“Guardian?”

I frowned at the unfamiliar term. It was incredibly unfriendly how many things I didn’t know about in this world.

Damn that Anonymous poster, if you’re going to send me here, you should have at least packed in plenty of information.

At my obviously questioning reaction, the Lizard opened and closed his snout several times – clack, clack – as if contemplating, then began explaining.

“The Guardian was originally a resident of the lower floors who lived symbiotically with our tribe. It was an amorphous creature with a body that shone like gold.”

The Lizard Great Warrior blinked his eyes several times as if reminiscing, looking up at the leafy ceiling.

“More precisely, it was a magical creature created by some human wizard in the past who wanted to experiment, based on a slime mass. He was pleased with himself, saying he had constructed a ritual that transcended the limits of species by using certain mediums and whatnot, but I’m not a wizard, so I don’t know the details.”

A golden slime based on a slime mass?

Somehow, an image like a palette-swapped large monster that occasionally appears during events in MMORPGs formed in my mind.

“Whether it wanted to leave behind something of its own, the form the Guardian mimicked was like a human female, the same as that wizard, but its power was formidable. It was strong enough to suppress Alraune, who had been threatening the village for a long time. So we shared food with the Guardian and lived while keeping Alraune from being active.”

But that eventually ended a few years ago when the mediums that constituted the Guardian were stolen. This was added, but I couldn’t help but fall into contemplation at those words.

The existence of a being powerful enough to suppress Alraune had been present and then disappeared, but it wasn’t even mentioned in D.D.

Of course, the genre itself doesn’t reveal much information, so there were unavoidable aspects, but was it necessary to follow that as well?

“The mediums were stolen?”

“Yes. There was one particularly small one among those damn green-skinned creatures. It was so nimble that one of the three mediums was robbed right before our eyes. The Guardian instantly shrank and disappeared.”

It was clearly the story of the Thief Goblin.

I suddenly became curious about the stolen medium. Since I had just stripped all the hidden items, there was a chance it might be among the items I brought.

“What were these mediums that made up the Guardian?”

“Hmm… originally it would be a secret, but it doesn’t matter now. A withered heart, a small bottle containing what looks like melted blue gems, and finally, a golden statue modeled after the wizard’s appearance. The one that was stolen was the golden statue.”

“Oh.”

The golden statue that was in the Thief Goblin’s silver chest.

I recalled the statue depicting a woman that I had stuffed into my backpack with the intention of selling it when I returned to reality.

“I have that statue.”

“What did you say?”

Despite the reptilian face making it difficult to discern changes in expression, I rejoiced at the Great Warrior’s gestures that revealed his surprise.

I could use this as leverage to gain the Great Warrior’s help.

“I beat up that thief up there. The golden figurine was mixed in with the spoils. It’s in the backpack I left behind, but if I find it, couldn’t we recreate the Guardian?”

I cast the bait.

For the Great Warrior, who needed to protect the village, the fact that they could bring back a powerful entity like the Guardian would be an appetizing bait.

But contrary to my expectations, the Great Warrior’s response was lukewarm.

“Well… certainly, if we had the mediums, I did hear about a method to summon it again and again, but actually, the potion medium is also gone, so even with the statue, we couldn’t recreate the Guardian.”

“Potion? Could it be…”

I earnestly described the potion that had come out of the box held by the Giant Slime, and the Lizard Great Warrior blinked his eyes in surprise each time he heard it.

Seeing the Great Warrior affirm my description of the potion as accurate, I wanted to get up and dance, but unfortunately, I was tied up and couldn’t.

“Let’s make a deal.”

“A deal?”

“I’ll catch Alraune for you.”

Make an offer that can’t be refused.