Chapter : 04
“W-Wait a minute! How can I be sure you’re telling the truth? You could promise to give me 1 billion won and then never actually pay me!”
He had said that this was a different dimension from the one I had lived in. But he could give me the currency from my original world?
And even if he really did produce a pile of money right here and now, what if it turned out to be counterfeit?
The Demon King silently watched me panting with excitement, then slowly waved one of his wings. A small white light gathered at the tip.
The ball of light soon fluttered toward me as though it were alive and landed at my feet. The moment it touched the ground, it began to change shape.
“Gasp…!”
It was a bundle of 50,000-won banknotes.
Even at a glance, it looked like there was at least 20 million won there.
“An advance payment.”
The Demon King spoke in a languid voice.
“Instead of bringing currency of that value from your dimension, I exchanged an item of equal value and left it behind in its place. So you needn’t be suspicious. It’s real money.”
“A-an advance payment? This money really belongs to me…?”
“Yes.”
With trembling hands, I picked up the bundle of banknotes and hugged it to my chest.
The heavy sensation of the money filling my hands made my head spin.
Countless things I could do with 20 million won flashed through my mind, leaving me unable to think straight.
I barely managed to stop myself from blurting out that I wanted to sign the contract immediately.
This wasn’t the time to get distracted by money!
“You said you brought currency from the dimension I used to live in. Does that mean I can go back there?”
Even if I received a mountain of money, it would be useless if I couldn’t return to the place where I could actually spend it!
At my question, the Demon King let out a soft sigh.
“I cannot send you back right now. Bringing you here consumed a tremendous amount of causality. Furthermore…”
The Demon King pointed the tip of his wing at the bundle of banknotes I was clutching so dearly.
“Bringing that here completely depleted my remaining power. Therefore, in my current state, I cannot return you to your original dimension.”
I froze on the spot.
I hadn’t expected the Demon King’s power to be completely depleted.
And he’d used up nearly all his remaining strength just to get me these 20 million won?
An ominous feeling washed over me. The dreadful possibility that I might not be able to return home anytime soon.
“T-Then, would another Demon King… perhaps be able to do it? Could they send me back to my original world…?”
“You should abandon the idea of leaving this place to work at another dungeon. No Demon King would hire someone without experience, and a human wouldn’t even get the chance to meet a Demon King in person. To us, humans are nothing more than livestock from which we extract fear.”
Brownie, who had been floating beside us, squeaked loudly as well.
“Absolutely not! You can’t leave!”
“T-That’s impossible. I would never! I haven’t even thought about that for a second!”
I hurriedly shook my head before letting my shoulders slump.
Then what was I supposed to do now? Did this mean I had to live in this strange world forever?
I would never see my family or friends again.
The thought that I might never return, leaving behind all the money I’d painstakingly saved, all the years I’d lived, and all my memories, made my vision blur.
Just then, the Demon King spoke slowly.
“To regain my strength, I must extract fear from a great many people. Once I rise to around eleventh place in the rankings, I should be able to send you back to your original world.”
The moment I heard those words, hope bloomed inside me.
I could go home!
If I could get the Demon King in front of me to eleventh place, I could return home! And I’d get 10 billion won along with it!
…Now that I thought about it, the terms didn’t seem all that bad.
After all, the only person I could rely on right now was this owl Demon King standing before me, wasn’t he?
In that case, it would be a much bigger problem if the Demon King refused to hire me.
I had no idea how difficult it would be to climb the rankings, but with my return home and 10 billion won at stake, wouldn’t it be better to give it my best shot?
“I-I’ll give it a try!”
I clenched my fist tightly and held it up.
Even if I ultimately couldn’t pull it off, I figured I could recruit a capable new employee later and leave the task to them.
The 10 billion won was a secondary objective. Getting home was the most important thing.
“Then the contract is concluded.”
“Great!”
The Demon King’s voice brightened noticeably. The fairy Brownie cheered and flew around excitedly, making a tremendous fuss.
My résumé appeared before me once again.
Before long, the bottom of the paper began to burn away, and something resembling a bright red seal appeared.
The characters didn’t look anything like Hangul, yet, strangely enough, I could read them.
The words on the seal read: [Hiring Complete].
And just like that, I’d successfully changed jobs to a new company—or rather, a dungeon.
And then…
“Demon King…?”
As soon as the entire process was over, the Demon King flopped down onto the floor.
A few seconds hadn’t even passed before he began snoring loudly and fell asleep.
I’d only just joined the company, and the boss had already gone off to dreamland.
My bewilderment lasted only a moment before the clay doll, which had naturally ignored the Demon King, fluttered over to me.
“Hello! Let me introduce myself again. I’m Brownie, a guardian fairy bound to this place, and I’ll help you manage the dungeon.”
“Hello…”
Brownie seemed to be in an extremely good mood.
Its thin mouth, which looked as though it had been carved into clay with a sculpting knife, curved into a crescent shape.
Brownie flew in circles around me at waist height, chattering in a very high-pitched, slightly sharp voice. It seemed to have a cheerful and lively personality.
“I have very high hopes for you! The more you help this dungeon prosper, the stronger I become, too! My dream is to become a high-ranking fairy. So please, please make this place an unbelievably infamous dungeon!”
“I-I’ll try. I don’t really know how to do that yet, though…”
If I wanted to return home, I had to do my very best first.
The idea of managing a dungeon sounded intimidating, but perhaps I could just treat it like joining a company with no proper organizational structure and get on with the work.
After all, I was a talented employee who had endured four years at an infamous black company while earning a pitiful salary, wasn’t I?
“Anyway, what a relief. I was really worried that the Demon King might go bankrupt buying the dungeon and end up unable to hire even a single employee.”
Just as I was reassuring myself, I heard another statement that made me want to clutch the back of my neck.
“Wait! Hold on! What do you mean, go bankrupt?”
“Oh, the Demon King didn’t tell you? Actually, he spent his entire fortune buying this enormous dungeon. He said that, as a Demon King, owning a small dungeon wouldn’t look impressive enough. He probably has some debt now, too.”
I frantically looked around the empty space where I was standing.
So he’d gone bankrupt buying the company building?
Suddenly, I realized that this was exactly the sort of thing that fat owl Demon King might do.
I’d thought he was merely unmotivated and lazy, but apparently, he also had no sense of financial responsibility and was completely incompetent.
No wonder he was dead last in the rankings.
All of a sudden, I remembered the president of my former company. He had been the very embodiment of incompetence, too, and the memory filled me with an overwhelming sense of anxiety.
Why was I so unlucky when it came to employers? Mr. Physiognomist, you said I was blessed with good connections!
“Then he must have no money left at all. How are we supposed to run the company… I mean, the dungeon?”
“Fortunately, I have some starting capital. It’s the money I’ve saved up over my entire life. I hid it from the Demon King, so this is a secret just between the two of us, okay?”
The fairy opened its mouth wide over my hand and poured out a clattering pile of rusty coins covered in dirt.
The weight of the coins in my palm made my mind go completely blank.
“I worked really hard collecting coins that people dropped. I even resisted the temptation to buy candy so I could save them up, so please spend them wisely. This is my investment in the dungeon! The dungeon needs to grow for me to grow, too!”
“How much money is all this…?”
Naturally, the money looked a little different from the currency used in my world.
Each coin was almost half the size of my palm and quite thin.
“About 100,000 Eon. That should be enough to hire one or two field workers, as long as they’re pretty incompetent.”
“The unit is won?”
I was startled by the familiar-sounding currency unit.
“No, Eon. Eon is the currency used in the Anais Empire.”
“Ah… Eon.”
‘At least it’ll be easy to get used to,’ I thought absently.
“Can we really hire employees with this much money…?”
I was still bewildered because I didn’t properly understand the value of the currency yet.
“It’s a tough job market these days, you know. There are tons of monsters who are desperate for someone to hire them, as long as they’re paid. Of course, since the salary is so low, only the useless ones will come crawling in.”
As Brownie spoke, it casually pointed toward the monster’s business card I was holding.
So that terrifying green monster I’d met was considered a ‘useless one’ by fairy standards?
“Even monsters… are struggling to find jobs.”
