The Dungeon is the perfect place for a Psycho (Cyberpunk/Danmachi)

Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia

The bag made the issue of looting disappear. It did not make the issue of cost to time ratios disappear. Kids and dogs gave twenty-five valis per kill, the lizards gave two-hundred. The exact reason behind this jump in price wasn't known to him, but that didn't actually matter either. They paid more for cores from monsters deeper down, which meant the logical answer was to go as deep as possible to slaughter until the bag was full.

A goblin's skull turned into paste as his fist passed through it. His hand grabbed the snout of the kobold behind. Stomping, he yanked it back through and swung. The kobold smashed into a small group of its fellows, all of which crashed back to slam against the dull-blue walls.

"Your meat fails you!"

Scrappy swung, larger blade cutting the feet off of a dog, causing it to fall with a strangled yelp. Then he twisted, moving into a stab against the goblin immediately behind the now-crippled dog. Then, he twisted in reverse, stepping back to move his sword into a downwards stab against the grounded dog. A swipe-thrust-thrust to eliminate two targets immediately in front of him.

Adam did that once an hour ago, except he used his legs and fists. Scrappy was still paying attention.

However, the issue with trying to go deeper was the enemies along the way. It was not just a matter of killing the good bounties, you also had to kill the chaff preventing you from going down as well as the chaff preventing you from going back up. This was old business to him. Arasaka sent him out to murder high-profile targets all the time, and those fuckers were always behind neo-corporate fortresses brimming with walls, turrets, guards, and nethacks. Sometimes they even had the big guns ready for him.

They were never ready enough. He was Adam Smasher.

He backhanded a leaping child, shattering it's jaw and sending it tumbling to the side. The motion was carried, his leg shot up in a whip-like motion, and tore a dog in half at the waist. It didn't slow him down enough, he still needed to bleed off momentum. He carried the twist and hopped to swap what legs were on the ground.

His right foot stomped down, his left foot carried the weight of the accumulated rotation. It smashed through a dog's throat like a massive spear. Rotation negated. His left foot stomped down, his torso twisted and carried him into a straight right. Another green kid died.

"Less than human!"

Scrappy swiped twice, cutting off the fingers of another child, disabling it as a threat. Then, that vector of attack cut off, his sword swept again. Bladed edge carried through the open maw of a dog, cutting into the jaw and skull. The swipe pulled its way out of the skull, in time for Scrappy to smash the pommel into the face of another child. His gambeson absorbing blows and allowing him to attack through swiping claws without fear.

Finally using his armor properly. It took him a few hours to figure that bit out.

Still, the wear down and back up was something he was going to keep in mind. He didn't get as old as he was by being stupid about the capabilities of his targets, big or small. He would have to slaughter his way down, slaughter his targets until his bags were full, then slaughter his way back up for a payout. It reminded him of his warzone days.

Has he mentioned how much he loved this place already?

They had chosen their location carefully, a t-way intersection with walls they had already cleared out behind them. Slowly making their way through the third floor, Adam mentally mapping it's pathways as they ventured through it, slaughtering monsters and lizards whenever they found them. Of course, this period of peaceable exploration required for optimal murder later on was interrupted with a handful of meatbags running past them shouting apologies.

In the wake of these meatbags was a horde of monsters, clamoring and writhing with bloodthirst. He and Scrappy immediately started to run back to a more defensible location Adam had memorized, Scrappy explaining what had happened along the way. 'Pass Parade', an adventurer or group of adventurers has to run away from a fight, the Dungeon spawns more monsters along the way, and to escape they run past someone else. While the monsters kill their victim, they escape.

They were running away from children, dogs, and lizards. It was fucking embarrasing to be in the same profession as those meatbags.

"Insignificant!"

Still, it was pretty helpful, if he was being honest. Because now he and the kid didn't even have to move to gain far more than they would in an hour of wandering. There was an army constantly pouring in from the non-depleted walls before them, and all the corpses made excellent tripping hazards.

So, a steady fighting retreat it was, moving back into already-depleted sections at a steady rate, killing everything that approached, and letting the corpses clog the path and slow everything behind them down. Five minutes of gradual slaughter later and all they were dealing with were the stragglers at the end.

At a certain point, it doesn't matter how many bodies the enemy throws at you. Especially not if those bodies can only come through three to five at a time and had absolutely no ranged weapons available to them. Adam was used to doing this against grunts with guns, children and animals weren't about to stand a chance.

Punch. Kick. Snap. Shatter. Crush. Smash. Kill. Gore painted his form, and the walls, and the floor, and the ceiling. Bodies clogged the halls. Monsters tripped over the slick killing field in effort to reach them. Monsters rushed into his fists and died. Yet more replaced them, fewer with each passing wave.

Overall, Adam liked the third floor. It was making a really good first impression on him.

"Why do you do that?" Scrappy asked, breathing heavy but stable as he cut down another child.

Adam rumbled inquisitively, turning a leaping lizard into red rain with a kick.

"The taunting. Monsters aren't really living things, so it doesn't really work on them, does it?" Scrappy pointed out. Thrust into slice cut down another dog.

Ah. That. "What kind of slaughter is complete without one-liners?" Adam asked rhetorically. "Have you ever seen a movie kid?" Lunging punch, impaling a dog. Teeth clamped down on his gauntlets uselessly.

"What's a movie?" Sweep into thrust into rising knee. A green corpse fell back to interrupt the charge of a dog.

He rumbled in annoyance. They wouldn't have those here, huh? "Theater?" Swiping claw grabbed, child swung, improvised club acquired. He used it to bludgeon dogs until the arm tore off.

"Oh yeah! Gramps took me to one once! It was a story about an Amazon Hero!" Scrappy chopped down hard, catching a lizard as it soared towards him. His weapon was stuck in the corpse. Adam stomped over once to cover more of the hallway and focused entirely on standing strikes until he got it out.

"Right, The hero. Did they say dramatic stuff during the fights?"

"Oh! You're talking about catchphrases! Gramps told me it was one of the three pillars of being a true hero!"

Adam rumbled in confirmation. "Right. Catchphrases, one-liners, etcetera. If you're not talking during the fight, that means you're completely focused on winning." Scrappy got the sword out, Adam let a spin-kick decapitate a child and carry him back into his spot again. "Means whatever you're killing is a threat to you. So, if you're taunting during a slaughter…?" He trailed off to let Scrappy answer.

"...It means-" Scrappy swung to sever another limb. "-That you know you can win with the handicap? That they aren't a threat to you?"

"Exactly." Adam punctuated his claim with another punch, impaling a lizard on his forearm. He narrowed his eyes as he felt the core against his hand. "It's not enough to kill weaklings like this."

He raised the lizard above him. Thrust his other hand inside.

And tore it in half above his head.

"You need to crush them." Gore spilled over him like a shower for an instant, before the corpse in his hands began to dissolve into scattering ash. A waxing grin and glare grew into full bloom on his face. The handful of straggler monsters at the end of the gore-slick hallway wisely started running at this point. He almost hurled the core in his hands to mulch one of their skulls before he remembered how valuable this was compared to them.

He let them go, they had more than enough corpses to butcher already and he wouldn't be able to catch up over the killing field. His meat screamed like a baby at the sustained effort. He ignored it and finished his impromptu lesson with a satisfied rumble and another rhetorical question.

"What the hell kind of 'hero' struggles against fodder?"

Note to self, start carrying around something he can throw. Letting meat get away left a bad taste in his mouth.

—

Floor three took most of their trip to full map, a trend he noticed with the second floor but now had enough evidence to confirm. The floors were progressively getting larger and larger the deeper they went. This made sense, and it was probably what allowed the Dungeon to sustain an entire city economy of murderers. Not murderers like him, because there were none like him, but in the same profession at least.

To his delight, they didn't manage to fill up his new bag at the end of the twelve hours. Its interior was at least two and a half cubic feet of space, and it could probably hold thousands of the tiny marble-sized cores that kids and dogs gave. The lizard cores were slightly larger, but still, probably hundreds. That was on top of the side-bags, six in total, each of which were about as big as Scrappy's fanny pack.

This was a high-quality bag, it was worth every theoretical cent he could've pried out of that bribe.

"You wanted a crossbow." Scrappy said during their trip up, both of them sufficiently soaked in gore and dripping. This let them have a wide berth from the meatbags heading down or up.

Adam blinked, glancing over at him and furrowing his brows. Scrappy continued. "You said to remind you to buy a crossbow."

Adam rumbled. "I did, didn't I? We'll see how much we get from this trip first. We got three-thousand from the kids and dogs alone, the lizards should be about eight and a half thousand, and I don't know how much the smiths will give for the drops."

"Heh. You had a gleam in your eye when you were counting the pass parade." Scrappy chuckled, sword resting on his shoulder. His normally white hair was currently dyed rusty, flaking red. Adam could feel his own hair was similar.

"You think we can hire meatbags to build one up for us every time?" Adam mused. First time they made anything approaching a decent wage, and it took three days and random chance for it to happen.

"Eh… I'm not sure about that." Scrappy laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head. "I always got told that no one wants to experience a pass parade."

"You're right. Most are probably too chickenshit for it." Adam grunted unhappily. "We'll have to keep looking for the slaughters rather than it coming to us."

"You don't sound too unhappy about it!" Scrappy grinned at him. Adam scoffed in amusement.

"I like to kill things."

"I can tell."

There were a few moments of silence after that.

"So we have enough money to go back to-"

"No."

"C'mon Adam! The pasta was really good! I promised Hestia-sama I'd bring some back for her to try next time!"

"Go alone."

"It's no fun alone! We're a familia! We need to go together!"

"No."

—

Adam was grinning on his way back to the church, a long shift of murder over, staring at their guild bank statement along the way. His new purchases on his belt, feet, and arm. At the end of the day, they had seventeen-thousand valis in the account. Nine-thousand of that went into buying three things. Leaving them at eight-thousand, a net increase from when the day started.

Socks and leather boots, finally covering his feet up with something. A belt-quiver and twenty bolts. And finally, a 'Pallum' crossbow. Adam didn't know what the fuck a Pallum was, but he did know that this was the second-cheapest crossbow available and was designed to strap to his forearm and fire when he pulled a string attached to a ring on his ring finger.

Sure, he had to manually reload each shot, but the immediacy was favorable. It was almost like having a really shitty version of his old arm-mounted micro-missile launchers again. Except this only fired one at a time, and they didn't track targets, or explode on contact, or sheath themselves in his arm when he didn't need them.

But he had a weapon he could hit distant stragglers again! And he saw more expensive versions available for sale, and they were certainly tempting to look at. He asked for a catalogue, which they apparently didn't have, forcing him to explain the concept.

The child manning the storefront at 'Barry's Ballistas and Bolts' promised him that they would have a catalogue ready within a week after he finished explaining it, so he made a note to return there soon. He would probably need to return semi-frequently just to restock on bolts. At one-hundred and twenty-five valis per bolt, he'd need to kill five children or dogs, or one lizard, per bolt.

So probably not worth it to use too often, but the weight on his arm was a familiar and comfortable one.

"Hehehe~" Scrappy chuckled with mischief and anticipation, bringing Adam's attention away from his new weapon and towards the unfortunate present.

As they had a shared account, Adam had to make concessions for his new crossbow.

Standing in front of the Hostess of Fertility again, Adam was strongly considering whether or not the concession he made for a familiar weapon was worth the sacrifice. Frowning deeply, he glanced over to see Scrappy staring at him with waggling eyebrows, head nodded at the door.

All for the weapon, Adam. All for the weapon.

He growled as he opened the door again and gestured for the kid to step through. Following behind, Adam stepped into the wretched, overpriced diner.

"Hello! Two again? Nya~"

For the weapon.

"Yes please!" Scrappy cheerfully declared. "We made loads of valis today, so we're back to eat some more!"

"Wow! I'm sure Mama will be really happy to hear that! Nya~!" She raised her hands in a pawing motion at chest height. The catmeat had the audacity to glance at him. His smoldering antipathy was all that greeted her gaze.

"I am! No chef can complain when a customer is that happy to eat!" The apparent 'Mama', fortunately not a cat, called out from near the bar. A woman who looked to be in her early twenties, and thus far older than any of the teenagers that surrounded him, wearing an apron and hair tied back in a bun.

Her gaze came over him, and her features turned suspicious. "Hey now… Ain't you the punk that called my food overpriced?"

"It is." Adam grumbled out as they were being led to the bar stools. "Six hundred for a meal, three lizards. I could buy a hundred potatoes for that."

Mama scoffed confidently. "My food is well worth a hundred potatoes mister! The taste is what you come here for!"

"You don't eat because of taste, you eat because you have to." Adam countered, Scrappy and the catmeat watching the back and forth play out between. "I'd never eat again if the meat would stop complaining about it! I'm here because the kid wants to bring something back to our employer, nothing more."

"You're here because you wanted to buy a Pallum crossbow with the valis we earned today, so I asked you to come with me in exchange." Scrappy unfortunately chimed in. "It's no good to go out if your familia can't come with you!"

"You'd never eat again huh? I'll show you a meal you can't live without then, cocky brat!" 'Mama' declared challengingly, leaning forwards. "Whaddya ordering?"

"Mama!" Catmeat complained with twitching ears.

"Alright, listen up cause I'm only explaining this once!" Adam leaned forwards, rising to the challenge and locking eyes with the apparent owner. "I'm ordering a deluxe cheeseburger, you know what that is? I'll tell you what it is!"

"A grilled ground beef patty, a slice of cheese, a leaf of lettuce, a slice of tomato, three pickle slices, and a sauce of choice! All between a sliced roll of baked bread and big enough that kids like Scrappy over there need both hands to hold it all! Paired with a side of potato sliced long and thin and fried and salted! You got that?!"

'Mama' glared into his eyes, her own irises blazing with confidence.

"Yeah… Yeah I got that. You sit your pretty ass down boy. I'm charging extra for this and it's gonna be worth every valis, you got that?!" She growled low at him.

"We'll see about that!" Adam growled back, slowly descending down into his bar stool and crossing his arms in anticipation. The restaurant was mostly silent, staring in shock at the challenge issued.

'Mama' raised her handkerchief, and tied her hair back out of her eyes. "Anya… bring them some beers. Girls, ready my part of the kitchen. I got a brat to feed."

"Yes Mama!" Came the cry of at least six girlmeats from various parts of the store, all rushing to fulfill the order given to them. The restaurant was now filled with anticipated chattering, all quietly watching as the apparent master chef went to work, and disappeared behind the counter and into the kitchen.

Adam stayed silent, turning around to half-lean against the counter. His legs and arms were crossed like a bored king on his resplendent throne, and his glare struck down whispers where it passed.

"...What's happening?" Scrappy muttered to himself, baffled at the turn of events.

"A clash of iron wills." One of the waitresses, one with light brown hair, whispered in reply.

"An unprecedented turn of events, I've never seen Mama worked up like that!" This time, a gray-haired waitress, sliding mugs of beer onto the table for the two of them.

Adam snatched it without looking, and drained exactly half in one long draw, setting it back down on the table again. Acceptable taste, not great and not awful.

"And now we wait." He declared, leaning back on his bar room throne with the arrogance of an aged suzerain. Win or lose, he won here. Either he'd get a good burger, or he'd prove his point. Victory was already his.

Omake: To be a True Hero

-x-x-x-x-x-

Growing up on Gramps teachings, listening to his stories as he trained, Bell thought he knew what it meant to be a hero… or at least enough to have a general idea.

However as Mia of the Hostess of Fertility stared at Adam, who in turn gazed back unflinchingly like it was nothing to stand there at the center of attention, under all that pressure… he stared to wonder if there was so much more to learn.

Adam cut down monsters like it was nothing. Check.

Adam made tons of Valis. Check.

Adam didn't care about the pain from healing potions. Check.

Adam used catchphrases. Check.

Adam didn't run from the Pass Parade… he fought through it and cut down everything!! Just like in the stories his grandpa used to tell!

Now there were literal stars in the eyes of waitresses around him as they stared at Adam.

… and maybe even some stars in Mia's eyes.

Was this the famed 'loads of women falling for you' that his Grandpa has spoken of?!

Bell clenched his fist. His grandpa hadn't been wrong! He was right! All those stories about true heroes…

Loads of women were falling for Adam! Bruni, the waitresses… maybe even Mia!

This was proof!

He had to learn more from Adam and become so he could become a True Hero!

-x-x-x-x-x-

AN: Just a funny thought that wouldn't go away. I hope Bell writes down Adam's lessons and keeps them close to heart.