Deadline Is Raining in the Status Window - Chapter 97

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“How long was I asleep?”
Cha Cha composed himself and checked the time first. No matter how potent his barrier was, the window for a human to survive in the Underworld was brutally short. Twenty-four hours at most, if we were generous.
Cha Cha wanted to send the human beside him back to the Surface World before he perished in the depths. When a species went extinct, not all concepts from its entire history transferred to the Underworld—only fragments arrived, prioritized by how recently the extinction occurred and how closely those concepts aligned with the species’ final moments.
In essence, it was a matter of seniority. Moreover, only concepts tied to deaths on the Surface World could transfer; if someone died here in the Underworld, there was no salvation. Cha Cha had grown rather fond of this human who’d given him candy, and he genuinely wanted to see him again in the Underworld for years to come.
“About an hour has passed.”
“That’s not much time. If we hurry back the way we came, there’s a passage that connects to the—”
“Insane! A Brachiosaurus!”
“Hey! Where are you going!”
Evan Laef, who adored dinosaurs with an almost obsessive passion, spotted the long-necked creature in the distance and scooped Cha Cha up before bolting forward at a sprint.
Cradled in Evan’s arms, the young Underworld King felt the world spin around him. Could humans really move this fast? Not only were they quick, but they leaped to tremendous heights, somehow created ice on cliff faces, slid down them with fluid grace, and landed perfectly on treetops.
I’d never heard that Mother had engineered a new improved strain of humanity, yet this creature was so remarkably durable. Surely not all modern humans were like this. If there were hundreds of millions of beings identical to this one, how could I possibly drive them to extinction? Despair flooded through Cha Cha’s heart.
“Such a long neck. Magnificent. And I especially appreciate that it has no fur.”
Recent academic theories had been depressing him with talk of feathered dinosaurs and other such hopeless nonsense, but seeing this sleek creature filled Evan Laef with pure joy.
“Is there a Tyrannosaurus around here?”
“There is, but—”
“Great. Should we go look for it?”
“Look for it? Are you insane? Staying too long in the Underworld means death!”
Evan Laef’s expression fell with profound disappointment. So I won’t get to see the Tyrannosaurus? But I came all this way—I have to see the T-Rex. The idol of the dinosaur world.
“That ‘too long’ doesn’t mean a strict twenty-four-hour limit, does it?”
“You know exactly what it means!”
“Damn.”
“What does ‘damn’ even mean?”
“Children don’t need to know.”
“I’m not a child!”
When the young one threw another tantrum, Evan Laef unwrapped another candy and popped it into his mouth, then hoisted him up onto her shoulders. As she let him enjoy the view comfortably, the young Underworld King shrieked and gripped her head tightly.
“I’m falling! I’m going to fall!”
“If you hold on like that, you won’t fall.”
“Why do you keep picking me up!”
“Because you’re injured.”
“I can walk on my own!”
“Your pace is too slow.”
“Ugh…”
Logically defeated, the Underworld King had nothing to say and simply clung to Evan’s head. I’d never encountered a creature so determined to win every argument, even if it meant dying moments later.
“There’s a gazebo over there in a decent spot. Let’s rest for a moment.”
“Huh, you like it there?”
“Being in the middle of the swamp gives it a certain charm. Whoever built it managed to construct it remarkably well out here. The craftsmanship is excellent.”
“Right!”
The Panda Butler had always detested such humid and gloomy places, but Evan Laef possessed a discerning eye for beauty.
“The way the Protosucuses swarm together in great numbers is truly magnificent.”
“Isn’t it, isn’t it!”
They were all conceptual beings who would resurrect perfectly fine the next day even if devoured, yet the Panda Butler insisted they were terrifying. When the Underworld King Cha Cha explained there was no need to fear, I suddenly realized that Evan Laef possessed a physical body.
I was about to tell her to run, thinking that if all those carnivorous lizards swarmed her, she’d be torn into three hundred eighty pieces and die, when the gathering horde of Protosucuses abruptly reversed direction and splashed away into the distance.
“Hey, why did they run away?”
“Perhaps they’re shy.”
“That can’t be right.”
“The lizards I raise have no shyness—they cling to people affectionately when they see them.”
“You raise lizards?”
“Race King Lizards.”
“Wow!”
As Evan Laef spoke proudly of her beloved pet, the Underworld King’s eyes gleamed with interest, asking if they still hadn’t gone extinct.
“Moreover, our White One has such a distinctive color—pure white all over.”
“Wow! A white lizard must be beautiful!”
“Come visit sometime. Our house is close by here.”
When Evan Laef told me the location of the Laef House that would be rebuilt, I gave a vague response. Later, once humanity went extinct, I’d have to develop a plague that killed only Race King Lizards and release it on the Surface World. Since Evan Laef loved White One so much, I couldn’t bear to separate them.
“Do you raise any other animals?”
“No. Do you raise any?”
“Well… a panda?”
“I’m going to your house right now.”
“Wait a minute!”
When the Underworld King nagged that I needed to think about returning to the Surface World immediately or I’d get distracted again, Evan Laef replied that I still had twenty hours of leeway, so there was no rush.
“Well, that’s true, but…”
“Have you been here long? If you’re in a hurry, don’t let me slow you down.”
“No, I can’t go up to the Surface World anyway.”
Seeing Cha Cha look dejected, Evan Laef fell silent. Did mole demi-humans go blind when they ascended to the surface? I’d noticed there were no mentions of mole demi-humans in either my neighborhood or the original work. Still misunderstanding the situation, I felt sympathy for the child’s circumstances and added a thought.
“Then I’ll renovate our house for you. I’ll make the basement extend deep underground and install dim lighting throughout.”
“No, that’s not it…”
“Your eyes are as beautiful as seasonal flounder. It would be a waste to make them unable to see.”
Why does this human use such terrible pickup lines? Seasonal flounder—that’s genuinely awful. What was she even trying to accomplish by flattering me in the first place?
As the young Underworld King was lost in these confused thoughts, the moment I questioned why I’d accepted such a clumsy compliment, heat rushed to my face. The rise in body temperature was undoubtedly caused by deep irritation.
“If m-my eyes are like seasonal flounder, then your eyes are the color of mackerel back!”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
As Evan Laef smiled softly, my heart raced, and I wanted to sink into the swamp and die. A strange sense of self-loathing welled up. This shouldn’t be happening. My body was clearly malfunctioning. That was it—I must have developed arrhythmia from lack of sleep.
“Maybe Mother made me wrong too.”
To the child digging at the ground, calling himself a failure, Evan Laef said it wasn’t so. Speaking such harsh words would hurt your parents. Both parent and child would only be wounded, so please don’t tell your Mother. As Evan Laef spoke only sensible words in rapid succession, Cha Cha felt a rebellious urge and let slip what I’d been holding back.
“I sleep too much, and I’m not growing tall.”
“Children naturally sleep a lot. Your height will grow naturally as you age.”
“I’m the smallest among my siblings!”
The eldest brother, yet the smallest! When Cha Cha threw a tantrum about it, Evan laughed warmly and consoled him, saying it was certainly understandable to be bothered by such a thing.
“If you’d like, I could teach you some height-increasing exercises.”
“That’s not something exercise can solve.”
“Humans can accomplish anything if they push themselves hard enough to cough up blood.”
“I’m not human.”
What a truly lacking-in-confidence mole demi-human. Evan demonstrated a series of calisthenics focused on jumping in place, determined to keep going until the other learned. When Evan, humming a tune, repeated the three-minute routine for the fifth time, the young Underworld King reluctantly got up and awkwardly mimicked the human.
“You just have to do it, just do it! Like, like this?”
“Exactly. And the finale is always ‘Down with the Crowell Empire!'”
“Do you have a grudge against the Empire?”
“The person who made this song was dragged into a war and only exploited by the Empire, so that’s why.”
“The Empire was terrible then.”
“In any history, if ‘Empire’ is attached to something, it’s generally bad.”
“That’s… certainly seems to be true.”
Cha Cha, who knew all of humanity’s history, laughed aloud upon hearing it, saying it made sense. Evan felt genuinely pleased seeing the child laugh brightly for the first time.
When Evan said to do this exercise ten times a day if he wanted to grow taller, the child laughed again, saying height didn’t increase so easily. Children really do look good when they smile. Laughter is treasure, and smiling brings good fortune.
“You’ve rested enough now. Let’s find the exit. From what I heard earlier, it seems you know the way.”
“Huh, already?”
“Your parents must be waiting for you.”
Worried that the child’s parents might be concerned, Evan revealed her identity as the Mayor of Unified Racecourse, not a suspicious person, and made sure to promote that Ilam was a great place for demi-humans to live and that moving there would be a good choice. And the young Underworld King wanted to slap his own mouth for already asking if she was leaving so soon.
“So I can walk by myself!”
“This way is faster.”
Evan hoisted Cha Cha onto her back, told him to wrap his arms around her neck and hold tight, then sprang up the cliff face with powerful bounds. The descent earlier had seemed insane, but the ascent was equally unreasonable.
Evan scaled the cliff with feats that seemed impossible for any human, moving so fast that Cha Cha’s hair whipped in the wind, heading back to where she had originally fallen, and following the child’s directions, she quickly found her way to the bottom of a long Staircase.
Since it was the complete opposite direction from where she had run off claiming to find the exit, Evan felt deeply embarrassed.
“The Staircase is quite long.”
“It’s not as long as it appears. There’s a warp system in the middle.”
With the child’s explanation, Evan understood what happened when she fell down the Well. Now that she thought about it, during the fall, her body had lurched the same way it did when she transferred to Dr. Bruno’s Dungeon, and she must have lost consciousness from suffocation.
“What about the barrier? Wasn’t that why you came—to reactivate it?”
“It’s not needed anymore. That Village is going to be search and destroyed.”
“Uh, u-um…”
Though he didn’t quite understand the meaning, the tone sounded so ominous that Cha Cha decided not to ask further.
“Hey! So will you come play again? If you press that doorbell at the Well, I can come pick you up.”
“It’s possible. But I only come to Ilam during breaks.”
“Uh-um… you go to school?”
“Yes. I’m a first-year student at the Crowell Empire Academy Magic Department.”
The fact that she attended school and was only a first-year made Cha Cha’s lips tremble with an ominous premonition as he asked.
“Um, by any chance… how old are you?”
“I’ll be eighteen after my birthday.”
To have been captivated by a mere brat—Cha Cha wanted to die. Her words and ideology seemed so immature that he’d assumed she was at least forty, but she was a brat not yet twenty. Not even half of forty—he wanted to die even more.
“Then let’s see each other again next time. Don’t wander far, or your eyes will go blind.”
The human who had spoken words of incomprehensible meaning climbed the staircase with heavy footsteps. Cha Cha, who had been waving goodbye as Evan Laef grew distant, felt an inexplicable sense of longing and stepped closer to the staircase, only to bump his head hard against an invisible wall. It was a protective barrier Mother had erected to prevent even accidental contact with the surface world’s air.
“Evan Laef, listen.”
Cha Cha stepped back from the invisible wall. He had intended never to use this method because it was cruel, but seeing that human ascending the staircase, he realized he wouldn’t be able to see her for a while, so he decided to try it anyway.
“Listen, you still have plenty of time left.”
Among the many laws of the Underworld passed down through ancient tales, there exists a rule: do not look back while ascending to the surface world. If you turn around midway, the gate leading to the surface closes, and you wander the Underworld forever—or so the legend goes. But truthfully, it was half right and half wrong.
If you turn around while climbing the staircase, the exit here closes. However, there were multiple gates leading to the surface. How could there be only one exit when the land was so vast?
If this gate closed, I could be with Evan Laef while moving to another gate. I could spend the full twenty-four hours circling around, barely filling the time. With such a cunning scheme in mind, Cha Cha thought of the Panda Butler at home and shouted.
“Listen! There’s a panda at my house!”
Evan Laef’s footsteps stopped. Right, there was a panda at the kid’s place. If that were the case, wouldn’t there still be time left? Seeing the panda before leaving would be a good deal. Evan Laef considered turning back, but then recalled stories from mythology—tales of how turning back in such situations meant never being able to return home.
So she walked forward without looking back. Then a notification window appeared with a soft chime.
“Our house panda can even talk!”
I really want to see that right now. Evan Laef forcibly suppressed the urge to turn back immediately and continued walking upward. Another notification window chimed.
“Listen, there’s more.”
Cha Cha racked his brain desperately. What had Evan Laef said she wanted to see? Something other than the panda. What was it? When he tried to recall, the name wouldn’t come to mind. His heart raced, his memory failed him, and tears kept streaming down. She had just said she wanted to see the panda, so why was she just leaving now? Evan Laef frustrated him so much that no matter how many times he wiped his tears, they kept falling.
“Listen, sob, you said it earlier.”
What did she say? What had Evan Laef said earlier? Cha Cha bit his lip and thought hard for a long moment before suddenly remembering something and shouting toward Evan Laef.
“Tyrano! You said you wanted to see a Tyrannosaurus!”
You just need to go a bit further, and there’s a place where they appear. If you don’t see one, I’ll definitely find it for you. I promise.
The child tried to continue speaking, but his voice trembled and his words failed to convey his meaning. His sobs prevented him from speaking. The wall remained unmoved no matter how hard he struck it.
“You wanted to see iiiiit!”
The Underworld King collapsed and wept, but Evan Laef was no longer even visible. She had already been transported near the exit through a warp.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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