Once Vale was clothed, for the most part, and somewhat comfortable, he took this short 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. He could see 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, though… were a little hard 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 spikey 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. He just wasn't privy to that knowledge 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 face 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 glowing pink portal.
Once he did, he looked over toward the naked demoness who still lay unconscious with her breasts smushed against the smooth rock floor. Her left leg slid to the side just a little, but it was enough that Vale was able to catch a glimpse of the promised land.
Vale considered waking her up; she was his Champion after all and should be helping him right now, but he let her rest. She seemed in need of it.
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 just… disappear.
It wasn't like 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.
Whatever rock he mined would be stored in the white void, then could be used to create new walls and other formations, as well as allow the dungeon to repair any damage it may sustain.
Unfortunately, he didn't yet understand why, but he could only mine in a horizontal plane. If he tried to mine down, then the pickaxe would just bounce back and do nothing.
Laboriously, Vale kept swinging into the wall while humming a tune, eventually creating a sizable indent, the start of the path to where he was going to hide the Core.
***
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 plan, which failed, was to tuck the Core away in a corridor cut off from the alcove by a wall, 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 just to stack the stone there, but for some reason, if he laid a piece of stone down without setting the blueprint, it would just disappear and return to the pile
[First challengers: 0:15:13]
In any case, 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'd just simply placed the Core at the end of the short corridor he made 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.
He'd given the pickaxe to Salome, who'd redressed and was making the corridor a little longer.
Twelve more minutes passed, and Vale called Salome back into the central alcove. They discussed something for a little while, standing side by side, facing the translucent black wall, which was losing its opacity by the second, revealing human-like silhouettes on the other side.