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Dungeon Hero, or, How Midoriya Izuku Joined the Touden Party and Came to Love Dungeon Cuisine

Summary:

Midoriya Izuku was a Hero-in-Training, gearing up for one last decisive strike against the Paranormal Liberation Front - a foe he, admittedly, only just learned about thanks to Hawks's intel hidden in an annotated copy of "The Meta Liberation War".

Then, just as suddenly, he was in a distant land, without any of the local coin and hunger encroaching on his stomach.

Midoriya found his way, but now, a year later, a quest literally manifests in front of him. And, well, a Hero meddles where he isn't needed...

(Midoriya Izuku is moved to Melini a year before the events of Dungeon Meshi and a month before the PLF raid. This changes quite a bit, of course.)

--

Previously posted on my Tumblr, now finally moved over here!

Notes:

For people unaware I have a Tumblr, this fic was originally posted there in one long chain of reblogs and readmores. Now, I've posted it here in two long chapters, each one representing approximately a season of the anime. Since the Tumblr format was more episodic than I'm used to, I figured this would be a suitable layout for what was essentially me tormenting my followers.

Slight edits were made, but nothing too game-changing. Just little background details and typo corrections.

Chapter 1: Volume 1: Introductions, Breakfast, Snacks, Appetizers, and a Light Lunch

Chapter Text

Midoriya Izuku does not start out as an adventurer. At least, not a proper one.

His introduction to the world is as abrupt as most things in his life are. He's training with Endeavor, seeing the man slowly become a sensible human being (whatever that entails for such an infuriating man - Deku may be willing to work with him, but Midoriya Izuku tends not to forget), ensuring Bakugou doesn't try to kill Todoroki, and next-

Next, he's waking up next to what appears to be the entrance to a mine shaft.

He makes his way to the nearest town - Melini, it's called. It sounds Greek, perhaps? Certainly not Otheon. However, what interests him more is how... Low-fantasy the whole thing feels. Sure, there are people who are obviously not human walking around, but he could care less about that - he wants a meal first.

He doesn't have money for a meal.

He begins to panic. Surely, there's a way for him to find some kind of food around here. He doesn't want to resort to thievery (he's a Hero, for goodness's sake! Even if the rules of where he was don't apply to where he is, he still feels obligated!), but luckily, he's pointed to a bulletin board - weeks of Hagakure and Sero getting into some video game they keep gushing about has him know that jobs are on bulletin boards in this sort of fantasy world - and he looks for a job that pays.

One catches his eye. A corpse retrieval unit, specifically to rescue dead adventurers so that they can be revived (for a fee)? It sounds perfect for Midoriya to learn the rules of this world.

The fact that the first floor is a bustling economy of its own is a bit of a shock after he descends the mine shaft he had awoken by, but he finds out where the revival center is. He's drafted pretty easily into the retrievers when it turns out he still possesses One for All (though, really, the fact that he was already freakishly strong for a tall-man - a child no less! - would have gotten him the job regardless), which is passed off to others as a sort of "body enhancement magic".

A year goes by in this manner. "Deku" - his callsign, as many things do not change - becomes a staple of the corpse retrievers, not only because of his incredible power, but also because he seems to have a second sense as to traps. The fact that he's unwaveringly kind to everyone, even refusing pay at times if the client doesn't have much to give, earns him a reputation for dungeon divers who regularly wipe on the upper levels. The fact that he's begun to keep a slime-stained notebook titled "Monster Notes for the Future, Vol. 1" doesn't factor into their opinions on him, since he usually leaves it in his booked room when he's on the job.

He seems to be incredibly skittish around possession victims, however. The reason is unknown.

Then, one day, when Midoriya's on his way to the "clinic" for his shift, a group of five warriors are suddenly warped in front of him in a flash of light. As two, the dwarf and the samurai (a samurai?! HERE?!) tender their resignations to the elf and what he assumes to be a half-foot, he hangs back, worried about the blond man who has yet to get up. The dead can't be revived outside the dungeon, so he might have to carry the poor guy to the first floor.

And then, when the blond awakens, he learns of their new plight - get to the bottom of the dungeon and find the man's sister.

Of course, the essence of a Hero is meddling where he isn't needed...

Their plan is to eat monsters.

To be more exact, Laios's (the blond man with the missing sister who's beginning to remind Midoriya more and more of All Might) plan is to eat monsters. Chilchuck (the half-foot - Midoriya isn't sure why, but he gives off Aizawa vibes) seems hesitant at best, but the elf (Marcy? Midoriya didn't quite catch it.) is wholly against the idea, even after having dispatched a living mushroom with a single strike.

Midoriya isn't so detatched from the concept of livestock and hunting for meat - Tamaki-senpai had ensured Midoriya remained open in his diet (it was unclear what lesson Tamaki-senpai was trying to impart before his nerves got the best of him, but it's the lesson Midoriya was trying to apply to this scenario) - but the concept of eating monsters... Some were just a bit too humanoid for his liking. 

Then Laios caught a scorpion and bit directly into the tail. Food poisoning was a great deterrent to joining this party, Midoriya immediately realized.

Then a strange dwarf commandeered the whole show and began cooking up a strangely delicious dish. A new bond was formed in this party Midoriya had sort of inserted himself into, but with this dwarf tagging along- oh, he should introduce himself.

"Oh, my name is Midoriya Izuku!" Midoriya explains happily. "I'm actually a corpse retriever for the local revival center. I'm pretty handy at taking down monsters and carrying well above what other tall-men can handle!" He takes a breath before he can ramble. "My Hero- er, callsign is "Deku"! You can call me that, too, I don't mind!"

(Laios and Chilchuck, for different reasons, immediately take to calling Midoriya "Deku". Senshi seems to think Midoriya meant "Midoriya of Izuku" - something like Izganda, probably? Marcille...)

"Deku?" Marcille wonders aloud. "That's a strange callsign..."

"Well, it's more of a nickname my friend gave me, when we were little..." Midoriya sheepishly explains. "But my friends call me that all the time, that I just made it my callsign!"

"How do you get Deku from Midoriya, though?" Marcille points out. "Even for a nickname, that's..."

"Oh! Oh, right." Midoriya remembers that this is more of a Western fantasy. "Sorry, my name's actually Izuku Midoriya. We tend to put the family name first, where I come from. My friend read my name wrong when we were kids and it's just stuck ever since!"

(Midoriya gets the sneaking suspicion that Marcille has the wrong idea about Bakugou.)

And so, the party of five head for the second floor.

Midoriya had not been keeping up with his diet.

Exercise in the dungeon was particularly simple, especially when the second and third floors were so easily accessible and where most beginning adventuring parties wiped this early. Midoriya always tried to give them a beginner's discount when he was in the retrieval unit, but it never always worked out. Still, clemency like that was important for people at their starting line.

Still, if there was one thing Midoriya was worried about, it was his caloric intake. The diet All Might had come up with was strict enough, but ten months of only eating dishes rich in vitamins, nutrients, and proteins really did end up creating a dietary habit that was almost impossible to break.

However, being suddenly shoved into a world where dieticians only cared about maxing out the fat you consumed and then rationing out in jerkies and hardtack... It wasn't good for a bodybuilder's diet.

Luckily, however, Marcille ended up killing a giant bat in her attempts to feel useful. Later, she would be attacked by vines, but what came out of it was something pretty tasty.

Senshi's Noble Three Truths... The man had been living alongside the dungeon for ten years, so perhaps this was the perfect chance to return to his diet.

(Chilchuck had begun to become worried about the second tall-man, who looked incredibly young for his race. He shrugged it off as paranoia. After all, Deku was a new addition, who shoved himself into the party out of some weird concern for someone he didn't even know could be rescued. Plus, he hadn't shared much of himself beyond his name, callsign, and past with some other tall-man who gave him the callsign in the first place. He was too much of an unknown, that was all.)

When the Living Armor attacks, however, and Midoriya can't help but throw himself between the others and kick the armor with about 5% of One for All... Well, there's only so many ways you can try to explain away your Quirk in a world without Quirks. Chilchuck, Senshi, and Laios could probably accept an innate skill in body enhancement magic, but Marcille could be a bit of a problem if she knew what that magic would entail.

(Marcille does, in fact, know what it entails. Izuku is lying about something.)

Midoriya's first meeting with orcs did not end well.

The golems were fine. Senshi had been living among them for a while, using them as mobile farmland. Midoriya had to admire Senshi's tenacity and skill, and he faintly wondered that, if golems could be created by gnomes, why didn't he see more on the surface? Certainly, Melini may have been mainly tall-men and half-foots, but why couldn't they trade with gnomish settlements?

This internal debate lasted some time, and, after some absent-minded soil-tilling, Midoriya was faintly aware of a bumper crop of carrots being shoved in his arms. Blinking, Midoriya realized how many vegetables they were struggling with, and offered to carry them all.

The fact that he didn't use any amount of One for All meant that he hadn't lost his touch. In fact, Senshi's meals combined with the exercises he tried to get away with during their downtime... Learning how to air chair was probably the best decision he possibly made.

Unfortunately, that turned south when it turned out Senshi frequented what would easily be a front for the League of Villains. Even so, Midoriya was certain that the League, of what little he'd actually seen of them, would be more gracious hosts than the ruffians and scoundrels. 

Danger Sense pinged in his head, and he tossed the vegetables on the ground and got ready to fight. 

Now, Midoriya was well aware of his limitations. Just because he could easily send Overhaul into the Earth's core, it didn't mean he could use the same tactics with people who were much less durable than Overhaul. Orcs were much the same. And, unfortunately, there seemed to be a whole tribe of orcs at the front door, and Midoriya simply didn't do well in group fights. Numbers were against him.

Senshi then revealed that these were his clients.

And then they locked them in a chicken pen.

So. Not a good first impression, on either of their accounts.

Thank whatever god was listening that Senshi convinced Zon to let them bake bread. That got the orcs to actually treat them nicely, so it was a win in Midoriya's book.

(There was something strange happening with Izuku. The whole party could see it at this point. Aside from his massive strength - which wasn't even a part of his enhancement magic apparently! - there was the issue of him seemingly able to predict danger. This wasn't something you could simply do as you liked. Something strange was afoot with Izuku Midoriya.)

Midoriya hated thinking about possession.

When he first started out as a corpse retriever, the revival center received a particular body. Half-foot. Female. Twenty-one years old. From the looks of things, a pick-lock. The revival went without a hitch, but...

Her eyes were unfocused, her skin was still the same pallor as it had been, and her movements were jerky, as if unused to her own body.

It wasn't her body.

The poor woman had been summarily killed, and it was explained to a horrified Midoriya that, when someone in the dungeon died while possessed by spirits, a ghoul would happen if they didn't somehow manage to separate the two souls. Many adventurers were at risk of such a fate befalling them.

Within Midoriya, eight souls squirmed uncomfortably as they realized the same thing he had: Midoriya Izuku could not die while within the dungeon, as grave consequences could follow.

Midoriya did not mention this last bit, but he explained possession with such fervor and terror that the others simply couldn't help but listen. That they ended up making sorbet with the very spirits locked out of the "retrieved" bodies... Midoriya came to appreciate errant ghosts a bit more.

He hoped the other party wouldn't feel too bad about them eating their loot.

However, the fourth floor truly was dangerous, wasn't it? So, Midoriya was a bit cautious in not unduly using supplies that could be easily broken. So when it came time for Marcille to tie a rope around Laios... Midoriya decided to do something drastic.

"There's no need to use that, Marcille." Midoriya explains, taking off his gauntlet. "What if whatever's in the painting snaps the rope? I've got something a bit sturdier."

And so, Laios delves into the various paintings with a harness of Black Whip around his chest.

(Senshi thought that there was quite a lot of things off with Izuku - after all, how would THIS count as body enhancement? It's really just not natural.)

(Marcille almost screamed when she saw the tentacles erupting out of Izuku's arm like it was nothing. What sort of magic WAS that?! Was it ancient magic? What was a tall-man doing throwing around ANCIENT MAGIC to use as a tether?!)

(Chilchuck decided this was another trade secret, although he did scold Deku into warning him next time he was going to do something weird like that.)

(Laios watched with confusion as the young elf frowned and pulled a bit at the tentacles Deku had conjured from his skin. This, apparently, was the cue for Deku to pull him out of the painting, but... Was Deku some sort of... Human-monster?)

(Midoriya learns, with some horror, that Chilchuck is, in fact, Aizawa-sensei's age. Laios has become less and less like All Might, with an exponential drop the further down into the dungeon. Laios, indeed, is most like Yagi Toshinori, in Midoriya's eyes - utterly incapable of actually taking care of himself but willing to put it all on the line for others. The parasite incident only helps to prove this bias, unfortunately.)

Midoriya is a corpse retriever.

Midoriya became a corpse retriever partly for the money, but also because, at his core, he is and always will be, a hero. Not just a Hero, but simply... A hero. He liked to think the sort of thing he does is just something anyone would do, but he knows from firsthand experience that there were plenty of... Unsavory types among the corpse retrievers. 

Midoriya hoped those types wouldn't find the bodies of the party they fished out of the water in the wake of the mermaid incident. Marcille needed to save her magic, after all, and Midoriya didn't have any aptitude for spells... Probably? Certainly, if he access to healing magic while he was still shattering his bones, he'd probably be more reckless with his usage of One for All... But perhaps he wouldn't be getting those aches when those winter chills set in.

Honestly, it was surprising none of the party had asked about the scars on his hands. Perhaps they had enough decorum not to or they hadn't noticed.

(Laios had not noticed. Chilchuck, however, had become concerned, especially later, when Deku began to fight against the undine.)

Meeting Namari had been a surprise, however. The other dwarf had last been seen by Midoriya retiring from Laios's party, so he hadn't managed to catch her name. It was nice to meet her and the rest of the Tansu party, however. He wished it wasn't under fire of an undine and with the way blocked by tentacles. A few potshots with a few Detroit Smashes were dangerous, what with the body being purely liquid and able to fire back just as hard, but being able to use his strength to instead trap the undine in the pot... It was all somehow pretty exhilarating. He'd have to ask Senshi to use the pot as part of a weightlifting workout sometime.

(Senshi would agree, and make a note that Izuku would clearly need more protein if he was going to be working himself like this. You had to feed the young'ns, after all.)

The frogs were uncomfortable. He could feel the looming specter of Asu-Tsuyu ("Call me Tsu.") over his shoulder. He resolved to never wear the frog suit again. 

...Although, the tongues gave him an idea. He sent a brief mental apology to A-Tsuyu. ("It's Tsu.").

(Something about the image of Senshi's freshly-groomed beard stuck with Midoriya, deep in his psyche. He hoped that wouldn't be important, somehow.)

Midoriya had never seen a proper dragon before.

He had, of course, seen Ryukyu, of course. It was hard not to have seen her, especially when he had personally be on a raid with her (and gotten her autograph!). He'd met Godzillo in passing as well, but he was less "dragon" and more "gigantic lizard", though apparently he might have to rethink the distinction after all this. A real, not-human dragon had yet to be seen.

And he was about to fight one.

Intellectually, he knew he'd have to fight a dragon. The orcs talking about how the red dragon had forced them from their home made it clear that the dragon was active. But was he really ready to fight one? If push came to shove, he would probably need to use Float, the Quirk of the Seventh User, but was he ready to reveal Float to the party and deal with more scrutiny?

...It would have to be, if it came down to it. But until it did, he wouldn't mention it.

Luckily, the plan accounted for Midoriya not talking about his flight capabilities, and eventually became Midoriya and Marcille flanking the dragon to restrain and subdue it with Black Whip and some well-placed explosions, while Senshi, Chilchuck, and Laios would take it head-on and cut Falin out of the dragon's stomach.

It was foolproof. It was executed perfectly.

It went wrong in a flash.

Suddenly, despite the dragon being buried under brick and mortar, it conjured enough strength to throw Midoriya off. A quick activation of Full Cowling prevented the worst damage, but he was very badly injured. Not so bad that he couldn't move, but a leg and an arm were certainly broken. It was almost nostalgic, in a way, but he wasn't looking to start crawling around like at the entrance exam. Not while the dragon was still fighting the party.

Slowly, Midoriya wobbled into the air. Float would have to come into play, then. He felt a little more than nostalgic as he flew towards the beast cornering Chilchuck-

Chilchuck, with utmost precision, threw Senshi's cooking knife into the dragon's eye. Okay, so that was the coolest thing Midoriya'd seen the entire time he'd been on this floor of the dungeon (that this only spanned the past couple of hours was irrelevant). Midoriya kicked with his unbroken leg, taking out the other eye with minimal difficulty and, unlike the last time he was in a similar position, no breaking both of his legs this time.

With Laios's skill and Marcille's magic, the two ended up killing the dragon entirely. 

(Midoriya grimaced as he looked at how discolored his favorite sneaker became. He hopes there's an easy spell to remove blood that Marcille knows.)

(There is.)

With Marcille eventually healing Midoriya's broken bones, he was now of sound enough mind to lead the party in a sort of corpse retrieval, as the on-board expert of such matters (he did not mention he never had before carved through a dragon's organs, so it would've been really messy had Laios not known that red dragons swallowed their prey whole like owls).

It was too late for Falin. Midoriya knew this. Fully-stripped bone like this... It would take an entire flock of sheep just to get Falin to even have equivalent blood and flesh.

They used the dragon.

The power of revival and complete resurrection... It really did scare Midoriya, quite a bit. Sure, Falin was alive and, later, proved to be incredibly nice and charming, but...

Something stirred in him. 

Midoriya was not going to die while in a dungeon, he was certain of it. 

(Falin, over dinner, met Laios's new friends, Senshi and Deku. They were both perfectly lovely in their own ways, but there was something... Very off, about Deku. There had to be; after all, why else would she be able to hear the faint whispers of eight extra souls within him? Oh well. Probably a question for the morning.)

Midoriya almost died in the dungeon.

He couldn't react in time. Danger Sense screamed at him, Falin was missing, the dragon's carcass was dissolving into blood, and suddenly, he was in a cellar, being rescued by orcs.

Midoriya Izuku's second interaction with orcs went marginally better, all things considered. This one, Leed, was actively trying to help, aandshe even got Chilchuck to actually confront his feelings... He thinks. They were pretty far away at the time, so Midoriya didn't know what happened between them.

He would much rather forget Senshi trying to give him and Chilchuck the talk. How old was Senshi if he thought the middle-aged Chilchuck needed such a thing...? Midoriya may be seventeen, but he was certainly well old enough to know where children come from. His mom embarrassed him enough when she told him when he was twelve, and Midnight-sensei's health lesson...

The less Midoriya remembered that harrowing event, the better.

Midoriya then woke up four days later. Apparently, he had gotten bitten by a cockatrice, and quickly turned to stone. Marcille, as well. He was a bit confused as to who, exactly, had healed him, but it turned out Laios had rudimentary self-training in healing magic. Midoriya was slightly jealous, but decided that it would be nice to have two mages in the party, especially this deep in the dungeon.

And then Midoriya met the samurai. Well, the samurai, two ninja, an oni, someone who was clearly a shaman, and a... Puppeteer? Midoriya couldn't really read who this "Asebi" was, but it was whatever. Apparently, the samurai (who looked dead on his feet) was Shuro, though the ninjas seemed openly confused as to why Laios was calling him that. 

Also having arrived was the party Midoriya helped retrieve from the fourth floor's water. It was certainly nice to see them up and about again, but did they have to join such a huge entourage? Midoriya thought back to that huge party that had delved into the dungeon a few months ago that splintered under the stress, causing several to get killed. The migraine of that particular one... 

Midoriya is placed on the cooking team. 

It goes well until it doesn't.

Midoriya stares as the lifeless body of... Benichidori, he thinks her name is.

His retriever training kicks in, and he runs in to collect Hien's body to be revived by someone, perhaps the gnome that arrived with the adventuring party, or Marcille, but before he can pick up the corpse... The air shifts.

Midoriya is now staring up at an amalgamation of Falin and the dragon. The feathers adorning her body resemble those of the harpies around her.

Falin stares at them all.

One for All stills in fear, only breaking Midoriya's internal silence as Danger Sense screams for him to move. 

Falin crushes Maizuru where Midoriya once stood. 

The fight is intense, and a complete blur, all at the same time. At one point, Midoriya attempts to restrain Falin-chimera with Black Whip, but her body twists in a completely unnatural way and throws him through a wall. He's followed shortly by the oni, Tade. Neither of them are badly injured, but they're certainly not doing well.

Falin screams an unearthly wail, there's sounds of crushing stone, lightning, moving earth, and then... Silence.

Eventually, a downtrodden Marcille comes by to heal the two up, and they use their combined knowledge, strength, and magical power to get everyone revived and ready. 

There's arguing in the distance that sounds vaguely like Laios and Shuro (Toshiro, apparently. Midoriya wonders how Laios got that wrong.), but it eventually settles down. 

"So, if you don't mind me asking," Tade eventually breaches as Hien's body knits back together, "You kinda look like you're from the Eastern Islands?"

Midoriya blinks. "You mean... Japan?"

"Is that a new place?" Tade asks in return.

Midoriya thinks back to all the fantasy Japan names Sero laughs about. "That's one name for it." He settles on. "There's also Wa, Yamato, Nippon, Jipang..."

The more names Midoriya lists, the more Tade seems confused. He decides to distract from the topic and move on.

(Marcille notices this. A complete unknown from a random country with a thousand names, with magic that insane and finicky? What is the mystery of Izuku Midoriya?)

(Hien later explains to Tade that Midoriya was right in saying the archipelago was the country of Wa. As ogres simply didn't call it that, this was news to Tade. They, along with Benichidori, all chew on who Midoriya Izuku could possibly be.)

Laios ends up making up with Toshiro, and the two share a meal of harpy omelettes. Midoriya enjoys the protein, but gets the feeling that those outside his party might be rather hesitant.

...Hm. So this is his party.

There are five Midoriya Izukus. Three of them suck.

In one corner, there's a Midoriya that looks... Much too young. Or feminine. Midoriya can't decide which would be worse. He's not a young girl, he's almost an adult man! 

(Midoriya staunchly ignores that he's already an adult by tall-man standards. You can take the boy out of the dimension, but you can't take the dimension out of the boy.)

The second Midoriya is one that almost looks exactly like he does, except... There's this worrying gleam in his eye. That's not good.

The third Midoriya also looks remarkably like Midoriya does, if not for the shoes, which are, weirdly enough, bright green, and the fact that he ears on his hood are not that rabbit-like anymore. He's not sure what to make of those.

The fourth one is... Actually older than Midoriya is. At least, he looks older? Sort of like if Midoriya suddenly hit a growth spurt to fill out Laios's armor. It was disconcerting. The hair is also shorter than the other Midoriyas.

The fifth one is Midoriya Izuku, the real one.

Naturally, this problem is plaguing the others as well. He sees among the Laioses one with a pinched, sunken-in expression that he realizes (with some horror) is an All Might expression; the Marcilles have one with a high ponytail; with the Chilchucks is one who has stubble and what looks like a thinner version of Chilchuck's neck warmer-thing; and there's a Senshi who's so covered in hair he looks like Nagamasa, from Shiketsu.

The mentioned Laios, Chilchuck, and Senshi are carted away immediately, along with the ponytail Marcille when it turns out her grimoire contains anatomy diagrams instead of dense text and wavelengths. Similarly, the Midoriyas with obvious physical differences are removed.

Midoriya and his clone both prepare cockatrice katsu. Midoriya's so focused on his own dish he doesn't actually notice what Laios wrote down about him, but the Midoriya besides him scoffs about as he uses Black Whip to...

Midoriya jerks up. There's one Quirk he hasn't used (aside from Second and Third's) that's sure to get the group's attention. 

He starts emitting smoke. 

The fake is surprised, as well as the entire party. Midoriya says that this is something he hasn't used because he never had a reason to, and the fake Midoriya obviously would have no idea about it.

Fake Midoriya scoffs. "Throwing around magic like that... You're really reckless, aren't you?"

"I am..." Midoriya nods.

Fake Midoriya gets a smug look.

"Not using magic at all." Midoriya reveals.

Fake Midoriya stops. The entire assembled party freezes. 

Midoriya calmly walks over, picks up Fake Midoriya, and throws him into the cell with the others.

Unfortunately, it seems this has spurred the remaining pairs into further arguing, and now they're fighting each other.

Laios barks like a dog.

(Laios later explains that Deku doesn't just use his magic for everything, and is a lot more controlled than his double. The fact that it isn't magic throws him off, however. He privately wonders if Deku really is some sort of half-monster. Wouldn't that be nice...)

(Chilchuck, Marcille, and Senshi stare warily at Deku. Deku seems to wilt under the attention. There's a pang of guilt, but none of them know how to approach the topic, which, over the resultant couple of days, seems to make Deku more nervous. It's a vicious cyle.)

Midoriya can feel their gazes. 

It's been an eventful few days. They've been joined by Izutsumi, they managed to sautée nightmares (which were apparently a sort of mollusk?), and then, after everything that happened (including a freak snowstorm that caused Midoriya's joints to lock up like hell), they were now in what was apparently called the Golden Country.

Laios apparently got to milk a minotaur.

Midoriya could feel it. The longer it went unaddressed, the more things would crumble. However, he couldn't explain what was happening, not yet. Izutsumi wasn't feeling well, and he wanted to explain this only once.

Then they were back in the cistern, trying to catch a gryphon that was surprisingly capable of avoiding Black Whip. He attempts both Float and Full Cowling, but he's been so out-of-sorts that he ends up crashing face-first into a pillar.

Suddenly... Chilchuck explained he was divorced, with three kids.

And Midoriya couldn't hold it in.

"I'm not... From this world." Midoriya explains, unprompted. The sound doesn't travel far, what with all the snow, but it still seems to echo in the circle they were in. "One day, I just woke up here, outside the dungeon with only my clothes."

The party is silent. Midoriya begins to ramble.

"So, to explain, my theory is that there's this Villain - um, you'd have to know the context of that. A Villain is someone who breaks the law and a Hero- Wait, no, I have to explain that, too. So, to begin, a Quirk is what could be called a superpower, sort of like magic, but more specialized, and Villains are-"

The explanation gets long and complicated, but Marcille seems to be paying rapt attention.

"So, to explain, I have no magical ability, because my universe doesn't have magic." Midoriya finished lamely. "So what you've been seeing me do is my Quirk."

"That's... Unbelievable." Chilchuck deadpans.

"So you're saying..." Izutsumi demands, "That there's an entire world of beastkin like me?!" 

"W-Well, that's, er, um..." Midoriya stammers. "That's, well... Heteromorphs aren't exactly, uh..."

(Midoriya couldn't tell Izutsumi the very real prejudices against Heteromorphic Quirks, as unaware of Izutsumi's past as he was. As Izutsumi wasn't telling, the two were at a quick standstill.)

(Senshi broke the silence. He is Senshi from Izganda, after all.)

The party is closer than ever from hippogriff soup.

And then Midoriya wakes up as a gnome.

Chapter 2: Volume 2: Late Lunch, Entrées, Desserts, Apperatifs, and Feasts.

Notes:

The second half! Where things go crazy.

Chapter Text

Midoriya still can't believe it.

The changeling incident had ended with them tricking gargoyles into flying through a ring of them all, turning them into different pieces of stonework. Midoriya the gnome and Marcille the half-foot had the inenviable task of being the ones to be thrown through the air.

All that paled in comparison to the realization that the dwarves apparently invented hydraulic pipe systems and, more shockingly, a cable car to head further into the dungeon.

Senshi could read the sign, obviously, but a little instinct in the back of Midoriya's head said it was probably just one of those "please be mindful of other passengers" signs you saw all the time on the train. Still, the familiar comfort was enough to relax him, and he dozed off sitting upright, his head leaning against the window.

(Marcille, seeing that Midoriya was asleep, was suddenly struck with the realization that when he wasn't fighting like a maniac with not-magic, he was actually a pretty cute kid. With the thought of "cute kid", she then turned to Chilchuck.)

When the tram stopped, Izutsumi shook him awake. Apparently, they had arrived at an ancient dwarf city. It astounded Midoriya to see the abandoned buildings, spiraling into the abyss below, all built directly into the walls.

Marcille suddenly began to gossip to him about Chilchuck's family situation - apparently he cheated on his wife?

(There was a nagging feeling at the back of his head. It felt like someone in One for All was laughing.)

Before anything else could be figured out, however, they had to catch and eat a bicorn.

Midoriya was familiar with unicorns, of course, but a bicorn... Well, he would just follow the group for this one. Sure, gluttony was an easy thing to do, with the egg sandwiches Senshi had made, but envy...

"Deep down, I've always been a little jealous of people who had Quirks to begin with." Midoriya eventually admits, after Chilchuck and Senshi have their moment. "It feels like I'm always playing catch-up, since I've had One for All for only two years when everyone else has had at least eleven to get used to theirs."

Apparently, that was gloomy enough to get the bicorn to stop, but now Marcille won't stop looking at him, so maybe he shouldn't have said anything...?

In the end, they managed to catch the Bicorn, but Chilchuck's hand got bitten off, so it turns out he didn't cheat on his wife.

(Midoriya makes a mental note, watching Marcille somehow create a whole Scenario as to Chilchuck's wife leaving him, that he should really clear up his and Kacchan's relationship, so Marcille doesn't get the wrong idea... Well, maybe later.)

Eventually, when a dullahan gets the bicorn body and Midoriya's a bit too preoccupied with staring at the bicorn head, he makes the mistake of mentioning Tamaki-senpai's Quirk around Laios, in the context of how Tamaki-senpai would eat sakuraniku to gain the lower body of a horse.

(Midoriya made another mental note: never introduce Laios or Senshi to Tamaki-senpai. He's not sure his upperclassman would survive.)

Midoriya went off alone. It was inevitable, but dumb.

In hindsight, Midoriya really, really should have seen this coming. There was something that was bothering him, yes, but that didn't mean he shouldn't go off on his own into an area of the dungeon no one had ever been to before.

He went off, and found his mother.

Midoriya Inko was a bit of a... Sore spot. Not because she was a bad mother, by any stretch of the imagination. Being over-protective of her only child wasn't a bad thing, certainly. No, Midoriya Inko was a sore spot because Midoriya missed her, dearly. When he was still in his world, he could at least call her on the phone whenever his homesickness flared up.

In Melini, for a full year with no possible way to contact her... Midoriya sometimes spent whole days wondering about how she was doing, whether she was worrying over her son being missing without a trace, if she was crying those Midoriya tears, if she was already signing Izuku's withdrawal from UA... Even the cockatrice katsu was an attempt to try and recall Midoriya Inko. 

Katsudon was his favorite food, but his mother's katsudon would always be number one.

So, to find Midoriya Inko in the dungeon was a bit of a shock. As she drew close to him, ready to hug him and kiss him on the cheek and reunite with her son, Midoriya Izuku let his guard down.

Danger Sense blared like a nuclear klaxon, and Black Whip automatically sliced Midoriya Inko's head off.

Midoriya watched, horrified, as Midoriya Inko fell to the ground, oozing what was clearly not human blood, a thin needle poking out from her mouth.

"What..." Midoriya whispered, before the sound of movement caught his attention.

It was Midoriya Inko, but there was a whole crowd of other people behind her. More Midoriya Inkos, some naked women, some naked men, a weirdly-undressed Aizawa-sensei for some reason... 

Midoriya suddenly remembered one or two corpses he had retrieved. Apparently, they were succubus victims, drained to a husk and ready to die if not given the proper nutrients. Meat for revival in their cases was always expensive, as it had to be a lot to replenish their BMI to a proper, healthy level.

The corpses had been rare enough and so close to the start of his career that it was eventually declared that the succubus was essentially extinct on Melini. He'd have to update his notebook.

Midoriya Izuku was not good in a group fight. However, as he looked at the succubuses (succubi?) that had transformed into forms that weren't exactly his taste (he very much preferred his own age group!), he realized something so monumentally basic that he wasn't sure why he hadn't realized it until now -

Midoriya Izuku, the ninth holder of One for All, was never alone.

It wasn't an easy fight. However, Smokescreen combined with Danger Sense was a deadly combo, and Black Whip and Float ensured that any that took to the skies (they had wings!) would be easy to deal with as well. At some point, though Midoriya couldn't see it well, his body began to glow red as he backhanded a succubus that looked oddly like David Shield through an abandoned house.

Midoriya Izuku, however alone he may not have been, was still not built for group fights. He had to tire eventually, and at some point he felt as though he had begun to have trouble breathing. He chalked that up to Smokescreen rather than anything else.

And then something was thrown into the abyss, and all the succubi (succubuses?) froze. Another was thrown, and another, and every single monster clamored to throw themselves into the abyss after them.

Silence. Merciful silence. 

Midoriya made his way back to camp, where he found a healthy Izutsumi rummaging though Senshi's ingredients in one corner of the room and four shriveled adventurers.

Before Midoriya could do anything beyond scream in shock, Izutsumi shoved a sack of... Sugar? (It was some sort of powder)... Into his arms. Apparently, she was going to milk the dead succubi behind her for nutrient slurry and mix it together with a powder to make it easily-administerable.

The end result tasted awful, but the best medicines tend to.

After Laios recounted what little of his dream about the Winged Lion he could, Midoriya was given the chance to explain himself.

"I think..." Midoriya began, thinking to those campfire pits he had seen, "We aren't alone down here. Someone's ahead of us."

Midoriya couldn't help but stare. 

The dungeon had had understandable progression to this point. The first floor was Melini's underground graveyard, to begin with. As the most recent addition to the dungeon, it was only understandable it wouldn't be further integrated into the dungeon's general layout beyond an entrance lobby. The second through fourth floors were comprised of the Golden Kingdom's castle, with the fifth floor being the castle town. If the layout of the sixth floor was any indication, it was probably the sewers of the old kingdom, with the Golden Kingdom detour being a bit of a distraction. The door that had appeared, according to Yaad, was created last-minute by Sissel to bridge the underground areas where he personally lived with the rest of the dungeon above, so the abandoned dwarf city was merely buried by the rest of the kingdom and moved even further underground... Probably. He had no way to know without asking someone who could possibly have been there.

From the dwarf city, as empty and desolate as it was, to Sissel's house, however, the juxtaposition was...

"It's certainly... Green." Midoriya commented, looking around the otherwise-untouched vale. It was perfectly idyllic.

So, when Chilchuck shot down the guard bird and everyone went inside to the sight of countless broken mirrors... It was a shock, but not as much of a shock as finding Yaad's body, as well as what was assumed to be Delgal and... Three others, one of which was a mannequin. Surrounded by paintings, seated to eat, with plates that looked to be completely untouched.

That they were alive, but with their souls removed... Midoriya felt shivers up his spine. They had to find the Winged Lion, and fast.

...Unfortunately, with the house in the disrepair it was...

One phoenix attack later, and Midoriya is helping Laios clean the house. Fashioning some bags out of some unused sheets, his job is to carry the trash outside. It would be nostalgic if there wasn't the stress of being in the enemy's base of operations.

(Midoriya is seated with Chilchuck on Yaad's lap. Neither are particularly happy, but Laios is paired with Senshi on Delgal's lap, and Marcille and Izutsumi are seated on the hence-unnamed noblewomen. None of them want to take chances with the dummy, so comfort must be sacrificed for the duration of the meal.)

Midoriya had heard about rabbits.

He often kept his hood down because of them, after all. There was an old tale he had heard about sometimes. Beheaded corpses, that, when retrieved, would scream about rabbits and nothing else. With the tale of dungeon rabbits fresh in his head, he had learned how to sew to make his hood more dog-like. Unfortunately, he wasn't very good at sewing, so he ended up just not wearing the hood most times. 

(He had worn it in the snowstorm on the sixth level. If anyone else had been around, he would have braved the cold. He knew his party would understand, though.)

(Laios made a mental note to ask Deku sometime later why his hood had rabbit ears. Was it a hint to his real nature?)

Now, they were going to hunt dungeon rabbits. He couldn't help but be a little on-edge. The minute the Winged Lion had shown up, he had immediately gotten a migraine that silenced once he exited the house. He wasn't sure what to make of it, so he simply didn't talk about it and stayed behind with Chilchuck and Marcille.

Then Laios and Senshi fell, their mouths gurgling with blood. Chilchuck was next, and Danger Sense screamed enough that Midoriya weaved out of the way of another one.

Blood laced out from a deep cut on his face. 

Marcille snapped out of it and obliterated two rabbits with her go-to fireball, sending her and Midoriya flying back several feet.

The following hour was a blur. Once Chilchuck's corpse rose onto his feet, puppeted by Marcille, all the things that could possibly happen to him if he died began flooding into Midoriya's head. He watched, in stunned silence, as Marcille slowly gathered up Senshi and Laios's corpses, killed as many rabbits as she could, and led them with a fainted Izutsumi into the house.

As he entered behind them, he remained completely silent, allowing the piercing migraine of the Winged Lion to stun him so further that by the time he rejoined the party, they were already preparing the rabbit curry.

Vivid memories of Bakugou screaming at them at the training camp flooded his mind, and he quickly slotted into the frenetic meal prep.

Midoriya watched Sissel enter the house.

They had only just barely finished in time for them to carry the enormous plate of curry out of the house. Midoriya, personally, had taken the barrel of ale and ran as quickly as he could. He made a mental note to add this to his training regimen - running with a container of sloshing liquid over your head really made balancing difficult.

(In the end, he couldn't watch Laios kill Falin - she was still human, even if she was a monster.)

(He couldn't look away, in the end.)

The plan now is simple: defeat Sissel, make Laios the dungeon lord, then consolidate the first and lowest floors so that Falin was now surface-level enough to carve the dragon out of her and serve her to as many people as possible.

(When Laios first described this plan, Midoriya couldn't help but launch into a long-winded description of Lunch-Rush feeding an entire nation haute cuisine until help had further arrived. Laios and Senshi seemed very interested, Marcille had openly wondered where Lunch-Rush had gotten the ingredients, and Chilchuck began to give him a very strange look once he had finished describing every single dish served at that disaster site seven years ago.)

(Chilchuck made a mental note that Midoriya was, unfortunately, more like Laios than he had hoped.)

The revelation that Marcille is a half-elf... Midoriya hadn't really seen other elves before aside from the one on the second floor, as tall-man centric as Melini was. Dwarves and half-foots, yes. Gnomes, on occasion. Kobolds were a rare surprise, and orcs were only on this adventure. He had simply assumed Marcille was a regular elf and moved on with his life.

In the end, it didn't really bother him. Because now they had bigger problems -

Namely, dragons. A lot of them.

If one migraine had been solved by Sissel sealing away the Winged Lion, the hydra in the back had been enough to send Midoriya running, Danger Sense screeching unhelpfully.

In the end, it wasn't enough. Midoriya Izuku was never good in a group fight.

Multi-Headed Roulade

Ingredients: 1 Izuku Midoriya

Hydra heads (a lot)

Deku had been quiet all night.

Laios felt generally unsure, somehow. Sure, Deku had been surprised to be alive, but apparently he was skittish around resurrections, so he guessed it was just nerves from his first death. If left alone, and with a good meal, it was sure to be fine.

Plus, drink! Chilchuck was right, tonight was a reason to drink. He wasn't totally sure why Sissel had revived Marcille and then fallen asleep, but it was probably magic exhaustion. Even the dungeon lord had to get exhausted sometimes. Sissel hadn't been eating, either, so maybe the little of the (awful) seawater-cooked dragon meat that they'd had had tired him out. Summoning dragons like that, without even knowing what they did...

In the morning, the Winged Lion would make him the dungeon lord, they'd move up Falin's body to the top floor, they'd cook up a meal for everyone there (just like that Lush-Lunch guy Deku told him about!), and then revive what remained of Falin. Then he'd get on to other things, maybe.

Like... No, first, the wine and roast.

(Deku picked at the roast before tentatively placing it in his mouth. He'd never noticed Deku was such a picky eater. He should have told Laios. At least Deku began shoveling it in after the initial taste.)

Deku was awake the next morning, staring out the window. The sun hadn't really set during the night, so Laios had simply drawn the curtains and gone to sleep. He did startle a bit when Laios approached, which made Laios pause. He supposed that it was still first death nerves, so he shrugged it off. After all, Deku tended to get strange migraines around the Winged Lion, so maybe that was it.

Then Kabooru ("Kabru.") Kabru showed up, followed by what he was quickly told was the Canaries. It was all a whirlwind of introductions, none of which he could possibly remember in such short time, and in the end, they were all seated around the study table with Senshi serving tea and snacks to the Canaries, Kabru, Chilchuck, Deku, and him.

Deku accidentally drank while it was still hot. As someone who apparently really liked green tea, that stuck out as extremely off to Laios, but then his attention was taken up by the elf with the really intense gaze.

She pulled out some lilies-of-the-valley.

He told her everything.

In the distance, there was screaming and crashing.

To be short, Midoriya was furious.

There was a very, very particular aspect of One for All. Namely, that it was the combined gestalt of approximately eight people, all living in the head of what was currently the ninth holder. It had had two hundred years to mature into what it was, collecting soul imprints of its previous holder until the sheer force of will that was Midoriya Izuku cultivated them back into consciousness.

The first actual sign of this was a surprisingly hot day in May. Midoriya could remember it extremely clearly - it was the day that forever altered his perspective of Endeavor, the day that Todoroki used his fire, the day he learned how cool Dark Shadow and Tokoyami really were.

It was the day Shinsou Hitoshi first put him under brainwashing.

On that day, approximately three months after he had first used One for All to crumple a fifteen-story robot (and shatter three limbs in the process), he saw them. While one might call them vestiges, something about them seemed... More. Spirits, one would call them.

(One could call something many things, in fact. Many people could call one thing many things. This was the power of perspective.)

(In the perspective of the dungeon, they would be souls, anchored and chained to Midoriya, who was, in turn, chained to them.)

Midoriya Izuku would learn, on that hot May day, that he was, effectively, immune to brainwashing. One of the spirits took control of his finger that day and shattered it, breaking him free of the brainwashing within the confines of Shinsou Hitoshi's Quirk's conditions.

And right now, seeing the elf (Cithis, someone supplied to him) question his body like that, treating his party like that...

When he began to emit smoke to get Laios to shut up, the tall shirtless elf looked to him. When he began to float off the ground, the one with cropped hair looked to him and called to Cithis.

When Cithis leaned forward to inspect Midoriya, his mouth shot open and Black Whip sliced out at her, Froppy-style. Tsuyu ("Call me Asui.") would never forgive him.

And then Marcille and a completely different, yet-unseen elf teleported in, and the room utterly froze.

Unfortunately, it seemed another migraine was on the way.

Something was... Weird, about Izuku.

Marcille obviously had bigger problems currently. The Canaries were in the house, Laios and the others had been charmed by illusion magic, Izutsumi had been teleported... Somewhere, and Izuku...

Behind her, opposite of Laios, Senshi, and Chilchuck's dazed bodies, was Izuku, unhappily glaring at the Canaries and single-handedly bringing the air of the room down by several degrees. Blackwhip had receded back into his mouth (she hadn't known he could do that!), and he was no longer floating and emitting smoke, but there was a strange grimace on his face.

(With Marcille in the room, safe and sound, Midoriya now felt somewhat better about his chances and more hopeful that this wouldn't end in a fight. If only he could figure out why his migraine had returned and gotten increasingly worse... He hoped his discomfort wasn't showing on his face.)

(It was. It translated as a deeply unsettling glare.)

Behind Pattadol (as the liaison for the Canaries was named), the human who was accompanying them for some reason motioned for her to nod. As preoccupied with Izuku as everyone was, she simply agreed and moved on with the conversation.

"That's right." Marcille lied as easily as she breathed. "I hired them for their very specific skillsets. Senshi for his... Intimate knowledge of the dungeon and culinary skill. Chilchuck, for his expertise in traps. Laios, as a specialist in..." She trailed off. She then turned to Izuku. "And Izuku here is immune to illusion magic, as you may have noticed."

"Please pardon my fit earlier." Izuku sighed, his eyebrow continuing to twitch. "I am a corpse retriever by trade, and I'm not used to being so close to the bottom of the dungeon. I've had a strong migraine the entire time I've been down here, and it's caused me to lash out."

Marcille is unsurprised that Izuku is a good liar.

The rest of the conversation proceeds quite swimmingly. She even managed, by process of elimination, to figure out what liricmumwarei was!

And then Cithis, the illusionist who previously angered Izuku into attacking, shatters the illusion of Marcille being anywhere near trustworthy.

Izutsumi crashes through the window aiming for the captain. He teleports out, and Marcille runs with Izuku following close behind.

As Izuku grapples with the captain, she begins chanting to release the other half of the seal.

So focused is she on unleashing the Winged Lion and getting out of there that she doesn't notice Izuku faint dead away.

Laios is groggy as he wakes up in... a hallway.

The first thing that catches his eye is the two dead Ariadnes on the ground. Dungeon spiders is the common term for them, and- Wait, no, that isn't important. For starters, they have the heads of stuffed toys. It's an affront to monsters everywhere, but what's more important is that they're dead. One has collapsed from the inside with an elf-shaped crater, the other has been chopped through the head with a painting. There are two elves and a crow hanging from the ceiling, another two have fainted, an unfamiliar one is being held against the wall by Kabru, and one more is still conscious and looking around worriedly.

Deku is lying on the ground, out cold. Luckily, he comes to as Chilchuck props him up, groaning as he rubs his head.

Deku looks up at the webbing instead of the barely-conscious elves and says, "Oh, this isn't good."

Laios has more important things to worry about. Namely, he needs everyone to help carry the party outside. Deku would be a natural help at this, since he's a corpse retriever and the Canaries apparently aren't even dead, but...

But he's walking strangely, as if unused to being as physically fit as he is.

There's no time. They have to get out of the house.

"Izutsumi," Laios begins. "Where's Marcille? Wasn't she with you upstairs?"

According to Izutsumi, they somehow managed to blast her outside with magic and only showed up when Marcille and Deku fled the room together. Apparently, Deku has a resistance to whatever spell the elf he's currently carrying on his back cast on him.

Deku is even less forthcoming, which is extremely alarming. But right now...

Laios has to find Marcille. The Canaries are after the books, they probably did something to Deku, Marcille is probably alone and likely to starve herself like she did Sissel...

And the dungeon's ecosystem has been scrambled into one singular floor. Monsters are all mixed up, and it's horrible to watch. The Canaries will be fine. He needs to get to Marcille.

The last remaining elf turns into a beastman! A wolf! A were-wolf! Kabru tackles him to the ground, then turns with Kensuke drawn.

The were-wolf scolds Kabru for not wanting to eat monster food, and somehow that hurts most of all.

Deku mutters something along the lines of, "Even Nine picked up on that..."

Laios can't focus on that now. He has to hurry and find Marcille. With Izutsumi distracting the were-wolf, now's the perfect time-

Kabru begins talking to him again. It's complicated and he can't understand why this is important now, but at least he apologized for lying? It's unimportant. This isn't the time to talk. He needs to get to Marcille.

Kabru stutters. Laios has never seen that.

Kabru punches him. Laios has seen that.

The thing is, Kabru seems to be unable to actually reconcile that he wanted to punch Laios and be friends with him at the same time. He doesn't quite get Kabru's fevered rant, but he understands it. For once in his life, he understands another human.

He's... Interested, in another human.

This isn't the time. Izutsumi is chucked at Deku, knocking them both to the ground. He vows to return with Marcille to Kabru, so that they can have a nice, non-monster meal together.

The cliff falls apart, and Laios and his friends (except for Kabru) all fall into the river below.

The mushrooms are carrying their stuff.

Well... Nine's stuff.

And Nine's friends, he supposes.

The act of walking on water... If it's this easy, than that old Western god was a mage? It would be a fascinating plot twist, but probably a limited run edition. People hated blasphemy like that, even if it was fun to read.

If Nine didn't have such ineptitude for magic (to be fair, none of them did), this would probably be the first spell he learned. Besides resurrection.

...Resurrection...

The cat-girl, Izutsumi, has noticed something... A huge swarm of birds. Sort of like that one bird he read about... Star-somethings? It's been too long, but essentially, if there were enough of them flying around at the same time, they could completely blot out the sun.

He shook his head and went to gather Nine's things. He probably wasn't going to be able to do anything with it all, however. Nine tended to pack heavily, as a sort of weight-lifting exercise. He was-

Oh, it was surprisingly light. Perhaps Eight's workout routine really was the stuff of dreams.

The birds swarmed into the shape of one singular, gigantic bird. A symbiotic organism, comprised of several smaller organisms. Sort of like that living armor, as it turned out-

Oh, starlings. Like the movie character.

He was eaten by the flock.

Luckily, the tall-man, Laios, has a plan: become like parasites and irritate the bird from within. Apparently, they're all psychically linked to someone, so it may actually cause problems.

Nine is assigned to agitate the wings with Five's Quirk. He... Can't do that, so he instead climbs over to the wings and begins to pluck out the feathers of as many birds as he can find. As it turns out, some of them are insects. He feels bad tearing out insect wings, so he settles on targeting the birds.

(Down below, the Canaries feel horrible plucking feelings along their arms. It's miserable.)

Eventually - he isn't sure how or why - but a gigantic winged serpent comes out of the water and swallows the entire flock whole, leaving them stranded in a monster's stomach going who-knows-where surrounded by dead animals.

As they move toward the bowels of the snake, Laios speaks up.

"This has been bothering me for a bit, but..." Laios begins. "You aren't Deku, are you?"

Ah. He's been found out.

Brother would tease him miserably over this.

Bowel peristalsis kicks in.

 

Laios has finally realized the dungeon's power is evil.

Of course it is? The Winged Lion (who isn't causing Deku headaches, weirdly enough) has declared that the best way to make Marcille's pipe dream a reality is to make the dungeon expand to cover the entire world.

It's laughable.

(The worst part is, Chil gets it. He doesn't want to die before her, Senshi, Izutsumi, heck, even Laios and Deku. He's already pushing thirty, after all. There's so much he hasn't done, and so little time.)

(A thousand years sounds like it'd be miserable. Poor Marcille.)

But now here they are. They have to cook SOMETHING, and the door is being guarded by some guy who Laios says is Marcille's father. Laios eventually determines that the guy, Donato, is some sort of form-changing monster called a "doppelgänger", known for killing the person they copy and replacing them.

Kinda like shapeshifters. Euch.

(Chil hears Deku shift uncomfortably. That's something to talk about later.)

(There's a lot of weird little slip-ups from Deku he's heard recently, such as calling himself "Nine" and suddenly claiming he can't do that Black-Whip thing when attacked by the familiars. He was a little busy at the time trying not to die, but put all together... There may be two doppelgängers on their hands.)

Izutsumi finds a barred window. For some reason, Deku isn't using his body enhancement, so that's a no-go.

Marcille is gearing up for war. It's officially bad.

Donato is the real problem. Since they can't trust Deku to fight right now, they need to find a way to get Marcille to come to them.

("Deku" suggests herring and salmon. Chil isn't sure where he got that idea.)

Laios, through stunning deduction, proposes hometown cuisine. They don't know where Marcille is from, so they ask "Donato".

Through clues, Senshi eventually figures out that Marcille would probably like roasted pork noodles in a chicken broth. Chil thinks that's a weird takeaway to take from Marcille's extremely sad childhood, but Laios apparently completely understands because he's recounting the nightmare he helped Marcille through.

(Chil hates that he understands Marcille even more now. If he died before his daughters... If May or Puck or Fler died before him...)

What Chil doesn't understand is why Laios is blaming himself for all this. He didn't force her to become the dungeon lord, she did all that herself. It's like blaming Falin for becoming friends with Marcille, or-

The smell of pork in chicken broth is overwhelming enough that Marcille comes to eat.

"Deku" is uncomfortable the whole meal, but Marcille ends up cleaning her bowl.

(Chil hates that Marcille isn't open to even considering that that lion is no good for her.)

Laios ends up using the completely clean, reflective bowl to turn "Donato" back into his true form: an octopus, apparently.

Laios then turns to "Deku" with the bowl.

"I don't think you're a doppelgänger." Laios explains. "I saw Marcille revive Deku's body. But I'm going to ask you this one more time: You aren't Deku, so who are you?"

"Deku" sighs.

"We don't really have time for this, so I won't be able to properly explain." "Deku" explains. "So just know that Nine's Quirk, One for All, has a particular feature you were yet unaware of. To answer your question... My name is Yoichi Shigaraki. I am the first holder of One for All. I am afraid there has been a mix-up regarding Nine's resurrection."

Good grief. Are all revived spirits such chatterboxes?

(What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-)

Laios's favorite food is cheesecake.

Completely unbidden, Yoichi replies that his favorite food is roasted dragon. It was the first food he'd ever eaten that he'd actually enjoyed, after all. The food Senshi made that day... It was beautiful.

Forget that it was quite literally only yesterday. Nine should have eaten it instead of him.

(Kabru gives Izuku Midoriya a weird look. He'd been acting strangely meek ever since Cithis's magic wore off, he'd been walking like he hadn't had legs in forever, and it's harder to get a read on him. He's practically acting like a different person entirely. It's like... He's possessed.)

(Kabru won't act yet. Not now. But if this is a ghoul, there's a chance he may get affected by the Dungeon Lord's magic. He'll kill him if necessary. For now, he'll observe.)

What the Lion is speaking of... Of a world where all desires never cease... It feels like the vault, all over again. His brother always gave Yoichi what he wanted, when he wanted. He supposed he should have been happy in that.

He wasn't happy. The one thing he always truly wanted was to be anywhere but there. To be free from his brother's influence.

Even in another world, bound to Nine's body by One for All and forced to take his place, his brother holds influence.

The Winged Lion... Sounds almost exactly like All for One. Promising the world in honeyed tones, to use those he lures in like flies as fodder for grander ambitions, leaving everyone to rot in an inescapable prison. Yoichi's hair stands on end just thinking about it.

(Unconsciously, his muscles tense, and a spark of silvery-green lightning jumps up his arm.)

Eventually, as a horde of elves jumped in to help subdue the extreme amount of monsters, Yoichi and Nine's party came to a decision.

The fighting completely stopped as Laios led them right to Marcille.

(The elves called him "Demon King", like that one villain from his favorite comic. The one All for One jealously glared at when Yoichi praised how cool he was as a villain.)

(The elves had no idea what a real demon king was like.)

(But Yoichi did.)

Marcille is on a balcony, just out of reach. Beneath her is a tower of pies.

Yoichi hears the half-foot, Chilchuck, call out to Marcille as doppelgängers (disgusting, gross things that remind him of his brother's Face-Meld Quirk, one of the first he'd taken) attack Laios. Chilchuck says he's offering to let Marcille meet his family.

It's the first thing said so far that's made Marcille physically move. Yoichi is struck with an idea, and he musters up his best imitation of Nine.

"Y-You can come and meet Kacchan, too!" Yoichi's voice wavers, but he presses on as Marcille's eyes bulge out. "M-Maybe if we work together, we can figure out a way for me to get home! Then- Then I can show you Kacchan and my mom and all my friends!"

A gigantic picture falls behind Yoichi, showing what looks like Nine, Marcille, and two completely unrecognizable people. One looks exactly like Nine, only taller and with longer hair. The other is an elf with raggedly-cut hair, an eyepatch, and a long leather coat with a cat sticking its head out of the collar.

Yoichi doesn't know what the hell this is, but it starts raining books, so he no longer cares.

(Within One for All, Midoriya screams as he sobs into a weirdly-receptive Bruce's arms about how Marcille completely misread his and Kacchan's situation. Next to them, Kudou and Daigoro are laughing their heads off.)

Eventually, Laios frantically climbs a doppelgänger up to the balcony, where he's consoling a despondent Marcille. Suddenly, everyone is offering to help Marcille through the difficult times, and Yoichi feels as though he has to add something.

"Um- I can probably help with a workout plan." He offers, still trying to imitate Nine. "Or, well, when we figure out that way home I mentioned... I could get my teacher to figure one out. He's actually really good at that sort of thing."

Marcille looks unsure.

Suddenly, Laios, Chilchuck, and the dwarf, Senshi, are running though a monologue Yoichi must've been completely unaware of. As a result, he and Izutsumi are sitting there, gobsmacked, as Marcille throws herself, crying, into Laios's arms.

The mood is completely broken by the screams of monsters and adventurers outside.

It feels like... The end.

It feels climactic. Most comic books don't properly have endings - syndication, and all that. It led to an endless supply of content, most of which contradicted one another and ended up giving the hero various highs and lows and weaknesses and powers that were put on and taken apart like a doll's clothes.

Yoichi, in Nine's body, stood with Nine's party, facing what should have been Nine's final opponent in this run.

Four's Quirk had gone from a dull rumble to a constant buzz. This was apparently what Nine had been going through the entire time the Winged Lion had only been a head, so that was a good thing, at least. Even so, he trailed behind the others, failing miserably at pretending he wasn't stepping on an ocean of bones.

Laios then took a minute to explain his plan. His plan... Was to become the dungeon lord, create a dungeon where the demon straight-up had no power, and then figure things out from there.

It was the worst plan in the world, and Yoichi made sure to voice it.

"My brother makes more cognizant plans than you do." He deadpans. He isn't sure if he's heard over Izutsumi dissing Marcille's cool new dress.

After some deliberation (most of which involved destroying the dress), Laios decided to continue the plan. However, he was going to assign everyone contingencies, which was fine by Yoichi.

"...Also, Chil, can I ask for a dagger?" Laios asks calmly.

Chilchuck (Chil? That felt too personal, though...) rummages through his pack and gives one to Laios.

"Thank you." Laios then turns around to give it to Yoichi. "Yoy-chi-"

"Yoichi."

"Yoichi?" Marcille asks incredulously.

"Yo-shi."

"What? No. Just call me "First"."

"Who is Yoichi?" Marcille demands.

"I know you might not have the same training as Deku," Laios explains, placing the dagger in Yoichi- Nine's hands, "But you have to protect Marcille, Chilchuck, and the others. Give them time to do their tasks, and you'll do just fine."

"But-" Yoichi blinks. "But I'm not even- You know that Nine knows how to do all that. I was killed almost immediately after escaping and only gained awareness last year. You think I can protect them all?"

"Of course." Laios says. "If Deku can be a hero, so can you, First."

"Did I miss something?!" Marcille whispers to Chilchuck.

"I'm not sure what's going on with him either." Chilchuck whispers back.

With the tasks assigned, Yoichi watches Laios approach the demon.

They stare at each other.

They continue to stare at each other.

Laios begins to salivate. It's starting to get really uncomfortable.

Laios cleaves the demon's head off.

Yoichi and the others startle. He's done it! He's-

Danger S- Four's Quirk starts screaming louder than ever.

Yoichi places himself between the the others as Izutsumi takes off Laios's head in one clean slice.

The oni, Tade, came over specifically to check on Nine.

It would be a nice gesture, but they failed. Laios is still within the demon's realm, the demon is in Laios's body, but at least Yoichi was able to pull everyone a good distance away. Eight's regimen really seasoned Nine's body quite well. He'd have to thank Senshi for the life advice, as well.

Except that will have to wait. The demon is here, and is escaping.

"Ah! Izuku!" Tade screams. "Use your Black Binding spell to catch him!"

"Yeah, well, about that..." Yoichi murmurs, suddenly embarrassed.

A tower emerges, and then the teleporting elf Marcille killed with one of those water monsters - Undine? - bodily tackles the Demon. Marcille, Namari the dwarf, and Toshiro the samurai are running over, so Yoichi steadies to his legs and tightens his grip on Chilchuck's dagger.

There's suddenly an enormous shadow. A great behemoth of a creature. It's an amalgam of various creatures, it has multiple heads - avian, canine, and rhinoceros, it has a serpent's tail, it-

It's just sitting patiently there, as if it wants to be admired.

Yoichi makes his way over to where Namari and the others are whispering. Marcille is flipping through Laios's monster manual, so there's probably something-

It's a sketch of the exact monster they're looking at, with all sorts of footnotes and a gigantic title saying "THE REALLY COOL MONSTER I THOUGHT UP".

Everyone realizes the exact same thing at the exact same time. The monster preens patiently as the book gets passed around, so that everyone can figure out the really cool idea he obviously had.

Laios is... A total idiot, isn't he?

(Deep in One for All, Midoriya falls over, thoroughly embarrassed, as he remembers Mighty Boy and All Might Jr. The fiery apparition of Yagi attempts to calm him down while Daigoro and Kudou continue to laugh.)

The chimeric Laios then proceeds to not only bust a hole in the sky in a horrifying display of power, but slices open the winged snake Marcille can still command.

Yoichi stares up as Laios continues to make stupid poses. He distantly hears Marcille say that they have to take on the Winged Lion - Winged Laios? - directly. Which is all well and good, but Yoichi is only armed with a dagger, so he's not going to be much help beyond pure muscle, especially since he's getting winded just running-

Wait.

When did Yoichi start running? Why is Nine's- His body moving on its own?

They reach the top of the tower.

They've reached the surface. They're no longer underground.

This is the worst possible outcome. Demon-Laios opens up a rift in the sky, and a peering mass of eyes claws open the material of reality. It reaches down, its many, clawing arms, and begins to consume each and every person in the world, greedily shoveling them into its maw.

They've lost. And they're going to be left behind.

Yoichi... Will remain stuck in Nine's body, forced to die in a body that isn't his, with friends that aren't his, and no one else in the world.

There's a faint pulse in his chest, but before he can figure that out, a gigantic talon reaches out and grabs the demon.

It's Laios. The chimera, Laios.

No one's sure what to make of it. But they're pretty sure... Laios wants to eat the demon.

Naturally, they all encourage this behavior, because if there's one thing they've learned, it's that Laios will not stop until he's finished pursuing his meal. It's rather reckless. Rather like Nine.

There's another pulse in Yoichi's chest. 

The demon says something about how the entire world is now an extension of his body, which sounds like something Yoichi's brother would say, and then Laios shoves the demon into his rhinoceros-mouth.

A cascade of Laioses pours out, and suddenly, the fight is on.

...Or, it would be a fight, if the demons were actually trying to attack them. He's so busy goading Laios with his infinite clones that he's completely ignoring everyone else. Marcille is poring over Laios's homebrew, Senshi is stress cleaning, and Chilchuck-

Chilchuck is getting manhandled by the Laios clones.

Monster-Laios eats one, and the other one is immediately kicked to the ground by Yoichi, glowing a faint silver-green.

"Dear me," The Lai-on (? He'll workshop it) smirks, "So you can still use that unfathomable power, even when I'm overwhelming your Danger Sense just by existing. You know, I can give you a complete copy of your home world, Deku. Everyone you love... Completely remade, just as you remember them-"

The clone's eye is stabbed out.

"My sincerest apologies, brother." Yoichi snarls. "But the world I come from is long gone. You're about two-hundred years too late."

Before the demon can respond, Yoichi calls up to the chimera and shouts, "Laios, you missed one!"

Yoichi climbs off just as the tiger paw comes down to swipe up the carcass.

Chilchuck is staring at Yoichi.

"I'll explain when all of existence isn't getting snuffed out." Yoichi settles on.

Suddenly, the Laios clones begin to stab Laios-mera with an infinite amount of swords. It all looks bad, and as Yoichi and Chilchuck reunite with Marcille and the others, they find her frantically flipping through pages to find out what makes Monster-Laios so enormously more powerful than the demon.

As they find the relevant sentence, the clones all stop and begin to spasm. The arms cease movement and go limp.

"The monster can even digest desires."

The dungeon is falling apart.

Laios is dead with no chance of revival. Yoichi lost Chilchuck's dagger. The dungeon is falling apart.

And here they are, in the house where Yoichi woke up in Nine's body.

"He's dead." Yoichi points to the corpse of the immortal, Yaad.

"We can see that!" Chilchuck snaps.

Luckily, however, it turns out that souls are so malleable that Yaad is able to pilot his grandfather, Delgal's body. With Yaad (Delgal? They'll figure it out.) carrying Sissel, the mage that killed Nine, on his back, they all manage to make it to the outside, where they find the people of the Golden Kingdom with three unicorns with their horns shorn off. Steeds. An escape route.

If they can make it in time.

They're off like a whip. Spirits guide them through the castle town walls (it's hard to believe Nine was ever scared of them), they're weaving through changelings in the cistern's snowstorm, and suddenly, they're in the forest.

Yoichi (who has tied himself to Delgal and Sissel so he won't fall off the, admittedly, lustrous steed) stares.

The monsters are also escaping. The living armors retreat in formation. The dullahan with the gifted bicorn carcass stares as mandrakes, paintings, and dungeon rabbits all flee. The golems are running for their lives.

For the first time in his life. For the first time in two-hundred years, ever since he had been born with "Inheritance", the aspect of One for All that allows for the transfer of his Quirk...

Yoichi is really seeing life as it should be. All running together. All united in the simple, singular goal of remaining alive.

...Nine should be the one seeing this.

With a stop, they dismount in the flooding entrance lobby, the floor where Nine made his trade, collecting bodies and leading healers through dangerous odds. Nine truly had more of a connection to this dungeon than any of One for All. They could only smell the food, let it flavor the bland rice that was watching Nine's life play out.

As Delgal (Yaad?) bid farewell to a furious Izutsumi, Yoichi realized one thing that needed to happen.

The dungeon's fountain shattered, and everything below ground was flushed away. Luckily, it turned out that everyone else was okay, simply dazed and confused.

(Yoichi found the dagger borrowed from Chilchuck. Chilchuck recommended he keep it.)

Suddenly, Toshiro's bell began to ring, before completely falling silent. This was, apparently, a clear sign that Laios was certainly alive, so Yoichi joined Senshi in the quest to find out where Laios was.

They didn't have to search for long.

"Thanks to you, that awful racket Danger Sense- Four's Quirk- Oh, forget it." Yoichi sighs as he pats Laios on the back. "I no longer have a migraine, now. Thank you, Laios."

("Seriously, what's going on?" Marcille whispers to Chilchuck, who is still fairly confused himself.)

Laios finally tells everyone the plan is to eat Falin.

It goes as well as Yoichi expected. Truthfully, he is a little - well, no, extremely - maybe not that? He's hesitant, to say the least, but...

Everything up to this point was to help revive Falin. This was simply part of the plan, in the end. It's what Nine agreed to help with, and Nine was willing to go along with it, even bringing up his school lunch chef in the process.

Who was Yoichi to back down from something Nine agreed to?

In the end, the fact that they were even able to get the one elf - Mithrun, apparently, which was such an elf name that Yoichi felt delighted - to help out, despite being so catatonic after devoting apparently his whole existence to the one final desire of killing the demon... Well, that just meant that Yoichi should begin helping to prep the food.

(Yoichi felt like he could relate. He should talk to Mithrun when there isn't anyone around.)

It was all a whirlwind after that. Even without the slim dredges of One for All that Yoichi could call up, Nine's body was simply so toned that he could carry as many enormous chunks of meat as he could to where people needed.

It was when he was finished with that and beginning to help cook that Izutsumi finally came up to him.

"Hey, Yoichi," Izutsumi asks, "What do you going to do now?"

"Oh, you got my name right." Yoichi blinks. "Well, I'm done carting around meat with my bare hands, so I'm going to go wash up and see if I can recreate Nine's cockatrice katsu, but with Falin- Falinmera? Falingon? Falin's breast meat." 

"No, I mean, what are you doing after this?" Izutsumi's eye twitches. Clearly, she had been going through everyone else, as her ear also flapped in annoyance.

"Oh..." Yoichi sighs. "I don't want to explain myself too much, considering I want to tell you all the truth of the matter during the meal, but..." He looks over to the dwarves from Kakha Brud working with Tade and the others from the Eastern Islands, as well as the twin tall-men (he's not sure which one is which), and sighs again. "Well, let it be said... You'll be seeing Nine again soon."

Izutsumi, who has only been barely following what has happened with Yoichi and Midoriya, immediately scratches Yoichi on the back of the head.

"I don't get it at all," Izutsumi snarls, "But you're going to just die and see if Izuku comes back out, is that it?" 

"It isn't my body." Yoichi argues, "I don't plan on eating much, really. I'm just going to find a nice monster, get killed, and let the corpse retrievers revive Nine. With any luck, he'll join up with them and you'll never hear from me again."

"And we'll never hear from him again either!" Izutsumi fires back. "Didn't you listen to Izuku's dumb lectures about revival?"

("She listened?" Midoriya wonders.)

"If you starve yourself, there won't be enough meat to revive you!" Izutsumi continues. "You can't just not eat when you're starving! Think about Izuku's feelings, too! You'll be giving him a real crummy body when he comes back if you're doing all that!"

With that, Izutsumi storms off. Yoichi is left in thought, all the way until Laios finishes making his speech to the entire crowd of people and sits down with Nine's party.

"Um, everyone," Yoichi speaks up once they begin to dig in. Izutsumi glares at him. He puts another fried cutlet on the plate. "I think it's time I properly explained One for All to you all..."

Everyone leans in, curious.

"It all started..." Yoichi sighs. "Two hundred years ago, when a woman gave birth to two twin brothers..."