The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL]

The view expanded into silence as Luca descended even deeper into the waters.

The light thinned the farther he went. Soon, only faint traces of blue remained before the blackness ahead swallowed everything whole.

Just before the dark horizon, he stopped.

Everyone watching from the Imperial battleship squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

Not that it was blurry or grainy. On the contrary, they could see a bit too well.

So they were more certain than ever. There was nothing.

No movement. No flicker. Just an endless, suffocating stretch of water and darkness.

If no one had said anything, they might’ve thought the feed had frozen.

On another channel connected to Luca’s broadcast, a whisper broke the silence.

”Alright, baby D, listen here...”

The voice was unmistakably Ollie’s.

Jax was curious. ”What are you doing?”

”Positive reinforcement,” Ollie hissed in a conspiratorial tone. ”If D-64 follows through and only drops the rock instead of going in, I’ll buy more stickers this month.”

”...You’re bribing the baby?”

”Encouraging,” Ollie whispered stubbornly. ”We’re raising it right.”

”...”

”...”

Kyle didn’t say a word. But he sure wanted to put both hands over his face now.

The rest of the command deck, who could somehow hear all this over the shared feed, exchanged uneasy looks.

Was... that part of the operation plan? There’s a baby?

Before anyone could question it further, movement appeared on the screen.

Something small and blue drifted into view.

”Is that a... creature?” one soldier muttered.

They weren’t sure.

The view was wide, but whatever it was, it looked strangely familiar—like the little blue companion mecha, just shaped differently.

For several long seconds, everyone simply watched. The comparatively tiny figure moved quietly through the water, drifting farther from Luca’s position until it was just a glowing lump.

Then it stopped.

And—

”Wait. What’s it holding?”

Something large and dark appeared in its grip.

Was that... a rock?

The creature—or rather, D-64—held it up for a brief moment, almost like it was showing it off, and then, without warning, it let go.

The rock dropped.

The little blue mecha instantly turned around and bolted back toward the camera at twice the speed.

”...It’s swimming back,” someone observed.

”What just happened?” another asked blankly.

The rock kept falling, growing smaller and smaller as it sank. The water around it was calm, eerily still.

”Huh?”

They were confused. And yet, no one blinked.

Then, something shifted below.

At first, it was faint—a flicker, a shadow, a blur that might have been nothing. But then the movement grew stronger, rippling outward like waves under pressure.

The current trembled.

And then—something vast began to rise.

”That’s... not the sea floor,” one of the officers said, voice trembling.

”That’s—”

”A hole,” Luca finished softly.

Every hair on the back of their necks stood on end.

From that black pit, a shape began to emerge.

The first thing to break through the dark was a long appendage—smooth, pale, and disturbingly graceful.

Then another.

And another.

The limbs twisted like giant ropes, stretching and reaching, unfolding in slow, deliberate rhythm.

The soldiers could only stare, mute with horror, as the thing continued to unfurl. The limbs rose upward before spreading wide, forming what looked like massive petals.

”Is that... a flower?” one of the analysts whispered, her voice breaking.

If it was, it was the kind that bloomed in nightmares.

The kind where the center would open, forming a void of its own.

And as if wanting to ensure the success of catching one very dead yet very spiritual prey, its enormous limbs converged on the rock.

They closed around the falling rock and dragged it inward—straight into the gaping mouth at the center.

The petals folded shut, sealing the darkness inside.

The ocean trembled.

The creature sank, retreating into the depths as if it had never been there.

Silence filled the channel.

Then Eden, who had been gripping her tablet the entire time, muttered flatly, ”...Yeah. We’re fucked.”

Because how could they be anything else when even that colossal bloom ran away from that thing hiding in the seabed?

__

But apparently, not everyone thought it was bad news.

At least one person—specifically one dungeon owner—didn’t.

Because wasn’t it better now that they knew what the problem was?

Especially when they’d already learned that taking care of the lower half of the sea anemone usually solved it?

Marshal Julian would’ve loved to say several pointed things about that particular line of reasoning, but decided against it when five cadets and three sentient mechas had already volunteered—debatably—to deal with the horrifying surprise underwater.

So if the combined forces of the assigned soldiers, the Imperial reinforcements, and the supercharged soldiers of House Kyros still couldn’t handle the bloom above, then shouldn’t they all just resign?

Not that the Marshal didn’t want to resign himself, honestly.

It was just... a lot.

And maybe it was nerves, but he kept finding his grip tightening around the weapon said to have defeated someone even worse than the bloom before them.

A comforting thought, except for the part where he didn’t actually know what ”worse” looked like anymore.

According to the cadets, his task was simple—buy time and target the parts with the highest concentration of corruption.

Simple.

Except nothing about this was simple.

”Son of a gun! They just keep on coming!” shouted Eden over the comms, voice cracking slightly as another explosion rocked the water.

Her role was simple, too—stare at the bloom.

Specifically, stare at it until it decides to hurl another ”gift.”

Because while their radar could detect movement, it couldn’t exactly predict when the monstrous bloom would vomit another corrupted abomination onto the battlefield.

So Eden watched it.

And watched it.

And when she finally spoke again, she sounded like she was about to throw something.

”I swear the time between projectiles is decreasing, Marshal! See? Incoming!”

A collective groan filled the channel.

Everywhere, soldiers cursed, repositioned, or prepared for impact.

Most of them, especially the manual mechas, could only stay on the sidelines, dealing with smaller mutated beasts and trying to stop the escapees before they could spread to the wild.

Meanwhile, the soldiers of House Kyros were doing the impossible.

They fought like machines possessed. Their mechas, for some reason, seemed to heal themselves mid-battle.

One of the elite imperial soldiers allowed to pilot a combination mecha even said they hadn’t been fighting for too long, yet they were already feeling the fatigue, while those pilots who had been there since yesterday were still going at it.

Panting inside his cockpit, he muttered to no one in particular, ”How are those people still alive?”

He got no answer.

Because how could they have known that inside those cockpits, every pilot was chugging juice like their lives depended on it?

Or that every single one of those mechas was running on Luca’s reverse energy grid—the system designed to distribute spiritual energy efficiently.

Slightly unfair, yet definitely impressive.

But even then, it wasn’t something they could sustain in the long run.

Duchess Amelia, who had been monitoring the ground readings, finally spoke.

”Marshal,” she said, ”I think we have enough concentration of corruption on the ground. Should we start working on the bloom while evacuation begins?”

Marshal Julian thought about it. The feed flickered across his console, showing wreckage, goo, and an uncomfortably large number of wriggling limbs.

Finally, he nodded.

”Yes,” he said. ”All manual mechas—start evacuation protocols immediately.”

There was a pause.

Because all over the battlefield were bewildered soldiers who were thinking to themselves, ”Huh? Didn’t we just get here?!”