I Just Awakened My Sharingan, and You're Telling Me This Is DanMachi?

Following the dim, shadowy tunnel, Ryota continued pushing deeper.

From the first to the fourth floor, the monsters were hardly a threat: goblins, kobolds, Dungeon lizards — these barely counted as opponents to him now.

So he didn't even bother fighting personally.

Almost every battle was handled by Karasu, floating ahead of him.

At first, there was a noticeable delay in the chakra thread controls — the puppet's arms and visual feed would often fall out of sync, and a couple Dungeon lizards nearly escaped because of it.

But Ryota made note of every error, continuously analyzing the lag between motion feedback and chakra return flow with his Sharingan.

He treated the act of "operating" like a form of combat training, using each live encounter to rapidly transform the Puppet Master Jutsu knowledge flooding his mind into true muscle memory and reflex.

His command delay dropped from one second to half a second, then down to 0.2 seconds.

Instead of a single chakra thread controlling the puppet's core, he'd now split them into four, separately managing its limbs.

By the time he reached the fifth floor, he was nearly able to have the puppet carry out automatic attacks with jutsu finishing moves on its own.

All it took was the twitch of a finger, and Karasu would lunge forward, blades sliding out from its forearms, spinning like a windmill to shred several kobolds that came swarming in.

Then, in a single pivot, its shoulder mechanism would launch a chain, pinning a Frog Shooter sneaking up from afar straight to the wall.

Every motion was clean, with not a hint of waste.

Standing in the rear, Ryota murmured to himself:

"The first to fifth floors will count as my trial run."

One thing that especially satisfied him was how Karasu, despite its terrifying killing power and ruthless precision, struck perfectly at the threshold of "lethal but not explosive."

It would sever arteries and pierce hearts with surgical efficiency, without wasting a single drop of blood.

Compared to the memory of blasting apart a Monster Tide with Fire Style jutsu and turning all the magic stones to ash, Ryota still winced at the thought of that gut-wrenching loss.

Yeah, he'd wiped the enemies out clean, but all those magic stones had burned to dust.

That kind of total loss still gave him post-traumatic stress to this day.

"Money… I really need more money…"

He sighed, flexing his fingertips.

Receiving the command, Karasu acted like a perfectly trained pack mule, stooping to gather up every magic stone, bone, claw, and even reusable teeth lying on the ground.

Its multi-jointed mechanical arms moved so dexterously it was almost like watching a professional butcher prepping meat, grabbing, sorting, and stacking items before depositing them into the backpack slung on Ryota's back.

That backpack, reinforced and oversized, was something Ryota had snagged from the Hephaestus Familia's forge before leaving —

perfect for "frontline resource collection" in the Dungeon.

Once he felt he'd scrounged about everything from the fifth floor, Ryota had Karasu continue forward.

For the sixth and seventh floors, he fell into a pattern of "see, slash, loot, pack" in an endless cycle.

Karasu turned into a fully activated battlefield sweeper, slicing down every monster in its path with perfect precision and then cleaning up the loot afterward.

And Ryota?

He just stood a few meters back, gently twitching the chakra threads, barely breaking a sweat.

On those floors, he also encountered his old "friends" — the Killer Ants.

From there, it was a routine he could run in his sleep:

Activate genjutsu — break their spirits — lure in reinforcements.

The familiar three-stage kill sequence turned the Dungeon into his personal monster factory once again.

This time, however, he didn't even need to draw his sword.

The newly-deployed "all-in-one Dungeon workhorse," Karasu, took care of everything.

Pausing in front of the path to the tenth floor, Ryota glanced into the thick mist ahead.

His backpack was already stuffed to the point the straps were starting to deform under the weight of materials and magic stones.

"Why does it still feel like not enough?"

He raised a hand, recalling Karasu back to his mindscape, then took a moment to rest at the corridor's entrance.

Even though this trip had been smooth and satisfying,

Ryota knew perfectly well that Karasu's overall efficiency wasn't as high as he'd hoped.

Sure, it had solid precision, stable chakra flow, and integrated ranged, melee, harvest, and cleanup modules —

but its overall strength was still just that of a "basic offensive puppet."

Nowhere near the kind of power that could dominate an entire battlefield.

It didn't have the Magnet Type Iron Sand of the Third Kazekage puppet, nor the venom-loaded blade traps of Hiruko, and certainly no flight turbines or chakra burst cores.

Karasu was more like a practical cleaning tool, not a war machine.

Ryota understood this perfectly — that wasn't Karasu's fault, but rather:

"The system just gave me a base model to start with."

Still, deep down, he had a feeling — someday he'd get new puppets.

Not just one or two, but an entire puppet army.

He'd manipulate chakra threads like a Spider King, commanding hundreds of mechanisms on the battlefield, realizing a true hundred-machine grand performance.

That would be Ryota's real, fully-automated Dungeon conquest style.

Thinking of that, he let a grin slip across his lips and refocused on the dark entrance to the tenth floor.

"But before that—"

"I'd better take care of the Infant Dragon, and maybe hunt down a Minotaur too."

Ryota was no stranger to the tenth floor.

Not long ago, he'd explored it together with Lefiya.

And once his Sharingan was activated, the white fog filling the cave became nearly transparent in his vision.

So even though the tenth to twelfth floors were infamous for their fog labyrinth and a nightmare for most adventurers, to Ryota they were basically an open book.

But just as he thought he'd push forward smoothly and spot a clue to his mission target,

the moment he entered the eleventh floor, a strange silence stopped him cold.

Normally, as the floors got deeper, the monster density should rise dramatically.

But here, it was getting quieter and quieter.

Ryota instinctively frowned. Something was off.

The mist on the eleventh floor had thickened even further, practically forming a gel-like mass you could see hanging in the air.

Ordinarily, the eleventh floor marked the territory of rare species, with far more aggressive monsters and faster respawns.

Especially a "Infant Dragon" class creature — it should have sensed an intruder and responded almost immediately.

But now the entire place was eerily silent.

No monster cries, no echoes of fighting, only the faint tap of his own footsteps on the stone, like he was stepping into a space that had been deliberately cleared out.

"Is this the work of a rare monster?"

Ryota was just about to investigate further, when all of a sudden, footsteps echoed through the suffocating fog ahead.

His eyes sharpened, and with a soft shing, he drew the Kusanagi Sword, its blade stirring a faint air current that blew the mist outward.

Narrowing his eyes, he focused on the silhouette forming in the fog.

The figure gradually came into view, footsteps hurried, like they'd jogged over.

Moments later, the person stepped out of the haze — red hair, a familiar face, and a bright smile across it.

Lain Hait.

The red-haired boy walked up, panting, face lit with irrepressible delight.

"Ha… ha… Senior! I can't believe I ran into you here!"

Ryota blinked, but kept a firm grip on his sword.

"Lain?! What are you doing here?"

Lain raised a hand to wipe sweat from his brow.

"I took a commission, supposed to only reach the tenth floor. But then Lia and Lota wanted to explore a bit further, so I came with them to the eleventh."

He pulled a resigned, slightly annoyed expression and went on:

"But we got separated almost right away — the fog's so thick I completely lost my bearings…"

"If I hadn't run into you by sheer luck, I'd probably still be wandering in circles right now. You're a lifesaver, Senior."

His tone was casual, even laced with a playful note, as though he'd really just gotten separated and randomly bumped into a friend.

Yet Ryota watched him, listening to every syllable, every breath.

Too smooth.

From the delight to the tension to the frustration to the relief, every shift in Lain's expression, every pause, was so perfectly timed it felt scripted.

That kind of "natural" was the most unnatural thing of all.

Besides, there were contradictions in his words that Ryota couldn't ignore.

Even if he didn't know Lain's exact level, anyone taking an escort quest down to the tenth floor had to be at least near LV.2.

And someone that capable, a party core member, would really just go along with "let's check a deeper floor" on a whim?

Into the eleventh floor, where rare species might appear?

That did not match the Lain he knew at all.

"…This is wrong. Way too wrong."

Questions flashed one after another through Ryota's mind.

Then, in the next instant, a spark went off inside him.

Like a taut string had been suddenly plucked, an electric jolt shot through his nerves.

Lain… was from the Freya Familia.

His heart gave a heavy thump, pupils contracting sharply.

Of course he knew that fact — he just hadn't connected it to the present moment.

But now, linking together "that weird smile," "those out-of-character choices," "that flawless conversation flow"…

There was only one possible explanation.

This guy… he's been charmed, hasn't he?

Freya's charm — a mental domination technique so absolute it overwrote a person's will.

Not simple control, but a subtle, total rewriting of their devotion, making her their "one and only."

If Lain had truly suffered a deep charm implantation, then his smile, his tone, even his timing…

all of it was a carefully arranged lure.

And the target of that script, obviously, was himself.

Ryota thought of the main quest, then of the Minotaur mentioned in the branch quest,

and as the clues connected, it was like a hundred arrows silently pointed toward a single name.

That god with a control obsession so strong she saw all of Orario as her chessboard —

the Goddess of Beauty, Freya.

At that precise moment, a shock ran through Ryota's entire body.

In his ear, a mechanical chime rang out, but this time the voice was different — colder, heavier, with an oppressive edge:

[Ding!]

[Main Branch Special Quest Activated—]

[Name]: The Scales of Choice

[Objective]: Lain Hait is currently under deep charm implantation. Please make your decision:

[A: Kill the target, severing divine domination for a guaranteed clean result.]

[B: Save the target, forcibly break the charm and restore their true self.]

[Quest Reward]: Unknown, will be comprehensively judged based on the chosen path and execution process.

Ryota's pupils shrank.

What is this?

This kind of notification had never appeared since he'd gotten the system!

No more linear progress — this was a crossroads of fate.

One side, a clean cut to erase the threat.

The other, a plunge into the tangled swamp of breaking a mental hold.

He looked at Lain, still smiling at him like a friend.

"To save — or to kill?"

"Freya… what the hell are you trying to pull?"

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