"H-hey, what are you doing?"
"I'm taking a little nap. Please watch over me."
"What? Are you insane? This may be an E-rank dungeon, but even I can't successfully hold off an entire floor of monsters."
"Hey.", He barked, grinning gently. "Do this for me. Or are you going to make me beg?"
Alexi had tried hard for an actual, genuine smile, but Amane's reaction suggested otherwise. She could not meet his gaze and instead opted to look down, trembling as she responded.
"I-I will wait."
Her voice was shaky and sorrowful. They could easily be mistaken for sweat, but if one observed well, they could make out tears in the corners of her eyes.
On one hand, Alexi got his answer and on the other, he got it in an annoying way. Changing his charisma from -5 to 0 should have made Amane neutral to him, if they were going by system novel standards, right?
Were there other requirements? Perhaps her already interacting with him at -5 still left her confused with the sudden switch? Would it really be such a reason? Or was there something else that he was missing?
He glared at his timid senior, scanning her from head to toe to see if he could spot anything different from the first time he met her.
Her hair wasn't tied up in a pony tail anymore, but rather it messily flowed down her neck with bangs covering some bits of her face. She wasn't wearing her original scampy outfit, and had opted to wear baggy gym clothes.
This, to Alexi's dismay, meant her sizable chest was hidden.
But past that, he scanned her face curiously. There was something off. Once he met her dark, shaky eyes, it finally hit him.
"Amane, you actually wear glasses, don't you?"
"What?"
In their first meeting, she came to him wearing glasses, but now she didn't have them on. That must have made the difference.
"Right now, you're not wearing your contacts either, right? Please wear them."
"E-Eh? But I…"
The only reason it took so long for Amane to be affected by his charisma was because she hadn't seen him properly. Wearing her contacts should have been a quick fix.
"You?"
"I-I didn't bring them."
Several questions flooded Alexi's mind in that instant. All these questions were almost immediately dumped into the trash. After hearing what she said, Alexi started to suspect he was dealing with a very concerning individual and doubted her intelligence.
Rather than sitting in such an awkward conversation, he quickly changed topics.
"I'll be going to sleep now. If I don't wake up in 2 hours, please leave the dungeon."
Alexi doubted this side quest would take longer than an hour. If it exceeded the time limit he gave, it most likely meant he was done for, but the signs wouldn't show.
"Y-You want me to just leave you here?"
"Yes. You can run away- erh, just head back. Thanks for your help today."
Saying this, Alexi took a pill. In a matter of seconds, he was knocked out cold.
***
When Alexi came to, he was standing in what seemed like an expensive mansion.
'The third floor, huh?'
Just as he'd hoped, the pill helped him skip the second floor. It was a consumable item he acquired from the system store. A red moon pill. It forced the user into a state of half-rest.
The second floor was an infinite space filled with parasitic mist that preyed on sleeping minds, forcing them into a memory trance. Basically, those trapped in the second floor would live out their memories over and over again, until they either went mad or the parasites consumed them of everything they had.
He'd also named the second floor the Floor of Drifting Souls.
The red moon pill allowed him to resist the effects of the memory trance almost immediately, which forced him to skip to the third floor.
This was the sleeping lord's domain.
Just like how Alexi had envisioned it, the atmosphere was quite intense. There were seven people gathered in a grand hall, including him. The grand hall was illuminated by lit torches placed at practically every inch of the room.
Even though he never really described it, the setting had come to life just like how he initially thought. The hall was filled to the brim with antique-looking artefacts from head to tails. The chairs on the other hand looked like sofas from the current era.
The curtains were drawn, but the sound of beating rain and thunder gave away the weather conditions.
The cracking wood of the fireplace, however somehow sounded louder than the thunder.
Of the six people Alexi could see, a particular one drew his attention. That was the woman sitting on her knees, cradling the body of a child with a knife sticking out of his chest.
"Detective.", One of the seven people called out to him. He was clothed in police attire and held a stick in his hands. "What say you on this?"
Alexi blinked rapidly, his brain finally catching up to the situation.
This was a scenario the protagonist would tackle later down the line of the story.
It was a murder-mystery whodunit plot that Alexi suddenly threw into the novel to change things up to avoid burnout writing the same thing.
The scenario was between seven characters: The master of the mansion, his butler, his chef, a police officer and his partner, a grieving woman holding the murder victim and a private investigator from the neighbouring town.
The protagonist would take up the role of the detective and use clues the actual detective left behind, as well as conversations with the characters in the room to draw connections and piece together the whole puzzle to figure out who committed the murder.
This arc was one that tested the protagonist's intelligence and observational skills. The whole point was to prove to the readers who believed Alexi was a simple-minded brute that he actually had brains as well.
Although when he included it, readers called the arc a sleep fest and would constantly nag at him to complete the arc almost immediately. In the end, it was one of the only two times Alexi caved and gave the readers what they wanted, resulting in the two worst arcs of his story.
Alexi couldn't shake off the feeling of disappointment he had after that.
'None of that matters anymore.', he thought, shaking away those thoughts.
He could simply speed through this arc now. He already knew who the murderer was. The only problem he had no was to come up with a way to present the solution to them without it sounding too unnatural.
As he was in thought, there was a loud knock on the door. He would have brushed it off as thunder, if not for the fact that the knocking only grew louder in quick succession.
Everyone else caught on to the knocking and turned to the butler, who finally walked over to the door. He spent quite some time conversing with the person at the door, prompting Alexi to grow curious as to what was happening.
'Who's at the door?'
His answer came marching on the carpet with his wet boots and raincoat.
Alexi was now feeling a lot of things. Confusion, anxiety, shock and annoyance. They all mixed into a single bundle, resulting in a single question coming to mind.
'HOW!?'
The person at the end of the door flashed him a menacing grin as he took off his cap and greeted the host.
"My name is Cain. I'm the detective you called over?"