I mean, what were the chances that the one time I go to a D-class dungeon, supposedly filled with E-class monsters, a monstrous army decides to welcome us on the first floor?

  The minion snarlers hadn’t even been that bad, to be honest. We had been stupid for using so much fire magic with no ventilation, but I’d handled most of them without even using mana.

  That mutated queen had been the problem. How the hell had it gotten so strong? Was it because it ate the other queen? Was it even possible to just get instant power-ups like that?

  I continued debriefing myself about the day’s events as I gripped and let go of the stone wall, falling down further into who knows where. I let go of the wall and fell down, timing myself before burying my augmented hands into the wall again. However, this time, my hand couldn’t penetrate the surface.

  What the…

  I clawed desperately at the wall, but even with the augmentation in my hand, I wasn’t able to make so much as a scratch.

  The surface of the wall was different now; it was smooth—too smooth to be natural.

  I was picking up speed as my persistent attempts to find purchase proved fruitless.

  This isn’t working.

  Trying to make as little noise as possible, I rhythmically let out pulses of wind around me as I fell, a sort of makeshift echolocation, hoping to find potential footholds or handholds to stop my fall.

  This isn’t working either!

  The theory worked great in my head, but trying it without practice proved harder than I imagined. There were few handholds I could try and hang myself from, and my makeshift echolocation technique wasn’t as accurate as I had hoped. I ended up narrowly missing a lot of the potential supports, and it became even harder as I picked up speed.

  I still couldn’t sense the floor anywhere close to me, so I had time—but if I fell any faster, even if I could grab onto a support, I wasn’t sure if my arms would be able to take the stress of the abrupt stop.

  I continued fumbling my arms against the wall, searching for anything that might slow down or stop my fall. Suddenly I was finally able to sense the ground.

  Damn it… This isn’t good.

  I had about two hundred yards before my body became a puddle on the ground. That left me with about… six seconds?

  Damn it all.

  Twisting so that the wall was to my back, I gathered all the mana I had saved up. It would take about four seconds to focus enough mana to cast the Wind Torrent spell.

  Stretching my arms out in front of me, I unleashed a stream of compressed air to the other side of this giant hole I was in. If I could create enough force to push myself back against the wall, I might be able to slow down enough to survive the fall. I no longer cared about keeping noise to a minimum.

  The jet of air boomed as it collided into the wall opposite me. My body pressed harder and harder against the wall behind me from the recoil of the spell, and I could only grit my teeth as I felt the back of my uniform and my skin burning off from the friction.

  I could feel myself approaching the backlash stage, but I desperately released all the mana I could muster while continuing to use mana rotation. The air stream continued colliding against the other side, pushing me back harder and harder into the smooth wall as I approached the ground.

  One hundred feet…

  Seventy feet…

  Fifty feet…

  I see a faint light!

  Thirty feet…

  Ten feet…

  I let out a high-pitched scream as I felt myself slowing down, the burning pain coursing through my back so intense that I began to grow numb.

  Two yards above the ground, I let out one last, large pulse of compressed air straight below me.

  My eyes bulged and the only sound I could make was a painful cough as I met the ground.

  I rolled forward as soon as I could, trying to spread out the pressure as much as possible, but it wasn’t enough. I felt like a hammer being smashed into an anvil.

  Head spinning and vision blurred, I struggled to stay conscious.

  My vision!

  I lifted my head up from the ground; faint lights illuminated the area. Though my vision was blurred, I could tell I was in a passageway of some sort, with small lights along the sides. From further down the hall came a brighter source of light.

  “Who’s there?” a female voice asked, echoing down the hallway.

  I tried answering the frightened voice, but my own voice failed me—when I opened my mouth, I could only cough.

  “Please, I need help,” she called. It sounded like she was gasping.

  Again, no sound came out, and my vision continued to fade. I tried getting up but my legs gave out.

  “Hold… on,” I managed. My voice was raspy and weak, but she heard me.

  I heard harsh, forced breaths from her before she replied with a faint, “Okay.”

  Sylvia’s dragon will was working wonders, and I felt my body healing itself. My back was scorched from sliding down the wall, and my legs felt like they’d been torn apart and taped back together, but I was able to stand up within thirty minutes.

  I looked up into darkness; there was no hint of the massive tunnel that opened up over my head. Around me were shattered stones and, I thought, a limb of the queen snarler that had exploded. Near the limb, though, I spotted light reflecting from something under a pile of rubble.

  Each faltering step was painful as I stumbled toward the reflection, but a smile crept up on my face as I realized what it was. My sword! I began digging and pulling it out of the shallow pile of rocks. Dawn’s Ballad was soon retrieved and safely back inside my dimension ring. I put the severed limb of the mutated queen snarler inside my dimension ring as well, hoping to study it if I ever made it out of this place.

  Trying to think optimistically, I realized I was in reasonably good shape. I had managed to slow myself down enough that I didn’t have any broken bones. The shock had gone through my spine and rattled my brain, making me almost lose consciousness, but considering the circumstances, I felt like it could’ve been a lot worse. My mana was beginning to recover and, with my legs now functioning, I began making my way toward the voice, which seemed to have gone silent.

  “Hello?” I leaned against the wall for support as I made my way down the passage.

  “I’m… here.” The voice seemed even weaker than it had been half an hour ago.

  Approaching the end of the tunnel, I had to stop and wait for my vision to adjust to the brightness after being enveloped in utter darkness for so long. Inching closer toward the growing light, I called out to her again.

  “This… way.” The voice gave a faint cough.

  I couldn’t respond. I almost fell over as I stumbled back in horror from what I was seeing.

  The abattoir full of snarler bodies piled on top of each other in the dungeon above seemed like something from a children’s picture book compared to the scene in front of me. But I couldn’t seem to peel my eyes away from it.

  Corpses. Corpses of humans, elves, and dwarves lay scattered—some in pieces—around a cavern that would’ve been considered beautiful otherwise.

  The grass-like moss spread over the ground seemed to have once been green, but was now dyed red with blood, and the stream crossing through the cavern was clogged with floating bodies, blood swirling around them.

  There must have been forty or fifty corpses spread throughout the cavern, their weapons next to them. The bodies revealed signs of torture—some had had their limbs torn apart, and other beheaded bodies showed cuts and gashes all over them.

  I heard her cough again. “Are you… still there?” The weak voice came from my left.

  “I can’t see—oh…” My heart dropped and I couldn’t even finish.

  The woman lying against the wall of the cavern was probably in a worse state than the mutilated carcasses spread around her.

  The woman—an elf, it seemed—was missing most of her limbs. Where her right arm and both legs should’ve been were gaping wounds that had been cruelly sealed by burning. Her eyes were gone, and dried blood that had streamed down from the sockets stained her cheeks. Through the woman’s abdomen, right where her mana core was, a sleek black spike impaled her.

  “You… How?” I dropped to my knees in front of her as I inspected her. I felt like I’d seen her somewhere. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I recognized her face. Where did I—

  The Lances… The Six Lances! She was one of the six strongest mages in all of Dicathen, chosen to represent the continent.

  “You’re one of the Six Lances,” I sputtered.

  “Indeed I am…” She gave a ragged sigh. “As for how… If you’re asking how I’m still alive in this state, it’s because he left me alive.” Her eyebrows furrowed and the dried blood crusted between her eyelids crumbled. A trickle of fresh blood came from her empty sockets.

  “He?” I felt like I was asking stupid questions, but I was so lost.

  “Yes. Vritra.” With her left hand, the only limb she had left, she slowly reached for something behind her and pulled it out.

  In her hand was a sleek black fragment of some sort of stone. As I squinted my eyes to analyze it, I was suddenly reminded of my time with Sylvia.

  I gingerly plucked it from her outstretched hand as she held it out to me.

  The memory clicked and the pieces came together in my head. My hand squeezed tightly around the black shard and my whole body shook with anger.

  I knew why this black stone looked so familiar.

  It was part of the horn of one of the black-horned demons that Sylvia had first disguised herself as—the very creatures that had killed her.

  68

  Widow’s Crypt V

  “Can I keep this?” I asked. I realized that my palm was bleeding from grasping the shard of the horn too hard.

  The elven woman, despite her condition, let out a hoarse chuckle at my question, catching me by surprise. I raised an eyebrow, wondering what was going through her mind and thinking how admirable it was that she could still laugh, considering her situation.

  “Please, try not to move too much,” I admonished gently, using what little mana I had left to give her more strength.

  “I don’t know… what you’re doing, but I feel slightly better than a corpse now,” she said.

  “It’s just a temporary solution.”

  “Does it seem strange… that I am so at ease in this situation?” she asked.

  “No, not strange. Admirable, if anything,” I replied.

  “You’re a strange one, too—asking a dying soldier if you can keep something like that. Keep it. It’s of no value to me anyway.”Her breath shuddered and her face became suddenly grave, making her appear as if she had aged twenty years.

  “I don’t know your name, kid, but I’m going to die soon. There’s no point in pretending otherwise.” The elven warrior let out a ragged breath, but her expression remained resolute.

  “My name is Arthur, and… yeah. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any way for me to save you.” I put the black shard inside my dimension ring. “I’m sorry.”

  “It just wasn’t meant to be. Since I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll tell you as much as I know,” she said with solemn resolve.

  “My name is Alea Triscan. As you deduced, I am one of the Six Lances, and the corpses you probably spotted upon your arrival were my troops. Each Lance was in charge of a battalion composed of top mages.” She stopped to catch her breath, and I was glad she wasn’t able to witness the gruesome slaughter that had turned this once-beautiful place into a grave of mangled corpses.

  “After the formation of the Six Lances, I had been training them to work as a team to clear dungeons and other unknown areas. The Six Lances rarely go on missions together, unless we are to explore an S-class or above dungeon

  She fell silent and I worried that she had spent the last of her strength, but then she took a deep, wheezing breath and continued: “From the direction of your footsteps earlier, it seems you came in from a different entrance. This place is actually connected to three dungeons. Which dungeon did you come from, Arthur?” Alea wiggled her body, struggling to keep herself propped up against the wall.

  “I came from the Widow’s Crypt. We were on a class expedition… Everyone else was able to make it out, but I guess I wasn’t so lucky.” I took a seat against the wall next to Alea and surveyed the carnage displayed before me. I was able to vaguely imagine what had happened by how the bodies were positioned and where they had sustained their fatal injuries.

  “I’m not sure how old you are, Arthur, but no one should have to see something like this,” Alea whispered, her voice laced with remorse.

  “My age—well, that’s complicated, but you’re right. No one, regardless of age, should have to see something like this.”

  Her breathing became more ragged and uneven, but she held on.

  “My troops and I came from an A-class dungeon called Hell’s Jaw. We were assigned to investigate the dungeon after getting reports of inconsistent sightings inside. The adventurers who had come back were ones who frequented the dungeon for training. They barely made it back alive, and they all spoke about how the beasts residing within suddenly became stronger and fiercer. Was that the case for the dungeon you came from as well?” Alea asked, her words coming more slowly.

  “Yes. Just on the first floor, an army of minion snarlers welcomed us. The minions weren’t bad, but two queen snarlers showed up. One of the queens, after eating the other queen, turned from gray to black and its strength jumped a few-fold. It started to grow a horn, which—well, it reminded me of something I’d seen before.”

  “Something like a horned demon?” Alea’s limp body suddenly stiffened as her head turned back toward me, shock evident in her voice.

  “Yes, that’s what I was thinking of, and this piece of horn only confirms it. I wonder if it was the same one…” I responded frankly.

  “The same one? You think there’s more than one?” Alea’s voice was hoarse with terror.

  “I don’t have definite proof, but I suspect that the one you saw, this Vritra, is just one of the horned demons out there somewhere,” I replied, recalling the night I had gotten separated from Sylvia. The black demon with downward-curving horns had said something about causing them trouble. It was just speculation, but I suspected there were probably more of them.

  My mind began to spin as I pondered the different possibilities and reasons as to why they might be doing this. Was this all for Sylvie, or some greater cause?

  I remembered that, when Sylvia had given the stone to me, she’d said I had to protect it at all costs. That “stone” turned out to be an egg, and of a dragon no less. Was Sylvie such an important creature that the horned demons would go this far for her?

  “What… are you thinking of, Arthur?” Alea let out a strained cough, and fresh blood escaped from the wound where her mana core had once been.

  I had always found it intriguing that, while beast cores could be harvested and used as tools to enhance mana, human mana cores couldn’t. When a mage died, their mana core shattered and the mana accumulated inside dispersed. Was this because we gathered mana from the atmosphere?

  There seemed to be a deeper meaning when I thought about the fact that humans didn’t need their mana cores in order to survive, but our mana cores were dependent on us being alive. This world seemed to revolve around whether or not you were a mage, and, if you were, how strong you were. I couldn’t help but think that the god of this world had wanted to tell us that life was more important than magic. It should be an obvious statement, but it seemed to be something the people of this world had forgotten.

  Before I could lose myself to thoughts of a higher being, Alea’s ragged coughing snapped me back to reality.

  “Are you okay?” That was a dumb question. Of course she isn’t okay.

  “When my team reached the first floor of Hell’s Jaw, there was nothing off about it; the mana beasts were exactly what we expected. Everything was normal until we reached the final floor, where the master of the dungeon made its den. The Hades Serpent was an AA-class mana beast—should’ve been something I could beat fairly easily.” There was no trace of boasting or overconfidence in her tone. She was just stating a fact.

  “The Hades Serpent is known for blue fire spouting along its spine, but it looked different. At first, we were confused—it didn’t look like it had any flames at all. But when we looked closer, we realized the reason we couldn’t see the flames against the black walls of the cave… was because the flames themselves were black.

  “It looked like thick smoke flickering wildly along the spine of this hundred-foot serpent. That particular Hades Serpent also had a black horn jutting out of its forehead, while its scales, which were recorded as being a matte gray color, were a sleek black…” she said, starting to shiver.

  “The fight was gruesome. I lost five of my men to that Hades Serpent. The fight lasted several hours, but I was finally able to kill it. When we tried to retrieve the beast core, though, it wasn’t there.” She broke into another fit of coughs, so I ran toward the pond. I followed the edge until I found water that hadn’t been tainted by blood, and soaked what was left of my uniform in it. I allowed the fabric to absorb as much water as it could, then walked back to Alea.

  “Open your mouth,” I instructed. “This is just water.”

  She opened her mouth immediately. I gently squeezed my soaked uniform over her mouth and the water trickled across her lips.

  She let out a short moan as the cold water wet her parched mouth, drinking fiercely as I wrung out the ragged cloth. Once I’d squeezed out the last drop, I used the damp rags to wipe away some of the blood on her face. She whispered a small thank you, then continued her story.

  “Although we were tempted to go back to the surface, we had too many questions, so we started searching for clues inside. One of my men used a spell and found there was a hidden tunnel underneath a thin layer of earth. After falling down tunnel, we arrived here.” Alea’s voice trembled at those words, and fresh blood began streaming from the wounds where her eyes used to be.

 

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