Regained Vitality
Crack— crackle-crack—!
Across the corridor where even time itself seemed frozen beneath a white silence, a slender fracture began to spread. The moment that tiny line raced past Apep and swallowed the white wave, everything collapsed.
Hisssss—
Shattering into white smoke as it crumbled, the sight called to mind a snow-covered mountain range.
Yet even with everything locked in white ice, one thing remained intact: the grimoire Apep had been holding. The wicked mana that had poured from it vanished with its master’s death, but the stiff-textured book still floated in place.
“This is…”
For something to survive magic of that magnitude, it could hardly be an ordinary grimoire. While gathering the scattered belongings, I snatched up the book Apep had used and stuffed it into my bag.
Beyond the crumbling white wall of skeletons, the rest of the party came into view. Their numbers had been cut in half from the start, and even the survivors looked far from well.
“Ceris?”
My eyes met Terra’s. Her face was a mess of blood and sweat, one eye barely open, as she wrenched her greatsword free from the white ice that had buried it.
Her whole body was a lattice of wounds—large and small sword cuts covering her from head to toe, thick with the stench of blood.
“I-is it over?”
At Terra’s question the surviving party members turned to me with fragile hope. Everyone was waiting for my answer—waiting for the period to be placed at the end of this fight.
When I nodded, they exhaled ragged breaths and sank to the floor. White shards of shattered ice dusted their clothes, but no one cared.
It had been a short battle, yet the mental toll was enormous. Every one of us felt it. Without a word I walked over and dropped down among them.
There was no sense of rejection. If anything, a strange familiarity rose from them. These were the comrades who had refused to run and held the death knights to the end. Without them I never would have taken down the black mage Apep.
We had slain Apep, who had seemed the dungeon’s master, yet the exploration itself was far from finished. The dungeon was still faithfully doing its job.
“Looks like the path that black mage carved while coming this far…”
After a proper rest we resumed the delve and soon found a staircase revealed along one side of the corridor—the route Apep had taken while leading his army of the dead.
It was nothing like a normal passage. It felt like a private little tunnel reserved solely for the dungeon’s master.
The party had a choice: follow this path, or search for a new one. They held a brief discussion.
“It could be dangerous…”
“It’s the passage the dungeon’s master used. There won’t be traps.”
“I’m with Terra. He wouldn’t have set traps on the route he himself walked.”
A clear majority chose to descend the passage. I naturally looked up at Alfonso. On the surface he was still the party’s leader, so I waited for his final word.
But Alfonso did not step forward. The confident air he had shown while exploring the dungeon was gone. He hesitated, glancing at me—and so did the others.
Everyone was waiting for my answer, as though they would follow whatever I decided.
“Let’s go down.”
In the end I led the party toward the depths of the dungeon. Leadership had shifted as naturally as breathing. Before every action the party asked my opinion and moved exactly as I directed.
Even Terra.
As expected, we found no traps on the long descent. Against any unforeseen threat I took the lead, and the others simply followed in my wake.
I never let my guard down. In our current battered state, another enemy would be disastrous. The goal was to reach an exit without fighting if at all possible.
“This is…”
Halfway down the long passage we came upon a knight collapsed on the floor. Like the death knights we had faced earlier, he wore battered full plate and still gripped a sword in one hand.
He did not move. With the dungeon’s master gone, the mana that had animated him had vanished as well; he had clearly returned to rest.
As a precaution I tore pieces from the fallen knight’s body and scattered them in every direction. It was desecration of the dead, yet no one rebuked me. Some even seemed to share the same thought and helped. One party member stuffed the knight’s helm and skull into his own pack.
The deeper we went, the more fallen death knights and crumbled skeleton remains we found.
Skeletons and death knights that rose again no matter how many times they were killed had clearly left scars on the party. Whenever they spotted such remains they stomped them into powder.
Time had lost all meaning. The dungeon’s perpetual darkness, with no day or night, piled on crushing stress. The inability to sleep properly only made it worse. The constant fear that the dead might rise again somewhere, sometime, gnawed at everyone’s minds.
How long had we been walking? We were stumbling down the endless stairs, feet dragging, when a vast chamber suddenly opened before us.
“This place…”
Smoothly carved pillars stood solid and tall. Spreading out from them was a carpet made of human skin. Here and there across the flesh-colored weave one could still make out faces, strands of hair, even fingernails.
“How ghastly…”
“Dear gods…”
It showed no signs of decay, so it must have been treated with some special preservative. At the far end of the human-skin carpet stood a throne of pure white bone, and beyond it a pitch-black sphere floated in midair.
The party set small lamps around the chamber, lighting the barren space that radiated outward from the great throne.
I walked straight toward the floating sphere. A powerful current of mana pulsed from it—clean, uncorrupted mana flowing into the orb.
“This is…”
I followed the current with my eyes. When my gaze finally reached the ceiling I understood what was pouring into this place.
A massive magic circle was carved into the ceiling. Strange geometries and incomprehensible characters greedily drank in the surrounding mana and corrupted everything they absorbed.
“Alfonso.”
“Ah—you called me?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
He came to my side, looking down at me with a tightly wound expression.
“This country used to be a lush forest, didn’t it?”
“…So they say. But that was long before I was born.”
“We might be able to bring that landscape back.”
“What do you mean by—”
Not immediately, of course. Once the stolen mana returned to its rightful place and the land stabilized, this soil would begin its journey toward the future by reclaiming its past.
I drew the sword from my back. The blade slid free with a cool whisper, scattering white reverse light as it caught the lamp glow. Starlight mana began to coil around it.
No grand spell was needed—just enough force to scar the circle on the ceiling. Given how little mana I had recovered, this was the best option.
Taat—!
The instant my foot struck the floor I launched upward. I had no mana left to reinforce my body, so I leapt on pure physical strength, kicked off a nearby pillar, and sprang diagonally higher still.
The moment I neared the ceiling, a pure-white star carved a long trail across the giant magic circle. The ring that had sustained the spell’s continuity snapped. The characters that guided the flow of mana were scraped away.
As the trailing tail of white light stretched downward, the circle that had been greedily devouring the land’s mana lost its glow.
Boom—! Rumble-rumble—!
The instant the circle failed, the entire dungeon began to quake.
Tadak—!
“W-what in the world—!”
“The dungeon…! The dungeon’s collapsing!”
Panicked voices filled the chamber. I stared up at the ceiling in blank shock.
Krrrrumble—!
The surface of the ceiling began to shift; fine stone dust rained down. Anyone could see the dungeon itself was coming apart.
I never imagined the whole place would start collapsing the moment the circle was damaged…
My face went pale as I swallowed dryly.
“This way! A path just opened over here!”
Terra’s voice rang out. I turned my head and saw a passage that had not been there a moment ago, yawning wide in front of her.
“R-run!”
Every one of us sprinted madly for that narrow tunnel.
Krrrumble—!
As the dungeon crumbled, a massive storm of dust surged after us. We pounded up the ascending stairs without daring to look back.
Even when the choking earth cloud blinded us we did not stop. Then, with another thunderous roar—Krrrrumble—! the way ahead began to cave in.
At that horrific sight everyone nearly froze—until a flash of pink hair shot forward. Terra.
“Hyaaah!”
She drove her greatsword deep into the wall. The instant I saw it I understood: she had created a temporary ceiling with her blade. It would not last long. Without a second’s hesitation the entire party dove beneath Terra’s sword.
Krrrrumble—!
The moment Terra herself, still gripping the hilt, scrambled free of the narrow gap, the rear collapsed completely—sword and all.
“Run!”
Even after losing her weapon she showed no regret, only shouted us onward.
At the far edge of the endless dark a sliver of light appeared, and with it a rush of fresh air. One step from the surface. The party members poured every last scrap of strength into a silent scream of effort.
Their frantic motion soaked the bandages red; half-healed wounds tore open and spilled fresh blood. Yet not a single person groaned in pain.
The tiny light grew larger. We burst from the narrow passage without slowing—and suddenly the world opened wide. A vast plain stretched before our eyes.
“Haaahk!”
“Hiiik…”
We lay sprawled on the ground, gasping, when a green current began to spread outward from the tunnel we had just escaped.
It was like ripples expanding across a still pond. The green flow did not stop. As though determined to blanket every lifeless inch of this land, it rolled steadily toward the distant ridges.