The Ancient Missing Link (9)
The situation was fucking terrible. I clicked my tongue while receiving healing from Dana. That goddamn psycho bitch. Yerna was toying with us like some salty veteran who queues into PVP just to bully newbies with trash gear. The truly vicious part was that she was fully decked out in top-tier armor. A mage bastard stacking every buff imaginable and then spamming stick-and-move damage—it left us with no path forward.
Was there any way to break through that shameless double barrier of petals and shields to land real damage? Watching Larilura’s full-control damage get completely ignored like it was nothing made hoping for a miracle seem stupid. I activated my Observation to the fullest and examined Yerna.
‘……Goddamn it. She doesn’t look like she’s used up much stamina or mana at all.’
That was strange. Sure, enduring Veronica’s magic was one thing, but on top of that she’d taken Larilura’s laser—physical this time—straight on. No matter how much she’d relied on that wood-dull iron ingot technique to tank it, showing zero signs of fatigue was simply impossible. Even if there was a massive gap in skill, if a high schooler threw a serious killing punch, even a pro boxer would at least flinch. After eating that barrage of high-powered attacks, she should have shown some exhaustion.
‘Is she just pretending to be relaxed?’
It was a plausible theory, but I decided not to lean on it. If it really was a bluff, we’d eventually see through it by trading blows. But if I failed to recognize that she still had plenty left in the tank, charged in anyway, and got myself killed, I’d be so resentful I’d probably turn into a vengeful ghost. Better safe than sorry. The correct attitude for any sensible person in this new world was to always assume the enemy was still hiding a significant portion of their strength.
‘Saying she’s been hiding her power until now doesn’t explain it either.’
This was a hipster-pick trash isekai world without status windows, so I couldn’t measure combat power with numbers. Still, the mana I sensed from Yerna right now was objectively overwhelming. Even in reality, you could tell whether Ma Dong-seok or the guy from Masan-dong was stronger. My mana-enhanced senses were screaming danger. I had to rate a serious Yerna as at least Mithril Class.
That egoistic flower-petal bitch had definitely been concealing her full power even while exploring the ruins with me and Dana. That was an undeniable fact. But could she really be this overwhelmingly dominant with just that level of mana? The gap between the pressure I felt from her and her actual displayed combat strength felt strangely off. Think about math formulas. If the answer comes out weirdly large, it means you missed a variable in the equation.
My elite brain had caught the thread. There was something strange about the magic formulas or this underground tomb itself.
‘Fuck. But what can I even do about it?’
I bit my lip. Something I hadn’t calculated was acting as a massive variable. I’d thought that with the five of us, we could handle even a Mithril Class opponent. But serious-mode Yerna looked stronger than that unicorn bastard—whether his name was Adidas or Adadus, I couldn’t remember.
More than ten vines had already unfurled. If even half of those vines could move with the same power as the ones I’d planted in the floor earlier, our party would be completely wiped out. Maybe because it wasn’t pure attack magic, the ᚦ (Thurisaz) rune wasn’t activating either. It was possible we were simply being overwhelmed in instantaneous firepower, just like when I broke through Tabula’s defense.
─Shupak!!
Right then, vines poured down as if trying to corner me. Were they trying to prevent our party from cooperating? The vines moved like living creatures, intent on killing us.
“──Tch!”
My hand shoved Dana away. It was half-instinctual. Since she’d been healing me, she wouldn’t have been able to deploy her prized shield. I protected my vitals with my arms so the attack wouldn’t splash onto her and charged forward.
Shwoooooooo…….
The attacking vines looked slow. Was I seeing my life flash before my eyes? I could only hope it wasn’t that bad. I let out a battle cry.
“Not even blinking!!”
The vines slammed into my arms crossed in an X-guard.
─Bang!!
Excruciating pain! My eyes didn’t blink, but everything in front of me flashed white. It felt like the pain of smashing your head on a desk while picking up an eraser, multiplied by several dozen times. My vision blurred and my knees buckled on their own.
This unworthy disciple kneels before you.
‘F-fuck…….’
Even though the insane damage had knocked my mind offline, my elite brain still explained exactly what had happened. After striking my arms, the vine had slithered over my head like a snake crossing a wall and delivered a brutal follow-up strike to the back of my skull. When you control the power, it’s easier to adjust the attack trajectory. Just like a forkball in baseball, the vine had landed one hit on my arms and one on the back of my head. There was no way I could stay on my feet.
The back of my head felt hot and wet. As my consciousness grew hazy, my eyes closed as if I’d fallen into a dream. I bit my lip hard to stay awake. Goddamn it, I was filled with regret.
‘I should have taken her out the moment Yerna let her guard down.’
If she hadn’t summoned that skeleton army, it would have been entirely possible. She must have known that too, which was why she sent the trash mobs. That bitch had been testing our positions and abilities just for fun.
‘──Skel…eton?’
That was when realization struck me like lightning. Skeletons. Those skeletons that had been swept away by Dana’s holy magic! That was the true identity of Yerna’s monstrous power.
This ruin was a barrier that gathered darkness and negative mana. That was an undeniable fact. So why gather mana that only caused side effects? To create undead soldiers to guard the ruins? No. Gathering that wicked mana had been groundwork for the real purpose.
I had said it before—nature loves balance. From hot to cold. From high pressure to low pressure. That was an immutable truth that held even in this other world. The reason the ruins used bones and barriers to generate and gather darkness and negative mana was exactly that.
‘This place is an ancient civilization’s power plant that utilizes natural phenomena.’
A device that generated darkness and negative mana, then absorbed the “light mana” that gathered to dilute it! That was the true nature of this ruin. Earth’s wind, thermal, and hydro power plants all converted natural forces into electricity, didn’t they? This world’s power plants worked on similar principles.
‘That’s also why her plant magic has such ridiculous power.’
I thought this even as my head felt like it was about to pass out. Undead in this world take damage from healing magic. Because their compatibility is completely opposite. If you pour cold water into hot water, it doesn’t just become lukewarm! The ancients had reverse-engineered this + and – physical law into their power plant. Just like how nuclear power plants extract energy from the physical laws of nuclear fusion or fission.
In a way, my comparison of Mozriun to a radioactive waste site had been spot on. Even ignoring the ethical issues, this power plant was dangerous. The contradiction of having to gather mana that harms people first in order to gather mana that benefits them. It might be easier to clean up than a 21st-century reactor meltdown, but the danger level was about the same. In fact, wasn’t Mozriun destroyed precisely because they didn’t know about this ruin’s existence?
Most likely, after thousands of years of abandonment, the ancient power plant had finally begun spraying radiation-like darkness and negative mana over the city. Or perhaps grave-robbing relic hunters had come here, broken down walls, and left it exposed, triggering the disaster. If I reasoned it out, the otherworldly radiation concentrated over thousands of years from this otherworldly nuclear reactor must have leaked into wells or somewhere similar. If radioactive solution had flowed through the city’s water pipes, it would have been enough to wipe out the entire population in a single night. Maybe they really had filmed a happy zombie splatter movie. A bad ending with zero survivors.
Still, the price must have been an enormous amount of energy. The caretaker would have long since become bones, so it probably hadn’t been running continuously for thousands of years—but even so, there should have been at least “several hundred years” worth of core-level mana stored in this ruin.
‘Yerna is using the light mana that the ruin’s generator has accumulated… for her plant magic.’
Light mana is used to heal living beings, and the pinnacle of healing magic in this world belongs to the priests of abundance who worship Pomona in Romania. In other words, light mana shares the same root as abundance mana. Light mana was the most optimal mana for growing plants. After all, plants create nutrients from water and light.
That water-type professor-mon Yerna had no choice but to display power far beyond her normal limits. It was so absurd I wanted to curse. Wood-dull atomic fusion technique, my ass.
‘……Mom. There’s no answer to this.’
Despair washed over me. Until now, I had always been able to analyze an enemy’s magic or power and come up with a suitable strategy. But this time, I couldn’t. And that was inevitable. When the opponent simply had an absurd amount of mana, what weakness could there possibly be?!
Several hundred years. This reactor had been accumulating mana for several hundred years. The mana gathered over that much time by a reactor powerful enough to cover an entire city had now fallen completely into our enemy’s hands.
There was no chance of victory. Strategy, tactics—none of it mattered. In any world, weight class is king. No matter how strong a 50kg lightweight boxer’s punches are, what does it matter? A 150kg super heavyweight only needs to protect his chin and he’ll never lose. Fuck.
Why had that dark mage bitch who came here first died? She’d been lured by the darkness and negative mana but failed to recognize the ruin’s true value. If my reasoning was correct, that was why Yerna had killed her. If the dark mage had secured the light mana first, it might have been Yerna who got reverse-killed and turned into an undead.
But the dark mage hadn’t known. Yerna had. That was the decisive difference.
─Clang!
Rumble!
─Thud!
My dazed eyes captured the flow of battle. Had she deliberately struck the back of my head to incapacitate me so I would be forced to watch the others suffer? It was malice, pure and simple. I could only cling desperately to the tightrope of my fading consciousness and watch my party members get attacked one by one.
Thump…….
A low destructive sound, like something heard underwater. Veronica, whose stamina had been completely drained by the curse, was struck by a vine and collapsed. The vine kicked her like trash and hurled her into the wall.
Four vines snatched the marionettes away from Larilura. Even after losing her main weapons, Larilura dodged the vines several times. But this had been an unfair match from the start. Every time she evaded, the vines sped up as if saying “try dodging this,” and eventually Larilura took a heavy blow to the stomach and crumpled forward.
Normally I would have been furious at such a tragic sight, but since I was on the verge of losing consciousness, I felt no emotion at all. It was like watching a broken old CRT television that had been hit by the Buddha’s Palm—both picture and sound completely fucked. My consciousness had been trapped inside the idiot box called my brain.
‘Where’s Franc…… where’s Dana……?’
I moved my swaying head and finally spotted Dana. From behind Dana, who was running over to heal me, a vine quietly radiated killing intent.
─Tat.
I dashed forward to save Dana. I couldn’t even feel my limbs touching the ground. It felt as stifling as playing a laggy VR game. Still, I managed to rescue Dana from the vine.
This goddamn bug-filled masterpiece of a life sim. Whoosh─!! While dodging the vine, I performed a princess carry with Dana. She said something while grabbing my head and casting healing. Her hands became covered in blood in the blink of an eye. It seemed I had lost more blood than I thought.
I gradually regained my senses. But where was Franc? I couldn’t see her anywhere.
I frowned from the headache that followed my brain’s awakening and braced myself against the floor.
─Clatter.
A blood-covered bronze mirror caught on my fingers.
‘…………The bronze mirror?’
─Thump!
My heart pounded violently. This was the mirror Franc had taken with her when we fled from the zombie horde earlier. The one that showed the vision of the sparrow golem.
So why was that mirror here? Why was it covered in blood? And the red liquid soaking the hand I had pressed against the floor—what the hell was it?
The slowed flow of time returned to normal. Franc was lying collapsed in a bright red pool of blood.