A Special Accomplice

The Warden led us straight to his personal quarters at the pinnacle of the watchtower that loomed over the prison yard. After a private elevator ride and the heavy clank of a reinforced steel security door swinging open, we found ourselves in a cluttered office—a room furnished with an ordinary desk, a plush luxury sofa, and a gleaming nameplate announcing the Warden's authority.

While I hung back, trying to look as harmless and invisible as possible, the Warden rounded on Kiara, glaring daggers.

"Let's hear it. It's been what, a week? What the hell has gotten into you lately? Did I do something to piss you off? I thought I've been pretty damn good to you, Kiara."

With each sentence, he jabbed a heavy finger repeatedly into Kiara's forehead. Poke. Poke. Kiara's expression remained completely detached.

"Who knows? Maybe I just woke up in a bad mood. More importantly, what did you bring us all the way up here to talk about?"

"...I've known you for years, but I still can't figure you out," the Warden grumbled. "You're the only single-digit inmate left alive in this place. You've kept your head down and played nice for this long—why start throwing tantrums now?"

Just as my inmate number was 44, Kiara had hers.

Inmate #1.

Kiara was the longest-surviving resident in all of Berdal Prison.

"Watch your mouth," Kiara said coolly. "The maknae is right here."

"Heh. Why do you think I dragged him along, idiot?" The Warden sneered, chuckling under his breath. "I figured you had a soft spot for the runt. Thought watching you get taken down a peg in front of him would do you some good."

His demeanor was entirely different from down in the yard. Minutes ago, he had been raging like a madman; now, he was bantering with Kiara as if they were old acquaintances.

"Come on, spill it. What are you scheming?" he pressed. "I know you damn well, and you're not the type to flip out just because I cracked down on a little card game."

Honestly, I was curious about that myself. What had really set her off?

Poke. Poke.

The Warden shoved her forehead again, deliberately trying to provoke her. Because of his hefty frame, the force pushed Kiara back step by step until she was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠standing right in front of me. Looking past her shoulder, I caught a glimpse of her face—and it had frosted over with murderous cold.

"Tsk. You talk too damn much for a fat pig."

"...What did you say?"

"If you want to hit me, just hit me," she snarled. "Not the type to flip out? I've been biting my tongue and enduring your bullshit all these years. If it weren't for this damn collar, you'd have been dead in a ditch a long time ago. You know that, don't you?"

Kiara turned her head back toward me, her grimace shifting into a faint, reassuring smirk.

"Sorry about this, Maknae. I dragged you into my mess."

"........."

I was at a loss for words. We had barely just met, yet she was looking at me with such genuine warmth. Bond Level 1 was far more potent than I had anticipated. A quick shoulder massage and a few witty jokes had been enough to firmly win her favor.

It functioned exactly like the game. As long as Bond Level 1 was active, she might harbor basic doubts or keep her guard up, but she would never betray me.

"You've got some nerve..."

I stole a glance at the Warden. Thick veins bulged across his thick neck, his face turning an apoplectic crimson like an active volcano on the verge of erupting.

"If you wanted a beating that badly, you should have just asked. Fine. If that's your dying wish, who am I to refuse?"

The Warden stood tall, glaring at Kiara for a split second before dropping into a practiced combat stance. In a hellhole where everyone cursed like sailors, his calm, unswearing tone felt infinitely more terrifying.

Shhh—

A faint hum resonated as the veins running from his neck across his entire body began to radiate light. With a low electrical buzz, intricate luminous patterns danced across his skin, dazzling the eyes like glowing circuitry.

I had wondered why his veins looked so unnaturally pronounced and dense. They weren't veins at all.

That was what Kiara had mentioned earlier—modern magic circuits.

In the tiny fraction of a second it took for that thought to cross my mind...

In the span of a single blink...

The Warden vanished.

Kiara was catapulted backward.

BOOM!

The explosive thunder of displaced air tore through the room first.

And then, a beat later...

CRACK!

The sickening thud of the impact battered my eardrums.

Holy shit...

Was that even human? I didn't even have the luxury of marveling at the display. Kiara had just been smashed into a bloody pulp; that meant I was next in line for his wrath.

Yet my hands and feet didn't tremble. The permanently broken psyche of an Abyssal Wizard forcibly overrode my mortal terror, clamping down on my panic with unnatural serenity.

The world slowed to a crawl.

My thought processes accelerated to blinding speeds.

Thanks to that, I had all the time in the world. I could analyze the situation calmly and make a rational judgment.

First things first.

I summoned the Abyssal Grimoire—visible only to my eyes—and flipped it open.

Kiara had warned me that the metal collar around my neck was a restraint designed to suppress all magical phenomena. But that made no sense. The Abyssal Wizard unquestionably fell under the wizard class archetype. Looking at my modern fusion-punk trench coat, it was clearly a class tailored for this futuristic setting.

Yet, bizarrely, the collar's interference didn't seem to affect me at all.

Why?

Ever since I transmigrated, the mysteries had only continued to pile up.

Within the dilated flow of time, the pages of the grimoire snapped to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠attention.

I pressed my thumb firmly against the page.

Everything had to end in a single heartbeat. I needed to act before the Warden realized what hit him, and ensure he retained zero memory of me casting magic.

From a turn-based tactical perspective, the sequence was clear. The Warden had already spent his turn striking down Kiara. Barring complete defiance of physical laws, Newton's third law of action and reaction dictated that he would suffer a momentary recovery lag.

That was my opening.

To his eyes, I was merely a frail prisoner bound by a mana restraint collar. He would never expect a counterattack from me.

Locking eyes with the Warden, I whispered words in a language that did not belong to this world—incomprehensible phonemes that even I, the speaker, could scarcely fathom.

I could still cast spells.

Dungeon Core was an RPG heavily inspired by D&D. Because of that heritage, wizards in this game wielded magic through a very specific mechanic: spell slots.

In the game's native terminology, it was called Memory Capacity.

As a wizard grew, slots opened up, allowing them to engrave and 'memorize' ancient incantations. Then, using their internal mana as ink, they 'drew' the memorized formula into reality. It was essentially the classic Vancian memorization system blended with the game's unique lore.

The Abyssal Wizard, unlocked only after conquering Phase 20, obeyed this identical rule.

...Well, it obeyed it, but with a bizarre twist.

Under normal circumstances, a wizard had to actively memorize spells into their empty capacity. That was an ironclad law for any caster class in the game. Yet when I first opened this grimoire, all five slots of my Memory Capacity were already occupied. Aside from the first slot, the remaining four were marked as [ Locked ], but the crucial point was that they weren't empty.

Obviously, this was my first time ever playing the Abyssal Wizard. I had never assigned spells to these slots.

That led me to two possible hypotheses.

The first was that the Abyssal Wizard was a complete mutant class that fundamentally diverged from traditional casters. Rather than filling empty slots manually, it was an archetype where all slots were preloaded and had to be unlocked progressively. It operated on its own unique ruleset. Considering it was an edgy hipster class that insisted on wearing a modern trench coat while everyone else wore fantasy robes, that theory had plenty of merit. The base game never even had grimoires—only wands or staves to assist casting.

Or what about the second hypothesis?

Someone other than me had already engraved those spells into this capacity. And that someone was most likely the original owner of this body: 'Ian'.

Viewing it through that lens aligned perfectly with the game's original mechanics and offered a neat explanation for why the slots were locked. The spells had been memorized by the original Ian, but the current 'me' had no recollection of how to cast them.

Still, that left one mystery: why was the very first slot unlocked from the start?

Was it such a rudimentary spell that it had been ingrained into the muscle memory of this body?

It certainly qualified as basic. I had suffered through this exact spell during madness events in the game, so I knew its effects intimately. It erased recent short-term memories and inflicted the Collapse status for three full turns.

Mental Collapse was not an offensive spell; it was pure crowd control.

Ssssp... huuuuh.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the soothing aroma of the Ambrosia Petal hanging from my neck. Every time I cast a spell, an uncomfortable itch scratched at the back of my brain—a sensation uncomfortably close ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to being dragged into Madness. A built-in penalty for meddling with forbidden arts, most likely.

It was a minor nuisance, but in our current predicament, the spell couldn't have been more perfect.

"Uhh... aaauugh... huuh..."

"Ugh, drooling. Gross."

Even though I had caught him during his recovery frames, the Warden possessed superhuman physical capabilities. There was no way he could have missed me casting magic right in front of his face. If I had merely knocked him unconscious without wiping his mind, we would have been in deep trouble later. Even if we managed to talk our way out of it right now, him discovering my ability to use magic would only be a matter of time.

But what if his recent memories were wiped completely clean?

In a game, memory erasure was just a situational debuff, but in reality, it was absurdly broken. It enabled consequence-free crimes! I could indulge in all the chaos with none of the accountability.

Before casting it on the Warden, I had harbored doubts about whether it would actually work on someone of his caliber. But seeing him stand there slack-jawed with drool pooling down his chin, it had clearly landed with full force.

Due to my low proficiency, it was a one-shot spell and completely lacked offensive power. Even so, having an absolute escape button in my arsenal was an enormous asset. It vastly improved our chances of breaking out of this place.

Ssssp... huuuuh.

I took another slow drag of the Ambrosia Petal's menthol scent. The prickling sensation inside my skull gradually subsided. An inevitable penalty, to be sure. Still, Despair Difficulty was turning out to be surprisingly manageable.

I gave a satisfied shrug—right until a voice broke the silence.

"...Maknae? Did you just use magic? How... wait, never mind that, how did you drop the Warden in a single hit?!"

Kiara was currently crawling out from beneath a pile of smashed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bookshelves, staring at me with sheer, unadulterated shock.

Wait... you weren't knocked out?

Before I could even process her reaction, the pages of the Abyssal Grimoire fluttered open on their own.