The Dungeon
"Aaaagh!"
Joseph hurled the Mana Orb he'd summoned forward with everything he had. He hadn't been trying to kill it — he'd simply fired on reflex, startled by the sheer size of the thing.
Ugh, that's disgusting as hell!
A bug. That thing was a bug.
Joseph had lived in this world long enough to be reasonably used to insects by now. But that was different. The size, the sound, the appearance — all of it. Every twitch of the creature's body set his nerves on fire. Revulsion crawled up his spine and all the way to the crown of his head.
Hissss! Three Mana Orbs shot out at once, aiming to crush the thing's carapace.
But then — skitter-skitter-skitter! Countless legs attached to that black mass moved. In an instant, it slipped out of the line of fire and vanished into the darkness.
I cannot let it get away. Absolutely not!
That bug was more terrifying once it disappeared than when it was right in front of him. If he lost it, there was no telling when or where it would come bursting out again.
First, eliminate the blind spots.
Joseph recalled the three Mana Orbs he'd fired, then summoned three more. He spread them as widely as possible around himself, lighting up the surroundings. The glow wasn't particularly strong, but it was enough to make out anything nearby. Then, holding his shield out in front, he moved the orbs and pursued the creature.
He didn't run. There was no need to waste stamina and leave himself gasping. Instead he kept up a brisk walk so the thing wouldn't pull too far ahead.
Skitter—
Soon the sound came again. Only then did Joseph break into a run. Of the six Mana Orbs, he fired the two in front as far as they would go. Where their light swept past, the bug flickered into view for an instant.
Skitter-skitter-skitter! Sensing that something had passed over its head, the creature tried to vanish backward as quickly as before.
"Return!"
But Joseph chanted the spell first. The two Mana Orbs that had passed the creature unfolded into a vast white wall.
Screeeech! It slammed into Return with a grotesque noise and bounced back toward him. The sight of it on its back, countless legs wriggling in the air, sent a chill crawling over his skin. He immediately drove the remaining Mana Orbs into its belly.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!!
"Ugh!"
But the thing spread its wings while still inverted and thrashed wildly in every direction. Far from landing a hit, Joseph had to back away just to avoid it. The creature flopping on the floor soon righted itself. Thinking it would charge, he positioned a Mana Orb directly in front of him.
......?
But the thing just stood there, motionless. Looking closer, he could see a crack running through its head.
Return actually worked!
The blow to the head had apparently left it dazed. Joseph didn't let the opportunity slip. He fired one Mana Orb straight at its skull.
Crunch! The head of the creature standing there in a stupor made a wet, crushing sound. But a single orb apparently wasn't enough — it started thrashing around again.
What the hell, how is it that tough?
Joseph immediately poured additional mana into the orb.
"Return!"
At the same time, he boxed it in with walls of Return. The creature bounced around as it slammed into the barriers, and once the Mana Orb swelled to the size of Joseph's torso, it could no longer escape the massive sphere pressing down from above.
Crack! Joseph pressed the orb down even harder, crushing the creature's upper body. Bright yellow ichor oozed out between the shattered carapace. The thing made a grotesque noise, convulsed, and then went still.
"Fuck, is that a Demonic Beast too...?"
If so, Demonic Beasts were far more horrific than Joseph had imagined. He was still shuddering with disgust when he suddenly flinched.
Wait.
They always said that if you saw one of those bugs, hundreds more were hiding in the house... How many more of these things were waiting further in?
...Not that I can turn back now.
If he didn't do this now, he might never be able to enter this cave again. This was a dungeon — the kind mages searched for with fire in their eyes.
...Alright. Fine. Let's do this.
Joseph drew a long, steadying breath, then summoned a Mana Orb. And quietly, he chanted a spell.
"Iceberg."
⟨ Iceberg ⟩
Cold air bloomed from the Mana Orb, and in an instant a block of ice the size of Joseph's torso took shape.
Thud! The ice summoned in midair slammed into the ground.
Iceberg. It was a spell written in the grimoire he'd obtained from the fight with the bandits in front of Bari Village. Until now he hadn't even been able to attempt it, since he had no ice to work with. But thanks to packing an ice-filled Artifact when he left the castle, he'd been able to accumulate ice-attributed mana in bits and pieces. For a first attempt, it had gone surprisingly cleanly.
Looking at it like this, it seems pretty heavy.
The massive ice block sat buried in the ground. He gave it a few kicks with his foot — it was quite solid.
This should be enough to kill one in a single hit.
The passage was too narrow to use fire magic carelessly. That was why he'd inflated a Mana Orb and crushed the last one. But he couldn't do that every time. A Mana Orb of that size used enough mana for four or five Flame Bites — and since the mana in a Mana Orb couldn't be recovered, the efficiency was abysmal.
Iceberg, by comparison, didn't consume much mana. It was simply a spell that generated a block of ice. He just summoned it above their heads. Using magic through a Mana Orb — a privilege only Joseph could exploit.
So he'd found a workable solution for dealing with them. The problem, however...
"Iceberg! Iceberg! Aaaagh!! Fuck! Iceberg!!"
The moment he pressed further in, several more of those bugs from before started bursting out. Floor, walls, pillars — the giant things twitched everywhere. Joseph smashed them with Mana Orbs at maximum speed the instant they appeared, stopping them in their tracks, then immediately chanted the spell. They were crushed under the weight in a single blow. Some of them fled quickly, but those he blocked with Return and pulverized with Iceberg.
"Hahh..."
Once the first wave was cleared, Joseph smashed the still-twitching ones one by one with his shield. His stomach churned. This time it wasn't Mana Sickness — it was just regular nausea.
I don't have that much mana to spare.
Even as he gagged, Joseph checked the mana in his body. He was continuously releasing it to keep the headache at bay, and on top of that he'd been spamming spells, so he could feel his reserves starting to run dry. He briefly considered absorbing the mana from the passage, but getting it under control would take too much time.
It'd be nice if something showed up soon...
He'd been in the passage for a while now. An exit, a secret — something ought to appear by this point. At this rate, he'd have come all this way just to fight bugs and then turn back.
And then, at last, the passage ended and a large space opened up.
Finally...!
In a wide chamber several times larger than the passage, three rooms waited. Wooden doors hung on them, like the pillars that had supported the tunnel — cracked and riddled with holes, looking ready to fall apart at any moment. Joseph noticed that a flow of mana was gathering toward one of the three.
He approached slowly and pulled the handle. It came right off in his hand. As a precaution, he slipped a small Mana Orb through the hole to light the interior.
What the hell is that?
There was nothing inside the room. A hole about the size of an adult's torso had been bored into the floor. No matter how he looked at it, it wasn't natural. All the mana flowing through the entire passage was being sucked into that hole.
He opened the door, went inside, and examined it more closely. Nothing was visible in the large hole in the floor. Even shining a torch down didn't help. It was nothing but darkness, as if this section of the world had been cut away. He sent a Mana Orb down into it, but it couldn't illuminate the bottom. The floor was deep, yes — but more than that, the Mana Orb's form was crushed out of shape.
A mana black hole. He could tell that something down there was endlessly devouring mana. Joseph looked down for a moment, then left the room. There didn't seem to be anything to gain from that place.
Next he headed to the room across the way. This time he smashed the door with a Mana Orb and likewise lit the interior.
Another hole?
The opposite room had a large hole in the floor, just like the last one. Approaching it, he felt mana trying to force its way into his body, punching through his own mana release. This time it was a hole that emitted mana.
One side sucked it in. The other side spewed it out. He didn't understand the principle, but the dense flow of mana throughout the passage seemed to be because of those holes.
Joseph entered the last room. Unlike the two chambers with their black holes, this one still had traces of someone conducting research. There was a table in the center, and on it a device made of mixed wood and iron — most of it rusted and withered, making the original form hard to discern. But he could guess what it was for.
"An Artifact?"
He knew because he'd read Zallier's Grimoire. Wood and stone, metal, traces of dried liquid — these were the typical basic materials for making Artifacts, as described in the early pages of that book.
Was there a mage hiding here making Artifacts?
He turned his gaze and checked the rest of the room. Old books were slotted into shelves set into the wall. He tried to check the contents, but they'd been left so long that the letters had all bled and were unreadable.
Then, in one corner of the room, a bed where someone seemed to have slept — and beside it, a small box — caught his eye. It was a box with a lock, but when he pushed the lid with his staff, it slid right off. The hinges seemed to have worn away completely.
There was a book inside the box as well. For a moment he thought it might be a grimoire, but he felt nothing from it. Having been stored in the box, it was in better condition than the other books. He carefully opened it and found sentences here and there that he could still read.
"This is...?"
Mana is insufficient. There isn't time to gather it gradually.
How long has it been since that day...
"...A diary?"
It seemed to be a journal left by the one who'd been manufacturing Artifacts. Joseph flipped through the book for a while, checking the contents.
So it was a mage after all.
The author of this diary was a mage who made Artifacts, like Zalier. He seemed to have fled here for some reason, and he appeared to have been trying to manufacture some kind of special Artifact in this place.
Connect the floors and forcibly fix the flow of mana at the center.
The person who made the holes in both rooms seemed to have been this mage as well.
Fix the flow of mana...
Joseph wasn't particularly well-versed in magic, but he could easily tell that wasn't an ordinary feat. Mana was something that flowed everywhere in the world. A mage absorbed it and converted it into their own in order to realize magic. In a sense that activity was artificial, but it too was a kind of mana flow.
But to forcibly stop the flow itself...?
If that's actually possible...