The Holy Knight's Last Wish
As I stepped into the dungeon for our practical combat class, a refreshing breeze brushed the tip of my nose. At the same time, lights that had remained dark for who knew how long flickered on all at once. With their glow, the interior of the place filled my vision in a single sweep.
The walls, like those at the entrance, were corroded bricks that looked unused for ages. A passageway in an unmistakably ancient style stretched onward.
The passage itself wasn’t very long. At its far end, however, stood a massive door.
If the game was any indication, this dungeon was structured so that clearing one room would open the next, allowing steady advancement. Depending on the chamber, monsters might appear or traps might lie in wait. And the first room was…
“A trap, huh.”
I gazed down at the pattern etched into the floor. It depicted a human, a soul, and a brilliantly shining light. At their center stood a statue of someone in prayer.
Below it was an unreadable inscription. Under normal circumstances, the characters would have been indecipherable.
But I possessed the Eye of the Transcendent.
As I stared at the writing, the symbols wriggled like worms before transforming into clear Korean. I slowly read the now-familiar text aloud.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It was a phrase most people knew even if they didn’t believe in God. The reason it was carved beneath the statue was simple: the human representing the Father, the light representing the Son, and the soul openly referred to as the Holy Spirit.
If you stepped on the floor patterns in the correct order and placed your hand on the praying statue…
Rumble.
The door to the next chamber opened with surprising ease.
I stared at the statue a moment longer, then moved on.
Even taking my time, I had less than two days to clear this dungeon. Factoring in travel back to the academy, the deadline grew even tighter.
Since I’d been the one to insist on this outing, arriving late would definitely earn me punishment. I wouldn’t be expelled or suspended for simple tardiness, but I could forget about any favorable treatment afterward.
So I needed to move as quickly as possible.
The moment I entered the next chamber, a familiar sound echoed in my ears.
Clatter. Clatter.
The noise of bone striking bone drew my gaze on instinct.
I’d seen them countless times in the game and killed more than I could count, yet seeing them in the flesh was utterly grotesque.
Skeletons. Or bone soldiers, as they were sometimes called. Five of them.
The number of skeletons that appeared was usually random. From my repeated visits to rescue Tana, I knew it was fixed between three and five.
In other words, the five before me represented the maximum number this dungeon could spawn.
Just my luck. Of course, after taking down an iron-horned bull, complaining about these small fries seemed ridiculous. Still, since this was my first time properly using magic in actual combat, they posed a slight nuisance.
Clatter.
They must have sensed me the instant I entered, because they immediately began to move. Their speed wasn’t impressive—nothing more than lifeless bones—but it was enough that I couldn’t simply stand still.
I started casting before they could close in.
Swordsmanship was heavily affected by tier, but magic was even more so. The formulas you could calculate and the casting speed varied drastically according to the user’s tier. Individual differences existed, of course, but no one could deny that higher tiers meant faster casting.
Whoosh.
Perhaps that was why my casting speed felt painfully slow.
Thanks to my Mana’s Blessing trait, mana should have gathered quickly. The bottleneck was clearly the sluggish calculation speed caused by my low tier.
To use magic, you had to construct the spell formula in your mind. It wasn’t as simple as drawing lines in the air. You visualized the desired magic, adopted the proper mental stance, formulated the spell, then infused it with mana and called it forth.
Any lapse in concentration during the process could cause even a completable spell to fail.
Because the chanting process was so demanding, mages were incredibly rare. That was what the game had explained. And now I was experiencing that truth firsthand.
Is this really trash?
It took roughly ten seconds to cast a single spell, and the power wasn’t particularly impressive. Nor was the process easy; having to chant while dodging skeleton attacks doubled the fatigue.
So that’s why mages in party play needed allies to cover them while they chanted.
With those thoughts in mind, I continued controlling the spell. Considering how long it had taken me when I first played a mage in the game, this speed was actually decent. Plenty of students needed over thirty seconds per cast.
Of course the mana cost differed, but it was exhausting work regardless.
The real issue was my tier. I needed to raise it quickly somehow.
Even that came with problems. I still didn’t fully understand how tier advancement worked. Simply accumulating mana and raising stats didn’t automatically increase your tier.
That only applied to higher ranks.
At 1st or 2nd Tier, progress came quickly. Thanks to the elixir, I had already reached 2nd Tier. 3rd and 4th Tier weren’t particularly difficult either; the academy literally taught that they could be achieved through straightforward effort.
My unique trait let me climb the lower tiers with relative ease.
But 5th Tier—the so-called Wall among awakeners—still remained hazy and out of reach.
Someone might scoff that a mere 2nd Tier like me was having delusions of grandeur, but I had my reasons for thinking about it.
Advancing to 2nd Tier had felt as natural as flowing water. The moment I consumed the dean’s elixir, my body seemed to have been waiting for it; the tier rose on its own.
Because of that, I didn’t feel any particular emotion. I simply noticed that my body control had grown slightly more sensitive.
“Ah.”
Lost in useless thoughts, I had already finished off every skeleton.
I still needed more magic proficiency if I wanted to face that creature waiting in the hidden passage.
Well, nothing I could do about it now.
I extinguished the flames flickering in my palm and headed for the next chamber.
More skeletons awaited me there, but these were completely different from the previous ones.
Though heavily worn, they wore proper equipment and held disciplined stances. Blue ghostly lights flickered behind their helmet visors.
I swallowed hard. If the earlier skeletons had been common soldiers, the entity before me was closer to a knight.
A Skeleton Knight. It lacked a horse, but there was no doubt—this was a knight.
A holy knight who had once believed in God.
Clatter.
The dead holy knight moved, carrying muscles long since rotted away and a faith that had already vanished.
Even in death it clung to its piety, pouring its sacred power into a crumbling sword as it charged at me with everything it had left.
I calmly watched the holy knight’s approach, then raised my machete.
Clang!
Machete and half-shattered sword collided. Small fragments flew from the blade, which trembled violently as though struck by an earthquake.
After spending so long in this dungeon, it seemed the knight had nearly exhausted what little strength remained.
I had no idea how a God-fearing holy knight had ended up dead in such a state.
In the game, the encounter had been far worse. The sword was already broken and the skeleton couldn’t even move. That was why I had learned nothing from this dungeon back then.
Honestly, discovering the hidden passage had been pure coincidence.
After blocking the sword a few more times with my machete, the knight’s body staggered and collapsed with a thud. The blue glow in its eyes vanished, and the sword shattered into pieces.
It was exactly as I remembered from the game. I observed the scene quietly and offered a moment of silence.
That was when it happened.
The fallen holy knight suddenly stirred. Its extinguished blue eyes flared back to life as it sprang up and seized my shoulder.
“You son of a—!”
To have arrived here safely must mean you have been chosen by God.
If it is you, I believe you can fulfill our will.
That monster—the demon we have sealed for so long—please…
May God’s blessing be with you.
The hand gripping my shoulder refused to let go, drawing strength from some unknown source.
The holy knight’s flame guttered out mid-sentence, its words cutting off intermittently.
I stared down at the knight, mind racing.
Monster. Demon. The being the holy knight spoke of was undoubtedly the creature guarding the Holy Water in the hidden passage.
But that thing was a demon?
Information I had never encountered before flooded in. Was this because I had arrived far earlier than in the game?
In the original timeline, clearing this dungeon happened roughly six months later—when Tana’s condition worsened, the dungeon was discovered, and first-years were finally allowed to venture outside. All those conditions had to align.
“Six months…”
To think I would learn all this by coming half a year early.
But it wasn’t over yet. As the holy knight had said, after defeating that creature I would need to verify a few more things.
I walked through the door that had opened when I touched the knight.
There stood a statue of God. Though time had left its mark with cracks and chips like everything else in the dungeon, its divine light had not faded.
Before the statue, as if congratulating me for making it this far, lay a reward.
A cross-shaped necklace artifact that raised strength, agility, and stamina by one point each.
After equipping the artifact, I returned to the very first chamber I had entered.
Stepping out through the door, I saw the statue once more—praying with its back turned to God.
When I had played through this section in the game, it always felt strange. Why would a believer pray with their back to their own deity?
Now, after defeating the holy knight and piecing together the situation, I finally understood.
This statue had been praying toward us.
To the blessed benefactor who would one day enter this dungeon and defeat the monster its guardians could not.
I turned the statue so that it faced the direction of God. In the straight corridor, nothing now stood between deity and believer.
Therefore—
Rumble.
A new path opened.
I stepped into the hidden passage.
Beyond it waited the creature that carried the holy knights’ final wish.
The monster guarding the Holy Water.
Kirgas.
It would certainly be a difficult opponent, but I wasn’t worried. In the game, the creature had already been at the end of its lifespan—sluggish, its attacks no longer threatening. As long as I avoided its occasional strange patterns…
“Huh?”
I rubbed my eyes and looked again at the sight before me.
Growl.
It was definitely Kirgas. There was no mistaking that hideous form.
If anything was wrong, it was that…
“Why does it look so healthy?”
Kirgas was far younger than I had expected. Impossibly so.