The Hub
Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.
Derin—S-class adventurer of Elmaile, the woman the world called an Archmage—fled with every scrap of strength she had left. Mixed droplets of sweat and tears slid down her chin.
Calm down. Calm down. Just run first.
She clung to her fracturing mind by the barest threads. Breath tearing in and out of her lungs, she kept running and forced herself to replay the events of an hour ago.
Karseron…
She had accepted Karseron’s desperate plea, gathered what adventurers she could, and set out to retake the Teleportation Hub.
The outcome had been obvious from the start. A vampire who could erase thirty S-class adventurers in a single stroke, and the butler-monster who served her. A ragtag collection of middling ranks stood no chance against either of them.
Even knowing that, Derin had still marched toward the hub exactly as Karseron asked—because the guilt was eating her alive, chewing through her sanity with every passing minute.
If only I hadn’t touched that talisman…
If she had never laid a finger on the seal binding the vampire, none of this would have happened. If not for her cursed, insatiable curiosity, Karseron would never have had to stake his life facing that creature. If not for those choices, she would be laughing with comrades who had returned laden with treasure, cold beer in hand.
…
Cold sweat poured down her back; her legs shook so hard she could barely stand. She wanted nothing more than to run. Yet guilt alone held those instincts in check, and she pressed on toward the Teleportation Hub in grim silence.
“You can do it! Don’t be scared!”
“Yeah—it’s not the progenitor vampire, just her thrall. If we play it right, we might actually win!”
“…”
Fortunately the other adventurers’ spirits were still high. They could say those things only because they had never stood face-to-face with the progenitor vampire herself—but Derin saw no reason to shatter their illusions. If a fight with the vampire butler was inevitable, better to arrive with morale intact and a shred of optimism still burning.
And then, when less than fifty meters remained to the hub—
“…!!”
An invisible aura—dark, corrupt, and heavy—crashed over Derin’s body. The world spun as though an elephant’s trunk had seized her skull and whirled it. Her stomach heaved; she vomited everything she had left.
“Ugh—! Uweeeek…!”
It felt as if a vital screw had simply fallen out of her. Her blood circulation stuttered; her entire body went corpse-pale. Something had deliberately thrown her biological rhythm into chaos.
“De—Derin-nim!”
“Are you all right?!”
The adventurers traveling with her looked completely unaffected.
This is…
She understood almost at once.
Derin was an S-class mage. Because she commanded vast magic and shaped mana as freely as breath, she was far more sensitive—and far more vulnerable—to external mana than ordinary people.
…It’s devouring my mana.
The deliberately released power was invading her own reserves, overwriting them. A phenomenon she had only ever studied in theory as a student was now happening inside her living body.
It surpasses mine? I’m an Archmage!
Her mana was vast enough to earn the title of Archmage—yet this force was so immense, so thoroughly corrupted, that it smothered even hers.
“I-impossible…”
Her legs gave out. A living creature on this earth possessing mana of that scale? This was power beyond any known measure—off the charts of magic engineering itself. The darkness coiled inside it made her gag the moment she tried to sense it. Mere contact left her gasping; her body’s rhythm shattered. Flashes of light exploded across her vision, forcing hallucinations into her mind. Her skull felt ready to split.
The blood-soaked silhouette of a demon flickered before her eyes.
“Ah…”
She understood. This was mana the vampire butler occupying the Teleportation Hub was deliberately broadcasting. Just as animals mark territory with scent to warn rivals, the butler was warning every S-class or higher who could feel and interpret the message:
Come closer and die.
“U-ugh…”
Panic swallowed her whole.
In the labyrinth he had simply not bothered to release his mana. Now, before she could even see him, he was crushing her. If she actually faced him, her mana would overload and she would go mad. To a mage, mana was blood. An explosion of overloaded mana was no different from every vessel in the body bursting at once—pain beyond imagination.
“Uuuu…”
She had no confidence left. How was anyone supposed to stand against a monster like that? A terror she had never known—an unknown, irresistible dread—ate her from the inside. Survival instinct rose up and crushed every lesser feeling: guilt, duty, everything. Extreme fear at the absolute limit overturns every resolution, every scrap of common sense a person possesses.
“U-uaaaaaaaaaah!!”
Derin fled without a second’s hesitation.
She slammed acceleration magic into her own body and tore away from the Teleportation Hub like a gale. Voices of the other adventurers called after her, trying to stop her; she ignored them and ran, and ran, and ran.
Fuck it—none of it matters! None of it!
What did protecting Elmaile matter? What did a childhood friend matter? Guilt? What did her own mistakes matter? In this moment nothing in the world was more important than Derin’s own life. As long as she never tangled with that vampire—never met that legendary monster—anything else was fine.
“Sk-skeletons!!”
“Everyone scatter! Kyaaaak!!”
“…”
By the time she reached the city gate, enormous magic circles had bloomed and skeleton soldiers were pouring out of them amid hideous screams. Fight things like that? She couldn’t. Call her a disgrace of an S-class adventurer if they wanted. As long as she lived, she didn’t care.
North. Go north.
Yes—run as far from this place as possible. Flee to the northeastern edge of the kingdom so she would never again risk meeting that monstrous vampire. One city rose clearly in her mind.
The fortress city of Nebirtol.
Sitting at the northernmost tip of the Abilia Kingdom, true to its name it boasted seven concentric walls—an impregnable stronghold. The vampire had no reason to come that far, and even if she did, Nebirtol stood a real chance of holding her back, if only a little. No other place could soothe a heart shredded by terror. Destination fixed, Derin stole a horse from a checkpoint and fled at a dead gallop.
Good. It’s over now.
Burning Elmaile shrank and vanished behind her. Conscience pricked, but she ignored it.
Because once again, she had survived.
“Ah…”
The face of Elmaile’s lord—who had given his name as Karseron—went rigid. Empty eyes stared out over the territory that was transforming into hell before him.
The dry clatter of skeleton joints grinding out of place. The crash and shatter of weapons. Someone’s agony-soaked scream.
The once-glittering metropolis had become a burning battlefield of the living and the dead. And the victors were the dead. Hope drained from Karseron’s eyes.
“Hmm…”
I, on the other hand, looked down on the scene with something close to satisfaction.
The old records were so vague that people of this era might not grasp my true strength. A little spectacle like this would make for an entrance no one would ever forget. Besides—after a thousand years of sealing, if I simply scurried into the capital like a rat and started assassinating people, it would look petty and timid. To vent everything I had bottled up, turning the whole of Abilia into a wasteland still wouldn’t feel like enough.
“This is your fault for sending a subjugation force without the slightest investigation.”
Elmaile had been the first to declare war by sending troops against me. I had merely answered in kind.
“Get up. Guide me to the Teleportation Hub.”
I spoke to the hollow-eyed Karseron. There was nothing left for me in this city. Word of my rampage would already be racing toward the capital by messenger bird; I needed to reach the hub and ride it there before the capital could react.
“Ah…”
Karseron only wept. Like a broken machine he turned his head and looked at me.
“K-kill me…”
“…”
He asked for death. Territory burned, countless subjects slaughtered—he had clearly lost the will to live. The crushing weight of a lord who had failed every responsibility sat heavy on his shoulders. Rather than remain a miserable, powerless wreck who had lost everything, he wanted to escape into death. That was his problem, not mine.
I snorted.
“You think dying solves everything?”
“…?”
“What—planning a nice trip to heaven or hell?”
“Th-that’s…”
“Bad luck for you. My specialty is necromancy.”
As long as I stood in front of him, Karseron would never know eternal rest even if he died. My class—Elzerva’s class—was Necromancer Lord. His ego would vanish, but that was fine; I could simply raise him again as a skeleton soldier.
“If you die, I’ll revive you as a skeleton soldier.”
“U-undead…?”
“That’s right. So choose quickly. Remain human and guide me, or become an ego-less skeleton and wander the nine heavens forever.”
“Ah…”
“Oh—and for the record, I never promised a comfortable death.”
“…”
Karseron lowered his head. Shadow swallowed his face; thick tears tracked down his cheeks. He wore the most wretched expression a human being can make. The choice must have been agony: continue living as a lord who had lost everything, or become humanity’s greatest enemy—the worst monster of all—and drift through the afterlife for eternity.
“…I’ll guide you.”
He chose to remain human, whatever came next. I smiled at the swift decision.
“Good boy.”
“Kh…”
He bowed even deeper. It was the first time I had seen that particular expression, and I found I liked it more than expected—the look of a heart splitting open when everything is gone and nothing can be done. The face of someone tracing every wrong turn while sinking into a deeper and deeper pit of despair. I had probably worn the same face while I was sealed.
Now it was time to give that expression back to every last soul in Abilia.
“…Please follow me.”
“…”
I followed Karseron toward the Teleportation Hub.
“Alfred!”
“Young miss. Welcome.”
Elmaile’s Teleportation Hub stood on the city’s outskirts. In front of the massive capsule-shaped machine—easily five meters tall—the vampire butler Alfred waited with his head bowed. On either side of him, corpses of adventurers and soldiers were heaped like mountains. He had casually crushed every attempt to retake the hub.
“…The hub.”
“Yeah. Good work.”
I gave Karseron a dismissive wave. The task I had set him finished, he simply collapsed where he stood, as though his soul had cracked. He was still breathing, yet he no longer looked alive. If the heart is dead, how is that any different from an undead?
“…Whatever.”
I had neither the time nor the inclination to play therapist. With the quiet focus of a bride and groom stepping into the wedding hall, I brushed the dust from my clothes and entered the capsule of the Teleportation Hub. Tina and Alfred followed close behind.
“…Destination: the capital.”
A thousand years had passed, yet the basic operation of the hub had barely changed. I worked the navigation panel set into the capsule’s inner wall and locked in the capital as our destination. In less than a minute the two hubs would link like a portal. After a brief flash we would step out already standing in the capital.
“…See you around.”
“…”
Only unintelligible babbling answered me, but I offered the broken Karseron a final farewell and sealed the capsule lid.
Then I activated the great machine.
“…!”
A faint tremor, and golden light flooded the capsule.
“…”
I stared into the dazzling radiance and let the memories of a thousand years ago rise.
The people of the Abilia Kingdom—who had forgotten every debt they owed me for slaying the Demon King and ending the war, who never once questioned the oracle’s truth, and who turned on me in a single heartbeat. I would never forget the day they whispered as I passed, then united as one voice to hurl curses and rage.
And Lilianel Greenfield—the one who had gifted me hellish betrayal, humiliation, and shame. The woman who murdered my dearest friend Sophie just to indulge Varius’s sordid affair. The wicked smile that trampled my trust, my faith, and every sacrifice I had made. I still remembered it perfectly.
At last the hour had come to repay every last one of them.
“…”
When the Teleportation Hub’s light faded and the capsule lid opened, we stood upon the capital’s splendid plain.
“Ah…”
To this wretched place where my happiest memories and my most agonizing ones still lived side by side, I had finally returned.
After a thousand years.