Super Senses (4)
Once I was sure the freak was down, I let my head hang again.
It hurt so badly I thought I was going to die.
New flesh bubbled and boiled through the hole blown in my side. Super Regeneration had activated, knitting the wound back together. But whether the injury was simply that severe or the bastard's mana was slowing the process, the healing felt sluggish.
"Ghh..."
Before long the wound had fully closed, and I got to my feet. Strength had drained out of my body completely. Of every close call I had survived so far, this one had been the closest. If that attack had struck my head instead of my side, I would have died on the spot. Super Regeneration or not, it was not going to restore a destroyed brain.
The magic circles that had been lighting the chamber all went dark the moment the freak died. I stared at the corpse for a beat, then remembered Ashel and turned around. She was sprawled against the wall, not moving an inch. I straightened my ruined clothes as best I could and went over to her.
"Hey."
I had no idea how badly she was hurt, or how I was supposed to wake her, so I just tapped her cheek a few times. Her eyelids fluttered, and then Ashel slowly opened her eyes. I let out a silent breath of relief and asked her, as she blinked up at me in a daze.
"You all right?"
"...Yes. How long was I... that creature?"
"Dead."
Still disoriented, Ashel seemed to piece the situation together. She let out a small gasp, and then her expression crumpled. She had taken a single hit, been sent flying, and been knocked out of the fight — honestly, I could not blame her this time. I could see levels. She could not.
"I apologize. Once again, I was of no..."
"He was as strong as the Grand Lord. Enough with the self-reproach. Drink this."
At that, Ashel's eyes went round. I pulled the Scarlet Potion from inside my coat. The attack had hit lower down, so this, at least, had survived intact. Ashel shook her head, planted her sword in the floor, and staggered to her feet.
"I am fine."
"I said drink it."
"No. I am truly all right."
God, she was stubborn. I kept holding it out, and she kept insisting she was fine, so I made as if to press it to her lips. Ashel startled so badly she stumbled backward, lost her footing, and went down again. The reaction was so extreme I was a little startled myself. I looked down at her. What was she even doing.
"You're clearly not in your right mind."
"..."
I could see a faint mix of embarrassment and resentment in the look she gave me. Well. Who told her to keep being so stubborn.
"That's an order. Drink it."
In the end, Ashel took the Scarlet Potion and drank it. She was irreplaceable to me. As if I would begrudge a hundred of these potions, let alone one. The moment I so much as suspected something was off, I needed to deal with it immediately, before it could become a problem.
Anyway...
I let out a silent sigh and turned back toward the fallen freak.
What the hell even was that guy?
Why had a monster of that insane level been sitting in this forest of all places? Even in the golden age of ancient magic, when powerful mages had been plentiful, level 97 would have put him among the strongest on the entire continent.
Enfirus Deyma, he'd called himself.
The game barely mentioned figures from the ancient era, so the name meant nothing to me. That was the whole point of the setting — aside from the ruins buried across the continent, the ancient age had left almost no records at all.
I climbed up onto the altar. Looking around the corpse, I found something like a book. I reached for it, then froze. The thing threatened to crumble at the slightest touch. How old was this? I had no choice but to crouch in front of it and turn the first page as carefully as I could.
"..."
What?
I stared blankly at the writing on the page. This was... ancient script. And I could read it fluently. I had been too busy trying to stay alive to think about it earlier, but I had spoken with the freak in the ancient language as naturally as breathing. The ancient tongue had suddenly become as comprehensible as my everyday speech, and I reached a conclusion without much difficulty. I had felt this once before.
It was the same when I first possessed this body.
When I had first been dropped into this game, I had spoken the continental common tongue with a prisoner without any trouble at all. I did not know the details, but it seemed like something similar had happened again.
Was conversation the trigger, maybe?
If speaking directly with someone in a language I did not know was the trigger, that would make sense. I would look into it later. For now, I turned my attention back to the book.
I sought to become an eternal being.
Every living thing is born into a fate of mortality. Even if one delays aging with mana or other powers, even if one discards a living body and is resurrected in a dead one, the end always comes. I sought to overcome that limit. To shed the shell of mortality and become an eternal existence.
What followed at great length was an account of his magical research. I could not have understood it even if I had tried, so I skimmed past it.
But despite all those countless efforts, I could not fulfill my wish.
The end came for a body that had lived thousands of years. I could have lived longer, originally, but the accumulated strain of my many researches had reached its limit.
If I used necromancy to resurrect in a corpse, I could extend my existence. But then I would never again return to the ranks of the living, and would spend the rest of my days in a dead man's body. That would be a negation of everything I am.
I decided to meet my end here, in the place that has been my companion all my life. I have no wish to leave a legacy. This diary is all I will leave behind.
Loneliness. I never imagined a day would come when I would feel this emotion. Had I known, taking on a few decent disciples would not have been so terrible.
Up to that point, it had read like the ordinary life of a mage obsessed with his craft. So why had he not died? Why had he been living in that state all this time? The answer came in the very next passage.
In the moment of death, when I had laid everything down, a new revelation came to me.
I grasped a method to extend this body's lifespan beyond all measure, but it was futile. It required the flesh of a being of high caliber as a sacrifice. With this dying body, I could not even seek out such a sacrifice — barely clinging to life within the barrier I had just managed to raise. How cruel a fate this is.
I glimpsed, faintly, a path to being reborn as an eternal, perfect existence. I cannot end it here. Even bound to this place, unable to move an inch, I will wait for someone to find this place. Though an eternity may pass, I will not vanish. I will wait...
A sacrifice... so that was why he had gone wild with joy the moment he saw me. Because of Emperor's Soul, I must have looked like a being of high caliber in his eyes.
The writing that followed grew increasingly unhinged. You could see his mind coming apart from being locked up alone for so long. I skimmed the rest and closed the book.
Nothing useful.
I just felt absurd. So this was not the location marked on the map, and this Enfirus was not the dungeon's creator. I had stumbled, by the most miserable coincidence, onto the sealed prison of a deranged ancient mage instead of the dungeon I had actually been looking for.
What kind of insane coincidence is this.
Had I picked up some kind of penalty when I got dropped into this game? If I could open a stat window, my Luck would probably be sitting at -99. It had been the same when I found Super Regeneration, the same when I found Immovable Barrier — every time I went looking for a Mystery, something went catastrophically wrong. I cursed under my breath again and stood up.
He had written in the diary that he did not intend to leave any legacy, so I doubted there were artifacts lying around. Still, I went back out through the passage and searched the rest of the place, just in case. I found nothing. All I learned was that this underground space was absurdly vast — easily a match for the Lord's castle I had been staying in. Had a complex this enormous been buried under this forest the whole time?
Feeling hollow, I turned to Ashel.
"Let's get out of here."
When we emerged, Raylo was nowhere to be seen.
Where'd she gone now?
I waited, thinking she might have stepped away to relieve herself, but time passed and she did not come back. There were no signs of a fight anywhere — everything looked exactly as it had when we had gone in. An ambush did not seem likely. Ashel, who had gone to scout the area on my orders, reported back.
"There do not appear to be any unusual traces."
"..."
I thought it over, then reached a conclusion.
She bolted.
It was the only explanation that fit. She might have seen Ashel's strength and gotten scared enough to run. We had all witnessed the ruins together — she could have figured we would kill her to keep her quiet.
The way back wasn't complicated, so it doesn't really matter...
I sighed inwardly. So where the hell was the dungeon Teir had actually discovered? I was not ready to just turn around empty-handed, so we kept looking. We continued in the direction the tree branches had been pointing.
After quite a while, we found another Luminous Tree. It had grown right up against a fairly large boulder, surrounded by dense undergrowth. I had a hunch and went in for a closer look. Pushing through the thick brush, I found a small passage between the rock and the ground.
"..."
I stared at the passage for a moment, then turned my head. Ashel had come up beside me and was looking down into it as well. Our eyes met.
Fuck...
The curse rose all the way to my throat before I swallowed it back down. So we had left this sitting here, gone off to find something completely useless, and that was why we had gone through all that hell.
KRAAANG!
I had Ashel widen the passage, and we went in. A narrow corridor opened into a wide chamber, and in the center stood giants of wood, still as carved marionettes.
I glanced at the pitiful levels hovering over their heads and clicked my tongue. Yeah. This was the place. The dungeon Teir had found.
A moment later, blue light kindled in their eyes, and ancient script flared to life along the side wall.
"Adventurer, face the trial."
"Overcome the trial and claim the legacy I have hidden in this dungeon."
"Evade the Guardians and destroy the mana stones at each edge of the chamber. Their movements will grow slower with each one destroyed, and they will stop when all are gone."
I looked around the chamber. Just as the text said, mana stones were set into the walls at each edge of the space. Destroying all of them was apparently the clear condition.
THOOM.
The Guardians started moving, lumbering toward us. I said to Ashel,
"Ashel."
"Yes."
"Clear them out."
KRAAAAAANG!
A single blow from Ashel sent every last Guardian flying.