The Abyss's Silent Echoes
I paused at the threshold of Main Base, the familiar hum of the generator tower fading into the deeper silence of the first layer. Something felt off. A wrongness in the air, like the faint static before a lightning strike.
Mea's hand had frozen mid-page on the relic notebook she'd been flipping through earlier. The pages lay still, no more scribbles, no more soft murmurs of discovery. And then... nothing. Just that sudden, heavy quiet.
I gave her the space she needed to steady herself. She always processed things in layers, this quiet dark elf of ours. A single night of deep, dreamless sleep after bargaining away her worst nightmares? That had to hit her like a tonic poured straight into her veins. She deserved the time to breathe it in.
If my hunch held true, today we'd reach the ruins. And with everything ahead—real combat, real stakes—we couldn't afford to be anything but at full strength. Purely in terms of raw power, Mea had always been the anchor of our duo. She moved like shadow and starlight, her shadow wolves never lagging, her curses landing with surgical precision. Mea carried the weight, and I carried the flair. Together, we burned brighter than any solo run.
Main Base to the ruins... only five days on foot if you measured by pure physical conditioning. Five days for a regular-ranked explorer who knew how to push their body until it screamed. But the ruins felt... closer than they should. Unnaturally close.
There were a few reasons for that.
The transfer points of the gates shifted. Main Base itself moved with them, like the whole settlement was always dancing on the edge of the Abyss. Second, people tended to ignore the shadows right beneath the streetlamps—me included, back in the day. And the biggest reason of all? The very terrain of the first floor. It wasn't flat. It was tiered, stepped like ancient giant staircases carved into the earth itself—sharp drops, sheer cliffs, nothing forgiving. The entire first layer of the Abyss looked like the planet had cracked open and decided to show us its bones.
In our earlier conversation, when I'd casually said we'd "come down" to the ruins, I'd meant more than just stepping into a tunnel. It had been a reminder of how vertical this whole world was.
Exploring the Abyss first floor meant both horizontal ambition and vertical necessity at once. The distant floor was a nightmare to reach, but descending? That could be managed in a fraction of the time. Of course, the danger made it a gamble. But I was going to change that.
I'd better learn flight magic. Surprisingly few mages bothered teaching it. It sat in the universal spell list, sure, but most people never bothered to pick it up. Not when the second floor alone could make it useless, and the efficiency ratings were pathetic. Still, if I was going to call myself a mage, I owed it to the sky to soar.
My thoughts had drifted that far when I felt it—a subtle shift in the air behind me.
I turned just in time to see Mea closing the last few steps until she stood right in front of me, eyes blazing.
"How did you do that?"
She pressed in close, close enough that I could feel the heat of her body even through the layers of shadow. Her gaze—those amber eyes—were a storm of every emotion at once: confusion, joy, shock, hope, doubt, fear. All of it swirling in quiet, helpless waves.
Her composure had shattered completely. She stared up at me with raw, desperate need, waiting for answers that wouldn't come.
I played it cool, flashing her my most innocent smile. "What do you mean?"
"Seriously...!"
"My contract price?"
"Yeah! Nothing! I didn't have any nightmares... not just that. Other prices too... You... what exactly are you? How did you pull that off? What did you do that even Hecate couldn't..."
"I don't know either."
I didn't dodge. I kept talking before she could unload any more.
"Everything was just a simple request."
"A request...?"
"Yes. You looked so miserable, like a nightmare was eating you alive. I asked for help."
Her reaction wasn't quite the understanding I hoped for. Or gratitude. Or even the usual sympathetic shoulder-rub. She just blinked, stunned into silence.
Then, after a long pause, she managed to speak again—still completely blank-faced. But the meaning underneath had changed. Her usual blank stare was one of deliberate indifference. This one felt like pure, wide-eyed bewilderment.
"You... asked a demon for help?"
"Yes. They're all pretty good ones. That's all there is to it."
She stiffened, the color draining from her face. The words died on her tongue again.
But now it was time to move.
Mea had stayed up for days straight. One night of sleep was long overdue. We couldn't afford to linger. If we waited much longer, we'd end up traveling under the cover of night, and I wanted to avoid that.
"Mea, how about we take a quick check here? The distance is short, and the price shouldn't be too high."
The reason Fiona had naturally assigned Teresa to me and Mea without hesitation. Because we were demonologists.
Demonologists were the pariahs of the mage society—classed as dangerous, shunned, kept out of almost every alliance. But even among outcasts, we still had one final lifeline.
"...Yeah. Got it."
Straight to the hunt.
There was no spell for finding people. There was one for tracking special brands, sure. But nothing beat demonology when it came to simple searches.
It was basic demonic magic—summoning demons and commanding them to locate whatever you wanted. The most common authority demons possessed. In fact, the guy who found Ray for us had been a demonologist too.
When it came to finding things, demonology had no peer.
The downside was that the farther the target, the more potent the obsessions and prices became. But if the price was right? Anyone could be found.
That was the demonologist's ultimate survival tool. In other words, a glorified information broker!
"I found her. She's nearby."
"Amazing. No clues at all, yet you get the exact location."
"...I'm the one who's amazing."
A double meaning, no doubt.
The price had been removed.
And yet we couldn't even use the basic tracking magic of demonology.
Everything was utterly baffling.
The first point was something to brag about. The second... well, it was a problem.
Especially since both Seir and Leraje possessed weak authorities in that specific area.
If I summoned some low-tier demon just to use tracking magic, I'd be insulting the dignity of my count and duke. They'd throw a fit.
"Hmph. Let's go."
"...Not that direction."
Oh.
§
Leading the way while I stumbled along behind, trying to use tracking magic, Mea moved with the grace of someone who had no idea where her mind was. Her thoughts were somewhere entirely different.
It wasn't a simple substitution.
Substitution only replaced part of the price with something else. It couldn't erase the price entirely.
Most importantly, it was something the demonologist himself had to do. No one else could pay it for them.
So what Roman had done... was clearly a transfer.
When the burden of a price exceeded what one person could bear, demonologists created the last resort to share it and avoid doom.
One final workaround, but it only changed where the price was collected. It didn't cancel it. It only made the total heavier.
In other words, Roman had taken on her entire price as a more expensive one.
The nightmare ownership. The memory theft that erased old emotions.
All of it.
Yet one detail refused to sit right.
Roman was a beginner demonologist who couldn't even cast tracking magic.
And yet the demonic presence I felt behind him felt like that of a high-ranking Great Marquis.
The knowledge gap was impossible to bridge.
Roman answered my unspoken question with a simple shrug.
"I only asked the demon for help."
If that was the case, the entire process—including the transfer—had been handled by the demon...
Was that even possible?
A Great Marquis, casually summoned to do that much?
For Mea, it was the most unprecedented thing imaginable.
Perhaps... it was true.
That old story I'd heard once and dismissed as nonsense... maybe it had resurfaced for a reason.
If that was the case...
Mea suddenly remembered something she'd forgotten.
"Hey, Roman. Thanks for the other day... wait, Roman?"
When she turned around...
All I saw was the back of Roman sitting on the ground.
"Mea, can we descend this way?"
§
In the darkness.
Only a single faint beam of light pierced the gloom.
Two ragged breaths—exhaustion and terror intertwined—echoed in the space.
"I'm going to die... just like them... Tuberos... Osmant... I'm going to die too..."
Curled in the corner, Priyera lay huddled and trembling. Teresa watched her with pity.
"Haa..."
Only the first-floor ruins.
A Senior-rank Priyera and five Regular explorers.
Plus Teresa and one temporary license holder—eight people in total.
A regular expedition team on paper, but in reality capable of pushing toward the third floor.
That arrogance. That complacency. That had cost them everything.
Teresa was the only one who had managed to drag Priyera out alive.
The root of their failure was simple.
Every single member was a pure mage.
If just two of them had been martial artists, they would never have been caught like this.
"...This is tough."
Priyera, reduced to nothing but a burden, was basically a walking dead weight.
With her condition, escaping was already nearly impossible. Adding her would make it hopeless.
"We have to hold on until nightfall."
If they were caught, could they stop it?
Teresa shook her head.
No way.
She couldn't even run while carrying Priyera.
But the reality was cruel.
A sound—something approaching—reached her ears.
"Ha... Yeah. That's the Abyss for you."
Teresa stood up.
Back to Priyera, she focused on the sound.
"Above...?"
Was it an ambush from above?
A single, vicious bastard.
Teresa poured every last drop of mana into her body.
The strength she felt was laughably weak.
But she had to fight.
She couldn't die here.
And when a chunk of the ceiling suddenly collapsed, revealing its occupant, Teresa's eyes widened in disbelief.
She hadn't expected anything like this here.
"Roman...?"
Black hair, exotic features.
A face that should have been unforgettable to anyone.
Even someone as uninterested as Teresa remembered him clearly from the temporary license exam.
Roman spoke as if he had known all along that Teresa was here.
"Luckily, you're all right."
"Why are you here... ah!"
It was Fiona's doing.
Roman's ability was spatial translocation—pure, innate magic. No external mana required.
In terms of rescue and escape, Roman was unmatched.
Fiona had sensed Teresa's crisis and sent him without hesitation.
Of course.
Who else could know Teresa's danger and Roman's abilities well enough to send him?
Teresa understood perfectly and nodded.
"Fiona."
The obvious reason didn't matter.
Teresa felt an unprecedented wave of emotion swell inside her chest.
They had only left the training facility together.
In truth, this was a one-sided sacrifice on Roman's part that had turned into a bond.
For the sake of that bond, Roman had returned.
Even if it meant burning his own life once more.
Comrades. Friends.
Words Teresa could never fully understand.
Teresa herself had almost no bonds with even her fellow academy members.
Only one person.
Only Fiona shared the kind of emotion Teresa could call true friendship.
Even when Roman had helped her escape the underground, the gratitude had never reached the level of comrades.
This time was different.
Not in the training facility.
Not in the Abyss.
Even though Roman didn't need to move.
Yet he had moved anyway.
Could that mean... Roman truly cared for them like comrades?
Fiona asked for help, yes... but no. We should descend first.
At those words, Teresa's excitement crashed. Her face twisted in alarm.
"No! Don't come down! Stay... there, wait..."
But it was too late.
Thud.
"Eh? Why?"
Teresa stared blankly at Roman, now standing on the floor.
And murmured.
"Here... it sucks in mana."
Right after Teresa had revealed the secret of this ruin.
She had realized she still had one last lifeline—Roman's companionship.
"Roman, don't get too ahead of yourself."
Unfortunately, that lifeline had also fallen to the ground.
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