Excavation
"Seems like this is the last one."
After finishing off the Chromatic Find with our bare hands, we scoured the surroundings and collected the remains of our fallen comrades.
This kind of ruin...
We'd been promised sweet rewards for unexplored depths, yet no one had any objections.
Though, to be precise, only Priscilla, me, and Mea were still standing.
No need to say it out loud, but I chose to gather the others first.
Mea respected our decision without question.
Collecting the remains of the six corpses—excluding Theresa and Priscilla—had taken longer than the fight against the Chromatic Find.
They weren't even gathered in one spot, and some were so shredded it was a miracle they hadn't been completely torn apart.
"...I guess it's fortunate they weren't eaten."
"Too easy on us."
Theresa spoke coldly.
The Chromatic Find had been peeled alive, its useful organs ripped out while the creature still breathed, only then falling still.
A monster's tenacity was real, but I doubt it hadn't cursed its own sturdy body for the first time in its life.
Monsters feel pain, after all.
The Find's organs were safely stored by Theresa.
"As the enemy's, I'll make good use of them."
"But what about after this? Any way to carry them?"
"No. It's not impossible, but their volume is too much."
Theresa's body reinforcement was nearly Ray's level—at night only.
Still, even if we ignored the weight, the rigor mortis had set in, making those six bodies impossibly heavy to move.
I wondered if each of us should take two, but their condition was far from good...
"We're burning them."
"Hmm."
"Don't make that face. In the Abyss, a funeral is enough for a mourning. Everyone who's entered here has made that peace. If they haven't, they just died, and that's natural."
Theresa, of all people, was launching into one of her long rants that looked nothing like her usual self.
It was clearly meant to comfort me.
If even she felt the need to say that...
"I know. Down there, they never even got a proper funeral."
"...I know."
Of the sixteen new recruits and one instructor who survived, everyone else would have to become the training facility's underground as their grave.
Fiona had said they were going to dig up the remains, but whether they could even find them was still unknown.
Thinking about it that way, Theresa's words about "mourning" made a strange kind of sense.
Theresa placed a flower atop each corpse.
It had been among the supplies we recovered along with the remains.
The gesture looked like an offering to the harmony of the dead.
"Gladiolas. The flower on the crown of the God of the Book of the Dead. Perfect for honoring the deceased. The meaning of the flower is funeral. A guide to the underworld?"
"That's right. I had no idea anyone would use it here."
Theresa spoke with a bitter edge, her lips trembling slightly.
She was reciting an incantation.
As her lips closed, white flames rose from the flower and engulfed the bodies.
White flames see off those who have left this world.
May they rest in peace.
May these white flames take the departed from this dark, full-of-death world and free them from the gloom of the afterlife.
'This is the Abyss.'
A place where you never know when or where you'll die.
They never would have imagined it.
Even during training, on the first floor, they would die like this.
No one could have guessed.
But the moment you set foot in the Abyss, you bring along uninvited companions.
A shadow wielding a scythe that follows to take your life.
While chewing on the lesson death had taught us, I felt a little—very little—understanding of the Abyss.
The change brought by their deaths and my shallow enlightenment wasn't just about my mood.
But I didn't notice it right away.
The Blank Grimoire on my belt.
One by one, a single character was filling the blank pages.
§
So now it was harvest time.
The Chromatic Find's hide was far too big and had been interfering with movement, so we'd hidden it in a safe spot.
Theresa had cast a Blastoma school alarm magic spell, declaring it "ours," so no one could easily touch it even if they found it.
Anyway, the four of us—Mea, Theresa, and me, with Priscilla still out of commission—moved deeper, scouring the surroundings.
Since it was indoors, it was dark inside.
Even the glow dust bugs couldn't follow this far.
But three mages (Priscilla kept on standby) were gathered, so that little bit of darkness was nothing.
Each of us floated a light orb and probed suspicious spots as we advanced.
And after some time, the soaring expectations crashed hard.
"What's there?"
Yeah.
Nothing.
"...Just a trap?"
"It was pretty tough to fool us at first."
The Chromatic Find really was the harvest.
Its hide changed color with the surroundings, hid the mana color, and even suppressed mana, making it an extremely useful monster for the first floor.
It was something even high-ranking explorers coveted.
Add in the Chromatic Find's mana stone.
Actually the biggest mana stone you could get from the first floor, and refining it into equipment would produce something on the upper tier—not just for a Novice like me, but even for Regulars.
The results from the training were immense.
Everyone would be stunned if they heard I pulled off something like this in training.
It might even get a title.
"Training to catch a Chromatic Find—"
Just like catching a bear at ten years old.
But if this really was the end, it felt too bitter.
"Theresa, anything?"
"Nothing."
Among us three, Theresa was the sharpest-eyed.
Day or night, the current darkness made no difference.
Even she couldn't find it, so had we really been cleaned out?
"Then we're heading back..."
"Here."
Mea's voice cut through mine.
"Path."
This, right here.
"I knew it was Mea. Demon magic?"
"...No."
When I got closer and checked Mea's face, something looked off.
Not the joy of discovery, but a pale, worried expression.
"Mea?"
"Let's go in."
After saying that, Mea touched the wall, and a path truly opened.
With a sense of unease, Theresa and I followed Mea in silence.
"Here's... a workshop?"
Theresa's first words upon seeing the room connected to the path.
The workspace of mages.
A place for researching magic and developing magic tools—more workshop than laboratory.
And this one was even more so.
"Looks like an alchemist worked here."
After checking the empty glass bottles that had evaporated, Theresa spoke.
"An alchemist... There aren't many books."
There should have been experiment logs or something.
"The scum must have swept it clean."
"The impostor. Spreading rumors about this place."
"Probably."
Still, we searched thoroughly just in case something was left behind.
The room was quite large, with a staircase leading down, giving us a good search area.
I stopped searching the upper floor early and descended.
Honestly, even if they were left behind, they wouldn't have been up there.
It looked like they'd been thoroughly cleaned out.
The lower floor had a huge magic circle.
"Oh, this is it."
The power that had been absorbing mana.
It seemed to originate from here.
No, this was definitely it.
I could sense the mana that the bastard had absorbed from Seir and Leraje.
And the moment I recognized the mana of my contracted demons inside it.
I knew.
This magic circle would obey my control.
It had to, structurally.
This was real.
This was what the owner of this workshop had wanted to preserve.
I moved the mana.
The magic circle, which had stopped, began to glow again.
Uuuuung—
Along with the resonance of the mana, the floor's movement made a deafening sound that filled the entire room.
The sudden noise sent Mea and Theresa crashing down from upstairs.
"Roman?"
"Found something?"
When I answered their questions.
I was standing right at the center of the magic circle.
"Something like that."
A stone pillar rising from the floor the magic circle had opened.
Inside it was a book, and a potion bottle with no signs of evaporation—unlike the ones in the upper floor bottles that had been there for a long time.
I carefully flipped open the first page of the book.
"For my beloved and hated little sister."
Even I, who didn't know calligraphy, thought the handwriting was quite archaic.
Fortunately, the characters written were ones I recognized.
The paper was incredibly stiff, as if some preservation magic had been applied.
But once I turned the next page, I couldn't read the book anymore.
The characters were the same, but the content was some kind of cipher.
The same went for Theresa and Mea.
"I need to receive the emotions."
The results of the search ended there.
After that, we continued searching for a while longer, but nothing else came out.
"Let's head back."
There were no objections to my words.
Priscilla was supported by Theresa, Mea and I took the front and back, and we climbed back to the surface.
Outside, several exploration teams that had been about to enter were in sight.
Latecomers, perhaps.
Unfortunately, we were too slow.
They must have realized it, because the other explorers stared at us in confusion.
Since we were openly carrying the Chromatic Find's hide, that gaze carried more meaning.
Even those who didn't understand what a Chromatic Find was seemed to sense that it was valuable.
The ones who were gleaming with excitement cautiously checked us out before slowly approaching.
If they thought they could take advantage, they'd picked the wrong fight.
In the tense situation.
My voice stopped me just as I was about to pull up Leraje's mana and counter.
"Whoa, what? Roman and Theresa. You guys came too?"
A light tone as if it was just air, and a voice that sounded arrogant the moment you heard it.
There couldn't be two people like this owner in the world.
"Dustin?"
"We were one step late. Hey, you guys. If you don't want to make the Blastoma and Kelsus schools our enemies, then stand down a bit."
The situation was sorted out in an instant.
We were traveling with Dustin and the people from Kelsus academy, whom he was training—the kind of academy famous for good character, and truly kind people.
I still couldn't understand how someone with Dustin's personality had come out of such a place.
On the way back, the journey took more time than the way down.
Ascending was harder and took longer.
After a week-long journey.
We had returned.
To the Main Base.
The training was finally over for me.
**The training session has ended. Congratulations on completing the basic training course on the first floor of the Abyss. You have received a new title: "Grave Robber of the First Floor."** **+50 Exploration Experience. Level up complete!**