An Unexpected Encounter

Crack!

With a heavy, air-shattering smash, the skull of a crawling skeleton shattered into powder. Taking advantage of the brief opening, three iron-tipped spears thrust viciously toward my torso. Snapping my training blade back, I stepped back two paces and whipped the flat of the sword around in a wide arc, swatting all three spearheads aside.

"Seriously, give me a break...!"

Crushing the skulls of the spearmen skeletons in a single decisive follow-through, I muttered a breath of annoyance under my breath. Taken individually, ordinary skeletons were feeble cannon fodder, but when packed together in a tight, treacherous dungeon like the Ancient Lich's Tomb, there was hardly anything more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠obnoxious.

Wiping away the dripping sweat from my brow, I glanced over my shoulder. Behind me, scattered across the narrow, straight corridor, lay a grim carpet of broken bone fragments. Having cut down well over a hundred skeletons already, the end of this damned hallway had to be close.

Kicking aside a rusted sword that snagged on my boot, I pressed forward at a measured pace.

Despite its grand, ominous name, the Ancient Lich's Tomb possessed a layout that was brutally simple and thoroughly vicious: one long, dead-straight corridor guarded by unending waves of skeleton soldiers, interspersed with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠relentless, unpredictable floor traps. To make matters worse, despite throwing waves of numbers at the player, the narrow linear layout made large-scale area-of-effect spells nearly impossible to angle, while skeletons spawned in staggered intervals to minimize the effectiveness of piercing magic.

And as the final insult to anyone relying on magic, the dungeon's ambient field doubled the mana cost for any wide-area spells.

Only by overcoming all that absurd artificial difficulty could one reach the very end of the corridor, where the dungeon's core awaited—an artifact I desperately needed right now.

"Ah. There it is."

No sooner had the words left my lips than a pale blue glow caught the edge of my vision. Perched upon a lonely stone altar at the corridor's terminus rested a single, luminous blue orb.

At the exact same moment, that familiar, grating clatter of bone echoed through the damp cavern. The stone floor between me and the orb began to shudder violently as skeletons clad in jagged plates of rusted iron slowly pulled themselves upright.

These were different from the common fodder I had cleaved through earlier. Though their armor was crudely assembled, these elite vanguard troops formed disciplined ranks and gripped their weapon hilts in eerie unison.

Shring—

With a screech of pitted metal, rusted blades snapped into position, leveled straight at me. Hollow, vacant eye sockets devoid of life locked onto my frame, radiating a thirst for slaughter on an entirely different level from the rank-and-file undead.

In response, the Stigma etched into my skin flared with ink-black light.

Dark motes dissolved into the gloom of the corridor. The skeletons' hollow eye sockets seemed to freeze in bewilderment as their aimed blade-tips swept through empty air. An instant later, I materialized directly behind their formation, planting my left foot and dropping the tip of my training blade low to my right. The quiet tap of my boot dispersed softly down the tomb's stone floor.

Rattle. Clack. Clatter.

Half a beat late, a chaotic chorus of jarring bone echoed through the corridor. The elite skeletons scrambled to wheel around, but I was already in motion.

"Hup...!"

With a sharp, focused exhale, I swung the blunt edge of the practice sword, its length heavily imbued with mana and wreathed in roaring black flame.

Boom!

A thunderous shockwave shuddered through the enclosed space. The dense shroud of mana trailing along the blade carved a thick, radiant arc through the shadows, cleanly cleaving through the cluster of skeletons in a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠single sweep. Rusted iron plate vanished into the pitch-black fire. Packed with raw magical force, the strike pulverized brittle, decayed bone to ash.

In an instant, the bodies of all twelve elite skeletons collapsed into a lifeless heap.

"Whew..."

Letting out a soft sigh, I slowly lowered my weapon and assessed my condition. A few shallow scratches dotted my forearms, and my clothes had suffered a couple of minor tears, but none of it mattered. I had anticipated taking some scuffs from the start. Unless one had attained the realm of a Swordmaster, no warrior could push through that kind of sheer volume without getting nicked once or twice. Flesh and blood simply struggled against overwhelming numbers.

If there was a silver lining, it was that my stamina hadn't drained nearly as much as I feared. For all their overwhelming numbers, skeletons suffered from abysmal durability. Even with an unsharpened practice sword, hitting them with enough blunt momentum was more than enough to shatter them into splinters.

"...Now then, let's claim the prize."

Muttering softly to myself, I approached the stone altar.

Hummmm—

The azure orb vibrated with a faint, resonant hum. Buried deep beneath the academy for decades, perhaps centuries, this jewel had continuously siphoned ambient mana from the earth. Naturally, almost all of that accumulated energy had been burned off maintaining the dungeon itself, so it held little immediate juice for me to harvest right away. But that didn't matter.

The real reason I wanted the core was its innate traits: Mana Drain and Mana Storage.

Either ability alone was absurdly powerful, but combined into a single sphere, this artifact was the textbook definition of a late-game growth item. In its nascent state, it was borderline useless—incapable of absorbing even basic beginner-tier magic and possessing a reservoir barely large enough to cast a single elementary spell. But once nurtured to its later stages, its capacity expanded into a bottomless ocean, while its passive barrier could automatically devour virtually any mid-to-low-tier spell hurled at its wielder.

"...Time to get out of here."

Grinning with satisfaction at the haul, I reached out and lifted the sphere from the altar.

The orb flickered with blue light a few times before dulling into a clear, dormant crystal. Simultaneously, with a grinding rumble, the stone altar cracked and collapsed inward.

I hastily tucked the sphere into my inner coat pocket and turned on my heel—or rather, I tried to.

"...Ugh?!"

Before I could complete the turn, the icy, biting chill of a steel blade pressed flush against the side of my throat.

My mind kicked into overdrive. For me to have failed to sense an approach entirely was beyond abnormal. No matter how distracted I might have been carving through skeleton hordes, there was no way someone could have crept up behind me in a straight, unobstructed corridor without triggering my instincts. Which meant whoever held this blade to my neck was at least my equal—if not an outright superior combatant.

Among the villains I know of who sneak into the academy during the early game, there shouldn't be anyone this powerful...?

"Who are—gh!"

I opened my mouth to probe for an identity, but the only response was the edge biting harder against my skin. Feeling the razor-sharp steel press dangerously close to my carotid, I slowly raised both hands into the air.

At the same time, I covertly summoned my status interface before my eyes.

"A-All right. I won't resist."

Dammit. If I'd known this would happen, I would have taken the extra trouble to seal the dungeon entrance behind me.

Under normal circumstances, entry required a key that wasn't supposed to surface until the mid-game storyline. In other words, by using my meta-knowledge to crack it open early and leaving the door unlocked, I had walked straight into a trap of my own making.

"..."

Gritting my teeth, I stared at the prompt hovering in my field of view. My mana pool sat at D-. Between using my Stigma to force entry into the dungeon, fighting through double mana costs, and wreathing my weapon in black fire, I had zero reserves left for another spatial jump. That is... assuming I hadn't just acquired the Ancient Lich's Dungeon Core.

Drawing a shallow breath, I shut my eyes. In that instant, the brand on my skin ignited.

"Ah, a Stigma Bearer?! Wait a min—!"

As my form dissolved into black particles, a strangely familiar feminine voice cut through the dark corridor. Materializing directly behind her back, my hand snapped straight to my sword hilt.

"―?!"

My target was her lower legs. In all my thousands of hours playing the game, I had never once encountered an anomaly like this, so whatever happened, I needed to keep her alive to question her.

With that resolve locked in my mind, my blade tore out of its sheath like a streak of lightning. It pierced the gloom—a surprise counter launched from an angle humanly impossible to evade.

"Ngh...!"

Claaaaang!

A bone-jarring impact reverberated down the stone walls. In the split second of deflection, the girl's massive blade traced an uncanny, bizarre trajectory through the air. I had no idea what school of swordsmanship she wielded, nor ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could I decipher which vital point that unnatural arc was tracking. Plunged in near pitch-black darkness, I couldn't even make out her face.

Yet every instinct honed across five brutal years of surviving as a Gold-tag adventurer screamed in absolute terror. Don't try to parry that. If you try to block it, you die. Move!

Throwing all my weight backward, I leaped two paces back. A razor-sharp, crescent-shaped wave of pressurized force ripped through the exact coordinates where my throat had been a heartbeat prior.

Rumbleeee...

Deprived of its core, the entire dungeon began to convulse. With the ancient magical power source that had anchored the structure for centuries abruptly removed, the stone ceiling wept dust and debris.

Fwump—

Dislodged by the tremor, an unlit torch tumbled from a sconce, ignited by stray residual sparks as it rolled between us. For the first time, yellow firelight washed over our features.

Even with the corridor illuminated, my blade remained frozen mid-air.

"Ah...?"

The moment I saw the face behind the massive greatsword pointed straight at me, my entire body locked up in disbelief.

Dark navy hair cascaded past her shoulders, tangled and unkempt like a bird's nest. Beneath heavy, bruised dark circles, a pair of exhausted ruby-red eyes reflected the dancing torchlight. She was slightly shorter than me, yet she wielded a slab of steel nearly as tall as her own frame. Despite her disheveled state and hollow weariness, she carried a fragile, almost decadent beauty that refused to be diminished.

She looked radically different from the cheerful, energetic short-haired girl who appeared in the original canon. But having poured thousands of hours into Arcana Academy, I couldn't possibly mistake who she was.

Eldest daughter of the Southern Margrave. A prodigy of both sword and sorcery. The future commander of the Southern Knights. And the girl currently living her second life.

The only Regressor in this world—Regina Strelitzia—stood before me, completely and utterly broken.