Chapter 42

With the sound of the detonator activating, the world is engulfed in blinding white light.

My senses are paralyzed by the relentless surge of heat and light, by the flash and the tempest, my entire body burning hot.

The hem of my black robe flares, and my white hair writhes, consumed by the flames.

My brain, caught off guard by the sudden explosion, didn’t even have time to conjure the word ‘death.’ A normal mage would have erected a shield, minimizing the damage, but that was not an option available to me.

…Or perhaps, even a normal mage wouldn’t have been able to withstand this explosion with a barrier.

Lir, too, had failed to raise a shield.

Even the elf, renowned for her agility and swift reactions, hadn’t managed to deploy one.

It was such an unforeseen appearance, so perhaps it was only natural.

The feeling of skin searing beneath my robe now makes itself known.

Belated agony crawls up my peripheral nerves, tormenting my brain.

My ribs and left wrist throbbed, as if fractured clean through.

Soon this agony would propagate, engulfing everything. And then, before long, like a television abruptly unplugged, my world would bleed into darkness.

… Thinking of it that way, despite being caught in the heart of a massive explosion, a bone-deep chill ran through me.

Shit. I don’t want to die.

“…Pull yourself together!”

Rex’s voice cut through the ringing in my ears.

You dead too?

Damn, that mine had some serious oomph. I knew it could take out a squishy mage, but to vaporize an orc barbarian in one go?

Guess that demon was pretty high level. The mine’s design was impressively…

“Damn it, is this really the time to be reviving the dead? Get him slung over your shoulder and move!”

Even through the brutal ringing, I could hear Trian’s voice.

Something was off. Trian should have been a good few meters from the blast’s epicenter.

“For the love of god, move your ass!”

“…O-okay, just a second!”

Lir’s voice, too, filtered through, faint but there.

Seriously, what, did that demon have a miniature nuke in his pocket?

One mine and the whole party gets wiped…

“…Hrk!”

A gasp exploded from my lips. I forced my eyes open, desperately trying to find the source of the sudden, agonizing pain.

My blurry vision swayed like mad. I saw it – the crimson glow of the orc’s skin.

I struggled to blink the blurriness from my vision, but couldn’t manage it; something thick and hard held me pinned.

When I managed to turn my head, globs of flesh that resembled drained toys stared vacantly into the air. The blackened floor and walls of the dungeon only registered after a moment.

‘…Am I…alive?’

“Clear the way, Rex!”

Before I could even process the wonder of survival, my vision blurred with a far more violent motion than before.

The sound of an axe cleaving through flesh, and the feeling of toxic ichor spraying past my cheek.

“…Rex?”

“Stay still!”

I mumbled the name of Rex, who carried me like a sack of grain on his shoulders, swinging his axe – crafted of artificial muscle – .

I blinked, unable to understand how I could possibly be alive.

As I continued to blink, my errant focus slowly began to return, and with clear vision I could vividly see Rex’s back, simmering like a witch’s cauldron soup.

Skin melting away, the poisonous blood of demons and mutated creatures soaking deep within.

The sight robbed me of speech for a moment.

The reason I was alive was simple, brutally clear.

Rex had shielded me with his immense back from the magic mine’s detonation that had occurred at near point-blank range.

I was indebted to Rex for my life, yet again.

The pain in my ribs and wrist intensified along with my returning focus. Suppressing a groan, I frantically turned my head, trying to comprehend the situation.

“We’re going back the way we came! Damn it, Lir! Keep your head down and close the gap! Stick to that Orc b*stard like glue!”

Accompanying Trian’s crisp curses, faint rumbling sounds began to echo between the globs of flesh.

The immense sound of the mine’s explosion must have finally disturbed the natives of this place.

“Just in case I need to say it, you wizards! Unless your life is truly hanging by a thread, don’t use large-scale magic! Any more attention and things will get complicated beyond our control!”

Trian shouted as soon as he realized I had regained consciousness on Rex’s shoulder.

“Huu, sss…!”

Rex’s rough breathing vibrated through my fragile body, past his broken ribs.

How many times did my vision blur? Rex swung his axe with all his might, retracing the path we had come, putting as much distance as possible between us and the source of the sound.

Passing those vacant-eyed mutants, we reached the next chamber.

“Incoming! One from the nine o’clock position!”

No sooner had Trian’s warning been uttered than a long spider leg shattered the doorway, making its entrance.

“Don’t stop, Rex! Getting as far away from the blast zone as possible is the priority!”

We hadn’t put enough distance between ourselves and where the explosion had occurred. Trian determined that we couldn’t get bogged down here, and kept yelling at us to run straight ahead.

Thump!

A gigantic spider, almost ten meters tall, shoved its leg through the small doorway, and soon its massive body squeezed into the room we occupied.

Enormous fangs bared towards Rex and me, poised to strike, when a steel-tipped arrow flew, hitting the spider’s eye with precision.

“Run, run!”

Rex trusted Trian’s cover and didn’t falter in his steps. Trian, with incredible speed, traversed from chamber to chamber, unleashing a rain of arrows, while Rire, with her head lowered, stuck close behind Rex.

Clang!

Shoving his steel-clad shoulder, Rex opened the door and moved into the next room.

The giant spider, momentarily stunned by the steel arrow in its eye, pursued relentlessly, showing no sign of being mortally wounded.

“This is insane… Rex! Axe up! There’s one straight ahead too! One big one and two smaller ones!”

After breaking through perhaps three or four more rooms, Trian unleashed another warning laced with curses.

“Activation, now!”

I bit down on my tongue, atop Rex’s swaying shoulders, focusing on the foreign sensation in my chest.

Thankfully, the artifact was functioning normally.

*Thunk!*

The moment we opened the door, a monstrous spider with four pairs of eyes and legs greeted us. The clever, agile beast seemed to have anticipated our path, its immense maw gaping directly in front of the doorway.

“Rex! Duck!”

The orc lowered his head instantly as my words left my lips. A thin, crimson line flashed past the back of his head, leaving a gaping hole in the giant spider’s mandibles.

*Whoosh!*

The air cracked, and my vision blurred. Then, a torrent of bright blue blood washed over us. Rex’s massive axe had widened the hole in the spider’s mouth, cleaving the creature’s torso in two.

Thankfully, the spider monster’s blood wasn’t poisonous. That was at least one advantage monsters had over the Variants.

*Whoosh!*

With each swing of Rex’s axe, my vision swam. I caught a glimpse of a steel arrowhead flying past my nose.

Simultaneously, the wet sound of flesh and organs being pierced echoed in the air.

Two spiderlings riding atop the bisected mother spider had leaped towards Rex’s head, but Trian’s two arrows found their marks perfectly, stopping them cold.

“Move!”

With no time to assess the situation, Rex started running again.

“Ugh…!”

Lir gasped in disgust at the sight of the burning spider guts and gore. I don’t know why that small voice was so clear, even as a damned ringing hammered in my head.

We ran, plastered with the spider’s remains. Lir sounded breathless, but we couldn’t afford to cater to her discomfort.

*Crash!*

From behind, a sound of flesh colliding echoed. Lir, it seemed, had tripped over a spider’s carcass, and Trian was forcefully hauling her up.

“Damn it, do I have to spell out ‘watch your feet’?! Snap out of it!”

Even an elf, whose forte was agility, would quickly fall behind if they lost focus for even a moment. I was truly grateful to be hanging like a sack of potatoes on Lex’s shoulder. If it were me, I would have been left behind, my life forfeit, before I even registered what was happening.

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

Behind us, the enormous spider with the arrow lodged in its eye continued to smash through doorways as it gave chase.

“One on the left in the next room, too! Ignore it and keep running!”

We continued to run, and run some more.

We retraced our steps through approximately forty to fifty chambers from the explosion’s epicenter, finally nearing the room where we had initially entered.

Having ignored every monster we encountered, we now had a pack of roughly seven massive spiders clinging to our heels.

We endured a chase lasting around ten minutes, separated by a distance of two or three rooms. Thankfully, the number of pursuing monsters didn’t increase.

“Damn it, only seven on our tail, huh….”

Within a dungeon, it’s paramount not to make loud noises that might attract the attention of the inhabitants. Especially in a high-level dungeon.

The best strategy is to achieve your objective quickly and escape without engaging in combat. If battle is unavoidable, the next best thing is to lure the monsters out one at a time to fight them.

To face seven high-level dungeon monsters simultaneously with a small group of just four or so people was, quite simply, the worst possible option.

But we had no other choice.

…If I’d known it would come to this, I would have brought a large force with us from the start.

“We fight in the next room! Mages, I’m emphasizing this again, absolutely no thunder-sounding spells!”

“Haa, inhale… haa…”

Lir seemed too occupied catching her breath to answer. She wiped the sweat trickling down her chin with the back of her hand, answering instead with a nod.

We had arrived at what was practically the dungeon’s entrance. Making a loud commotion in a place like this, especially now, would mean running not through a path we knew, but through a complete unknown.

Throwing ourselves, chased by something, into an unknown room riddled with traps and monsters was the easiest and fastest way for the party to be wiped out.

Thunk!

The moment Rex opened the door before him, he dropped me at the base of the corner.

There was no room to expect delicate handling. He almost threw me to the ground before immediately raising his axe, positioning himself flush against the door.

“Lir, Bin! Take the left wall! Quickly!”

Trian swiftly indicated where Lir and I should position ourselves, then stood glued to the right wall.

With a mage on the left and a ranger on the right, focusing a concentrated barrage through the narrow entrance, it was a surprisingly rational and ideal formation for something put together so hastily.

Even in this tense situation, Trian’s experience hadn’t gone anywhere.

“Uh…”

But my vision, as I leaned against the wall concentrating, began to sway for no apparent reason.

My legs lost their strength, my arms and legs trembled, and I couldn’t find the cause.

“Are you alright?! Can you move?”

Damn it, had I suffered an injury somewhere unseen?

Even with Rex carrying me that entire distance, my body wouldn’t obey my will.

It seemed the problem was that I had been somewhat caught up in the explosion of the mana mine. A groan escaped with every movement of my right shoulder, and my legs were trembling.

My vision kept wavering. I nearly fell twice while moving from where Rex had set me down to the spot Trian had pointed to.

“Shit…”

Lyr, who had already secured a spot, couldn’t bear it any longer and came toward me, offering a shoulder to lean on.

“Move it, mage! If you collapse now, it’s annihilation for all of us!”

Trian pushed me on with a booming voice.

“…Haa, haa.”

Even a textbook mage who’d invested somewhat in stamina could inevitably become dead weight on a battlefield where unforeseen accidents constantly occur.

A well-ordered formation could crumble in an instant, and in the chaos of close combat, a mage was no different from an ant caught in a bombardment.

What’s more, my own constitution had rock-bottom stats not only in stamina, but also agility, strength, even luck.

I’d been aware, to some extent, that this kind of moment would come.

…I knew it, alright.

“…Shit.”

But actually facing this moment, becoming a burden to the party, made something boil up from within. Perhaps it was shame, perhaps guilt, or maybe even anger directed at myself.

In a fierce battle where a single decision could determine life or death, what meaning was there for a mage who couldn’t unleash their full potential for the absurd reason of insufficient stamina?

I sucked in a ragged breath and, leaning against the wall, stubbornly forced my collapsed legs back up. My legs screamed in protest, but I ignored them.

If I couldn’t earn my keep here, everything they’d sacrificed for me until now would be for nothing.

They’d sacrificed for me, so now it was my turn to repay them…

“Huh.”

A distinct sensation registered under my feet as I moved forward, tense. Every nerve in my body was sharpened by tension, and my sensitive sense of touch detected something catching on the thin soles of my shoes.

I lowered my gaze to the ground to move whatever it was, a stone or something else, out of the way. If I tripped and fell while fighting, who knew what kind of disaster could unfold, so I had to deal with these things in advance.

…But the thing causing the odd sensation wasn’t something like a rock.

It was a crack.

So artificial, like the scars left by a gigantic axe, freshly made.

I turned my head slowly, driven by an instinctual unease.

Right next to where I stood, a door existed that Trian had warned never to open, and Rex, accordingly, had marked just in case.

No, not a door, but a gigantic Mimic disguised as one. A Mimic of level 40, large enough to swallow even the massive Rex in a single gulp.

…Son of a b*tch. As if I wasn’t already distracted, there’s a Mimic blatantly settled right next to me.

“It’s coming!”

A chill tightens its grip on my throat.

Before I could even warn Lir about the Mimic, a heavy thud resonated from behind the door Rex was pressed up against.

Thump!

A massive, spiked leg forced its way through the door, trying to cram itself in again.