The Doomed Fief’s Dying Lord (46)

“Here… the mana blood doesn’t crystallize.”

I muttered unconsciously.

It violated the laws of the Dungeon.

Mana exposed to a Dungeon’s atmosphere immediately turns into crystals.

There can be no bloodstains of mana in a Dungeon.

And of course, no pools made of mana.

‘Does only this room have the same composition as the surface and its atmosphere? What? How?’

I couldn’t find a way to explain this phenomenon.

And one of my advantages is how quickly I give up in situations like this.

I gave up trying to understand.

That seemed better for me.

Surely some rule is at work behind this phenomenon as well.

But explaining it is the job of scholars living in this world.

I’m a reader.

I don’t need to explain the fantastical and mysterious things that happen in this world.

Nor could I.

I just have to accept it as it is.

“Anyway, it’s certain there’s a clue here.”

“Well… I know that too.”

Suddenly Ronari spoke.

“That clue is too high to reach, though?”

She pointed at the blue basin on the ceiling.

I followed and looked at it as well.

The ceiling was high.

No matter how you look at it, there was no way to reach it.

“There must be some other device.”

I said that and looked around.

But there was nothing peculiar about the room.

There wasn’t even a suspicious stone, let alone any operable device.

Damn it.

Just when I’d given up trying to explain, another riddle demanded explanation.

I muttered.

“…It’s one mountain after another.“

“A mountain, huh.”

Ronari repeated my words in a tired voice.

She rubbed her cheek.

I looked at her.

“Ronari, any good inspiration?”

“Oh. You’re finally relying on me a bit?”

She grinned.

It was a lecherous smile.

But that kind of smile is my specialty.

I chuckled and said.

“I always rely on you. Please continue to take care of me.”

“…Ugh. That makes me uncomfortable.“

“Uncomfortable? I was just being honest.”

“The young master is the most unpleasant when he speaks honestly.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Anyway, nothing has come to mind yet. You should have experienced a situation like this before.”

The rest is the same.

Still, I had a thought.

I mentioned one of them.

“Then let’s try the easiest thing first. Ronari. Can you call people? The more, the better.”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“Didn’t I say ‘mountain’? Let’s stack people like a mountain. Try to reach that.”

I pointed at the basin on the ceiling.

Ronari let out a single exclamation.

“Ah.”

“It’s the stupidest method, but at least it’s intuitive. Try that first and then come up with another measure.”

“Mm. Okay.”

Ronari headed to room [0, 0].

Good.

At least I succeeded in getting her out of here.

Izack and Pietro were probably angry already.

I had dragged Ronari into this Dungeon with great effort.

And now this Dungeon looked like it might be our coffin.

If I involved her even at a point like this, Izack might kill me.

“So I’ll have to be the protagonist here. Sorry! Ronari.”

I approached the door through which Ronari had left.

And I closed that door.

I had just thought of a new method.

I had been thinking about Ronari’s hypothesis since earlier.

Ronari’s way of thinking.

According to it, this place was the center of the Dungeon’s defenses.

But would the true secret be revealed so openly while exposed like this?

That would be strange.

The Dungeon’s heart still wore its shell.

I had to consider this riddle part of the defense system.

No way would stacking people into a mountain to reach it do anything.

We have to make it drop its defenses.

How do we do that?

‘How, indeed.’

“We need to make this room perceive itself as being in a safe state.”

I immediately turned the thought into action.

I said earlier.

There are no devices to operate in this room, I said.

That was actually a lie.

There was one thing.

The door.

The doors that connect rooms to rooms.

I had just closed one of those doors.

This room had four doors.

What if I closed all the doors connected in every direction?

Wouldn’t the Dungeon then recognize this room as being in a safe state?

“Ugh. These are damn heavy.”

I grunted and closed all four doors.

Then I looked up at the basin on the ceiling again.

‘Please, let something happen. Please.’

I prayed silently.

But soon I regretted having thought that.

A strange sense of alienation, a microscopic feeling, brushed past me.

Nothing seemed to have changed.

Yet something had changed.

Like a summer gust rushing through an opened door, a tactile change arrived first.

Everything around me became heavy.

My breath caught in my throat.

And the real change came.

At that moment, the blue pool of liquid mana pooled in the basin on the ceiling began to pour down to the floor.

-Splashhhhhhhh!

The downpour, which I thought would end in an instant, did not stop.

There was far more liquid mana pooled in the ceiling than I had imagined.

It poured like crazy.

I retreated to the edge of the room.

What would happen if I got drenched in that much liquid mana?

Just imagining it was horrible.

But the liquid mana began to rise from the floor at once.

But wait.

Isn’t this a drowning scene?

The touch of liquid mana against my ankles sent chills down my spine.

It was neither cold nor hot.

It seemed to be exactly the same temperature as my body.

Maybe its thermal conductivity differs from ordinary materials?

No, damn it, who has time to think about that!

What the hell do I do!?

Then a sound came from beyond the door I had stepped back from.

-Thump thump thump

“…Young master!?“

Ronari?

“…Wait, everyone, pull this. Why won’t this open!?“

A noisy commotion could be felt from beyond the door.

I alternated my gaze between the door and the basin.

The roaring sound of water pouring from the basin drowned out the commotion outside the door.

I felt the urge to scream at the closed door to save us.

“Damn…!”

But an intuition that I mustn’t do that held me back.

It seemed there was no plan even outside the door.

If they could have opened it, they would have come in already.

While I fretted, the liquid mana had already risen to my knees.

The glowing liquid mana made the room as bright as daylight above ground.

“Wow. This is really fucked.”

I let out a hollow laugh.

I almost became a drowned hero all by myself.

At least it’s a relief that others didn’t get dragged in.

The liquid had now risen to my chest.

All I could do was hope this choice was the right one.

But then.

“Huh?”

-Swhooooshhhhh…

Suddenly the downpour stopped.

The basin on the ceiling had emptied.

The basin on the ceiling, when I looked up, wasn’t a pool but a well.

A well piercing upward, defying gravity.

Inside that now-empty well, there was a spiral staircase.

“As I thought…!”

It was probably a staircase leading up to the surface.

I pushed through the pool of mana and moved down into the well.

I wanted to see the inside of the well more closely.

My progress was slow at first, but I began to gain speed.

Had I sped up?

No… no.

“Damn it… this…!”

The water level began to drop.

Right below the well in the ceiling.

Water was being sucked into that place.

It seemed a hole had opened there.

I struggled with all my might to avoid being drawn in.

But there’s no way a person could resist the force of the current, which had risen to my chest, being sucked into one spot.

I needed something to hold onto if I was going to survive!

A vortex formed in the center of the room, matching the circumference of the well in the ceiling.

A voice echoed in a corner of my mind.

‘Ah, I’m really fucked…’

I was drawn into the invisible hole in the floor.

So it’s a drowning ending after all.

No, maybe a crystallization ending.

There’s no way my body would remain intact after being submerged in so much liquid mana.

Soon my body would become a statue of Mana crystal.

Or perhaps I’d become a slime of liquid mana.

My head was submerged in mana.

-Gurgle

My lungs expelled the last of the air.

Mana began filling my lungs instead of air.

I wanted to cough, but I couldn’t.

It was painful.

After all that struggle.

I end up dying so meaninglessly.

’….’

…How many seconds.
How many minutes had passed?

The turbulent current of mana that had harshly engulfed and pressed me grew calm.

I slowly sank toward the floor like sediment in a water bottle.

It was a strange sensation.

‘Why… am I still alive?’

I could breathe.

Surely my lungs had been soaked in mana.

I should have crystallized, or been trapped in an endless suffocation nightmare.

Yet I was breathing perfectly fine.

I felt a peculiar foreign sensation deep in my chest.

It felt like my lungs had grown heavy.

‘The liquid mana must have filled my lungs. But, but why…’

How was I able to breathe?

Could mana be substituting for oxygen?

I mustered the courage to open my eyes.

What appeared before my eyes was an entirely different scene.

Unlike the opaque surface, under the surface of the mana it was transparent.

I could see right through everything.

My eyes didn’t sting.

Even exposed to so much mana, why wasn’t I dying right away?

The question remained unanswered and threw another riddle at me.

That riddle was…

Too vast for me to solve.

There was a sea of mana there.

An endlessly wide and endlessly deep sea of mana.

I floated there and looked down into the fathomless abyss.

Below, a stream of light flowed.

It looked like the Milky Way seen through an astronomical telescope.

‘Is that… the flow of ley-line mana?’

Moreover, that huge column stretched up from that Milky Way-like stream to the ceiling.

’…A tree? No, a tower?’

It seemed like some gigantic mechanism.

Could I even call it a device?

In any case, its scale was practically geographical.

It seemed taller than all the towers in Seoul combined…

And its thickness could be believed to be the veins of this planet.

If an orbital elevator existed in reality, would it feel like this?

An SF spectacle encountered in a fantasy world.

What on earth is all this?

What is its true identity?

I couldn’t tell.

Even if I knew, I couldn’t prove it.

I felt like a castaway drifting through space.

But there was more there than just the sea of mana and that gigantic column.

The mysterious hole I had emerged from.

There was some structure connected to it.

The structure was merely an incomplete fragment, like a small piece of a puzzle.

It couldn’t be called a complete building.

But there was an inhabitant in that structure.

‘Dungeon Core…!’

Attached to the structure was a Dungeon Core that looked like a whale’s heart or a pulsating tumor.

I swam toward it.

As if I had become a castaway in space, I needed something to hold onto.

It didn’t matter if that was the Dungeon Core’s home.

That structure was the only relatively realistic-sized object I’d encountered down here.

I stood there and looked down again.

The sea of mana.

And the mana Milky Way.

‘If I cast magic on that…’

What would happen to me?

A magic that turns liquid mana into crystals.

Could I make this vast sea of mana solid as well?

If I tried, I’d probably die.

With that thought, I looked around the Dungeon Core.

‘But I have no other way to destroy you.’

In the end, I had found the exit out of the Dungeon and the Dungeon Core.

The answer was in front of me.

I would smash this, and people would leave the Dungeon alive.

‘Without ever knowing the identity of this gigantic mystery…’

The sea of mana spread out beneath the Dungeon.

And this colossal structure.

Was I destined to sacrifice myself never knowing about these things?

But then, at that perfect moment, that bastard appeared.

Status Window.

[Milestone achieved.]

[Denabi’s Overseer, Shane Astrier.]
[Look behind you.]

‘Behind…?’

I unconsciously turned around.

The Dungeon Core was still in its place.

But was there something else?

The Status Window highlighted it like a head-up display interface.

I squinted and looked at it.

Something embedded in the Dungeon Core, a thin, long object.

[World Quest found.]

[Quest: (Censored) Device Activation]

[Completion Condition: Collect the Four Seasonal Swords (0/4)]

[Would you like to accept the quest?]