Chapter 102
At first, I had planned to go down alone.
The final boss fights on each floor are a tough challenge for me, too.
I might not have the spare strength to protect anyone else.
But I soon changed my mind.
I turned around and looked at Sharon.
“Shall we go together?”
“Huh?”
“Because every miracle needs a witness.”
I said with a faint smile.
Today's opponent was probably the black mage who had been lurking as the hidden mastermind in the latter half of the 30th floor.
Since this would be the first battle between mages, I wanted to leave it on record.
It would also give me one more piece of content for Mage Gallery.
“Sharon, watch everything that happens today with your own eyes and tell everyone about it.”
“Yes! I will remember everything the Sage does!”
At my words, Sharon nodded with a determined look.
I handed Sharon my smartphone.
“Just use this to film me.”
“What? You want me to bash you with this? How could I possibly do such a thing?”
“Huh?”
What was that supposed to mean?
I obviously meant filming a video.
Was Sharon actually a bit dim?
Ah, right. This world probably didn't even have the concept of taking photos yet.
There were no photos or videos in a world like this.
I was still reeling from the shock, so I explained photos and videos to Sharon.
“This is what ‘take a picture’ means.”
“I see, so that's what ‘take’ means... Truly, the Sage’s wisdom is endless!”
“Uh...”
I felt oddly like the person who had introduced the concept of “delicious” to another world.
Embarrassed, I scratched my cheek.
Sharon carefully took the smartphone in both hands.
Since the camera operator was ready, there was no need to drag this out any longer.
We stepped into the darkness together.
A spiral staircase with no end in sight.
With every step down, the air grew noticeably colder.
A chill that raised goose bumps on my skin.
The surroundings were utterly silent. Only our footsteps echoed strangely.
“We've been going down for a while, haven't we...”
My sense of time had gone dull.
I couldn't tell whether we'd been going down for ten minutes or an hour.
Sharon swallowed hard, tense, and stayed close behind me.
How much farther had we gone?
At last, we reached the end of the stairs.
What lay before us was a vast cavern.
The ceiling was impossibly high, and every direction was swallowed by endless darkness.
And at the center of that immense space.
“This...”
I held my breath.
There, the ruins of a gigantic tower were lodged in the ground.
The same ruin of the black tower I'd seen on the 20th floor, the very one standing on Earth.
The source that had polluted the World Tree.
It was here too.
But that wasn't the only problem.
“...That's a gate, isn't it?”
A gate that appears where a tower has collapsed.
Gates periodically spit out monsters.
This was my first time seeing one for real.
“Ugh, my head...”
Just looking at the gate gave me an unexplained headache.
The gate pulsed repeatedly as it glowed an eerie purple.
I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again.
And then, the next instant.
“!”
There was a figure standing in front of the gate.
Wrapped entirely in black shadow.
Anyone could tell he was a black mage.
The black mage extended a skeletal arm.
[At last. A mage from another world.]
A dry, cracked, unpleasant voice.
The black mage stared straight at me and continued.
[Mage, abandon this place. It will become my territory.]
“Why is that your territory?”
I was dumbfounded.
This had been a place I'd already staked out before that guy even showed up.
But he completely ignored my protest.
[Even if we fought, the odds of you beating me are zero.]
“You're awfully full of yourself.”
[I am a 9-circle black mage who has touched the truth. There is a world of difference between us.]
“...What's a circle?”
[You don't know? As expected, the magic system of this world is primitive.]
[It means I've mastered nine spells. You half-witted mage.]
I quickly did the math in my head.
By his classification, did level equal circle?
How many spells could I use right now?
[I've been watching you this whole time. You can use about six spells: sand bullet, sand blade, sand barrier, sand transformation, illusion magic... and finally that giant summon.]
“What? He counted wrong?”
I thought to myself.
The sand bullet and sand blade weren't even my skills, and he seemed to know nothing about my clone or my Insight Eye.
I secretly prepared Chohogi.
If it went well, I might be able to finish this with one blow.
[Looks like you're only at about the 6-circle level. And on top of that, you're a halfwit who doesn't even know the concept of circles. How are you supposed to bridge that gap?]
His voice was overflowing with confidence.
[Besides, I've already prepared counters for every one of your spells while keeping an eye on you. You can never beat me. Just give up and leave.]
He declared it smugly.
Then, as if he could read my mind, he added a warning.
[Ah, and it'd be best not to summon that giant worm.]
He pointed upward with his bony fingertips.
[This cavern isn't very sturdy. The moment you summon that worm, we'll all be buried alive together. Of course, I have a countermeasure, so it doesn't matter to me.]
“Oh, really?”
The ceiling was going to collapse?
So what?
Did he really think something like that would scare me off?
I'm an earth mage. I wasn't going to die buried under dirt.
That's utter nonsense on the same level as saying a water mage would drown.
Without hesitation, I summoned my strongest creature.
“Sandworm.”
Rrrrumble—!
The moment my command was given, the entire floor flipped over.
Solid bedrock crumbled like tofu, and the maw of a giant sand worm surged upward.
I couldn't see its face, but I could tell it was very surprised.
[What kind of idiot is this...! And he calls himself a mage?]
His curse hadn't even finished before it happened.
The sandworm swallowed the surrounding space—including the black mage—in one bite.
[You're saying we can all die together?]
The black mage's scream of shock echoed from inside the sandworm's belly.
Apparently, he hadn't expected me to act without a shred of hesitation.
I was just about to order the sandworm to grind everything inside its stomach to dust.
That was when.
[Open, Gate of the Netherworld.]
The black mage intoned the spell.
The next moment, a powerful shockwave spread out in all directions from deep inside the sandworm's belly.
Kwaaaaboom!
An invisible wave of force swept everything away.
The first to react was the sandworm that had swallowed him.
The sandworm's body blurred, and it was forcibly unsummoned.
[Sandworm summon dismissed.]
[Resummoning impossible for 24 hours.]
That wasn't the end.
The shockwave pierced through the sandworm's body and spread in all directions.
The form of Chohogi, hidden by a mirage while it was sneaking up behind the black mage, was revealed.
“...!!!”
Chohogi took the shockwave head-on.
Its sand body crumbled away, then slowly began to take shape again.
One extra life gained thanks to the Spirit Core vanished in an instant.
It was clearly out of combat for a while.
The shockwave's aftermath reached me too.
My automatically activated sand barrier appeared, but it shattered while blocking the shockwave.
[You brute. Thanks to you, I wasted a precious spell...]
Fortunately, it seemed the black mage couldn't use that powerful spell repeatedly.
He was panting too, barely managing to steady his stance.
“Tricky...”
For the first time, I felt a chill run down my spine.
A sense of crisis.
If the magic-cutting old man was absurdly strong, this guy was troublesome in a different way.
My first enemy with both personality and intelligence.
I moved my hand to the belt at my waist, just in case.
If needed, I was going to activate time-reversal magic.
At the same time, I pushed the power of Insight Eye to its limit.
The flow of every bit of mana in the world was drawn clearly into my mind.
[From here on, I will make you painfully realize just how foolish it is to fight a prepared mage.]
The black mage sneered and cast his second spell.
Black mist rose from beneath his feet and instantly covered the entire cavern.
It wasn't merely a spell to obstruct vision.
“...”
The moment the mist touched the ground, I felt my connection to the earth sever.
My control over the surrounding soil and sand was completely taken away.
“He really did prepare well...”
He had gotten me.
To seal away nearly half my abilities with a single spell.
I drew up mana and tried to wrest back control of the earth from him.
But it wasn't enough.
I was losing in both skill and understanding of magic.
[Give up. This land already belongs to me.]
The black mage's mocking laughter echoed through the mist.
Instead of abandoning the contest of strength, I chose another move.
Sand generated directly from my body.
Even that, he couldn't take from me.
I concentrated all my divine power at the tip of my left index finger.
A golden sand bullet.
I fired it without hesitation toward the direction the voice had come from.
Whoosh-!
But he was already prepared.
Just before my bullet hit, his form turned into black mist and lightly let the attack slip past.
[Do you really think such a primitive attack will work?]
Back to his turn.
This time, something invisible came flying at me.
The flow of mana, as seen through Insight Eye.
A curse.
Without hesitation, I fired another divine sand bullet to intercept it.
The two spells collided in midair and canceled each other out.
But at that moment, I felt a chill run down my spine.
“A feint?”
While I was distracted by the curse in midair, his real move went off.
Kwaboom—!
An explosion burst from the mist on the ground.
There was no time to dodge.
Just as the black blast was about to engulf me,
the World Tree leaf around my neck burst forth with dazzling green light.
That pendant had saved me once before, too.
The light formed a soft barrier, perfectly blocking the curse's explosion.
“An opponent with a working brain is definitely troublesome.”
Sandworm had been sealed, and Chohogi had been neutralized.
My attacks were being countered one after another.
This called for mind games and tactical play, unlike the battles so far.
I clenched my teeth.
Looks like it was time to use my brain for once.
Brute force like before wasn't going to work.
“Fine. Let's do this.”
I conjured sand again at the tip of my left index finger.
Then I started firing bullets like a machine gun.
Ratatatatang—!
An attack that cleverly mixed ordinary sand bullets with golden holy bullets.
The black mage calmly countered my attack.
He probably had some sort of means of telling the two apart.
Ordinary sand bullets were lightly blocked by a shield made of black mist.
But the holy bullets were different.
Whenever an attack contained holy sand, he chose evasion instead of defense.
He scattered into mist and dodged.
[Useless. Such monotonous attacks won't...]
He sneered at me.
But I didn't stop.
I kept firing, again and again.
As expected, it had little effect.
He kept turning into mist to dodge my attacks.
I took all of it in.
I can see it.
The principle behind his magic.
But it's still not enough.
What I needed was more experience.
I had already used up an amount of sand equal to one left index finger's worth.
I turned my ring finger into sand.
And then I started spraying bullets again.
Thumb, middle finger, ring finger.
I kept hurling bullets until my entire left arm had turned to sand and vanished.
But the result was disastrous.
Even after using up my entire left arm, I hadn't landed a single effective hit.
His defense was perfect.
[Pathetic flailing. I'll end this now, mage.]
The black mage said in a mocking voice.
Once my attacks came to a complete stop, he switched back to the offensive.
[Death's Grasp.]
Black mist writhed and turned into dozens of shadow blades that surged at me from all directions.
At the same time, a swamp of curses rose from the floor and grabbed my ankles.
There was nowhere to escape.
I used my remaining right arm to raise a sand barrier, but it couldn't block everything.
“Agh...!”
The shadow blade I couldn't block sliced off my leg.
I screamed and collapsed to the ground.
My left arm was gone, and my right leg had been cut off.
I was a complete wreck.
The black mage slowly walked toward me.
He lifted one of my severed legs from the ground and sneered.
[Didn't I tell you? That's the difference between you and me.]
“Give it back... my leg...”
[Of course I'll put it back on. After you're dead.]
[I'll make good use of your body. Mage corpses are hard to come by.]
I let out a groan of pain and crawled along the floor.
A satisfied smile appeared on the black mage's lips as he watched me.
He was certain of his victory.
Of course he was.
It was a hopeless situation to anyone looking at it.
I said to the black mage,
“...No, come to think of it, I think I don't need it back.”
[…?]
“Sharon, you're getting this on camera, right? Keep watching. The highlight starts now.”
Right after that, the leg he was holding exploded.