My vision was pitch-black even after I opened my eyes.
As I blinked in bewilderment, pain came rushing in.
Pain throughout my entire body, as if someone had beaten me black and blue.
Thanks to the pain, my memories returned.
‘Did I pass out?’
My last memory was of falling downward, then crashing into the floor.
Once I came to my senses, the dark energy inside my body began to move.
I could use my senses right away.
I felt a vertical cavern bored open above my head.
The place where I lay was the bottom of that vertical cavern.
Broken skewers lay scattered across the floor.
“So it was the bottom of a trap.”
Since I had fallen into a trap, it was only natural that I would end up slammed into the floor of it.
“If things had gone wrong, I’d be dead.”
If the skewers rolling around on the floor had been intact, I would have become meat on a spit.
I tried moving my body little by little.
My fingers moved fine, and my arms and legs were all right too.
That was a relief.
Nothing had been cut off, and nothing was broken.
The bruising was severe, but there was no problem moving.
“Ugh.”
When I forced myself up, a groan slipped out.
Nothing was broken, but if it had been the old me, I felt like I wouldn’t have been able to move an inch from the pain.
Fortunately, my backpack was safe too. The box inside was intact as well.
I took a torch out of the box and lit it.
It was no different from what I had sensed.
Rusty skewers were rolling across the floor, and half-weathered bones were scattered here and there.
Above me, at the end of a vertical cavern more than ten meters high, I could see a sealed ceiling.
That ceiling must have been the trap I had fallen through.
“If I’d been a little more careful, I wouldn’t have slammed into the floor and passed out.”
A safe landing would have been difficult, but if I had properly used my senses and my strengthened body, I certainly wouldn’t have felt this kind of pain.
However, all of that was in the past now.
At the time, I hadn’t been able to think of any of that.
I had been too busy running away, so there had been no way to know it was a trap.
“You could have just said it was a trap.”
Grumbling at the voice that had helped me, I opened the box.
I took out one combat ration from the box.
It was a combat ration I had secretly set aside.
The pain was severe, but I was no longer tired.
Seeing how hungry I was in the middle of all that, it seemed I had been unconscious for quite a long time.
“Was it not fainting, but falling asleep?”
It felt somewhat pathetic, but I decided to think positively.
I had become able to start the day full of energy.
“Ugh. Energy, my ass.”
Enduring the pain, I chewed and swallowed the entire combat ration.
After finishing my meal, I looked up.
A vertical cavern with nowhere to grab on to, and a sealed ceiling.
It seemed difficult to return to the trap again.
Since the voice had deliberately dropped me into the trap, it probably would not want me to go back either.
I looked around once more.
The bottom of the trap was sealed tight on all sides.
Fortunately, I had senses that could grasp places I could not see.
Holding the bag with the torch and the box inside, I walked over to one wall.
I saw a stone wall no different from the others.
I knocked on the wall.
Thump, thump.
A hollow sound came from behind it.
As expected, my senses had not been wrong.
Behind this wall was a small passage that continued on for a long distance.
“It must be something like a maintenance passage.”
I did not know why it had been made this way, but there was no need to know the reason.
After pushing dark energy into my spear, I began breaking down the wall.
Thud, thud, bang, bang.
Each time I thrust the spear, a chunk was gouged out, and before long, a hole opened up.
Once the hole had opened, I was able to widen it quickly.
I looked at the hole, now wide enough for a person to pass through, and the spearhead that was still perfectly intact, then tilted my head.
“I’m starting to go beyond human limits…”
It was thinner than the other places, but it was still a wall made of solid stone.
Though I had the help of a spear wrapped in dark energy, I never thought I would pierce through such a wall in an instant.
It was something that would have been difficult not only for the past me, but even for people who specialized in such work.
I was different again from yesterday.
Even inside the ruins, my strength was continuing to grow.
Beyond the collapsed wall, I could not see the end of the narrow passage.
The same went for my senses.
The passage continued beyond the range of my senses.
“I suppose there’s no helping it. I was invited to come this way, after all.”
I had not heard the voice since waking up, but since there was no other path, this was the way I had to go.
I shouldered my backpack and entered the passage.
A passage just barely wide enough for one person to pass through.
I stepped into the passage whose end was nowhere in sight.
As I had expected, this passage was for building and maintaining the traps.
The passage was connected to several old-fashioned traps.
There were traps with spikes set into them, like the one I had fallen into, and there were also traps where water had once pooled.
There were various other traps as well, but all of them were broken.
Just how much time had passed since these ruins were made? In an unexpected place, I was able to feel the transience of time.
The passage did not continue only horizontally.
After I had advanced for quite some time, the path led downward, and only after walking for another half a day did I arrive at the end of the passage.
At the end of the passage was a door.
It was a sliding metal door with neither handle nor switch in sight.
Even my senses could not grasp what lay beyond the door.
The entire area beyond felt hazy, as if covered in fog.
If I wanted to know what was behind the door, I had to open it.
However, the metal door looked far too thick and sturdy to break.
It was troublesome, but I did not need to break this door.
Rumble, rumble.
Because when I approached, the door opened on its own.
When the door opened, the senses that had been blocked off opened wide as well.
Behind the door was a large room.
It was not a stone chamber made of rock.
It was a large room enclosed by metal walls.
They had even opened the door for me; I could hardly refuse to enter.
I sensed no living beings inside the room.
Nor did I see any special traps.
I carefully passed through the open door.
The room I stepped into beyond the door was far stranger than I had expected.
The circular room was empty inside.
There were no patterns drawn on the walls, and on the ceiling, all I could see was smooth metal.
No, it was not completely empty.
In the center of the empty room’s floor, a circular pattern was drawn.
It was not large, and a faint light kept appearing and disappearing within it.
At the center of that pattern, a single rod was embedded.
An ordinary rod with nothing drawn on it.
It was about the same length as my spear shaft.
No matter how much I looked around, there was nothing else besides it.
After coming all this way, to think there would be only a single rod sitting alone in an empty room.
“Do I have to go farther?”
But according to my senses, this room was the end.
Other than the passage I had entered through, everything was packed full of earth, stone, and minerals.
In the end, there was only one place I had to check.
I walked toward the center of the room, to the middle of the pattern.
What was drawn in the center of the room was a small pattern about four meters in diameter.
I carefully walked inward without stepping on the pattern.
“It wasn’t a wooden rod.”
When I examined it up close, the rod was made of metal.
It was not painted either; it was a metal with a color similar to wood.
This, too, was a metal I had never seen before.
“Hmm… Now, what do I do?”
The only thing worth taking from here was this rod.
But I could not guarantee whether I was allowed to do that, or what might happen if I did.
As I was worrying over that, I ended up letting out a hollow laugh.
“It’s not like I’ve only done one or two insane things, so what am I hesitating over now…”
To pull out the rod, I reached out with my other hand.
I grasped the rod in my hand.
Whoooosh!
My vision turned white.
‘I knew this would happen.’
Just as that complaint crossed my mind—
My vision, which had turned white, returned to normal.
Fortunately, what I could see was the same room as before.
‘No, it’s not the same room?’
I had not been moved elsewhere.
Nor had the room’s structure changed.
It was just that the interior of the formerly empty room was now filled with holograms.
Holograms similar to the ones I had seen at the spatial transfer ruins filled the room.
‘No. These aren’t just holograms. These are screens—monitors floating in midair.’
Inside the holograms floating in the air, various screens were moving.
Graphs moved, and letters flowed by.
But on most of the screens, video was being displayed.
All of them were battle footage—videos of people fighting monsters.
‘Was this room something like a control room? But why did this scene suddenly unfold?’
Thinking that, I tried to turn my head to look elsewhere.
‘Huh? I can’t move?’
My head would not move.
Now that I thought about it, I could not speak either.
As if I were watching a VR device connected to all five senses, I could only receive information from the outside.
As soon as I realized that, sound followed the images.
[Sector 2 has been breached!]
[Sector 3 won’t be able to hold much longer either!]
[It seems the transfer base has been discovered! Some of them have changed direction!]
They were sounds coming from the battle videos.
In the videos, people wearing unfamiliar clothes and terrifying monsters I had never seen before were locked in combat.
They moved like superhumans, holding back the dreadful monsters.
However, every scene shown on the screens showed the humans being pushed back.
Then, words flowed out of my mouth.
“Do not worry. I will stop them. Everyone, evacuate the base immediately and head for the transfer base.”
They were not words I had spoken.
I felt my mouth moving, but it was not my mouth, nor was it my body.
On top of that, this voice was one I knew.
It was the voice that had led me here.
After hearing those words, startled voices came from within the screens.
[Surely… Are you thinking of using grand magic?]
“There is no other way.”
[But your body won’t be able to endure it!]
“Then it does not need to endure. There is also a way to maintain the ruins even without my body, so there is no need to worry about that either.”
[That is not what I meant!]
“I am the last one. Surely I have the right to make an end more splendid than my comrades.”
With those words, I saw the people salute toward the screens and leave.
When the monsters tried to follow, the body moved and planted the staff it held into the floor.
“You cannot flee before me.”
The staff planted in the floor was a beautiful staff set with several black stones.
An immense energy flowed out of the body and surged into the staff.
The black stones set in the staff shone.
The pattern on the floor blazed brightly as well.
“If I place my mind into the staff, the ruins will be maintained even after my body disappears.”
Even as the voice continued in a calm tone, the hand gripping the staff kept withering away.
At the same time, on the screens, I saw the ground collapsing.
The monsters were sucked downward along with the collapsing earth.
So as not to harm the people fleeing, the ground collapsed in sequence, and as time passed, it became a vast canyon.
As the canyon formed, the black stones attached to the staff shattered one after another.
The pattern on the floor, which had been shining brightly, gradually faded, and the screens that filled the room went out one by one.
The arm holding the staff slowly began to disintegrate.
“It was a somewhat regrettable life.”
With those words, my vision darkened.
A moment later, the scene before my eyes brightened again.
An empty room.
I was holding the rod with my perfectly intact arm.
This time, it was my own body, moving as I wished.
I pulled out the rod.
Or was it a staff, not a rod?
The staff came out easily.
When I pulled out the staff, the faintly glowing pattern on the floor disappeared.
The voice came again.
This time, it came from the staff.
[After all that searching, what I found is a man. I chose the wrong person.]
Those were the first words the staff said to me.