29 BREATHS LEFT

What the?

It had happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that I wasted precious seconds not reacting.

【ADMIN STOP SELF-DESTRUCT】

28 BREATHS LEFT

No response?!

What the fuck is going on?! Cold sweat formed on my forehead as I frantically sent commands to the Magical Power Armor.

To no avail.

27 BREATHS LEFT

That was not possible! The way it had been designed made it impossible for the self-destruct sequence to engage randomly and dismiss the deactivation signal…

Unless…

Someone had deliberately sabotaged the mechanism.

Anger flared up in me as I slammed my gauntlet hard on the wall. Twice.

『Allen: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!』

I screamed through the fucking comm ring.

『Blackfist: Can’t talk now!』

『Allen: THE ARMOR IS SELF-DESTRUCTING! WHAT DID YOUR MEN DO TO IT?』

『Blackfist: WHAT?!』

Had they embedded some remote mechanism to trigger it? Had they decided to dispose of me, after all?

20 BREATHS LEFT

Approximately sixty seconds left. Not enough time to undo the protective weaves and inspect the mana circuits.

19 BREATHS LEFT

But then… Why not detonate it immediately?! I had no time to speculate.

18 BREATHS LEFT

『Blackfist: The Archmage only changed the self-destruct spell!』

17 BREATHS LEFT

『Allen: SOMEONE SABOTAGED THE ARMOR!』

16 BREATHS LEFT

『Blackfist: SHIT…』

The commander sounded genuinely unhappy about this turn of events.

『Blackfist: GET AWAY FROM THE OTHERS! DUMP THE ARMOR AND RUN!』

14 BREATHS LEFT

I was doing that even before he said so.

「Allen: STAY BACK!」

I shouted back to the Third Group, while I ran deeper into the corridor. If the archmage changed the spell, I had a good idea what had been the replacement. The lethal white flash explosion from before.

13 BREATHS LEFT

How big would the explosion be? What factors would amplify the blast? Mana? Blackfist had put emphasis on running. Probably worse than I could imagine.

12 BREATHS LEFT

I thought I had run far enough. Obsidian would obstruct the magical explosion, so I turned and knelt down.

「Allen: 【ADMIN EJECT】!」

The Armor’s unfastening unfolded at an incredibly slow perceived motion. Come on, come ooon!

11 BREATHS LEFT

「Allen: 【TIMER START 29 SECONDS】」

I transferred the countdown to my ring minus one second for safety and jumped off.

Fuck! My heart was beating like a goddamn jackhammer. I ran as fast as I could.

28

I’ll miss you MPA MK I. We bathed in blood together.

27

I turned the corner.

26

An unexpected problem at the worst possible time…

A demon, who had seemingly appeared from no-fucking-where, standing in the middle of my path was turning to face me. He shouted something.

25

FUCK! I ran the other way. I had no armor on me.

24

Not even a weapon!

23

I heard his footsteps getting closer. He was faster than me.

22

21

20

He jumped on me. I twisted, trying to make him push him off. He didn’t look like a soldier or a mage, maybe a servant. But he was strong nonetheless.

The demon wrapped his hands around my throat as I was pushed down to the ground with him on top.

19

Despite hardening, my neck was about to be crushed at an alarming speed. Adrenaline kicked in, time slowed down.

I could see his bare arms, muscles tensing.

18

I pinched my fingers right behind his tendons and pulled as hard as I could. The pressure on my neck loosened. The demon arched back about to scream, but I was already grabbing the back of his head.

My magically hardened forehead met his face.

17

Without hesitation, I stabbed my right index finger deep inside his eye socket. I had never tried it before.

FUUUUCK!

I wanted to scream, but only a grunt came out.

16

The demon went limp, and I pushed him aside. I was gasping hard to breathe, not sure if my throat had been crushed or not.

15

I stood up and wasted another precious second trying to recollect where I had come from.

14

It was too late to run all the way back with my own legs, so I continued in the opposite direction.

13

I finally managed to breathe in fully.

12

11

Three armored demons appeared at the end of the corridor and saw me.

10

I jumped into an empty room on my right.

9

8

A dead end.

7

I was almost out of mana. I had burned through it dealing with just one demon.

6

FOCUS, ALLEN!

On a corner, I saw an open coffin made of stone, its lid just leaning next to the side.

5

I jumped into the coffin…

4

I grabbed at the stone lid with my right hand, but the index finger sent a jolt of pain when I tried to bend it, ruining my grasp.

3

This time, I used both hands and pulled, using the last of my mana reserves.

2

The first of the armored demons rushed into the room just as I dropped the lid closed.

1

If I survive this I will never take orders from anyone ever again.

0

Unless at gunpoint.

Armored footsteps approached dangerously close. I closed my eyes and took a long weary breath.

Sudden goosebumps covered every inch of my skin, and the high-pitched sound filled the air. The effect was magnitudes stronger than before.

CRAAAAAAAACK *

A deafening crack and an equally potent tremor shook the building. I saw the white flash through the lid’s cracks. My ears were ringing.

And just as it had happened, it was over.

Quick!

I drew two long deep breaths and started breathing mana, finding it hard to do.

I pulled the broken finger and took a sip from a health potion. All the pains I didn’t know I had worn off. I pushed the coffin’s lid away.

Complete darkness had overtaken the place. I conjured a mana light.

My body twitched in response to seeing a dark shape just a few steps from me.

It crumbled to dust just as I stared. The only sound I could hear, beyond the ear ringing, was the hammering inside my chest.

I have to get back.

I hopped off the coffin and traced back my steps.

At least that had been the plan. Instead, I found a giant pile of rubble blocking the corridor intersection from which I had come.

I stared silently at the obstruction. There was no way I could dig through that on my own. To make it worse, it was all obsidian.

A telepathic voice interrupted my grim realization.

『This is the Forbidden. We’re retreating, warn the others!』

Forbidden? That voice wasn’t Blackfist’s. It was the archmage’s.

『Allen: Blackfist?』

I inquired, guessing the answer.

『Pale man: Dead.』

I remained silent for a few seconds, taking in the news.

『Allen: Did you kill the Demon Lord?』

He didn’t answer and the silence told me all I had to know. Blackfist dead and the mission a failure… It saddened me, I really hoped we’d win or at least that we’d go down taking the enemy with us.

『Allen: I can’t regroup. Your explosive spell made the corridor collapse.』

Obsidian could negate direct magic, but indirect forces…

『Pale man: I see…』

Was I going to die in this obsidian shithole? Weariness pervaded my whole body.

『Pale man: We can’t open a path. We have to move down.』

I closed my eyes. I could almost hear some faint vibrations in the distance. That would be the men retreating.

『Pale man: Try finding a way down.』

My eyes shot open. My attention was suddenly sharp.

『Pale man: From the demon’s memories there was another conjunction just one floor lower from where we started.』

A sliver of hope. I steeled myself.

『Allen: Will do.』

『Pale man: Good luck.』

I bolted into motion. Stairs, I need to find stairs. I checked the rooms as I moved further into the corridor and met a junction. I took a right.

Soon I faced a dead end. I cursed, hastening back to the junction until I heard a hissing voice. I froze mid-step.

Shit!

I killed my mana light. This felt like one of those nightmares where you’re hopelessly lost and can’t ever find the destination.

Right…

Nightmare!

I saw a blue light becoming visible as the armored clanking grew louder. There was no time. I took off my shoes, crouched down, and cast an illusion just in time to meet the incoming guest.

The armored demon acted startled when he noticed me but held his ground. I could see black smoke being emitted, but I wasn’t sure how well the illusion was working. I was letting my subconscious do the work.

It was a big gamble. I slowed my breath.

We stared at each other for an indefinite amount of time, then he yelled something in his hissing language and motioned me to follow. I toned down the illusion as soon as he turned his back on me, to conserve mana, but kept it active so I could restore it quickly.

I longed for the clarity of the First Step, but I hadn’t been able to reach that state since I had dealt with the unarmored demon. It had been, like… hard to breathe, but it was getting easier now that I was getting further away from the zone of the explosion.

That white flash must have depleted the mana in the air.

We approached a corridor that hadn’t suffered from the blast. The mana lights were still active. I restored the illusion to full power. The good thing was that since I didn’t need to focus on directing the illusion, I could concentrate on breathing mana in to slow down its depletion.

The demon soldier hurried downstairs, casting glances at me now and then to make sure I was still following. We turned several corners and descended as many stairs. My chances to shrink the illusion and conserve mana grew scarcer because we began crossing paths with more and more demons, heading in the same direction.

I didn’t know how long I’d be able to hold the illusion. Or how long I’d last before anyone noticed I wasn’t a nightmare creature.

We entered a long wide corridor, and by that point, I had completely lost any sense of direction. I saw no doors or archways on the sides, no place where I could sneak into. We approached an area where thick numbers of demons were clustered. The area opened into what looked like a storehouse with crates and junk. As I moved on all fours, I felt the many stares boring holes through my illusion, but they stepped aside to let us pass.

Right in the middle of a wall was an unassuming black door. The armored demon who had led me here opened it, gesturing me to get inside.

I moved slowly, gauging my options.

No options, only demons. So I moved inside.

The room was dark and stank of stale air. The moment I stepped inside, I realized I wasn’t alone. Shadows were shifting around me.

Fear-projecting gazes of an indefinite number of nightmares fixed on me.

Behind me, the door closed with a bang, leaving me in complete darkness.

For some reason, I felt a smile creeping up my lips and a deeply wrong sense of euphoria.

I blacked out.

I came back to my senses, still in complete darkness.

The first thing I noticed was that I was breathing hard.

It had happened again. What’s wrong with me? I thought, struggling to push the concerns away and focus on the now.

Like before, I felt mentally drained.

I conjured an illusory light, just in time to see a big foggy mass being drawn toward my body. I jumped, startled by the surprise.

The energy I absorbed pushed me quickly into the First Step. A shred of light was cast upon my disarrayed thoughts.

More nightmares were circling around me, but they seemed too wary to approach. Three dozen at a first glance… at least those I could see. The black fog they emitted prevented me from seeing further than a few paces away.

I also became aware of the pain in my chest. Clothes torn and bloody, I had been slashed by something sharp that had left three deep gashes leaking blood. My arms and legs were covered with similar wounds of minor severity. I warily poured a few drops of healing potion on the gashes while holding them closed to help them heal right. I couldn’t count on Ellin this time. I had to follow what I learned at the Academy. I drank the leftover liquid from the vial, already partially depleted from the earlier sip, and tossed it away.

Five potions left.

Think, Allen. I was severely outmatched and unprepared. My chances of survival were dangerously declining every second.

At least the demons outside hadn’t seemed to notice anything or perhaps didn’t deem worth investigating. Good.

I was surrounded by lethal-looking creatures of shifting black smoke. Not good.

The only saving grace was that they were hesitant to attack. I was wearing no armor, and my shredded clothes offered zero protection. One wrong step and it would be over. I couldn’t afford to blackout again.

There had to be something really wrong with my brain because I was feeling madly elated. A dangerously addicting kind of feel. I had to maintain the void state of mind to keep myself from doing something fucking stupid.

What was the deal with this room? Why not use all these nightmares against our forces instead?

Demons outside, nightmares inside.

It was like… they wanted to protect something? I slowly walked further down the room, keeping my attention to the deadly nightmares circling me with predatory intent.

What I found was a narrow dark corridor extending further on. Wide enough for one person. Floors, walls, and ceiling were made of polished pitch-black obsidian stone. I could see the faint reflection of my face. Gods, did I look like shit.

The creatures didn’t pursue me choosing to remain behind, maybe annoyed by the tight space and all the obsidian. but I could still perceive their attention fixed on me.

『Allen: Hello?』

I asked through the ring.

『Allen: Are you guys still alive?』

No reply came back. Had the pale-skinned archmage died? Were they too busy surviving? Had everyone left already? It depended on how many demons they had to fight through to get to the portal.

The narrow corridor culminated to a dead end. No doors, no openings. Nothing, only my disappointed scowl reflected back at me.

That didn’t make sense. There was no point in defending an empty room. Unless…

I slid my hands across the surface and knocked at it to hear the sound on different parts of it. Precious minutes passed without me finding anything. I walked back slowly, letting my hands slide on the reflective walls.

Are you having a laugh, Creator?

I engaged in an imaginary conversation with the entity who had dropped me into this world.

What, I dug my own grave? You’re mistaken, I received plenty of help from everyon- Wait…

A change in sensation… Had I imagined it? I stopped and moved back slowly. The wall to my right had felt different but offered no visual cue for me to see, just polished black obsidian. I closed my eyes and focused more carefully on the sensations on my fingertips.

There!

I felt it again.

A small gap where the material felt different. I slowly traced an outline, realizing it was shaped like a rectangle. A secret door!

My excitement didn’t last long as I realized I had no idea how to open it. There had to be some kind of magical contraption, a trigger, something.

Nothing within the rectangle. Nothing on the wall immediately next to it…

The outline of the secret door was around two-and-half centimeters thick. Perfectly indistinguishable from the surrounding obsidian, but it didn’t stop magic. My magical sense couldn’t extend deep enough to sense anything.

I stared at my feet. It felt weird being inside this corridor. It would have been like floating in a black void, were it not for the ghastly reflections.

I crouched down and inspected the floor.

Here!

A small circular area… I could extend my sense through it and immediately did so. I found a trigger construct with several threads extending away from it. I had no idea what could activate the trigger, nor did I care. I hooked a filament to the mana circuit running toward the secret door’s direction and activated it.

The effect was immediate.

The innermost part of the invisible outline turned semi-liquid, and the door opened smoothly without a sound.

Clever… they had merged a similar but easily transmutable material to the obsidian, so they could hide it and move the obsidian door indirectly. The enchantment transmuting the glassy material had to be deeper inside, projecting its effect to make it harder to find and activate.

Move the fuck on, Allen! I reminded myself, stifling the desire to analyze the magical mechanism.

I would have never found it were it not for Yusdrolir. If I ever come back, I’m buying you all the alcohol you want, I promised.

By now, the ring would have remarked about this achievement had I not disabled the progress notifications. Well, it wasn’t time to turn them back on yet.

I moved through the new corridor. This one was more spacious, made of raw, unpolished volcanic stone. Lots of dust. Maybe I could still make it if I found an exit.

Several steps in, I wished I had kept the shoes.

A weapon would have been nice too. Sadly, the white flash had turned both demonic soldiers and their equipment into ash.

「Allen: Can’t we tune the difficulty down a notch, huh?」

I whispered to myself, hiding my uneasiness under sarcasm.

I picked up the pace moving through a confusing mess of small corridors and rough stairs, desperately looking for an exit.

After an unspecified lapse of time of wandering lost, I heard a coughing sound further ahead. I shut down my mana light and approached carefully. I spied around the corner from where a faint gleam of light was coming from.

A beaten-up blue-skinned demon full of wounds was hobbling forward with great difficulty, supporting himself with a shiny bloodstained metal staff. He looked aged and about to keel over.

He had to have crossed our troops! He was bleeding, which meant I could trace back his steps to find the exit! Hope was not lost yet.

The passage was too narrow to run past him, and I didn’t have time to wait for him to cross over while hiding safely somewhere. Time was a commodity did not have.

Perhaps it was foolish to hold on to the hope that the portal was still open and waiting for me… but you never know.

One of Vallachio’s sayings came to mind.

As long as you draw breath, you haven’t lost.

And I fucking hated losing. So I would keep winning and burying as many of these pieces of shit kurwa motherfuckers as I could before getting a Game Over.

Finish off the demon and follow the blood traces back to the exit, Allen. I set my mind to it.

I drew a deep breath and wove a new nightmarish illusion over me, then I left the corner, approaching the half-dead demon. He immediately noticed me, tensing.

The aging demon was wearing the tattered remains of a black and purple silky robe. Now that I took a closer look, I realized he was missing the left arm. This seemed doable.

My plan was to strike hard and fast at his carotid, then beat him down with his own staff.

Now or never.

I kept walking until I was a few steps away from him. The moment I was about to strike, he frowned menacingly and threw himself against me with unexpected agility.

Because he moved, my throat punch missed, sliding across his blood-wetted skin. The old demon had dropped the staff and instead grabbed my left arm.

* CRACK *

I felt the sound before the pain hit me. With an impossibly fast movement, he had broken my arm. Just a mere twist of his wrist. I had misjudged his capabilities!

Involuntary tears blurred my vision.

The demon was on me. I fell back with him on top. The fucker tried to bite my throat out, but I managed to push him away with my right arm just in time. He growled, spitting blood in my eyes.

Fueled both by pain and mana-infused strength, I kneed his nuts. He emitted a high-pitched whine, and his grasp on my broken arm loosened.

This time I succeeded in punching his throat. I pushed him away from me, hoping to buy precious seconds. I jumped on my feet and tried to run past him.

But he used his legs to make me trip. I rolled forward, nearly avoiding his hand coming short mere inches from grasping me. I scampered back. At that instant, magic particles shimmered around his hand, dancing in a vortex. I barely had time to instinctively shield myself.

But nothing happened, except a fizz. The spell had failed! There was no word to describe the surprise and anger displayed on his face while I stared back, my heartbeat pumping like never before.

The light went out. I had forgotten that the source of light had been my opponent himself. I failed to react.

* CRUNCH *

My right leg burned with searing hot pain.

As I frantically grasped around blind, something cold touched my right hand. The metal staff. Without thinking, I grabbed hold of it and struck at the not-quite-dead-yet demon, whose face was now illuminated by magic particles from another spell in the making. I knew he wouldn’t fail again if I let him, and I couldn’t flee since he held onto my broken leg.

The staff was about to collide when it went rigid mid-air. The bleeding demon smiled nastily. He shouted a command.

A force pulled the enchanted weapon aside toward empty air, I pulled back, and the weapon pulled twice as hard, dragging me along with it. The pain I was experiencing was indescribable. I almost blacked out.

A bright gleam of magic flared up, about to be cast.

Fuck.

Summoning every inch of anger, strength, and mana, I made one desperate gamble.

You.

I pulled hard, twisting myself left. The pain didn’t matter.

「Allen: GaaaaAAAHH!」

For a brief moment, I managed to drag the butt of the staff right in front of the demon’s mouth.

I pushed. Hard.

The demon stared with horror as the sudden telekinetic pull, complemented by my own physical push, forced the weapon to fly straight into his own mouth. A gasp and the mana particles disappeared… Along with the hold on my broken leg. However, the demon was still making gurgling sounds.

A disturbing sound to hear in complete darkness.

「Allen: FUCK!」

I pulled my left foot back.

「Allen: YOUUUU!!!!」

And slammed it where the top of the staff had been. Pain coursed back to me as I hit the pointy bits, but I didn’t hold back and pushed as hard as humanly possible.

I heard a soft thud.

Silence.

I was about to take a deep breath when a sudden and excruciating pain assaulted my spirit. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

I fought hard to remain conscious, whimpers escaping my lips. I was enduring not only physical pain but the spiritual kind too. A normal person would have passed out.

Not me.

Somehow the sudden wave relented, leaving a dull pulsing ache behind.

What the fuck… was that…

I tried and failed to conjure a mana light, my spirit screaming in pain. It took me a while, but I remembered that my ring could also produce one, so I activated it.

Light streamed across the passage, but I was too hurt to move my head and look around.

I moved my trembling right arm in search of a potion. My vision was blurry because I had trouble stopping my eyes from shedding tears.

My heart sank when I touched the sharp edges of the broken vials.

Second, broken… third, broken… Fourth, broken too… Fifth… broken…

I closed my eyes as I moved ib the last sixth vial.

The glass didn’t cut me. I gently pulled it out and brought it before my eyes.

It was intact.

I exhaled, my jaw trembling, as I cradled the vial to my chest.

I had to set the broken limbs straight. I rolled my torso forward to reach and set the broken leg straight, holding it beside the wall and my left leg. I gritted my teeth, enduring the sharp pain. I lightly used magical healing to realign the limb correctly, letting the body remember just like I had been taught. My spiritual body complained, but not as much as casting an external spell.

Next, the left arm. I laid down and slowly twisted the arm until I felt the broken parts trying to realign.

「Allen: Hhugh!」

I wasn’t capable of doing more than that. That was the best I could do. The rest would be up to the potion. I uncorked the vial and drank the contents.

Tingling, pain, and other sensations pulsed for several seconds while the S-grade healing potion worked its magic.

I waited a little more, still breathing heavily.

How lucky that the demons didn’t know about Informagics, and still relied on unreliable magical constructs. Had it been made by me, the enchanted staff wouldn’t have committed such grievous mistake as to pierce its owner.

『Pale man: We’re leaving. Are you still alive? This is the last call.』

The sudden intrusive mental voice made me twitch.

『Allen: I’m alive!』

I sent, as I struggled to order my thoughts coherently.

『Allen: I found a secret passage… I’m inside…』

『Pale man: I thought you were dead. I heard you calling before, but you didn’t answer my replies.』

I hadn’t heard him at all. Maybe something was blocking spatial magic back there? Whatever the case, it seemed to work in this spot.

『Allen: I killed… a demon… My spirit hurts… Can’t cast.』

『Pale man: You must have been cursed.』

Cursed? Shit… I had forgotten about dying mage curses.

『Allen: Fucking… purple-robed… old demon geezer… I shoved his… metal staff… down his throat…』

My body was mostly healed, but I had nothing to treat my mana body. It was hard to think.

『Pale man: What did you just say?』

Asked the pal man suddenly curious.

『Allen: I shoved his… metal staff… down his throat…』

I repeated.

『Pale man: Sorry… Are you talking about an aged blue-skinned demon? Purple and black robe? A shiny metal staff?』

He asked with sudden urgency. The description matched. He had seen him then? Was there a chance they had fought anywhere close?!

『Allen: Yeah… That one. Was he close-』

『Pale man: You?!』

He said speechless, interrupting me.

『Pale man: You killed the Demon Lord?!』

I stared at nothing, blinking confusedly.

What?

WHAT?!

Demon Lord?!

Is this a bad joke?

『Pale man: What about the Grand Vizier?! He was covering his retreat! We were so close, if only he hadn’t summoned that abomination…』

『Allen: Who-』

Footsteps caught my attention. I twisted my neck in the direction, suddenly alarmed. Another light was approaching from the distance.

『Allen: Shit! I think he may… be getting here.』

『Pale man: …』

I tried standing, but my legs buckled down. Another wave of spiritual pain hit me. My hand slipped over a puddle of blood that had leaked from the fucking Demon Lord. The noise echoed across the passage.

Shit! I gotta move! I thought, but my body wasn’t responding.

『Pale man: Soldier, the Kingdom will honor your sacrifice.』

A flash of anger welled up in me.

『Allen: Sacrifice my ass! GET ME OUT OF HERE!』

I knew it was pointless. I just wanted to vent out. I understood… these passages lead all the way up to the throne room. My hope had been ephemeral. I never really had a chance to rejoin the group.

I crawled away from the approaching light, but the demon had heard me and was approaching quickly.

Just when I finally managed to stand up straight, a telekinetic force lifted me up in the air. My attempts to struggle proved vain.

The curse was wreaking havoc on my spirit body, so I couldn’t even spray some anti-magic to free myself. I was utterly fucked.

The magical force held me in a T pose, slowly rotating me to face the new arrival. An older demon, but healthy. Not covered in wounds and ready to cross over. There was no dealing with this one. I was also out of potions.

The Grand Vizier spoke foreign words I didn’t understand, then he cast a look at the dead Demon Lord and stared back at me with anger.

「Vizier: How could… a mere human?」

Oh whatever, I don’t give a fuck anymore.

「Allen: He basically… killed himself.」

Come on, kill me, you piece of shit!

Instead, the demon kept me floating mid-air, while he inspected the corpse, all the while whispering inaudible words.

Another wave of pain wracked my spiritual body.

「Allen: AaaAAGH!」

I twitched, cold sweat covering my skin. I gritted my teeth.

But this time, it was just too much, and I was too tired, and hurting, and spent.

I welcomed the blackness enveloping me.

A voice pierced my blackness.

Sinister maniacal laughter echoed across all corners of my being.

It stopped.

“How ironic,” the voice said in a wicked tone. “To think all I had to do was simply wait!”

The voice exploded in another laugh.

“That you… Would deliver yourself to me in such a manner!” It said with devious glee.

An amused silence echoed just as loud.

“You will serve me…” promised ExFeras, the Dark God of Nightmare.

The blackness swallowed me again.