11 — Growth

11 — Growth

“You might want some nose plugs from here on.”

“I guess I’ll hang on to them.” Estia hesitantly took the nose plugs from me.

“Here, take this holy silver sword and shield too. They’ll work wonders if you imbue them with your magic.”

“Okay. Thank you, sir.”

And that was the extent of our exchange. I felt like I was spinning my wheels trying to lighten the mood around her. What a great start to our labyrinth adventure.

“There.” I pointed. “That’s a zombie. Seen one before?”

“At the empire when I was little.”

“Okay. What about ghouls?”

“The empire conducted experiments with the undead. The strongest mages were turned into wraiths. Low-level corpses became zombies or mummies. High-level ones turned into ghouls or death knights. So yes.”

How in the world... Never mind. I didn’t want to know how she knew all that. It was bad for my heart.

“Be sure to share any information you have, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

My impression of Estia had changed a great deal over the last few hours now that I actually knew a few things about her. It also helped that she didn’t retreat from me every time I stood next to her. We’d have a problem if her inability to hold a conversation wasn’t so charming, though.

The smell got worse the deeper we went, but it didn’t slow us down. We were at the tenth floor boss room in thirty minutes, and ten minutes later we were moving on. Battles ended quickly—so quickly, in fact, that picking up the magic stones took longer than the fights themselves. I knew a few crafters who would be very happy with the amount of stones we were gathering.

“Feels like there are more monsters than last time,” I remarked. “It’s only going to get tougher, so let me know if it’s too much.”

“Yes, sir.”

Those two words were just about all I could force out of her. She kept her sentences short and her mouth tight. To be fair, though, she had never been much of a talker.

“Feel free to speak up whenever. I’m sure you and the spirit will catch things I wouldn’t on my own.”

“Um, yes,” Estia replied. “Thank you, sir.”

I sensed her relaxing a little more. Maybe mentioning the spirit helped to take the pressure off her. As we pressed on, the tension gradually dissipated.

“Wraiths on the twentieth floor,” I said. “The labyrinth definitely did some leveling up of its own.”

“What used to be here?”

“Ghouls, mummies, ghosts, skeleton knights, that sort of thing. Wraiths aren’t supposed to show up until at least floor thirty. Gives me a bad feeling. But let’s not rush. We’ll take a break at the thirtieth floor boss— I mean, in the main chamber.”

“Understood, sir.”

True to the Spirit of Dusk’s word, Estia was unaffected by the wraiths’ magic. They and the death knights posed no obstacle as we proceeded.

We were resting in the third boss room when I asked Estia, “Feeling tired?”

“Not particularly,” she responded. “You’ve done most of the work, sir.”

I didn’t quite believe her; she looked a little lethargic. But she would have let the Spirit of Dusk take over if she was truly exhausted.

“I thought you might be drained after all the walking and fighting we’ve done, but if you say so.”

“An average person might be, but I’m fairly high-leveled. And I’ve been...comfortable lately.”

Comfortable wasn’t familiar to her, I took it. She told me her level, and it was the exact same as Kefin’s before we had left Yenice. I decided to shift the subject to myself.

“I’m surprised how easily we’ve been getting through,” I said. “Maybe it’s my higher stats or maybe my training’s been paying off. Do you want to take more of the battles?”

“No, that’s okay. I don’t really like fighting.”

“THANK YOU!” I cried. Estia flinched, but I was too ecstatic about finally finding a sane, like-minded individual to care about looking crazy. “Sorry, I’ve just been constantly surrounded by people who want to do nothing but swing sharp edges around.”

Estia giggled. “Yeah, you’re not wrong there,” she said. “How long did it take you to come this far the first time?”

I thought back on my old labyrinth-trotting journey, my old strategies. It had taken me the better part of half a year, out of a total year and a half, to reach this point.

“A few months at least. But before that, I trained at the Merratoni Adventurer’s Guild. Then Church HQ summoned me, and half a year of fighting for my life later, I made it to this room.” I cracked a nostalgic smile. “I know I’m weak now, but back then it wasn’t even funny.”

“It sounds like you’ve worked hard to come this far.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that. There was a lot of recklessness involved, punctuated by even more luck.”

It wasn’t entirely luck, granted, but needless to say, I would not have survived without Monsieur Luck.

“Sure, but it still took effort,” Estia insisted.

“Maybe,” I conceded. “I’m not sure I’d say I necessarily worked for anything. I just did what I could with what I had at the time.”

Survival had been the only thing on my mind. And that didn’t really feel like work, let alone hard work, unless you could call doing the bare minimum “effort.”

I felt a knot in my chest. Had I changed since coming to this world? Had I grown as a person?

The monsters on the thirty-first floor had jumped to a new class yet again. Red-eyed death knights and translucent, ethereal entities that only needed a scythe to complete the Grim Reaper look—wraith-like creatures of greater size than any I’d seen before—wandered the halls.

“Keep your distance. I might not be able to make it in time if you’re in trouble,” I warned Estia. “But also protect me if you can.”

No shame. I had seen Estia fight on our way here, and she wasn’t an amateur. I had yet to see the full extent of her abilities, though.

“Yes, sir,” she replied, skillfully dispatching a death knight and his goons.

I faced my own enemies, trying not to be too jealous of her skills. “So you can cut right through bone, huh? No way I could do that.”

Not without the Illusion Sword, anyway. I deftly swapped between sword and staff mode as needed, cutting down and purifying monsters, then promptly collecting their gems.

“We’re starting to see monsters that should only be on the fortieth floor,” I noted. “It’s anyone’s guess what could be waiting for us, so we’ll eat and get some sleep when we get there. After that, it’s a straight shot to the end.”

“Yes, sir.”

We rapidly descended, smoothly and without triggering a single trap, until we approached the fortieth floor boss room.

For the first time since we had entered the labyrinth, Estia spoke up and asked a proper question. “Mister Luciel, are all labyrinths this simple?”

“No way,” I replied at once. “I’m just familiar with this one, so we’re not getting nearly as lost as we normally would.”

“Yeah, true. We haven’t made a single wrong turn now that you mention it.”

“Good thing I made those maps, huh? Also, the monsters are up against a bad matchup. Normally, the wraiths’ mind magic would be devastating, but it doesn’t faze us.”

“They’re really that dangerous?”

“Generally,” I said. “And the undead really don’t like holy magic, so that gives us a pretty solid edge.”

Estia mumbled something in affirmation. I wondered what had caused her to suddenly be so inquisitive. I certainly didn’t mind; it was just odd.

“Something bothering you?” I asked.

“Just wondering if I really need to be here,” she murmured. She seemed really obsessed with making herself useful.

“Let me be straight with you. I’m positive I could have made it here on my own, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to. I’ve hardly even tapped into my magic. I appreciate you being here.” Being alone was hard on the mind in a lot of ways, after all.

Estia held her hands together and offered a smile that wasn’t quite convincing. “Then I’m glad.”

“Don’t let your guard down yet,” I warned her, steeling myself for what lay ahead. “Last time I fought this boss, I got locked in and it took me half a year to beat. I’ll need your and the spirit’s help to make sure we don’t have a repeat of that little incident.”

“Half a year? How did you survive?”

“I told you, I get lucky a lot. It happened right after I’d stocked up on tons of food.”

“You’re...not joking,” Estia murmured. “I honestly thought you were exaggerating to lighten the mood.”

“I only lie for good reason. You can ask around if you don’t believe me. It’ll probably be even crazier than what I could describe.”

“Y-Yes, sir.”

I still felt a bit of distance between us, but it was closing ever so slightly.

We proceeded to the boss room door and opened it. And inside, waiting for me, was him.

The lich knight.

I couldn’t contain my grin. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“This power,” Estia gasped. “That’s no ordinary monster, sir.”

Even in death, the lich knight possessed the same sort of intimidating presence as Brod, and I had regarded it accordingly as my second master. Seeing the monster again, with fresh eyes, I was reassured that it was deserving of the title.

Estia was trembling.

“You stay back,” I told her. “I’ll handle this.”

“You can’t be serious. There’s no way you can take on that thing by yourself.”

“Only one way to find out. It’s time to see how much I’ve grown.”

To be fair, with the Holy Dragon spear in my left hand and the Illusion Sword in my right, it wouldn’t be an entirely accurate evaluation. But still, after over a hundred levels since I had last faced the lich knight as a beginner, I was surely much stronger.

My joints locked up at the monster’s foreboding presence. And yet, I felt like I could give my old rival a run for his money.

“My name is Luciel, S-rank of the Church of Saint Shurule,” I declared, “and you, my mentor, will be my judge. Let’s see what I can do, shall we?”

The lich knight’s massive, deadly greatsword swept past my face, its spear closing in directly after it. One of the five openers. Its patterns were simple.

I parried the spear, and the greatsword returned a beat later, just like I knew it would. I let it glance off my own spear, barely redirecting it away from me, and shifted my center of mass to deliver a full swing at the lich knight’s exposed neck. It caught the blow against its spear, then prepared to counter with the greatsword, but my Illusion Sword tore through the spear and continued towards its target.

The lich knight’s head came clean off.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” I said, exhaling. “I remember being driven to tears when I finally beat him for the first time.”

My body remembered everything, all the moves down to my bones. Everything about my first battle with the lich knight had come rushing back. All the emotions, the sheer will and defiance of death that had been my only weapon against such an overpowering opponent.

Suddenly, I realized something—why it felt like past me, who ran headfirst into battle like an idiot, seemed to have been making so much more progress than I was now. It was something the lich knight had taught me.

Essentially, I was putting myself on a pedestal.

“Wow! That was incredible, Mister Luciel!” Estia cheered. “How did you do that? How did you stand up to that monster without even flinching? You’ve been holding back this whole time, haven’t you?” She was beaming from ear to ear. “I had no idea you were so strong!”

I gave her an ironic smile back. “No. I owe this win to my past self. For putting in the effort. Come on, let’s eat.”

Estia raised her eyebrows in surprise. And I felt more alive than I had in ages.