07 — Always Cheat on Time Trials

07 — Always Cheat on Time Trials

The new monsters on floor forty-one were undead beasts like horses, wolves, and tigers. I didn’t know their actual names; it was easier to call it as I saw them. An appraisal skill of some sort would have been handy right about now.

Undead horses with melted bodies, enshrouded in a purplish-red aura, trotted through the halls. The muffled howls of wolves that were made of pure, thick bone (none of which were good boys) shook the walls. Catlike monsters with saber teeth scraped the floors with their knife-like claws. I’d read quite a few monster encyclopedias, but these creatures were brand new to me.

There were also larger wraiths and crimson-eyed death knights, but that was the extent of the threat that faced me. After half a year of fighting the lich knight, these guys felt almost agonizingly slow in comparison. And the wraiths were certainly bigger, but I was still immune to their magic.

As I encountered new monsters in the depths, not one posed a single problem, making clearing the labyrinth before I starved to death my primary concern aside from watching out for traps.

I was convinced that the reason I hadn’t been allowed to turn back at the fortieth floor was because the final boss room awaited me on the fiftieth. I had to believe that or I might have lost my mind.

Regardless, I was dangerously low on food and couldn’t afford to take things slow like I had been doing before. So I thought up the stupidest exploit imaginable.

“Please work.”

Operation Substance X March was a go, and it was going to take a lot of luck and prayer to pull it off. I removed the lid from one of the barrels and tied it securely around my waist with a spare holy silver robe that I had. Then I marched on. The idea was to use it to repel monsters and make it all the way down to the next boss without actually having to fight anything along the way.

The undead hordes spotted me, paused for a moment, then turned right back around and fled. It was particularly effective against animal-types. All I had to do was walk around, believing in my gut and Monsieur Luck, and I came across several treasure chests and downward paths with minimal effort.

“Okay, I didn’t expect it to be that easy. Now I’m kinda scared.”

I was enjoying the fruits of my ridiculous plan, which had frankly been one step away from pure gambling, and was having a last supper in front of the fiftieth-floor boss room. The smell wafting from the open barrels I’d sealed off the area with was horrendously pungent. There were no monsters in sight.

“It’s not going to be funny if I wake up and get turned into a zombie right at the end.”

I rested my head on my Angel’s Pillow for what would likely be my last night in the labyrinth. There was a disturbingly real chance that the next morning would be my last one alive. If I couldn’t beat the final boss, I would merely become another zombie roaming the halls.

I had assumed that my inability to level up meant that this place was fake, but I’d only made it through my battle with the lich knight with all of my limbs intact because of Extra Heal. Without such an advanced healing spell, I certainly would have died. And not in the hyperbolic sense. This magic was nowhere in the grimoires I’d gotten from Her Holiness, and I was likely the only healer at HQ who could cast it.

The labyrinth was real. There was no other explanation. If I hadn’t doubted that in the beginning, I’d have called it quits right after the first boss fight. The only thing that kept me from trembling in fear now was the looming threat of starvation if I didn’t press on.

I closed my eyes. One way or another, tomorrow was the end.

I usually woke up gradually, but today of all days I was startled awake by the distinct stench of Substance X.

“That stuff sure is handy. It even works as an alarm clock.”

I poured one last mug to brace myself. And with no food left, that was all the preparation I had.

“I did everything I could. If it all comes to nothing, I’ll surrender with dignity,” I vowed. “Yeah, right. To hell with dignity! I’ll crawl through muck and grime to make it back alive! I didn’t think I had a shot at beating the lich knight, but here I am! And the pope still owes me that fabulous prize!”

I took a deep breath and prepared for battle. There was no creaking from the doors this time. They swung open with a deep, violent quaking.

“I expected no less.”

The doors slammed shut and locked as usual when I reached the middle of the room. There to meet me was the final wight, and it was anything but ordinary. Built like an orc, it had a commanding presence befitting a title like “king,” or maybe “lord.” It was about the height of the lich knight, but it outweighed the knight with its sheer girth.

Among all the monsters I had fought, I’d never seen a creature so grotesque. In most respects it was a normal wight, except for the writhing faces that covered its body and robe.

“I’m gonna be sick.”

Like the center of a vortex, it seemed to have absorbed countless undead creatures and knights of the Church into a gelatinous amalgamation. I knew that rushing would only cause me to lose my head, but I was a firm believer in the philosophy of “the early bird gets the worm.” Accelerating my magical energy within me, I leaped into action.

Cleansing magic wasn’t worth the effort, not against the sheer mass of this thing. And especially not after the last boss had flown into a rage when I’d tried it. The faces shifting around my new enemy’s form made me think my only shot at winning was with something far bigger and stronger.

Countless imaginings from my past life, fantasies and creatures from every kind of fiction, were real in this world, and enemies like this one tended to be invincible as long as they had the means to recover. Sometimes it was by magic, but in this case my opponent was probably strengthened by the various entities it had absorbed.

Plus, well, this was the fiftieth floor. It was undoubtedly going to be leagues above the wights that I’d fought before. I would need all my strength and more to knock this king off its throne.

“Oh holy hand of healing. Oh birthing breath of the land. Heed my prayer. Take my energy for an angelic breath and mend the beings of this realm. Area High Heal!”

Moments after my chant ended, the boss’s arm elongated and came crashing down towards me, catching me by surprise and sending me flying.

“Oof, wow,” I winced. “Thank god I jumped aside.”

When it rains, it pours, though. Several faces lurched forward from its outstretched arm and morphed into multiple red-eyed death knights and wraiths.

“Her Holiness really undersold how dangerous conquering this place would be.”

The now-missing portion of the boss’s arm quickly regenerated and returned to normal. The new death knights had to be dealt with first, so I paralyzed them with Purification and made quick work of them. As always, the wraiths’ dark magic was little more than a nuisance.

But those were hardly my only threats. The boss itself wouldn’t sit around while I took care of the stragglers, and the magic it hurled at me was anything but meager, although it was familiar. These were the same rays of darkness that the first boss had used on me. The very same ones that had sent agonizing pain through me after only a slight graze.

Dammit! I cast the spell left to me by my second master, the lich knight. “Sanctuary Circle!”

A magic runic circle appeared beneath me and began to radiate light. As I downed a high-level potion, bringing me back from the brink of magical exhaustion, I reveled in the strength of my new spell.

“Not knowing what they do until I actually try it out really sucks, though.” The king wight’s rays of darkness dissipated as they passed through the circle. “Is this barrier magic? No, it couldn’t be...”

The undead around me were erupting in bluish-white flames the instant they touched the edge of it. This spell had cost a whopping one hundred MP. Add an extra fifty percent to that from Free Casting it and my magic was running dangerously low.

About a minute later, the circle vanished. I’d been hoarding points since the thirtieth floor, so Cattleya had recommended I spend them on the highest-level potions I could afford. And honestly, I didn’t think I would ever have to use them. I hadn’t needed them before, not even for the lich knight (why bother when I could just take a break in the corner?). Now, though, they were a godsend.

I finished my potion and cut down the extra monsters after casting Purification.

“Damn, all I’m doing is buying time here!”

The king wight, now cautious of me, cast its spells from a safe distance. Although Sanctuary Circle nullified its magic, my own wouldn’t last if things continued this way.

“It’s not like me to be pushed into a corner. Guess I’ll just have to finish this quickly!”

I dashed towards the boss and chanted, “Oh holy hand of healing. Oh birthing breath of the land. Take my energy and shield me in ramparts of angelic light. Engulf impurity in a bastion of radiance. Sanctuary Circle!”

As the words left my lips, I felt magical energy flow from within me. But while the sensation normally left me as it escaped my body, I somehow, strangely, continued to feel my energy seep out of me and into the circle as it formed. I opened the dam further, pouring more and more magic out, and the more the circle beneath me absorbed, the wider it grew, reaching all the way to the king wight.

The wight severed the part of its leg that stood within the circle just as it began to shimmer, and an instant later, the detached limb was engulfed in white flames. Now legless, my enemy toppled over backwards.

Whether or not I had the magic for a follow-up attack, it was now or never. This move would decide the battle.

I chugged another potion and slew the monsters around the boss with my sword and spear. What good that did, I couldn’t say, but the king wight was clearly shrinking back to normal size.

Yet this wasn’t the time to let my guard down. No, it was time for an experiment. I began to chant again, coalescing my magic not directly beneath me, but beyond me. I was going to create a magic circle at range.

When I’d first come to the Church, this technique had been beyond my grasp. Theoretically, one could create runes on any surface that one could see, to cast spells with. The grimoire had described Sanctuary Circle as the shield of all good, the hope of all things holy. It was impenetrable to the dark arts and anything wicked within it was set ablaze. However, like all shields, it had weak points. For instance, it was completely useless against aerial attacks.

Also, was it just me, or was it ironic that the Church so heavily associated itself with the term “magic”? When I heard “magic,” I thought of witches, demons, and evil creatures normally persecuted by the Church, so wouldn’t it have been better to call holy magic something like “the holy arts”? Unless warlocks were, somehow, swell folks to be around. But I digress.

What piqued my interest about the grimoire’s description of the spell was the “anything wicked within it was set ablaze” part. And right now, the wight boss was stuck on the floor, so I simply placed the circle directly beneath it and cast the spell.

The creature shrieked in agony but only for a moment. Its body ignited, and as it smoldered there in the flames...

“That’s...not possible...”

Within the flames, I thought I saw my enemy transform into an elderly priest, bathed in a holy aura and staring straight at me. Smiling. He whispered something and then was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.

My hair stood on end and I immediately vomited what little contents I had in my stomach. The labyrinth itself seemed to be toying with me, asking me a cruel question: what if every monster I’d fought on my way down had been like that old man? No rest. Not even at the very end. However this dungeon had come to be, whatever sick bastard had made the place, they were no friend of mine.

My mood didn’t improve, but while I waited for my drained MP to recover, I gathered the king wight’s dropped items before taking a break. This boss hadn’t left a magic stone (unless Sanctuary Circle had destroyed it). All that remained was a staff and grimoire. I purified both and placed the staff into my bag, then flipped open the book.

“Forbidden Magic of the Holy Variety,” it read.

“This can’t be what I think it is,” I muttered.

My assumptions were correct. The spellbook detailed the chant, the effects, why it was forbidden...everything. I stashed it in my bag, conflicted over whether to present it to Her Holiness when the time came.

“Huh? Where’s the rumbling? No more staircases? Unless...”

I prayed to Monsieur Luck for a nice, clichéd teleport back to the beginning, but I was well accustomed by now to the fact that life was never fair. There was no magic teleport. And the door I’d entered through had simply vanished.

“Well, I’m stuck. Or, what, is this where I starve myself until I cleanse my chakras of worldly desires?”

I had passed my limit long ago. On top of being exhausted from two boss fights in a row, my mind was churning. I sat down and let myself fall backwards.

“I’m so sick of this. Wake me up when I’m in a fluffy bed, please and thank you.”

I took out my Angel’s Pillow and took a very angry nap.