Chapter 190

“My experience to my pupil. Guide her on the road ahead.” Although Mariela had assumed it would be accompanied by pain, like the Imprints she’d suffered many times over, the transfer of experience was extremely gentle. She was enveloped in a calm, warm feeling that reminded her of Freyja leading her home by the hand when she was little. “It’s done. This is all I can do for Mariela.” “Master…” Freyja was kind at heart. She was an arrogant drunkard and a good-for-nothing who caused trouble for others, but she was also a wonderful person who lavished love on a child like Mariela with no special skills other than alchemy. In the depths of the Labyrinth, Freyja had taken on a swarm of corpses alone and shown everyone the way forward. Even though she should have been in dire peril, she had managed to slip from the jaws of death and come running at just the right time to help Mariela out of a tough spot. However, despite seeming to know everything, Freyja refused to do any kind of housework, and she was a tactless scatterbrain. That was why, even though it seemed that the sage had managed something truly incredible, what came next wasn’t a surprise to Mariela. With an extremely clear understanding, Mariela faced her master and shouted, “Master! It’s still not enough!” 04 “Whaaaaaa—?!” The legendary Sage of Calamity had known of Mariela’s lack of experience and had used it to make a cool entrance. She’d even looked the part of a noble sage in the way she’d taken it upon herself to transfer her experience to Mariela. Yet the Elixir was still just a tiny bit out of Mariela’s reach. “Uh…how? You’re kidding, right?!” “I’m not! It’s all ’cause you slacked off on your alchemy! Aaargh, what do we do?!” “Wow. So about how much more do you still need?” “Erm…probably…one special-grade potion’s worth?” The alchemist master and her pupil were both completely flustered. Leonhardt, Sieg, and indeed all the present members of the Labyrinth Suppression Forces had become mere spectators to this display, dumbfounded and wondering what would happen next. As for Endalsia, she had a somewhat distant look in her eyes as she quietly continued to fade. “One more potion’s worth? You’ve still got medicinal crystals, right? So you just need a ley-line shard! Right, all of you! Yes, you, soldiers! Everyone! Jump right now!” With an incredibly threatening look, Freyja barked out an order. Whether it was because of the presence she commanded or because her masterly ways evoked some sort of childlike obedience in the soldiers, the Labyrinth Suppression Forces began to jump up and down. Clinking accompanied the hops, along with flying coins. It was chaos. The medical staff hadn’t gone to the trouble of healing the soldiers for a charade like this. Nierenberg shoved his glasses upward as he turned his pockets inside out to check whether he’d forgotten about any ley-line shards. The only ones who didn’t join in the ridiculous jumps were Leonhardt, who hadn’t been picking up materials, and Sieg. Sieg had sunk to the ground next to Mariela; his grip on consciousness had grown hazy after sustaining so many injuries and using up his magical power to kill the boss of the Labyrinth. Even Mariela was jumping up and down in the hope she might have a shard. Perhaps the raptor and the salamander on its head both thought it was some kind of game, because they jumped, too, with little growls. Despite the rather absurd efforts, not a single ley-line shard fell from anyone’s pockets. Before they’d come here to the deepest stratum, though, they’d resolved to do their utmost and scraped together everything they had to make potions, so it was no surprise that no shards remained. Endalsia’s existence continued to fade as they wasted time in a futile effort. All Mariela needed was just a little more…just a tiny bit more… “Ahhh, what should we dooo?!” Mariela shouted, looking ready to cry again. Sieg, still on the ground, hurriedly searched his own pockets in vain. “You reeeally are a klutz, huh?” “…Lynx?!” Mariela could have sworn she’d heard Lynx whispering in her ear. She whirled around to look behind herself, and the pendant Lynx had once given to her swung, and the chain broke with a snap, sending the pendant flying. Thunk, thunk-thud. The water droplet-shaped trick locket bounced and rolled on the Labyrinth’s floor. “Ahh, my pendant!” Flustered, Mariela rushed over and picked it up. The trick locket, which she had never opened, now readily bore its concealed contents in her hands. A ley-line shard tumbled out. Lynx had given Mariela this pendant around the time she’d first come to the Labyrinth City. It had a complex gimmick to it, and no matter what Mariela had tried, she’d never been able to open it. As a prank, Lynx had shut a ley-line shard within it, where it had remained until both Mariela and Sieg had forgotten what was inside. Even so, Mariela had always carried it close to her as a memento of him. “Lynx…” Had the voice just been a hallucination brought on by exhaustion, or, now that they were so close to the ley line, could Lynx have provided them with a miracle? The ley-line shard in Mariela’s hand was unable to answer, but it gave her a more nostalgic feeling than anything she’d ever touched before. This shard was the final piece. With this, the puzzle would be complete… “Mariela, that pendant…” “I know, Sieg. Lynx is helping us.” Leonhardt and the Labyrinth Suppression Forces were wide-eyed at this inconceivable development. Even Sieg was surprised at Lynx’s unexpected aid. Mariela entrusted the Core of the Labyrinth to Sieg for the time being and put power into the ley-line shard Lynx had given her. The process of refining special-grade potions was the same one she’d repeated many, many times over—quite possibly the last refining process she would ever perform. “Transmutation Vessel.” When I’d just started making special-grade potions, I made the Transmutation Vessels too strong and wasted magical power. Mariela expanded the Transmutation Vessel as she reflected back to when her master had first arrived in the Labyrinth City. In her peripheral vision, Mariela spotted her master wearing an expression that said “I knew it.” However, Mariela chose to ignore Freyja for the moment. Turning away, Mariela decided to play back the memories of that time with a more glorified, responsible version of her master instead. Dissolving a ley-line shard into Drops of Life required high temperature and high pressure, but that didn’t mean she could just force it in. You could say a ley-line shard was the crystallization of a monster’s vitality, formed inside its body. So traces of the monster’s consciousness remained. Each ley-line shard held traits related to vague qualities about the monster it was once part of. Some melted easily at high temperatures; some preferred sudden changes in pressure; some wanted greater pressure and lower temperature. If you put magical power into Drops of Life and adjusted the environment in accordance with preferences like those, the shard would melt surprisingly well. I wonder what kind of creature this was, Mariela thought. Lynx had said he had gotten this ley-line shard from a monster he’d defeated on the way to the Labyrinth City from the imperial capital. What kind of monster did Lynx fight, and how did he fight it? As she recalled Lynx with fondness, Mariela probed the ley-line shard as if she was asking it questions. What kind of special-grade potion was she to make with this last shard? Mariela had repeated the refining process so many times she’d lost track, and she’d also gradually become better at tuning in to the individuality of ley-line shards. Moreover, now that she’d inherited her master’s experience, Mariela’s proficiency in alchemy had been boosted so much that it was only a hair from the highest level possible. Recently, Mariela had fervently handling shards en masse, so she’d been unaware of their individuality. However, now that she had a moment to focus her awareness on one, she found that grasping the unique qualities of the material came surprisingly quickly. Mariela had always understood well the condition of medicinal herbs and the processing they’d gone through, but now the ley-line shard transmitted even the memories of its host from when it was alive. Oh… This was a wolf monster. A strong force, the ley-line shard, suddenly formed in its body, and it ran wild. Its friends were the same way. Some of them went even wilder… Then they attacked Lynx and the others, who defeated them. This ley-line shard had come from a black death wolf. Some of its comrades went on to evolve all the way to werewolves, but this individual had been the only one with a ley-line shard inside it. Since it had been a wolf, Mariela reasoned she could raise the temperature and pressure in her vessel to simulate the creature running through the forest. Black death wolves are strong, but not so strong that they have ley-line shards in them. This is unusual. I wonder what it could’ve eaten? Mariela thought. I want to run, I want to dash. Faster, faster, faster. Such were the feelings coming from the shard. As she radically changed the temperature and pressure of the Drops of Life to fulfill the desire of the ley-line shard, Mariela further attuned her awareness to its history. These wolves attacked a merchant caravan… This is horrible. Everyone’s so thin, and they don’t have decent equipment… Wha— This is… Mariela turned an eye toward Sieg. This ley-line shard had dwelled in the black death wolf Lynx had defeated. That black death wolf had evolved from a black wolf that had attacked a certain merchant. The memories flowing from the ley-line shard replayed the details of the attack to Mariela. A lone man climbed onto a raptor and fled while the pack of black wolves attacked the merchant caravan and devoured their poor victims. Although the fleeing man wanted desperately to escape, he stopped to save a man in heavy armor, allowing the pursuing black wolves to close the distance. A wolf sank its teeth into the man’s left leg and tore flesh from his calf before eating it. And so it consumed the flesh of a man beloved by the spirits and filled with power. This wolf tried to eat Sieg… When Sieg was still a debt laborer, he was taken into the Fell Forest by his then-master’s son. Wolves had attacked him, and he’d survived the ordeal but suffered a grievous wound to the leg. That flesh and blood, full of great ability and loved by the spirits because of the Spirit Eye, was what had allowed the black wolf to evolve into a black death wolf after consuming only a relatively small amount. That was why a ley-line shard had formed within the monster. Another monster had evolved all the way to a werewolf, and that one had indeed devoured many of the poor debt laborers. However, only the black death wolf who ate Sieg’s flesh had absorbed enough Drops of Life into its body to produce a ley-line shard. About a month after Sieg had been attacked, the Black Iron Freight Corps had defeated the werewolf and the black death wolves. Lynx had given the ley-line shard to Mariela, and the wolf had ended up back near Sieg again, in a way. This was the final shard, the last piece, connecting the present to the future. What a turn of fate. It’s like it was predetermined. No, that’s not right. This is more than just fate, Mariela reflected as she crafted the potion. She believed she’d survived the Stampede and woken up two hundred years later in order to be here now. However, she’d only made it here because of her own actions, her own will. Mariela could have just as easily drawn Magic Circles of Suspended Animation and escaped with her master and Sieg. She’d been aware of that option, yet she had chosen to come here, to the deepest part of the Labyrinth. Mariela fixed her gaze on Sieg. When Mariela looked at Sieg during her potion-making process, Sieg stared back at her, the Core of the Labyrinth still in his hands, wondering what she wanted. He had pushed himself so hard in order to defeat the Labyrinth boss that even standing was a monumental task. “Sieg, you’re always wearing yourself out, aren’t you?” “Hmm? Ah, sorry. I’m just resting a little so I can recover enough to protect you.” “That’s not what I meant. Sieg, you’ve always given it your all. You’ve worked super-duper hard.” Sieg was always worrying about something, lamenting something, and yet he’d come all the way here with Mariela without even the slightest hesitation. “Sieg, you always do your best and never give up. That’s why I’m here right now.” Although it did seem like both the timing of Freyja’s awakening and her teachings followed a predetermined destiny… Surely fate alone wouldn’t have been enough, Mariela reasoned. Sieg’s tenacity, and this journey he and Mariela had walked together, were by no means the workings of destiny. “Anchor Essence.” Mariela completed the final stage of the special-grade potion refining process. With the potion finished, Mariela understood that she’d finally reached the end of her training, the pinnacle of alchemy. And she’d done so by her own will. 05 At last, Mariela could refine the legendary potion, the Elixir. She understood now that she was capable of making it. First, however, Mariela had the Sieg drink her newly made special-grade heal potion to relieve his exhaustion. Sieg had pushed his Spirit Eye to the limit and was about ready to keel over. He likely had a few torn muscles, too. Yet he suspiciously turned down the offer. “I’m fine,” he said. So Mariela simply thrust the concoction into Sieg’s mouth with a “Hup.” Although he gagged on it at first, he did drink it down. Didn’t something like this happen on the day we first met? Mariela wondered. Since the pendant had opened, all Mariela could think about was the past. As she reflected with nostalgia on her time since awakening in the world of two centuries later, Mariela accepted the Core of the Labyrinth back from Sieg. The recipe for making the Elixir wasn’t recorded in the Library, but Mariela no longer needed the likes of a recipe. She understood what to do. The Core of the Labyrinth would tell her. “I’m going to start,” Mariela announced; then she slowly expanded a Transmutation Vessel. The Core of the Labyrinth was a mass of pure, high-density energy. The miasma of the monster that had been the boss of the Labyrinth had permeated it, turning it black and corrupted. Which meant the first thing to do was excise the corruption. Excise? No, it’s more like sending it back. If the world’s corruption, which made monsters what they were, had been created by humans, then it was a part of those humans. That being the case, Mariela reasoned that she should be able to send it back. “Drops of Life.” When she filled the Transmutation Vessel containing the Core of the Labyrinth with Drops of Life, the Core sucked up the Drops of Life like a thirsty beast drinking water, and it began to swell gradually with the amount it took in. As she constantly drew up more Drops of Life for the Core of the Labyrinth to absorb, Mariela lowered the pressure and temperature a bit at a time, little by little. The control was precise, exact, and advanced enough that only a person worthy of working with Core of the Labyrinth could have ever done it. She didn’t deviate even slightly from the needed temperature or pressure. To others, it might have seemed incredible, but to Mariela, it was hardly anything. She’d done work like this many thousands, tens of thousands of times since she was a child. When she lowered the pressure below what one would have found atop the highest mountain in the world and the temperature below the air of the frigid north, the Core of the Labyrinth suddenly turned jet-black. In the next instant, the black color was replaced by pure white, as if the darkness was being erased. After that, Mariela changed the temperature, pressure, and atmosphere in accordance with what the Core of the Labyrinth, now fat on Drops of Life, wished. There were as many steps as there were stars in the sky, and Mariela dared not risk a single error among them. Such technique combined minute, precise, and fundamental methods in limitless combination. This was a peak of alchemy that only those who had made potion after potion after potion could reach. Searing lava leaping within the deepest reaches of a volcano’s crater. The unreachable bottom of a fissure in the sea. A hot, massive, ancient site shut away in the deepest reaches of the earth. Mariela changed the Transmutation Vessel, changed her world, as if she was traveling to the most extreme places known to man. With each alteration, the Core of the Labyrinth changed color, changed size. Before Mariela knew it, the Core had become a liquid floating within the Transmutation Vessel. The red of blood, the red of the setting sun, and the deep, fiery red of the swaying autumn trees. The light yellowish-green of new leaves in spring, the bright green of jade beads, the deep green of the trees in the Fell Forest. The indigo of the sky when nighttime nears, the blue of the endless seas, the blue of Sieg’s eye. No sooner had the Core of the Labyrinth taken on a large gaseous form, filling its container like a cloud, than it condensed. The vaporous form rapidly shrank, coalescing into something like a berry or nut. The mass winked out of existence and immediately began growing like a sprouting plant. The silver of the moon, the gold of flames, the luminescence of fireflies, the lightning on a dark night. Pale, fierce, gentle, intense. Both the color and the light shifted, and the transitions themselves appeared unstable. It was as though everyone present was watching a world change at a rapid speed. What they were seeing in the transformations of the Core of the Labyrinth—or rather, the core of the ley line—might have been its very memories. “Ahh, how plentiful and beautiful, this ley line,” Freyja murmured in wonder as she attentively watched the growth of her favorite pupil and the refining of the Elixir. And just as she spoke, the Elixir, the legendary secret medicine, suddenly reached its completion. “It’s…done.” Mariela breathed a big sigh and offered the glittering liquid in the Transmutation Vessel to the spirit Endalsia. “So this is…the Elixir.” “It’s shines just as the ley line does.” As Leonhardt and Sieg watched attentively, the spirit Endalsia shifted her focus to the Elixir, then to Mariela, Leonhardt, Sieg, and each of the other humans. —Are you truly certain? If you help me, the Elixir will disappear. Even if it extends my life, I can no longer manage the ley line in this weakened body. I am now a mere spirit. I have not the power to manifest in this world, and only a little remaining to watch over you all and illuminate your path—. At Endalsia’s question, Mariela looked back at Leonhardt, Dick, Nierenberg, the soldiers of the Labyrinth Suppression Forces, Sieg, and, finally, her master, Freyja. All of them nodded reassuringly at Mariela and Endalsia. “That’s plenty. We might make mistakes sometimes, but when that happens, just try to light our way a little. We can handle the rest; we can move forward on our own.” It was with these words that Mariela offered the entire Transmutation Vessel with the Elixir to Endalsia. —You have my thanks.— The instant Endalsia touched the Elixir, the Labyrinth’s sixtieth stratum filled with a gentle glow. A cascade of placid, warm light. Before the light flowing from Endalsia blanketed everyone’s field of view, Mariela saw Endalsia look at someone and smile. —Thank you for guiding the children.— The only ones who could hear what the spirit said were those closest to her. Who is she— Sieg? No…it’s… But the light engulfed their surroundings faster than Mariela could follow Endalsia’s line of sight. After dazzling display subsided, the sixtieth stratum of the Labyrinth was nothing more than an empty cave. They could no longer sense the ley line that had felt so close just a moment ago. Only the salamander atop Koo the raptor’s head provided illumination for Mariela and the others. It was a small lamp in a pitch-dark cavern.