A relentlessly somber atmosphere plagued the bottom tier of the Abyss due to its supreme overlord’s descent into a deep state of melancholy.
“I-Is it because I let the baddie escape?” Nazuna asked with eyes brimming with tears. “Is that why master’s so mad?”
“I assure you it’s not your fault,” Ellie soothed. “Blessed Lord Light is not the kind of man who would be this aggrieved over something so petty. If you recall, several other high-level Masters showed up unexpectedly to seize Mr. Goh from your grasp. None of us could have anticipated that, so you mustn’t blame yourself, Nazuna.”
Light had assigned Nazuna, the Abyss’s mightiest warrior, to capture Goh, and although the mission had initially gone to plan, three Masters had appeared and distracted Nazuna while teleporting Goh away. It was also plain that these other Masters had been on a calculated search and rescue mission, and had no intentions of engaging Nazuna in battle for any extended length of time. Even if on paper, four Masters presented a tough fight, it was virtually guaranteed that Nazuna would prevail. But if their plan all along was a swift withdrawal, Nazuna was never likely to be able to stop them, even if she somehow managed to marshal all of her strength. Viewed through that lens, Goh’s escape had been practically unavoidable in that situation.
“In any case, His Blessedness isn’t displeased with you in the least,” Ellie continued. “So there’s no need for you to be so distraught.”
“O-Okay,” Nazuna sniffed. “If ya say so, Ellie...”
Ellie turned her gaze to the door of the room Light had holed himself in. Just imagining the sight of her master lost in abject misery caused the superwitch’s chest to tighten.
If only my sorcery could be of some help... she thought. But it’s too far out of my hands. I’m the Level 9999 Forbidden Witch, yet I’m unable to be of any service to my Blessed Lord in his time of need...
Even while Ellie comforted Nazuna, in her head, she was mentally clenching her teeth at her own impotence. She knew that all she could do was stand by and watch as her dungeon lord wallowed in despair.
✦ ✦ ✦
✰✰✰
I sat in a chair beside the bed, gazing in speechless shock at my brother’s unmoving body. We had managed to bring Els and Doc down to the Abyss like we had originally planned, so in that regard, the mission was a success. Admittedly, my brother had committed suicide to stop himself from hurting me, but Ellie had since confirmed that it was possible to use her Resurrection of the Dead spell to bring him back to life.
Fortunately for Els, the only part of his body that had been destroyed was his heart, not much time had passed since his death, and Doc had transformed Els’s body to be highly resilient, which was handy because the resurrection spell wouldn’t work on anyone low-level since the body wouldn’t be able to withstand its power. There was also nothing to be done if the body had been torn to pieces (or was just too damaged in general), or if too much time had passed after death, since the corpse would have started to decompose and become too skeletal. But Ellie assured me that my brother had cleared the whole raft of conditions that needed to be met in order to resurrect his body, so everything was fine on that front. (More precisely, the dead body needed organs that could function normally after being revived. Yes, my brother had crushed his heart, but Ellie said it was possible to restore it and bring him back to life.)
However, the big problem facing us was the fact that there was no way to turn my brother back to normal. None. At this moment in time, Els was lying on a bed still in monster form, and since Ellie had already used her magic to repair his heart, it looked like my brother was just sleeping.
Ellie said Doc had no idea how to turn my brother back into a human, even after probing every inch of his memories, I recalled. Plus, we got Mei to use her lie-detecting skill to confirm he wasn’t hiding anything.
At that same moment, Doc was undergoing the worst form of torture imaginable in the bottommost chambers of the Abyss, beside the former Concord of the Tribes members I had managed to capture so far. But considering the horrors he’d put countless people through, I wasn’t sure he was being punished enough. Prior to placing Doc in his cell, we had done practically everything in our power to try to make him tell us how to turn my brother back to normal, but it was all for naught. This monster version of Els was like a bottle of wine that had mud mixed into it, and it was impossible to separate mud from wine. Since it was similarly impossible to turn my brother back to normal, if we were to revive him, he would go back to being an uncontrollable monster, making the whole thing pointless.
So for the time being, Ellie had used an ultimate class spell on the body that stopped it from experiencing time and thereby prevented it from decomposing. Her magic was strong enough to make time stop forever, not just temporarily, so there was no need to worry about any of Els’s body parts accidentally decaying, and as previously mentioned, it really did look like my brother was simply sleeping on the bed.
I have many times more wealth and resources than I could ever have imagined possessing when I was back on my family’s old farm, I thought. I’ve conquered the world’s biggest and deadliest dungeon, and I have the power to take on all of the nations that oppress humans. Yet none of my powers are enough to bring back my brother...
I folded my hands in front of my face as if in prayer, but instead of beseeching some unseen power, all I could do was let my head hang low until my forehead was pressing up against my interlocked fingers. Bitter tears flowed from my closed eyelids as I tried to make sense of my brother’s cruel fate, and I felt completely miserable about my inability to do a thing for him, even after rescuing him from Doc’s grasp.
I heard a knock at the door, but I didn’t bother to answer. The door opened anyway, and I knew exactly who was walking into the room from the feel of her energy.
“Mei...” I muttered robotically. “I thought I told everyone I wanted to be alone with my brother.”
“Please excuse me for intruding,” Mei said simply, approaching me from the side despite my grumblings, then taking out a handkerchief and gently wiping away my tears. I would usually have been thrilled to be treated with such care by Mei, but instead, this simple act struck a nerve and left me on the edge of becoming a total emotional wreck. But before that could happen, Mei broke the weighty silence.
“Master Light, you must not give up on your dear brother,” she stated. “I believe in my heart that there is still a way to save him.”
“But Doc said that Els is stuck like this forever, and he’s the one who mutated him in the first place,” I said. “Are you saying one of the Dragonute Empire Masters might know something he didn’t?”
I knew it was just wishful thinking on my part, and it was basically a waste of time hoping that any of the remaining Masters might have the skills or capabilities to bring my brother back, no matter what powers they possessed. Heck, I’d even toyed with the idea of getting Nazuna to use her Prometheus to bend my brother’s reality and return him to normal, but affecting the reality of another person would have put her through the most amount of strain imaginable, to the point where it would risk killing her. And that was even if Nazuna made a clone of herself in advance and left it on standby to heal her. I would never risk sacrificing Nazuna’s life to save my brother. That was simply not an option. (And in any case, there was no guarantee Ellie’s resurrection spell would work on Nazuna if she died in the process.) There was simply nothing I could realistically do to save Els.
Mei shook her head. “No, my belief has nothing to do with them. I believe the way to save your dear brother lies within your own self, Master Light. Within your Unlimited Gacha.”
My eyes blinked open and widened as full realization of what Mei had just said struck me. Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? I chalked it up to taking my Gift for granted for so long, I had completely forgotten to appreciate the world of possibilities it represented.
“You’re right. There’s still a chance my Unlimited Gacha will produce a card that’ll fix up my brother,” I said. “I mean, it’s already given me the Gungnir, an actual genesis-class weapon, so why shouldn’t it give me another insanely rare card with the power to turn him back to normal?”
This must have been what it feels like for the scales to fall from your eyes. I got up out of my chair and turned to face Mei, my eyes twinkling with new hope after her words had hauled me out of my pit of despair. I grabbed her hand with pure, unmitigated gratitude.
“Thank you, Mei! Thank you!” I gushed. “Now I know there is still a chance. I just hadn’t realized it before!”
“There is no need to thank me, Master Light,” Mei replied, a smile on her face from seeing me in such high spirits. “To serve you is my honor as a maid as well as my very reason for being.”
I kept thanking Mei over and over, tears of joy streaming down my face. I had thought I would never get out of my funk, but she had opened up my eyes to this new faint glimmer of a possibility. Mei once again wiped my eyes with her handkerchief, although unlike before, I could feel from the touch of her fingertips that she was just as happy as I was.