Chapter 186 (2/15): The Dungeon Within the Mountain

Camilla shut her eyes. The light was blinding. With every step she took further into the tunnel, the holy mana grew stronger. If it wasn’t for the much more overpowering earth mana that dominated her senses, she might have mistaken the mountain for a gigantic consecrated zone. However, there was no reaction at all from Kagriss, nothing to indicate that she might be inconvenienced in the slightest. How could Kagriss not feel that overbearing pressure?

Or was she the problem for being able to detect such trace amounts of mana?

It seemed that the only discomfort Kagriss felt came from Camilla herself. Kagriss kept looking over, looking worried. “Camilla, what’s wrong?”

Camilla shook her head. “Nothing,” she lied. She hasn’t told Kagriss about the holy mana yet. She didn’t know why she was keeping Kagriss in the dark, but she had a feeling that if she let Kagriss know about the danger, Kagriss would become reckless trying to protect her. That’s something that Camilla did not want to see happen. But seeing the worried glances that Kagriss shot her wracked her with guilt.

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she wanted to say, but she bit her lips and kept her mouth shut, lowering her head, and moving on. If only she was stronger. In the end, it all came down to a lack of strength that prevented her from doing what she wanted to do: protect Kagriss. A lack of strength to fulfill her promise.

A limit was truly a limit. She had already walked the easy path to stretch, jumping from the lower echelons of power to the limit she could reach in a few short months, but if she ever wanted to go further, she had to put in more effort than before to achieve less than she ever had.

In the face of the holy threat that they were doubtlessly about to face, nothing seemed enough.

“If only I could break past my limit…” she grumbled. This time, Kagriss heard her.

“Was that what you were worried about? I thought you got over it,” Kagriss whispered in her ears in a soothing, gentle voice. There was a hint of admonition buried in the tone, as if scolding Camilla for being so foolish. “Remember what I told you. Evolution isn’t something that you can force, or you’re liable to end up worse off than if you haven’t tried at all. You have to let it come naturally when it’s the right time.”

Camilla scowled, pushing Kagriss away. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Letting things go at their own pace was okay when there was any imminent danger, but now was different. “But what if the right time is too late? What if I need to break past now?”

“Why would you need to break past now? We have hundreds of people with us,” Kagriss said. Her brows furrowed and her eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “You’re not hiding something from me, are you? You know something I don’t.”

There wasn’t any hesitation in her voice, a simple declaration that, as usual, was right. Camilla shivered. She considered lying again and say that nothing was wrong, but she didn’t know if she could stand lying to Kagriss again. It would just make her feel worse and worse, even if she thought that it was for the best.

Kagriss deserved to know what doubtlessly awaited them.

Camilla licked her lips that had been blown dry by the parched air inside the tunnels and told Kagriss the truth that she had been hiding. “There is holy mana in the air and it’s…getting stronger. I don’t know why no one else could feel it, but it’s really strong compared to everything else other than earth. Kagriss, I’m worried about what might be waiting for us!”

How could she have known that the one mission that Victoria had her take as one of the conditions for Victoria’s help involved heading straight into what seemed to be a consecrated zone? If she had known beforehand the kind of danger that this mission would involve, there was no way that she’d let Kagriss come, even if she had to sneak away in the middle of the night. She couldn’t help but fume at Victoria’s silence on something so important.

Kagriss didn’t look very well when she heard the bad news. However, she smoothed out the complex emotions on her face much more quickly than Camilla did. “It can’t be helped,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that it will be so dangerous, but I’m sure we’ll be able to get through it like we always have.” Then she flashed Camilla a bright, warm smile, full of reassurance. For a moment, Camilla felt like everything would be okay.

Just for a moment, she was calm. It was amazing how Kagriss could be so stoic at tense moments like this. There was such a large difference between her and Kagriss, even though they were both undead. If asked, a bystander who knew about neither of them would probably name Kagriss as the person who had previous experience leading a Templar Order.

“Hey Kagriss?”

“What?”

“Do you…ever regret not evolving when you had the chance? Back when we were still in human lands, you had the chance to, didn’t you?” she asked. “If you took the chance now, I don’t think I would’ve been quite so worried.”

Kagriss looked surprised at her question, but she patiently answered with a modest smile as usual. “Not at all. Like I said, I didn’t think it was the time. Rather than rely on me, you took the lead, which let you grow this much in such a short amount of time. Even now, I consider that to be the right decision.”

Such confidence… Camilla sighed. Kagriss really was perfect. She was even feeling a bit jealous about how self-assured Kagriss always was. On the other hand, the confidence was infectious. Walking alongside Kagriss, Camilla felt her weariness and worry fade away. Neither disappeared completely, but it was enough for her to stop gnawing on her bottom lip.

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Time was hard to tell so deep into the mountains. Minutes felt like hours, but at the same time, no one could be sure if an hour had passed yet. They were so far in that the air felt stale and the tunnel was several degrees hotter than the outside. Except for Camilla, Kagriss, and some of the elementals that made up the First Division of the Regalius Litha, everyone was sweating.

Drops of salty liquid traced a wet line down the hunters’ faces, while those with loose strands of long hair had them stick uncomfortably to the hunter’s face and neck. Compared to the cold, the heat was so much worse, draining the motivation of the entire exploration team.

Unable to watch the hunters sweat to death, Beitra turned and snapped out orders in rapid succession, organizing the hunters into roles. “Stand further apart!

“You! Can you make ice? Give everyone a small chunk if you can, for them to carry.

“Do we have any wind mages? Use your magic to cause some air flow in here. We don’t know how long of a way we have left to go, but we can’t stop here!”

Whenever he gave an order, someone rushed to fulfill it. Meanwhile, the people who weren’t called on to work sat down to rest and drink the water they packed to try and rehydrate themselves. As one of those that had nothing to do but rest, Camilla had plenty of time to further observe Beitra’s every move, and she quickly noticed that Beitra didn’t work alone.

He had an elf next to him, being totally dwarfed by his height, but yet still making for an imposing figure with her cold eagle-like eyes. Someone so close to Beitra was doubtlessly famous. Camilla searched her memory for the elf woman’s identity and it quickly came to mind. “Cadaelia. Dual affinity of nature and wind…”

As soon as she spoke the elf woman’s affinity, Cadaelia gathered up the five wind mages in the party and began to jointly cast a powerful wind magic. The casting only took a few seconds to complete, and a second later, the wind in the tunnel picked up, sending the Camilla’s hair whipping.

At the same time as the air poured out on one side of the tunnel, trapped by magic, the air flooded back in on the other side. The true genius in the spell was in how Cadaelia managed to separate the two air flows and extending the range for so far Camilla couldn’t even see the end of the tunnel where the air was actually being exchanged.

As expected, no one from an A-rank core team should be underestimated. Even more impressive was that somehow, Cadaelia managed to cast a high-ranked joint spell, something that Camilla didn’t think was possible. At the very least, the archpriests back in Moltrost couldn’t combine their efforts to amplify a spell’s effect. What they got was what they got.

After a few minutes of rest, the team got up and continued walking, each person’s nerves strained by the unchanging tunnel walls and seemingly endless march.

“How much further is it?” someone kept asking. No one replied. No one wanted to think about how far they’ve been walking. If they did, they might go insane. Eventually, even the person who kept complaining fell silent.

The holy mana got denser and denser, as did the raw mana itself. If such a mana-dense location was on the surface, it would no doubt have created a whole nest of mana beasts, with many as strong or stronger than Elyss. However, because the place was under a mountain, there were no mana beasts, at least as far as Camilla could tell.

Suddenly, Beitra’s loud voice echoed back down the tunnel at them. “Halt!” he shouted. “There’s something ahead!”

“What’s ahead?” Camilla whispered to Kagriss and Ismelda, the worry crawling back on her. She answered her own question. “That’s… a lot of mana ahead. I can’t sense anything past it…”

Right in front of where Beitra was standing, a huge wall of mana that had previously been hidden by stone revealed itself. It was so dense that Camilla found it hard to believe that something like it could exist, but either way, there was just no way that it was natural.

But if it wasn’t natural, what was it there for?

Beitra quickly widened the tunnel, making a wide chamber in front of the wall until there was a cavern with a low ceiling wide enough to accommodate the whole party. The ceiling was supported by thick, stout pillows that Beitra left in place when he carved out the cavern.

“Alright, rest for now!” he said. Those under his command quickly obeyed, sitting down in place with grunts, hitting their sore legs.

After a moment, Camilla sat down as well since there was no reason to stand out as one of the only people standing. “What do you think is the wall?” Camilla asked. She looked at Kagriss and then Ismelda in turn, hoping one of them might have an answer.

She tried to glean something from it with her own mana sense but came back empty handed. As far as she could tell, it was just raw mana. Unfortunately, Kagriss shook her head as well. “No idea. It seems to be just mana, but I don’t know what it does. Sorry, Milla.”

“I don’t know either. I’m not the right person to be asking when it comes to things like this. Like I said, let’s just wait for Beitra to try something and if it seems safe, we’ll copy him.”

Although Ismelda didn’t have an answer, she did have someone just as good: a plan. It was a great plana and one Camilla liked as well. She quickly nodded. “Then let’s wait. I need to prepare… the wall has that same large concentration of holy mana… even more than it should have based off the previous concentrations.” She sighed. “I think that the thing most dangerous to us lies behind that wall, and to walk straight into a tiger’s waiting mouth is the height of insanity.”

“It can’t be helped. We made a promise after all.”

“I know, Kagriss. But aren’t you worried at all?”

“I am.”

Camilla glared at her. Kagriss was still looking nonchalant as well. “You should learn to lie better.”

Kagriss just smiled.

A shadow fell over them and they looked up to see a stony face peering down at them. It was a stone elemental, but it wasn’t Beitra. The elemental had an androgynous face and an equally androgynous voice that had a slight gravelly feel to it. It bowed to Ismelda. “Hello, Miss Ismelda. Beitra requests your presence. He has invited the other leaders to make a plan, and naturally you have an invitation as well.”

Ismelda raised an eyebrow and looked over in Beitra’s direction, finding him staring back. He raised a hand in greeting. Ismelda groaned.

“Do you two want to come with me?” she asked.

It was clear that she just wanted company in her misery in dealing with Beitra.