Ch 2 Ancient Relics

[Title: Master of the Abyss]

…I’m the what now?

He had no idea what “Master of the Abyss” meant.

Did I just get slapped with another role?

It felt exactly like the time he’d been chosen as the hero to stop the Lady of the Night.

[Quest!]

All of your precious relics have vanished. Find the whereabouts of the items!

Failure: Disappointing. Are you really an Archmage?

Success: Random Box

Also, what was up with the quest? Since when did the System start talking to him like this? It used to act more like a computer.

Not that it mattered; he was obviously going to track his gear down anyway, even without the prompt.

Asterion swiped the quest window away. Just who the hell had cleared out his stash?

The only ones capable of reaching this deep after he “died” would be heavy hitters like the Imperial Knights.

Did one of those bastards loot my corpse…?

Well, if he announced his return, their masters cough up the treasures in a heartbeat. Back in the day, those emperors would invite him to massive banquets and practically grovel to him the second a rumor dropped that he was anywhere near the capital.

With that in mind, he attempted to cast [Teleport] to jump to the nearest Empire’s capital.

“…Huh?”

Was he losing his touch? Perhaps it was because he’d just woken up.

Asterion closed his eyes and calmly visualized his destination.

He pictured the heart of the capital, perfectly recalling the exact layout. [Teleport] was a spell that could take him absolutely anywhere, provided he had personally visited the location and could remember at least eighty percent of its geography.

But his mana refused to flow.

“Why isn’t it working?”

[Teleport] was a 7th-circle spell, meaning a high-tier mage could barely manage to cast it once a day, but Asterion had used it all the time.

Its range depended entirely on the mage’s capabilities, and since Asterion’s were off the charts, he could warp anywhere on the continent in a single cast.

Except right now.

This had never happened before.

Not unless the geography of the continent itself had drastically shifted. But there was no way that could be the case. Even if some things changed, as long as his image was 80% accurate, [Teleport] would work.

He tried other destinations, to no avail.

…What the hell happened while I was asleep?

To think he’d hit a wall like this when all he wastrying to do was leave a labyrinth.

Asterion calmly gathered his thoughts.

Actually, it made more sense to check the entire labyrinth first before he went scouring the rest of the continent, didn’t it?

If he spread the mana in the air thin, scanning one floor at a time, he would be able to detect mana flows. He already knew for a fact his loot wasn’t on the 11th floor.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I’ll check the floors above this, one by one. If my stuff isn’t on the 1st floor either, I can just walk out the front door and fly over to the Empire.

For now, he had no choice but to do it the old-fashioned way.

After a moment of thought, Asterion readied a different spell.

“[Shadow Step].”

It was a short-distance warp.

Though the function looked similar to [Teleport], they belonged to entirely different subclasses of magic. As long as there was a shadow, he could jump through dimensions.

And this “Abyss” had plenty of them.

The only issue was the ceiling currently blocking his way. [Shadow Step] woked much easier if he could see his destination.

Well, if his line of sight was blocked, he just had to improvise with guesswork.

Asterion raised a hand and fired his mana in two different directions. It was as fluid as a fish swimming through water. Or a tree extending its branches.

Every single act of manipulating mana was incredibly effortless. Perhaps even more than before he had died, which was strange, considering Overcharged mana was notoriously difficult to finely control.

Asterion cast one mana cube on his own shadow, then shot the other one through the high rock ceiling. As long as he could turn the mana into a fine mist, it could get through even solid objects.

The only way to stop a spell from penetrating was another spell.

Using the mist of mana as his eyes, he settled next to what seemed like a giant boulder. Thanks to the light source that was always in the middle of the Labyrinth, shadows stretched toward the walls.