Thousands of eyes fixed on the heart of the Oval Arena, a vast square of stone webbed with cracks and scorched black by old spell-burn.

  It was a historical record written in scars.

  Because the platform had been cut from two-foot-thick bedrock, the magic of ordinary students barely scratched its surface—leaving the wounds of high sorcery untouched for generations.

  In the heavy silence, the first representative of the Student Council stepped from the tunnel’s shadow. The last scraps of murmuring died instantly. Everyone at the academy recognized that silhouette.

  Mira startled, nearly jumping out of her seat. The girl walking with poised, unhurried elegance—

  her long black hair gleaming like ink—

  was Isabella Vane.

  She was a top-ranked third-year, and a name Rein had once circled in red for his original tournament team.

  In the academy, only a handful of students had refined their mana enough to pierce the Stratosphere-tier. Most were third-years, and Isabella was their crown jewel. They called her the Darkness Princess.

  Rumor held that if she’d entered the previous AGMT, the top spot would have been hers by right. Rein’s rise might never have happened at all.

  “Why her? Isn’t she Spring Faction?”

  “I heard she stood up for commoners. What is this?”

  “Hah. Just another noble looking to grind us under her heel.”

  Accusations surged from the scholarship stands, thick with the sting of betrayal. Isabella didn’t flinch at the shouting. She kept her chin level, eyes tracking toward the horizon as if the insults of the commoners were merely wind rattling a window.

  If her eyes flickered with a private sadness, her mana offered no such sympathy. It spread through the arena—cold, dense, and heavy enough to press against the skin of everyone nearby.

  William Sterling and Victoria Montague followed. Both were Master Troposphere-tier mages, and both wore their arrogance like tailored coats. William held a three-pronged iron trident carved to a predatory point: Stormcaller, the Sterling family heirloom.

  Victoria, clad in light mage armor, carried a staff crowned with a luminous pearl that breathed frost into the air: Storm Surge, the pride of House Montague.

  Boris’s jaw tightened. “They brought family relics. Those are Unique-tier at least. This isn't a duel anymore—it's a treasury swinging a club.”

  Mira didn’t answer. She sat biting her nail, eyes locked on the empty challenger’s tunnel across the arena. Her hope thinned by the minute.

  Protests erupted over the unfair advantage of high-grade equipment, but the judges issued a cold ruling:

  No restrictions on weapon grade.

  The Council was within the rules.

  When the announcer called for Rein Rhys’s team again, the tunnel remained a throat of darkness. No footsteps. No silhouette.

  The silence lasted a heartbeat before noble laughter shattered it.

  “Thought he was special—turns out he’s just a coward.”

  “He probably ran the moment he saw the roster.”

  “Third place in the AGMT? Bet he cheated.”

  Commoners lowered their heads. Disappointment thickened into an uncomfortable quiet. Boris and Mira sat rigid, repeating Rein's name like a mantra that could force reality to comply.

  Rein… where are you?

  “Five minutes,” the judge’s voice echoed, amplified until it vibrated in the spectators' teeth. “If Rein Rhys does not appear, he will be judged to have forfeited. The Student Council will win by default.”

  …

  …

  Far below, the sticky filth had finally been scrubbed away. The air in the hidden laboratory, once drowned in the metallic stink of monster gore, now carried a faint, herbal scent. It felt like relief.

  Rein lowered himself into a chair, his damp hair brushing his neck. He nodded to LIZ, who projected a holographic overlay of the Academy map, the Whitmore estate, and the dungeon layout.

  He needed to know exactly where they stood beneath the world above.

  Sophia lounged on an old sofa, idly turning pages of a book she’d pulled from the shelves. The further she read, the more her face twisted.

  “This is a madman’s log,” she muttered. “They were breeding monsters as weapons. It’s horrifying.”

  Rein didn’t look up from the blue glow of the data. His voice was flat, unruffled.

  “It’s because of those madmen that I could refine your mana that fast.”

  Sophia snapped upright, the book thudding onto the cushions as if it had burned her. She stared at him, wonder tangled with lingering fear.

  “I saw it,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “You used Dual-Hand Casting. That’s insane, Rein. When those two rings started spinning against each other, I thought we were going to blow ourselves apart.

  I can’t believe I trusted someone like you.”

  Sophia paused, studying him as one might study a sword that had already drawn blood—unsure if it was safe to hold. Her voice dropped, turning more serious. “But you still controlled it. You’re… you’re crazier than every lunatic who wrote those notes put together.”

  Rein tilted his head. The orange-haired girl looked like she wanted to scold him, yet her eyes betrayed a new, reluctant respect. He let a small smile touch one corner of his mouth.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment—coming from a Stratosphere-tier mage.”

  Sophia blew a sharp breath, flicking a stray strand of hair from her face. The tension in her shoulders didn't fade.

  “The problem is… how do we get back up?”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Instead of answering, Rein focused on the table. To Sophia, the surface was just a chaotic mess of scattered documents and yellowed parchment. To Rein, it was a puzzle waiting to be solved. His brow furrowed.

  “I used to live in an underground lab for months,” Rein said, his voice drifting as if wandering down a long-forgotten corridor of memory.

  “So long I forgot what the sun and moon even looked like.”

  Sophia’s expression shifted. Her arms folded tighter, and her frown deepened.

  Was he locked up as a child? she wondered.

  Forced to survive in a hole like I was?

  The thought changed the way she saw him. The edge of her harshness softened, replaced by a reluctant, human sympathy. If he had crawled through a hell like that and come out this intact, perhaps it wasn't strange that he treated miracles like common tools.

  Rein let out a quiet, internal laugh. He was thinking of the months he’d spent buried in research at Nackerl, blissfully unaware that Sophia was turning his life into a tragic epic in her head.

  “Honestly,” he said, glancing around the stone hall, “it was a lot like this room. Just… a bit more modern. The place I used to be had things like food-and-drink dispensers along the outer corridors.”

  “Dispensers?” Sophia repeated, testing the unfamiliar word. “Like a storage artifact that preserves food? Similar to your dimensional storage cloak?”

  Rein paused, realizing he’d let a term from his old world slip. He nodded casually, smoothing over the crack in his story.

  “Uh… close enough. But you know, the first time I walked out of that lab and stepped onto open ground again, it felt like being born a second time.”

  “I get that,” Sophia said. Her voice was softer now, warmer. Her gaze was openly sympathetic—which would have been touching if Rein’s mind weren't currently filling with question marks.

  Wait… Carrot-head hasn’t exactly lived in secret research facilities.

  She’s probably just trying to be nice.

  He almost laughed again, but he didn't want to ruin the moment with the truth: that his "drama" had mostly consisted of deadlines, caffeine, and stubborn obsession.

  If she wanted to see him in a kinder light, he’d let it stand.

  “What I’m saying is…” He tapped the table, letting the pause hang for emphasis.

  “No matter how classified a research site is,

  there’s always an emergency exit.”

  His eyes stayed on the holographic map LIZ projected across the tabletop. The faint blue light reflected in his pupils as he traced the room’s spatial structure.

  Sophia stepped closer, standing beside him. In that moment—like a gear snapping into place—Rein reached into his cloak and pressed something into her hand.

  Sophia took it on instinct, then froze. Her fingers closed around cool metal and polished gemstones. She looked down, her eyes widening.

  Resting in her palm was a pair of emerald earrings, glossy green and vibrating with a faint, rhythmic pulse of mana.

  “Wait—are you…” Heat rushed into her cheeks so fast it looked like a pyromancy spell had ignited.

  “You’re seriously giving me—”

  Rein cut her off before her embarrassment could spiral. His tone was maddeningly clinical.

  “They’re a Unique-grade item from the Twin Vipers,” he said, as if discussing a grocery list. “I checked the internal mana circuitry. It’s designed to echo a single cast, producing two results. If you wear the pair, it should push the output to three.”

  “There’s a usage limit, but you can buffer the charge with your own mana.”

  “The Twin Vipers… Lance’s lackeys?” Sophia recovered her composure with suspicious speed, shoving her blush down by sheer force of will. Her heart, however, remained off-tempo.

  “I heard they were assassinated. Don’t tell me that was you.”

  “Not me. The Shapeshifters,” Rein said, grimacing as he dragged a hand through his hair.

  “Why does everyone think I’m a murderer? Is it the haircut?”

  Sophia released a slow breath, unsure if she felt relieved or oddly disappointed. “So you took these off them… and you want me to wear them.”

  “Yeah,” Rein said blandly, turning back to the map.

  “I don’t like earrings.”

  Sophia stood there, gripping the emeralds. She felt something she couldn’t quite label—a mix of irritation at his pragmatism and something else she wasn't ready to name.

  [LIZ: There is, in fact, a hidden route from this room to the surface. However, you don’t seem particularly eager to return just yet.]

  Rein’s gaze swept over the projected layout of the fourth dungeon floor. He answered LIZ in rapid thought.

  By my estimate, we have nearly six hours left in the outside world. That gives us twelve hours down here with the time dilation. That’s enough time to farm several more high-value cores.

  If we break through to the fourth floor and secure the final one, the exit there will bring us closer to the arena than backtracking.

  He dragged a finger across the hologram, then looked up. Sophia was now wearing the emerald earrings. The satisfied lift at the corner of Rein’s mouth said he’d finally reached the point where the board made sense.

  He had his key condition: a Stratosphere-tier mage, fully geared.

  “All right,” Rein said, his voice almost cheerful. “Next phase. I’m counting on you.”

  Sophia raised a clenched fist to her chin, her eyes bright with a new, soaring confidence. “Leave it to me, Rein. I’m the higher tier now—lean on me as much as you want!”

  That confidence became a scream exactly twelve hours later.

  “Reiiiiin, you lunatic!”

  Sophia’s shout tore through the cavern as she sprinted for her life. Her boots hammered against the stone, sending vibrations up her legs.

  Behind her, a colossal centipede surged in pursuit. Its body stretched hundreds of feet, a living siege engine of chitin and malice. The size was terrifying, and the earthquake-like tremors of its movement were worse—but the mouth was a nightmare.

  It was a grinder of thousands of razor teeth, flanked by two front fangs, each twenty feet long, that scraped against the cavern walls with the sound of a mountain being torn apart.

  Rein’s plan had been simple on paper: loop back to "farm" the bosses on the upper floors for respawned resources, then push into the unexplored depths of the fourth.

  Now, Sophia looked like she’d been dragged through a quarry—her orange hair caked with grit and her cloak tattered as death on a hundred legs chased her down.

  This centipede wasn't like the other bosses. It didn't sit on a nest like a tyrant on a throne. The moment it caught her scent, it had lunged as if she were the finest meal in the dungeon.

  “Run a little faster, Carrot,” Rein’s voice vibrated directly into her mind via the Mana Resonance Link. It was a basic party-craft spell that synchronized mana frequencies between mages, and it was almost insulting that Sophia had been the one to suggest it.

  Rein hadn't even known the spell existed.

  Has he seriously never joined a party before? she wondered, her lungs burning.

  “To the centipede, you probably look like a delicacy,” Rein continued, his voice maddeningly calm. “Pick up the pace before it checks the menu.”

  “Then why—” Sophia screamed between ragged breaths as a massive fang scythed through the stone wall beside her, "—why aren’t you the one baiting it!”

  She twisted, zigzagging between falling boulders that slammed down like a rain of cannonballs. When a section of the ceiling collapsed, she threw herself through a narrow gap with inches to spare. Dust exploded behind her, coating her tongue with the taste of pulverized limestone.

  “Whew—almost,” she panted, pausing for a split second to catch her breath.

  “Don’t stop,” Rein snapped. “That didn’t even slow it down.”

  “What do you mean, don’t stop? I’ve run ten kilometers!” she barked. “Are we there yet?”

  Behind her, the centipede didn't bother navigating the rubble. It simply pulverized it. Its front fangs ground the blockage into pebbles. The moment the monster’s head punched through, Sophia bolted again, following the route Rein fed into her mind.

  “Left up ahead!” Rein whispered in her ear.

  “Not that left! The next one—or do you just have a death wish? No, no, turn right! Straight—faster!

  At this speed, a turtle would catch you and take a bite.”

  He guided her with a casual, taunting tone that made her teeth grind. The centipede sounded even angrier, its countless legs tearing through the terrain like a tireless war machine.

  B-plus or A-grade, my ass, Sophia thought, mentally cursing the research logs.

  This thing is an A-plus. Minimum.

  “Uh,” Rein cut in. His tone shifted—just slightly—into something more cautious. “I think we’ve got a small problem.”

  “What now?” Sophia screamed, the sound bouncing off the stone walls. “What are you saying?!”

  “The route to the exit,” Rein said, and she could practically hear the grimace in his voice, “has a minor obstacle in the way.”

  Sophia’s frustration finally boiled over.

  “Damn it! I really, really misjudged the day I decided to work with you!”

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  Weapons & Items

  Stormcaller

  A three-pronged iron trident wielded by William Sterling, described as a Sterling family heirloom and implied Unique-tier. Its naming suggests storm-aspect enhancement or lightning/wind synergy, though its full abilities are not revealed yet.

  Storm Surge

  A staff carried by Victoria Montague, crowned with a luminous pearl that “breathes frost.” Implied Unique-tier relic tied to House Montague. The frost emission indicates a water-to-ice leaning or cold amplification effect.

  Emerald Echo Earrings (Twin Vipers’ Unique-Grade Artifact Update)

  A pair of emerald earrings taken from the Twin Vipers. The internal circuitry is designed to echo a single cast, producing two results; worn as a pair, it may push output to three. It has a usage limit, but can be buffer-charged by the wearer’s mana. Sophia equips them immediately.

  Update Note: This extends the earlier “Double Cast” artifact concept with a stronger, wearable multi-echo variant.

  Madman’s Log (Dungeon Research Records)

  Sophia identifies the recovered research notes as “a madman’s log,” confirming the dungeon beneath the estate was used to breed monsters as weapons. This reinforces the dungeon’s artificial origin and moral horror behind its “resource factory” utility.

  Concept

  Emergency Exit Doctrine

  Rein’s practical research-facility principle: no matter how classified a site is, it always has an emergency exit. He applies this mindset to the hidden underground lab and dungeon structure—implying they will locate a designed escape route rather than brute-force a return.

  Earth-Term

  Dispensers

  A real-world concept Rein lets slip: “food-and-drink dispensers” in his old underground lab. Sophia interprets it as something like a storage artifact. This functions as a small worldbuilding “translation moment” showing Rein’s habit of patching Earth terms into Arath logic.

  Magic and Spell Techniques

  Mana Resonance Link (Party Craft Spell)

  A basic party coordination spell that synchronizes mana frequencies between teammates, allowing direct resonance-link communication during high-speed movement and combat routing. Sophia was the one who suggested it; Rein hadn’t even known it existed—hinting he lacks conventional “party experience” despite his combat IQ.

  Monsters

  Colossal Centipede (Boss-Class Pursuer)

  A massive centipede-like monster, hundreds of feet long, described as a living siege engine. Its mouth is a grinder of thousands of teeth; its two front fangs are ~20 feet long and can carve stone as it pursues. It does not detour around obstacles—it pulverizes them. Sophia estimates it’s A-plus minimum, contradicting earlier “B+/A” expectations.