The air in the lower tunnels was thick with the scent of damp earth. Aiven could no longer see the orange flicker of Rysa's flames in the distance.
His lungs burned. Every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass, and his legs—accustomed to the short walks between filing cabinets and tea stations—were screaming in protest. To his left, Virelle drifted effortlessly, her silver hair trailing behind her like a comet's tail. She looked as though she were going for a leisurely stroll in a garden, while Aiven was a collapsing wreck.
Figures, Aiven thought, his vision blurring slightly from the exertion. I can't keep up with a real adventurer.
The doubt he had been suppressing since day 1 of adventuring began to seep back in, cold and invasive. He was a nobody with a stolen mana pool. He wasn't a warrior. He wasn't a hero. He was just a man who had tripped into a destiny far too large for his narrow shoulders.
The ground beneath him was uneven, slick with cave moisture. As he pushed himself to round a jagged corner, his boot caught on a protruding root of bioluminescent moss.
Aiven gasped as his balance vanished. He hit the ground hard, his palms scraping against the sharp limestone and his nicked short sword clattering uselessly against the floor.
"Master! Are you okay?" Virelle stopped instantly and circled to the front of Aiven.
Aiven stayed there for a moment, chest heaving, his forehead pressed against the cold stone. The silence of the cave felt heavy, mocking his weakness.
Virelle descended, her boots touching the ground as she knelt beside him. She didn't offer a sassy remark or a playful nudge. Instead, she reached out, her cool fingers resting gently on his shoulder.
"Master," she said, her voice unusually soft, laced with a genuine, sharp concern. "Stop. Just... stay here."
Aiven looked up, his face pale and streaked with sweat.
"I can sense it," Virelle continued, her violet eyes searching his. "The doubt. The fear. You're shaking." She looked toward the dark abyss of the lower floors. "You don't need to do this. I can fly down there, finish whatever is causing those screams, and be back before your heart rate even settles. You don't have to endanger yourself to prove a point."
Aiven let out a ragged laugh, leaning back against the cave wall. "I know. I know you could do it in an instant. You're the miracle, Virelle. And I'm... I'm just the guy who fate happened to choose to do...whatever."
He looked at his scraped palms, the blood beginning to bead in the cracks of his skin. "I thought my resolve was stronger. I thought I wouldn't be afraid of anything anymore. But I'm terrified. I'm terrified that I'm just meddling in things I don't understand."
Suddenly, another scream tore through the silence. It was closer this time—a raw, gurgling sound of someone losing hope.
Aiven flinched. The sound hit him like a physical blow. He looked at the dark tunnel, then back at Virelle.
"The longer we wait here, the more people might die," Aiven said, his voice regaining a thin, sharp edge of determination. He looked at his hands and realized that his ego was the only thing keeping Virelle by his side. He wanted to be the one to save the day, but he was the one holding the hero back.
"Virelle," he said, standing up with a wince. "Go. Forget about me for a second. Rysa is already down there, and those miners... they don't have time for me to catch my breath."
Virelle hesitated, her prismatic orb pulsing a worried blue. "You sure?"
"Yes, please, " Aiven said. "Fly there. Save them. I'll catch up as fast as I can. Just... make sure no one else screams."
Virelle stared at him for a long heartbeat. She saw the shift in his eyes—the moment he set aside his own desire to be a hero. She gave a small, solemn nod, her silver hair suddenly flaring with a brilliant, intense violet light.
"As you wish, Master," she whispered.
With a sudden, violent surge of mana, Virelle vanished. She didn't just fly; she became a streak of lavender lightning that tore through the tunnel, the sonic boom of her departure rattling the stalactites above Aiven's head.
Aiven stood alone in the sudden, crushing silence. He took a deep, shaky breath, gripped his sword, and began to run again—slower this time, but with a heart that had finally stopped doubting why it was beating.
The lower mining level was a graveyard of heavy machinery and shattered dreams. As Virelle drifted into the central excavation pit, the first thing she noticed wasn't the monster, but the smell of copper and the silence of the dead.
The ore veins pulsed with a sickly, dying light, casting long shadows over three motionless bodies near a massive steam-drill. Blood splattered the yellow iron of the machinery, stark and grim.
Master wouldn't want to see this, Virelle thought, her violet eyes narrowing. But I cannot bring back the dead.
Movement caught her eye. Two miners were huddled in the wreckage of a collapsed support beam, clutching their mangled limbs. Without descending, Virelle flicked her wrist. A wave of shimmering lavender light washed over them, knitting flesh and sealing wounds in a heartbeat.
"Who... are you?" one of the miners stammered, his eyes wide as the pain vanished.
"Usually, I would demand you praise my benevolence until your throats were dry," Virelle said, her voice cold and echoing. "But for now, shut your mouths and patch yourselves up."
A thunderous boom echoed from the far side of the pit.
Virelle flew toward the sound, passing over the jagged remains of a mining cart. In the center of the deep-vein excavation, Rysa was dancing with death.
The creature she faced was a Rock-Shelled Lurker, but it had been horribly warped. It was the size of a heavy cargo-hauler, its stone hide thick with obsidian-like protrusions that pulsed with a dark, oily light. Rysa's fists were roaring with orange flame, her atrikes slamming into the creature's legs, but the magic simply washed over the stone like water.
Rysa panted, her movements becoming heavy. She dodged a massive, needle-sharp leg by a fraction of an inch, the impact of the monster's strike shattering the floor where she had stood a second before.
"At this pace, vixen, you'll be a very charred pancake before the sun sets," Virelle's voice rang out from above.
Rysa looked up, sweat stinging her eyes. "Virelle? Where's Aiven?"
"Master will arrive soon, and I need to take care of this mess before he sets foot in this messy place," Virelle said, hovering with her arms crossed. "Back off, pugilist. Let someone with actual talent handle this overgrown pebble."
Rysa hesitated, her pride stung, but she looked at the creature's unshaken shell and her own trembling hands. "Fine! But be careful—it's tougher than it looks!"
"Toughness is a relative concept," Virelle remarked. "Now run. You're in my blast radius."
Rysa didn't need to be told twice. She leaped backward, using a burst of flame to propel herself across the pit and behind a reinforced iron pillar.
Virelle looked down at the deformed Lurker. The creature let out a high-pitched, static-filled screech and prepared to lunge.
"Immobilize," Virelle whispered. No incantation. No long-winded chant.
The air above the pit shattered. Dozens of massive, glowing mana spears, each ten feet long and carved from pure starlight, rained down from the ceiling. They didn't just hit the Lurker; they pinned it. The spears drove through its obsidian joints and stone hide, anchoring it to the cave floor. The creature shrieked, its legs twitching helplessly.
Behind the pillar, Rysa's jaw dropped. No incantations? That scale of magic... it's not just high-tier. I've never seen it before.
"You've seen nothing yet," Virelle noted, sensing the pugilist's shock.
She raised a single finger, her prismatic orb spinning so fast it became a blur of violet light. A bead of energy formed at her fingertip—no larger than a marble, but so dense it seemed to warp the shadows around it.
"Delete."
A pillar of pure, concentrated mana erupted. There was no explosion, only a blinding flash and a sound like the world being torn in half. When the light faded, the deformed Lurker was gone. Not killed, but erased. Only a large, pulsing violet core remained in the center of a perfectly circular, charred crater.
"Mission accomplished," Virelle chirped, her murderous aura vanishing as if it had never existed.
"Virelle!"
Aiven finally burst into the chamber, his chest heaving and his face flushed a deep red. He looked at the crater, the dead monster, and the survivors huddled in the corner. He stood there for a moment, leaning on his knees, trying to process the scale of the destruction.
Virelle flew toward him happily, her translucent sleeves fluttering like wings. She circled around him, a bright, playful smile on her face. "Master! You missed the best part! It was quite a spectacle. I expect a very tasty treat for this—perhaps that honey-glazed bread from the market?"
Aiven let out a long, shaky exhale, looking from his cheerful summon to the scorched earth. "You... you're okay? Rysa?"
Rysa stepped out from behind the pillar, her flames gone. She looked at Aiven—the exhausted, average-looking clerk who could barely run a mile—and then at the silver-haired godling hovering beside him.
How? Rysa wondered, a cold chill running down her spine. How does a nobody like him manage to control a being like that?
"I'm fine," Rysa said, her voice unusually quiet. She looked at the massive glowing core in the crater. "We should... we should get those miners out of here. Unfortunately, there were casualties, but we should still be able to get pretty nice rewards for our effort. Or more like, her effort," Rysa said as she looked towards Virelle, who was already busy poking the monster core with her boot.
Aiven knew the questions were coming. The dust was settling, but the starlight was becoming harder and harder to hide.