Memoirs of the Returnee
chapter-122

Mental strength (2)

Thud───!

Akane’s spell pressed down on my body. But it wouldn’t be a spell that controls gravity itself. Then it must be a grand spell.

Probably, it’s a spatial spell that pulls objects down through this apartment as a medium.

“……Kuh.”

Partial immunity to magical interference. I don’t know to what extent that ‘partial’ is, but it wasn’t omnipotent after all.

Of course, I can largely fend off or ignore the force pulling my body itself. However, I can’t resist 100% of it and also, the weight of the ‘air’ pressing down remains the same.

The intensity of the spell deepens as I approach Akane. Every time I lift my foot and step down again, it feels like every joint in my body is twisting.

If it were an ordinary person, all their joints would have been crushed by now.

I understand why Gerkhen Kal Doon was knocked down.

He must have crawled.

Enduring this insane gravity with his whole body, and crawling that far.

Indeed, his mental strength is superior to anyone else’s.

I wonder if he’s not insane.

I walked. I didn’t kneel. I stood on two legs and took one step at a time.

……Thump.

A reverberation echoed with each step. I crossed Elise with that stride.

The weight being imposed on me now must be about the same as one or two adult gorillas.

……Thump!

As I walked, my increasingly heavy limbs moved. I carried a body that didn’t feel like my own.

Thump!

As I approached, Akane’s expression slowly hardened.

The face that seemed to be dealing with a madman was now gone.

Instead, she seemed intrigued. Like someone who found something useful in muddy water.

Thump─!

When I took three more steps, I was on the same line as Gerkhen Kal Doon. The gravity had reached its peak. It truly felt like an elephant was stepping on my shoulder.

Isn’t this going to make me bald?

I finally lifted my knee. I prepared to take a step while withstanding the gravity.

Thump──!

Just one step.

With that, I surpassed Gerkhen Kal Doon, and my whole body flared up in red.

Whether it was pain or heat, my body felt like it was melting from the heat.

Even in that heat, again, the last.

Thump.

At Akane’s feet. I saw her dark slippers and gray socks in my lowered gaze. The combination of slippers and socks is a bit off.

I lifted my face.

Akane was there.

In front of her nose, I looked into her crimson pupils.

“…….”

I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t even have the strength to move my lips.

Instead, she scanned me from top to bottom. She licked her lips slightly with her tongue as if she was amazed.

Soon, she chuckled and nodded.

“You’re first. Ironically, you have a useful body…….”

I have no memory after that.

Whether I fainted or fell asleep, I must have done something.

When I opened my eyes again, it was a white ceiling. I blinked blankly while lying down. My whole body was sore, and my brain was still loading.

─You awake?

A voice flowed into my right ear. I couldn’t hear from my left ear. I blankly turned my face left and right.

It was a space like a health center. Akane was sitting on one side. She, dressed in a gown, was pouring liquid into a test tube with a dropper. It seemed like she was conducting some research or making a drug.

I asked her.

“……The evaluation. Is it over?”

─Three days ago.

My ears were deaf. I shook my head.

“Huh?”

“You’ve been asleep for three days.”

Fortunately, my hearing recovered quickly.

“The other seniors have already left. I’m the only one working overtime because of you. Unpaid service.”

Clink, clink-

Akane shook a test tube. As she stared at the liquid mixing inside, she asked me.

“Who do you want to kill?”

“Huh?”

“You asked for a deadly poison.”

“Uh…… Ah. There are many people I want to kill.”

There are many. A lot. A whole lot.

Perhaps, I will kill quite a lot in the future.

Akane chuckled.

“Killing someone you want to kill is easy. The hard part is facing yourself after you’ve been tainted by the act.”

She transferred the liquid from the test tube into a tiny glass vial and threw it at me.

“Catch. If you can’t catch it, you die.”

“Gah!”

I caught it with both hands. My heart nearly jumped out.

“It’s a deadly poison. Classified as a neurotoxin.”

The color is ordinary. The volume is extremely small. Barely 3g?

“With that amount, you can kill 1,000 elephants.”

1,000 elephants. A brutal statement, but Grawl─the ‘S-class monster’ I intend to kill─is on a different level from current living animals, including humans.

“I’ll take it. But, is it okay to give this to a senior?”

“The maker only makes. From there on, it depends on the user’s moral standards and value judgment. I don’t care if you kill someone with the prosthetic arm I give. Of course, considering it’s a deadly poison, and you’ve already expressed your intent to kill, there might be implied intent……”

Akane, who had stopped speaking, stared at me blankly.

“Humans must take responsibility for the direction they want to go. It’s none of my business what you do.”

She took out a cigarette from her pocket and lit it. I put the poison in my pocket.

“Ah, by any chance, do you also do appraisals?”

“You ask for too much. Are you talking about R-elix?”

“……You knew?”

Akane furrowed one eyebrow. The smoke from her cigarette swirled like a snake.

“I’m the designer. I know everything that happens in this maze. You were lucky to get two.”

Do you think you laid them out on purpose-”

“Ask me if I’m crazy instead. Do you know how much that’s worth? The design of the maze is just structure and concept. The obstacles are brought in by guiding the creatures that were originally in the dungeon. The R-elix of the snow mountain, the R-elix of the butcher, it’s all the will of this ‘rift’, not me.”

If I had known, I would have eaten it myself. Akane added, licking her lips.

“So……”

I took out the R-elix from my inventory. Akane’s red eyes flickered slightly.

“It seems to be an R-elix related to killing or combat. If it’s C-class, it should be useful enough.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Now go.”

Akane waved her hand.

Ding- Then an alarm rang on my smartwatch.

[Ending the evaluation of Shion Ascal.]

Thump—!

My hand, clutching the blanket, trembled, and the space around me shifted.

“……”

I stood, swaying.

I looked around blankly.

It was a harbor.

A harbor visible through the portal of the rift, outside the maze.

There was nothing. The seniors seemed to have already left, the scenery itself was barren, and only a small fishing boat was docked.

“Student! You’ve finally arrived! Get on!”

A sailor on the boat shouted. I hesitated for a moment before responding.

“……Go ahead.”

“What are you talking about. We even accepted money to pick you up when you come out.”

I stood with my back to the dock, staring at the still flickering portal.

“Student!”

The sailor shouted again. I waited silently, fiddling with the deadly poison in my pocket. My hair fluttered in the sea breeze.

5 minutes──

15 minutes──

30 minutes──

“Yawn.”

It’s still boring enough to yawn.

Well, will we fight today? Are they fighting right now?

If it’s a Diary battle between S-rankers, it should be felt even outside the corridor.

“……Hey, student! If you don’t come, we’re really leaving, okay?!”

“Yes.”

I looked at my wristwatch. An hour had already passed.

Rumble……

Just then, a faint vibration on the surface.

I lifted my face. Some kind of wave had been emitted from inside the portal to the outside.

“What, what is this.”

The boat became active. The sailors moved quickly. They retrieved the anchor and turned the bow.

“Student. For the last time……”

──────────!

The shock swallowed the sound. The portal shook as if it had exploded. Fragments of magic scattered like broken glass all around.

The boat had already turned around. They were fleeing in panic, but I was moving in the opposite direction.

———!

The second tremor.

The portal shook again, greatly. Parts of it shattered and fell to the pavement. The size of the portal itself had noticeably decreased.

——.

The third tremor.

This time it was closer to an aftershock. There was no significant echo.

“……Is it over?”

The battles of the masters are surprisingly short. Because the density of each moment is so high, exchanging hundreds of hits in an instant is an S-rank duel. Of course, the aftermath is comparable to a magic core bomb.

“……”

I wait quietly, and it remains calm.

Peaceful.

“……Huh.”

I sighed. I took out an R-elix from my inventory.

A brilliant and radiant C-rank R-elix.

Of course, implanting an unappraised R-elix is a gamble. But it’s not without benefits. ‘Appraisal’ is the act of peeling off the outer layer of the R-elix, and that outer layer is also R-elix.

In other words, when appraising, the performance of the R-elix is shaved off to a certain degree. Instead, you can eliminate the risk of ‘R-elix collision’ and easily realize its use.

However, the 「Treasure Hunter」 I implanted has almost no chance of colliding with other R-elixes. Because its attribute itself is ‘Life’.

Also, the chance of getting an R-elix of C-rank or higher in the next few years is almost none……

I attached the R-elix to my left arm. I implanted it as it was. There was a sensation of heat, but it was bearable.

“Haaaaa……”

After taking a deep breath, I reentered the portal.

…The inside was already hell. The vast space that once held a hospital, a snowy mountain, a maze, and an apartment had shrunk to nothingness, and the burnt, crimson traces of what was once there flowed in like petals.

I turned on the SZX-9500.

Where a meteor had seemingly collided, creating a massive crater, the monster ‘Grawl’ was visible.

He had already lost his human form. His arms and legs had disintegrated into black dust, and his head was stuck to his belly, possibly attacked during regeneration.

Yet, he survived.

Clearly, he was still breathing.

“……”

I became tense.

He was undoubtedly unconscious. However, even his unconsciousness was a threat to me now.

I walked towards him.

…Humans overestimate their complexity.

The day I faced him before the regression came to mind.

…In reality, they are simpler than any beast. The more you consume, the more you understand.

His dark, sour voice echoed in my ears.

…Humans deny the origin of existence. They merely say they were born because they were born, rationalizing that the burden of origin is too heavy for a short life.

Grawl.

He is a monster of stone.

A naturally occurring monster.

He was never human, nor was he ever a monster. He was truly nothing more than a ‘stone’.

…The origin is not in the continent. It’s not in space. The origin is within me. My existence is my origin. My cause and effect are my origin.

My legs stopped.

Roughly 1.5 km.

The minimum distance where the fatally wounded him could not detect me. This is as far as I go.

…I am exploring myself. The only reason I cooperate with Derek of Libra is that…

I took out Akane’s deadly poison. I blew Perion into it.

I wondered if the nerve poison would work on a stone, but he is a stone that has mutated all its veins into ‘nerves’, or magic circuits.

A cannibalistic monster that anchored its existence to humans by consuming them.

At least as much as a monster ‘human’, it must work.

I threw the poison high into the sky. Thoroughly calculating the impact and trajectory, with the most accurate angle.

Whooosh…

The glass bottle drew a rainbow-like parabola, slowly descending towards Grawl.

Grawl reacted instinctively. He spread a ‘barrier’ to block the trivially falling glass bottle.

Clink-!

The glass bottle shattered. The nerve poison seeped into his body through the barrier.

The very next moment.

──────!

Grawl’s body twisted. His crimson magic was bizarrely released. In an instant, it took dozens of different shapes and convulsed.

And so, he discovered me.

─■──■──■─!

He extended his magic towards me. It surged towards my neck and waist like a blade. It seemed to disintegrate my entire body, pressing down on me…

Rustle-

He lost his form.

Like sand, he oxidized into dry, fine particles and spilled onto the surface.

“Haa, haa……”

I clenched my heart. Only then did the R-elix react belatedly.

The R-elix in my left arm, the one just implanted, sucked in Grawl’s withered magic. As if absorbing it.

“…What a reaction speed.”

If you were going to do something, you should have done it earlier.

I looked again at the other side.

Where Grawl had been, there was now only dark red sand. He had collapsed. I had killed him, a creature that had survived until the very end before the regression, ten years earlier than before.

So, did I get rid of him? Let’s not say the same thing.

“I almost died.”

I got up. I looked around for Akane. I searched all around with the SZX-9500.

“Ah.”

There she was.

Quite far from the crater.

She was lying as if hiding, and it was gruesome.

She was as good as dead.

Her body was only a quarter left, with only her head, chest, and right arm remaining, but her survival was entirely due to her right arm.

Her right arm, black as coal.

The arm of that monster that made her a monster, connecting her nerves, functioning like an organ, and forcibly making her heartbeat. Even that now looked faint…

I suddenly wondered.

Could this half-dead body survive on its own?

“…Three days.”

Akane had postponed the battle for three days because of me.

What if Grawl had prepared a little more during those three days?

Or, what if Akane had let her guard down a little more?

It couldn’t be helped.

I picked up Akane in both arms. She was light, perhaps because it was only a partial body.

“Let’s go.”

Whether it’s a human or a monster, I can do nursing and healing above average.

As I always say, there’s nothing I haven’t done in the underworld.

I stepped on the ashes and left the dungeon.

Swoosh——

Outside, it was raining. It was a downpour. Along with it, several ships were approaching, emitting lights.

I quickly hid my body.

I ran in the opposite direction of the light—into the forest.

Of course, because the continent despises monsters.

[There may be monsters in the underworld. However, monsters that come to the surface should be killed or reported to 666 immediately.]

Safety education that Edsilla citizens, no, continental citizens learn from the age of two.

[Edsilla Monster-related Law Article 3, Clause 2.

If you are aware of the existence of a monster but do not report it or intentionally hide it, you will be sentenced to more than 10 years in prison and more than 20 years of information disclosure.

However, if the monster’s violent acts are confirmed, it is considered justifiable.]

The law dealing with monsters.

Just hiding it can lead to more than 10 years in prison.

Just about my lifespan, but, well.

It’s not a crime if you don’t get caught.

Rustle-

I hid deep in the island, moving through the grass and trees.