"Deafening tinnitus, massive shockwaves."
The first thing Lir noticed # Nоvеlight # as she regained her senses was her own body, covered in dust after rolling dozens of meters, and the molten gold around her.
"Hah...!"
Lir’s head heated up with a rush of blood.
The enormous shockwave created by the white-haired boy mercilessly tore through the defense shield she hastily erected as if it were nothing.
The shockwave, tearing through her defense, directly hit Lir’s body, sending her crashing to the ground and tumbling for dozens of meters.
The ringing in her ears felt like it was about to shatter her skull. Despite the pain, she instinctively placed her hand over her ribs. The pain felt like a broken bone, but she couldn’t tell exactly where it was broken.
Her arms and legs began to tremble. A sheltered flower, growing under the shadow of her master her entire life, let out a soft moan at the intense, unfamiliar pain of a fracture.
Fsssssh...!
As Lir moaned in agony from the pain, a crackling sound filled her ears.
Even with her trembling limbs and a chill spreading across her body, something began to ignite in her chest.
"Let’s begin."
Struggling to lift her head, she looked ahead, where the white-haired boy stood, emitting an enormous current of electricity, a noble expression on his face.
"...Hah, hah..."
Even as she barely managed to breathe, her eyes never left the boy.
She was certain that an event, one that no mage should miss, was about to unfold before her.
Fssssh...
The air ignited.
Enormous light gathered at the tips of the boy's fingers. A giant with the face of a spider shouted something and began charging at the boy.
Rex and Trián raised their arms, fearing that the boy's eyes might be damaged, but Lir couldn’t tear her eyes from the light gathered at his fingertips.
Even if it meant her vision failed, she didn’t care.
She didn’t want to look away from that light, not even for a single moment.
Whooooosh—
The immense energy shot straight forward, piercing the heart of the giant in a perfectly straight line.
The air caught fire. Lightning branched out from the burning air and ionized oxygen.
A massive flame began to roar around the white-haired boy, standing at the origin of the lightning.
"The smell of burning is as revolting as the face of that giant."
The oxygen in the air spontaneously combusted, scorching the boy’s black robe.
Even as flames erupted around him, the boy didn’t blink an eye.
The giant, with a loud roar, charged fiercely toward the boy as his skin began to boil.
"Arrrrrrrgh!"
The spider-faced giant, even with its heart pierced by the tremendous light pillar, didn’t know how to stop its legs. As it stepped on the melted gold, it shot upwards into the air.
The giant’s arms and legs were covered in melted gold.
The boy retracted the pillar of light extending from his fingertips and flicked his opposite hand’s finger.
A bolt of lightning shot out from between his thumb and index finger, quickly branching out into dozens, hundreds of branches of lightning.
The body of the spider giant, charging at the boy, became tangled in the lightning threads.
The white lightning threads, emitting massive currents, burned the giant’s peripheral nerves one by one. Soon, the giant’s enormous body started to convulse.
The lightning extended from the boy’s hand, splitting continuously, and spread throughout the dungeon.
From afar, the spiders that had started to appear, climbing over fallen walls, foolishly tried to approach the center of the storm but were struck by lightning and flipped over, twitching uncontrollably.
"...You arrogant fool!"
How many hundreds of millions of volts had that giant absorbed?
Even with an unimaginable amount of power coursing through its body, the spider-headed giant continued moving.
Its scorched black arms began to boil. Its completely burned fingers fell to the ground and mixed with the melted gold.
Even the feet that had been on the ground melted away. With each step the giant took, its legs shrank as they melted.
It wasn’t strange that the giant could scream in pain and die from the shock, but the monster, driven by one instinct—kill—extended its black hand toward the white-haired boy.
Crush. Destroy. Make it into dough and eat it.
This monster, designed only for that purpose, didn’t stop in its mission to fulfill its destiny.
Its fist tore through the air, which was covered in thousands of branches of lightning.
Though its arms were melting and ripping apart, the giant didn’t care.
Its fingers had already vanished, and the palm, now melting, soon saw its wrist collapse, but the spider giant didn’t care.
It wasn’t born to survive but to kill.
"Discharge."
And the white-haired boy brought death to the life born with such a terrible task.
The world, which had been bathed in white light, was momentarily consumed by darkness.
The lightning that had spread in all directions disappeared in an instant. Lir’s vision turned pitch black, and it was the same for everyone else.
Rumbling...
The immense vibration that spread throughout Lir’s body, leaving the aftershock of the lightning, felt like an earthquake.
Boom!
The thunder shook her broken ribs.
Light.
Strangely, it reached her after the sound.
No, the light must have arrived long before. It was just that her optic nerve was overloaded, and the fact that light had arrived was only now being transmitted to her brain.
Lir’s skin burned painfully.
As her eyes, which had just begun to function again, saw the boy, he was standing farther away than he had been before her vision was overtaken by darkness.
Her body had been thrown further back by the shockwave. She didn’t know when she had been sent flying.
Even recognizing the enormous light entering through her eyes was straining her brain.
"This is..."
Lir couldn’t help but marvel at the scene before her. Despite the pain torturing her body, her mind didn’t have time to focus on that.
She had to engrave this moment deep into her mind, without missing a single detail. The broken ribs, bruises, burns from the hot air—none of these mattered right now.
The ionized oxygen and flames scattered around her, the current within them, all of it covered the spider giant’s body, following the boy’s command.
The monster, swinging its fists despite the pain of its limbs burning black, finally turned into white ash under the tremendous shock, far beyond hundreds of millions of volts. Only the half-burned, terrifying head remained on the ground.
"Hah..."
Lir sighed as she realized how far she had been thrown from the boy by the shockwave.
She wanted to see it from as close as possible.
The magic of the genius who would save the world.
Usually, with his childish pranks, eccentric behavior, and atrocious physical strength, she hadn’t fully realized it, but at this moment, Lir felt it deeply.
An overwhelming talent that she couldn’t even feel frustration or emptiness about.
"..."
Some might witness this overwhelming talent and fall into despair or helplessness.
It wasn’t unusual. The appearance of a monster surpassing everything built up over a lifetime often leads those who have worked hard to fall into despair and self-loathing.
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‘...This is it.’
But occasionally, there are those who, seeing such overwhelming talent, let out a sigh not of despair, but of admiration.
‘Gold, heat, light. No, that’s not it. It’s not just the general term of light...’
The word genius referred to those who, even upon seeing a monster far superior to them, still thought they would one day reach that level... or at least, even for a moment, try to surpass it.
Such absurd passion was what described those who lived with this kind of drive in their hearts.
‘Flash? No, flash has too much of an image of being a momentary thing. A more fitting expression would be...’
The spark within her chest suddenly blazed into a huge flame.
Inspiration. Yes, this would be correctly described as inspiration.
The immense light the boy had brought sparked a flame called inspiration in Lir, another genius.
What this flame would forge, from now on, was entirely up to her.
In this world, the first spell ever created by mages was like a ticking time bomb.
It was like an egg in a microwave or a child holding a loaded gun—an entity where an accident could happen at any moment.
This was truly a matter of luck.
Though one might argue how lucky it could be with a mere luck of 1, it could only be explained that way.
The first spell ever made.
The spell I had never experimented with before worked perfectly, and I could feel an unprecedented, powerful force bursting out from my body.
"You crazy bastard, shouldn’t you have toned it down?!"
Trián shouted at me, his skin glowing red from the hot air. Behind him, his longbow was broken for some unknown reason.
Looking around, it was truly chaos. The golden walls that had surrounded us had completely collapsed, and the giant door lay sprawled on the floor. The spot where the spider giant had stood was now a vast wasteland, with the giant’s body and debris scattered carelessly.
"That’s what I’m saying, General! We almost got into big trouble ourselves."
Rex, sweating profusely, said, clearly flustered.
...Well, I didn’t expect the magic’s power to be this strong either.
I’d never tested the spell before. Honestly, I didn’t know it would have this much of an effect...
"..."
Lir appeared from behind Trián and Rex, her golden hair fluttering.
Her eyes were fixed on me, but her mind seemed to be focused somewhere odd.
"...Disqualified, no, no... that’s not the right word..."
...Why did she suddenly lose her mind? Was she hit by one of the lightning strikes?
"Let’s get out quickly. All the monsters around have been crushed by you, so there’s nothing left, but still."
Trián grumbled as he touched his scorched skin and walked toward the treasure keeper’s body, which had turned to ash.
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Screech, screech!
Then the sound of metal plates clashing and scraping echoed, and a huge hole appeared beneath the treasure keeper’s body.
The white ash made a fine, sandy sound as it was sucked into the void. Moments later, a giant head, with forty-two eyes, fell weakly into it.
After some time, from the black hole that had swallowed the treasure keeper’s body, a dark door rose.
The chaotic golden room and the door that appeared in the center.
Trián opened the door without hesitation.
Beyond the door, the same color of void that had consumed the treasure keeper’s body awaited us.
Even when illuminated by light, it revealed nothing, just like the entrance to the dungeon.
"...Let’s go out quickly. Who made this damn place so hot."
Trián shook his head in frustration and stepped into the void first.
Rex followed behind him, trying to squeeze himself into the dark void.
His back was still burning, and if he didn’t meet a priest for treatment soon, things could get really bad.
"Rex, over there."
I knew it was urgent, but I called Rex back.
Rex, who had half of his foot in the darkness, withdrew it and looked back at me.
"What’s wrong, General?"
"That."
I pointed at a huge pile of gold coins, jewelry, and a white horn.
The treasure the treasure keeper had been guarding.
"...Why are you bothering to collect the treasure? And we don’t have a bag big enough for all that gold. General, you’re more materialistic than I thought."
"We all worked hard. Trián went ahead, and Lir... she’s in a strange state right now, so I have no one else to ask but you. As for the bag... well, can’t we use the horn to carry the gold? We’ve all been through a lot, so it’s a bit unfair to leave empty-handed."
"Well... I don’t mind. I’ll do it."
Though poisoned and covered in wounds, Rex followed my request without any objections. He placed his hand on the white horn in the center of the chaotic treasure keeper’s room...
At that moment, the white horn disintegrated into molecular form, crawling up Rex’s arm and seeping into his chest.
Rex, startled by the sudden change, repeatedly touched his chest with his thick hand.
...Having been poisoned and now something unknown was piercing his chest’s skin—anyone would react like that.
"It’s for your life."
It was useless for me as a mage, but a highly useful artifact for a barbarian.
And if that barbarian was Rex, he’d surely know how to use it properly.
"General, this is..."
"It’s harmless, I know because I’ve used it. As for how to use it... well, you’ll figure it out, right?"
I pulled on Lir’s robe, who was mumbling to herself in a dazed state, and left the dungeon first.
"Come on, we need to get you treated."
Just like when we entered the dungeon, the black darkness wrapped around me again.