Lifeline 2

While we were spinning around above the giant whirlpool, I looked for someone in particular.

“Oh! Viscount Jandel! Have you come to hunt the Lord of the…”

“Dimensional Gate! Is there any mage here who can use the Dimensional Gate?”

I checked every boat we passed, but not a single person gave me the answer I wanted.

Honestly, I had expected as much. I already knew I was clutching at straws when I put this plan into action. Wizards capable of casting Dimensional Door were rare. Only a handful of magic schools taught the improved version of the spell, and even if one of their wizards could use it, a rank 4 wizard could only cast it once in their lifetime.

Not to mention the fact that those precious mages were practically going extinct after the long war against Noark. Every school was desperately trying to train replacements, but that did nothing to help the current situation. A Level 4 mage could not be produced in just a few years. There was no way the supply could keep up with the demand.

In many ways, they were the most valuable human resource in the world right now.

Nearly every clan was frantically trying to recruit a dimensional gate mage.
Even our Anabada Clan, which usually did not accept new members, announced that it would make an exception for Dimensional Door mages— yet not a single one applied.

Some had responded, sure, but they were all frauds who only wanted an excuse to meet me.

Whatever. That did not matter right now.

“If Viscount Jandel is looking for a Dimensional Door mage, then…”

“Is the Lord of Tears really that terrifying? Terrifying enough that even that battle maniac is thinking of running away?”

“The palace! Where are the palace soldiers? They’ll come once they realize something is happening!”

Maybe because I had gone around asking about Dimensional Gate mages, the other explorers ended up misunderstanding the situation.

Hey, if I’d had enough time, I wouldn’t have done this either.

Even if we had come out immediately after hearing about the dimensional collapse, we still would not have been able to kill the Sixth Floor Lord.

Just look at the situation now.

The wave pattern hadn’t ended yet, so we were still caught in the whirlpool, waiting for the second phase to begin.

“The rain… stopped?”

The heavy rain pouring from the sky stopped all at once. Then the sky seemed to open again as powerful winds battered our vessel.

Fwoosh!

Strictly speaking, the sky had not actually opened. It only looked that way because light began streaming down through the split clouds.

The gloomy clouds disappeared, and intense sunlight poured down into the center of the whirlpool. Against the washed-out gray surroundings, that brilliant pillar of light seemed even brighter, almost divine.

“Whoa…”

All around us, I could see explorers staring up in awe, even as the whirlpool continued dragging them in circles.

***

Of course, not everyone was captivated by the sight.

“Damn it…”

“What are you all doing?! Snap out of it!”

It was obvious that only a few among the gathered groups truly understood what that pillar of light signified. Still, instead of simply staring in awe, some explorers reacted with caution. Their experience told them that, inside the labyrinth, nothing was more dangerous than the unknown.

“Something’s coming!”

Their wariness proved correct.

When the rain stopped and light poured down from the sky, it could only mean one thing.

Shwaaaaaa!

The waves finally calmed as phase two began.

“There! Is something rising up?”

“What the hell is that?!”

At the center of the whirlpool, right where the sunlight fell, the water pulled back and revealed a relatively small island.

“The Island of Beginnings… Lamia?”

I heard some explorers muttering that from far away, but they were wrong. It was true that it was called the Island of Beginnings, and its shape was almost identical.

But its location is completely different.

The Island of Beginning, Laimia, that we knew was much farther south from here, and by now, it should have been completely submerged. Reaching it would be nearly impossible at this point. In that case, the island visible below us had to be…

Honestly, only the name was different. It was practically the same island, except this one existed solely for raids and as a summoning altar.

To summon the Lord of Tears, someone had to anchor their ship here and dive down to that island. In other words, someone had deliberately summoned the Lord of the Floor.

But who?

I still did not know, but that was not what I needed to focus on right now.

No matter what they were scheming, they probably could not have predicted that a dimensional collapse would happen.

Uh… wait.

Could I really say that for certain?

Was it possible they had known?

The thought gnawed at me, but I quickly shook it off. With so little information, it was nothing more than baseless speculation.

“Captain! The ship is being pulled down!” Auyen shouted as he rushed out.

Until now, our ship had only been circling within the whirlpool, but now it began riding the current downward.

We had not completely fallen into panic, but everyone was clearly tense and anxious. First, I needed to calm them down.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” I said

“Ah… I-I panicked for nothing. So far, nothing much has—”

“The Lord of Tears will soon appear from over there.”

And almost as if my words had summoned it, something enormous emerged from beyond the wall of waves.

Splash!

First came its wrist. Then its elbow, its shoulder, and finally its face, covered by a cloth over its eyes and a gag in its mouth.

“It’s the Lord of Tears!”

“W, we have to run!”

The instant it appeared, everything descended into chaos.

Thinking about it, that reaction was only natural. None of the explorers here had probably ever seen a monster of that size before.

“H, how big is that thing?”

“We’re supposed to fight that?”

It was unbelievably massive, far taller than even the thirty foot tall Hipramajent. I could not say for sure, but it was probably even larger than the super giant I had seen on Giant Island back on the first underground floor.

And the worst part was, it had not even stood up yet.

After freezing the entire sea in terror with nothing but its entrance, it ignored us completely and began crawling toward the island.

Each time its knee touched the ground, a massive tremor shook the area.

Everyone could only stare. Its overwhelming presence made them forget even to tremble.

The Lord of Tears reached the island, then wrapped its arms around it as if shielding something precious. Once its enormous body had covered the whole island, it turned its head toward us.

Whoa…

Since it was wearing an eyepatch, “stared” was not exactly the right word. For some reason, however, I felt as though our eyes had met, and goosebumps crawled up my back.

But maybe everyone had felt the same way.

“Um… Clan Master? What happens now?”

“Like I said earlier, you don’t have to worry.”

“Ah… I-I see?”

“Now it will simply try to kill us.”

“Pardon?”

Of course, it would not actively rush at us.

In the second phase, it just stayed there, hugging the island.

The problem was that all kinds of monsters poured out from beyond the seawater walls, and even though the Lord of Tears itself did not move, it spammed all kinds of skills.

“Th-then aren’t we in serious trouble? I heard Lords of the Floor from the sixth floor and above are as strong as most Level 1 monsters.”

“The Wolf of Prophecy was terrifying… Just how terrifying will that thing be?”

The party members shuddered at the horrible memory.

“That’s exactly why I’m telling you not to worry.”

I kept my eyes on the Lord of Tears, which seemed to be staring back at me while holding the island in its arms.

“It’s about time.”

Still, I did not know whether I should call this fortunate. Honestly, I would have preferred it a hundred times over if my prediction had been completely wrong and we only had to fight the Lord of Terror today.
But…
00:03.
As expected, with my fate…
00:02.
There was no way…
00:01.
Things would go that smoothly.
00:00.3.
…Fine. Let’s do this.
***

「The duration of [Final Day] has ended.」

「The labyrinth has been closed.」

「Moving character to Raphdonia…」

「Moving character to Raphdonia…」

「Moving character to Raphdonia…」

「Error occurred.」

「Failed to move character to Raphdonia.」

The lightning bolts and meteors falling from the sky vanished all at once, leaving behind a sudden silence.

But this silence was far from peaceful.

The calm before the storm.

To me, at least, this brief silence was no different from a signal flare announcing that the storm was about to begin.

Crackle—

It began with a small sound.

Crack, crackle!

Then a small crack bloomed in the world.

Craaackle—!

From there, countless tiny cracky spread outward like a spider’s web.

The hundreds of explorers who had just been helplessly swept around by the Lord of Tears’ currents now witnessed an abnormal phenomenon none of them had ever experienced before.

And then…

Craaackle—!

The moment another cracking sound echoed throughout the entire world…

The world split into thousands, then tens of thousands of pieces, and across those fragments appeared the faces of strangers, monsters, and unfamiliar places.

A mage fighting in the Great Demon Realm.

A large clan crossing the Dark Continent on the seventh floor.

A small, unknown team trudging through a snowstorm on Ice Rock.

All those people moved within the countless fragments, like images reflected in the pieces of a shattered mirror.

“What the… Who is that?!”

“Bjorn… Jandel?”

“Wait, is that the Great Ocean behind him?”

Some of them even spoke while looking in my direction.

Swish

Then, a single snowflake, carried by the wind, landed on the back of my hand and melted away.

This was dimensional collapse.

It was an ordinary world being forcibly twisted and crushed by some unknown power, folded and crumpled like a piece of paper.

Crack!

Another sharp sound rang out, and the thousands of fragments shattered again, multiplying into millions.

So the dimensional collapse is really happening.

Even though I had known about it in advance, my heart still pounded violently in my chest.

Yet unlike my racing heartbeat, my thoughts slowed down and sharpened, focusing at once on what I needed to do.

“Everyone, stick close to me…!”

At my urgent shout, everyone on the boat immediately rushed toward me.

Shatter!

With the sound of something breaking, the world collapsed once more.

“This is…”

When I finally came to my senses and raised my head,

[Gate of the Abyss]

A familiar stone gate stood before me.

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