After that, they climbed the stairs to the third floor and saw a single room set in the back.
There was nothing else on the floor. As Hajime pushed open the door, he saw an eight-meter-long magic circle inlaid on the floor that had some of the most complex and subtle inscriptions he had ever seen. The circle’s design and layout were so detailed that it wouldn’t have been an exaggeration to call the whole thing a work of art.
But what caught Hajime’s eye most was the person sitting in an ostentatious chair right next to the circle.
Said person was clearly dead. The corpse had already decayed until nothing but bones remained, and it was clothed in a grand robe of black and gold. There was not the slightest hint of dust or grime anywhere on the robe. The impeccable cleanliness of the corpse made it seem more akin to a haunted house prop than something actually scary.
It was splayed out on the chair in a relaxed pose, with the skull’s empty sockets staring down at its own figure. Almost as if the person it had once been had simply sat down there and died that way. The skeleton and magic circle were the only objects in the room. Why’d they chose to come here to die and not their bedroom or the living room...?
“Looks suspicious... What should we do?” Yue seemed concerned about the skeleton as well. Hajime assumed it must have belonged to the maverick that was said to live here. The strange thing was that he died peacefully sitting like that, as if he were waiting for someone.
“Well, if we want to find a way out, this room seems to be our best bet. Even Transmutation couldn’t do anything to the locks we found in the library and the workshop, so... this is the only thing left to investigate. Yue, be ready for anything. I’ll be counting on you if something happens.”
“Okay... be careful.”
Hajime tentatively took a step forward. Nothing happened, so he kept advancing slowly. Then, when he reached the center of the circle, the entire room was filled with bright yellow light.
Hajime closed his eyes, unable to handle the intensity. A second later, it felt as if something invaded his head, and he began seeing flashbacks of his time in the abyss, starting from when he fell all the way up until he fought the Hydra.
Finally, the magic circle’s power began to wane and the light dimmed somewhat. Hajime opened his eyes... and saw a black-robed young man standing before him. He hadn’t sensed him enter the room at all.
The magic circle still glowed faintly, filling the room with a mystical light. Hajime instantly shifted into a battle stance, but after a few seconds he lowered his guard. Not only could he not feel any hostility or malice coming from the man in front of him, but the figure himself didn’t seem real. When he scrutinized it a little further, Hajime realized the robe he was wearing was the same as the one the skeleton had. That told him enough to guess who the man in front of him probably was.
Hajime silently gazed at the figure, waiting for something to happen. Finally, the apparition began to speak.
“I congratulate you on overcoming my trial. My name is Oscar Orcus. I am the man who created this labyrinth. I suppose to the world I’m known as a maverick.” It seemed the dead man sitting in front of them was Oscar Orcus, the creator of the Great Orcus Labyrinth. Hajime and Yue stared, half surprised, half expecting it.
“By the way, please spare me the questions. This is nothing more than a recording I left behind, so I unfortunately cannot answer any queries you may have. I wanted to tell those who made it this far why it was that we, who learned the truth of the world, chose to fight against the gods... so I decided to leave a message. And this was the simplest form to convey that message in. I want you to know... that though we were mavericks, we were not truly rebels.”
The story he wove for them was completely different from the history Hajime had learned from the Holy Church’s records, or the stories Yue had been told about the mavericks. The revelations Oscar had for them shocked them to the core.
His tale was one of mad gods and their descendants who fought against them.
A short time after the Age of the Gods, the world was engulfed in strife. Humans, demons, and even beastmen all fought against each other in a never-ending war. Their reasons were as numerous as their battles. Land, resources, personal values, greed, but most important among them was theology.
In that age, the races and countries were split up into numerous factions, each of which had their own god. And it was each tribe’s god that incited its people to fight against those who worshiped others.
After some time, a group appeared that sought to put an end to this centuries-long war. They called themselves the Liberators.
There was only one thing they all had in common. Each member was a direct descendant of one of the gods. Their leader was someone who had, by coincidence, happened to learn of the gods’ true intentions. It appeared that the gods were using the various races like pawns, playing a grand game of chess with the world as their board. The leader of the Liberators couldn’t stand their sickening disregard for life, and began looking for comrades who felt the same way he did.
After an arduous search, they were able to discover the location of Asgard, the home of the gods. There were seven among the Liberators who were exceptionally powerful, and they were chosen to be the vanguard in the battle against the gods.
However, their plans were foiled before the battle could even begin. The gods manipulated the sentient races and made them believe the Liberators were trying to destroy the world. They were marked as enemies of the gods, and every human, demon, and beastman considered them their mortal foe.
After a great many conspiracies, events, and dramatic encounters, the Liberators found themselves on the run. They couldn’t bring themselves to fight the people they had sworn to protect, but those very people believed they were ungrateful heretics trying to bring about the end of the world. Their true name was forgotten, and they were known simply as mavericks in the annals of history.
The Liberators were killed off one by one, until only the strongest seven remained. With the entire world against them, they realized they wouldn’t be able to defeat the gods. So they scattered to the ends of the earth and built huge labyrinths to hide themselves in. They created a series of trials, praying that someone who could clear them might one day appear, so they could bequeath their powers onto them in hopes that these new warriors would carry out their dreams.
After he finished his long speech, Oscar smiled peacefully.
“I have no idea who you are, or why you chose to fight your way down here. Nor do I have any intention of forcing my own dreams of the gods’ demise onto you. I simply wanted you to know what it was we fought, and died, for... As a reward for hearing me out, I shall grant you my strength. How you use it is entirely up to you. I can only pray you won’t use it for evil. That’s all I have to say. Thank you for listening to the end. May the ‘blessings’ of the gods never reach you.” Oscar’s apparition vanished once he finished talking. At the same time, Hajime felt something strange enter his mind. The sensation was quite painful, but because he knew what was happening, he quietly let it enter inside him.
The pain finally subsided, and the magic circle grew dim once more. Hajime let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in the whole time.
“Hajime... are you ok?”
“Yeah, I’m fine... But man, what a tale.”
“Yeah... What are you going to do?”
Yue was referring, of course, to Oscar’s tale.
“Hm? Nothing really. It was those good-for-nothing gods that summoned me here in the first place and told me to go fight in their war. I hate them as it is anyway. Still, this world’s got nothing to do with me. All I care about is making it back to the surface and finding a way home. That’s all... Did his story bother you, Yue?”
The old Hajime might have been more sympathetic to this world’s plight, but the reforged Hajime discarded Oscar’s tale without so much as a second thought. It’s this world’s problem, so the people of this wo
rld should deal with it.
That being said, Yue was someone of this world. Which was why, if she said she wanted to do something about it, Hajime might have reconsidered. His bond with Yue wasn’t something he could discard as easily Oscar’s story.
However, Yue shook her head without hesitation.
“My home is wherever you are... I don’t care about anywhere else.” She sidled up to Hajime and squeezed his hand. The warmth of her hand told him she wasn’t just trying to be considerate.
Yue once devoted her entire life to her country. Despite that, she was betrayed by the ones she trusted most and left to rot in the darkness. None of her subjects came to save her. Three hundred years had passed since then, and all the people she knew were long since dead. For Yue, there was not a single thing left to care about in this world. In fact, much like Hajime, she had started to see the realm as a prison more than her home after being trapped for so long. And it was Hajime who had saved her from that prison. Which was why she only cared about being by Hajime’s side.
“...I see.” Hajime blushed a little. He then cleared his throat and dropped a bombshell of an announcement.
“Umm, also, I think I learned a new spell... Some kind of magic from the Age of the Gods, I think?”
“...Really?” Yue said, amazed. Her surprise was understandable. After all, magic from the Age of the Gods was something the gods had once used, magic that no longer existed in the present day. Teleportation magic was from that age as well.
“This magic circle did something to my head, and it’s like I suddenly understand how it works, kind of.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I’m totally fine. Even better, this spell’s a perfect fit for me.”
“...What kind of spell is it?”
“Umm, it’s a creation spell of some kind. It lets me add magical properties to minerals, and create new ore with special traits.”
Yue’s jaw hung open as she listened to Hajime’s explanation.
“You can make artifacts?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
The creation spell Hajime had inherited was the same magic people had used to create artifacts in the Age of the Gods. Truly, it was the perfect skill for a Synergist. Though Hajime didn’t know it, Oscar’s job had also been Synergist.
“You want to learn it too, Yue? You just have to step into the magic circle. It does this kind of thing where it runs through your memories. Oscar said something about a trial earlier too, so since we cleared it together, you should have the right to learn it as well.”
“...I can’t use transmutation.”
“Oh yeah, I guess that’s true... Still, it’s magic from the Age of the Gods. There’s no real harm in learning it either way, right?”
“Okay. If you want me to, Hajime.” Urged onward by Hajime, Yue stepped into the magic circle next. It began glowing faintly and started probing Yue’s memories. It must have decided Yue had cleared the conditions as well, since the apparition appeared once more.
“I congratulate you on overcoming my trial. My name is Oscar...”
Oscar’s disembodied voice rang out for a second time. Having it happen a second time kind of ruined the moment. Oscar repeated the same words he had earlier, so Yue and Hajime ignored him and continued their conversation.
“How’d it go? Did you learn it?”
“Yeah, I did. But artifacts don’t make much sense to me.”
“Hmmm, I guess even ancient magic is useless unless you’ve got an affinity for it.”
The vision of Oscar smiled as it wrapped up its conversation. It was kind of surreal, really. Hajime couldn’t be sure he didn’t imagine it, but it felt like the skeleton behind the vision looked somewhat sad.
“Ah, since I guess this house is basically ours now, we should get rid of the skeleton.” He had no respect for the corpse at all.
“Yeah... He’ll make good fertilizer for the fields.” Neither did Yue. Though there was no wind, Oscar’s skull fell forward another few inches.
They buried Oscar’s skeleton near the edge of the field and even gave him a modest gravestone. In the end, even they felt enough pity for him that they didn’t just make him into fertilizer.
Once the burial was finished, Hajime and Yue returned to the two places that had been locked before. When they had buried him, they’d relieved him of the ring he’d been wearing on his skeletal finger. It wasn’t grave-robbing, since he hadn’t been buried yet. The ring had a symbol of a circle with a cross splitting it into even sections engraved on it, which matched the engravings on the locks perfectly.
First, they went to the library. They were hoping some of the books would have knowledge on how to get back to the surface. Hajime and Yue broke the seal on the bookshelves and started perusing the volumes. During their search, they discovered what appeared to be the building’s blueprints. It wasn’t nearly as detailed as a proper set of blueprints, but there were a lot of memos about what would be built where and how the layout of the house would look.
“Bingo! I found it, Yue!”
“Nice.”
Hajime let out a whoop of joy. Yue responded happily as well, though with less intensity. According to the blueprints, the magic circle on the third floor connected to another circle that would teleport them back to the surface. It seemed that function could only be activated with Orcus’ ring, though. It was fortunate they’d sto— taken it from him.
They also learned that cleaning was handled automatically at set intervals by golems that normally rested in one of the workshop rooms, and that the globe hanging from the ceiling possessed the same properties as the sun, so they could grow crops if they wished. So that’s why it’s so clean even though no one’s lived here in ages.
There were a number of artifacts and rare materials Oscar had been working with in the locked room of his workshop, according to the memos. Hajime decided to ste— take those too. It couldn’t hurt to have more items to work with after all.
“Hajime... look at this.”
“Hm?”
Yue had been looking through the other books while Hajime had pored over the blueprints, and she came to him with one of them in her hands. It turned out to be Oscar’s diary. It chronicled the normal everyday life of Oscar and his six powerful companions. One of the passages in it talked about the labyrinths his six comrades had made.
“...So basically, that means if we conquer the other labyrinths, we can get all the ancient magic the other Liberators possessed too?”
“...Maybe.”
According to his diary, his six comrades had also designed their labyrinths so that anyone who made it all the way to its furthest depths would be granted magic from the Age of the Gods. Unfortunately, it didn’t go into the specifics of what kind of magic each had.
“One of them might help us get back to your world.” Yue definitely has a point there. After all, the teleportation magic that summoned my class here was from the Age of the Gods too.
“Yeah. Now we have an idea of where to look next. Our goal after we get back to the surface is to conquer the other six labyrinths.”
“Yeah.”
Hajime smiled, glad he’d finally found a lead. He started unconsciously patting Yue’s head, to which she closed her eyes happily and let herself be spoiled.
They searched around the library for a while longer, but they couldn’t find any books telling them the exact locations of the other labyrinths. For now, they were stuck with the two whose locations were known, the Grand Gruen Volcano and the Haltina Woods. They could also start searching around the Reisen Gorge and Schnee Snow Fields, where two other labyrinths were said to be hidden.
Once they finished rummaging through the library, the pair headed over to the workshop. There were a number of locked doors in the workshop, all of which Hajime opened with Orcus’ ring. Crammed inside were all manner of ore, tools with unknown purposes, and work manuals. The entire treasure trove was a Synergist’s dream come tr
ue. Hajime folded his single arm as he lapsed into thought. Yue tilted her head, puzzled, and asked him the question on her mind.
“...What’s wrong?” After thinking deeply for a few minutes, Hajime turned to Yue and answered.
“Hmm, well I was thinking. How about we stay here for a little while, Yue? Don’t get me wrong, I’m eager to return to the surface too... but since there’s all this stuff to explore and learn about, it might be better to make this our base and rest up for a bit. Especially since if we’re going to be heading for the other labyrinths next, it’d be best to prepare ourselves as much as possible. What do you think?” Hajime was trying to be considerate of Yue, since he figured after 300 years of darkness she was aching to see the light, but she agreed rather quickly after looking at him blankly for a few seconds. Hajime found that a little strange, but she just gave him a curt reply.
“...As long as I’m with you, Hajime, anywhere is fine.” It seemed she didn’t harbor any burning desire to see the sun. Hajime blushed and scratched his cheek when he heard her declare that so boldly.
With that settled, the two decided to stay there to train and prepare as much as possible.
Soon enough evening fell, and the bright sunlight turned to pale moonlight. Hajime was currently soaking in the bath, letting his entire body relax for the first time in months. He’d been on edge ever since he’d fallen into the abyss. The bath cleansed him in both body and soul.
“Haaaah, this feels great!” This kind of carefree tone was a first for the new Hajime. As he let the energy drain from his body, he suddenly heard the sound of footsteps heading his way. He cursed himself for letting his guard down.
“I told you I wanted to take my bath alone!”
There was a loud splash.
“Hmm... This really does feel nice...” And then, Yue was sitting next to him. She scooted over next to Hajime, completely naked.
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 1 (Premium) Page 28
