[Title: Master of the Abyss]

  …I’m the what now?

  He had no idea what “Master of the Abyss” meant.

  Did I just get slapped with another role?

  It felt exactly like the time he’d been chosen as the hero to stop the Lady of the Night.

  [Quest!]

  All of your precious relics have vanished. Find the whereabouts of the items!

  Failure: Disappointing. Are you really an Archmage?

  Success: Random Box

  Also, what was up with the quest? Since when did the System start talking to him like this? It used to act more like a computer.

  Not that it mattered; he was obviously going to track his gear down anyway, even without the prompt.

  Asterion swiped the quest window away. Just who the hell had cleared out his stash?

  The only ones capable of reaching this deep after he “died” would be heavy hitters like the Imperial Knights.

  Did one of those bastards loot my corpse...?

  Well, if he announced his return, their masters cough up the treasures in a heartbeat. Back in the day, those emperors would invite him to massive banquets and practically grovel to him the second a rumor dropped that he was anywhere near the capital.

  With that in mind, he attempted to cast [Teleport] to jump to the nearest Empire’s capital.

  “…Huh?”

  Was he losing his touch? Perhaps it was because he’d just woken up.

  Asterion closed his eyes and calmly visualized his destination.

  He pictured the heart of the capital, perfectly recalling the exact layout. [Teleport] was a spell that could take him absolutely anywhere, provided he had personally visited the location and could remember at least eighty percent of its geography.

  But his mana refused to flow.

  “Why isn’t it working?”

  [Teleport] was a 7th-circle spell, meaning a high-tier mage could barely manage to cast it once a day, but Asterion had used it all the time.

  Its range depended entirely on the mage’s capabilities, and since Asterion’s were off the charts, he could warp anywhere on the continent in a single cast.

  Except right now.

  This had never happened before.

  Not unless the geography of the continent itself had drastically shifted. But there was no way that could be the case. Even if some things changed, as long as his image was 80% accurate, [Teleport] would work.

  He tried other destinations, to no avail.

  …What the hell happened while I was asleep?

  To think he’d hit a wall like this when all he wastrying to do was leave a labyrinth.

  Asterion calmly gathered his thoughts.

  Actually, it made more sense to check the entire labyrinth first before he went scouring the rest of the continent, didn’t it?

  If he spread the mana in the air thin, scanning one floor at a time, he would be able to detect mana flows. He already knew for a fact his loot wasn’t on the 11th floor.

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  I’ll check the floors above this, one by one. If my stuff isn’t on the 1st floor either, I can just walk out the front door and fly over to the Empire.

  For now, he had no choice but to do it the old-fashioned way.

  After a moment of thought, Asterion readied a different spell.

  “[Shadow Step].”

  It was a short-distance warp.

  Though the function looked similar to [Teleport], they belonged to entirely different subclasses of magic. As long as there was a shadow, he could jump through dimensions.

  And this “Abyss” had plenty of them.

  The only issue was the ceiling currently blocking his way. [Shadow Step] woked much easier if he could see his destination.

  Well, if his line of sight was blocked, he just had to improvise with guesswork.

  Asterion raised a hand and fired his mana in two different directions. It was as fluid as a fish swimming through water. Or a tree extending its branches.

  Every single act of manipulating mana was incredibly effortless. Perhaps even more than before he had died, which was strange, considering Overcharged mana was notoriously difficult to finely control.

  Asterion cast one mana cube on his own shadow, then shot the other one through the high rock ceiling. As long as he could turn the mana into a fine mist, it could get through even solid objects.

  The only way to stop a spell from penetrating was another spell.

  Using the mist of mana as his eyes, he settled next to what seemed like a giant boulder. Thanks to the light source that was always in the middle of the Labyrinth, shadows stretched toward the walls.

  He dropped his mana cube in the shadows to act as his exit portal.

  “[Shadow Step].”

  Asterion, at least to an outside observer, looked like he melted into his own shadow. He stepped out of the exit portal and looked around him.

  The moment he arrived at the 10th floor, he was greeted by a purple fog trying to choke him with miasma, though they weren’t as bad as the 11th floor. The stagnant fog seemed to cause the plants to twist and cling to the walls like veins.

  Asterion frowned, sweeping the area with mana. Nothing here, either. Other than a few weak monsters.

  He’d hoped his relics would be directly above the floor where he’d been asleep.

  Next floor, then.

  He had no choice but to [Shadow Step] to the next floor again.

  As he repeated this process—scanning and ascending—he realized the Labyrinth’s environment and ecosystem had completely changed from what he remembered.

  Before, there had only been one floor.

  According to his dull memories, perhaps his fight with the Dark Lady might have sunk the labyrinth down into the earth.

  But to think there were eleven floors in the Labyrinth now. And each floor was wildly different.

  From the middle floors onward, he found caverns glittering with rare ores, and higher up, there were twisted forests and jungles he’d never seen before.

  With every floor he cleared, he noticed the mana in the air grew noticeably thin. Most people would feel their bodies getting lighter, but the mana density didn’t have much affect on Asterion, so he just registered the difference mentally.

  Asterion muttered to himself.

  “…Why does this place have to have so many floors?”

  The ceilings were so high that all Asterion could do with his short-distance warp was to move up one floor at a time.

  After repeating his search and ascending a total of ten times, Asterion reached the final layer of earth.

  “What the…”

  What greeted him was very unexpected.

  Sunlight. So bright that it would’ve made the old Asterion’s eyes water.

  The first floor’s ceiling was open to the sky, like the inside of a volcano, except there was an entire forest inside it.

  It was like a lush garden, brimming with the fresh scent of grass and gentle warmth. If he hadn’t known in advance, he would never have believed he was inside a labyrinth.

  He was just about to stretch the mana out to scan the area when he abruptly stopped.

  Something caught his eyes—his real eyes. Asterion blinked. Then blinked again.

  He saw people wandering around, and right next to the forest, there seemed to be two to three story buildings that looked like residential housing.

  With monsters as an active threat, a sight like this was totally unheard of.

  A village inside the Labyrinth?

  Asterion stared blankly at the scene for a moment, before quickly snapping out of it.

  It didn't matter. He was planning to go back to sleep soon anyway. Obviously these people were able to take care of themselves—somehow—if the village had grown this big and bustling with people.

  …Could these people know about my relics?

  Perhaps, they stole them?

  Asterion calmly gathered mana and spread it across the humongous floor. The 1st floor was the widest level of the entire labyrinth, and it surprised Asterion that his control didn’t even falter scanning the area.

  He was starting to scare himself now.

  I’ve really got to go to sleep fast.

  It felt like immense, if not infinite, power flow through him. Though it had been decades since he’d experienced a mana high reaching the Archmage status, he could feel he was getting dangerously close.

  And if he started going on a rampage, like those idiots who sought to control the world, who would stop him?

  Eventually, he found a spot where streams of mana were thickly tangled together. There was no mistake.

  His relics were underground.

  A smirk tugged at the corners of Asterion's mouth as he pinpointed his buried treasures.

  That was quicker than I thought!

  It wouldn’t take long to set up the seal on himself once he had his gear. Asterion [Shadow Stepped] one more time, feeling relieved.

  Thank the seven heavens…

  He materialized at the destination, already mentally organizing which spell to use to dig up the relics, only to freeze at the giant structure in front of him.

  His eyes started twitching.

  Because the spot where his relics were buried wasn’t just an empty plot of land.

  Sitting proudly on top of it was a white fortress, looking as though all the wealth and magical engineering in the world had been poured into its foundation. He could feel his relics’ mana pumping into the building to support whatever spells they were sustaining.

  Asterion, not even moving his head, rolled his eyes downward and started reading the giant plate hammered onto the gate.

  Aeterna Royal Magic Academy.