Soren's head snapped up.
All around him, wooden coffins that had been resting against the walls and lined along the floor began to burst open.
Rotten lids broke inward, fragments scattering, and from within them skeletons rose.
Within seconds, they swarmed him.
Empty eye sockets.
Grinning jaws.
Bones scraped against stone as they pulled themselves free and turned toward him, drawn by the presence of living flesh.
Soren inhaled sharply.
His hands shook slightly as he raised the handaxe in his left hand, the weapon feeling heavier than before.
Flames crackled faintly in his right palm as he fed mana into [Ignition], keeping it small for now.
'Focus… don't think about what could go wrong.'
Skeletons were undead of the lowest level.
They weren't fast, and they weren't clever.
Their movements were clumsy, their bones brittle.
Fortunately, that meant he shouldn't have too much to worry about, at least, not from them alone.
'The real problem is that guy.'
He shifted his gaze to the far end of the crypt.
Floating above a stone sarcophagus was a wraith.
Its form was thin and tattered, like a cloak made from shadow and smoke, flickering with every hint of air.
Empty darkness stared out from where its face should have been.
Wraiths were low-level monsters.
But that term was deceiving.
They were still an entire tier above skeletons, and they had complete immunity to physical attacks.
If he tried to hit it with the axe, the blade would pass through as if through mist.
The skeletons rattled and clattered as they stumbled toward him from all directions, jawbones snapping open and shut.
Soren pointed his right palm at the floor near the nearest group.
"「Ignition」"
Flames poured out in all directions, rushing across the stone in a wave.
The nearest skeletons blackened as the fire licked at them, a few ribs cracking in the sudden heat, but that wasn't why he had used it.
Sizzle…
This room was filled with wood.
Coffins, broken planks, supports.
In a place like this, fire spread easily.
The flames caught, climbing up splintered boards and leaping from coffin to coffin until the crypt was bathed in uneven firelight.
The flickering illumination drove away the worst of the darkness, throwing sharp shadows along the walls.
It freed up his left hand.
He let the fire burn, kept it under control enough not to trap himself, and shifted his focus to his divine power.
Purplish-silver light began to gather in his palm.
A flicker of doubt crawled up the back of his neck as he raised his hand toward the oncoming horde.
'What if I fail again…'
He pushed the thought down, forcing himself to speak clearly.
"Stitch thy flesh, I end thy agony. 「Heal」."
The closest skeleton exploded into ash.
Its bones disintegrated under the divine spell, collapsing in on themselves as if its structure had been wiped away.
Relief washed over him, sharp and immediate… but it was fleeting.
More skeletons pressed in, stepping over the dust of their fallen ally.
His pulse raced.
His grip on the axe tightened.
Even now, the fear of losing, of mistiming his spells, of letting one slip through, gnawed at his mind.
Another skeleton staggered forward, its bony fingers outstretched.
Soren swung his handaxe, but his footing slipped slightly on scattered debris, and the swing went wide, scraping along the creature's ribs instead of smashing its skull.
Heat flared in his chest, not from magic, but from a spike of panic.
'Calm down… just… one thing at a time.'
He forced himself to inhale, then exhale slowly, even as the skeleton lurched closer.
He channelled divine power into his left hand again and thrust his palm forward.
Light erupted from his fingers, disintegrating the nearest undead.
Bones turned to powder mid-step.
Soren gritted his teeth and forced his body to move, even though every part of him screamed for rest.
His head pounded from the smoke, his lungs burned, and his arms felt heavy.
His enemies right now weren't just the monsters in front of him.
It was also his own mind, clouded after a string of defeats, heavy with self-doubt.
Step by step, he engaged.
Swinging.
Casting.
Dodging.
Pivoting.
He repeated the same cycle over and over, muscles burning and sweat stinging his eyes.
Each movement carried a shadow of doubt.
'Am I fast enough?'
'Am I thinking too slowly?'
'What if I miss, what if I mess up again…'
Skeletons fell one by one.
Ash piled up around his boots, mixing with fragments of charred wood.
The room was a blur of bones and flame and light.
But Soren barely registered the growing mess.
Every skeleton that fell brought a rush of relief, but the relief came with an edge, like he was afraid the next one would be the one that slipped past his guard.
Thud—
He slammed the side of his handaxe into a skeleton's skull, shattering it.
He made a point of using the flat and the haft more than the blade.
Skeletons were weak to blunt force; no reason to waste effort cleaving clean cuts when a solid impact worked better.
Woonggg—
Divine light hummed in his other hand, ready to be fired.
"Cough!"
The heat finally caught up to him. Smoke and hot air stung his eyes and throat. He coughed roughly, vision blurring.
He pulled a T-shirt from his inventory with his offhand and tied it loosely over his mouth and nose, filtering the worst of the smoke.
It was a clumsy solution, but it was enough to let him keep breathing.
He knew, logically, that he could beat these skeletons.
Their movements were predictable.
Their strength was low.
He had the spells and the stamina to outlast them.
But the mental strain weighed heavier than the physical.
Even so, something subtle began to settle inside him.
Every swing he made, every spell he cast, was deliberate.
He wasn't flailing.
He wasn't thrashing wildly and praying for a hit.
He was cautious, aware, and efficient.
And, for the first time in a while, he acknowledged it.
He was holding his own.
He had grown stronger.
The fog that had clouded his thoughts started to thin as he forced himself to look at things objectively.
He remembered Rena Forest.
He remembered how much he had struggled against the goblins there, how fighting fewer than twenty of them had nearly killed him.
How every clash had felt like an end, how his lungs had burned, and his body had been pushed to its limit.
Now, he was dealing with an equivalent horde of low-level monsters and managing them with relative ease.
It was just that everyone around him was a genius.
Amelia, Lilliana, Alex, Olivia.
Compared to them, he looked stagnant, constantly trailing behind, painfully aware of every weakness.
He was weak.
Wooonggg!
He knew that.
He had never pretended otherwise.
THUD!
Another skeleton collapsed, its skull caving under the side of his axe.
But now he knew something else, too.
He wasn't as weak as he had thought.
A small smile crept onto his face, almost unbidden.
"I'm doing fine," he whispered.
The words weren't loud, not meant for anyone else.
They were for him.
He might not be as strong as Alex.
He might never glow with golden light or twist time around himself.
But that was fine.
Smash!
He drove the axe into the side of a skeleton's head and sent it crashing into a burning coffin.
He tossed aside, for a moment, all his worries about whether the story would go well.
Whether the "original" plotline would recover.
Whether his presence had ruined things beyond repair.
He decided, just this once, to enjoy himself.
To treat this like what it was, a room full of weak enemies he could mow down.
It became a form of stress relief.
Each shattered skull, each burst of divine light, each crumbling pile of bones took a bit of the pressure off his chest, releasing pent-up frustration that had been building for too long.
The numbers dwindled rapidly.
The clatter of bones grew less frequent.
The space around him opened up.
Flames crackled, but the swarm of skeletons that had rushed him at the start was now reduced to scattered stragglers.
Until, at last, only one remained.
He was almost disappointed that it was ending.
His mood now was nothing like when he had first stepped into the crypt.
Soren stepped forward and placed his hand on the final skeleton's head.
"Stitch thy flesh, I end thy agony. 「Heal」."
Light flared.
The skeleton turned to ash in his grasp, its cranium collapsing inward as if erased.
He released what was left, letting the ash spill through his fingers, and scanned the room, chest rising and falling with steady breaths.
That was when he noticed it.
A small flicker of movement in the corner of his vision.
The wraith, which had previously been hovering almost motionless above the sarcophagus, suddenly surged forward.
Its cloaked, shadowy body twisted unnaturally as it shot toward him, crossing the distance in an instant.
Soren barely had time to register the attack before the wraith passed straight through him, its incorporeal form phasing through his chest like cold smoke.
His breath caught.
A system message popped up before his eyes.
.
[Curse of Nightmares has been applied!]
.
A curse.
He felt the change immediately.
Lethargy spread through his body, heavy and suffocating; his limbs grew heavy, every muscle losing strength as if someone had layered weights across his entire frame.
His eyelids drooped, thick and unwilling to stay open.
His knees wobbled.
He tried to move his hand, to raise his arm, to do anything, and his body barely responded.
He desperately forced the mana in his body to activate, to rouse itself despite the weight dragging it down.
It moved like tar, sluggish and resistant.
But it moved.
Wooonggg—
A magic circle formed in Soren's hand.
Small and simple.
One he had used many times before.
The wraith darted around the room, its empty, flowing body circling above the scattered ashes of the skeletons.
It was almost playful in its movements, twisting in the hot air.
Then it turned.
Its faceless attention fixed on him.
"Not… yet…!"
Soren ground out, his teeth clenched as he fought to hold onto his fading consciousness.
Dash!
The wraith flew toward him again, a dark streak against the firelight, ready to pass through his body once more and press the curse deeper into his bones.
But this time, Soren was faster.
Just barely.
"「Ignition」"
Flames erupted from his palm, surging forward in a focused burst.
The fire struck the wraith squarely.
The impact drove it backwards.
The wraith shrieked in agony, a high, distorted sound that scraped at his ears.
Its form twisted violently, its outline warping as the flames of [Ignition] clung to it, burning its spectral body.
Thud—
The moment the spell left his hand, Soren's legs finally gave out.
He collapsed backwards onto the ground, his back hitting cold stone.
His chest heaved as he panted, every breath a struggle.
His eyelids drooped, the darkness at the edges of his vision creeping inward.
His body went limp.
Slowly, his vision blurred, the ceiling of the crypt smearing into indistinct shapes.
Then it went completely dark
————「❤︎」————