Aftermath
The fortress did not explode. Not here anyway.The silence that followed the teleportation was heavier than any detonation could have been, as if the entire structure had exhaled its last breath and simply given up on existing. The violent pressure that had filled the air moments ago was gone, replaced by the groan of metal collapsing under its own weight. "Oh fuck! I knew this will happen." Without its core, the Mobile Fortress was nothing more than a dying shell. Ruko stood still for a moment, feeling the absence.
He could sense it clearly now—the hollow where the mana had been, the fading echoes of power that had once held the fortress together. Through his newly awakened mana flow, the entire structure felt like a corpse cooling around him. The pathways that had once pulsed with energy were now empty veins. Kazuma dropped to one knee, panting, his hand still twitching from overusing Drain Touch. Wiz swayed beside him, her face pale, eyes unfocused from pushing teleportation magic beyond her limits. "Guess they reach there limit. And they had done it. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But they had saved Axel. But I haven't done a thing!"
Somewhere far away, the redirected explosion would have landed—on noble land. Ruko didn't need to hear the result to know what that meant. Damage. Political anger. Consequences that would come later in the form of blame and debt. "Well that got nothing to do with me." That was the world they lived in. But Axel still stood. The fortress began to break apart in earnest. Large sections of the ceiling collapsed, sending dust and fragments raining down. Kazuma forced himself up, grabbing Wiz's arm and pulling her toward an exit path. "We need to get out. Now," he said, his voice hoarse but urgent.
Ruko followed without speaking. They moved through broken corridors that no longer tried to stop them. The traps were dead. The defenses silent. Adventurers appeared in scattered groups, some cheering, some injured, some too exhausted to react. The chaos from earlier had faded into the dull shock that always followed survival. When they finally emerged outside, the night air hit like cold water. Axel was still there. Damaged walls. Craters in the ground. Smoke rising from impact points where adventurers had attacked the fortress. But the city lived. People were gathering, voices rising in confusion, relief, and celebration.
Someone shouted Kazuma's name. Others cheered when they saw Wiz, even if they didn't fully understand what she had done. Fame was already forming around them. Ruko stayed a step behind the group. Megumin was unconscious, carried proudly despite having spent all her mana. Darkness was arguing loudly with other adventurers about tactical decisions she had made. Aqua was complaining about something no one want to listen. "It's seems everyone in one peace at least." It was loud. Messy. Alive. Normal. He should have felt relief. Instead, he felt… distance.
Not emotional emptiness. Not detachment. Just awareness. He could feel the mana in the ground beneath Axel, the faint traces of spells still lingering in the air, the exhaustion radiating off the people around him like heat. The world had texture now—layers he had never noticed before. It was overwhelming in a quiet way. The thief appeared briefly in the crowd, her eyes scanning the returning adventurers. For a fraction of a second, her gaze passed over Ruko. She paused—not long enough for anyone else to notice, but long enough to register that something about him had changed. Then she smiled casually and disappeared into the movement of people. No questions. No explanations.
Kazuma was already being dragged into conversations about compensation, damages, and noble complaints that would inevitably follow. Wiz stood beside him, apologizing repeatedly for problems that weren't entirely her fault. Ruko looked at his hand again. Lumy's core embedded in his palm was still there, faintly warm. The Sha-Obelisk fragments were silent but present, stable within him. The Eternal Thread was no longer visible, but he could feel it resting beneath his skin like a dormant network.
"I guess my power had increased. Not explosively. Not overwhelmingly.
But permanently. Like I have a new form of might." More than that, something inside him had shifted. The fortress had been a machine, a weapon, a relic of arrogance. Inside it, he had not fought anyone. He had not proven strength. He had simply… changed. And that felt more significant than any battle. The cheering around him grew louder as the story of the victory spread, simplified and exaggerated in real time. Heroes were being chosen by the crowd. Names were being assigned to deeds. Credit was being misplaced as usual.
Ruko did not step forward. He stayed at the edge, watching. For the first time since arriving in this world, he understood that growth did not always announce itself. Sometimes it happened in hidden chambers, in moments no one witnessed, in pain no one else could measure. Axel celebrated survival. The party celebrated success. Ruko walked behind them in silence, carrying something none of them knew existed. And that ended not with triumph, but with quiet transformation.