In the end, I was able to stomach the whole thing down thanks to the fact that I was used to eating strange things at this point. As long as the food was edible and not too “nasty,” I wouldn’t be too picky, especially when living in a world where luxury wasn’t within arm’s reach.

To wash away the lingering taste in my mouth, I took a few mouthfuls of water down my throat from my trusty water bottle.

“Hey, can you pass me the water?”

“Sure.” I tossed the bottle at her, which she caught easily.

Water… drinking water from the same bottle…

I was one of the mildly obnoxious guys that liked to make a bit of a deal when two of my friends drank from the same thing, no matter whether they were male or female.

“Aah! That’s one good water!” Tuilë wiped the water that splattered on her mouth and noticed my gaze. “Hm? Something’s wrong?”

“Nothing…” I turned my face away while maintaining a poker face.

“Let’s make our way back to town then!” Tuilë asserted, quickly landing on her feet and passing me back the now empty water bottle. “C’mon, Alfredo, bring the steam kite.”

Silent was its answer, but it obeyed and rose to its feet. I could see why she was confident in finishing the airship within a month — bringing the steam kite didn’t put so much as a strain on its movements. It was a given that our journey back was slower, taking a bit more than four hours even before reaching Tuilë’s workshop while knowing the path clearly.

We intentionally took a detour to avoid dangerous animals roaming the forest and managed to do so with much ease thanks to Luna-1’s sensors.

As soon as we reached the workshop, Alfredo dropped the wreckage of the steam kite gently on the corner of the workshop and then sat down nearby with a soft thud.

No different than it, I scrambled to a nearby seat to rest. Even a source enhancer like me still got exhausted from hours of walking nonstop.

And yet, the flame of curiosity inside me kept burning wildly; I really, really wanted to explore my power in the mine while gathering source crystals. Therefore, after a bit of rest, I gathered up my strength as well as willpower to go and told them about my intention.

“I don’t mind. I’ll accompany you; there’s nothing much to do here anyway.”

“Sure, just be careful.”

Lunaria and Tuilë didn’t object. Even if they did, I would still go there, albeit not diving too deep as not to attract danger.

So here I was inside the cave filled with white mist to the brim, to the point that visibility was less than five meters, and that was under the bright light coming from Luna-1’s strobe lamp. The roars and growls of the crimson draugrs were audible from where I stood, enough to make my scalp go numb.

Even at this hour, the miners were working hard to mine above. It appeared that the nine-to-five system was something that didn’t exist here. I was glad that I refused Yorith’s invitation, the mine’s supervisor, to work here…

While making wide steps into the cave, I spotted the first victim of my onslaught. It was a lone draugr that stayed rooted in its place, staring at nothing.

Usually, I would simply charge at an extreme speed and used the momentum to deal a deadly strike with my catalyst daggers, but now was different. This would be the first time for me to conjure up an evoker spell, so my hands sweated from the excitement.

“You look like a kid who just got a new toy.”

“Shut it, you…” I dismissed Lunaria’s remark by nudging my backpack.

At any rate, testing my new power was what had brought me here. I ought to begin with something weak before scaling up from there. Besides, I’d decided to use Pyro as my first source element — its applications being widely used in novels and games, so I had a lot of inspiration to take from.

Through the source power within my source heart, I drew in the source energy around me and chanted a spell, “{Fireball}.” A ball of fire the size of a palm appeared on my side and shot through the air and hit the clueless crimson draugr.

The poor monster was immediately scorched in flame as fire was its bane, spreading to all parts of its body at breakneck speed. Soon, the fire completely engulfed its body, and it could only snarl at me, the perpetrator, before becoming one with the ground.

Magic was amazing!

Parenthetically, magic was mostly divided into five known tiers: Aleph (1), Bet (2), Gimel (3), Daleth (4), and He (5), which corresponded to Bottom, Low, Mid, High, and Top. They were divided based not only on their complexity, the total amount of source energy used, and output, but also on the power of what the source heart could provide; as a Tier-1 evoker, I could only cast Aleph-tier spells, maybe a single Bet-tier spell if I didn’t care about the consequences.

Despite the limitations, I couldn’t help but smile in glee over the fact that I mastered seven elements, so much so that my mouth subconsciously curved so widely that it hurt.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Heh! However weak my current magic is, its potential is limitless.”

“On a high horse, eh? Your cockiness has never failed to amaze me.”

“Does it? Then show me your magic prowess, Lunaria.” Not that she could while inhabiting Luna-1, the spherical drone.

To that matter, she went quiet again.

Whatever the reason for her silence, I waltzed deeper with a steady gait while testing my magic on various elements on the group after group of draugrs, while not forgetting to fish out for source crystals. There was nothing that could scare me on this floor of the cave. Nothing.

Previously, I was a bit wary of facing a Second-Order mutated monster, but now that I was an evoker, I had nothing to fear. Bring it on! Be it monsters from within this place, you think I’m afraid of you?

As if to answer my provocation, I chanced upon an opening in the cave that I hadn’t been to. Inside, there was a tall undead shrouded in a thin red fog not that different than the typical crimson draugrs, but instead of ragged clothes, it wore plate armor with a large longsword and a shield in both hands. Its shape was also more human than the others, looking like it came from a human corpse…

While I couldn’t see its face since it had its back at me, just a glimpse of its glowing blue eyes was enough to send chills down my spine. Without a doubt, this thing was at Second Order, probably the draugr commander.

Gee… I didn’t mean what I said literally. Wait, I didn’t even say it…

I started to regret what I wished for. No matter. This worked to my benefit, as there was no need to search for its whereabouts further.

In haste, I hid behind a curved part of the cave nearby as not to get noticed. Fortunately, it was too preoccupied with whatever it was doing that the little noise I made didn’t alert it. Lunaria had also turned down the drone’s flashlight.

To check how strong it was, I used [Identification] on it and was almost unable to hold my voice by what I saw.

Species: Crimson draugr knight (mutant)

Sex: Nonexistent

Age: 121 years old

Height: 198 cm

Source Level: Second Order

Source Element(s): Death

Stats:

* STR: D+ (58)

* AGI: D (51)

* VIT: D+ (56)

* SRC: D (54)

* SPR: D (47)

Accumulation Points: 65 [D+]

Holy…

It wielded a source element that I’d never heard before and stood among the peak of Second Order. Unless I was courting death, it’d be better to turn around and avoid it right now… No, I couldn’t just back away without trying.

Well, I had to at least observe what it was doing to find its weaknesses.

Currently, it was standing still while staring at empty space… Did every draugr like to stare at nothing? Nonetheless, my view was covered with mist, though it became somewhat clear once I circulated source energy into my eyes.

Aside from that, I noticed a large, strange crimson bulge that continued to enlarge with each passing second from within the mist.

“Hmm… For some reason, that bulge looks familiar,” I murmured.

“Of course it is. It’s exactly the one you see occasionally creeping inside mycelium spread throughout the cave walls.”

While Lunaria said that, her projection appeared from Luna-1. It had been quite a while since she appeared in her 3D projection; a girl looking sixteen to seventeen with lustrous silver hair that reached down to her waist and a face that was doll-like, flawless, and expressionless. Features that were enough to charm basically anyone.

Quite nostalgic.

“Hold on, the mycelium carries with it the red fog, so the bulging must’ve been caused by the red fog concentrating into one location. Just what’s that draugr’s aiming for?” A bad premonition cropped up inside me.

Whatever its intentions were, it couldn’t be something good.

Shortly after, the bulge broke apart like a water bulge on the ceiling leaking out and released red fog into the interior of the cave, mixing with the white mist all around and turning it grayish red. It spread to the location I was at, so I had to use my source power to block the red fog.

After a few seconds of blocking the red fog, I realized that I could condense the source energy outside to create an invisible barrier. It appeared that enhancers and evokers had their own way of blocking the red fog: enhancers by circulating the source energy within their bodies while evokers by condensing a thin source energy shield around them.

In fact, creating an invisible barrier, the like of which was similar to a mage’s shield, wouldn’t be an impossible thing to do. I just had to figure out how to do that, maybe by condensing the shield further to the point that it was tangible.

“{Source Shield}.” I chanted. The source energy shield condensed further and created a somewhat transparent, sphere shield around me.

Neat. It exhausted the source heart within me to control the shield at an alarming rate, but this could be used whenever I was in a pinch.

I retracted the source shield and observed what the draugr commander was doing now. Before it was two corpses, not human obviously but Fogland people. The two of them were human-like, however, and resembled bipedal mammals.

They were likely to be miners… I didn’t know where it picked up these two, but the cave wasn’t fully explored yet, so there was bound to be another path leading outside.

As the red fog enveloped these two, the draugr commander released a black, eerie mist from its body that seeped into the corpses. They then rotted at a visible rate and turned into the typical crimson draugrs that I was familiar with. So this is how crimson draugrs come into being…

It finally clicked inside my head. No wonder there were so many crimson draugrs spread throughout the cave… This thing accumulated dead people little by little and turned them into its brethren. In the course of decades, it would pile up into hundreds…

Such horror…

I had to stop it before it completely turned those two corpses and caught it off guard. My best chance would be to use my semi-automatic rifle and aim for its head.

“Lunaria, keep an eye on the surroundings. Can’t be careless when there are still so many crimson draugrs roaming about this place,” I told Lunaria.

“’Kay. But are you sure about doing this?”

After all, even if I didn’t take action, someone else might take care of this. And I didn’t have the obligation to take it down either. But on second thought, this crimson draugr had been occupying this place for a long time, so it was unlikely for that to happen.

Still, my whole purpose for taking it down was to harvest its source crystal and to make a safe passage to the ruin down below.

“Don’t try to dissuade me. I’m quite certain of killing it.”

She acquiesced with a nod, turning off her projection.

“Mm. I’ll give you my whole support, then.”

That was all I needed; with the drone’s support, escaping would be a cinch even if I failed.