Ackster went over to the torch’s resting place of bands of metal forming a little cup with a hole at the bottom and put his hand on it.
‘Wait a minute.’
But, the sudden flush of hope and relief gave Ackster’s brain the release it needed to realize something, something potentially life-altering. He stuck his head out of the room and looked at the ant tunnel’s ceiling.
Ackster’s realization had been spurred into existence by touching the tomb ceiling in search of trapdoor triggers.
He hadn’t thought of it before, mostly because he was narrow-minded. But what if the ants had hidden their tunnels?
Well, maybe not hidden them. But Ackster, who had been stuck in the ant nest with nothing to shed light on his surroundings, wouldn’t have been able to detect them if they were in the ceiling. He had followed his feet and what he could sense by prodding his surroundings with his hand. He hadn’t thought about taking a stick and poking the ceiling every few meters.
But now that he had a torch that could bestow upon him the miracle of seeing the walls around him, maybe he could see whether the tunnels had entrances upward.
Considering ants were ants and could climb on walls, and they were adept and efficient enough as builders to build ramps if necessary, it wasn’t such a farfetched idea.
Ackster couldn’t see anything immediately outside the tomb, which was understandable since it would be unnecessary to build something like that right outside an excavation point. At least, that’s what he hoped as he walked further up through the tunnel.
Ackster’s gaze was fixed on the uneven ceiling, and after walking like that for a while, his neck began cramping. But he ignored it and sharpened his already sharp eyesight even more in the hopes of identifying something that looked like a path upward.
He had no idea what he was looking for or if it would even exist. But he had finally found hope at escaping this damned ant nest. He wasn’t going to give up that easily.
However, after a little while, Ackster noticed that the torch was losing its light. A couple of steps back and forth confirmed that it was because of range and not that it was running out of energy.
Ackster hesitated but continued up the tunnel until, almost as if ordained by fate, he found an opening right when the torch blacked out.
Ackster tilted his head curiously.
‘Did the ant queen know about the torch’s range?’
Since the ant queen controlled all the ants and decided what they did to a degree where they were incapable of doing anything after her passing, Ackster wouldn’t be surprised if it was her decision to put the opening where it was. But he couldn’t understand why.
Was the Alchemaze’s magic interfering with the signals she used to control her colony or something? Maybe it was simply caution.
‘I’m fucking stupid.’
Ackster facepalmed again.
Why was he thinking about such nonsensical things when he had found the way to the surface? He should be celebrating and cheering in joy.
Ackster used a nearby ant corpse to mark the spot. He was confident he would find his way back. But he had also been confident about challenging the ant queen and the general. That confidence lost him an arm.
He drew a line in the ground that he could follow with his bare feet using a nearby ant leg.
And when he was back at the tomb, he put the torch in its holder again. It was useless past a certain point, so he wouldn’t gain anything by bringing it along. It was also part of the Alchemaze, so if he lugged it around and an expert noticed it, he would expose himself as someone who has been in the Alchemaze or just invite trouble to himself by carrying around something others would pay their fortunes to get.
Even if people didn’t think he had discovered an entrance to the Alchemaze, they would still want the torch and any information they could get about the Alchemaze from Ackster. He didn’t want that, so he had to leave it behind.
But that wasn’t the only reason he returned. After all, there was no difference in leaving the torch below the tunnel or in the tomb.
He returned to the tomb because he was curious.
Although he knew it was objectively in his best interests and his best bet to leave the ant nest and head south as quickly as possible, Ackster was desperate to know whether the sconce really was the secret trigger to open the passage to the next room. The Alchemaze was too alluring.
Ackster tugged on the torch. Much to the satisfaction of his hopes, the sconce popped out of the wall like it was made to do so. It hadn’t suffered from the same erosion as the door.
But even after several tense moments, nothing happened. No secret passage opened, and no trap door revealed itself. There weren’t even any booby traps.
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“So it was a dud in the end.”
Ackster’s burning hope lost strength until only embers remained. This room might have been a failure, but all signs pointed to there being more entrances to the Alchemaze in the other tunnels. So, Ackster wasn’t completely out of hope just yet.
But it did help convince him that he should just leave. He had more important things to do instead of indulging in an almost childish wish to explore the ruined labyrinth of the greatest alchemist in history.
So, Ackster turned around and stopped looking around the room and walked up the tunnel, following the line he made until he reached the X. He was still disappointed nothing had happened. But he made sure to imprint on his mind that it was a good thing since he wasn’t sure he would have been able to convince himself to leave the nest if a secret passage had opened up.
Ackster looked up at the ceiling and saw nothing since it was darker than night, and there wasn’t a single source of light to help guide his eyes. But he had walked in the darkness for long enough to have become friends with it.
He jumped up and grabbed hold of the edge with his hand. Well, he tried to. It was a mostly flat, almost vertical wall.
‘Don’t tell me….’
A little more bouncing later, and Ackster confirmed his suspicions.
For some reason, the ants had made a tube running almost straight down, like an elevator shaft.
It was certainly an efficient pathway if they wanted to move quickly up and down.
‘But why?’
Ackster couldn’t understand why they had made it go like that all the way to one of the tunnels at the bottom of the ant nest.
Ackster face-palmed again. He really should stop thinking about nonsense when he could be celebrating.
Even if it would be straining and potentially difficult, Ackster had found a path hopefully leading straight to the surface. And it was as direct as it could get, to boot. Yet, here he was, thinking about the meaning behind the ants’ architectural designs.
Ackster wasn’t an expert on building ant nests. If anyone were, it would be the ants. What right did he have to criticize them? Ackster shook his head slightly and sighed.
“Hold on, Mio.”
Since the wall was almost straight up and not designed with a built-in ladder, Ackster would have to put one of the few good things about him, his physique, to good use. He wasn’t sure how far up the shaft would lead him. He hoped all the way, but even if it didn’t go that far, Ackster would, more than likely, still have to climb pretty far.
That would take a whole bunch of effort.
But Ackster wasn’t going to get any stronger by waiting, so he bent his knees, took one deep breath, and leaped up. Thanks to feeling around with his earlier bouncing up and down, he hit the tunnel on the first try.
And, before he could lose the momentum of his jump, Ackster put his feet against the wall and pushed off upward.
It was a little unsteady at first, to the point Ackster was happy it was so dark since it would be impossible to see him. But as he continued running up the wall, occasionally jumping from side to side to stop himself from losing traction or angle, he got more used to it. His body’s balance became more at ease with running at such a steep angle.
It felt like he was running up a wall perpendicular to the ground, but he knew that the slight angle it had was enough to make a difference and was the only reason he could sprint full speed without pushing himself away from the wall. However, running practically vertically was no less draining than running completely vertically.
It didn’t take long before Ackster’s legs began burning from the exertion.
After being in the ant nest’s darkness for so long, Ackster had completely lost his sense of time. Combined with how he was putting all his mind to running and keeping his balance, Ackster had no idea how much time had passed when he started feeling the effects of his efforts. He hoped he had climbed high. It felt like he had. It was just that he had no idea how deep underground he had been.
Ackster also had trouble estimating how long he had run since he was running in such an impractical way. He knew that it would have taken him hours upon hours and leagues upon leagues of sprinting to tire his legs to such a degree that he felt like resting. He ignored that feeling, of course. But running in circles up what he could only liken to a primitive and misaligned tubular elevator shaft drained Ackster’s energy much quicker than running horizontally.
Ackster completely understood why. And it was good training for his agility and stamina, so he didn’t exactly mind it. He just hoped he would reach the surface before his legs gave out and sent him tumbling through the tube to his death.
Just imagining the sight and feeling of falling through an unreasonably long tunnel, bouncing and crashing against the slightly sloped and rocky sides until finally coming to a dead stop at the bottom, was enough to spur Ackster on. He couldn’t afford to lose speed.
He could take a short break and hold himself up by putting his feet and hand against the sides. But doing that would kill all his momentum, so Ackster didn’t even entertain the thought.
He did, however, entertain the thought of activating Limit Breaker.
Limit Breaker would let him go on for a little longer at max speed. He could even surpass it if he wanted. But if he didn’t reach the surface using the burst it could give him, he would have just killed himself, so he held off on that until the absolute last minute. Only when he began losing too much speed and momentum to continue running up the wall would he consider using Limit Breaker again.
Fortunately, Ackster could feel himself growing in real-time. Strong Body was becoming more acquainted with the sense of balance and the foot usage necessary to maintain his sprint. Sprint, the skill, also seemed to be advancing.
But most importantly, almost as if responding to Ackster’s wish to not give in, Stubborn Well-Being healed the leg muscle tissue Ackster had torn by engaging in such a demanding endeavor.
Feeling relatively at ease now that his body had grown more accustomed to the task at hand, Ackster decided to look at the wall around him. The tunnel walls at the depths of the ant nest had been practically impossible to damage, even when using the ants’ mandibles for some reason. And they had felt like solid stone of some really sturdy kind. It wasn’t comparable to the Alchemaze, which had seemed indestructible. But the material at the bottom of the ant nest was still very hard.
However, where he was now looked and felt like a softer variant mixed with ordinary dirt.
‘Wait a damn minute!’
***
In the lonely tomb, robbed of its contents, everything had returned to deathly stillness, quiet, and darkness following the absence of the ants and Ackster. Truly befitting of a storage room of the dead.
However, sensing something moving, the tomb’s magic relit the torch, still hanging at an angle due to Ackster’s failed attempt at opening the secret passage. Or maybe it didn’t fail?
After a series of faltering mechanical clanking and whirring sounds, the door slid open just enough for something dark, thin, and heavy to crash into the torch, forever damning it to the darkness it was created to chase away.