The rubble blocking the exit is cleared away by the large blast from Curtis's Worlds Howl spell. Now with a path to exit students are running up the stairs heading to the surface while only a few students stayed behind to make sure all the students made it out.
Curtis and Claire helped lead the students safely towards the stairs and when there were few students left Claire tells me, "I think you should go outside as well, make sure everyone out there is safe."
While I normally would have agreed to this, out of the corner of my eye I see Professor Glory still fighting the mutated Queen Snarler. Professor Glory was an AA-class adventurer so a beast giving her trouble is something to be concerned about.
"The teacher needs help, I can support her for a short amount of time to help her escape as well," I say.
"That is too risky Arthur, Professor Glory told us to get everyone to safety," Curtis exclaims in concern. But Claire didn't say anything, she knew that I was an adventurer prior to coming here. She must have known that I faced an S-class mana beast before ending my time as an adventurer.
Claire looks over to Curtis and tells him, "You and Grawder head outside and make sure the students aren't attacked by any rogue wandering mana beasts, I'll stay here with Arthur to make sure the rest of the students escape safely."
Curtis looks at her for a moment confused but listens, he jumps onto Grawders back and he is carried outside the dungeon.
Claire turns to me and gives me a small green crystal, "Break this and it will heal your wounds as long as they aren't too major, I will stay and help the remaining students flee. Go and help Professor Glory and make sure you get out in good shape."
I nod, "Thank you."
"Just don't die you anomaly, Kaspian will be upset with both of us if you are taken down," Claire says, she runs off to help the remaining students as I pocket the healing crystal into my dimension ring.
I tighten my grip on my purple blade as I begin running toward Professor Glory. The ground is broken, leaving large gaps in what looked like an endless plummet to death.
Carefully navigating my way past the gaps in the ground I used wind magic to produce a gale of wind beneath me and launched myself next to Professor Glory. I begin flowing mana into the blade as warm and powerful energy from the blade flows throughout my body enhancing my strength. With a slash of my blade, I make a large cut into the skin of the Queen Snarler.
"Huh?! Arthur, what are you doing? Get out of here." Professor Glory yells out as she barely avoids an attack from the Queen Snarler. She has been fighting for some time so she was breathing quite heavily and starting to lose strength in her attacks.
"Isn't it natural for a fellow professor to help their colleague?" I ask jokingly.
"You brat, fine, just focus on weakening it so we can get out of here."
"Got it," I respond as I dodge a large swing from the Queen Snarler. I used wind magic to conjure several wind blades and kept a constant stream of them hurling out at the mutated beast.
"Good," Professor Glory says as she uses both her blades to cut down on the Queen Snarlers' side.
But the Queen Snalrer flies directly at me and throws a fast jab at me. Its fist was nearly the size of my torso so it would likely finish me with this one attack. I position my sword in the way to pierce the mutated beast's fist and use that as a point to pivot myself around, barely avoiding the Queen Snarlers' attack.
This mana beast was capable of shrugging off most of my wind and earth spells, I didn't have enough mana or time to use anything big with them so I had to resort to my other two elements.
I tear off my two sealing bracelets and release my fire and water elements. I begin to flow all four elements into the sword producing a stronger effect from the sword.
My forearm began to slowly turn purple in color and glowed brightly, the more mana I put into the sword the more the purple spread across my arm, eventually reaching my shoulder and chest. The power from the sword began to affect my mind like it had done back when I first used it.
'Power, God, Aether, Space, Mana, Time, Lessers, Life, DESTRUCTION.' The thoughts filled my head as I soon became agitated and began attacking the beast out of pure instinct rather than thought and precision.
Using Infinite Step I flick past the mutated beast appearing behind it and I make a large slash across its back. The wound inflicted on the mutated beast seemed to just grow in size after I had cut it.
The power gained from this sword was affecting my mind but also rewarding with a significant buff in not only physical strength but in magic. When I went to form a ball of lightning to shoot at the beast it felt as if it appeared instantaneously. I fired the ball of lightning and pierced through the creature's chest.
It began to retreat, it was flying towards the back of the dungeon in an attempt to get away, now would have been a good time to escape with Professor Glory but my mind was already too far gone. I leaped towards the Mutated Queen Snarler, with all four elements enhancing my blade I made a large slash across the torso of the beast.
Not just stopping there I continued to hack and slash at the beast while it was down until my blood flew into my eyes blocking my sightline.
I wipe away the blood and look down at the crippled beast, it lay on the ground barely looking alive. I stopped flowing mana into my blade releasing me from its clutches as I felt it was no longer satisfactory to attack such a pitiful sight.
Once my mind was freed from the effects, I acknowledged its effect and felt fear, not in any beast or enemy. But fear towards the sword I wielded. Is it safe to even carry around this thing if it does this to me?
I see that the Mutated Queen Snarler was still alive so to finish this I lift my blade to go for a finishing strike but the creature grabs hold of my lower leg and I see its body begin to inflate and grow larger before it suddenly explodes.
*BOOM*
I am thrown back by the impact of the explosion and the ground that was already breaking apart entirely collapses beneath me and I begin plummeting down the dark expanse.
After a few seconds of falling, I quickly try grabbing around for something to stop me from falling any further. I soon grab hold of a root and I stop falling. Using the strength I have remaining from the large blast I took the full force of, I hold onto the tree root.
I try to calm down and pay attention to my surroundings, it is too dark to be able to see so I decided to break one of the important rules of being in a situation like this and ignite a small flame in the palm of my hand.
It lights up my immediate surroundings but the size of the dark cave prevents me from seeing any of the other walls.
I use earth magic to pull the earth out of the wall I am next to and create a small platform underneath me. Now that I have decently stable footing I try to come up with a way out.
There is no easy way to get back up so my best bet is to go down. This dungeon should be connected to two others somewhere at the bottom. My best option is to go down and make my way up through one of the other dungeons instead of climbing up a steep and dangerous gorge.
So I begin using a little bit of earth magic to make small grips on the side of the wall and make my way down.
I am now about a hundred feet down. I try to make an earth grip but I can't control the earth there. I panic when I have nothing below me that I can manipulate with earth magic. I don't have enough mana inside my core to use anything like ice magic.
The grip I formed begins to break apart from having to support my weight for far too long and without a way to prevent myself from falling I begin plummeting down once again.
"FUCK!" I roar in anger. My voice echos into the expanse of darkness.
I began using wind magic and making a large constant stream of wind to slow down my falling speed but with the amount of mana I had left I wasn't able to make one strong enough to make too big of an impact on my falling speed.
I can now see the bottom of the cave, but my wind isn't slowing me down enough and if I hit the ground like this I will surely die.
'What can I do?' I search my mind for solutions, I remember that Infinite Step can cancel out momentum. I put all my hope that it will actually work and I begin to time my falling for when to use Infinite Step.
When I get close enough I flow the rest of my mana into the rune on my arm. I appear a few feet above the ground and fall down. I lay there exhausted from nearly all my mana. With the amount I have remaining, I couldn't even augment my finger.
I lay there as I tried to absorb mana since I wasn't meditating. It was slow and difficult but I managed to get enough mana to at least quell the pain.
"Is someone there?" I hear a woman's voice call out in pain.
"Who said that?" I yell out trying to locate the origin of the voice.
"I'm over here!" The woman yells.
I get up and limp my way over to where I heard the voice come from. Beyond a waterfall, I find a large separated space from the cave.
I was greeted to find several fallen soldiers with black spikes puncturing through their chests. I nearly threw up at the sight of the gruesome dead bodies.
I try to regain focus on why I was there originally and call out, "Where are you!"
"Over here!" I see an elven woman yell. I run over to see what kind of gruesome fate has befallen them.
I spike jutting through their chest with both their legs and an arm missing. They were missing their eyes and all that remained was blood seeping out of them.
I finally recognized them as one of the famous lances, Lance Alea Triscan of Elenoir. But how? Aren't the lances supposed to be the strongest on the continent?
"How- how did this happen?" I ask, barely getting the words out of my mouth.
"There was a horned figure, he was too strong. Are you with the backup the other Lances were sending for the Hell Serpent? If so, you have to get out of here." She says.
"No, I'm not, I'm a student who got separated from my class. Here I have this crystal I don't think it will help completely but hopefully-" She stops me from continuing talking.
"There's nothing that can save me from this. So let me at least tell you what happened and please warn the other lances somehow." Alea begins to explain what had happened, how she was sent down into the dungeon Hells Jaw and found a mutated Hells Serpent, they soon found a horned man who killed all her soldiers and left her here to die.
After her explanation, she gave me the fragment of the horn she broke off the man.
"What is your name?" She asks.
"My name is Arthur."
"Arthur, can you please hold me?" She asks.
"Huh?"
"I always thought that I didn't need anyone... as long as I was strong enough. I never had a family or lover... to depend on... but you know? I-I really don't want to die alone right now..." Hearing that from her I moved closer to hug her and held her as she began to cry into my shoulder.
"I don't want to die Arthur, I don't, I'm scared." She cries out through her tears.
"I'm scared, I don't want to die..."