"So this is it huh… It's been a long time coming~" Ivan smacked the side of the golden box with a single palm. Smiling as the sound of the slap echoed through the halls of the 150th floor of the Orcus Labyrinth.
In the middle resided a large crater, an opening at the front of it where Ivan blasted through to free Yue, and a mold of her body that the box seemed to encapsulate perfectly.
"Hehehe, what's there to be embarrassed of, I've seen the real thing after all~!" Ivan's words of course incited a flurry of shy punches from Yue.
"Well, let's get to work on destroying it. It shouldn't be too difficult now with the hand of destruction." Ivan had Yue back up a few steps before placing a palm on the surface of the prison cube.
Red lightning flared behind him as his entire arm coursed with a similarly crimson colored mana. He made careful, decisive erosion on the surface of the cube, disassembling pieces into perfect cubes for storage. A material ground into dust by accident was vacuumed by a hand vacuum he brought along specifically for the task.
As even if a material was ground into dust, transmutation would allow him to transform it into a usable state that could be incorporated into other crafts.
"Ivan, look here…" Yue's soft yet anxious voice pulled away Ivan's attention, he turned to her side combat ready in case what she had exclaimed for was a threat. Instead he followed her finger to a clearly man made mold that was beneath her prison cube.
Taking a few steps closer Ivan mused before tracing her finger along the molded pattern.
"This looks just like… the emblem in Schnee's manor…" To confirm his theory Ivan pulled from his storage ring the badge which had been awarded to his group for clearing the dungeon as every labyrinth did.
And just as he suspected, even hovering the emblem above the mold he could tell that they were exactly identical to each other.
"A secret for only those who have cleared the Schnee labyrinth huh…" Before inserting the emblem into the slot Ivan stood up straight and faced Yue. There was one thing he thought of when he thought about the things Yue had said about her uncle and how that might correlate to Schnee's emblem being beneath her former prison.
"Yue, you said your Uncle had a couple of familiars right? Did he ever tell you how he happened upon them?"
"...." Yue mused for a bit before coming to a pause, she most certainly remembered her Uncle was a prominent mage who specialized in using his familiars, especially the bird he always had at his side that would sometimes carry messages between her and her uncle.
"You don't think…"
Yue knew what Ivan was implying, and the more she thought about it the more plausible it sounded. There was a chance— a huge chance, that her Uncle had cleared the Schnee Labyrinth and used Metamorphosis Magic to create his familiars.
After all it wasn't exactly a secret to her that her Uncle managed to obtain Creation Magic, or it was more like she inferred that he was able to claim it. As it was unlikely that he dragged her from the 1st floor to the 150th, meaning he had used the teleportation circle connected to Oscar's lair to carry her back 50 floors.
He had even been able to manufacture the prison that she had been locked in, no ordinary person would have been able to create the weird material that prevented her from expelling her mana at all.
"Your thoughts align with mine, Yue. Upon closer inspection I got to say this cube is more like an organism than a mineral. If I had to guess your uncle created a rock-like organism to constantly absorb your mana forever. At least that would explain why I couldn't part it when we first met, and instead had to destroy it…"
Under normal circumstances transmutation should have allowed Ivan to part the prison, instead when they first met that wasn't possible. At first Ivan thought it was just a matter of not understanding the composition of the mineral, and while that was technically the case he never would've guessed that it was because it was alive.
'Well I guess it's dead now… if it was truly a construct of the labyrinth it would've auto repaired like everything else…'
The fact that it had a crater in it and the mold of Yue's body indicated that it was not a part of the original dungeon. But that did get Ivan thinking on how her Uncle created the room without it auto refilling and regenerating as did the rest of the dungeon.
He never went back to investigate, but maybe the rooms he had made on his way to the bottom of the labyrinth were probably still hollow as they were when he made them. At least that might be the case, otherwise Ivan felt like the letter he wrote might have been a waste.
'Hajime did say he found the rooms I made, and the stuff I left behind…'
"So I guess your uncle was the first person in hundreds of years to ever clear the labyrinths huh… and to think he completed two of them as well… Makes me think about how a guy like him didn't naturally ascend to the throne instead of his brother."
Yue wordlessly nodded before staring down in contemplation, Ivan only silently watched her while readying for her resolution. And only seconds passed before she prompted him to insert the emblem into the mold.
*Clink*
It slipped in seamlessly, only making a very quiet clicking sound as it fell in place, almost as if it had been magnetized to stick there.
RUMBLE RUMBLE
Ivan and Yue assumed combat positions as the ground beneath them shook furiously. Slowly but surely, the room that had been Yue's former prison had revealed something they hadn't anticipated.
"This is…?" As the shaking receded, Ivan stepped cautiously forward to receive the item that had appeared alongside the compartment embedded in the floor.
It was a ball, a ball of metallic material that just about fit in the palm of his hand. He stared at it inquisitive before noticing the gray almost see through lines that permeated throughout the whole device, resembling veins one could find in their own body.
"It seems like a grenade… though I really doubt someone would put it here after asking for something like Schnee's emblem."
Ivan had Yue take a few more steps back before infusing the device with his mana. The vein-like circuits glowed with a brilliant golden light before a projection of what seemed to be a man closely resembling Yue appeared.
"Uncle…" Yue muttered aloud.
And not more than a second later, the man that was her uncle spoke.
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