A glimmer flickered in Sarah’s eyes.
If the Star’s Fragment embedded in her eyes was reacting now, there could be only one explanation.
Someone whose fate had been distorted.
The god watching over her from hell was sending her a signal.
Somewhere beyond that pitch-black maze, someone was waiting for her. Someone whose fate she could correct to reduce her sentence of hundreds of millions of years.
If it meant shortening her punishment, Sarah would gladly venture into the Black Thorns—or even walk straight into a pit of fire.
“What are you waiting for? Hurry up.”
The problem was Enoch’s shameless attitude, as though he were doing her a favor by giving her this task.
“Come on, now. You still owe me for saving you, Sarah.”
Perhaps mistaking her hesitation for reluctance, Enoch smiled slyly and made a point of urging her onward. If he was so concerned about rescuing his subordinate, he could have gone in himself. Instead, he stood there issuing orders without lifting a finger.
“Yes…”
Perhaps that was why, even though she had every reason to enter, Sarah suddenly found herself reluctant to take another step.
Still, she forced herself to remain resolute. The opportunity before her was far too tempting to abandon over such a petty provocation.
“If you make it back safely, I’ll reward you by letting you sleep in my arms.”
…Maybe I shouldn’t go after all.
Every time she managed to steel herself, that mouth of his threatened to undo her resolve.
If there were a competition for destroying someone’s motivation, Enoch would undoubtedly win first place without breaking a sweat.
What infuriated her most was his assumption that sharing a bed with him constituted some magnificent reward.
After hearing that, Sarah had absolutely no confidence in her desire to return safely.
“That’s the one reward I’d rather die than accept…”
But sacrifices were inevitable when something greater was at stake.
Concealing her true feelings, Sarah lowered her gaze and parted her lips, adopting a pitiful expression.
“I’ll make sure to rescue your comrade, Master.”
Her unexpected obedience prompted whispers among the watching guild members. They seemed uncertain what to make of a slave who spoke so insolently yet ultimately obeyed her master’s commands.
Sob, sob. Master, I’ll be back.
Playing the part of a tragic heroine, Sarah trudged toward the dark entrance.
She maintained her pitiful demeanor until the last glimmer of light from outside disappeared behind her.
“Hah…!”
The instant she was alone in the darkness, her expression changed. She let out a derisive snort.
“How irritating!”
Having finally vented her frustration, Sarah continued forward, looking considerably more refreshed.
The mist filling the maze surged toward her, obscuring the way ahead.
What a cheap trick.
Sarah scoffed and dismissed it with a casual wave of her hand.
The mist that had claimed countless lives vanished as though it had never existed.
“So this is how it works…?”
With the mist gone, the interior of the thorns became clearer, and Sarah could sense the dense presence of black magic.
She had been skeptical when she learned that the Antares Church was operating in her name, but apparently, they really were using genuine black magic.
How was that possible?
Black magic should have died with her.
As the only black mage who had ever existed, Sarah found the discovery perplexing. But she soon abandoned the question.
The world was vast and full of absurdities. Somehow, they must have found a way.
With characteristic nonchalance, she set aside the question of how they had accomplished it and focused instead on what lay before her.
Sarah snapped her fingers.
An ominously colored flame sprang to life in midair.
Had her magical circuits been intact, she could have illuminated the entire maze as brightly as daylight. Now, however, the flame was no brighter than a burning match.
It was hardly satisfactory, but at least it was enough to dispel the darkness immediately around her.
Holding the flame above her palm, Sarah directed its light toward the wall rather than the passage ahead.
An ordinary person would have seen nothing unusual, but to Sarah, a black mage, the runes inscribed upon the thorns were perfectly clear.
The maze’s complexity and the strength of its monsters were laughably unimpressive. The Black Thorns themselves, however, were another matter.
Oh, now that's cleverly done.
As she studied the inscriptions with growing interest, Sarah found herself genuinely impressed.
“They’re using the earth’s life force as a source of power. So that’s why the land ended up like this.”
Unlike conventional magic, black magic demanded a price.
It drew upon power from another world, rather than the forces permitted by the god who had created this one.
The Black Thorns piercing the earth paid that price by draining the life force from the land they touched.
The stolen energy not only sustained the black magic operating within the thorns but also supplied a portion of that power elsewhere.
In other words, as long as even a single Black Thorn remained, the Antares Church could continue using black magic indefinitely—provided the world itself did not perish.
“This is annoyingly well designed.”
Clicking her tongue, Sarah reluctantly tore her eyes from the unsettling runes and turned in the direction indicated by the Star’s Fragment.
“…?”
At that moment, her expression changed subtly as her gaze happened to settle on something else.
Something she looked as though she had never been meant to see.
***
This must be my grave.
Seiyen Martis, the youngest member of the Cygnus Guild and now stranded inside the Black Thorns, had reached that conclusion.
Sitting with his back against the wall, he wore the weary expression of an old man who had already seen everything life had to offer.
“My leg won’t move…”
His despairing gaze settled on his knee, which was tightly wrapped in white cloth.
Blood had seeped through the bandage. The knee itself appeared badly broken, leaving him unable to move it.
Even his previously uninjured right leg was beginning to lose sensation, probably because the poison within the thorns was creeping upward from his toes.
A broken sword lay discarded beside him, while the corpses of the monsters that had attacked him were scattered nearby.
“Twelve of them. Wow. A new record…”
Seiyen counted the monsters he had slain and frowned bitterly.
He had surpassed his personal record, but if he had known it would be his last, he would never have pushed himself so recklessly.
“I should’ve listened to the old man…”
It was too late to regret ignoring the advice of someone more experienced.
This was what he got for boasting that he was old enough to handle things on his own.
I was supposed to become an outstanding guild member…
Having abandoned all hope, Seiyen released a deep, miserable sigh.
He had always aspired to become a great swordsman.
And the reason he had undertaken such a dangerous task was that entering the Black Thorns was the only way to destroy them completely.
At the end of the maze, concealed by its troublesome mist, lay a core. Destroying that core was necessary to uproot even one of the Black Thorns devouring the earth.
Normally, the task was entrusted to a team of three or four guild members. But smaller sites, like the one Seiyen had entered, could be handled by a single person.
Seiyen hadn't wanted his older, busier guildmates to waste their valuable time accompanying him simply because he was young.
That would have seemed like an unnecessary burden.
So, eager to prove himself, he had slipped into the thorns alone.
Despite his youth, he wanted everyone to recognize him as a capable, full-fledged member of the Cygnus Guild.
Unfortunately, it now seemed unlikely that anyone would ever learn of his admirable intentions.
“If only it weren’t for this mist…”
Resting his head fully against the wall, Seiyen glared resentfully at the pitch-black haze filling his vision.
More than his injured leg, the mist was what prevented him from escaping.
The mist permeating the Black Thorns interfered with human senses, transforming an already complicated maze into a disorienting labyrinth where a person could wander endlessly without finding the exit.
Consequently, there were two established ways to remove the thorns safely: send in an immune, who was unaffected by the mist, or carry a purification stone imbued with holy power.
Most guilds preferred to rely on immunes.
The Cygnus Guild, however, had none among its members, leaving it entirely dependent on purification stones.
A purification stone allowed an ordinary person to resist the mist's effects, making it an exceptionally useful tool.
But the holy power contained within each stone was finite.
There was a limit to how long its bearer could remain inside the thorns.
And if someone failed to emerge before that power was exhausted…
“They'd end up in a mess like me.”
Muttering bitterly, Seiyen looked down at his purification stone, its light completely extinguished.
At the very moment he had defeated the last monster, both his sword and the stone had been neatly split in two.
With the stone broken, nothing remained to protect him from the mist.
Whenever Seiyen heard about guild members who failed to return before their time ran out, he had always thought them pathetic for neglecting such an elementary precaution.
Never had he imagined he would become one of them.
To make matters worse, he had wasted so much time fighting monsters that he hadn't even managed to destroy the core.
Now he was going to die without accomplishing his mission.
Ah, how embarrassing.
Burying his face in his hands, Seiyen wished that, if death was inevitable, he could simply crumble into dust.
Then no one would have to go through the trouble of finding his body or suffer the unpleasantness of discovering his remains.
And death was, by now, the only outcome he could reasonably expect.
Anyone who remained too long inside the poison-saturated Black Thorns would eventually suffer the same fate as the land they had pierced: their body would gradually deteriorate under the poison's influence.
It was a dreadful, painful death to contemplate.
Yet it was also the most merciful end one could meet within the thorns.
Someone less fortunate might be devoured without a trace by monsters attracted to the scent of human flesh, becoming nothing more than nourishment for the creatures.
Grrrr…
Yes.
Just like now.