We'd been cutting through the dungeon for a while when my young mistress turned to me with a question.
"So why are we here, anyway?"
"There's something I need to find."
"Something you need to find?"
"A treasure, you might say."
I answered plainly, guiding her by the hand through a corridor thick with darkness.
"You mean the mana stone?"
The mana stone.
The core and heart of any dungeon.
It was certainly treasure enough, by any reasonable measure.
The sheer volume of mana stored within a mana stone alone offered endless possibilities for use.
But that wasn't what I'd come for today.
"Something rarer than a mana stone. Something that can never be obtained again."
"Then just tell me what it is!"
Heh. Now I understand why uncles tease their nieces.
When the reaction is this good, how could anyone resist?
As I kept dancing around the answer, my young mistress tugged impatiently at my hand—short, insistent little pulls that made her frustration perfectly clear.
And yet, perhaps mindful that I was still recovering, she didn't pull hard.
Just enough to say: I am displeased.
Our young mistress is getting cuter by the day.
She'd left Drnaris territory and stepped into an entirely new world—maybe she was simply giddy with it all. Heh.
"So what is it?!"
"Easy, easy. Do you happen to know how Stellar Academy was founded?"
"Obviously. The First Hero kicked a dragon out of its home and built it there! I read it in a storybook when I was little."
Kicked out. What a barbaric way to put it.
There's a perfectly elegant phrase for it: permanent venue lease.
Besides, the dragon wasn't kicked out at all.
It simply— ah, this wasn't the moment to get into that.
"Well, you could see it that way, but to be precise: after three days of battle, the First Hero earned the dragon's recognition and borrowed the land."
"Isn't that the same thing? And what does any of that have to do with here?"
"This dungeon was born from that battle."
"…What do you mean?"
What I meant was this: this dungeon was the very site where the First Hero and the Red Dragon fought for three days and three nights.
The First Hero—said to have toppled the Demon King in a mortal body, married the Saintess, and become the founding ancestor of the Libertian imperial family.
She had one particular problem weighing on her mind.
Namely: where to build the empire's capital.
It was the First Hero's empire, after all—she couldn't just plant a capital anywhere. She needed land with good geography and strong symbolic weight. Was there no such place?
After a long search, one piece of land caught her eye.
The Crebos Mountain Range, ruled by the Red Dragon—what is now Libertis.
Any ordinary person would never entertain the mad notion of building a capital in territory ruled by a ferocious dragon, amid treacherous mountain peaks. The problem was that the First Hero was precisely the sort of person who would entertain such a notion—and, unfortunately, possessed the power to see it through.
*Oh? Shave down those mountains a bit and this place would be perfect.*
*Dragon owns it? Sure—I'll just take it.*
And so the Hero came crashing in without warning. The Red Dragon fought back for three days and three nights, and the shockwaves of that battle erased the Crebos Mountain Range from the map entirely.
Stripped of its home by the Hero, the Red Dragon ultimately acknowledged her and surrendered dominion over the land.
The Libertian Empire rose on that ground, and the First Hero—to express her gratitude to the Red Dragon for so graciously(?) yielding the territory—built a cradle for talented youth atop the dragon's former nest. That, in short, is the founding legend of Stellar Academy.
…Come to think of it, seizing someone's land and then building an academy on top of it as a commemoration does sound rather like she just wanted to teabag the place.
"But that was nearly a thousand years ago."
"True enough. Which makes it all the more remarkable, doesn't it? That mana from a thousand years ago still lingers here, transformed into a dungeon."
A thousand years. The mana unleashed in the battle between the First Hero and the Red Dragon, still present, still churning into a dungeon after all this time… just what kind of monster was the First Hero?
In the game, she'd only ever appeared as a figure of lore—mentioned in passing, never seen directly—but every mention revealed a staggering combination of terrifying strength and questionable character. The fandom had taken to calling her the Cheat Hero or, less charitably, the Trash Hero.
"So in other words, this dungeon is a byproduct of a dragon and a hero passionately coveting each other's bodies."
"…That is absolutely not what happened!"
Perhaps a bit too spicy for my young mistress to process.
Regardless.
Given its origins, this dungeon was the place within Stellar Academy where the First Hero's traces ran deepest.
"So you're saying the First Hero's treasure is here."
"'Treasure' feels a little awkward, but… yes, essentially."
"Where do you even learn these things?"
"Honestly? I'm from another world. I found out playing a game there."
"Oh, stop it! If you're going to lie, at least put some effort in!"
It's the truth, though…
We were still talking as we made our way deeper into the dungeon.
I was picking my way forward with my cane when something registered in my Heart-Sight.
"……Found it."
At my words, my young mistress—who had been leading the way—stopped walking.
Before us, a massive door revealed itself.
I recalled the image of it from the game.
Not stone, not iron—constructed from some unidentifiable black material, it was enormous in a way that suggested it had been built with a dragon in mind.
Right. We've come this far, which means it's time to put my young mistress to proper use.
"Come now, my lady—over here~"
"What now? Your voice has that exact tone you use when you're about to trick me."
"What a hurtful thing to say~ You know how much I care for you. Come on, it's fine, just step this way~"
Tch. Sharp as ever. But too late. Once you've come this far, it's already over.
At that moment, a blue magic circle blazed to life beneath my young mistress's feet.
I got my apology in quickly.
"My lady, I'm sorry!"
"Dia, wait—what is this?! Why can't I move?!"
Her startled cry echoed through the dungeon.
The magic circle that had erupted beneath her feet latched onto her mana like a starving beast, drawing it out in rough, greedy pulls and feeding it directly into the door.
The door drank her mana at a ferocious pace, and then, with a tremendous roar, it began to open.
*KRRRMMM—*
Impressive, as always.
This door normally required several mages working in concert to open. She'd done it alone.
Well—all thanks to my excellent instruction, naturally.
From that perspective, I might as well have cleared this dungeon single-handedly.
My young mistress was just along for the ride.
Still, draining that much mana in one go was clearly a strain even for her. I felt her legs buckle as the last of it was wrung out of her.
I sprinted to her side and caught her around the waist just before she hit the floor, pulling her into my arms.
"As expected of my young mistress. Opening this alone—truly remarkable."
Her slender frame trembled with mana exhaustion, but what I sensed from her as she lay in my arms wasn't fatigue.
It was killing intent.
"You… you're genuinely… dead when we get out."
Oh dear. She's properly furious.
I gently smoothed her sweat-damp hair back from her face and poured on the praise with complete sincerity.
"All those years of training have paid off. Opening that door so perfectly—you were absolutely magnificent today."
"…You're trying… to get away with it… using compliments again…!"
She pressed her lips together in indignation, but mana exhaustion was winning the battle with her eyelids. She slumped against my chest, still fuming in short, breathless huffs.
And then, before long, she was asleep.
I carried her and walked on without any particular hurry.
Well—better to ask forgiveness than permission, isn't it?
If I'd told her the truth, she would have whined about not wanting to do it. I'd had no choice.
This was absolutely not revenge for her showing up this morning, hungry and whimpering. Absolutely not.
About ten minutes of walking later—
The straight corridor opened up without warning into a vast, circular chamber.
The deepest point of the dungeon. The Core Room, where the mana stone resided.
The moment I stepped inside, a wave of mana rolled over me like a physical force, raising every hair on my body.
At the center of the room, suspended in midair, the mana stone pulsed with the kind of power that truly earned it the title of this dungeon's heart.
It beat like a living thing, slow and steady, announcing its presence to the world.
*Thrum. Thrum.*
With each pulse, the air around it rippled, pouring mana endlessly into the dungeon's veins.
The mana unleashed a thousand years ago when the First Hero and the Red Dragon clashed—condensed across centuries, cycling without end inside that stone.
"So this is the mana stone… it really is something."
The mana stone's presence was overwhelming. Calling it a mere lump of mana felt like an insult—it was too vast, too threatening for that. With this alone, one could power any number of magical facilities for decades. In the right hands, it could become an absolute force capable of shaking the empire itself.
But the mana stone wasn't my primary objective today. I'd collect it later.
I carefully laid my young mistress down on a flat stretch of floor beside the altar, then walked toward the mana stone.
I ran my hand slowly along the base of the altar beneath it.
My fingertips found a patch of floor that felt subtly, unmistakably different from the rest.
"Here."
*Click.*
I pressed it. Something slotted into place with a clean, precise sound, and the floor slid smoothly inward. A glass vial lay nestled in the hollow beneath.
Whoever had hidden it here hadn't trusted concealment alone—thick layers of barrier magic encased the vial on all sides. But a magically constructed barrier meant nothing to me.
I carefully lifted the vial free.
I couldn't see it, but I knew with absolute certainty: this was the Hidden Piece I'd come for.
Nothing else could radiate a presence like this.
"Found it."
An item of legend even within the game. One of only two things the First Hero had left behind.
"Hero's Blood."