‘Oh… shit,’ was the only response I could muster as I saw the entrails of electricity now starting to generate around the flock as it dived towards me, almost like a giant lightning bolt ready to tear my flesh apart as soon as it struck me. I was in no way confident of being able to survive a coordinated attack from dozens of B-rank mana creatures, even if I gave it everything I had. For starters, I hadn’t yet figured out how to use my lightning element for meaningful defense purposes; having mostly focused on improving my speed and attack in the brief training I had done prior to Magiharu. And there was no way that the strongest fire element defensive spell that I knew, the C-rank Flame Shield, would be of any use against lightning, which boasted the highest penetrative attack power of any element.

As my thoughts came together, forming something akin to a plan, I focused the entirety of my mana towards boosting the power of my already active lightning coat. As every fiber in my body screamed for me to stop, I bolted towards the cave entrance in front of me, at a speed faster than I had ever gone before. Of course, with my mana sense being stretched to its limit, I could tell the flock was still right behind me, even as I made it deeper and deeper into the straight tunnel I now found myself in. 

After what seemed like an eternity, my mana sense picked up on a fork in the road ahead, with a small side tunnel no bigger than an average doorway coming up ahead towards my sharp right. Although for some strange reason, the mana concentration in the smaller tunnel seemed to be a lot denser than the main tunnel of this cave system. It didn’t matter however; with my mana reserves quickly dwindling and the lightning shaped formation of mana creatures right behind me, just out of reach of the naked eye, I knew it was now or never.

Channeling the last of my mana towards my right hand to cast the presumably D-rank Lightning Sphere, I shot the orb of lightning straight into the main tunnel ahead of me, while dispersing my Lightning Coat at the same time, as I dived right into the smaller tunnel. The flock of mana creatures on my tail must have fallen for my little trick, because even with my now-withdrawn mana sense, I could tell from the crackling sound the wind made that they had chased the Lightning Sphere into the main tunnel instead of following me. 

This was one of the drawbacks of mana creatures overly relying on their mana sense rather than their vision, although I guess in a system of dark caves and tunnels, simple eyesight was useless anyway. After what could only be described as skidding down the smaller tunnel on my ass, I fell down from an opening that suddenly appeared below me, onto a hard, wet floor with a resounding thud. If it hadn’t been for the small burst of pure mana I had instinctively let out from my body to shield my fall, I might have had a few broken bones; but as it were, I seemed to have escaped that ordeal mostly in one piece.

After taking a few seconds to compose myself, I got up to navigate my new surroundings. While I was still in a small, dark space, I could see strong light just past the small exit a few paces ahead of me. However, any preconceived notions I may have had about what I’d find in the underbelly of this mountain, were quickly shattered into a million little pieces. As I emerged from the small opening into a gigantic open space, perhaps the size of a few football stadiums, I could hardly believe my eyes. The obvious question would have been how such a large space could even exist underground, but the dozens of other questions flooding into my mind upon gazing at the beauty of my surroundings dwarfed the obvious by a long shot. 

The dazzling display of colored lights emanating from the multi-colored crystals attached to the ceiling of this cavern provided more than enough luminescence for one to mistake that they were standing in broad daylight. That must have been the reason the entirety of the cavern was full of moss, plants, and trees of differing colors and shapes; as if a master craftsman had compacted an entire ecosystem inside a proverbial snow globe. What caught my attention the most however was the large blue lake which lay peacefully in the center of the cavern, shimmering brighter than even the finest mana particles while reflecting the light from the crystals above.

As I walked up to the lake, my mana sense now fully active, I couldn’t sense any mana creatures in this almost ideal habitat, although, I did notice something else. This cavern had the highest concentration of mana particles I had ever come across; with millions of small multi-colored particles performing an almost intricate dance around me, recharging my mana reserves at a speed faster than I had ever experienced before. In the few short minutes it took for me to walk up to the underground lake, I could already feel my mana channels overflowing with the amount of mana that had been absorbed into my body; without me even meditating or focusing on the task. As I reached the lake, my eyes fell upon the effaced golden runes which lined its edges, as if the entire lake were some sort of gigantic magic circle.

Although I couldn’t be sure of it, everything about this very natural landscape seemed poignantly unnatural; as if it shouldn’t be able to exist on its own, or rather, as if someone had created it artificially. I had only heard of one mage in the entire world who had the power to manipulate the ‘nature’ on a large scale, and that was Haruka Shinsei, an S-ranked member of our kingdom’s Knights of the Round. However, even Miss Shinsei, who was one of the world’s few Soul-Searchers, that is, mages who possessed ‘unique’ magic only available to them, couldn’t possibly cause mana to congregate so densely within this confined space. In fact, no mage could; I mean if that was possible, they’d probably no longer be human but something akin to a higher existence.

Well, it didn’t matter right now who built this place, but rather how I was going to get out of it. The ‘entrance’ I had fallen down from had collapsed in on itself while I was walking towards the lake, and there didn’t seem to be any other openings or exits in the walls of this cavern; at least none that my fully stretched, maxed out mana sense could find. Honestly, I was even surprised at being able to stretch my mana sense to fill the entirety of this huge cavern, which was probably only possible due to the insane abundance of mana all around me. Still, it didn’t really help me get out of this predicament. After spending a few more minutes using lightning coat to quickly make a trip around the internal circumference of the cavern to search for any openings with the naked eye, I found myself back at the lake, unable to find anything.

‘Well, at least I won’t die in here for like a month with all the supplies I have,’ I chuckled to myself. As I munched on a hastily made sandwich of some hunter beef and bread extracted from my storage ring, my eyes once again fell upon the runes lining the lake. They had to be here for a reason, although I wasn’t sure what that was. However, it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out. I’d learned from one of the books in my father’s study that channeling mana into a complete magic circle would always activate its effect, even if the mage didn’t know what the magic circle was for. 

All one had to do was provide it with an adequate amount of mana; something I surmised wouldn’t be difficult to do since this cavern was overflowing with it. Still, it was dangerous to activate magic without knowing what the effect was. This was precisely why the world’s top magic scholars, who were well-versed in written forms of magic using runes, such as magic circles, studied for years and years to perfect their understanding of this emerging field. That was because runes, which were sort of an ancient language for encoding mana, had only been discovered inside the white obelisk about thirteen years ago.

After the Aurora Magilis came and went in the span of a single day fifteen years ago, many of the world’s landscapes starting absorbing the now abundant atmospheric mana, and morphed into nature zones, becoming the new habitat for mana creatures to thrive in. However while all other nature zones were exactly as their name implied, that is, natural; there was one nature zone, in the heart of our kingdom, that was discovered to have a tall white structure in its center, the only one of its kind ever found inside a nature zone. 

Over time, adventurers from our kingdom, made their way into the white obelisk and discovered not only priceless regalia, but also golden symbols carved all across the obelisk’s sprawling internal structure. After a few more years of study, magic scholars gained a superficial understanding of these runes, which were a language for instructing mana to produce specific effects, far more efficient than the ‘spells’ we had come up with since the Aurora Magilis. The little understanding of runes our kingdom’s scholars and high-level mages had gained in the time since, had allowed us to become the world’s most advanced civilization; everything from magitech, to gates, to our ability to travel to the moon, depended on runes. Whether it was fate or simply luck that the white obelisk had appeared in our kingdom was irrelevant; simply put, our kingdom had monopolized this otherworldly information to reach new heights under the guidance of the Silver King.

This was why I was still hesitant to activate the magic circle in front of me. Apart from being huge, and likely requiring more mana inflow than I could channel at once, I wasn’t sure if this was man-made or something otherworldly like the white obelisk. I still remembered watching the blinding explosion inside the white obelisk which had been caught on camera when an overeager mage had activated an unknown sequence of runes, killing almost fifty high-level mages in a single instant, yet somehow leaving the structure unaffected. Without an understanding of the runes in front of me, activating this magic circle could be suicide. On the other hand, however, its not like a magical epiphany would suddenly allow me to read complex runes which even magic scholars spent decades learning, before I ran out of food and died all alone in this cavern. So, if I was going to do this sooner or later, I might as well do it sooner when I had more vitality.

And so, kneeling down onto the ground, with my hands placed firmly on the huge rune below me, the size of my entire body, I channeled mana directly onto the effaced carving. ‘It’s working!’ I exclaimed to myself as the rune under my body lit up to emanate a shining golden light, after which the two runes surrounding it also lit up. As I channeled more and more of my mana into the ground, runes starting lighting up one by one as if a chain effect had been activated, finally allowing me to properly see the outer circumference of the magic circle, which indeed surrounded the entirety of the lake. 

Normally, at this point, my mana reserves would have been depleted and I would have fallen into mana exhaustion. However, currently, I couldn’t even feel my mana reserves being drained, as the mana all around me continued pouring into my body at a speed almost faster than it was being drained. It was almost like some other force was commanding the surrounding mana, instructing it to enter my body without me having any control over the phenomenon. There must have been additional runes under the lake, because I could now see golden light pushing out from the depths of the lake as the magic circle finally revealed itself in its entirety.

Of course, I hardly had time to admire it as a white light from what seemed like the heavens or perhaps the top of the cavern descended upon me, encapsulating my entire body. Before I could even blink however, I wasn’t in the cavern anymore. Still huddled on all fours, the ground below me felt ice cold to the touch, the same piercing chill penetrating into every fiber of my body. As my eyes adjusted to the immense light all around me, I was rendered speechless at the scene before me. I was no longer in some underground cavern, rather, just the opposite. I was on some sort of snow-covered ledge, snowy peaks and a cloudy mist all around me as the sun above shone brighter than I had ever imagined it could. Without knowing anything, I was quickly aware of the fact that if I had just been somewhere deep under the Hayan Mountains, then I was now ironically situated at its antithesis.

Far from being locked up underground, I found myself higher than any adventurer had ever gone before, at the absolute peak of the Hayan Mountains, high enough over the cloud cover that even the sun was bearing its unrestricted fangs at my struggling eyesight. I could feel my brain physically freezing up within a few moments, my body now shivering uncontrollably even through the high-quality insulated clothing and my nature as a fire elemental. I had no idea why, but it was highly likely that the magic circle had transported me directly to the top of one of the mountains in the Hayan Mountain range, acting like some sort of a gate. Perhaps that was why no adventurers had yet been able to find a route to the higher altitudes of the mountain range; the answer hadn’t been to go further up, but to go further down, to where the runic gate was.

Desperate for warmth, I quickly tried to generate a Flame Coat over my body, but to no avail. Although there was absolutely no wind, the eerily silent cold was too strong for a fire spell to work. That was made clear when I activated my mana sense, not being able to see a single red-tinted mana particle in my vicinity, although surrounded by an abundance of the other colors. Just the fact that it was so cold up here that not a single fire-nature mana particle could be found was enough to blow an ordinary mages mind; although I was way past anything being able to surprise me anymore. At least, overtaken by the extreme cold and about to become a human icicle, that’s what I thought. Until of course, my almost frozen jaw dropped down to the floor at what I witnessed next.