Whenever things went terribly wrong, Levi typically found himself tracing back the chain of events to determine who was to blame, how easily it could’ve been avoided, and more often than not, which god and/or supernatural deity he had to curse. It was to his consternation that he did this more often than he was strictly comfortable with. Surely, there weren’t any common denominators at play here.

  As Levi watched the Elder Wyvern fully emerge from the ground up ahead, shake off the clumps of soil and debris that clung to its form, and rise up to its full height 150 meters above, he arrived at two out of the three answers.

  Clearly, Phantasm was the main person to blame here. His plan had been to conceal the Greater and Elder Wyverns’ presences within the dungeon by setting up runic scripts to suppress the residual magical energy that would’ve leaked out otherwise, thus fooling the Adventurer’s Guild surveyors into classifying it as a silver-tier dungeon.

  Low-tier adventurers would’ve been sent to clear the dungeon, and they would’ve been summarily massacred by the sudden onslaught of Greater Wyverns in the cavern. Reinforcements would’ve then arrived to save the village of Farband, or failing that, to at least prevent the wyverns from razing other villages and towns as well. Then, once those higher-tier adventurers had arrived, they would’ve been ambushed by the Elder Wyvern and slaughtered as well.

  It was quite the diabolical plan. Levi would have approved more if he hadn’t been caught right in the middle of it.

  The only question was, were Levi and Liliya the specific targets? Had they been assigned this dungeon on purpose, or had it just been an unlucky coincidence? Phantasm had known both of them by name, so Levi was leaning toward the former.

  Levi doubted that himself dying would’ve had any real consequences since he was already disinherited and disdained, but if Liliya had died, it would’ve sent out ripples affecting Marquis Volkov, Duke Heir Montague, and perhaps even the Institute of Ascension itself.

  Could this situation have been avoided? Levi didn’t think so. There was no way they could’ve known ahead of time that there was an unknown third party interfering in the background. Perhaps if Levi had sensed the wyverns beforehand, but the runic scripts had unfortunately prevented even his honed magical senses from detecting anything.

  As for which god or supernatural deity Levi had to curse… He’d reserve judgement for now.

  “So,” Liliya said quietly. Thankfully, the Elder Wyvern hadn’t noticed them yet; the trees were shielding them from view. It was instead looking around and presumably enjoying the feeling of fresh air after so much time spent underground. “Ready to slay a dragon?”

  “Dragon?” Levi chuckled. “That’s not a dragon. If it were, we’d be in much, much more trouble.”

  “Semantics. It’s a giant lizard with wings and breathes fire. I’d say close enough.”

  “Heh. Can’t argue with that, I suppose. But to answer your question… No, I’m not ready.”

  Liliya blinked, whirling to him. “What? What do you mean?”

  Levi looked back at her, and it was all he could do to keep his body from trembling. “Well. Let’s just say that I have a time limit on how long I can stay in battle.”

  It took Liliya a moment to register the implication. Her eyes suddenly flickered with worry. “How long?”

  “Not long enough.”

  That final teleportation had finally pushed him over the edge. Levi felt the familiar sensation of magical overburn begin to overtake his body once more, his nerves prickling and his heart starting to pound furiously against his chest.

  In the week since he had awoken in this world, Levi had managed to increase his new body’s magical capabilities significantly. Compared to his first day, when he’d fought Heimler, his magical output levels had already risen exponentially. Back then, he had barely been able to manage even a dozen spells; now, he’d expended a truly immense amount of magic in killing the Greater Wyverns and fighting Phantasm.

  But though he had improved, it wasn’t enough. The magical overburn hadn’t fully set in yet, but it was definitely beginning to start.

  Magical overburn effectively limited the amount of magic one could safely output; it was basically his body overheating. Once the overburn reached a certain point, Levi would no longer be able to cast any magic at all, and forcing himself to do so would only result in severe traumatic internal injuries, potential unconsciousness, and if he strained his body hard enough, his heart could even stop.

  “I need ten minutes,” Levi said. That should give him enough time to recover and for his body to cool down. “I can fight after that.”

  “Ten minutes…” Liliya looked back at the Elder Wyvern. As they watched, the massive wyvern reached down, brought one of the trees to its mouth with a clawed grip, and crunched down on it with its powerful jaws. Rivulets of sap leaked out from the crushed bark and into the wyvern’s awaiting maw. It swallowed and let out a sound of satisfaction. “It’s distracted now, but it’s only a matter of time before it gets hungry for real meat and heads toward the town of Farband. We don’t have ten minutes. We probably don’t even have five.”

  “Then someone will just have to buy some time.”

  Liliya let out a disbelieving noise. “Who?” she asked. “Me?”

  Levi was silent for several moments. Then, he smiled.

  “I didn’t realize it earlier, but in addition to concealing the wyvern’s magical presences, the runic scripts must’ve also had an additional function in blocking any outgoing magical signals.”

  “What are you talking about…” Liliya blinked. “Oh. I had forgotten.”

  Slowly, she retrieved an object that had been tucked into her belt. It was still letting out continuous pulses of magic.

  The emergency beacon.

  As if on cue, two figures suddenly materialized next to them in twin flickers of speed, leaves rustling around them in swirls of wind.

  “What-ho!” Professor Merriweather declared. “Rest easy and have no fear, my dear students, for your valiant professor is here! Indeed, it is I, the great Alistair Merriweather–!” He caught sight of the other newcomer in the forest and did a double-take. “Mythmaker Ravenbane? What are you doing here?”

  “Yo,” Qorbin drawled, raising a lazy hand in greeting. “Been a while. Was in town for some specialty ale, heard the commotion, and came over to check out what was going on.” He turned toward the wyvern and let out a low whistle. “Will say though, I didn’t quite expect an Elder Wyvern of all things.” He looked at Liliya and Levi. “What the hell did you two get up to down there?”

  Professor Merriweather too turned toward the wyvern, his gaze going blank for a moment before his eyes lit up with visible excitement. “Ms Volkov, you found an Elder Wyvern for me to slay?” A wide, jovial smile spread across his face. “You shouldn’t have,” he said, choking up slightly with emotions. “This might possibly be the nicest gift a student has ever gotten me. Though… how did this happen, exactly?”

  “The dungeon was a trap,” Liliya said. “Someone was concealing the dungeon’s true tier with runic scripts – he called himself Phantasm, of the Crucible.”

  Professor Merriweather showed no signs of recognition, but Qorbin’s eyes sharpened slightly at the name.

  “I see,” the Grand Assassin said, sounding a lot more serious than before. “That explains how the Guild surveyors managed to muck up so badly. Phantasm, huh? He sounds like a rather unpleasant fellow.”

  “Indeed,” Professor Merriweather said. “Laying a trap to kill my students…” His eyes glinted with something dangerous, and his mustache quivered with fury. “I’ll need to have some words with him. Another day, of course. For now…”

  A massive double-sided axe materialized in the portly professor’s hands. He expertly spun it around with surprising deftness of someone his size before slamming the metal butt into the ground, a loud unnatural gong sound reverberating throughout the air. The Elder Wyvern went still, then turned to look down at them.

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  Professor Merriweather’s face split into a gallant grin. “It’s time for some afterhour lessons: Dragon Slaying 101. Watch closely, kids. You’re not going to want to miss this.”

  Then he exploded upward, the ground beneath him cratering from the sheer force of his jump. A second later, the Elder Wyvern let out a screech of pain as Merriweather slammed his axe down right between its eyes, a powerful shockwave radiating from the impact.

  “Quite the dramatic fellow, eh?” Qorbin grinned at them. “Sit tight, you two. Stay out of the crossfire. Let the professionals take care of this.”

  Then he was gone as well, his form melting into the shadows as his presence disappeared completely.

  “A Grand Assassin and a Vanguard against an Elder Wyvern…” Liliya shook her head as the two of them turned and began running through the forest, the sound of battle booming behind them. “Well. You’ll get your ten minutes.”

  “I might not even be needed at this rate,” Levi said. “It looks like they’re handling things well enough.”

  Liliya glanced at him. “You do realize they were putting on an act, right?”

  Levi faltered slightly. “What?”

  “To prevent us from panicking, I imagine,” Liliya said. “But Elder Wyverns are extremely powerful. It would likely require a full party of adamantine-tier adventurers and maybe a Mythmaker or two to bring one down. Professor Merriweather is strong, but he’s only adamantine-tier, and while Qorbin is a Mythmaker, his Class as a Grand Assassin makes him unsuited for taking down giant beasts. There’s a reason why they didn’t tell us to go back to the village to evacuate the citizens.”

  “Because if they fell, the townspeople would be doomed either way, even if they tried to run,” Levi finished.

  Liliya nodded grimly.

  They came to a stop once they were a good distance away, well out of the danger zone. They turned back to watch the fight. Levi rapidly ran through multiple breathing exercises in an attempt to stabilize his body.

  Seven minutes left.

  Those two just had to hold out until then.

  Qorbin Ravenbane wasn’t getting paid enough for this.

  He wasn’t getting paid at all, actually. But even if he was, there was no amount of money that could’ve convinced him to go up against an Elder Wyvern with only a single adamantine-tier Vanguard as backup. They didn’t even have a healer, for the Goddess’s sake.

  As a Grand Assassin, he was extraordinarily skilled in eliminating single unit threats. Assassinating a vampiric lord hidden inside an impenetrable magical castle? Piece of cake. Killing a high dark elf protected by thousands of warped nature spirits? Sign him up. He operated best in the shadows, and when it came to anti-personnel capabilities, nobody had him beat.

  But fighting a giant wyvern? Nah, no thanks. Qorbin left that to the Warrior, Mage, and Knight classes who actually specialized in those kinds of things.

  Yet here he was, blurring through the air and trying his hardest to pierce the Elder Wyvern’s absurdly tough hide. The things he did out of the goodness of his heart…

  His curved blade clanged off fruitlessly, as they had the past hundred or so times he’d tried to work them through a chink in the damn beast’s armor. Never mind the fact that his sword’s piercing power was actively being enhanced by five different high-tier skills simultaneously.

  Qorbin could cleave through mithril like butter, but an Elder Wyvern’s hide was considered to be one of the most durable materials in existence for a reason. It was aggravating.

  Above him, Merriweather let out another ferocious roar as he swung his battle axe into the beast’s side. The wyvern roared in response and swiped outward with its claws, sending out blades of wind that rippled out and carved deep gouges into the forest grounds. Merriweather managed to dodge the attack, but barely, a small cut appearing on the edge of his cheek.

  Now that the two kids were gone, Merriweather had dropped the confident facade, his face tight with concentration as he landed powerful blow after blow on the Elder Wyvern. He knew as well as Qorbin how stacked the odds were against them, which was made all the more evident by how none of his attacks had any effect other than pissing off the gargantuan beast.

  In fairness, both of them were both heavily constrained in what they could do due to a lack of healer present. Merriweather especially, since he was a frontline fighter; he couldn’t go charging in with full impunity like he normally did. Qorbin wouldn’t be surprised if over half of the professor’s usual strategies were restricted from him, if only because there’d be nobody to prevent his organs from spilling out afterward from the damage he sustained.

  Around them, the trees crackled with flames, having been set alight by the Elder Wyvern’s fireballs. A small part of Qorbin felt bad for the residents of Farband; the Grove of Embers was their main source of livelihood. The rest of him was grimly aware that there was a very good chance that he and Merriweather would be forced to retreat, and the town would fall altogether before it could suffer any major economic downturns.

  Activating his [Twilight Trespass], Qorbin disappeared from existence, reappearing on top of the Elder Wyvern’s head. The beast immediately roared in anger, shaking its head wildly in an attempt to dislodge him, but Qorbin’s balance was impeccable.

  Grabbing onto one of the scaly ridges that protruded from the wyvern’s head, he swung down in a graceful motion and ended up hanging by one arm right before its left eye. The wyvern’s slitted eyes dilated as it focused on Qorbin.

  Qorbin grinned. “Enjoy.”

  And he thrust his sword forward with blinding speed, invoking several of his most powerful skills. [Axiom Strike], [Assassin’s Diplomacy], [Blade’s End], and [Hubris] all empowered his stab, and his blade pierced the wyvern right in the center of its eye before it could even react, afterimages left behind in the air.

  The blade entered with seemingly no resistance at all, sinking in until it reached the hilt. The Elder Wyvern let out a deafening screech of pain as it began savagely thrashing around. Its talons streaked through the air as it tried to eviscerate Qorbin, but he had already let go, leaping off the wyvern’s snout and avoiding the lethal strike with an acrobatic flip.

  He fell through the air, his hair and clothes rippling in the wind as a geyser of blood spurted outward above him. Then he twisted and disappeared once more, rematerializing on the ground without a single sound.

  “Good one!” Merriweather shouted as he immediately capitalized on the opening Qorbin had made. “Have at you, foul beast!”

  He leaped up high into the air, higher than even the wyvern’s considerable height, and descended with his massive war axe brimming with mana. Distracted by the pain and fury, the wyvern didn’t notice until Merriweather was already right on top of it. With a resounding battle cry, the professor brought down his axe on the wyvern’s head and a BOOM sounded out as the devastating blow finally cleaved through the wyvern’s outer scales, carving deeper and deeper.

  Well look at that. Qorbin smiled triumphantly. It looked like Merriweather still had it in him–

  CLANG!

  Qorbin’s smile disappeared as Merriweather’s axe struck something that was neither bone or flesh. The professor reared backward, and even from this distance Qorbin could see his eyes widen in shock. “An enchanted barrier–?!”

  The wyvern suddenly lashed out with its barbed tail, and Merriweather was too stupefied to avoid it in time. The professor just barely managed to twist and block in time with the handle of his war axe, the tail slammed into him with full force.

  The blow sent Merriweather hurtling through the air like a missile. In the blink of an eye, he crashed into the ground, a pained gasp escaping him as he continued rolling head over heels dozens of times. He crashed through multiple tree trunks, the bark splintering and cracking apart under his form, before he finally came to a stop a hundred meters away from the crater where he’d originally landed, slumped against a particularly sturdy tree.

  Slowly, with great effort, Merriweather climbed to his feet, using his battle axe to support his weight. He was bleeding from multiple places, he had a slouch in his back that wasn’t there before, and his left arm was bent at an unnatural angle, but the professor stood upward regardless, facing the wyvern without a sign of fear in his eyes.

  “Hah,” Merriweather said, grinning. “Close, but no cigar…”

  His eyes rolled up and he collapsed forward with a crash, his injuries overtaking him. Above, the Elder Wyvern let out a thunderous triumphant roar, its yellow eyes filled with a malevolent satisfaction at finally bringing down one of its foes.

  Qorbin stared at Merriweather’s unmoving form. One single blow was all it’d taken to knock out an adamantine-tier adventurer – a Vanguard at that, one of the evolved forms of the Warrior class.

  Then he turned back to the Elder Wyvern. Through the blood pouring out the wound Merriweather had inflicted, Qorbin could see a faint white shimmering glow underneath the skin.

  Fuck him. The Elder Wyvern had been magically enhanced. Was it ‘Phantasm’ that did it? Cast magical enchantments to amplify the Elder Wyvern’s damage and bolster its defense?

  What a drag.

  Slowly, Qorbin reached into his cloak and withdrew a silver flask. He took a long swig, relishing the burn of the alcohol as it slid down his throat.

  It didn’t have any intoxicating effects on him, of course. One of his innate abilities as a Grand Assassin rendered him immune to all poisons. But drinking it still had a psychological effect, and Qorbin needed that right now as the Elder Wyvern finished its celebrations and turned to him.

  The situation was even worse than he’d originally thought. At this rate, Qorbin might have no choice but to retreat–

  “Thanks for stalling,” a voice said.

  Qorbin whirled to the side, eyes widening slightly as Levi Ironwood suddenly appeared next to him. Qorbin hadn’t sensed him approaching at all. A mere Institute student, a failure at that, had somehow snuck up on him, a Grand Assassin.

  That shouldn’t have been possible.

  Yet for some reason, Qorbin wasn’t surprised at all.

  For earlier that day, when Qorbin had held his blade to Levi’s throat, he had used his skill [Petrifying Gaze] on the kid, an ability that required direct eye contact to paralyze his target completely, rendering them unable to even breathe.

  But Levi somehow hadn’t been affected at all. He had remained calm and relaxed, staring back at Qorbin without a hint of fear or hesitation. It was as though he hadn’t even noticed the skill being used on him. Qorbin hadn’t shown it outwardly, but he had been more than a little unsettled by that.

  As such, Qorbin had made the decision right then and there to leave Levi alone and see what would happen.

  Now, he was glad that he did.

  “Hey,” Qorbin greeted. “You think you can help?”

  Levi nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  And magic exploded from his form.