Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 306: The Dwarven Cave of Mantamia (8)

“Ketal, what was that just now?” Ignisia asked him.

What had flared a moment earlier was nothing like the Myst he usually handled. It had not been Ketal clamping down and forcing it to behave. It had surged out as if it carried a will of its own. The movement was utterly different from the ever-tight restraint she had watched him keep until now.

“We had a conversation,” Ketal said. “It went well.”

“A... conversation? With whom?” Ignisia looked genuinely at a loss. No matter how she turned it over, those words did not sound like something one said about one’s own power.

“In any case, it worked,” she continued.

Mantamia’s mine was now bound, cinched tight by the Dragon Tongue weave they had cast together. That by itself meant very little, since the interior still counted as Raphael’s domain. The part that mattered began here.

“Are you sure you can do it?” she asked him, doubt pulling at her voice despite everything she had seen.

Rather than answer, Ketal laid his palm on the ground that had come up with the mine inside the binding. He soaked his hand with the Myst until it blended into the wrap and could not slip, then put his weight into the pull.

However, nothing moved. It felt like trying to lift a continent. Even for him, the resistance was not trivial.

“As I thought, it is heavy,” he murmured. “If I were still the man I was, I could shove it, but I would not be able to lift and carry it.”

However, the man he was now stood in a different place. Ketal bared his teeth. The Myst coursed along his body, hardening muscle and bone, lending steadiness to every joint. Into that strengthened frame, he poured his full strength. Power and Myst braided together. He set his stance and pushed.

At the same moment, deep below, Raphael mastered his surprise and coolly assessed what had changed.

“They bound the mine,” he said. “But why?”

He could not make sense of it. The binding made no changes to the domain. He gathered himself and reached to tear the Dragon Tongue wrapping apart.

“Sturdier than I like,” he muttered.

The sack was remarkably strong. Even for him, breaking it would take hours, and the fact that something so basic—neither a seal nor a shield—could possess such resilience pushed the limits of belief.

“What are they making this for?” he wondered, and drew more power. Whatever their aim, there was no reason to let it stand. He lifted his hand to rip the cloth. Just then, the earth groaned.

“W-what’s going on?” Raphael stammered. The mine lurched. The shock was large enough to force him to stop gathering power and plant his feet. “What is that?”

It has to be an attack, the demon thought. He widened his senses. Threads of awareness stretched out through the crystals and seams, ran along the inside of the binding, and reached outward past the cloth. The report that came back twisted his elegant face. Ketal was trying to lift the mine, not just to budge it, but to raise it completely and move it.

“What the hell is he doing?” Raphael blurted, and for the first time in his life, a vulgar word left his mouth. He was the Demon of Jewels. He had always considered crudity unaesthetic and beneath him. Yet here he was, cursing out loud.

***

The ground thundered like a drumhead struck by a giant. Ketal gripped the wrapped edge and poured himself into the effort. The earth quivered. A deep tremor rolled, then another, until the world seemed to shudder around them.

Still, the bundle did not rise. Ignisia bit down on a breath. This was what she had expected. She had been ready to suggest they abandon the mine and go crush Raphael outright.

Then, the tremor grew stronger. Without Myst bracing their bodies, it would have been difficult to remain upright. The pulse did not stay local. It ran out like a ring across the mountains, where birds flew away from trees in ragged clouds and beasts fled with their ears laid back.

Then Ignisia’s expression began to change, slowly at first and then all at once, as she realized what she was seeing—the land itself was rising.

“H-hold on,” she stammered.

The mine, bound up like a parcel, was rising. It was not clever magic lifting it, and it was not a construction of pulleys and cranes. It was Ketal’s hands, Ketal’s shoulders, and Ketal’s back.

“No. That can not be...”

Mantamia’s mine was only hill-sized if one measured length, breadth, and height with a yardstick. She herself could relocate something that large without strain. The problem had never been dimensions. Mantamia was the densest knot of ore in the world. It was not a hill. It was compression made into a thing. If one were to speak in pure weight, it did not fit into numbers. It was not something that could be lifted by anyone, not even by a named Hero with a legend under their belt.

However, now Ketal was raising it out of the ground. Cold ran across her skin.

“No way...,” the Holy Sword said. It spoke like someone who had misplaced their mind and was not certain where to look for it.

It made no sense. This was outside any category they had for strength. It felt like staring at something that should not exist. Once, when Ketal had been called the Avatar of the God of Strength, she had offered a mild objection. She knew what a god’s authority felt like. She had not believed he could reach that far. However, the power he was showing now left her no room to deny anything.

What are you, she thought, but the words would not pass her teeth.

While her thoughts ran circles, the mine kept coming up. Ketal breathed, set his feet, and raised his arms. The bound mass slid free.

It hung there in full view of the sky. In Ketal’s hands, the mountain of ore looked as if it were perched only an ant’s height above his palms, yet it defied gravity all the same and hovered, cradled as if it were nothing but a bowl filled with water.

“By the world...,” someone whispered.

“What is that?” someone else asked, voice cracked and thin.

The dwarves, who had been keeping watch at the entrance in case of disaster, forgot to close their mouths. King Grombir was no better. Manners and bearing meant nothing to a man who had just watched a neighbor pick up a mountain range.

“He lifted it,” Ignisia said, and her face came apart. It was an expression she had never made once in all the years of her long life.

“It is heavy,” Ketal said, as if observing a cart that pulled a little to one side. “Now I just need to put it down somewhere else, right?”

“Y-yes,” she managed.

Ketal began to walk. The ground shook with each step. Fortunately, he was wrapped so thoroughly in Myst that the usual rules were blurred around him. Otherwise, his footfalls would have been calamities. He took ten strides while holding a compacted mountain.

“Here,” he said. “Will this do?”

“Yes. That is good,” Ignisia replied.

He eased the mine down. The mass that had stood ant-high slipped toward the earth and met it. The land rolled like a sea struck by the wind. Waves of force ran outward in concentric rings. Huts pitched and snapped like kindling.

The shudder did not stop at the surface. It rolled into Mantamia’s halls and shook the great cavern. For thousands of years, the fortresses of the dwarves had never quivered. Their ancestors had carved the place to a standard that deserved to be called absolute. Stones laid by those hands did not shift.

They had not shifted even when demons came, and not a single pillar had cracked. Now, they began to move, lines appearing where none had existed before, and Mantamia, which had once been nearly perfect, looked unsettled for the first time in memory.

“Ah. I should have set it down more gently,” Ketal said, as if admitting he had bumped a table with his hip.

The Holy Sword said nothing. Ignisia said nothing. No one had the words.

***

While Ketal was lifting, Raphael could do nothing. The movement had been too violent. He curled in on himself like a child and waited for the heaving to stop. Only when the swaying quieted did he stand and gather his composure.

“What in the world happened?” he asked himself. He reached for his senses again, and this time, felt the lack. “Wait.”

His nearly absolute control over the ores was gone. He realized he was no longer inside his own domain.

“How can this happen?”

It did not make sense. His field had been a joining of his power with a god’s holy ground. Even with a god descending, breaking it should not have been easy. Raphael wondered what could have done it. Alarm bent his spine for a moment, but then he noticed that the domain itself still existed, intact and in place.

That should have reassured him, but it did not. If his field was still where it ought to be, then he had to wonder where he truly was. He had no time to chase the thought as the cloth split at the entrance and someone stepped through.

“We meet again,” Ketal said, smiling as he hefted the black axe. “Let us pick up where we left off.”

Raphael screamed and flung his will.

Raphael screamed and unleashed his power.

Mithril, deep and pure Myst compressed into metal so refined that even a single fragment could power the Mage Tower for a week, shot toward Ketal and detonated. The blast carried enough force that Ketal had to shield himself with Myst and defend himself fully just to withstand it.

As the explosion cleared, Ketal charged forward and swung his axe. Raphael protected himself with Adamantadium, the hardest of all ores, and it blocked Ketal’s strike without yielding.

Then Orikalos, the ore that amplified all power, resonated with Raphael’s magic and surged in a relentless assault. Ketal could not push through its rush and had to hurl himself aside to evade.

“He is still strong,” Ketal said, honestly pleased.

Raphael was strong. Even for Ketal, ending him would not be trivial. The mine made it harder. Down here, he could not mix his full-force strike with the Myst without risking the cavern.

“But now he is limited,” Ketal added.

Raphael no longer moved the mine’s wealth as if the seams were extensions of his fingers. Everything he did had edges now. If there were limits, there were lines to cross. The fight ground on. Bit by bit, Raphael lost ground. The hedge of ore he had saved against catastrophe thinned faster than he could believe.

Breathing hard, Raphael put his back to a wall and watched Ketal approach with his usual wary grace. It was not a good position. His supremacy had been stripped away in an instant, and the man walking toward him was a problem in the shape of a person.

However, Raphael did not break. He was a demon. He held the rank of count. He did not fold because the odds were poor. He ran calculations. If Ketal came straight, he would do one thing. If Ketal feinted high, he would do another. He rehearsed a hundred possible assaults and slotted a hundred responses into place.

However, Ketal did not come. He was just studying his axe.

“What are you doing?” Raphael asked him before he could stop himself.

Light drifted across the blade. Aura stirred around the edge like heat shimmers over stone.

“Oh. Good,” Ketal said. “I can draw this much out now. I thought I would need to be at least at the Transcendent level to manage it. I was happily wrong.”

He gave the axe an experimental flick, then lifted it with a playful apology.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Let us try that again.”

Aura wrapped the black head. It was thin and wavering, a candle flame that looked as if it might gutter out at any moment, but it was Aura nonetheless.

Raphael saw the trembling light, and his face went still. Until now, he had been baffled, agitated, and angry. He had fought like a desperate man. Through it all, he had kept his poise. He had kept his carriage. He had never lost the bearing that went with his title.

Now, all of that was over. His eyes filled with a fear so clean it could only be one thing. It was the fear of dying.