The Devil Is Real (Noir x Arifureta)

Chapter 4: Meaningful

The final floor, beyond the boss' room, is verbatim the surface. It had an artificial sky and sun, with a legit and accurate cycle between day and night. There was a healthy landscape, teeming with plants and trees, fed by the very artificial sun. At the very center was a modest mansion. Fountains were everywhere in this peaceful utopia. However, these are all "artifacts," as Yue calls them.

In any case, even I can tell I'm taking this way too easily as if I'm in a park on the deepest floor of a labyrinth. I finished auto-mapping the entire labyrinth, so I could envision the scenery of the outside with my eyes and flip myself there with teleportation. That was a power of my World's Eye. But it won't hurt to stay at this place for a few days, or weeks.

I needed the knowledge about this world, to properly fulfill my mission. My client, Hajime Nagumo, was part of a summoned group of people from Earth. The summoned 'heroes' supposedly had overpowered traits, but Hajime Nagumo was the only case that wasn't. He was looked down upon and discriminated against by the rest of his peers for being weak.

Two weeks after that, they went to the Great Orcus Labyrinth to level up. They were fine until they reached the 20th floor when Hiyama—an asshole classmate of his—touched a huge shiny ore in an attempt to obtain it for Kaori—another classmate of his—to impress her. It was a trap and everybody present was teleported to the 65th floor in the Dungeon. There, they saw a lizard-like monster called a Behemoth, that a powerful adventurer of the past was unable to defeat.

Then, Hajime got mad at Kouki—the acting leader—who refused to abandon Meld—the commander—saying that someone should lead the panicking classmates. Hajime told Meld to help his classmates after they immobilized the Behemoth. After that, their party was casting magic to kill the Behemoth, but one classmate betrayed Hajime and hit him with a fireball, sending him off a cliff much to the shock of Kaori and the others... Shortly after that, was the period he used his remaining energy and lifeforce to summon me and entrust his will.

The rooms were a variety. A library, a workshop, an open bath, a bedroom, etcetera, etcetera. The last floor we went into, was pretty different from the rest. A dead skeleton was sitting on a chair over there and as soon as we stepped in, staged a speech about how the Gods of this world manipulate the residents of Tortus as pieces in their grand game, kind of like chess. It's similar to Rogue and that human hero's game, but I couldn't tell if it was more brutal or not.

Well, it's none of my business, so I began to get bored after a while. Yue was particularly invested in the story, however. And something happened. Both I and Yue, who stepped into the magic circle present in the room, got the Ancient Magic: Creation Magic.

The magic circle seems to assess the memories of those who stepped in to verify whether they are truly worthy of the Ancient Magic which originally belonged to Oscar Orcus, the "Maverick" of this labyrinth. I thought as I analyzed it with my World's Eye.

Mavericks, or in real name, Liberators, was an organization that existed in the past. Their goal was to kill the Mad God Ehit, and put an end to his influence in Tortus. They created the seven trials to test anyone worthy enough to inherit their legacy and reward them with their Ancient Magic should they pass the tests.

Ancient Magic of the Age of Gods, as it turns out, is a group of seven powerful magical Skills that worked as the origin and basis for all existing magical concepts in Tortus. Every existing form of magic in Tortus is in some form a degraded version of these Ancient Magics. Each one of the seven magic seem to govern over one core concept aspect of existence and could be granted to anyone that managed to conquer any of the seven Great Labyrinths of Tortus that were created by the seven members of the Liberators, their original possessors.