Ambrosia.
He didn't need a book to tell him. His Soul Core confirmed it with a deep, resonant thrum—recognition, almost exited.
Hajime knelt and dipped his fingers into the basin.
The liquid was warm—body-temperature, silky, clinging to his skin like liquid starlight. He brought his hand to his lips and drank.
Warmth blossomed in his chest in a slow, controlled explosion.
Pain dulled, then softened, then ebbed away entirely. His ribs loosened. His leg stopped screaming. Bruises unknotted beneath the skin. Breath came easier.
He stared at his hand. Flexed it.
For the first time since the fall, he didn't feel like he was one bad breath away from dying.
A short, disbelieving laugh escaped him—half relief, half hysteria.
"An healing fountain… at the bottom of a murder maze. Sure. Why not."
He drank again, just enough to stabilize himself, then forced his hands away. Anything unlimited still had rules. Overdo it, and there'd be consequences.
With steadier limbs, he surveyed his alcove.
It still looked like a rough bite carved into a rock wall, but it was his. With the Divinity Stone embedded behind it, the entire hollow felt like a protected side-room off some vast, forbidden engine.
He expanded it next.
A slope of rough floor straightened under his mana. Jagged edges rounded. A short wall rose around the entrance—just high enough to block a direct charge or provide cover.
Then light.
He gathered fist-sized stones from the rubble outside, etched ultra-efficient inscription loops into each, and tuned them with Resonance. The stone room brightened with a soft, even glow.
Better.
He finally slumped against the wall and checked his status plate.
His HP had surged to over ninety percent. Debuffs remained, but the [Mortal Wound] marker had relaxed to a simple [Injury] alert. The worst was over.
His eyes closed.
Images returned—fracturing stone, screaming wind, the Behemoth's roar, Kaori's voice echoing down the void.
And then—
Hiyama's spell.
He saw the exact incantation again, preserved perfectly by Resonance.
Not aimed at the Behemoth.
Not at the battlefield.
At him.
Precisely at the weak joint behind his transmuted pillar.
No fear-blind mistake.
No friendly-fire accident.
Intentional.
He expected anger. Hatred. Rage hot enough to boil blood.
But what he felt instead was oddly calm—like a man correcting a mislabeled file inside his mental storage.
Before: Hiyama, an annoying classmate with a fragile ego.
Now: a man who had taken a chance to kill him.
"So that's how it is," Hajime murmured, not quite softly, not quite loud. "Alright."
He didn't plan to drag himself back up to the surface just to shout accusations. This world ran on gods, rituals, labyrinths, and politics. A single teenager screaming "attempted murder" wasn't even a footnote.
He touched the pendant beneath his shirt.
Warm.
He pulsed Resonance through it—a steady, deliberate rhythm.
A signal.
Kaori.
She knew he was alive.
And he knew she was still out there, still gripping her pendant like a lifeline.
"This thing is trouble," Hajime muttered, smiling faintly, "but also a promise."
A promise to return.
A tether to keep him from becoming something she wouldn't recognize.
He exhaled and looked up at the smooth ceiling.
Orcus.
No—this wasn't a labyrinth.
It was a system.
A stacked backend of magic interfacing with physical structures, built like layers of a massive, ancient machine. Priests and nobles treated magic like sacred scripture, but to his eyes, it was just a messy API with compiler steps and overinflated superstition.
Magic stones? Monster cores? Hardware.
Soul Devourer? Root access.
Resonance? Administrator-mode debugging.
He chuckled under his breath.
"Alright, Orcus… you're not my tomb. You're my dev environment."
---
Time blurred.
Two days passed—if the slow pulse of distant mana and faint dimming of glowstones could be trusted as a day-night cycle. Hajime rarely slept. When he wasn't resting, he was shaping his base.
He fortified the front wall.
Dug storage niches.
Smoothed a crafting patch on the floor.
He monitored the Behemoth corpse from afar.
He wasn't the only one interested.
On the second night, scavengers gathered—kick rabbits the size of dogs, twin-headed wolves, and other mid-tier predators lurking between shadows. They tore into the carcass with feral hunger.
They hadn't noticed him yet. His alcove was high and shadowed, and their focus was on the feast.
But he needed that corpse. For meat. For bones. For hide. For materials. For anything.
And the moment they finished feeding, they'd start sniffing around.
He flexed his fingers.
He hadn't spent two days doing nothing.
Above the Behemoth, he'd subtly weakened the fake ceiling he had created. Beneath it, he'd carved spike-lined pits. Hidden within the thinned stone, he'd planted trigger stones.
All he needed…
…was pressure.
Most of the pack clustered directly beneath the compromised ceiling, fighting for meat.
Perfect.
He whispered, "Trigger."
A pulse through the stones.
Crack.
The ceiling collapsed.
Boulders crashed down in an avalanche of stone. Kick rabbits disappeared with wet crunches. Wolves howled once before sound cut out. Bodies tumbled into pits and impaled themselves on spikes.
Dust billowed.
When it settled, the cavern held mostly silence.
Mostly.
One wolf-beast had survived, dragging itself with one limp neck and one snarling head. It staggered in a desperate arc—straight toward the wall where Hajime's alcove lay.
Figures.
He could wait for it to bleed out.
Safer, smarter.
But hunger gnawed at him—deep, insistent. His strengthened body demanded fuel. His mana pool—expanded but still insufficient—yearned for more.
Monster cores weren't just energy.
They were upgrade modules for someone like him.
He stepped out of the alcove without bracing on the wall.
His leg held.
The beast growled weakly.
"I know," he murmured. "But we're both out of good options."
A clean spike through the skull.
Silence.
He carved away a chunk of flank meat, wrapped it in hide, then found the core—hot, pulsing, the size of a large marble.
Back inside the alcove, he set the core before him.
"If this goes wrong, you'll make it quick, right?" he said to the empty room. "Fair trade."
He ate the meat first.
It was awful. Bitter, toxic, metallic. His body revolted immediately.
He drowned it with Ambrosia.
Warmth washed through him, neutralizing the poison.
Then he picked up the core.
He held it to his chest.
"Connect."
Resonance flared—matching frequencies, syncing pulses.
"Devour."
As if waiting for this command the soul-devourer jumped and The world ignited.
Heat slammed into him like molten iron. Mana surged through his nerves like lightning. His Soul Core roared, shredding foreign mana and reweaving it into his pattern.
Bones creaked.
Muscles tightened.
Senses sharpened in a dizzying instant—the drip of water, the soft hum of the Divinity Stone, the faint airflow from hidden tunnels.
Something deeper stirred beneath it all.
A predatory hunger.
A craving for more.
"Iam… your… boss" he snarled through clenched teeth.
He forced the last of the core's energy through the filter.
The crystal crumbled into dust.
He slumped back, panting.
When he stood again—shaking, but steady—everything felt sharper.
His mana pool had punched past an invisible cap. His body felt tuned, aligned, stronger.
And he wasn't done.
He ate a slice of Behemoth flesh, then chased it immediately with Ambrosia.
The reaction hit faster than expected.
Agony tore through him.
His skin crawled.
Bones screamed.
Vision warped.
His Soul Core pulsed urgently—panicked.
Touch it.
The impulse wasn't words, but absolute command.
He staggered forward, half collapsing onto the embedded Divinity Stone, pressing his palm against its smooth surface.
Everything aligned.
Resonance—carrying monster mana.
Soul Devourer—mid-integration.
Divinity Stone—raw, purified healing.
His soul core sprang up devoured everything, Circuits snapped into a single, blinding loop.
Light detonated behind his eyes.
Pain inverted into something indescribable.
He tried to scream—maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
Then—
Nothing.
No cavern.
No blood.
No stone.
Just vast, humming darkness.
Consciousness slipped.
His final thought drifted slow and quiet:
The Hajime who fell off that bridge died there.
Whatever wakes up beside this once divinity stone… won't be average anymore.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author: "Traveler! Spare a stone for your humble scribe!"
Reader: "Side quest declined."
Author: stands in idle animation forever 😔🎮
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~