Leon swept up everything inside the training room, including the books he hadn't had time to read. Though he had managed to raise his rank as quickly as possible, a significant amount of time had still passed.

"Has it been about three weeks...?" he mused. If he had been unconscious for a longer time, it might have been even more.

"Fly," Leon commanded as he equipped the golden wings and floated his ancient wooden staff in the air. He also held several scrolls in his hands.

"Come out," he muttered softly, and a translucent sphere appeared beside him.

This was a spell from the Arpina 5-star series, allowing Leon to harmoniously control the four elements without needing to summon separate elemental beings. The translucent sphere could transform into an elemental familiar of any attribute Leon desired, allowing him to cast magic as needed.

Since keeping it summoned would drain his mana, it was better to have it ready beforehand.

Once he was prepared, Leon pulled the lever.

Rumble...

The door, which seemed immovable, began to open.

As the door opened wide enough for Leon to see what lay outside, he noticed six golems standing in front of the door, all staring intently at him.

Just at the door alone, there were six golems.

When Leon expanded his detection spell, he found that there were a total of fifteen golems.

Ten armor golems and five gargoyle golems.

They didn't attack immediately but simply stared at him.

"As soon as I step outside... they'll probably attack," Leon thought.

When he first arrived here and used detection magic, he realized that the structure outside the door wasn't much different from the corridor he had originally been in.

A long corridor stretched out with rooms along both sides at regular intervals.

However, fifteen golems were now patrolling that corridor.

It was unfortunate that this training room was situated in the middle of the corridor.

"There's probably a staircase at the end of the corridor..."

Leon couldn't detect beyond the closed door at the end of the corridor, but he could infer from the structure he had seen so far.

Another thing he could deduce was that the exploration of the lair wasn’t complete yet. If it had been, there wouldn't be golems standing guard outside the door.

It seemed likely that there wasn't just one corridor in the lair.

"I don't need to deal with all of them."

Leon had no intention of engaging all fifteen golems. He still didn't know the full extent of the gargoyle golems' power.

His primary goal was to recover the wooden sword.

As soon as Leon stepped outside, the two armor golems closest to him charged.

Leon immediately activated the acceleration of the golden wings and soared to the ceiling of the corridor.

At that moment, the gargoyles looked up at him and opened their mouths.

Magic circles formed in front of their mouths, and dozens of invisible spikes materialized, rushing towards Leon.

"Thunderbolt."

Leon created three thunderbolts simultaneously, throwing two of them at the incoming wind spikes.

Boom!

As the two spheres collided with the wind spikes, electricity spread rapidly, producing a loud explosion.

However, the wind spikes weren’t coming from just one direction.

Three more gargoyles had fired wind spikes at Leon, although one of them was preparing a different spell, with the magic circle glowing but not yet activated.

Leon accelerated again to dodge the spells and pointed his finger at the gargoyle preparing the other spell.

The remaining sphere shot forward.

Boom! Crackle!

While the attack didn’t deal significant damage, it disrupted the magic circle in front of the gargoyle's mouth, causing it to dissipate.

"Hey, Black Orb."

Leon called the translucent sphere by a nickname he had made up. The sphere turned a brownish hue. Although the spell wasn't perfect yet, it didn’t fully transform into the 4-star earth familiar it was meant to be.

"I’ll head towards the staircase, and once I spot it, I’ll use Blink to get there."

With his plan in mind, Leon began moving in the chosen direction.

"Spit."

Each time an armor golem leaped toward him, the brown sphere gathered and hurled chunks of earth at them.

While the damage wasn’t significant, the increased power compared to when he was an apprentice was enough to keep the golems from reaching him.

Leon blocked the gargoyle golems' spells with thunderbolts and hindered the armor golems with the earth chunks from Black Orb. When the gargoyle golems prepared powerful spells, Leon disrupted them with thunderbolts or lightning strikes.

Whenever wind spikes came at him from an angle he couldn't avoid, he used a D-grade scroll to block them.

Leon currently had five D-grade one-time-use scrolls.

This was the total number he had acquired as standard quest rewards over the past four days.

By the time two Explosion scrolls had been used, Leon could see the end of the corridor.

He immediately infused mana into a Blink scroll.

Anything connected to Leon's mana was teleported along with him. With his increased mana, he no longer needed to hold everything in his hands. Even items in the Space-Time Orb could be teleported as long as they were connected to his mana.

At the end of the corridor, there was indeed a door.

Leon quickly pulled the lever and floated back into the air.

"I’ll see you later," he muttered as he grasped the orb.

"It’ll take about 30 seconds for the door to open..."

Leon spent 30 minutes inside the orb to recharge his mana and check his equipment before emerging.

The golems, who had been looking around, once again all turned to stare at Leon.

"Fall."

Boom!

The armor golem in front stumbled as it was struck by a lightning bolt.

In that moment, Leon used his last acceleration and dashed through the open door.

Another armor golem stood inside, head bowed, but as soon as Leon entered, it lifted its head.

"Thunderbolt."

Leon extended three fingers, and a small sphere of electricity formed on each fingertip.

He threw all three spheres at once.

Boom! Crackle!

Unlike the apprentice-level spells that had no effect, these attacks caused the armor golem to stagger and fall to one knee.

"Thunderstrike, Thunderstrike, Thunderstrike."

Three consecutive bolts of lightning fell from the ceiling.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Crash!

After three strikes, the armor shattered.

Leon panted heavily, feeling the toll on his mana reserves.

"Ha, that was tough..."

Even though he hadn’t fully perfected his martial-level abilities, Glorious Lightning was still a highly specialized offensive spell.

The fact that it took six hits to take down the golem was daunting.

Of course, if he were a Transcendence-level mage, it would probably have been much easier.

"Even so, the exploration isn’t over yet?"

Leon tilted his head in confusion as he surveyed his surroundings.

"It’s a staircase leading up."

Leon had suspected that the place he had been transported to was deeper within the lair. After all, it was a completely private training room.

Since his goal was to find the wooden sword, he was relieved that the staircase led upward.

If it had been a staircase going down, he might have considered retreating to the opposite corridor.

"I might have had to spend another day in the orb just to wait for the wings’ cooldown..."

Leon grabbed the helmet of the armor golem and recharged his mana inside the orb before heading up the stairs.

"Oh..."

When he reached the top, Leon found himself standing in a wide plaza where a corridor should have been.

The plaza's walls were lined with staircases leading both up and down.

There had to be at least twenty of them.

The staircase Leon had just climbed was one of many.

He circled the plaza, taking it all in.

There were no people, and no traces of mana.

"Is this the only plaza like this?"

There might be more. Or perhaps the stairs would continue endlessly downward.

Leon debated for a moment before choosing one of the staircases that caught his eye and climbing it.

Fortunately, the stairs weren’t blocked by a door. Given the structure of the place so far, this wasn’t surprising.

At the top of the stairs was a corridor, but Leon couldn’t immediately tell if it was the one he had been in before.

"I left all the doors open when I was exploring..."

It didn’t seem likely that anyone would have gone through and closed all the doors after him.

Leon went back down and tried a different staircase.

After repeating this four times, he finally found a corridor where all the doors were open.

"The room where I was caught in the light was the last one..."

The room he saw as soon as he climbed the stairs was probably the one.

Looking around the entrance to that room, he didn’t find the wooden sword.

Leon didn’t approach the door but instead checked the rooms across the corridor.

"This is the right place!"

Leon recognized the familiar room, having stored all the golem remnants in the orb.

"Fortunately, this plaza is connected..."

Or perhaps there was only one plaza.

It seemed more likely now that the stairs continued endlessly downward.

As Leon inspected the rooms, excluding the one with the magic circle, he became certain that this was indeed the corridor he had been in just before he was transported.

And then, in the middle of the corridor, he spotted the wooden sword lying abandoned in front of a door.

Leon felt a surge of relief but then sensed someone approaching the sword, causing him to quickly activate his invisibility cloak.

It wasn’t just one person.

Several individuals approached the sword, and one of them picked it up, looking at it curiously.

As they began to approach Leon’s direction, he realized they weren’t from the Widia faction. Their robes bore unfamiliar symbols.

"Did I see them during the exchange event...?"

"Hmm, I thought I sensed someone here," one of them said.

"Did you? I didn’t feel anything... But why did you pick up that wooden sword?"

The man holding the sword used a detection spell and, finding nothing wrong, replied, "We’ve found nothing else, and this is the only thing I picked up."

The middle-aged man who had picked up the sword swung it around a few times and clicked his tongue.

"Ugh, I thought it might be something useful, but this...?"

"Maybe the lair’s owner intended to give it to another golem, like the sword that the armor golem was holding."

"This useless wooden sword with no abilities?"

"Wasn’t it an artifact?"

"I was hoping it had some ability, but... You can have it."

"No thanks. Do you still see me as the idiot I was during my apprenticeship?"

"Watch your tone. Who was it that pulled you up and trained you?"

The middle-aged man tossed the wooden sword aside carelessly.

It bounced a few times on the floor before coming to rest in front of another door.

It looked pitiful, lying there discarded.

"So that’s how you’ve been treated..."

Leon realized why the wooden sword had ended up in front of a different door.

Other mages must have picked it up, realized it had no abilities, and discarded it.

"There really is no one here. What’s going on? I was sure I sensed something."

"Were you just being paranoid?"

"It’s natural to be on edge when exploring a place like this."

The middle-aged man shook his head.

"You’ve still got a long way to go. Just think about what those Widia bastards did. We were completely blindsided. Better to be cautious."

"Well, they’ve already fought twice in other areas, haven’t they?"

"Of course. Those bastards have no sense of honor. We’ll probably fight them every time we meet."

"It’s a real headache. The exploration has been delayed because of it."

"That’s because there’s a troublesome magic circle down below..."

The group of five, including the middle-aged man, passed by Leon and examined the training room where he had been caught by the magic circle.

But even when they checked the interior and turned back, nothing happened.

"Why didn’t the teleportation magic circle activate?"

While Leon pondered the reason, the group descended the stairs.

Leon waited a while longer before deactivating his invisibility and grabbing the wooden sword.

"Phew..."

It had taken a long time, but he finally had the sword back in his hands.

"Things worked out better than expected..."

Based on what the other group had said, it seemed the exploration of the lair was still ongoing.

While it would be best for Leon if he were found naturally by the Widia faction rather than suddenly appearing alone...

"It’s not good to be too greedy."

Even if he suddenly appeared in Widia, he could use the excuse of a teleportation magic circle.

After all, his sudden entry into the lair had been due to a teleportation magic circle, and being unexpectedly transported to the training room had also been due to one.

Since he planned to claim that he had awakened to magic while in the lair, it made sense to deal with everything at once.

Just as Leon finished his thoughts and stood up with the wooden sword in hand, he heard the approach of numerous people from the opposite direction where the middle-aged group had disappeared.

In the blink of an eye, they were close enough for Leon to see their faces.

The expressions on their faces were pale with fear as they raced toward Leon.

"If you don’t want to be killed by the witch, run now!"

They shouted before Leon could even react.

In the very next instant.

Without any warning, a black fireball struck the place where they stood.

Boom!

The massive black fireball exploded on the spot.

The shockwave reached Leon, causing his clothes to billow violently.

The dense mana wave was more suffocating than the hot air.

The magic had appeared without any sign.

"No incantation!"

At least a Transcendence-level mage.

Leon immediately grabbed his teleport scroll and infused mana into it.

"..."

But the flow of mana abruptly stopped.

When Leon looked up, he saw a woman with long black hair standing there, her face partially obscured by her hair as she held out a hand toward him.

"Mana interference?"

This wasn’t something even an initial Insight-level mage could do...

Leon’s thoughts didn’t have time to continue.

Instinctively, he touched the orb with his finger.

Leon vanished without a trace from the spot.

At the same time, black flames erupted from the ground.

"..."

The roaring flames extinguished in an instant.

The woman, who had been watching the flames for a while, tilted her head slightly as if puzzled.