I Became a Magical Genius After Regression

Chapter 34

Splash.

“……!”

Randel felt a sudden jolt of awareness from the cold sensation enveloping his body.

He had no idea what was happening. He had touched the sigil, heard a clunk, and now he was underwater……

Gurgle.

His thoughts were confused, but Randel’s body instinctively began to seek a way to survive.

During his mercenary days, he had once taken on a pirate extermination mission and ended up shipwrecked, falling into the sea.

A pitch-black night, waves crashing in, shouts echoing from all sides, the taste of salty seawater mixed with iron.

The experience of barely surviving that ordeal now drove Randel’s actions.

“Puhah!”

Randel barely managed to stick his head out of the water and exhaled a rough breath.

He swam to the shore and used his arms to climb onto the rock.

As he rested his head on the rock, the panic finally subsided, and his surroundings slowly began to come into view.

“Gasp, gasp. Damn… I almost died this time.”

Randel cursed, feeling as if cold sweat was running down his body despite being soaked.

It was absurd even in hindsight.

Touching that thing suddenly led to an underground journey.

Barely pulling himself together, Randel looked around.

His eyes, now adapted to the darkness, could only make out the silhouettes of what seemed to be rocks.

Randel quietly began casting.

“…Light. Ugh!”

He cast as carefully and slowly as possible, but pain surged from his chest.

Fortunately, the spell succeeded.

A sphere of light floated up, illuminating the surroundings brightly.

The light magic, now stronger at the third circle, instantly drove away the thick darkness from one end to the other.

‘Here is…….’

Randel looked around the brightened surroundings.

What was revealed under the light was a gigantic cavern.

It was so vast that even the mansion of the lord’s castle could fit inside with room to spare, and the light couldn’t reach the end.

In the middle of the cavern was the lake Randel had just crawled out of.

‘Where did I fall from?’

Randel looked up.

A ceiling of dizzying height. Among the sharp stalactites, he saw a small hole.

‘Damn.’

Randel felt goosebumps all over his body.

The distance from the lake to the ceiling was even higher than the canyon where the knight had fallen.

If it hadn’t been water below but a rocky area or dirt ground……

Unconsciously shaking his head, Randel looked at the hole in the ceiling once more.

‘If I use the shield continuously, I might be able to climb up…….’

Just like when he fell into the canyon, he thought he could use the shield to step on it and climb up.

But the problem was that Randel’s condition was not good at all.

Even though he used that simple light magic so carefully, pain surged in his chest.

And now he had to use the shield once every second to climb up to that ceiling?

What if his mana suddenly reversed or he missed a step halfway up… Would he fall into the lake again?

It seemed unlikely.

Then this time, it would be the end for him.

“I guess I have to find another exit.”

Randel gave up cleanly and wandered around, shining the light here and there.

All around the wide cavity, there were half-dug holes and piles of dirt.

Nearby, he saw tools like pickaxes and shovels.

But most of the wooden handles had crumbled, leaving only the metal parts.

There were also occasionally broken carts with iron rails and wheels on the ground.

“This is… a mine. Judging by the circumstances, this must be the ruins I was looking for.”

It was a bit different from what he had imagined, but it was likely that this place was the ruins.

There couldn’t be another artificial space like this under the canyon.

But soon, Randel felt dejected.

“No, I used Detect like crazy…”

From what he remembered, when he touched the pattern, the floor had collapsed with a clunk.

It seemed to be a special device that didn’t use any magic at all.

So, the mana-detecting Detect couldn’t find anything special.

What was more frustrating was that this was the first canyon he had searched.

Since it was the center of the canyons, he had used Detect and carefully inspected it with his eyes, but he hadn’t known this was here.

“If I had found it then, I wouldn’t have met those guys.”

But there was no use in regretting it.

He had to be grateful that he found it now.

“Oh, this is not the time for this.”

Randel erased his thoughts and sat down in his place.

There was something really important, but he had only looked around.

It was mana.

Randel entered the world of his mind straight away.

‘What is this? The situation is quite serious.’

Kuuu―

Randel clicked his tongue as he looked at his mental world.

Whirlpools were swirling all over the black sea, and the surface was filled with murky foam.

He looked up.

Three suns illuminating the dark sea.

But their brightness was much dimmer than usual.

Considering that the suns were Randel’s circles and the sea was the vessel containing them, the situation was serious.

It meant that the mana was rampaging.

‘Damn… This is going to last quite a while.’

Randel shook his head.

There had been times in the past when the mana had backflowed.

But it had never been this severe.

Considering that this was the result after taking a potion to stabilize it to some extent, without the potion, the circle might have broken.

‘That was really close.’

In any case, he couldn’t leave it like this.

Randel sighed and looked at the black sea for a moment.

Then he threw himself into it.

Splash.

* * *

“Phew, that was tough.”

Randel dusted himself off and stood up.

After half a day of effort, he managed to calm the whirlpools in the black sea of his mental world to some extent.

Although the situation was still unstable, he could consider it as emergency treatment.

‘Now I can use the 1st circle without any problem.’

It would take about a week to return to the perfect state of the 3rd circle.

It was fortunate that it was Randel. If another wizard had experienced mana backflow to Randel’s extent, they would have needed at least a year of recuperation.

This was all thanks to Randel’s high mana affinity, which made the mana respond quickly to his will.

“Let’s find a way out of here.”

Randell started moving again.

The cave itself was nothing special.

It was just filled with things like pickaxes and carts that he had seen before entering the mental world.

Thud.

“Huh? Did something just sparkle?”

Randell picked up a stone that had been kicked near the pickaxe.

Then, a small grain inside the black stone reflected the light from his lamp.

Rub, rub.

Randell rubbed his eyes, thinking they were blurry.

But no matter how he looked at it, the grain was emitting light on its own without any light source.

And it certainly looked like a metal he had seen before, although it was small.

“What the! This is mithril?”

Randell exclaimed in surprise.

What was mithril doing here?

Mithril is a miraculous metal.

Despite being a metal, it doesn’t corrode and has elasticity, absorbing most impacts.

Most importantly, its mana conductivity is extraordinary.

Other metals don’t fully absorb mana when it’s infused into them.

If you infuse 100 units of mana, about 40 units disperse into the air.

But mithril is different. Even if not all 100 units, about 90 units of mana flow through it.

‘That means it’s the best material for making artifacts and weapons.’

That’s why swords made of mithril alloy are the most coveted by knights.

Compared to swords made of steel, it’s much easier to manifest and maintain aura with them.

‘So this place is a mithril mine. Does that mean the owner here is a dwarf?’

Randell lifted the half-rotten pickaxe.

It felt oddly smaller than a regular pickaxe.

The shovels and carts were the same.

They all seemed too small for an adult man to use.

‘Since dwarves are about two-thirds the height of humans…’

It all made sense when I thought about it.

Moreover, the process of refining, smelting, and processing mithril was extremely burdensome for humans.

It was possible, but only a very few people could do it, and the efficiency wasn’t that great.

On the other hand, dwarves, with a staggering one-fifth of their population working as blacksmiths, could do it very easily.

‘But it seems quite old.’

This area was cleverly situated near the borders of three territories.

Also, no matter how well dwarves made weapons and handled ores, they couldn’t live off that alone.

So they had to procure food and other supplies from outside, and the surrounding territories would surely know about it.

In other words, it meant that dwarves had stayed here a very long time ago.

‘If even the wood of the pickaxe has rotted… at least 500 years?’

Randel thought so as he set out to find the exit.

Fortunately, there was a clear guide.

It was the rail laid on the ground.

Randel carefully followed the rail, making sure not to trip on the uneven ground.

How long had he walked?

After leaving the cavern and walking up the dark passage for quite a while, something came into view.

“Wow, why is it so big?”

The exit was round, like the entrance to a large cave.

In front of it, a round stone served as a door, looking like a flat, round coin.

But its size was no joke.

It was over 5 meters in diameter and 30 centimeters thick.

Such a stone door was half-open.

“How do I move this?”

Seeing the grooves on the sides, it seemed that it could be moved sideways to open or close the place.

But there was no device around to move the stone door.

Could it have been done with magic?

Randel, with the curiosity typical of a wizard, scrutinized the stone door but found nothing special.

“Huh?”

Instead, Randel discovered something else.

He found faintly glowing parts on the ground in the open space in front of the stone door.

‘What is this?’

Randell brushed away the dirt on the floor with his foot.

Then, the identity of the shining parts was revealed.

They were 72 rune characters, each the size of a palm, arranged in a circle like a magic circle.

‘What? I thought there were only 62 rune characters?’

Most of them were runes he had never seen before.

Additionally, it was peculiar that each rune had a transparent crystal embedded behind it.

Crack.

Randell pulled out one of them and marveled.

“Wow, this is a mana stone.”

Mana stones were similar to magic stones.

They had the same crystal form and contained mana within them.

However, those found inside monsters were called magic stones, while those found in veins were called mana stones.

But unlike magic stones, mana stones were not easy to find.

They were occasionally discovered in old veins untouched by humans or in ancient jungles.

Yet, the beings presumed to be dwarves had embedded such mana stones around the runes.

‘This is perfect.’

His mental world was still in a bad state.

Absorbing the pure mana from the mana stones in their natural state would greatly help stabilize it.

Randell pulled out all the mana stones and put them in his subspace.

“With this, I can fully recover my body.”

Randell said with a satisfied smile.

He then walked towards the half-open stone door.

Rumble…

He did not notice the faint vibrations that started from afar.