Volume 4 Chapter 11 The First Step into the Sea of Decomposition
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
A day had passed since I mastered my new Mana Shell.
We continued our journey north, pressing deeper into the snow-blanketed forest with Sylvia leading the way and me following closely in her footsteps. The winter woods were wrapped in a profound silence, but it wasn’t peaceful; it was the unmistakable stillness of death. Beneath the thick crust of snow we crunched underfoot lay layers of rotting detritus – the decayed remains of monsters and ancient flora that had perished here over the ages, venting a thick, toxic miasma.
Fortunately, I had my Mana Shell active. The biting chill of the snowfield and the foul stench rising from the earth were completely cut off, stopped dead just millimeters from my skin.
Just past noon, Sylvia came to a halt in a small, relatively open clearing. The massive roots of an ancient tree twisted above the ground like the entrance to a cavern, offering the perfect shelter from the biting wind and snow.
”Shall we take a short break?” Sylvia inquired, her tone perfectly measured and elegant.
”Good idea,” I replied, adjusting my collar. “I’m starting to get a bit hungry.”
We settled down on a dry patch of earth nestled between the roots. Sylvia deftly kindled a fire with a quick spark of magic, and the steady crackle of the flames immediately took some of the tension out of the frigid air.
”Phew…” I sighed, leaning back against the trunk.
I raised my hand into the empty air, focusing my consciousness on my Interdimensional Space to pull out some rations. It was my own personal, top-secret storehouse – infinite capacity, zero time progression, meaning anything I put inside would stay perfectly fresh forever. In a brutal fantasy survival scenario like this, there was no ability more reliable.
But the moment I opened the tear in space to grab some dried meat, a strange sensation brushed against my fingertips.
( …Hm? What was that? )
It was supposed to be a completely inert, sterile vacuum of a storage void. Yet, for a split second, I could have sworn I heard a sound echoing from its deepest depths – a rhythmic, heavy clack-clack, clank-clank1, accompanied by the low rushing hum of displaced air.
It was a sound that had absolutely no business existing in this fantasy world.
It was the unmistakable rhythm of steel wheels grinding against iron rails. The daily soundtrack of my former life as a commuter.
”Lord Spirit King?” Sylvia asked, tilting her head slightly. “Pray tell, is something the matter?”
”No, it’s nothing,” I said, shaking my head to clear the phantom noise. “Just my imagination.”
I forcefully brushed the bizarre anomaly aside. I was probably just exhausted, experiencing some kind of auditory hallucination brought on by a sudden wave of nostalgia. My only real point of concern was that the wrapped dried meat I pulled out felt intensely cold, almost as if it had been sitting in a commercial freezer, but we were out in the dead of winter anyway. It was probably just the weather.
”Here, let’s eat,” I said, unwrapping the package. “I’ll even splurge a bit today and bring out some of that high-grade cheese we bought back in Grimm.”
”My word!” Sylvia remarked, a genuine smile gracing her lips. “I shall certainly look forward to that.”
We lightly toasted the dried meat and cheese over the campfire, enjoying a belated lunch. As I savored the rich, melted cheese, I pushed the memory of that strange sound to the back of my mind and unrolled our map to plan our continued route north.
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Our break finished, we shook off our lethargy and pushed forward once more.
After walking for a few dozen minutes, I found myself staring at Sylvia’s back, my brow furrowing as I noticed a sudden, bizarre shift in our surroundings.
”The air… it’s completely changed,” I muttered, coming to a halt.
Up until a few moments ago, we had been trekking through a subarctic coniferous forest buried under deep snow – the Middle Layer of the woods. Our breath had been freezing white, the world defined by silence and ice. But as we pressed deeper into the interior after defeating the Trolls, the heavy snowbanks vanished so completely it felt like a hallucination.
In their place, the ground was covered in a thick, damp blanket of black humus and a tangled mess of grotesque, twisting roots.
The temperature was lukewarm, the humidity suffocating. A heavy, muggy dampness clung to my skin, mimicking the atmosphere of a tropical jungle. Thankfully, my newly developed Mana Shell isolated me from the unpleasant heat, keeping me perfectly comfortable.
”Sylvia,” I called out, gesturing to the wet earth. “What happened to the snow? We haven’t dropped in elevation at all, but the climate did a complete inversion.”
Without stopping her pace, Sylvia replied smoothly over her shoulder.
”We have crossed the boundary line between the Middle Layer and the Deep Core. The region surrounding the Elf village ahead is subject to a massive underground Dragon Pulse, as well as thermal interference from the Fire Dragon Mountain far to the north. That overflowing spiritual energy and heat has warped this specific zone into the Sea of Decomposition – a forest where anomalous, hyper-dense flora thrives.”
”I see,” I replied, wiping a stray drop of condensation from my face. “So it’s basically a natural underfloor heating system operating at absolute maximum capacity.”2
The explanation made sense, but the path ahead was an absolute quagmire of thick mud. I loosened the collar of my coat slightly and invoked my wind magic.
”Yeah, floating is definitely the way to go here.”
With a gentle lift, I rose about thirty centimeters off the ground.
It was the wind spell Fly. I used to use a cruder, brute-force method of lifting myself up on a literal slab of rock, but the ride quality was terrible, so I had refined the technique. Now, I compressed the air beneath my feet to create an invisible, high-density cushion while using gentle currents from behind to provide propulsion. With this, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting bogged down in the filthy, sucking mud.
Sylvia glanced back, letting out a wry chuckle as she saw me gliding effortlessly through the air.
”You never cease to amaze me, Lord Spirit King,” Sylvia murmured softly. “Navigating the deep core of the Magic Forest with such casual elegance is utterly unprecedented.”
”Well, if there’s an easier way to do things, I see no reason not to take it,” I replied with a straight face, keeping my focus sharp.
To navigate a dense jungle with such poor visibility, I activated the detection magic I had cooked up during our scouting in the middle layers.
”Release: Magic Sonar.”
Using myself as the epicenter, I began emitting a continuous, incredibly faint pulse of mana in every direction, like a radar beacon. When the wave hit an entity possessing its own mana, it bounced back to me. Monsters always possessed mana; conversely, ordinary wildlife and normal trees had virtually none, meaning they wouldn’t trigger a return signal. In short, it allowed me to cleanly filter out and detect only active threats.
The effective range was roughly what I could see with my own eyes – about a fifty-meter radius – but inside a suffocatingly dense forest, even that small window was an absolute lifesaver.
”Right ahead, up on that thick branch,” I whispered, extending a hand to halt her. “I’ve got a reading. Something’s laying low.”
”Eh?” Sylvia gasped softly, narrowing her eyes as she peered into the thicket. “Ah, you are entirely correct. It has completely suppressed its presence, but that is undoubtedly a Needle Spider.”
Sylvia voiced her surprise. The creature was nested in a position completely obscured by heavy foliage, making it virtually impossible to spot with the naked eye.
”You possess extraordinary perception, Lord Spirit King,” Sylvia praised, turning back to me. “To pinpoint its exact location prior to visual confirmation is a magnificent feat.”
”Being able to tell the difference between a monster and a normal animal is what makes it so useful,” I said.
I flashed a quick smirk and subtly adjusted our heading slightly to the left. There was no point in picking unnecessary fights; a peaceful, uneventful journey was always the goal.
Unfortunately, I had a feeling this forest wasn’t going to let us pass through quite that easily.
—
Summary:
Trekking north through a winter terrain, the protagonist utilizes his newly developed Mana Shell to shield against the elements and heavy miasma. A brief lunch break brings an unsettling auditory anomaly from his Interdimensional Space, reminiscent of a modern Japanese train. Leaving the winter snowline behind, the duo enters the hyper-dense tropical environment of the Sea of Decomposition, where an unseen lurking entity tests their tracking capabilities.
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Trivia:
The Interdimensional Space preserves items perfectly with zero time progression.
The sudden warmth of the deep core layer is caused by an underground Dragon Pulse combined with a northern volcano.
Magic Sonar only registers creatures possessing an active mana threshold.
The dried meat pulled from the storage space felt abnormally frozen despite the ambient temperature.
—
Translation Notes:
Notes:
• Man – A roughneck wearing a hat who participated in a group assault. He suffers the loss of his right arm and later his left arm during an experiment by the protagonist before being stored.
• Sylvia – Sylvia is a beautiful, voluptuous elf with hidden pointed ears and platinum hair. A formidable Silver-rank adventurer known as “Crimson Lotus,” she is a loyal warrior and subordinate to the Spirit King, trained in the Spirit Shroud. Wielding a longsword and bow in a hooded green coat, she is straightforward yet loyal, tutoring John, working with Nier, and traveling as a servant to Ryu.
• Ben – Struan’s son and Torben’s nephew, this young man served as a callous guide at their base, assisting in the family’s slave-trading enterprise. After confessing to his role in Mia’s death, he was bound by Stone Ball magic and drowned by Ryuichi. His corpse was later stored in the Interdimensional Space as a trophy of the protagonist’s retribution.
• Grimm – Grimm, the Mansion’s master and protagonist, is a powerful sorcerer wielding divine magic who speaks all languages and braves the dangerous Forest of Magic. He shares his name with a nearby, large, walled city under his influence—a bustling, diverse settlement with a vibrant marketplace that also suffers from a legalized slave trade and severe lack of sanitation.
• Troll – A giant monster with regeneration capabilities that is defeated and incinerated.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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