Normally it had only dripped in places away from the path, where it wouldn’t be an obstacle to their advance, so Hajime hadn’t paid too much attention to it. However, at one point he’d used his Ore Perception skill near where a section of river was dripping and he discovered that it was stillstone that was causing such unnatural behavior. The magma was being propelled through the air with mana, and the stillstone neutralized that mana whenever the river got too close to a deposit of it. That was what was causing it to act erratically.
Of course, it then stood to reason that places where the river was dripping was where there were large quantities of stillstone. Upon investigation of those locations, Hajime found out his idea was right on the money. Thanks to this new discovery, the party was able to quickly collect enough stillstone. In order to get a little more so they’d have enough to spare, Hajime and the others headed to where they assumed another deposit was.
They’d seen the river giving this section of wall a wide berth, so Hajime figured it contained stillstone. He had transmuted a makeshift staircase toward that section of wall and his Ore Perception had found that there actually was a large quantity of stillstone in the wall.
Hajime quickly used his Ore Desynthesis to take the stillstone out of the wall. However, the constant heat, and the routine way in which previous extractions had gone, caused him to drop his guard. He hadn’t been paying attention to what was inside the wall.
It was only after he’d put the harvested stillstone into his Treasure Trove that he realized his mistake. Without the stillstone to stop it, a huge fountain of magma burst through the wall.
He’d instantly jumped out of the way, but there had been a lot of magma dammed up on the other side. More and more started bursting through the walls, flooding the area.
Surrounded by magma on all sides, Hajime and the others had acted fast. Yue had erected a barrier to protect them temporarily, while Hajime fashioned a boat for them to all ride the flood in. The magma’s extreme heat burned through the boat at a fast rate, but Hajime used Diamond Skin’s derivative skill, Diamond Protection, to strengthen the rock. With that, the boat was able to ride the magma without melting.
The flood of magma joined up with the magma river, and soon the party was taking the express route down to the volcano’s center. After braving a few magma rapids, Hajime and the others arrived at the section of the river they were traversing now.
On a side note, when Hajime and the others had first started riding the magma, the boat had threatened to sink, so Shea had used her gravity spell, Fluctuator, to make it float. Fluctuator let Shea regulate the gravity of anything she touched, much like she did with her own weight.
“Ah, Hajime-san. Look, it’s another tunnel.”
“By my calculations, we should be nearing the volcano’s base. It’s likely we’ll find something on the other side.”
Hajime looked over in the direction Shea was pointing and saw a massive hole in the wall, which had the magma river running through it. The magma doubled as illumination, so everyone could see that the tunnel was angled downward. So far every time they’d gone through a tunnel they’d found themselves one floor lower. One good thing about riding the magma river was that it was much faster than descending normally.
The party nodded grimly to each other as the current carried them through the tunnel. On the other side they found their floating magma river snaking its way down the center of a massive cavern. The magma’s flow continued to slow as they descended, until finally it stopped at a curved section... where it suddenly turned into a magma waterfall.
“Not this again... Everyone, hang on tight!” The girls nodded and hung on to the edges of the boat, or to Hajime. Hajime’s stomach churned. It was just like riding a water coaster, except the water here was fatal. Finally, they reached the end of their slow descent and plunged down the falls.
The wind roared in their ears as they fell. Shea’s gravity magic and Tio’s wind magic kept stray splashes of magma from pelting the party. They found themselves accelerating at a breakneck pace, even though magma was supposed to be viscous.
Hajime transmuted the bottom of his shoes into spikes to hold him in place as he examined his surroundings. He didn’t want to be caught off guard by anything. Knowing the Liberators, this was the point where they set up an ambush.
“Tch, I knew it.” Hajime clicked his tongue, pulled out Donner, then quickly took aim and fired. There were three loud bangs, and three streaks of red light shot out from Donner’s barrel. A flock of magma bats had swooped down to attack them.
On their own, the bats weren’t much of a threat. They could fly pretty fast and fire magma fireballs, but that was about it. For Hajime and the others, they were basically small fry.
In a group, though, they became somewhat more of a threat. Where there was one, there was sure to be more. They swarmed out of the walls like cockroaches, dozens of them appearing from every crack and crevice.
Hajime had shot down three of them, but he heard many more flapping toward them. There was enough of them that the sound of their wings drowned out the roaring of the wind.
“Hajime, leave the left and the back to me.”
“You got it. Shea, Tio, make sure our boat doesn’t fall apart.”
“Roger!”
“Leave it to me. May I ask for a spanking as a reward?”
Hajime couldn’t figure out if Tio was being serious or joking, so he ignored her. Yue and Hajime stood back to back, angled diagonally from the sides of the boat. As always, they were in perfect sync.
The flock of magma bats bore down on the party in a single coordinated rush. They were so close to each other that they looked like one giant flaming dragon. Their burning red wings melded into each other seamlessly.
As they approached, the bats split into two groups. One attacked from the front, while the other circled behind them. Weak as they were individually, when they came en masse like this they made for a formidable foe. Most people wouldn’t have enough ammunition to take them all down even.
Unfortunately for the bats, they were facing one of the most overpowered parties in existence. They’d fought a far larger group of monsters back in Ur.
“Fight numbers with numbers. Eat lead, you flaming freaks.” Hajime pulled his gatling gun, Metzelei, out of his Treasure Trove. Then, he braced it against his hip, took aim, and pulled the trigger.
The distinctive ratatatata of machine gun fire echoed throughout the cavern as Hajime mowed down the magma bats. The deadly hail of gunfire pierced through even the waves of monsters furthest back. Metzelei fired with such force that the wall behind the bats was riddled with holes.
However, there were more magma bats than even Metzelei could handle, so Hajime pulled out Orkan with his free hand and started firing rockets into the bunched up group of monsters as well. The rockets left a trail of sparks as they struck clumps of magma bats, blowing dozens of them into smithereens.
The bats never stood a chance. A torrent of bat chunks fell to the ground. Hajime had quite literally made it rain blood.
The magma bats behind him suffered a similar fate at Yue’s hands.
“Storm Serpent.” A giant green globe of wind appeared in front of Yue’s outstretched hand. The globe elongated and sprouted wings, transforming into a dragon. The dragon eyed its prey for a moment before opening its maw wide and charging forward.
The bats split up into smaller groups, trying to avoid the deadly storm dragon. They pelted it with fireballs as they flapped out of the way. However, Yue’s dragon was composed of gravity magic. It couldn’t be hurt by fire. Wind blades swirled around inside the dragon, trapped there by Yue’s gravity magic. Once it had set its sights on something, it wouldn’t let it escape.
Like with Yue’s Draconic Thunder and Sapphire Serpent, Storm Serpent exerted a gravitational field that drew enemies to it. The magma bats were sucked into the dragon, where the wind blades ripped them to shreds. Yue had chosen a wind dragon this time because the
bats were resistant to heat, and ripping their wings off with wind seemed the most efficient way of dealing with them.
Once the dragon had swallowed up most of the bats it flew to the center of the room and burst apart. The trapped wind blades flew out in all directions, cutting down the few bats lucky enough to avoid being sucked in.
“No matter how many times I see it, Yue and Master’s ability to annihilate hordes of enemies never ceases to amaze me.”
“Yeah, they’re amazing.”
Tio and Shea exchanged a glance as they continued to steer and fortify the boat. Hajime put Metzelei and Orkan back into his Treasure Trove, patted Yue, who was puffing her chest out proudly, on the head, then turned to see what lay ahead of them. Meanwhile, Yue once again started keeping watch.
Tio and Shea were pouting, angry that Hajime had taken yet another chance to flirt with Yue while ignoring the two of them. Feeling a little guilty, Hajime sheepishly scratched Shea’s bunny ears and pinched Tio’s cheek.
It seemed rather odd to Hajime that such simple acts were enough to pacify the two of them.
Hajime and the others had little difficulty dispatching the monsters that tried to attack them as they made their way down the magma rapids. After a few minutes, though, something changed. The magma river began angling upward instead of down.
After climbing for a few dozen meters, the party could make out a light in the distance. It was the cavern’s exit. Unfortunately, the river came to a dead halt right before it.
“Hang on, guys!” Everyone once again clung to the edges of the boat. They fell down their steepest drop yet as their boat rushed toward the cavern exit.
Their descent was so fast that Hajime felt weightless for a few seconds. However, he quickly reoriented himself and examined his surroundings. The room they’d found themselves in was even vaster than the floating arena they’d fought Miledi in.
But unlike that arena, this room wasn’t spherical. It seemed to follow the natural contours of the rock, making it difficult to grasp the exact size of the space. The floor was covered in magma, with a few boulders jutting out here and there to provide footholds.
The walls also had protrusions large enough to stand on, and in other places the wall had sunken in to form alcoves. Numerous magma rivers crisscrossed each other in the sky, each of them spilling into the sea of magma below.
Fountains of magma occasionally spewed from below. If there was a cauldron in hell, chances are it was based off of this. Hajime and the others exclaimed softly in wonder.
Still, what was even more amazing than this marvel of nature was the island sitting in the center of the room. It was made from the same rock as everything else, and rose a good ten meters above the boiling magma. That alone didn’t make it anything special. What was special about it was the fact that there was a giant dome of magma on it. From afar, it looked like the island housed a mini-sun. It certainly wasn’t a sight one saw every day.
“Updraft!” The fall had tossed the boat nearly upside-down, so Tio righted it with her magic. Once it was in place, Hajime and the others leaped through the air back onto the boat. Then, Yue adjusted the boat’s speed with her own Updraft.
As they floated across the magma sea, Hajime and the others warily examined their surroundings.
“Is that where this labyrinth’s Liberator lived?” Yue pointed to the island with the magma dome.
“Considering how far we’ve descended, it seems likely. But then that also means...”
“This is where we will have to face the guardian of this place?”
Tio finished Hajime’s sentence, her eyes scanning the room like a hawk. Sometimes Hajime almost forgot that she was a hopeless pervert. Shea didn’t let her guard down either, but she tried to take a more optimistic view of their situation.
“Maybe we skipped past it because we took a shortcut here?”
Hajime turned to where Shea was looking and saw a staircase that ended at one of the raised platforms above the magma sea. Chances were that was where they would have come out had they taken the normal way down.
As unthinkable as it might have been for the labyrinth’s designer that anyone would try and ride the magma rivers, Hajime doubted they would have been careless enough to let anyone skip the final guardian. Even Shea didn’t really believe they’d somehow slipped past it.
Unfortunately, Shea was right to be skeptical. Without warning, bullets of magma shot out of the sea, heading straight for the boat.
“Hmph, let me handle this!” Tio summoned her own balls of magma from the sea and fired them at the oncoming bullets, neutralizing them.
However, that first attack had just been an opening volley. As the shattered magma bullets dropped to the ground, another salvo came at them. This time they came not just from the sea, but also from the rivers above.
“Tch, everyone scatter!” If they stayed on their boat they’d be burned to ashes in no time. Hajime and the others leaped off the boat and onto nearby boulders. A second later, their boat was bombarded with magma, and sunk into the fiery ocean.
As the party landed on their respective footholds, they began beating back the barrage of magma balls. While the waves of bullets weren’t so numerous that they couldn’t handle them, Hajime and the others soon began to grow irritated at the endless hail of magma. Part of the reason for their irritation was the heat. The sky had grown so thick with magma that it had begun to blur.
Hajime knew he needed to do something fast. He finished reloading his revolvers and, without turning around, aimed Schlag behind him. He fired a buckshot from his artificial elbow to clear the bullets closest to him, while also shooting down the ones that had been closing in on Yue behind him.
Yue realized what Hajime wanted her to do without him having to say anything. She used the reprieve he’d granted her to cast one of her gravity spells.
“Spatial Severance.” A black sphere materialized at a spot directly in between where the four of them were standing. It then began sucking in all of the magma balls the room was shooting out. Once inside the sphere, the magma was crushed by the immense pressure.
Now that he no longer had to worry about fending off magma bullets, Hajime was free to move. He leaped through the air with Aerodynamic, heading for the central island.
The most dangerous thing about this endless barrage was that they could see no obvious way to halt it. This was obviously the final trial of the Grand Gruen Volcano, but unlike the other labyrinths Hajime had conquered, there was no actual guardian to defeat. Because of that, he had no idea what they needed to do to clear this one. Their only clue was the strange island in the center.
As he sped toward the island, Hajime spoke to the others via Telepathy.
“I’m going to investigate the central island. Cover me.”
“Mmm... Okay.”
As Hajime left the effective range of Yue’s Spatial Severance, magma bullets started heading toward him again. Yue shot them all down with her own magma balls, maintaining her Spatial Severance all the while.
Tio backed her up, supplementing Yue’s magma balls with a few of her own. Shea helped as well, shooting down the bullets with Drucken’s shotgun mode.
With everyone’s help, Hajime was able to progress quickly. However, just before he could make the final leap onto the central island, he was interrupted.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Ah!?”
A bestial roar shook him to the very core. A second later, a giant magma serpent flew out of the sea, its jaws open wide.
Because of how hot their surroundings were, Hajime’s Heat Perception hadn’t been able to sense it at all. And because the entire magma sea was filled with mana, his Mana Perception skill hadn’t been able to sense it either. For the first time since leaving Orcus’ labyrinth, he’d been caught truly by surprise.
Hajime reacted with superhuman reflexes. He twisted to the side and just barely managed to dodge the serpent’s jaws. It flew past him, its mouth closing over the
spot he’d just been in.
Hajime used Aerodynamic to flip himself around in the air and fired at the serpent as it passed. His bullets sped toward the serpent’s head, each one finding its mark.
“What the!?” Hajime yelled out in surprise. The serpent should have died, but it hadn’t.
Hajime’s bullets had passed straight through the serpent’s head, dislodging a bit of magma as they’d done so. The thing was hollow. All of the other monsters Hajime had faced so far in the volcano had possessed physical bodies underneath their coating of lava. This was the first time he was facing a creature created purely from magma.
He quickly recovered from his surprise, and tried shooting at other sections of the serpent just in case. Unfortunately, the rest of its body was hollow as well. As he’d feared, the whole thing was made only of magma.
“Man, what a pain. I don’t have time to be dealing with you.”
Hajime fired enough bullets through the serpent so that it could no longer maintain its shape. Once it was rendered impotent, he slipped past it and once again sped off toward the central island.
Still, the serpent wasn’t done with Hajime yet. Though the magma comprising its head and much of its body had been shot away, it could still move. It lurched toward Hajime, trying to tackle him.
Hajime used the recoil of his elbow shotgun to push himself out of the way. Just then, chills ran down his spine. Trusting in his instincts, Hajime fired a second and third shotgun blast, pushing him even further backward. He augmented that with an Aerodynamic-powered leap, trying to gain as much distance as possible.
Not even a second later, multiple magma serpents shot out of the sea below, each of them chomping down where he’d been nanoseconds before.
Hajime beat a hasty retreat and landed on a nearby platform. Yue alighted next to him. The storm of magma bullets had stopped once the serpents had shown up.
“Are you alright, Hajime?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Looks like this is gonna be the real test.”
Yue placed a hand on Hajime’s arm. He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, but he did put his own hand on top of hers. More and more magma serpents popped up.
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 5 Page 7