The morning sunlight filtered through the windows of "The Rusty Spoon," illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. To the customers enjoying their breakfast, it was just another peaceful morning in Nairn. To Lencar, it was the calm before a very calculated storm.
He moved through the kitchen with his usual efficiency, but his mind was elsewhere. While his hands chopped onions with the speed of a master swordsman, his thoughts were focused on a map coordinates some two hundred kilometers away.
"Lencar! Marco is trying to serve the soup with a fork again!" Rebecca's voice cut through his thoughts.
Lencar sighed, putting down his knife. He walked into the dining area, gently took the fork from a defiant Marco, and handed him a ladle.
"Liquids require volume, Marco," Lencar said patiently. "Forks are for solids. Ladles are for liquids. It is simple physics."
"But the fork makes it look fancy!" Marco argued, crossing his arms.
"It makes it look like a mess," Lencar countered, ruffling the boy's hair. "Go help Luca wipe the tables."
As the lunch rush subsided, Lencar found Rebecca near the counter, tallying the receipts. She looked tired but content. The money Lencar had brought in from his "extra jobs" had allowed her to hire a supplier for better ingredients, easing her burden significantly.
"Rebecca," Lencar said, leaning against the counter.
She looked up, smiling. "Hey. Done with prep? You can take a break if you want."
"Actually," Lencar started, adjusting his sleeves. "I need to take a few days off. A courier job came up. It's a specialized delivery to a town near the border. High priority, good pay."
Rebecca's smile faltered slightly. The shadow of worry crossed her face—the same look his mother had given him. "The border? Isn't that dangerous? There are rumors about Diamond Kingdom skirmishes."
"I won't be crossing the border," Lencar reassured her, keeping his voice steady and warm. "I'm just dropping off a package at a waystation. I'll be back in two days, max. Probably before Marco manages to burn the kitchen down again."
Rebecca searched his face for a moment, then sighed. "Okay. Just... be careful, Lencar. You're part of this weird family now. We'd miss you."
"I know," Lencar said softly. "I'll be careful."
He left the restaurant an hour later. He went to his room, packed his gear—dried rations, water skins, and a few empty sacks he hoped to fill—and donned his Heretic persona: the black cloak, the wooden mask, and the heavy boots.
He walked to a secluded alleyway on the outskirts of Nairn, a place where the shadows were deep and the foot traffic nonexistent.
He pulled out the map Jareth had given him. His finger traced the route to Kiten. It was a border town, a fortress city crucial to the defense of the Clover Kingdom. Near it lay a dungeon that had recently been discovered—or was about to be discovered by the Golden Dawn in the original timeline.
"Distance: 180 kilometers," Lencar calculated. "A significant jump."
He breathed in, centering his mana. His core, now pulsing with the strength of a Mid-Stage 4 mage, felt dense and ready.
[Spatial Magic]: [Long-Range Coordinate Shift]
The world didn't just blur; it snapped.
Lencar vanished from Nairn.
He reappeared stumbling on a rocky outcrop overlooking a vast, arid plain. The air here smelled of dust and ozone. In the distance, the fortress city of Kiten rose like a stone giant against the horizon.
Lencar fell to one knee, sweat beading on his forehead. The jump had consumed nearly 40% of his mana.
"Heavy," Lencar gasped, wiping his brow. "Moving biological matter across that distance is still taxing. I need to optimize the formula."
He sat in the shadow of a boulder, assuming a meditative pose. He didn't rush. Rushing led to mistakes, and mistakes in a dungeon meant death. He used [Plant Recovery Magic] on himself, not to heal wounds, but to revitalize his fatigue, while drawing in ambient mana through his skin.
An hour later, he stood up. His reserves were back to 100%.
He pulled his hood tight. He didn't head for the city of Kiten. He headed for the ravine systems to the east, where his memory of the canon location told him the dungeon entrance lay.
He searched for another hour, flying low using [Wind Magic] to scan the terrain. The landscape was treacherous—jagged rocks and hidden drops.
Finally, he felt it.
A pulse. A deep, rhythmic thrumming of mana coming from beneath the earth. It wasn't natural mana; it was ancient, concentrated, and heavy.
Lencar landed on a ledge. Below him, obscured by overgrown thorny vines and fallen boulders, was a massive stone archway carved into the cliff face. It was sealed shut, no handle, no keyhole. Just runes glowing with a faint, dying light.
"The Front Door," Lencar murmured. "Usually, Asta breaks this, or Yuno blasts it."
Lencar walked up to the sealed stone. He placed his hand on the cold surface. He could feel the spatial thickness of the wall. It was meant to keep intruders out physically.
But Lencar didn't deal in physics anymore. He dealt in coordinates.
He visualized the space behind the door. Three meters deep.
[Spatial Magic]: [Short Jump]
POP.
The world went dark for a microsecond, and then Lencar was standing on the other side.
He was inside.
The air was stale, cold, and heavy with mana that tasted like iron. The only light came from glowing moss on the high ceiling.
CLICK.
Lencar's boot had barely touched the stone floor when the sound echoed. A pressure plate.
"Trap," his mind registered instantly.
From the darkness ahead, a glowing green circle appeared in the air.
[Wind Magic Trap]: [Thousand Needle Barrage]
A swarm of translucent wind arrows, sharp enough to pierce plate armor, erupted from the gloom, screaming toward him.
Lencar didn't panic. His reaction time, honed by fighting Bronto and the bandits, was instantaneous.
He didn't dodge. He countered.
He raised his right hand, palm open.
[Fire Magic] [Defense]: [Wall of the Crimson Lion]
A roaring wall of fire erupted in front of him.
HISS-CRACK!
The wind arrows slammed into the fire. The heat destabilized the compressed air of the arrows, causing them to detonate prematurely. A shockwave of hot air blew Lencar's cloak back, but not a single arrow touched him.
The fire died down, illuminating a long, winding corridor stretching into the abyss.
"Welcome to the dungeon," Lencar whispered to himself, a thrill of excitement running through his veins.
He stepped forward, checking for more traps. The path forked ahead. Left, right, and a staircase going down.
Lencar stopped.
"This place is a labyrinth," he realized. "If I wander blindly, I'll waste hours. I might miss the treasury. Or worse, I might run into a guardian golem I don't need to fight."
He needed a map.
He closed his eyes and thought back to the anime. Mimosa Vermillion. She had used a spell—[Magic Flower Guidepost]—to create a 3D holographic map of the dungeon.
Lencar possessed [Plant Magic] (harvested from Jinto of the Red Clay Bandits). He possessed [Earth Magic] (from Boran). And he had his own [Mana Sensing].
"I can do this," Lencar decided. "I can reverse-engineer her spell."
He sat down on the cold floor. He opened his grimoire.
He began to weave the mana. He visualized the roots of a plant not seeking water, but seeking mana density. He visualized the dungeon as a pot of soil, and his magic as the root system spreading rapidly through the stone.
Attempt 1: The vines withered instantly. Too little mana.
Attempt 2: The map formed but was blurry, just green noise.
Attempt 3: He added [Earth Magic] to ground the sensory input.
An hour passed. Lencar sat motionless, sweat dripping down his nose. Spell creation was mentally exhausting. It required visualizing complex arithmetic and biological structures simultaneously.
Finally, a glowing green bud sprouted from his grimoire. It grew rapidly, forming a complex flower that hovered in the air. The petals opened, and a hologram made of light and pollen projected upward.
[Plant Creation Magic]: [Verdant Echo Map]
It worked.
A wireframe model of the dungeon floated before him. He saw the twisting corridors, the dead ends, the trap rooms.
And deep in the center, near the bottom, he saw a massive room glowing with an intense, blinding light on his mana-map.
"The Treasury," Lencar smiled, his eyes reflecting the green glow. "Found you."
He studied the route. It was a straight shot if he could fly.
He stood up, dispelling the map but keeping the route burned into his memory.
[Wind Magic] [Flight]: [Sylph's Glide]
Green wind wrapped around his boots. Lencar lifted off the ground, hovering a foot in the air.
"Time to get paid," he said.
He shot forward, flying down the corridor, heading straight for the heart of the dungeon.