Chapter 9
It was a crystal shard, no bigger than her thumb, clear as glass but veined with shimmering blue light.
“A waystone,” he said. “Attune it to your mana. If you are dying, crush it. It will return you here – once.”
Miss Aiko stared at the waystone, then at him.
“That’s incredibly advanced magic,” she said slowly. “And extremely valuable.”
“We are not sending you to your death without at least pretending to be responsible,” Seryn replied, his tone as dry as snowdrift. “Besides, if you die, who will correct the errors in our history codices?”
A laugh escaped her, sharp and surprised.
“Your prioritisation is flattering,” she said.
He inclined his head.
“You will go whether I forbid it or not,” he said. “So I will not waste breath forbidding it. But I will give you this, and a word of advice.”
She picked up the waystone. It was icy against her skin for a heartbeat, then cooled to a comfortable chill as her mana seeped into it.
“I am listening.”
“When you reach the southern lands, do not announce that you are seeking dungeons,” Seryn said. “Humans are greedy. Guilds are worse. If they learn you are connected to a labyrinth, they will use you – as a key, a hostage, or a guide.”
Miss Aiko’s jaw tightened.
“Then I won’t tell them,” she said. “I’ll let them think I’m just another wandering scholar.”
“That will work for a time,” he agreed. “But be careful. The Labyrinth of Yuuno is already whispered about in adventurer circles. Its master has a reputation.”
Her heart skipped.
“What kind of reputation?” she asked.
Seryn shrugged lightly.
“Efficient. Bloodthirsty. Clever,” he said. “Some call it a tourist trap for suicidally ambitious heroes. Others call it a proving ground. There are rumours it evolves too quickly, that its floors shift, that its monsters learn.”
Yuuno, she thought, a mix of exasperation and reluctant pride welling up.
“That sounds like him,” she muttered.
Seryn tilted his head.
“You know this dungeon master?”
“I know the boy he used to be,” she replied. “That’s enough.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
He studied her face one last time, then inclined his head in a formal farewell.
“Then go, Miss Aiko of another world,” he said. “Find your lost children. Try not to die. And if you do die… make sure it is interesting enough that someone writes it down.”
Her lips quirked.
“I’ll aim for survival instead,” she said.
He left without another word, closing the door softly behind him.
The room felt even smaller now – but no longer like a cage. More like a cocoon she was finally ready to break out of.
Miss Aiko slung the satchel over her shoulder. The weight of the books, the waystone, and the few precious supplies settled against her hip. She took one last look around the study: the tidy shelves, the carefully stacked scrolls, the window where she had spent so many hours tracing constellations in alien skies.
Then she turned away and stepped out into the corridor.
The settlement was quieter than usual as she made her way to the outer gate. Most ice elves were already inside their homes, huddled around hearth‑stones that glowed with soft blue fire.
A few glanced up as she passed.
Some nodded, a silent wish of good fortune. Others simply watched with blank, assessing eyes. Outsider or not, she had become part of the settlement’s rhythm. Her absence would leave a small, teacher‑shaped gap.
At the gate, two young guards straightened.
“Lady Aiko,” one began.
“Miss,” she corrected automatically.
He blinked.
“Miss Aiko,” he amended. “The storm front is moving in from the east. If you wait until morning—”
“I’ve lived through worse staff meetings,” she said.
Both guards looked baffled.
“Open the gate, please,” she added more gently. “If I don’t go now, I’ll find a reason not to go at all.”
They exchanged a glance.
Then, wordlessly, they turned the great ice‑carved wheel. The massive gate – a slab of reinforced frost‑stone etched with wards – rumbled upward, letting in a blast of freezing wind and a swirl of snow.
Miss Aiko stepped out onto the tundra.
The world beyond the settlement was a different kind of silence: vast, empty, alive with the distant groan of shifting ice. The sky stretched overhead in a smear of purple and blue, stars already pricking through the fading light. The air burned in her lungs, sharp and clean.
She pulled her cloak tighter, adjusted the strap of her satchel, and set one booted foot in front of the other.
Each step left a crisp print in the snow. Behind her, the settlement shrank with every pace – blue lights dimming, the murmur of voices fading into the wind’s endless song.
Ahead, the tundra rolled on toward the dark line of the frost‑rim forest and, beyond that, the human lands where adventurers talked about dungeons over cheap ale and where guild boards pinned up flyers bearing names that did not belong to this world.
Somewhere in that chaos, there was a dungeon called the Labyrinth of Yuuno.
Somewhere, a nervous boy who had once flinched at roll call now commanded wyverns and liches.
Somewhere, twenty‑two other souls from a dusty classroom – loud, quiet, cruel, kind, everything in between – were learning how to survive a world that thought they were just more pieces on a board.
Miss Aiko lifted her chin, eyes narrowing against the wind.
“I’m coming,” she said, the words ripped away by the gale but solid as stone inside her. “Yuuno. Mai. Okama. Everyone. Just stay alive until I get there.”
Ice mana curled around her boots, hardening the snow beneath her into a narrow, glimmering path that cut straight through drifts and hidden crevasses. The cold that would have killed an ordinary human only made her stronger, clearer, more focused.
Behind her, the gate closed with a heavy, echoing thud.
Ahead, the first flakes of the storm began to fall.
Miss Aiko walked on, alone, into the white.
Her journey to find her class had finally begun.
(- Individual [[Suki Aiko]] obtained the greater SKILL [[Holder of Knowledge]] -)