The Girl Who Hacked The Magic System

"My dear Lovelace, did that demon hit you in the head or something? The way down is right here."

Chuckling, I take Yaci's comb from my pocket and open the portal.

"Oh. Right. I'm still not fully used to the concept of spatial magic. When I think of going somewhere, my first assumption is still to go the old-fashioned way."

"Hehe. Let's go."

:::

"YACI!!!!"

"Calm down, Aurea. Let me check her first. I think I can heal that. See if Ingela is okay."

"R-right..."

The mana in this place is a bit less nauseating than above, though there's one door from which a dense miasma is coming that revolts my stomach.

But what weirdens me most is the way the fabric of space is torn and twisted. Did Ingela use spatial magic in combat here? If so, she's even more of a genius than I assumed.

The fact that she is naked is a bit disturbing, given the environment and circumstance she's in, but she doesn't seem injured or anything, and she's sleeping peacefully.

"Ingela... good morning, sleepyhead."

"Oh... huh? Aurea? What are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you both, obviously. What the hell are you doing sleeping naked here is what I ask."

"Oh, I'm sorry... I used too much mana in the fight against the vampire. And my clothes burned in the process."

"And what happened to Yaci?"

"Oh! Yaci!!! Is she alright? Can Lovelace heal her?"

"She'll be good, I think. Lovelace's healing powers are the greatest I've ever seen."

"I healed her already. She'll wake up soon."

"Ohh... thanks, Lovelace! Thank you!!!"

Why is Ingela crying all of a sudden?

"Lovelace, you should rest a bit. I just fed you, and you've already spent that much mana again. We'll wait for Yaci to wake up before heading back. Use the time to recover."

Damn, I'm so curious about what happened here for things to end up this way. And about this place as well.

We're very far below the surface, from what I can tell, and this place looks just like a dungeon. Did the vampire build all this?

And what the hell is that magical miasma coming from that door?

Ingela must've seen my expression as I looked to the door, because she explained it to me.

"That door leads to what seems to have been the vampire's throne room. There were several undead guards in that hall, as well as the surrounding areas. They swarmed Yaci and me in there as soon as we fell there."

"As you fell there?"

"Yes. We were with Lovelace when the demon was summoned, but then a hole opened up below the two of us, and it led us straight to that throne room."

"So inside that place there is a concentration of destroyed undead?"

"Yes."

"Hm..."

I never found any mention of necromancy spells in all the books I've read, except for stuff like fairy tales and similar things. Yet, undead monsters are known to spawn in dungeons.

And this is not a dungeon, nor are there spawners or any of the other dungeon mechanisms.

"I'll take a look."

"Huh?"

"Stay here with Lovelace. I'll be back soon."

:::

This place is fetid. It's a true assault on the senses.

And I'm not even talking about the fact that there is defunct flesh in a closed-off space with no ventilation. I'm talking strictly about the magical senses here.

I remember seeing the magical body of the vampire as something similar to a very ill liver. This whole place is like that. Ill.

Some of the bodies still have pieces of clothing on them. They are clearly Wesgothian, and the aging of the bodies has a range from some that look like they have been recently deceased to some that look like they were buried before I was born.

The monsters spawned in dungeons are cookie-cutter. They are mass-produced, like clones of an original specimen. It's part of how monsters in this world work.

This wide range of body ages and decomposition states makes me think that all these undead were created. Which means that necromancy magic is a thing.

And all of them were created by one vampire who escaped a dungeon and nested inside a city...

If that vampire was also a cookie-cutter copy of an original specimen, I wonder where the original specimen is. Because that being could pose a huge threat to everyone.

If his clone made all this in five years, I wonder what the original could've done in more than a thousand years, if he already existed back when the system and the dungeons were created.

In any case, that brings me to the question...

Why was the vampire targeting the king? I don't think that the Church was collaborating with... this. They are corrupt little fanatics, but the fanatic side of them would block them from siding with this.

"Aurea... Yaci has woken up."

"Great!"

I run back to the chamber where I left them and hug Yaci as tightly as I can.

"Yaciiiiii!!!"

"It's okay... I'm okay now, Aurea..."

"You two... what happened that you decided to come here all by yourselves? Why did you exclude me from this?"

"I'm sorry... we wanted you to rest properly. So we decided to leave you sleeping."

"Yaci is right, Aurea. You've been pushing yourself too much lately. We couldn't just let you run yourself to the ground like that. We were already discussing it when the news came about the vampire."

"Okay... we might discuss that later. But this is the kind of emergency you should call me for. I don't know yet exactly what happened, but I can tell that this was a close call. Am I wrong?"

"To be honest, I didn't expect a vampire hunt to come out like this, with a whole cult nesting below the city and the summoning of a demon. I thought we would just kill Martius and be done with it."

"What Lovelace said. I also thought it was just a matter of fighting the vampire, and he wasn't that strong by himself. Ingela killed him by herself and completely overpowered him."

"Overpowered him? So you fainted because..."

"I'm sorry; when I saw Yaci hurt like that, I lost my cool, and then I went overboard. I would probably have been able to kill him using a lot less mana if I had just cut his head off and burned it."

"Instead, you made a spatial playground of this chamber to torment him... I see..."

"Huh? You can tell?"

"Yeah. I've never used spatial magic on that scale, so I never noticed it before. But take a look at the fabric of space here, the way it's torn and twisted."

Ingela takes some moments to look around her, as understanding slowly comes to her.

"I see... yeah, I definitely went unnecessarily overboard with him."

"You three will have plenty of time to write a detailed report later. Let's head back and then send some teams to clean this place. It might prove useful for us. And I hope that we might find some documents that will shed some light on the dealings between Martius and the Church."

"Okay!"

"Right."

"Yes, Let's head back."