"Wait, where is this?"
Luo Ge looked around and soon noticed something strange. Although this place looked similar to the previous room...
Its layout was completely different.
If the previous room had been a workspace for research, this was a living space.
There was a bed, a table and chairs, and even several long-dead potted plants in the corner. Faded tapestries hung on the walls...
Judging by these details, the owner, the Demon Dragon King... must have been a very particular, respectable person.
Fortunately, there was a door he could leave through.
Without lingering, Luo Ge pushed open the room's only door. Before him stretched a long staircase, flight after flight leading upward.
Darkness.
He could not see its end...
Bold yet meticulous, Luo Ge walked some distance before suddenly discovering what appeared to be a locked iron door along the corridor.
"Should I open it?"
He did not hesitate.
Luo Ge walked up and kicked it open, simple and brutal. Fortunately, there were no dangerous monsters behind it.
Only the remains of many dead monsters.
Skeletons littered the floor. Judging by their size and shape, they all belonged to Red Dragons.
So many Red Dragons had died here together?
What grew more terrifying the more he thought about it was this.
Luo Ge discovered... there were no obvious signs of battle damage on those Red Dragon skeletons. In other words, they had not been killed by someone, but seemed to have been instantly refined away by something without anyone noticing.
"Looks like this place is dangerous."
Luo Ge narrowed his eyes, increasingly certain that there was more to this place than met the eye. At the very least, it was definitely more than a mere underground laboratory.
After leaving through that iron door...
Luo Ge returned to the stairs in the original corridor. From then on... he became even more cautious.
Every so often, he left his own distinctive mark on the walls bearing ancient dragon murals, afraid of losing his way in this intricate terrain.
After several hours of winding around, turning left and right, and checking repeatedly, Luo Ge roughly figured out the structure of the place.
Once he finished scratching the outline of a simple map into the ground, his brows furrowed.
The structure here... how should he put it?
It was like a massive underground labyrinth.
First, the place where Luo Ge had woken up was the lowest level, a safe zone where Demon Dragon King Laplace had lived and conducted experiments.
If he continued upward, however, every level above was occupied by numerous ferocious monsters.
Although Luo Ge felt he probably would not have much trouble dealing with the monsters...
Out of caution, he did not rashly continue exploring upward. Instead, he remained on the labyrinth's lowest level, searching for a way out.
This would do for now.
If he truly could not find another escape route, he would have no choice but to grit his teeth and force his way through the upper levels.
After more wandering...
He arrived before the last unopened iron door and muttered to himself, "Anyway, it all comes down to this last try."
He took a deep breath, then slowly pushed open the last iron door here.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh...
In an instant, a fierce blast of cold air struck him. The wind cut across his face like knives, carrying the chill of ice and snow.
The world beyond the door was white... but there was light.
After so long in darkness, Luo Ge narrowed his eyes in discomfort. It took quite a while before he could make out everything before him.
Everything was clad in silver, blanketed in snow.
Not far away, ranges of great snowy mountains stretched into the distance. The blizzard glinted dazzlingly in the sunlight, extending all the way to the horizon.
Farther away, flocks of Red Dragons flew through the sky.
There was no doubt. This was the Red Dragon Mountains.
"Hahaha, finally... I'm out!"
The corners of Luo Ge's mouth rose, and at last, a smile he had not shown in a long time appeared.
He had known that the laboratory's owner, Demon Dragon King Laplace, was a meticulous person.
A cunning hare had three burrows. He would never have left himself trapped in his own laboratory.
This was the exit of a secret passage.
The first time, his gamble had won him his life. The second time, it had won him his freedom.
At that moment...
The morning sun happened to rise over the horizon.
Golden light spilled over Luo Ge's cheeks, as though bearing witness to his rebirth.
However... Luo Ge did not rush straight outside in his excitement.
Because he had already noticed.
This exit was set into a sheer cliff face, a marvel of natural craftsmanship. Beneath his feet lay an abyss ten thousand fathoms deep.
Had someone less cautious excitedly rushed straight out upon seeing the exit, they would most likely have fallen and been smashed to pieces.
Fortunately, he was cautious enough and always liked to take an extra precaution.
Just as Luo Ge was considering... how he should climb away from this steep cliff...
Meanwhile...
At the Greyrat home in Buena Village.
That day had come around again: the death anniversary of their second son, Luo Ge. Every family member wore a solemn expression.
Last year, they had still been a family of three.
But after Paul outdid himself, the family had now doubled into a household of six. They stood neatly in a row.
Paul stood beside Rudeus, while Zenith and Lilia stood on the other side, each holding a newborn baby.
Because they had failed to recover an intact body, the grave contained only half of Luo Ge's arm.
The Greyrat family, Luo Ge's grave.
The gravestone bore the name Rog Greyrat, his age at death, and so on... A black-and-white picture by Rudeus had also been placed right in the center.
...Rudeus had thoughtfully drawn it, stroke by stroke.
There were also some offerings, all pufferfish, Luo Ge's favorite food when he was alive.
Besides that, Rudeus had specially given everyone in the family a Luo Ge doll as a keepsake.
A doll modeled on Luo Ge, perfectly reproducing his appearance.
It looked lifelike, as though it had come alive, gripping a sword tightly while standing in an extremely embarrassing, chuunibyou pose.
Figurines like these...
Rudeus had secretly made many more.
With the blazing sun overhead, not one person complained of being tired. Everyone silently mourned Luo Ge's death.
Even though Luo Ge had already been dead for several years...
He remained an important member of this family.
Luo Ge's death had always been a wound that would not heal in this family's hearts... in Paul's, Zenith's, and even Rudeus's.
Especially Rudeus. The incident had dealt him an enormous blow, and he had nearly fallen into despair again.
Both were reincarnators, giving him the sense of a fox mourning a rabbit's death.
The sudden tragic news had also instilled in Rudeus a deep fear of the Dragon God he had never met.
If I encountered the Dragon God... would I be killed too?
Rudeus had thought this more than once beneath his covers. Every time the thought occurred to him, his body trembled uncontrollably, and he lay sleepless all night.
While Paul's family burned incense and paid their respects...
In the Shirone Kingdom, thousands of miles away, Roxy had become a Water King Rank magician as she had hoped after clearing a labyrinth alone, and had officially been hired as tutor to the seventh prince of Shirone.
For that reason, not long before... she had specially written to Paul's family in Buena Village.
Receiving a reply recently should actually have been a happy occasion.
But after receiving and reading the reply, Roxy was not particularly happy. Her face was troubled.
Because in the reply her pupil Rudeus had sent her, aside from expressing his concern and gratitude, one piece of news was impossible for Roxy to accept.
Luo Ge was dead...
That genius pupil, who in his eyes had been capable of anything and even more outstanding than Rudeus, had actually died.
"Just like that... you died. That isn't like you at all."
Roxy stood alone outside the window, gazing into the distance... at the azure sky, lost in thought.
Luo Ge's untimely death was something Roxy had never imagined. Had Rudeus not fully explained what had happened in his letter...
In the Red Dragon Mountains, Luo Ge had been attacked by the Dragon God, ranked second among the Seven Great Powers.
Roxy would never have dared believe it.
That once-brilliant swordsmanship prodigy had fallen... and had died so quietly in the Red Dragon Mountains, at that.
She had thought Luo Ge would reach heights beyond her imagination. Even if he died, perhaps his end would be a hero's tragic finale, commemorated by future generations.
In her eyes, that pupil of hers was just that remarkable, someone destined to become a hero.
Yet the unexpected had struck so suddenly.
It left Roxy utterly stunned.
He was dead. Roxy was equally heartbroken over Luo Ge's death, and had even spent a long time tormented by regret over it.
If only... I hadn't left without saying goodbye that day.
Or if I had stayed and stopped him, taught him to hold this world in awe and not always treat his own life as a game.
Could the tragedy have been prevented?
If...
So many ifs...
But it was all too late.
That outstanding pupil had already left this world forever. She would never see him again.