CHAPTER 14 — “Magma and Memory”
I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean it in the very literal sense that every single thing about this environment—the architecture, the ambiance, the ambient temperature that’s currently trying to cook me inside my own skin—has been specifically designed to murder anyone stupid enough to enter.
The Lava Halls, the System calls it. Real creative naming there. Really stretching the descriptive muscles.
Everything is lava. The walls glow with it, veins of molten rock pulsing through black stone like the dungeon has a circulatory system and its blood runs hot.
The floor has channels of the stuff, lazy rivers of liquid fire that seem almost peaceful until you realize one wrong step means losing a foot.
The air tastes like someone set fire to a sulfur mine, buried it in brimstone, and then asked what if we made this worse?
I’m sweating through my robes, which is a dignity I thought I’d left behind with my first death. Apparently not.
“This is fine,” I mutter, dodging a geyser of molten rock that shoots up from a crack in the floor I definitely should have noticed earlier. “Everything is fine. I love it here. Five stars. Would recommend.”
Johnson bounds ahead, silver-furred and completely unbothered by the heat because of course he is.
Ever since his evolution, he’s been different—faster, sharper, more confident in that predatory way that makes you realize rabbits were always apex hunters and we just got lucky they stayed small.
His paws don’t even seem to register the heat.
Meanwhile I’m over here doing a little dance every time I stand still too long because the floor is literally cooking my boots.
╔═══════════════════════════════════════╗║ FLOOR 8 --- LAVA HALLS ║║ ║║ Environment: Volcanic Active ║║ Temperature: Yes.
All of it. ║║ Hazards: ║║ ? Extreme heat (you noticed) ║║ ? Lava geysers (unpredictable) ║║ ? Fire elementals (aggressive) ║║ ? Structural instability (fun!) ║║ ║║ Monster Level Range: 16-20 ║║ Your Current Level: 10 ║║ Level Difference: Significant ║║ ║║ RECOMMENDATION: Turn back.
Go home. ║║ Take a nice bath. Read a book.
║║ Accept that some things aren't meant ║║ to be challenged at this stage of ║║ your development.
║║ ║║ ...You're going to ignore this, ║║ aren't you?
║╚═══════════════════════════════════════╝
Yes. Yes I am.
The thing about being underleveled is it forces creativity.
Any idiot can grind their way to success—throw enough bodies at a problem and eventually the numbers work out in your favor.
That’s the common path. The safe path. The path for people who have time and patience and aren’t running from two hundred years of accumulated spite.
I didn’t become the Archmage by following the common path. I became the Archmage by understanding that the System is just a framework, and frameworks have gaps, and gaps can be exploited by anyone clever enough to see them.
Movement ahead. I press against the wall—immediately regret it, the stone’s hot enough to sear through cloth—and peer around the corner.
Fire Salamanders. Three of them. Beautiful creatures, actually, if you can get past the whole “made of living flame and extremely interested in killing you” aspect. Long sinuous bodies, scales that flicker between orange and white depending on their internal temperature, eyes like molten gold.
Level 18 each, according to my passive assessment skill.
Eight levels above me. Three of them. In an environment that actively favors their element.
A normal Combat Alchemist would throw acid flasks and pray. Maybe get lucky. Probably die.
I’m not a normal Combat Alchemist. I’m an Archmage playing dress-up in a starter class, and I remember things about magic that the modern System has forgotten.
“Johnson,” I murmur. “On my signal.”
Ear flick. Acknowledgment.
I pull two potions from my belt. Frost Extract—basic stuff, does minor cold damage, slows enemies, the kind of thing you give to apprentice alchemists because it’s hard to screw up. And Pressurized Water—even more basic, mostly used for cleaning equipment or emergency hydration.
The System explicitly forbids combining these two. I know because I checked, and the crafting menu has a whole warning about “incompatible reagent matrices” and “volatile interaction potential” and a bunch of other words that basically mean don’t do this, you’ll blow yourself up.
The System’s guidelines are suggestions.
I’m a man with two hundred years of theoretical knowledge and absolutely nothing left to lose.
“[Volatile Synthesis],” I whisper, and slam the potions together.
The combination doesn’t explode. Not exactly.
Instead it converts—the frost and the pressure finding each other across incompatible magical wavelengths and deciding, against all established alchemical theory, to become something new.
Steam. But not normal steam. Pressurized, freezing, impossible steam that exists in the space between states of matter.
It hits the salamanders like a physical force.
The temperature differential—superheated fire creatures meeting sub-zero vapor—creates a shockwave I can feel in my teeth. The salamanders screech, and if you’ve never heard a fire elemental scream, count yourself lucky. It’s the sound of a furnace having a panic attack.
I’m already moving. “[Acidic Mist Flask]—modified.”
The lead salamander dissolves. Just… dissolves.
One second it’s there, writhing in the steam, and the next it’s a puddle of hissing organic matter spreading across the floor.
My modification to the standard recipe—more concentrated base, slower dispersal rate, a touch of something I shouldn’t technically be able to synthesize at my current tier—works exactly as planned.
The other two scatter. Smart creatures, salamanders. Smarter than most dungeon monsters. They know when they’re outmatched.
Johnson takes the one on the left. Shadow Step—he’s here, then he’s not, then he’s behind the fleeing salamander with his jaws around its throat before the thing can even register what’s happening. The silver light in his eyes flares. His teeth close. Four seconds, start to finish.
The third one runs.
I let it go.
“Waste of a potion to chase it down,” I explain to Johnson, who hasn’t asked. “And it’ll spread word to the other mobs that this floor isn’t safe anymore. Psychological warfare.”
Johnson looks at me with an expression that clearly says you’re just tired and didn’t want to run.
“That too,” I admit. “That’s also a factor.”
╔═══════════════════════════════════════╗║ COMBAT RESOLVED ║║ ║║ Fire Salamander (Lv.
18) x2: DEFEATED ║║ Fire Salamander (Lv.
18) x1: FLED ║║ ║║ XP Gained: 847 (Level penalty: -40%) ║║ BONUS XP: +200 (Outleveled Combat) ║║ BONUS XP: +150 (Environmental ║║ Disadvantage Overcome) ║║ ║║ LOOT: ║║ ? Salamander Core (Fire) x2 ║║ ? Molten Scale x7 ║║ ? Heat-Resistant Membrane x3 ║║ ║║ SYSTEM NOTE: Volatile Synthesis ║║ combination flagged for review.
║║ Interaction should not be possible ║║ at Tier 2 Alchemist rank.
Player ║║ either cheating or... concerning.
║║ ║║ Investigation pending. Probably. ║║ We're very busy.
║╚═══════════════════════════════════════╝
Let them investigate. By the time the System figures out what I’m doing, I’ll have already done it.
We push deeper.
The thing about the Lava Halls is they used to be something else.
You can see it in the architecture—beneath the volcanic overlay, there are hints of deliberate construction.
Carved pillars, now half-melted into organic shapes.
Doorways that follow geometric patterns too precise to be natural. Symbols on the walls that…
That I recognize.
I stop walking.
The symbol is almost destroyed—heat damage, time, the general entropy that eats everything eventually—but enough remains that I can piece it together. A circle. Seven points. A spiral in the center that moves counterclockwise.
My magical signature.
Not a signature I used. A signature I invented. The mathematical representation of my personal mana wavelength, developed over years of theoretical work, unique to me in the same way fingerprints are unique to physical bodies.
I carved that symbol into my workshop door two hundred years ago. I carved it into my research notes. I carved it into the wards I built, the artifacts I created, the spells I pioneered.
And now I’m looking at it on a dungeon wall, half-melted but unmistakable, in a place I have no memory of building.
“What the hell,” I breathe.
Johnson nudges my leg. You okay?
“I don’t know.” I reach out, trace the lines of the symbol with fingers that aren’t quite steady. “This is mine. This is my work. But I’ve never been here before. I’ve never—”
Except I have been here before. Haven’t I? In another life. With another face. I built this dungeon. The deep floors are sealed to my mana signature. The architecture follows patterns I favor without realizing I favor them.
I built this place, and then I forgot.
Or someone made me forget.
The boss arena for Floor 8 is a caldera.
Of course it is. Because subtlety is for people who haven’t committed fully to a fire aesthetic.
The chamber opens up from a narrow corridor into a massive circular space, walls rising hundreds of feet to a ceiling I can barely see through the heat shimmer.
Lava pools around the edges, feeding into a central platform of black obsidian that looks like it was grown rather than carved.
The whole thing pulses with an orange glow that makes my eyes water.
And in the center, coiled around itself like a cat made of magma and bad decisions, is the Magma Wyrm.