Harem Sync: Divine Edition-Chapter 34: Shadows in the Ruins of Vandris

The figure tried to escape in a desperate zigzag. He was fast, but no match for a beastkin in open territory, and in less than ten seconds Kira had closed the distance completely, jumped over a pile of rubble and took the guy down with a side tackle that sent them both rolling across the ground until they hit a broken column.

The man tried to get up but Kira was already on top of him, one knee pressing his chest against the ground while her right hand glowed faintly and claws emerged, five curved blades pointed straight at his throat.

"Wait! I’m not the enemy!" the man screamed in panic, hands raised trying to show he was unarmed.

Kira didn’t back down, claws millimeters from his skin. "If you’re good, you wouldn’t run."

The man was about to answer when he felt the pressure in his chest suddenly lessen, and when he looked, he saw that Kira had completely frozen, staring at her own right hand where another hand had appeared, firmly but not violently grasping her wrist.

Haru.

The man’s eyes widened because he hadn’t seen Haru arrive; one second it was just him and Kira, the next Haru was standing there beside her as if he had been there the whole time. Kira was also surprised; she hadn’t seen or heard him approach, only suddenly felt the touch on her wrist.

"It was like that time on the airship... in the blink of an eye we got there... how does he do that?" Kira thought.

She stopped her claws, which retracted back into her skin, got off the man, and stepped back two paces, letting Haru take control of the situation.

The man sat up slowly, still startled, looking at the three of them: Haru, Kira, and Isabela, who had arrived right behind them with fire still burning in her hands. "You... you’re followers of Vandris?"

"No," Haru said directly, crossing his arms. "Vandris is dead..."

The man processed this with an expression that mixed relief and fear at the same time, not knowing if it was good or bad news. He took a deep breath trying to calm himself, then slowly stood up, showing that he wasn’t going to try to run away again.

After a few minutes of calming the situation and ensuring that no one was going to kill anyone, the man finally introduced himself properly.

"My name is Aldric. I’m a messenger from the mayor of Ashvale, I was sent to find the map of the dungeon located in the northern forest."

"Map of the dungeon?" Isabela asked.

"Yes. The mayor sent letters asking for help from adventurers in nearby towns, offering a reward to whoever could clear the source of the attacks. They’ll arrive in five days, but..."

She paused, looking at the surrounding wreckage, "...if the dungeon isn’t located before then, these adventurers will arrive completely blind. They won’t know where to attack, and the village will probably already be abandoned or destroyed when they arrive."

Haru observed the man more closely as he spoke, noticing details that didn’t quite match the story.

He was carrying a sack on his back, half full of something heavy that made a metallic noise when he moved, and the parts of the ruins where they were didn’t look like a map room or office; they were more like a storage area or laboratory, places where someone would keep valuable objects.

"You came for the map..." Haru said slowly, looking directly into his eyes, "...or for the artifacts?"

Silence.

Aldric avoided his gaze, focusing on some point on the ground between them, and Haru knew he was right. He waited without pressing, letting the silence do its work.

The man sighed deeply after about ten seconds, defeated.

"Fine. Yes, I came for the map. That’s true, the mayor really sent me for that. But when I got here and saw the state of the mansion... I realized Vandris was a necromancer."

Aldric looked at the sack he was carrying. "Classes like necromancers, mages, and alchemists are always associated with wealth because they buy absurdly expensive things to do research: rare reagents, pure crystals, high-quality magical focus. And when I saw the wreckage... I realized there were valuable artifacts scattered around here."

He paused, looking up at Haru with an expression that mixed shame and defiance.

"So I thought: if I find the map and take it to the village as promised... nobody needs to know if I bring something else along, right? The village is saved, the adventurers can do their work, and I earn enough not to have to be a miserable messenger for the rest of my life."

Haru didn’t judge, just kept looking, and Aldric seemed to gain confidence from the lack of immediate condemnation.

"I want to help the village. Really. I was born there, I grew up there, I have friends who will die if this isn’t resolved. But I also want profit. Does that make me a bad person?"

"It doesn’t make you a bad person," Haru said directly, without judgment. "It makes you human." Aldric seemed relieved by the answer, his shoulders relaxing slightly.

"Vandris’s lab is in the basement of the east wing. I found the entrance a few hours ago, I think the map is there, but..." he hesitated, "...I didn’t want to go in alone. Something’s wrong in that place."

"Then let’s go together," Isabela said. "The faster we find that map, the faster we solve this."

...

Aldric nodded and began to guide the group through the ruins of the mansion, past crumbling corridors and rooms where the ceiling had completely collapsed, until they reached a stone staircase leading down to the basement.

The smell changed instantly; it was no longer just ash and burnt wood, but something organic and chemical mixed together, like rotten meat preserved in alcohol.

They descended slowly, Isabela creating small flames in her hands to light the way since the torches on the wall had all gone out.

The stone walls had necromantic symbols engraved in circular patterns, runes that glowed faintly even without active mana powering them, and the further down they went, the denser the symbols became until they covered practically every available inch.

They arrived at the laboratory proper, and the damage was visible: overturned tables, broken bottles with colored liquids still spilling onto the floor, destroyed books with torn pages scattered everywhere, and in the right corner what appeared to be a cage large enough to hold something the size of a bear, with bent bars as if something had forced its way out.

"Look for maps, grimoires, anything that shows the dungeon’s location," Haru ordered as she began to rummage through a pile of partially burned books near the main table.

She found a diary buried in the middle of the pile, its thick leather cover stained with something dark that could be ink or blood, and began to leaf through it as she walked through the laboratory inspecting other points.

Isabela was rummaging through a fallen shelf full of intact vials when she commented almost to herself: "Vandris probably studied necromancy applied to monsters, not humans. Look at the description of these reagents: golem blood, essence of a corrupted elemental, bone fragments of an ancient beast. This isn’t suitable for resurrecting ordinary people."

Haru continued reading the diary as she walked, skipping pages full of incomprehensible formulas and diagrams until she found more narrative entries, and that’s when she noticed something strange. She stopped walking.

"Many of the monsters that attacked the village were Vandris’s experiments," she said aloud, rereading a specific passage to be sure. "It’s here in the diary. He created variations of existing creatures, tested different resistances, and then... released them to ’observe behavior in a natural environment’."

Kira, who was investigating the back of the laboratory, suddenly called out: "I found something!"

Everyone went to where she was kneeling near the back wall, pointing to what appeared to have been a hidden passage that was now completely destroyed, fallen stones blocking the entrance to underground tunnels carved into the natural rock beneath the mansion.

"It looks like it went deep," Kira said, sniffing the air coming through the cracks between the stones. "Very deep. And it smells like... wet earth, mold, and something else I don’t recognize."

Haru approached, tried to move some stones, but they were too heavy and intertwined in such a way that removing one could cause the rest of the ceiling to collapse. She gave up for a moment and went back to reading the diary, flipping through it faster now, looking for something specific.

"Does anyone have any Efficiency with the Earth element?" Isabela asked the other two, who shook their heads in disapproval.

Haru found a partially intact page, written in a more hurried handwriting than the rest, as if Vandris had jotted it down urgently or euphorically. He read aloud slowly:

"The dungeon responds to death."

Silence in the laboratory. He continued reading:

"Each creature killed nearby accelerates the growth of the core. It doesn’t matter if it’s a monster, human, or animal. The dungeon consumes the energy released at the moment of death and uses it to expand. I thought I could control the pace. I was wrong."

Pause.

"If I lose control... Ashvale will be the first to fall."

Haru slowly closed the diary, processing the information while everyone looked at him, waiting for an explanation.

"So it’s not just an ordinary dungeon that appeared randomly," he finally said, looking at the blocked passage that probably led directly to the core below. "It’s something that’s growing. And every time Vandris ’protected’ the village by killing the monsters he himself created..."

"...He was feeding the dungeon," Isabela finished, understanding the horror of the situation.

Aldric leaned against the wall, pale. "So the entire village is built on top of a dungeon that’s been fed for months?"

Haru didn’t answer, only looked at the blocked passage again, thinking about how many creatures had died in that whole p

eriod, how much energy the dungeon had consumed, and how big it could have become down there without anyone knowing...