"It doesn't matter who I am. There's something I have to do."

Ryu, the Silver Masked Warrior, said this to Iraira, who was watching him from a distance.

"I'm going to save your son."

"What...? What are you talking about?"

"Those petrified within the dungeon might still be alive."

Iraira didn't quite understand what the Silver Masked Ryu meant, but as they were talking, a magic circle appeared at Ryu's feet, and he disappeared.

"What the?!"

"That's...spatial transfer? But transfer magic is ancient, lost magic..."

(Could it be...Ryujeen went to the dungeon?)

Iraira's son's body was still in the dungeon.

Iraira had reached her petrified son after receiving the report of a possible stampede and immediately rushing into the dungeon to cull monsters. But it was too dangerous to bring back his petrified body with dangerous monsters roaming around. If she'd tried to bring him back by force, he might have crumbled along the way. She couldn't bear to see her son's body break apart, even if it was stone. One of her companions had tried to put him into a magic bag, but for some reason, petrified people couldn't be stored in them.

So Iraira had moved her son's petrified body to a relatively safe place in the dungeon and left behind monster repellent magic tools.

After that, she occasionally went into the dungeon to visit her son's statue. She'd brought the statues of his comrades as well, so he wouldn't be lonely, and she'd planted flower seeds around the statues. Her son had been a skilled swordsman thanks to her training, but he'd also been a kind soul who loved flowers. The seeds, watered by Iraira's tears, eventually sprouted, and now the area around her son's statue was a field of flowers.

She had hoped he would be left in peace. It had been years since he was petrified. She didn't believe he could be brought back.

Ryu transferred to a spot deep inside the Wairago dungeon. It was a grassy field. There was a spot off the usual adventurer path where human statues lay scattered. These were the adventurers who had been petrified by the Catochrists' gas.

His prediction proved right. When he observed them with the Divine Eye, the petrified people were still alive.

It had been years since they were turned to stone, but they remained in that state, as if time had stopped. He didn't know what would happen after hundreds or thousands of years, but it seemed they could remain alive in that state for several years.

(But sadly, he couldn't detect life from the statues that had been broken. It seemed they died if they were broken after being petrified. Perhaps if they had just been broken, he might have been able to revive them using "Rewind." Even if they were missing parts, he could revive them if they were alive, then heal the missing parts later.)

Ryu decomposed and removed the petrifying mana from the petrified bodies. The statues gradually regained their color and started to moan.

"Ugh...where am I...? What happened to me...?"

Ryu saw a young man among the revived people who looked like Iraira. This must be her son.

When he'd been fighting Iraira, he'd been using the Divine Eye's mind-reading ability to read her attacks. He had glimpsed inside her heart. And he had learned about her past, how she had lost her son to a Catochrists' petrifying breath. (And that his body was left in the dungeon.)

When he realized that the petrified people outside the dungeon were still alive, he thought that the petrified people in the dungeon might still be alive too. Because the bodies of living things that died in the dungeon would be absorbed and vanish, but the statues had remained there for years without being absorbed. It was possible they weren't being absorbed because they were inorganic matter (stone), but maybe they weren't actually dead? That's what he had predicted.

When Iraira saw her beloved son Raal among the adventurers Ryu had brought back, she burst into tears. Her son rushed to her and hugged her.

Iraira, who had always pushed herself hard to master swordsmanship, had been strict with her son Raal. But he didn't rebel, he understood it as a sign of her love and had trained hard, responding to her tough love.

As a result, her son had become an adventurer at a young age.

And as a result, he had died young.

Iraira regretted having trained her son. It was precisely because he was strong, due to her training, that he had become an adventurer, and as a result, lost his life.

She had thought you needed to be strong to survive in this harsh world, but she was wrong.

If she hadn't taught him anything about swords, if she hadn't trained him, he might not have died, if he'd lived as a normal, weak person in the city.

But Raal, hugging his crying mother, said that wasn't true. Even if she hadn't trained him, he would have followed her into swordsmanship, following in her footsteps.

His mother's dignified figure had been his childhood inspiration. And that remained true to this day.

The adventurers of this town had never imagined that they'd see their "Demon Instructor," Iraira, break down and cry, and no one dared to tease her.

Seeing their reunion, believed dead, warmed Ryu's heart.

Next Episode

Silver Mask challenges the dungeon!

Stay tuned!