I have been staring at the darkness around me. I swear that at the moment I should be dead. I just can't figure out how I am not dead. After all, the plan was for me to escape the place before the trap triggered. I was supposed to have more time before the fireball would have destroyed the ceiling.

  I could have escaped as well. If I had just focused on escaping. If I had not gotten greedy and stopped to strike the creature, I would already have been out of the place. I was sure that I would be able to disable the creature before getting out. Then it would have absolutely not been able to escape when the ceiling collapsed. At least, that is what should have happened.

  I don't think I have managed to even leave a dent on its spine. I can feel the impact of my strike on my arms. It feels like I have just tried to strike a pillar of iron. I wonder how strong the dragon actually was when its body is still so strong after death.

  Right, there should be no place here for me to even move right now. I should be completely covered in the wreckage of the ceiling. They should be crushing me even at this moment. Yet, there is a void all around me. (Where there should have been rock.)

  Well, it doesn't take me long to realise why I had survived. Ironically, it is due to the dragon that I am not stuck under a pile of rock right now. You see, most of the rocks fell on the dragon. Right now, I am inside the dragon's ribcage. It is acting as an armor around me.

  Well, I guess that my priority should be to get out of the place. After all, I can't be sure of when things will get worse. After all, the collapse of the ceiling might trigger further collapses. Maybe the dragon could end up escaping even this somehow. I can think about this when I am on safer grounds.

  Well, getting out of this place is pretty simple, actually. There is a massive rock that is blocking my way out. I can whittle against this rock to create a small path that I can use to get out.

  I just need to do it carefully. After all, I have no interest in triggering further collapses. As I get up to do this task, I realise that I am not as unscathed as I was hoping I was. I collapse against the ground face-first. Right now, I can't feel either of my legs. Both of them are pinned against a medium-sized rock the size of a bed. Well, not feeling anything is a bad thing.

  Well, I can already feel blood mana flow into my wounds. It is not as useful as normal. After all, my legs are still stuck under the rock. It is still being crushed. Right, I should do something about that. I strike at the rock with my sword. It enters the rock like butter, as everything begins to shake against me. I wonder for a second if I had somehow triggered a ceiling collapse. It takes me a moment to realise that the shaking is not due to me, but the dragon.

  The damn undead is still alive, and it is moving in response to my sword strike. Just how fucking durable is the creature? Well, I don't need to worry about it too much. After all, it is still firmly stuck in the wreckage of the ceiling. Even for all of its shaking, it has only managed to get itself more stuck in the rocks.

  It takes me a couple more attempts to finally break the rock. The blood mana flowing into me has already begun to fix the wounds. I can already feel sensation return to my legs. I should at least be able to hobble out by the time I whittle out a path for myself.

  I can't move my legs at all now, though. Still, I drag myself to the rear of the creature using my hands. I begin to strike against the rock there. I have to be more careful off. After all, the rock here is way more unstable. I guess, while I am doing this, I should describe what exactly I had planned as my little trap. Well, I have been very careful not to speak about the trap.

  Well, the person who had made this trap was Searcher Amelia. Well, I would like to say that I have some idea of what she did. After all, I have managed to finally see her cast the magic. The only thing that I have been able to confirm in all of this is that it is something that I have never seen before.

  Well, it is something very similar to what we did in the Minotaur's labyrinth. In the labyrinth, the searchers had set a bunch of fireballs in places to cause the entire ceiling to come down. Well, the collapse here is not as impressive as the collapse in the labyrinth. (The labyrinth was unstable. This place is not.) The fall of the ceiling had buried all the undead there without any way to get out.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The roof of the room we are in is much more solid than the ceiling of the labyrinth. It also doesn't have tons of earth above it, constantly putting pressure on it. It also doesn't have weak points that the searchers can exploit to bring the ceiling down. That is why it had taken significantly more force to bring the ceiling down here. (The collapse is also much less impressive than the collapse at the labyrinth.)

  That is where I came in with this plan. After all, the fireballs of Amelia are pretty well built, but they lack the necessary force to bring down the ceiling. I will speak about what I did to deal with this soon enough, but before that, I will have to speak about the magic that they have used. (I don't want to forget about it now.) The scholars have managed to create spells that can be held without any protection.

  You see, any spell that exists in the environment has to face a constant onslaught. The chaotic mana of its surroundings is usually enough to collapse most spell models on its own. That is why all spells have to be consistently supplied with mana to resist this collapse.

  That is why we have to inscribe our spells in the first place. Doing this anchors the runes of the spell so that the ambient mana cannot break it down. We still have to supply mana to power up the runes, but the runes are very solid in a formation. The problem with inscription is that the entire process is time-consuming and takes a lot of skill to achieve. Inscribing a fireball spell would have taken me the better part of a day.

  The scholars have somehow managed to bypass all of this. They have created runes that can survive the onslaught of the ambient mana. I don't know how she has managed it, but the fireball spell I have seen is proof of this. I was there when the lady had woven it about ten minutes before the spell triggered. I had been studying the runes of the spell, and there has clearly not been any degradation in the spell. (I have not noticed it at least.)

  The only term that I have managed to wheedle out of her was the term "transient runes". The lady refuses to explain beyond this, though. All in all, the spell for the fireball existed on the ceiling like a ghost of a formation. I have to concentrate on my mana sense to even know that the spell was there. You can still find it, but it is less obvious than a formation would be.

  Well, the spell itself was not enough to bring down the ceiling. That is where I came in, actually. I linked the spell model and the mana reservoir meant to power the gate.

  It was actually not as hard as it looked. The spell was placed right in front of the mana reservoir. I just needed to link the reservoir and the spell model for a few moments. Using my control strings was enough for the task. I just had to move a bit of mana from the reservoir to the spell to activate the fireball a bit. Then the spell physically touched the mana reservoir and devoured the mana in there.

  All the mana flowed into the spell to create a massive fireball right on the ceiling. It was strong enough that I am sure that it would have looked like a small sun if I could have seen it. The fireball was inside the ceiling due to the location of the ceiling. The fireball was strong enough to bring down the entirety of the ceiling.

  That is why I had to stay back, you see. I am the most durable person in the group, so I would have been able to survive a fight against the dragon. More importantly, I would have been able to survive the ceiling collapse as well. After all, what we are doing here is not an exact science. We couldn't even be sure of the exact time the ceiling would have fallen.

  This was clearly prudent because I had assumed the shortest time it would take for the ceiling to fall. It still caught me by surprise. I am also the best candidate to create a link between a mana storage and a spell model. After all, that is what I have to do every day when I make a formation. Even the searcher would not have been able to do this as well as I.

  That is why I had to take this position, even with how risky it was. I just had the best chance of surviving and succeeding with this task. (Though I swear the next time I'm going to have one of the others do it. I am taking too many risky roles on this mission, if I am honest.)

  Anyway, to get back to the record, the things that happened after I activated the spell are already recorded. I won't bother to repeat that. I guess I should make a record of my exact injuries right now. Well, I have already told you about my legs. (Well, they are hurting like one of the hells by the way.) Right now, my arms are also not in a pretty position. My sword hand is throbbing like a little heart.

  Other than that, there are cuts all over my body. I don't need to worry about most of them. The gash on my left arm is going to be an issue, though. Well, it will be fine once I bandage it, though. Well, it should have already healed, but I am having to divert most of my mana to my legs, you see. I don't know if I will have enough blood mana to fix anything else once I am done with my legs.

  By the way, during the period that I have been recording, I have also been striking against the rock. The reason that it is taking so long is that I am not strengthening my arms with mana. (I need the mana for any emergencies.) Well, I have already created a hole large enough for me to get out of the place. This entrance is in the direction of the inner circle, by the way.

  I am just sitting here for my legs to get a bit better. Once that happens, I will leave the tunnel and quickly meet up with the rest of the group. They must be waiting for me somewhere inside the place. I will continue my log when I can meet them, though.