10 — Anomalies in the Labyrinth of Will

10 — Anomalies in the Labyrinth of Will

“Is it just me, or are there just as many monsters as last time?”

“No. There are even more,” Lionel answered me.

“There’s definitely a lot of ’em, but they’re not all that different from before,” Ketty added.

“But what is different worries me,” I said.

We’d been up against far more opposition than our first time here from the moment we entered, albeit without any scouts clearing the path for us.

“Labyrinths are supposed to weaken once someone’s traversed them in their entirety, right?”

No one answered. The slight taint of undead corruption visible on the monsters in our path was another cause for concern, but it was anyone’s guess as to what in the world was happening. I simply purified our foes and hoped the increase in hostility would make our magic stone quota that much easier to reach.

We ascended quickly, checking the map as we proceeded at about five minutes per floor, it felt like. The monsters proved ineffective against us. Despite the obvious change in our enemies, however, the labyrinth’s layout remained the same. We reached the tenth floor in a little over an hour, gathering gems along the way.

“Everything seems fine, but don’t forget, safety first, everyone.”

The team grinned at my usual spiel and nodded.

The boss room produced three red-lizardmen, one of which was undead. I swiftly took care of our undead foe with Purification, while Kefin and Yulbo’s team did away with the other two just as quickly.

“Lionel’s training’s worked wonders on you guys, huh?” I remarked.

Lionel and Ketty looked a tad disappointed. No doubt because they had wanted to take part in the fighting, but, unfortunately, I sympathized very little.

And up we went.

“It’s starting to seem like the higher we go, the more undead we find,” I said.

“So it would seem,” Lionel agreed. “But it does make for easy practice for you. Their speed drops considerably.”

“Sure, but I haven’t leveled up once since we got here.”

“Hey, you beat a dragon,” Ketty said. “No wonder the small fry don’t do it for you anymore.”

Leveling was going to get a lot harder from now on if that was the case. Then was it back to Substance X? Of course, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, right? I was conflicted.

The twentieth floor boss room held two red-orcs and a large fire-wolf, but I didn’t get a chance to shine there. Lionel slew a red-orc, Ketty decapitated the wolf, and Kefin’s group took care of the other orc with careful, coordinated strikes.

“It couldn’t have been that tough, could it?” I asked.

Kefin and his men could have surely taken out an orc easier than that. On their own, even. Or at least, I sure hoped so, because those guys were way stronger than me.

“We were working some things out. Making sure we’re in sync,” Kefin said. “It’s gonna get tougher from here on out, and hell if I’m gonna let us hold you guys back like last time.”

The others nodded in agreement.

“All right, then that’s fine. Safety first.”

I smiled and headed straight for the next staircase. Fast forward to the twenty-fifth floor...

“You’ve become rather assertive in ascending the floors,” Lionel commented.

“I have no desire to ever go into these things on my own again, but you all seem to be enjoying yourselves. And I trust you, after all. Plus, I hear stronger monsters give more potent magic stones that are better for artificing and stuff, and you can never have too many.”

I marched up the stairs with a smirk and an exaggerated gait. Our opponents in the thirtieth floor boss room were a fire-bear and a wraith. Upon spotting the latter, I reflexively shot off Purification without thinking. The wraith instantly dissolved into a single gem. Fortunately, no one seemed to have fallen under its effects.

The fire-bear left a few knicks here and there on Kefin’s men but still didn’t stand a chance. When the room was clear, we took a break.

“No doubt about it. That was a wraith. What was up on the fortieth floor again? Goldhus said it was originally a chimera, right?”

“Right, but really, you took out that wraith like it was nothin’,” Ketty praised. “You’re somethin’ else.”

“Yes, I agree,” Lionel said. “It’s no wonder you’ve become S-rank at such a young age.”

“Well, we go back. They’re nothing to me anymore, and their magic doesn’t do a thing to me. But they did almost get me one time.”

“How so?” Ketty asked.

“I can handle them well enough alone, but not when they make the people around me go into a frenzy and they start attacking me. And that condition continues even after you take out the monster, so my team was in chaos until I managed to cast Recover.”

Once, before coming to Yenice, I’d brought the Order to the Labyrinth of Trials for a bit of hands-on training. The mind magic of a wraith was not to be underestimated. I had thought it was all over when the knights started going crazy.

“I see. That explains your reflexes,” Lionel mused, rubbing his beard.

“Anyway, let’s enjoy that lunch Nalia went through the trouble of making,” I said, pulling out said meal from the magic bag.

I’d forgotten to purify the room, so I told the others to dig in while I went around and did that. No one had died back in the Labyrinth of Trials, and no one had quit the Order, but I still couldn’t help but worry about things. Still, I brushed my unease to the side long enough to savor lunch.

From floor thirty-one, not a single undead monster appeared. Something about this place wasn’t right, but we marched on, continuing without difficulty straight to the fortieth floor.

“What’s going on here?” Kefin suddenly spoke up. “Where is everyone?”

“Where’s who?” I asked.

“The basecamp was here, S-ran—sir. Where are the adventurer hunters? The sweepers should be right here!”

“Maybe they ditched because the monsters changed and stopped being profitable?”

“I’m not so sure.”

Kefin started to lose his cool, but finally calmed down after Lionel admonished his lack of composure.

My bad feeling only got worse. A labyrinth that should have been on the downturn seemed more active than ever, and it was teeming with the undead. And now there were missing adventurers.

“It couldn’t be,” I murmured. “You all remember the large magic stone on the fifty-first floor that I left, right?” Everyone nodded. “I wonder if the sweepers made it up to the fiftieth and messed with it.”

“But you said you needed the dragons’ blessing to even see the door,” Kefin argued. “I doubt any of them had anything like that.”

“I was told that I could only reach that room once. In which case, it would make sense for the things I left to be moved to the fiftieth floor, right? Including the gem.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I think it’s very likely that someone fiddled with the magic stone. I never touched it myself because my gut told me not to. Or rather, my Monster Luck skill told me so.”

It had become increasingly clear to me that an unseen enemy was stirring. And as the leader, I was forced to consider the terrifying possibility that their identity was none other than the Wicked One. I had to make a decision: continue on or turn back.

I felt everyone’s eyes on me. I had no doubt that they would obey any order I gave. Beyond those doors could have been a chimera and other undead atrocities beside. But I didn’t have the strength to lead people towards what might be their graves.

I dithered. “We’re looking at the possibility of a chimera as well as wraiths inside that room.” I couldn’t make this decision alone, so I sought other opinions. The final responsibility lay with me, and I didn’t intend to push that onto others, but I simply couldn’t decide their fate alone.

Lionel regarded me, studying me as if he could see through my thoughts. “You would normally order our retreat without question. What makes you hesitate?”

“Normally, yeah, I’d go home without a second thought, but...” I wavered. “But if we leave things like this, I have this feeling the labyrinth’s only going to grow and get worse until the monsters are so strong that no one can get near the place. I don’t have any proof of that, or that we can do anything about it, but something tells me we can.”

“Then let’s get goin’,” Ketty decided.

“We’ll go with what you think is right,” Kefin agreed.

“Trust in your judgment. If you decide it wise to retreat, then retreat we will.”

I never thought I’d hear Lionel say he would willingly back out of a fight. I paused, then ultimately concluded, “We’re leaving as soon as it gets too dangerous. We’ll prop open the door with some lumber. If this chimera causes any strange effects or anyone notices anything odd, tell me immediately.”

“Understood!” everyone answered.

Having steeled our resolve, we forged ahead.

We opened the door to the fortieth floor boss room and stepped inside, propping it open behind us with a couple of hunks of lumber.

“Let’s do this,” I said.

When we reached the center of the dim room, light suddenly illuminated the area, and I prepared to launch a Purification spell at any undead foes, but only five flaming saber-tooth tigers stood in our way. Slightly startled, I sized them up. One was about all I could realistically take, and by ‘take’ I meant hold back until Lionel or somebody else came to the rescue. Dhoran, Pola, and Verdel’s team weren’t here this time, though.

One of the tigers suddenly bared its teeth and leaped at me in my stupefied state. Somehow—likely on pure instinct—I found myself with the Holy Dragon spear in my hand, and a moment later its tip had squarely impaled the tiger’s open maw, just centimeters from me. Had I reacted a second later, those few centimeters wouldn’t have been much help. All I could do was offer thanks to Monsieur Luck for making the monster such an easy target.

The beast fell to the ground as a magic stone, and I glanced at the other battles raging around me. Or rather, had been raging. Lionel and Ketty were already done, while Kefin’s team had just about wrapped up.

“You do that all by yourself?” Ketty teased. “Nice goin’, Dragonslayer.”

“A simple healer no longer,” Lionel sneered.

“Please, you two beat me up in training every day,” I shot back. “You know I’m not that strong.”

“Hey, when the going gets tough, I’d say you are,” Ketty replied.

“And that’s the only time it matters,” Lionel added. “Given another ten years, I shudder in excitement to imagine what you’ll be capable of.”

Poor guy must’ve been cold, because I sure didn’t know what the heck made him so excited, and I didn’t care to find out. That’s called foreshadowing, and I didn’t mess around with it.

“Sure. Anyway, it’s strange that we haven’t found a single undead monster since floor thirty-one. It’s almost like the labyrinth is rebuilding itself or something.”

The smirks left my companions’ faces. I wasn’t alone in thinking that.

“What are your orders?” Lionel asked.

“We’ll keep gathering magic stones, as planned.” I paused. “Then we’ll check out the fiftieth floor and leave through the magic circle. Maybe we’ll walk back. We’ll have to see.”

“Got it,” Ketty said. “Oh, look who’s just about done.”

Kefin’s men had finished taking down their enemy. Numbers and careful coordination were the keys to their strategy.

“They seemed more certain than in the last battle,” Lionel commented.

“I make ’em do what they can by themselves. Looks like it works wonders,” his comrade replied.

“Make them do what they can...” I parroted to myself.

After tending to injuries, we made our way up the stairs. The undead were still nowhere to be seen. There were a few more monsters than last time, but with our completed map, we made short work of each floor, reaching the fiftieth floor boss room safely and easily in about five hours.

“Well, that doesn’t look pleasant,” Ketty remarked.

“It’s thicker than our last visit,” Lionel added.

“I can see the miasma seeping out. I think I should be able to purify it from here,” I said.

“Agreed.”

I took out the ingredients for dinner, handing them off to Kefin’s group, then visualized the inner chamber and got to purifying while they prepared the meal. After numerous casts towards the door, I envisioned a magic circle within the chamber itself and began casting within it. Several Purifications and Sanctuary Circles later, the miasma stopped creeping through.

“I’m going to keep purifying today. Tomorrow we’ll take a look inside,” I announced. “I’m not confident we’ll get lucky twice if there’s another red dragon in there.”

“After you’ve had dinner,” Lionel corrected. “If you leave some Substance X in the vicinity, Ketty and I can continue gathering gems with Kefin and his men in the meantime.”

“Right, okay. I’ll get some sleep once my magic gets low. You guys don’t push yourselves too hard, and rest in shifts. Tomorrow’s not going to be any easier.”

“Understood!” everyone cried.

Once the Substance X was placed in the hallway to keep the baddies out, I pictured the boss room sparkly clean and started casting again. Kefin and Ketty took the first sleep shift while Lionel and Yulbo’s team set out to fight monsters.

I continued to cast, my hand on the door, clearing my mind and praying that my spells would penetrate the fog. And then I realized something—in the past, I had always cast magic with a clear image of the result in mind, but lately I had fallen out of the habit. Was it proof of how used to the motions I’d become? Or was it complacency?

I knew at once that it could only be the latter. The only reason I had gotten my Holy Magic skill to such a high level was because I could see the number rise, not because of natural talent. Sure, I had put in effort, but I was self-aware enough to know that I wasn’t the most skilled guy around. I promised myself that once my business in Yenice was complete, I would take a week off in Merratoni to have Brod retrain me.

“I really don’t have the right to be leading people the way I am,” I muttered. “I’ve gotta try harder.”

Just then, I felt my magic start to run low, so I pulled out my angel’s pillow and went to sleep.

＊

Lionel and the others were gone when I woke up, but Ketty was there along with Kefin’s team. His men had a few cuts and bruises.

“Sorry. I’m up now. Gather round and I’ll cast Area Heal.” I did so, plus Area Barrier, then took in the situation. “How long was I out? When did everyone get back?”

“We’re swapping every three hours,” Ketty explained. “Sir Lionel just left on his second trip.”

Some nap that was. No wonder I felt so rested.

“So I was asleep for about five hours, huh? Anything new with the labyrinth?”

“Nope. Quite a few monsters, though.”

There could be no question at this point that the dungeon was reactivating. And considering how it had progressed to floor thirty, things were only going to get worse.

“Got it. You guys get some sleep. Or is anyone hungry?” They were not. “All right, I’ll wake you up when Lionel’s party gets back.”

My magic had completely recovered by then, so I decided to do a bit more purifying, leaving eighty percent or so of my power for later. As I did, I thought I heard the sounds of battle. Was Lionel nearby? But by the sound of all the metal on metal, they could’ve been attacking each other.

As I opened my eyes, concern welling up inside me, I caught sight of the man himself, returning with Yulbo. His team was a little scratched up, so I quickly healed them all.

“I heard the fighting. What happened?” I asked.

“Fighting?” Lionel looked puzzled. “We heard no such thing.”

It couldn’t have come from the boss room...could it? If so, that could only mean someone was locked in combat with something formidable, like I had been against the lich knight.

“How many stones did you guys get?”

“Counting Ketty’s, two hundred or so.”

We had already gotten our hands on a thousand stones on our way there. Including the two hundred, we were at about sixty percent of the total we needed. I figured it was now or never.

“I’m going to open the door in six hours. We’ll look inside, and if it’s dicy, we’re retreating and having the Adventurer’s Guild take care of it. No heroics. Stop me if I try anything stupid.”

“As you command. No harm will come to you,” he replied passionately.

I patted his shoulder and told them all to get some sleep. I let them get as much rest as they needed, then when everyone was up, we had breakfast, where I let the others know what I had told Lionel.

Then I opened the door.

Inside, we found the sweepers.

“They’re undead,” Ketty said.

There was no dragon, but there was also no magic circle waiting to send us to the entrance.

“Healerrr!” one of them shrieked. “Save us, S-raaank!”

It was a nightmare. Their ghoulish, glowing crimson eyes set in sheet-white faces conjured up images of the death knights from the Labyrinth of Trials.

“They’re lost to us!” Lionel shouted, standing between me and the creatures. “Cleanse them with your magic or we cut them down! You must choose!”

“They’re emitting miasma! They’re monsters!” Ketty yelled, stepping forward with the rest.

I trembled terribly. If I purified these people, these things, their lives would end. Whatever was left of them. In the truest sense of the word. I would be nothing more than a killer. The mere thought almost made me retch.

“Aren’t S-rank healers supposed to save people?”

“The pain! Stop the pain!”

“Gya ha ha ha ha! Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!”

“Die! Die!”

“Curse you, S-rank! Curse you, Goldhus! You did this!”

“Where will our souls go?”

Although some of them had gone mad, the adventurers weren’t dead. I simply couldn’t believe it. They moved and spoke like they still had conscious wills.

“High Heal!”

I fired a spell at the closest one. As long as it didn’t hurt him, there was a chance it could save him. But fate wasn’t going to give me an easy way out.

The adventurer howled in pain. I had tested this all the way back in the Church’s labyrinth. I knew all too well how susceptible the undead were to healing magic, and sadly, that seemed to hold true no matter how far into the corruption process they were. I had expected as much, but it still frustrated me. Painfully so. Still, there was no time to linger on the feeling.

I glanced at Lionel and Ketty. They were actually struggling. Kefin’s men had been driven into a corner. Apologizing in my heart for my helplessness, I channeled as much power as I could into a single spell and cast Purification. The adventurer before me vanished instantly, flesh, bone, blood, and all, as if he had been an illusion, leaving only his armor and equipment as proof he had been there.

I looked back at the others. Lionel and Ketty had not been pushed to their limit as I had initially thought. They had simply been awaiting my judgment: whether to slay the undead or rescue the adventurers, holding the enemy back without leaving so much as a single scratch on them. Not even fighters strong enough to ascend the entire labyrinth, powered up by undead corruption, were enough to take them down.

Kefin’s group wasn’t doing so well, though. They were in dire straits. I had to give it up and prioritize the lives of my friends and companions. I fired off a Purification at the remaining adventurers with all my might.

The bright light swept away the purple, miasmic fog, drowning the monstrous adventurers and transforming them into magic stones in a sea of death rattles. But only the final words of Lionel’s opponent reached me.

“You... You left us for the Wicked One. You’re...next!”

The vengeful words stuck in my ears, refusing to fade for some time. Soon, aside from the magic stones, only the adventurers’ gear and guild cards remained.

“Nobody touch those stones! Especially the one in the middle!” I shouted.

A brilliant gem now gleamed in the center of the room, but my gut told me the gorgeous display was a portent of danger. The adventurers’ stones also shone with beauty incomparable to any magic stone I had previously laid eyes on.

Once everything but the stones had been collected, I cast Purification and Recover on everyone, then healed our wounds. My trembling never stopped. Whatever had happened in this dungeon remained a mystery. We had far more questions than answers here. But I was sure of one thing: this had been a trap laid by someone with power. One with the power to seal away even the Eternal Dragons. The Wicked One.

We stepped into the newly glowing circle and were transported to the labyrinth’s entrance, but the trembling still wouldn’t stop.

As the sun thawed my frozen body, the blood returned to my limbs and, gradually, I stopped shaking. The others looked at me with concern but kept their distance. I appreciated their consideration.

I used the hermit key and opened the door. The first thing Forêt Noire did upon seeing me was bite the absolute hell out of my head.

“Ow, ow, ow! Forêt, that hurts!”

“Get a hold of yourself!” she seemed to bray.

Jolted by my partner’s warning, I looked around at everyone’s worried faces. What was I doing? Lionel had been so quiet because it was my job to rally the team, not his.

I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and addressed the group.