novelraw Chapter 436
Chapter 436
[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
Chapter 436
“How many walls did you smash through, exactly?”
Just the ones she had barged straight through from the front already numbered at least dozens.
This wasn’t just a simple stone corridor.
The place was more like a labyrinth.
“What about the others?”
“I haven’t met anyone yet. I can’t even detect them. It’s such a strange space that even my sensing can’t confirm anything.”
A labyrinth that could deploy a field strong enough to interfere with the perception of a former Archangel, no less.
“Leon. This place is the Labyrinth of Resonance.”
“The Labyrinth of Resonance?”
“When we first came in. It was written in ancient language at the entrance. Labyrinth of Resonance. Haven’t you seen someone’s memory by any chance?”
“Uh… I did see one.”
It had been Isna’s memory.
“Whose memory was it?”
“It was Isna’s.”
“Then that means she’s still somewhere inside this labyrinth.”
How did she figure something like that out?
That question didn’t linger long.
—Please… please, I told you everything! Let me go. Please!
The wraith that Luna had dragged along must have spilled everything.
Since it was a being that belonged to this place.
Even so, it was quite a vicious wraith.
If it had existed outside rather than within this rift, it probably would have caused a catastrophe of considerable scale.
Just how badly had Luna beaten it for it to end up in that state?
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Luna’s fists didn’t discriminate between the living and the dead.
Before long, the walls Luna had smashed began to wriggle, slowly returning to their original shape.
“For now, let’s move forward. We have a guide, after all.”
When I glanced at the wraith being held in Luna’s hand, the hollow sockets of its eyes turned toward me.
And then—
It began to tremble violently, as if terrified.
The wraith of this place seemed to be extremely frightened of the necromantic mana I was emitting.
After that, Luna grabbed the wraith by the hair and yanked it.
“What are you doing. Guide us already.”
The terrified wraith desperately pointed in a direction, and Luna confidently took the lead and started walking.
Ever since giving birth to Elpiria, she had been restraining herself a lot.
Now it looked like she was thrilled to finally release all that pent-up stress.
“I say this because I’m worried, but please don’t have a marital fight. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I won’t.”
To begin with, I had never really imagined myself having a marital fight with Luna.
After ignoring Lispa’s concern, we walked for quite a while.
Eventually, we encountered people for the first time.
There were four of them.
Two warriors that looked like the vanguard, and two who seemed to be the rear.
It looked like a somewhat balanced composition, but the usefulness of a party composition always depended on where you were exploring.
Just like how a mage becomes mostly useless in a place filled with monsters that have extremely high magic resistance.
They looked at us with intense vigilance.
The wariness was particularly strong, though they didn’t seem ready to attack.
“Excuse me. May I ask a few questions?”
“…Do not approach. Speak from there.”
Their cautious stance was noticeably different from the way people had looked in the lobby.
So I stopped where I was and asked.
“Are there only four of you in your party?”
“Why do you ask that?”
It was only natural for them to be wary.
After all, it sounded like I was probing how many enemies they had.
“Our party got separated. We just regrouped, but I wanted to ask if something like that happened to you as well.”
“Is this your first time here?”
Judging by his tone, it seemed this Integrated Rift had existed on the continent even before an entrance had appeared in the Cascadia Demon Realm.
Still, considering that rifts mostly appeared in the Demon Realm, it didn’t seem like all of them had entered through it…
“Yes.”
“You’re lucky. This labyrinth scatters people unless you break off a branch from the oak tree in the lobby, split it into pieces, and share them among your party.”
“Thank you for the information.”
I activated my subspace from within my coat and tossed them a buff potion.
Since it was infused with my buff, its effect would be considerable.
“Th—this is?!”
“My goodness… isn’t this a Cascadia-made buff potion?! I heard it’s practically impossible to get these these days…”
I hadn’t sold them in large quantities, after all.
To those who knew about them, it would seem like an extremely rare item.
“It’s a token of appreciation. May I ask a few more questions?”
“You’re giving something like this just as thanks?”
“To me, it’s not particularly precious.”
“Khmm!”
The man who had coughed loudly nodded.
“Go ahead.”
His tone had softened considerably.
“It seems you were unusually wary of us.”
“You really know nothing. This place is a labyrinth. The Integrated Rift contains dungeons with many different themes, and this labyrinth is among the worst of them.”
He then explained the nature of this labyrinth.
Unlike other dungeons, this labyrinth constantly moved as if it were alive, trying to wear down and kill those who entered it.
Most of the monsters were undead, but the actual danger from them wasn’t that great.
However, this labyrinth periodically launched an unidentified mental attack that shook the minds of humans.
I realized that this mental attack was actually a system that momentarily shared memories between people.
Naturally, my own memories could leak to someone else as well.
Perhaps because of that—
An unpleasant, indescribable current seeped into me, but perhaps due to my mental immunity—or for some other reason—my memories, or Luna’s and Lispa’s, didn’t seem to be leaking out yet.
“What does that have to do with your wariness?”
“Not directly. The point is that the labyrinth can make some kind of mental contact with explorers who enter it. To those who enter this labyrinth, it makes a single proposal.”
Kill those here.
Take the treasures they obtained.
It wasn’t forced.
However, the repeated contact slowly gnawed at a person’s mind until the explorer found an exit.
Once you leave, your mind returns to normal as if nothing happened.
But while inside here, it wouldn’t be strange for bloodshed to erupt at any moment.
“Then why aren’t you attacking me?”
“After seeing that?”
He pointed at the wraith screaming while being held in Luna’s hand.
“I’ve never seen someone dragging a wraith around like that in my life. Even if someone told me to attack a monster like that whose identity I don’t even know, survival instinct would come first.”
The wraith’s presence turned out to be more useful than I thought.
“Thank you for the information. Here’s an additional token.”
I took out another buff potion and handed it to them.
“If you wander the labyrinth, you’ll eventually see something like a huge stone monument rising from the floor. Each monument can move up to four people. With your group, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Well, there were three of us.
They expressed their gratitude but didn’t lower their guard until we disappeared from their sight, remaining in place the entire time.
“Phew…”
Right after we vanished, an extremely faint voice drifted through the air.
“Leader. Why are you so tense?”
“Yeah. He even gave us something that valuable. From the looks of it, he seemed like the child of some wealthy family. People like that don’t usually attack others for no reason.”
“You say that because you don’t know. The most dangerous people here are those blinded by money. But even more dangerous than them are those without greed.”
“Huh?”
“What reason would someone without greed have for coming here?”
“That’s…”
“And among those without greed, the most dangerous are cases like that. When you can’t sense anything from them. In those cases, they’re hiding their power with some kind of artifact. In fact, among the weak, there are fewer people who hide their power like that. Remember this well. Especially when you enter a labyrinth. Never forget what I just told you.”
Perhaps feeling a chill, they didn’t say another word.
Well, they weren’t wrong.
I had no interest in the rewards of this rift.
“Those guys will probably survive for a long time.”
Lispa chuckled.
And so we kept moving forward.
Occasionally undead discovered us and launched surprise attacks.
Crunch… crack…
But numbers were met with numbers.
The wraiths that emerged from my shadow brutally crushed and devoured them, so they didn’t pose much of a threat.
Of course, during the process the labyrinth kept changing its shape to block our path.
But we had a navigation system.
The wraith Luna had captured seemed to be a higher-ranking one than expected and kept guiding us.
Still, there was something that bothered me.
According to the explorers we met earlier, the chance of falling into this labyrinth was low.
But in the lobby, there had been someone who acted as if he already knew we would end up here.
“Hoh? How fortunate. I wondered where you had gone.”
Well, I could just ask him directly.
There were eleven of them in total.
The ones I found were the young master in flashy armor who had approached us in the lobby, along with several others.
Some of the faces were unfamiliar, so there were probably people who hadn’t confronted us earlier.
What mattered was the current situation.
They were subduing three men and women who appeared to be other explorers.
One man and two women lay collapsed on the ground.
Judging by the scene, eight people led by that hooligan of a young master had ambushed the three explorers.
The man had his arms and legs cut off and was screaming with bloodshot eyes.
The two pretty women struggled desperately to break free from the men pinning them down.
“Mmmph!! P-please… spare us!! Please spare us!!”
One of the men pinning down the screaming women licked his lips and grinned obscenely.
“Who said we’d kill you? Don’t worry. If you just stop resisting, we might think about it.”
“Who do you think is going to come save you here? If you keep making noise, we’ll just throw you to the undead like we said earlier.”
I didn’t even need to watch the situation to know how it would play out.
Meanwhile, the hooligan young master who appeared to be leading everything smiled brightly at us with his hands behind his back.
“I was just looking for you.”
Grinning, he walked toward us without even showing any caution.
Didn’t he see the wraith struggling in Luna’s hand?
When I glanced over, I saw Lispa covering the wraith so that it wouldn’t be visible.
As if she intended to let the opponent lower his guard.
“Well? Surprised?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t you get separated from all your companions the moment you came in?”
At that, I nodded slightly.
“I heard that unless you break a branch from the oak tree in the lobby and carry a piece of it, you’ll get scattered.”
“Oh. So you managed to figure it out. Usually the fools who enter without knowing anything die about halfway as soon as they fall into this labyrinth.”
Indeed.
If you carefully formed a party for balance and then suddenly everyone got scattered, it would naturally be extremely dangerous.
“That’s not what I’m curious about.”
“Hmm?”
As he slowly approached and looked at me, I asked him.
[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
“I heard all the dungeons here drop people in random places. And this labyrinth seems to be the only one where allies get separated.”
“So?”
“So I was wondering how you knew we’d end up here.”
At my question, he shrugged.
At the same time, the men behind him moved to block Luna and Lispa.
The men restraining the two female explorers raised daggers and drove them straight into the women’s palms, pinning their hands to the ground.
“AAAAAAAH!!!”
The women thrashed and screamed in agony, but the men slowly stood up and turned their attention toward us.
There wasn’t the slightest hesitation in their actions.
They treated people not as people, but as toys to play with—or beasts that could be killed at any moment.
These guys had definitely done this more than once.
“Hoh… those two over there look like high-grade goods, Young Master.”
“It’s been a while since we’ve had proper fun.”
Their snickering voices carried unmistakable filthy intentions toward the two women.
“I don’t have any personal grudge against you. You understand, right? This place is a structure where the strong devour everything.”
At his gesture, one of the men behind him opened the pouch hanging from his waist.
Inside were numerous human index fingers.
“Don’t resist. If you let us have some fun and hand over what you have, maybe we’ll let you live. Who knows?”
“You look like some rich brat, yet what you’re doing is worse than those back-alley organ traffickers. And the dogs you keep are the same kind of bastards.”
Well, there was no guarantee that a rich family couldn’t produce someone like this.
Especially this type.
“Well, coming here is just my personal hobby. If I did this outside, it would be troublesome.”
He pulled out a dagger and tapped it lightly against my neck.
“Don’t worry. I’ll make it painless. Who knows? If those two ladies over there behave nicely, we might even let those two bitches go.”
The composure of someone who had always stood on the side of the strong overflowed from him.
An utterly sadistic hooligan.
I had a rough idea now.
This bastard was definitely a perverted psychopath who felt extreme pleasure from harming people.
But doing such things outside would cause trouble, so he deliberately chose a dungeon where anything could happen without consequences.
“Did you ask earlier? How I knew you’d end up here.”
He took out an artifact from his chest that emitted a strange power.
“Do you know what this is? It’s called a Record Board. If you use it, you can send a target to the theme recorded in this item.”
In other words, he had been aiming for us to enter here from the start and had guided us.
That artifact must be something obtained here and usable only here.
“The labyrinth isn’t actually very popular. So getting this wasn’t difficult. Ah, may I ask you one question?”
“Go ahead.”
When I answered without resisting, he smiled with satisfaction.
“By any chance… what’s your relationship with those two ladies?”
I didn’t answer.
But Luna, who had been silently observing, replied without the slightest hesitation.
“Spouses.”
“Ah. Maybe I misunderstood the situation. That woman speaks pretty bluntly. Then what about that lady over there?”
“Why are you looking with those filthy eyes, bastard? Can’t you tell? She’s the woman who’ll become his wife about a hundred years from now.”
The young master looked slightly puzzled by Lispa’s rough reply.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Anyway, if you’re spouses, that’s even better. Taking what belongs to someone else makes it more pleasurable.”
“What shall we do, Young Master?”
“What else? We’ll do what we always do. Disarm them and strip them.”
At those words, I slowly raised my hand and grabbed the dagger he had pointed at my neck.
Thud!
“Hmm?”
Creeeak…
Then I clenched the blade in my bare hand and crushed it.
“Huh?”
“I wondered if there might be something worth finding out, but you’re empty inside. So. You’re saying no one would know if something happened here?”
“……”
“Then that means even if you die here, your family wouldn’t be able to do anything, right?”
The moment he sensed something was wrong and widened his eyes—
“Young Master!! Dodge!!”
One of the men who had been silently watching the situation rushed in at tremendous speed, pulling the hooligan backward while simultaneously swinging his sword at me.
His blade, infused with aura, flew toward my neck at terrifying speed.
At that very moment—
BOOM!!!!
The floor shattered as something like a gigantic creature burst out, moving as if to swallow both the man and me whole.
A Zombie Sandworm?
That was a really rare specimen.
Unlike the rotting skin covering parts of its body, the sharp teeth inside its mouth gleamed, coated in horrific slime.
Even among undead, it was a fairly powerful one.
An upper-rank undead that even Expert-level fighters would need numbers to face, otherwise they’d have to flee.
Why had something like that suddenly burst out of the ground?
Then I realized it had probably been drawn by the screaming wraith Luna was holding.
No one reacted to the sudden situation.
But—
Thud!!!
The Zombie Sandworm that had been lunging at me suddenly froze in midair.
Everyone stared at the scene with dumbfounded expressions.
CLANG!!
Then the knight’s aura-infused sword swung at my neck bounced away.
The man’s eyes widened as if he couldn’t understand what his sword had bounced off of.
Still, he wasn’t incompetent and tried to retreat quickly.
Where do you think you’re going?
Thud!
“Huh?!”
Just as he attempted a backstep, I grabbed him by the collar and grinned.
“Hey. Where are you going? Can’t you see it drooling because it’s hungry?”
“What?! Kuaaaah!!”
With brute strength, I yanked him forward and threw him straight into the Zombie Sandworm’s mouth.
The sandworm swallowed him like a crocodile catching prey, chewing him with a grotesque sound before gulping him down.
The man became the sandworm’s meal without even managing to scream properly.
Drops of his blood trickled down from the creature’s gaping mouth.
The sandworm had appeared boldly but now hung frozen in the air, staring at me.
Despite being undead, it felt fear toward me.
“Hungry?”
At my question, the sandworm’s body trembled.
“Want more?”
When I smiled chillingly and glanced at the men beside the hooligan young master, they staggered backward.
But the moment they took a single step back, I was already standing right in front of one of them.
“D-die!!”
The man swung his sword at me.
But his blade sliced only through empty air.
My dagger—drawn before he even realized it—flowed across his arms and legs, cutting them smoothly.
“Ghk?!”
With his tendons damaged, he collapsed without being able to resist.
Afterward, I grabbed him by the back of the neck and walked toward the Zombie Sandworm.
As I approached the sandworm, which stood frozen in fear and didn’t even dare attack me, the man struggled and screamed.
“S-stop! Please stop!! Spare me! Young Master! Young Master!!!”
The rest were completely frozen, unable to move.
Dragging the man toward the sandworm, I said:
“If you don’t want to die, chew him properly.”
“AAAAAAAH!!”
The second man was sucked into the sandworm’s mouth.
Even though only instinct remained, the terrified Zombie Sandworm hesitated, staring at me without even chewing the prey inside its mouth.
BAM!!
So I punched the sandworm in the head.
“Goblins too. They always listen better after getting hit.”
Perhaps sensing the chill in my mutter, the sandworm trembled violently and began frantically chewing and swallowing the prey in its mouth.
“Next.”
As my mutter spread through the air, the hooligan young master collapsed onto the ground with a pale face.
“The dungeon’s undead… is scared?”
“What the hell…”
“M-monster! What are you doing?!”
At his shout, I replied.
“Is there a problem with feeding beasts to beasts that are worse than animals?”
At least to me, that hooligan and his guards weren’t people.
“H-how can you feed people to the undead!”
“You’re saying strange things. Where are the people here? There were just eight beasts worse than animals who abandoned being human.”
Ah.
Two died already, so six now?
At my chilling reply, the hooligan and the others completely lost their nerve and collapsed.
“R-run away!!!”
Only then did they realize something was wrong and fled.
Seeing them abandon even the hooligan they were supposed to guard showed what they were worth.
“You bastards!! D-don’t run away!! Protect me!!”
All that remained were the screaming hooligan and the two men who had been blocking Luna and Lispa earlier.
They had forgotten even the timing to run, standing pale and shouting.
“P-please spare us!!”
“W-we’ll never come near you again! Forgive us!”
Looking at them screaming, I turned to the man whose arms and legs had been cut off, still screaming with bloodshot eyes.
He was the companion of the two women who had been restrained.
“What should I do with the remaining ones?”
At my question, the man who had been frozen gritted his teeth as blood flowed.
Then he shouted as if screaming in fury.
“Those bastards worse than humans! They’re famous murderers! Rape and murder inside dungeons is their specialty! They pit companions against each other, throw people into monster packs as bait, and even use people as meat shields to trigger dangerous traps for rewards! They’re demonic bastards!”
So they were quite notorious.
Of course, rumors alone were widespread, and their appearances weren’t known.
That was why they could act so boldly in the lobby.
Which meant they had never left a single victim alive who could be traced back to them.
“Then how do you know that?”
When I asked, he clenched his teeth.
“That son of a bitch told us everything himself while bragging about his achievements after capturing us!”
Ah.
One of those cases.
“Th-that’s all lies!! Lies!!”
The hooligan screamed in terror, so I glanced at Luna.
She made a slicing gesture across her neck with her thumb.
He was lying.
Seeing my cold gaze, he must have realized there was no other way, because he trembled and shouted.
“What’s wrong with it! It’s survival of the fittest anyway!!!”
They say the world is wide and full of lunatics.
There’s no need for demons.
With people like this around, even a demon like Diablo ends up serving gods.
“Well said. That’s why you’re dying here.”
—Leon…
At that moment, Isna’s voice seeped into my mind again.
It wasn’t that she was calling me.
Rather, the memory of her muttering to herself while cutting down monsters and pushing deeper into the labyrinth in agony surged through my mind.
Ah, just wait a moment.
I’ll clean up the trash first and then I’ll come rescue you right away.
[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]