Chapter 195 - Back to basics

The screams of the amalgam horror resounded through the corridor as Sofia ran for her life. She knew the general disposition of the maze’s layout now, and she ran toward the most complex part of the maze. She didn’t fool herself into thinking that maybe she could fight the thing, all she wanted was to try to take as many corners as possible to search for a life-saving layer change.

Immediately, there was a problem, the thing was much faster than her.

Sofia unsummoned her bone armor and stored the Orichalcum one, anything to go faster.

It was getting closer.

Not enough!

[You have chosen to replace ‘Poker Face’ (lvl36) by ‘Sprint’ (lvl9)]

[‘Poker Face’ will be unavailable for : 36 months. Are you sure?]

Yes!!!

[Sprint] : Top running speed is 90% (10*Skill level) higher.

The few seconds that it took for Sofia to fiddle with the system was enough for the monster to almost catch up, she had a rune up still, but if it activated she would instantly give up.

Sofia felt her body become lighter, her legs stronger, pushed by the mana from the skill, her speed almost doubled. She was surprised to see the skill already at level nine considering it had been level 3 when she deleted it last time, but she gladly welcomed the upgrade.

Finally, she managed to gain some distance, she was faster than the thing now, even if just a tiny bit, but her stamina was draining at breakneck speed as well. Several times, she almost spelled her doom by almost crashing into the wall during a turn because she was going so fast, but so far, she managed. The monster’s scream didn’t calm down, they got louder and louder, angrier as Sofia slowly pulled away. [Way of the fool] was working very hard to let her not fall despite her speed and the quakes shaking through the maze every time the monster howled.

Bit by bit, her speed fell as her stamina started running out.

Come on, change layer alreadyyyyyy!

She was doing her best to run around, going deeper and deeper into the maze, it was hard to remember it all. In desperation, she started emptying her bone storage to see if a well placed pile of bones would slow the thing down. It did not. The monster ate and tore through the pile of bones like it was mush.

The barrel of Silverwater was thrown at the monster too, as well as good quantities of blood, nothing did it.  Trying hard to remember what else she had that could help, Sofia kept throwing out things from her storage behind her. The monster devoured them all the same without losing its pace.

At an intersection, she turned, thinking she could loop around the monster and turn back, but was forced to go back and choose another direction. The monster was truly like a flood, it filled up the whole maze. Now it was coming from different directions all at once. At this pace, it would soon fill up the whole place, leaving Sofia with nowhere to go.

She still had a bunch of liquid health potion, she threw most of them at the thing. That did nothing. She also threw the explosive candy from Alith. These exploded after the thing ate them, and it actually slowed it down. For a second or two. It started going even faster after that.

Sofia ran and ran, but the distance of a dozen of meters still separating her from the flood like monster was slowly getting smaller.

As she turned a corner, what Sofia had been trying to avoid all this time happened, she entered a dead end.

Faced with an insurmountable hurdle, Sofia sighed. This is where the trial ends, then.

Just as it was about to reach her, she activated her bone armor. If it was going to eat her alive, at least she would fight back with some bone dominus spikes. Pareth also came out to fight, and Sofia turned around to face the monstrosity.

The awaited death didn’t come. Sofia was shocked by the calm and silence that had regained the maze, no more eyes, no more nightmare fuel monster. Where Sofia was, there was only old and moldy furniture, roots on the ground, and long-dead knights slowly waking up around her. Under the assault of a dozen wood monsters, Sofia laughed.

This was so much better.

Pareth did not let the wood knights hit Sofia a single time. When she started lashing out with her spine whip, the damage from the solar bursts were devastating on the very flammable monsters.

When this was all said and done and she was safe, Sofia sat in the puddle of vibrant red sap, and killed herself. With her stamina back up, she now waited in place for her mana to come back. She didn’t move, and she never looked behind her. A layer change at this moment would be too unfortunate, she did not want to spit at the luck she had just had.

Or the misfortune?

At first glance, she felt that she was lucky the layer change happened when it did. It had literally saved her life, a fraction of a second away from a disaster. But on the flip side, it had ample occasions to happen before that as she ran and took many turns through the maze, and it never did.

Seriously though, what was this fucking thing?

I don’t know but it takes the cake as the scariest shit I have ever seen. I think I wasn’t far from a heart-attack…

What is going to happen if I get sent back to the eye layer? Is it full of this thing now… I really can’t afford to move without a rune anymore. But I believe the change to that layer was triggered by me taking the orb, so at least going there might not happen randomly. I hope.

Also that damn, orb better be useful

“And of course like everything else, I cannot [Identify] it… At the very least it looks important.”

And the book I found before did mention a sculptor, maybe it was the one who made the statue that held the orb. I feel like this orb and the eye layer might be key to get out of here. There is no regular exit after all…

It’s a bit of a disappointment that I had to get rid of [Poker face], but [Sprint] really saved me. Also it came at level 9 for some reason. I don’t know why I thought classless always came at level 1 but I guess not? And I already knew it but [Sprint] really is an anomaly. Just like [Fast reading], a multiplier of 10% per level is just insane. It’s the easiest skill to get too, as if the system was inviting everyone to get good at running away from things.

I used to think I wouldn’t need it anymore since I have wings but that was shortsighted. I still feel weird about keeping it in the long run, but for now it’s good to have.

It even leveled up once while I was running for my life…

I’m glad to be back to one of the safer layers. This one is one of the most interesting as well, there are remnants of the people who built this place all over.

After recovering and channeling another rune, Sofia stood up and started moving, but after the first turn she took, the layer changed back to the trap layer. Oh please…

That gave Sofia a suspicion that the chance to change layers might have something to do with how long she spent in them. But it couldn’t be a specific time because the actual time it took was all over the place so far. She was tempted to just sit back down for a while again before going to try her theory, but something felt wrong about spending so much time doing nothing in this maze. So she just kept on exploring the trapped layer, updating her map every so often to mark the places she had explored.

It was messy, but she wanted to keep track of exactly what part she had searched in what layer, so she used different cross-hatchings to keep track of that. Like this she would eventually have searched every nook and cranny of every layer.

Before she could find anything worth her attention on the trap layer, she was back onto the wood layer again. That was a breath of fresh air. In the tight corridors of the maze, the monsters had nowhere to go to escape her whip as Pareth kept them from ever reaching her.

As she advanced in the direction with the most wood monsters she could find, their numbers weirdly kept increasing. Am I going to find a nest of these things? The origins of the roots?

Maybe she would have, but she got sidetracked by a room with a closed metal door. After sending Pareth inside via the graveyard and making sure it was safe, she entered too. The room was circular and almost empty. All there was were five long-dead skeletons sitting around an inactive ritual circle.

Sofia instantly recognized it, that was the partial one from the book cover she had found. The full ritual from the book, ‘The Great Hollow’. And now that she stood before the completed thing, she was almost certain now, this was a God’s rune.