053 Routes and Choices

Paz pushed Nicola out of the way.

The spears riddled him, punching large holes into his body. Blood splattered the floor in showers and sprayed onto the wall.

Despite the brutal trauma, Paz didn’t keel over. Not immediately, at least. He wavered as his health bar zeroed out. And then, he fell. First to his knees, then to his face. Blood dribbled out of his mouth.

“Um, you alright, big guy?” I asked.

Paz didn’t answer.

Nicola clasped her palms over her mouth. “I didn’t see it, Damien. I’m so sorry! I didn’t know this would happen.”

“Nah. Paz should have his rez off cooldown. Better him than you, really.”

I inspected the tile she’d stepped on. I wasn’t sure, but I’d probably walked across the same spot without triggering the trap. A consequence of the racial perk that all elves were blessed with?

Maybe . . . But, there was also more to it than that. The trap could have been specifically designed to kill casters, which made sense considering they were slower to evade than many other classes. A high chance existed that we would encounter a multitude of traps in the dungeon, both mechanical and magic-based, based on whatever inane criteria.

If other traps could deal as much damage as this one, we needed to figure out a way to safely bypass them for the sake of our quality of life.

“Ow, my head,” Paz said, rolling to a sitting position. His flesh knitted as he spoke, regrowing organs that had been punctured straight through. A spear that had been lodged in his chest tumbled to the ground. “That was so not fun.”

“Oh, you big dolt,” Nicola said and pulled him into a hug.

Paz glanced at me, at a loss for what to do.

I shrugged in return.

“So much for regular armor,” Paz said, clucking his tongue at the steel that had been mangled in the attack. “I told you that it was ranker-grade or nothing.”

“I’m not sure anything could have survived that,” I countered. “Except, maybe, a bullion van.”

“There you go with odd words again,” Paz said and peeled Nicola off his body. He unclasped his cuirass, letting it crash to the ground. “I didn’t expect to die, mind you. I was hoping my new skill would protect me. Good to know that it’s not infallible.”

“Ah. That’s the technique you got for reaching level fifteen, huh? What is it?”

“[Deflect Missile].” Paz rose to his feet. “It’s a passive skill that slows projectile attacks when they enter my vicinity. I’m still trying to get the hang of it, but I think it’s too low-level to help deflect anything above a certain size . . . or velocity.”

That sounded useful. “What happens when you deflect a projectile?”

Paz leered. “I return it in a chosen direction for two times more damage.”

Nice. With such an ability, we could employ him as a trump card against Rangers.

“How does it feel?” Nicola piped up. “Dying, that is.”

Paz furrowed his eyebrows. “I don’t know what’s on the other side if that’s what you’re asking. [Sanguine Return] keeps me in the mortal coil.”

“So, a kind of limbo? You can’t confirm if an afterlife exists?”

“Even if it did, I don’t plan to visit, Nicola. This lifetime is enough for me.”

I inspected the wall trap, more to take my mind off their discussion than anything else. My version of the afterlife featured a pyramid and a bunch of fiery monsters. I wasn’t sure the same held for all Vizhimans.

Paz followed my gaze. “Yeah. A Trickster would have been a great addition to our party, especially if equipped with [Trap Expert] or [Danger Sense] skills.”

“I can take point,” I said. “With your [Deflect Missile] working behind me. Nicola would bring up the rear.”

“Works for me.”

We resumed our advance, albeit at a less punishing pace.

[Map] proved invaluable in helping us maintain a cardinal direction. It led us through winding turns and past attacking chimeras, which we butchered, though gained little XP from by dint of three-way sharing.

Paz urged us forward until our stamina meters bottomed out. We downed some potions and continued again.

True enough, time flowed differently for everything within the Labyrinth. Despite the long hours spent navigating the corridors, the spirit orb timer didn’t advance by more than a few minutes. Where had this exploit been all my life?

But, I would worry about that once I caught my breath. It took every iota of my attention to keep a lookout for traps while also dealing with [Map] and ambushes from chimeras.

In what seemed to be about twenty hours since our appearance in the dungeon, we finally found a second safe room.

All three of us collapsed inside, barely able to stand.

“Four hours to meditate,” I moaned. “Or we die.”

“You mean sleep, right?” Nicola said, curling into a ball. “I’m not going to return to a hundred percent with mere meditation.”

Paz simply snored.

I turned over on my back and looked around the safe room. It glowed with the same ambient pink lighting that suffused all of the Labyrinth. Strange images covered the ceiling, carved in the stone, much like the murals I’d seen back at the abandoned mausoleum.

The images depicted a variety of scenes, of builders going about their activities. Lumberjacks felled trees in a forest and ferried the logs across a broad river. They erected some kind of structure—a house or a barn, I wasn’t sure which. A taskmaster oversaw the proceedings, though the images blurred at this point, proving too difficult to decipher . . .

I awoke to Nicola shaking me vigorously.

“Damien,” she hissed. “We’ve got company.”

I forced my eyes to stay open. Across from us, with their backs to the exit, a new party of four stood in the safe room.

All four of them looked just as tired as we did a few hours ago. The only female member of their party limped on one foot, bleeding profusely from the other.

Paz stood facing them with crossed arms, a sneer on his lips.

“This room’s taken,” he said.

“It’s a safe room,” the leader of the opposing party—a young man in steel armor—replied. “Surely, we can share without any problems.”

“It’s taken.”

The leader furrowed his brows. “Look, man. I try to avoid altercations with fellow adventurers when I can, but you can’t in good faith expect me to concede just because you say so. In case you haven’t noticed, the hallways are full of monsters. My party needs a breather.”

I butted in before Paz could say the first rude thought that jumped into his mouth. My use of [Identify] had put each of the newcomers at levels above 18. We could take them if it boiled down to it, but I wasn’t about to be an aggressor.

“Hey,” I said. “I won’t deny other rankers a chance to rest. But, I’m not sure I feel safe sharing a room with you. Why don’t we go about this with some civility?”

The limping woman frowned the moment I spoke and whispered to her teammates. “It’s him. The Dark Elf. The one who attacked Byron.”

I can hear you, lady.

“The party killers?” their steel-clad leader said, not even bothering to lower his voice.

“Yes,” Paz said with a grin.

“No,” I spat and glared at Paz. “Byron lied.”

The other party fell silent. But, the darting of their pupils and the tension in their limbs proved to be a dead giveaway.

They didn’t believe us. Would I end up killing another set of adventurers this soon?

“He’s telling the truth,” Nicola said, striding forward to join me. “I remember your faces. I’ve seen you around the guild. You might have heard of me in turn.”

The opposing leader stiffened. “You’re the carnal sister. The one who partied up with Ben.”

Nicola hummed. “And, if I were capable of murder for the sake of it, word would have traveled around the guild before today.” She extended her hand. “Peace?”

The man spent a moment in consideration, then accepted the handshake. “Peace. I’m not a big fan of Byron anyway. As long as we divide the room equally and stay in our respective corners, we wouldn’t issue hostilities.”

I stepped on Paz’s foot before he could reply. “That sounds good to me.”

“Though I must warn you,” the other man continued. “Most adventurers actively try to avoid getting on Red Wyrm’s bad side. Don’t expect a lot of help from the parties you meet.” He paused, as if reluctant to add. “We caught sight of Byron a few hours ago, for that matter. His party had just cleared a boss room by the looks of it. We traveled as fast as we could in the opposite direction, though I could not tell which way they headed. Consider this a tip.”

My heartbeat foundered. I hadn’t rested enough to refill my renewables, but assuming Paz was correct about the Labyrinth funneling rankers toward each other, hanging around the same vicinity as Byron was akin to suicide.

However, was leaving now the right choice?

Byron was too strong to need the safe rooms in this region. But, he knew we weren’t and could try to find us . . .

“Let’s head out,” I said to my team, paying no heed to the other party.

Nicola caught on as we reentered the corridors. “You think Byron’s searching the safe rooms?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t intend to find out. Paz, is it possible to mistake a boss monster’s lair for a safe room?”

“Not every time,” Paz answered. “But, I have heard of mimic rooms that lure unsuspecting rankers in.”

A dark shape barreled out of a corner. All three of us obliterated it before it got a chance to strike.

“Left, then right,” I said, studying the [Map]. “Left again.”

We ran down the passageways, reducing the monsters that occupied them to bloody matter.

I kept an eye on the circular outline of [Map], so I missed the chasm that I would have tumbled headfirst into had Paz not grabbed the back of my shirt.

“What?” I mumbled as he tossed me away from the edge of the drop. “Another trap?”

“Aye,” Paz said. “But, this one seems to have been triggered by someone else.”

I stared into the dark chasm and tried not to think of a preceding party falling to their doom. I failed.

“I can’t cross this,” Nicola said, eyeing the divide.

It stretched from one side of the wall to the other, about ten meters long.

“Same,” Paz said. “You’d need [Levitation] to pull it off, or the highest tiers of Strength or Dexterity.”

Clean wind howled up from the chasm, hinting at a cavern below. I couldn’t even bring myself to kick a stone into the drop for fear of rousing whatever slumbered within.

With no other choice left to us, we turned back the way we came. All the while, my heart thumped wildly in my chest as I imagined Byron bursting out of the next corner.

After some long, grueling hours—during which I drained most of my stamina—we ran into the umpteenth dead end. Unlike the others, however, this one bore a double door, no different from a tavern’s, and an inscription:

For those without fear.

“Do they mean the affinity,” I wheezed, “or the regular emotion?”

“Can’t know without entering,” Paz said. “This is a boss monster’s lair.”

Nicola said nothing, hunched over her knees in a bid to regain her breath.

She had even less stamina than I did. And, we would truly done for if we ran into trouble with our biggest damage dealer out of gas.

“Potion break,” I called, reaching into my inventory for a vial of brilliant green. “We’ll take a breather and find some other way around. The last thing we want is to get stuck in a place. Not with Byron lurking nearby.”

The boss’ room emitted a hideous aura that, although similar to mine, failed to trigger Dismay. I studied the huge double doors as I waited for the potion’s effects to kick in, noting a reoccurrence of the images from before.

Where before the paintings had only depicted human builders. This time, a panoply of strange animals were shown trooping toward an underground cavern. It was a scene eerily similar to the flood myths from Earth, except there was no flood, and the cavern seemed manmade, just like . . .

Hold on. Did this mean that an ancient civilization constructed the Labyrinth?

“This boss’ room blocks the path,” Paz said, touching the door.

“Obviously,” I replied, surfacing from the pool of my thoughts.

“No. I mean, it’s not a dead-end.” Paz gestured at an insignia on the door. “This is a corridor, guarded by a Way-keeping Boss—one of the special kinds of bosses that dungeons possess. We’d be able to continue onward to the other side if we beat the monster.”

“We’re not fighting a special boss,” I started to say before Paz kicked open the double doors.

Walls sprouted on both sides of our party, slamming into the ceiling. A purple mist rolled out from within the room.

Sequestered far within the dark, a pair of inhuman eyes opened above us.

They glowed red.