The Secret Path Through the Labyrinth

Rest and resupply took only a single day.

Watching Mu-saeng grinning from ear to ear, practically overflowing with stamina as he geared up for the Tower, Wahsh muttered from midair:

[Are you seriously hauling that massive bag around again? Packed to the brim like that?]

From the administrator's perspective, more than half of the contents were useless junk he would never touch. It was heavy, bulky, and bound to get in the way. Without that dead weight, he could breeze through time-limited quest floors even faster.

Mu-saeng, however, remained resolute. "Didn't I tell you? A man should be able to pull out whatever he needs with his eyes closed."

Even though he had received an A-rank artifact, the Bag of Whatever, as a 'courtesy' from One Way Group, Mu-saeng was not about to rely on it exclusively. Granted, compressing spatial volume made climbing infinitely more convenient for Awakeners. But that was all it did.

'It's not an in-game inventory where an item snaps into your hand at the press of a hotkey...'

What if he had to fashion a torch this very second? What if the ground collapsed beneath ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his boots and he needed carabiners, pitons, and climbing rope in an instant? What if his arm was cleanly severed and he had to chug a potion while splashing the rest over the stump?

Turn the Bag of Whatever inside out and dump everything onto the floor just to rummage for a single item? In a crisis, that was suicide.

As a dungeon sherpa who knew firsthand that a split-second judgment and being a single second faster meant the difference between life and death, packing a familiar, battle-tested rucksack was simply common sense.

[Hmph...] Wahsh snorted, feigning incomprehension. Yet the corners of his yellow bill curved into an unmistakable smirk.

'As expected of this brat... Kkyakyakyat! What luck that my transmission code latched onto him. Even if his personality gets on my nerves.'

The boy's attitude and resolve toward the Tower, dungeons, and fellow Awakeners was second to none. More importantly, he possessed the hard-earned knowledge and experience to back it up. Nor was it purely rational calculation.

"Oh, right. The goggles. Heh, definitely gotta bring these."

He instinctively knew what mattered. Back in Dungeon 55, ordinary climbers would have panicked, their minds paralyzed by the split-second agony of choosing which guardian to take. Yet in the heat of that chaos, Mu-saeng had snatched Sorcerer Maia's goggles and was already putting them to brilliant use.

Only after meticulously inspecting every strap and pouch did Mu-saeng declare himself ready to move.

"Shall we head out, Wahsh?"

He took his first step as he pushed open the hotel room door.

[Let's blow through these trivial floors quickly. I'm curious about that method the beast mentioned.]

"Blowing through Floors 7 through 10 'quickly' isn't exactly a walk in the park... as you well know—"

[Silence! With me at your side, what nonsense are you babbling? Just move your legs!]

Wahsh shoved his black horn-rimmed glasses firmly up his beak and drifted forward. Mu-saeng let out a quiet chuckle. Where on earth did this creature get such brazen confidence, considering he could not even invoke Admin Authority inside the Tower?

'He really is something else.'

Even so, the administrator's overbearing swagger was oddly reassuring.

"Yes, yes, your majesty. Let's go."

Mu-saeng set out for the Tower.

The drive from the luxury hotel provided by Geumseong Guild to the Tower took roughly twenty-seven minutes. From entering the public lobby to stepping onto the 7th floor was a seamless transition.

Little Trolls typically roamed in packs of ten and possessed rapid regenerative abilities, making them a notorious headache for novice Awakeners. But against Mu-saeng...

"Grargh?"

"Hup."

"Kraaaagh—!"

"Hup."

"Whim-whimper..."

"Hup."

Before Mu-saeng, whose raw specifications were utterly ridiculous for a climber on the 7th floor, the Little Trolls simply detonated into paste. Furthermore, because they were grouped tightly together, he did not have to waste a single second tracking them down.

Clearing the stage while comfortably meeting the bonus objective had taken barely eight minutes.

"...Driving here took longer than the raid."

[Kkyakyakyakyat! Didn't I tell you? Child's play!]

"Wait a minute. Wahsh, you didn't lift a single feather this time, so why are you strutting around? Instead of boasting, shouldn't you be complimenting how strong I've—"

[You insolent fool! Who do you think made it possible for you to get this strong in the first place?!]

Seeing Wahsh throw a squawking tantrum, Mu-saeng promptly shut his mouth.

"Tsk. Fine. Commencing Floor 8."

After all, the duck was not wrong.

One hundred and twenty hours. A staggering five days allotted for the quest on Floor 8.

The mortality rate was not exceptionally high, but among the lower tiers leading up to Floor 10, Floor 8 was easily the most loathed by Awakeners. There were no monsters lurking in the dark. Instead, climbers had to march endlessly through a pitch-black, suffocating labyrinth. The moment a sense of direction slipped, one was doomed to wander in circles indefinitely, meaning tension could never be released.

The average clear time sat around one hundred hours. Even Mu-saeng's personal record, achieved while running on minimal sleep, was eighty-nine hours. It was a trial designed to test the absolute limits of mortal mental and physical endurance.

And yet...

"Wahsh, is this really allowed?"

[What is it now?]

Zzzzzzzzzzt—!

Mu-saeng's vision flickered and shifted. To be precise, the scenery visible through his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠goggles transformed entirely. Gone were the gloomy, damp, foul-smelling stone corridors. His field of view was bathed in a clear, translucent blue.

"It's... see-through vision?"

Beyond the immediate masonry, structural pathways penetrating straight through solid rock were laid out in full view. At this point, the joy of being able to sprint through the maze was completely overshadowed by disbelief.

[...As expected of that Sorcerer wench. She certainly knew how to fiddle with the system in her own crude way.]

"The system? Are we sure this is safe? Won't this trigger alarms, like when you warned that using Admin Authority would get us caught?"

Wahsh was strictly barred from using Executing with Administrator Authority inside the Tower. He had stated clearly that doing so would immediately alert the overseers perched at the Tower's summit. Yet what about what was happening right in front of his eyes? Wasn't this just as game-breaking?

[Hmph. If I granted you true vision through my authority, it wouldn't stop at something so pathetic. And if it weren't safe, you would already be dead.]

Wahsh scoffed dismissively. His tone dripped with offense at being compared to Sorcerer Maia's 'measly' gadgetry, leaving Mu-saeng once again unable to fathom the true depth of Wahsh's cosmic powers.

"Fair point. I took something Maia was already wearing in the dungeon... If this broke the rules, she wouldn't have lasted inside the Tower either."

Although the Sorcerer Maia in Dungeon 55 was an anomalous bug, she was fundamentally identical to the boss on Floor 55. That meant these very goggles likely existed on the 55th floor as well. If the system was going to flag them, it would have happened centuries ago.

"Still, out of curiosity... if we ever do get caught, what would that even look like? Does another guy like you pop out of thin air?"

As Mu-saeng stepped into the maze with a vastly relaxed stride, he was promptly reminded once more.

[Shut your trap. If you can see through the walls, you see those stairs over there, don't you? Just walk in that direction.]

He was reminded of what kind of entity a Tower Administrator truly was.

X-ray vision? Merely seeing through stone?

"...Huh? Stairs?"

[You claimed you had see-through eyes, didn't you? Then look properly. That's the shortcut. Press the bricks in front of the stairwell in sequence and it'll open right up.]

There was no way a true administrator was limited to passive sight. Compared to that level of omniscience, Wahsh had every right to feel insulted by a pair of magitech goggles.

"This is just ridiculous..."

Beyond the corridor where challengers were meant to wander horizontally for days, Mu-saeng spotted a vertical structure standing out of nowhere. Arriving before the wall concealing the stairs, Wahsh floated in front of it and pointed to specific sections of the stonework.

Mu-saeng pressed firmly against each marked brick. With soft mechanical clicks, several stones sank into the wall like buttons.

Rumbleeeee...

The stone partition parted smoothly, revealing an ascending spiral staircase. Even as his boots echoed up the steps, Mu-saeng could not shake the bizarre feeling that he was committing an outright crime against the Tower's architects.

"Ha... Unbelievable. Really."

A hollow laugh broke from his lips as the clear notification surfaced before his eyes.

Even more shocking than three points to all attributes was the Fear Resistance. From Floor 30 onward, fear was one of the most crippling status abnormalities encountered in solo boss fights. To gain passive resistance to it on Floor 8 of all places was absurd.

And that was merely the standard bonus. The true milestone came right after.

There was no physical way to navigate the maze within five hours by running its corridors. In other words, discovering this hidden staircase was the only conceivable method to clear this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠requirement.

"Crazy... What on earth is this?"

A fivefold multiplier to destructive force against terrain and anything resting on the earth, whether natural or artificial?!

'The god-tier demolition passive... Good grief.'

His awe at the nonsensical reward had barely settled when another line flashed at the bottom:

"Wait... Three other human beings found this before me?!"

A dry laugh spilled from his lips. That brick puzzle was not something anyone could hit by chance. Even if someone had an X-ray skill, how could they have cracked the wall without knowing the precise sequence?

Mu-saeng tilted his head in sheer bewilderment, but Wahsh merely grunted as if it were obvious:

[...Well, there are always uncivilized brutes who solve problems by flattening every wall in their path. If that beast from earlier was lucky enough, he probably stumbled upon it that way.]

"Ah."

Someone capable of pulverizing the labyrinth's stonework, blessed with preposterous luck. In the end, hidden condition rewards often mirrored the outrageous methods used to accomplish them.

'That makes sense. Thunder Tiger... With an SSR-rank ability like that, and a bit of fortune to boot.'

Whether Geum Byeong-cheol had actually bypassed the maze in such a manner was impossible to confirm, but a monster of his stature was certainly capable of it. Even if he had lacked the raw mana to obliterate the entire labyrinth back when he was only climbing Floor 8, fortunate freaks with wide-area destruction could have shattered the right barrier by sheer coincidence.

"There are way too many freaks in this world."

Secrets he had never dreamed of during his thirteen years as a dungeon sherpa. Secrets that ordinary Awakeners grinding conventionally through the Tower would never know. Mu-saeng was unraveling them with his own two feet.

And the exact same held true for Floors 9 and 10.

The Tower's public lobby was buzzing with its usual restless crowd. Challengers braced their nerves, stifled their dread, or wore their manic excitement on their sleeves. Yet among them...

"Haa... haa... haa..."

One man was neither steeling his resolve nor concealing his sheer terror, letting his panic show for the entire lobby to see.

It was Park Hyun-gu.

"Aigoo, look at you. Your lungs are about to leap right out of your throat. Why is a guy who already cleared up to Floor 10 acting so terrified? You've raided Dungeon 11 plenty of times, Hyung."

Mu-saeng clicked his tongue. Park Hyun-gu waved his hands frantically, voice thick with grievance.

"Hey, you punk, this is the Tower! The Tower! Besides, well..."

"What? Are you nervous because you're climbing with me?"

"It's not just that! But damn it, you know what I mean!"

Challenging Floor 11 of the Tower. And doing so alongside Kim Mu-saeng. Park Hyun-gu knew the capabilities of an ace dungeon sherpa better than anyone on Earth. But inside the Tower, there were no escape scrolls. If they slipped up by one fraction of a percent, it was over. Permanent death.

And on top of that, what on earth had Mu-saeng demanded of him?

"A-Are you absolutely sure I should just stand still? I shouldn't do anything at all?"

Mu-saeng had instructed him to suppress his Awakened abilities and play the part of a lifeless prop. Even if Hyun-gu had stopped climbing at Floor 10, he still possessed respectable combat skills. How could he not break out in cold sweats when asked to act like a sack of barley—especially when Mu-saeng didn't even have a combat Awakened ability of his own?!

"Yep. Kim Mu-saeng and Park Hyun-gu. Requesting entry to the Tower."

"H-Hey, wait! Hold on a second! Shouldn't we at least hold a quick strategy meeting—"

"Strategy meeting, my foot. Just behave yourself, Hyung. Don't say a single word. Actually, don't even breathe."

A blinding flash engulfed the platform.

When the light faded, Mu-saeng and Park Hyun-gu were already standing on the 11th floor of the Mythic Tower.