Labyrinth Manager Daedalus
Labyrinth Manager Daedalus.
An A-rank boss monster that appears in the Creta Labyrinth.
Widely known among the public as having been subjugated by Noinseong, one of South Korea’s seven Transcendents.
I still remember how the entire internet burned with that story at the time.
Boom—!
His head rose into view above the distant rooftops.
Aside from a few major structures like the temple, most of the buildings in this Stone Monastery were only two stories high.
Still, that put them at seven or eight meters, right?
A head jutting up over those roofs meant the bastard stood nearly ten meters tall.
His appearance was almost human… in short, a giant pure and simple.
Crash—!
I reinforced my eyesight with mana to get a better look at what he was doing from afar.
He was repeating some extremely suspicious behavior.
He smashed a nearby building to rubble, then lifted the debris and hurled it into the distance.
The flying wreckage slammed into another building, collapsing it in a roar of noise and dust.
“What the hell is he doing? Was someone in that building?”
“He’s blocking the path.”
Ahn Jihyun.
She clearly knew something.
As expected of a veteran, huh?
What exactly does she know?
“What do you mean?”
“Daedalus… that thing is a monster with extraordinary intelligence. There’s a reason it carries the title Labyrinth Manager. One of the reasons the Creta Labyrinth is so difficult is because that creature cleverly manipulates the paths. Open corridors suddenly become walls, or the reverse—it happens all the time. It even gradually lures invaders into positions that favor it. The moment they realize and try to flee, it beheads them all without distinguishing between Awoken or Minotaurs.”
“It manipulates the paths?”
“Yes. In the labyrinth itself, it uses secret passages only it knows to shove entire walls into place. A corridor becomes a solid wall in an instant. But it can’t do that here, so it’s probably just toppling whole buildings to seal the routes completely.”
Listening to her, it made sense.
The debris he threw was already smashing the roof of the corridor we had been heading toward.
If that route sealed completely, we would have to take a massive detour just to reach the gate—unless we planned to haul every heavy chunk of rubble out of the way by hand.
The situation was urgent.
We couldn’t just stand here watching like idiots.
“We’re taking him down.”
“What? But I—”
“Tell me everything you know about him. Fast!”
He was clearly on a different level from the Minotaurs.
I knew that much.
But waiting around hoping he never noticed us and simply wandered off in another direction wasn’t an option either.
According to Ahn Jihyun, even a balanced five-man party of A-rank Awoken would struggle to bring him down in an open field with no interference.
A tank was especially critical—his massive frame, monstrous strength, and long spear made him nightmarish to defend against.
On top of that, his mind was as sharp as a human’s. Even if you tried casting from range, he would close the distance at terrifying speed and start hurling whatever was nearby.
“How do you even know all this?”
“We collect accounts from people who participated in the subjugation at the community level.”
“Ah.”
The community really was useful.
I definitely needed to keep Ahn Jihyun completely under my control.
She was going to be handy for a long time to come.
“The biggest problem is that, like the Minotaurs, he has some kind of strange attack. I don’t know the exact form, but anyone hit by it feels their entire body go numb for several seconds…”
“That’s fine. It won’t work on me.”
“What?”
I had neither the time nor the inclination to explain why.
The people who already knew me just accepted it, but Hong Eunyoung and Ahn Jihyun were looking at me like I was some kind of suspicious freak.
Well, a guy who can erase mana at will is pretty suspicious already, isn’t he?
“Even so, it’s too much. Without a well-trained tank it’s far too dangerous. Even if I recovered my full power right this second it would still be impossible. If we just hide somewhere he hasn’t noticed us yet and wait a few hours—”
“Yeah, yeah. Ahn Jihyun, take the others and hide in the back. I’ll handle him alone.”
“Excuse me?”
The moment I declared I would go solo, every gaze locked onto me.
A few who already believed I was a Transcendent simply nodded. Others stared in pure disbelief, as if to say, Who the hell do you think you are to fight him alone?
But no one opened their mouth.
I was the leader of this group right now.
They could offer opinions, but no one here had the authority to overturn my decision.
“Just in case, stay hidden. I don’t know if the aftershocks will reach this far.”
With that I stepped forward, borrowed A-rank weapon in hand.
Why was I so confident?
Because charging in recklessly was a great way to die?
Hilarious.
Did I look like the kind of idiot who would gamble his life without any basis?
Of course my choices weren’t always perfect.
I made mistakes. I failed sometimes.
But not this time.
I was walking into this fight with a guaranteed winning hand.
Crash!
Rumble…
A chunk of building the size of a car slammed onto the corridor roof.
One of the pillars toppled sideways.
At this rate the entrance to the gate really would be sealed shut.
“You’re loud as hell, you oversized dumbass.”
Daedalus reacted to my voice.
His massive body turned toward us at once.
“Kular! Gular.”
“What the fuck is this bastard babbling?”
“Insolent dwarf!”
“Huh?”
Suddenly the giant’s voice rang out crystal clear.
I had been hearing the sound from the start, but at some point the meaning of his words became perfectly understandable.
What the hell?
At the same time a message appeared at the edge of my vision.
[ON]
Something just turned on?
Don’t tell me it even does real-time voice translation?
I’d have to check properly later.
“I’ll tear you to shreds, dwarf.”
“That’s my line, you bastard!”
“Insolent!”
“What, you understand me too?”
“Die!”
His size and speech were completely mismatched, which only made him more ridiculous the longer I listened—but his movement was beyond anything I had imagined.
We had been trading words, yet dozens of meters still separated us, and I already had my bow drawn.
If I could drop him with arrows without closing the distance, it would be perfect. I had the string fully drawn in advance.
But Daedalus showed exactly why he was an A-rank boss.
Thwack—!
The arrow left my fingers and flew straight for his skull.
Just as Ahn Jihyun had said, he was so fast he casually slipped past an arrow that was flying like a bullet.
“Hmm… maybe I should’ve just sniped him quietly instead of talking.”
But that had only been a taste.
The real show started now.
My heart had already been pounding for a while.
All right. Let’s see just how strong a Transcendent’s mana really is.
Newly activating the ability of Link Target No. 1 ‘Kim Isol’.
“Ghk…!”
What the hell!?
A searing, white-hot agony suddenly flooded every inch of my body, as if I were being burned alive.
“Urgh… if I’d known it would be like this I should’ve… tested it first…”
Today… no, yesterday?
Anyway, a little over ten hours ago, Kim Isol had collapsed unconscious in my arms inside the temple.
I had restored the mana I erased, just to see if she might wake up.
She never did.
She wasn’t waking up?
Then there was only one thing left for me to do.
I decided it was actually perfect and acted immediately.
I raised her mana all the way to S-10.
At the same time I synchronized with her.
Afterward I dialed it back down to A-10 so she wouldn’t wake up and go berserk again. That was the compromise.
Dropping it too low or erasing it completely left me worried about a surprise attack.
An Awoken’s durability was on a completely different level from a normal person’s, after all.
In any case, I could now freely use S-10 mana and every one of Kim Isol’s skills.
Even Park Yuri wouldn’t come close to matching me.
The sheer grade of the mana was different, and on top of that I still had the broken ability Thought Acceleration.
“Gaaaaah—!”
I never expected it would look like this, though.
Lee Donggeul had been right.
The skin on my face cracked and flaked away.
Every bit of flesh and muscle wrapped in the A-rank suit was on the verge of necrosis, and the burning agony showed no sign of stopping.
And right then, the ten-meter giant gripping a long spear charged straight at me.
My body had begun forcibly upgrading itself into a Transcendent’s physique.
“Urgh… d-don’t come closer! Stay the fuck back, you son of a bitch!”
“Die—!”
He swept the spear—far longer than even his own ten-meter height—in a wide horizontal arc.
Every building the blade touched instantly crumbled into powder; none of them offered even a scrap of cover.
The razor tip slammed into my side.
Crash—!
A sound like shattering glass rang out.
All remaining energy has been expended defending against the attack.
Auto Shield has been forcibly terminated.
A single blow had drained every last scrap of energy I had left.
Thud—!
“Gyaaaaah—, th-this is insane.”
That wasn’t all.
The damage the shield failed to stop sank straight into my side.
My body flew through the air.
I tumbled across the ground several more times, then slammed into a fountain.
At least the shield had kept me from being cleanly sliced open.
Not losing a limb was already a miracle.
“Cough… cough…”
Every time I hacked, a thin mist of blood bloomed in front of my eyes.
“…Huh!?”
But something was wrong.
The pain vanished all at once.
I rubbed my side with my hand and found no wound remaining.
The searing agony had already disappeared.
And then…
A colossal surge of mana roared through my entire body.
A strange, soaring exhilaration rose inside me, as if I could take flight at any moment.
Finally.
Finally Kim Isol’s mana…
A Transcendent’s mana had become completely mine.
“Fuck… what took so long? I wasted every last bit of energy for nothing. How many times am I gonna have to bounce my hips just to refill all that…”
I slowly pushed myself up from the fountain.
Daedalus, who had clearly thought I was already dead, wore an expression that was pure comedy gold.
I wanted to snap a photo and post it online, but I didn’t have a phone in my hand right now.
“…Monster.”
“That’s you, you son of a bitch!”
Both the bow and the sword I had been carrying were gone.
They must have been knocked away when I took that hit.
“Huh?”
But something felt strange.
The sword’s location registered in my mind as clearly as if coordinates were being fed to me.
Mind and Sword as One. And…
“Flying Sword.”
The moment I murmured the words, the blade buried under building debris rose into the air of its own accord.
Then, as if obeying my will, it slid free of its scabbard and flew straight to me.
I caught it smoothly in my hand.
“Die.”
Before the dust still hanging over the area could even settle, Daedalus launched his next attack.
To keep my smaller frame from escaping, he swept the spear horizontally once more.
Clang—!
I didn’t budge an inch.
I blocked it with the sword right where I stood.
The thickness of the blade was on a completely different scale, but it hardly mattered.
[Maa…]
Daedalus began making a strange sound.
Critical situation. Protection mode activated.
Failed due to insufficient energy.
Was this the attack Ahn Jihyun had mentioned?
My entire body locked up; I couldn’t move a single muscle.
But the effect lasted less than a second.
The reason was almost certainly the difference in mana grade.
Clang—!
I barely managed to block the next strike as well.
If the paralysis had lasted even a little longer I would have been finished.
So I decided to attack first.
“Concentration.”
Concentration
Mana flooded into the sword in my hand in an instant.
I poured a full ten percent of S-10 class mana into it all at once.
At the same time I charged forward.
The overwhelming mana wrapping my entire body accelerated my movements to the extreme.
I’ll end this in one blow!
The distance closed in a flash and the giant flinched.
Fighting an ultra-close-range battle with a spear against an opponent so much smaller than himself would be extremely difficult.
That was exactly what I was counting on.
Who would have thought academy lessons would prove useful in a place like this.
He hurriedly leaped into the air to avoid the slash aimed at his ankle.
But it was useless.
My sword could now fly freely through the sky.
“Cut him down!”
The blade left my hand.
The vast mana concentrated by the Concentration skill still remained fully charged within it.
The flying sword rose from between his legs all the way up through the top of his skull.
Daedalus’s massive body split cleanly left and right.
Thud. Boom!
Thud-thud-thud.
He collapsed.
The two halves of his body plummeted from above my head and slammed into the ground.
A waterfall of blood poured from him, drenching me as it crashed onto the earth.