Unfair! The Second Floor's Labyrinth
“This is unfair!”
“Stop acting like a child and accept the results, Benny.”
“Ugh…!”
Benny ground her sharp teeth with an audible *crunch*. The sight was somewhat threatening, but the tears welling up in her eyes made it impossible to take her seriously. I stood behind her slumped shoulders and opened the flap of the backpack she was carrying.
“Let’s see… Ah, here it is.”
What I was looking for was a supply-grade lantern I’d bought before entering the labyrinth. Uniquely designed like a long belt that wrapped around the waist, it was made from a material that wouldn’t break even during intense movement. It was crafted from something called soft crystal, which only appeared on the second floor. In simple terms, it was a material that could be processed into flexible glass. I had no idea how it worked. But that’s what makes it fantasy, right?
Intrigued, I fiddled with the lantern around my waist before flipping the switch.
*Click!* With the sound of the switch flipping up, the lantern blazed to life. The previously dim surroundings became visible for quite a distance.
The roads surrounding us were made of packed earth. The air hung heavy and musty. And there was an oppressive silence without a single sound. That’s right. If the first floor’s theme was a vast primeval forest, the second floor’s was an underground tunnel system. A colossal maze formed by countless tunnels intertwining over eons. That was the concept of the second floor. Of course, it had already been fully conquered, so we had maps.
“Whoa. Seeing it in person, it’s no joke. The people back then really cleared this place with just their bare bodies? I don’t think I could’ve done it.”
“Yeah. Even now, most deaths on the second floor aren’t from monsters, but from people getting lost and starving to death. So be careful, Yona. The difficulty of finding your way is completely different from the first floor.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
With my pathfinding skill, I at least didn’t have to worry about getting lost in mapped areas. But even knowing that, the scenery before me was so overwhelming that I couldn’t help but feel anxious about losing my way.
The lantern’s light reached roughly a 1.5-meter radius. Beyond that, it gradually darkened until it turned into an unfathomable unknown. Shaking off the chill that felt like staring into an abyss, I forced a bright smile.
“In that case, should we first figure out where we are?”
“Hmph! You got lucky and made it to the second floor, but do you really think a rookie who’s only been at this for a month can navigate properly?”
Unlike the calm Lydia standing behind me, Benny grumbled with a face full of distrust. I flashed her a smirk, the corner of my mouth curling up.
“Hey now! Is that any way for a baggage carrier to complain? Never mind that—just watch quietly.”
Benny’s face twisted into a fierce scowl. But what could she do? If she was going to be upset, she shouldn’t have bet on something so ridiculous after doubting my words.
Chuckling, I examined the stele standing alone in the center of the safety zone, which was as spacious as a large room.
“Sector 17, huh? It’s a nice spot on the outskirts. I was thinking of heading back through Sector 15 to 26. Any objections?”
“Yeah. Looks fine to me. I approve.”
“I don’t know about Lydia, but I object! It’s obviously a route that circles around the outskirts, so you’d only run into monsters appropriate for your current level. But do you even know how many forks in the road you’d have to pass to circle the outskirts like that?!”
“Uh, um. Nine, right?”
“Exactly! That’s a lot, isn’t it?! Can you really pick the correct path at all nine without getting confused even once? Anyway, with us here, monsters won’t be a big problem. So how about we go a bit deeper, follow one path straight through, and return around Sector 13?”
Benny pointed at a winding path on the map that continued straight from our current location. Ultimately, it led toward the middle of the second floor, but as she said, our party’s strength was lacking, so there shouldn’t be any real danger. But still.
“Hmm. So in the end, you just don’t trust my skills? What a completely arrogant baggage carrier!”
“Isn’t that obvious?! What exactly am I supposed to trust about you?!”
“What? I appreciate you worrying about me when we’ve barely met, but I’m really fine. Just trust me this once. If things go south, we can just retrace our steps. You’re a mage, Benny, so your memory must be good. With you around, it shouldn’t be hard.”
“…I wasn’t worried, okay? But whatever. If you promise to follow my instructions in an emergency, I’ll let it slide this time.”
Benny puffed out her chest while shouldering a backpack as big as her own torso. I’d thought this before, but that skin-tight dress witch outfit was practically cheating. It was making a figure that could never be called lewd start to look downright seductive.
I smoothly averted my gaze, crouched down, and placed my hand on the ground. In a labyrinth where everything inside changed irregularly, the basic trick to figuring out your position and finding the way was simple. You used unchanging elements—in other words, the locations of safety zones and divine remains—as reference points. On the first floor, it had been the World Tree, visible from anywhere in the great forest. And the divine remains that served as the reference point on the second floor were the Heart of the Earth.
It was marked on the map as a large heart shape, and if you actually went there, you’d find a massive stone heart pulsing away. As the name suggested, the god sleeping on the second floor was the Earth God. While other elemental gods had died during the Divine War, the Earth God had survived until the very end. That was why, among the elementals born in places thick with the traces of elemental gods, earth-attribute ones were the rarest. Other gods had birthed elementals en masse from their corpses, but the Earth God hadn’t died on the surface and was instead buried within the labyrinth.
As I kept my hand pressed to the ground, I felt a faint vibration. It wasn’t that the Earth God’s heartbeat could actually be heard all the way here. Just as the entire great forest was the domain of the World Tree, this tunnel system itself was the Earth God’s territory, so you could sense its owner’s traces anywhere.
Memorizing the heart’s location, I stood up.
“Found it. This way.”
In the large, room-like safety zone, I headed toward one of the three connected passages. From behind me, Benny muttered uneasily.
“Lydia. Do we have enough food?”
“I always carry a year’s worth of emergency rations.”
“Isn’t that way too much?”
“But you don’t carry any, Benny. If we split it, that’s six months.”
“Ah… Sorry.”
“And if we split it with Yona, it’s four months’ worth.”
“From now on, I’ll prepare some too…”
“No need. It’s fine. New emergency rations come out every year anyway, so it’s perfect.”
“…Give me back my apology!”
Lydia and Benny bickered as they followed along. How many times had we repeated this while advancing down the long passage, chuckling at the sight of them?
*Thud.*
In a space where the only sounds had been those from our party, a small dissonance suddenly rang out. I stopped in my tracks and drew the dagger from my waist.
“Enemy ahead.”
“I know that. …I just don’t know how you knew.”
Benny tilted her head in confusion. I waved at the eyeballs that had popped out from her shadow, and they blinked happily. I let out a small laugh and answered.
“My senses are just a bit sharp, that’s all.”
They had grown sharper after obtaining the Sound-Eating Steps ability. If I wanted to hide my presence, I needed to clearly perceive the influence I had on my surroundings, didn’t I?
I tapped the ground twice with my toes and focused my mind. My senses, honed to a razor’s edge. From the very tip, I caught the faint sound of breathing. The right wall, huh?
Using Sound-Eating Steps, I suppressed my presence to the absolute limit. Before long, my breathing grew utterly silent, and the footsteps with each stride faded away. It felt as if I were melting into the world itself—or wrapping the world around me to conceal my own existence.
Was it startled by that? The breathing that had been coming from far away began to falter. It was only natural. Most monsters on the second floor lived in these tunnels, so their eyesight had degenerated while their other senses had developed. From that monster’s perspective, it probably looked like one of its enemies had suddenly vanished.
“W-what the—!”
Benny, who had been quietly gasping in admiration from behind, seemed to feel something similar. According to Lydia, it was stealth so effective that even she would lose track of me if she used aura to sense or stopped watching. Benny probably wasn’t much different. No, since she was a mage, her sensory acuity might be lower than Lydia’s, so she’d be even more shocked?
Chuckling inwardly, I carefully approached the monster step by step. What stood there was a bipedal creature pressed flat against the wall, clutching a pickaxe dearly to its chest. Its height was about the same as mine, or perhaps a little taller. Its appearance was a half-and-half mix of wolf and lizard, dressed in ragged clothes. And its long, thorn-covered tail seemed to declare that despite its small size, it was a threatening monster.
A kobold, huh? Like goblins on the first floor, they were the weakest monsters on the second. Perfect for a first opponent.
With a quiet smile, I drew closer to the creature, which had its ears perked in my direction. Its eyes had turned a cloudy gray—probably a sign of its degenerated vision. The kobold, completely unaware of me even though I was right in front of it, had its neck sliced through by my swung dagger.
“Kobol?”
Was it the sound of cutting through the air? Or the light emitted by the Unicorn Dagger? The kobold only realized my presence too late. As expected. It definitely looked stronger than a mere goblin. But it was already too late.
*Slice.*
The Unicorn Dagger passed through the kobold’s scaly neck as smoothly as cutting pudding. The body, now without its owner, slumped to the ground, and the head rolled across the floor before stopping at my feet.
After a moment of hesitation, I picked up the creature’s head. Then, dangling it, I returned to the party. Or more precisely, right in front of Benny.
“Benny! A present for you!”
“What are you, some kind of cat dragging in a cockroach?! I don’t want it!”
That’s too harsh.