Chapter 22
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 22
Chapter Title: The Labyrinth of Light
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Puhah...!
We kids greeted the sun.
Everyone was panting hard, their breaths coming right up to their chins even if they didn't show it.
The red-robed figure was heaving too, but unlike the others, he breathed steadily.
Hmm... I should pretend to be out of breath like them.
Chest heaving front to back, shoulders bobbing up and down to look winded... Man, acting is tough.
While I was putting on my awkward performance,
Inschtain yelled with a look of utter exasperation.
"Damn it...! Is there corruption in the Pador family or something? Not a single decent boat in that famous house?!"
Inschtain recoiled in disgust at his thoroughly soaked body.
"No one to be my boat?! I'll pay you an unimaginable amount of money!"
But the ones left were just the four of us, including me.
Among Ralph Pador, the red robe, and Andrew, who would agree to such an absurd demand...
"Here's a comfortable boat."
There was one?
Andrew tilted his body horizontally like a boat.
Inschtain hopped onto Andrew's back with satisfaction.
"Hahaha! Yes, perfect. That's the spirit!"
Surprisingly, they made a good pair.
"You pathetic fool! This is about looking out for the weak!"
Ralph, apparently inspired by the sight, copied Andrew. Then he turned to me.
"Get on, Deyan! How's a weakling like you supposed to swim?!"
Huh? Me?
What's this guy's deal?
As I stood there flustered, Ralph gestured impatiently.
"I said get on! The Pador family can't lose to losers like them!"
This isn't a competition, you moron.
Ralph was fired up over the dumbest thing.
"What are you waiting for?! Hurry up and get on! Or you, gloomy guy!"
Ralph pointed at the red robe.
"You wanna ride? You look like a weakling too!"
The red robe snorted dismissively.
"Worry about your own wounds first."
"What?! That punk!"
Ralph flailed around like a fish out of water. In the process, Andrew and Inschtain, who had been getting ready to set off beside him, got splashed.
That set Ralph and Inschtain wrestling again.
"You bastard...!"
"Hahaha! Watch where you're swinging!"
Don't these guys ever get tired?
Ralph's fist smacked the useless water's surface, and Inschtain jeered.
In the splash...
Splash!
Water hit my face.
This damn Ralph.
Splashing my face? Just shut up already!
I secretly flicked a finger wind at Ralph's forehead.
"Kwaaaack...!"
Ralph tumbled backward, bobbed on the water, clutched his forehead, and lifted his head.
"Hiiiik...! M-masked man...?! S-sorry. Huh? A d-dream?"
In that brief moment, Ralph must've had a nightmare.
I flinched when he mentioned the mask. Inschtain laughed at the dazed Ralph.
"Hmph, what an idiot. Pathetic compared to my Super Andrew-ho!"
Inschtain, since when did Andrew become your property...?
Inschtain spoke to Andrew lying beneath him like a boat.
"Right, Super Andrew-ho?"
Andrew made a horn sound with his mouth, just like a boat.
"Beep beep...!"
"......"
Guess he really is his property now.
These two weren't right in the head either.
Just as Inschtain and the Super Andrew-ho were about to navigate the stream...
Thud!
Something bumped into the pair.
"Hm...?"
It was a perfectly normal boat.
A Pador family knight at the prow looked down at them impassively.
"Get on."
"Uh...?"
The two suddenly looked utterly ridiculous.
All five of us boarded the Pador family boat. Naturally, I sat right next to the red robe.
I felt his gaze for a brief moment, but I just gave him a small smile.
The knight saw that we were all seated and nodded.
"Congratulations on passing the second trial. Now, on to the final one."
"What's the third trial?!"
"The boat sucks, that's what."
Questions and complaints poured from the kids, but the knight kept his businesslike demeanor.
Meanwhile, the boat entered a cave half-submerged in water.
Ralph peered curiously into the cave.
"Didn't know the family had a place like this..."
Same for me.
It was my first time seeing it.
Even those of Pador blood couldn't enter Trial Valley freely.
It was too dangerous, and only knights with permission could go in.
Like Ralph, I scanned the cave. Unlike the narrow entrance, the inside was vast.
Torches lit up the surroundings brightly, stalactites dotted everywhere.
Even a Pador family flag hanging from the ceiling.
It was a chilling yet majestic scene.
Thud...
The boat stopped, and the knight silently extended his hand, urging us to disembark.
Overwhelmed by the atmosphere, we five got off without a word.
The boat departed immediately after we did, without waiting.
"So, what do we do now?"
Inschtain looked around. There wasn't a soul in sight, just a dead end. Nothing to do.
This was the start of a trial even I didn't know about.
What trial was here, and why did that incident happen?
"Anyone there?!"
Ralph bellowed at the top of his lungs when...
Whirrr...!
"Ugh!"
A figure appeared right in front of Ralph's nose.
A man with sunken eyes and an expressionless face.
Unlike the previous knight, he bowed politely.
"Welcome to the final trial of Trial Valley."
Some welcome—his eyes were dead fish eyes.
Inschtain asked while scanning the cave.
"So, what do we do now?"
The knight spoke in a flat, toneless voice like a puppet.
"To leave this cave, you must obtain a boarding pass."
"Boarding pass...?"
"A ticket to exit the cave. Only one of the five will acquire it and board the victor's boat."
Five remained.
One boarding pass.
The moment they heard that, everyone started side-eyeing each other, sizing up their competition.
A strange tension settled over the kids who had been cooperating just moments ago.
In the end, they were all rivals.
Wait, why aren't these punks looking at me?
They're subtly ignoring me.
While I was secretly glaring at the others, Andrew seemed to have finally grasped the nature of Trial Valley's trials. He sighed and murmured,
"Obviously, the boarding pass isn't just handed out..."
The knight replied with his unchanging blank expression.
"The boarding pass is in the deepest part of the cave. However, the paths leading there twist like a maze, filled with monsters and traps."
In short, it was a race to see who could reach the depths first.
Managing stamina against monsters, figuring out paths based on monsters and terrain.
Simple, but it required brains.
The other participants nodded in understanding. Ralph, however, raised his hand as if something bothered him.
"I have a question."
"Yes, please ask!"
"How do we even go forward? There's no path."
Exactly. You need a path to head to the depths or whatever.
All we could see was a dead end.
The knight turned around silently.
We wondered what he was doing, but when he lowered an unlit torch from the cave wall...
Clunk!
Gear noises echoed from the cave wall, and soon the entire wall began to rotate.
"Wh-what?!"
Ralph startled and looked down at the ground to check if it was spinning too.
You idiot—if it was, we'd all lose balance.
Only the cave wall was turning.
Whirrrrr...
The wall kept rotating, pausing at regular intervals to reveal a single path each time.
It looked just like a roulette wheel.
"Proceed through these paths. No one knows which one leads to the depths."
Like the other trials in Trial Valley, this was no ordinary test.
The wall continued spinning, flashing paths one after another. Each path had a different light, an irregular rainbow glow.
First red, then green, even blue.
We had no idea what they meant.
Ralph couldn't contain his frustration and asked,
"What are those?"
"Guides. Lights to help you choose paths: blue for safety, red for danger, green for luck. Just those three."
"......?"
His vague, quiz-like words prompted a barrage of questions, but the knight gave only one response.
"You must discover that for yourselves."
Not hard to figure out with a little thought.
Blue is the safe, standard path; red means high risk but high reward; green is a gamble?
Easy to guess. The lights themselves were clues.
"What the hell does that mean...!"
Ralph tore at his hair.
You moron—should've read some books.
Unlike the floundering Ralph, the others seemed to have pieced it together and sank into thought silently.
"I'll give you gray bells for emergencies. Ring them if you're in danger."
The gray bells were handed out as usual, but none of the kids looked like they planned to use them.
The knight bowed after distributing them and left.
"Good luck."
The moment the knight vanished, Ralph bolted into a path.
"Yaaah!"
Like a bull.
"A real man takes on the challenge...!"
He charged into the red path without giving anyone a chance to speak.
As Ralph took the lead, the others shook their heads.
"Brute force gets you killed first."
Inschtain tsked pityingly. He flicked a gold coin up and down while eyeing the spinning paths.
When a green path appeared, he stepped forward decisively.
"A merchant has to invest boldly."
He sauntered in leisurely and grinned at us.
"Hahaha! Don't cry too hard if you lose. I'll give you consolation money!"
Another lunatic, just like Ralph.
Andrew, unlike them, yawned and headed for the blue path.
"Gotta go safe, safe."
With the three gone... only the red robe and I remained at the fork.
Hurry up and pick already.
So I can go too?
But the red robe didn't move toward a path. He looked at me instead.
"Thanks for the help earlier."
"Ah, sure."
I did have my reasons, but hey, thanks received.
The red robe headed for the green path.
"Hmm... so where should I go."
I eyed the three paths.
Truth be told, it didn't matter where.
All of us were capable enough to reach the depths.
The problem was... even if you got there, no one would claim the boarding pass.
An unbearable monster would be waiting in the depths.
And in this place, all the participants except Ralph died.
It was a trial designed that way from the start.
A ordeal with no victor.
"Then, shall we go..."
To the site of the catastrophe that once unfolded in Trial Valley.