Chapter 35
Chapter 35
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 35
Chapter Title: Rescue Team (2)
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One melee DPS, four tanks, two mages, one AoE DPS, one healer, and one mental support.
The ten members of the rescue team entered the gate. Space shifted, and their senses soon registered the change. Thick, murky air and dim visibility.
To either side, roughly hewn stone walls loomed like barriers. They looked polished yet battered by the ages, their surfaces jagged and uneven. Faint light seeped from cracks in the stone, and the group relied on that meager glow to survey their surroundings.
They stood in the middle of a long passageway. Glancing back, they saw only rough walls—the gate was gone.
A few frowned at the ends of the passage. Identical doors on both sides. The rescue team smack in the center. A fork in the road right from the start.
But the woman at the front stepped forward without hesitation. Nam Soyul didn't know the way. She simply judged that agonizing over it with no clues was a waste of time.
She soon opened the door ahead and stepped inside. The hazy view cleared, brightness returning. What greeted them was a stark white room several times wider than the passage. Someone muttered as the open space eased their claustrophobia.
"What is this... Why's it empty?"
There wasn't a monster in sight, not even a scrap of anything. A hollow cube enclosed by pristine white walls. The only features were the familiar doors on the front and side walls—identical to the one they'd just passed through.
"This is tricky."
Nam Soyul frowned. Past one fork, now three more. Their immediate goal was finding traces of the assault team. But picking the wrong path would only take them farther away.
She turned to the mages.
"Scan the area."
One mage soon completed his spell. But the mana dispersed upon hitting the room's boundary.
"...There's a semi-mana barrier on the outer walls. From how quickly it scatters, it feels like they're not allowing any tricks."
Nam Soyul's brow furrowed at the report. No smashing walls or peering through them. Straightforward tactics only.
She let out a small sigh and scanned the group. Most wore equally stymied expressions, but one who didn't caught her eye.
He was positioned at the rear due to the rank gap. He glanced around the room, then pulled out a pen and jotted something in a notebook.
Nam Soyul felt a flicker of curiosity but turned away. No time for trivial wonders now.
Eyeing the doors—one ahead, one left, one right—she made her call.
"Keep going straight."
Maintain the heading. Changing direction in a maze without evidence would only breed confusion. Nam Soyul strode to the front door and opened it.
Kiiiik. Another cramped, dark passage.
They passed silently to the end, where another identical door waited. Opening it revealed the familiar white room.
But this one wasn't empty.
—Grraaah?
Something the size of a human torso stood on two legs. Its protruding snout and beastly fur visible over its skin marked it as no human.
Yet its face—crude as a shellfish—made calling it a mere beast a stretch.
Beasts didn't wear chainmail or wield longswords and crossbows, after all.
It was a kobold.
—Kek! Kek kek!
Four kobold warriors, three kobold crossbowmen, two kobold shamans, one kobold commander. Ten monsters total.
The kobolds waiting in the room reacted instantly to the intruders. At the commander's cry, the crossbowmen loosed their pre-loaded bolts.
Thung!
Three bolts fired in rapid succession. Target: Nam Soyul up front. Unlike the other vanguards, she wore no metal armor—hits would draw blood. Their paths looked dead on for impact.
No. The straight lines warped mid-flight, as if space itself bent. Not a single bolt grazed her; they all clattered harmlessly to the floor.
The group surged with mana for a counterattack but halted. Nam Soyul had raised a hand to stop them.
Without taking her eyes off the front, she spoke calmly.
"No time to dawdle here."
Eyes on the monsters muttering incantations, she drew her sword from its sheath.
Shring. A chilling, razor-sharp ring echoed.
Blue energy soon flowed along the blade in her right hand. The kobold shamans finished their spells and thrust their arms forward. Then Nam Soyul's right arm moved.
A simple diagonal slash—from lower left to upper right. Over ten meters separated her from them at a glance.
Senseless by normal standards. But Nam Soyul's other ability found meaning in it. Her mind sketched a virtual space.
Two lines on the paper of space: the sword's path and a line to the kobolds' heads. Folding the paper narrowed the gap between the straights until they converged—and
Sglaang!
A spine-chilling cleave rang out. Ten heads harvested mercilessly, tumbling to the floor. Clean cross-sections, no spurting blood.
Thud, thud.
Headless bodies flopped like puppets with cut strings. The shamans' gathered mana scattered ownerless into the air. That was it.
Nam Soyul flicked her unbloodied blade clean and pressed on, ignoring the sprawled corpses that would soon turn to mana stones.
A few minutes to farm them? No. Their goal was swift rescue, not leisurely clears or farming. Every second counted; they couldn't squander time so pointlessly.
The room held the usual four doors: front, back, left, right. Without pause, she stuck to the path ahead. She opened the front door and passed the dark passage.
Thus, the third room. Not empty this time either.
Weeeeng—!
Black clumps zipped every which way inside. Watching, Nam Soyul realized what they were and scowled.
Vampire fly swarms. Each the size of a finger, but hundreds of thousands formed a massive horde. They'd caught the intruders' fresh blood scent and massed into a giant black cloud, slowly closing in.
A single slash would be ideal, but sadly, her abilities didn't match up well. She called to the rear.
"Electricity."
"Where's my name? Just 'Electricity'?"
Jeon Do-hyeok, just emerging from the passage, grumbled at the summons. But his eyes were already locked on the black cloud. He cupped his palms before his chest.
"Gonna be loud. Plug your ears."
Short warning, then fierce sparks crackled between his palms.
Pzzzt!
Atmospheric charge forcibly gathered, blue current condensing beyond limits. The air reeked of ozone.
"Hup!"
With a shout, Jeon Do-hyeok thrust his arms. The fist-sized lightning orb shot from his hand, burrowing into the swarm's heart. And
—Kwaaaaang!!!
A deafening thunderclap filled the room, shredding eardrums. Blinding flash—and hundreds of thousands of vampire flies vaporized into white ash without a scream. Terrifyingly effective against mobs, overwhelming firepower.
Acrid smoke and burnt stench assaulted the nose. But the perpetrator, far from posing, hacked away.
"Kuhk, keh! Ptoo! Ptoo!"
Seems a few flies got sucked into his open mouth during the cast. Nam Soyul patted his shoulder lightly.
"Good work."
She urged them onward. Nam Soyul headed straight for the exit, but stopped short.
"Huh! The door..."
No front door anymore. Sides still had theirs, but their intended path was sealed.
The first anomaly. Nam Soyul murmured its meaning.
"The rooms aren't infinite..."
Limited directions, finite rooms. That alone constrained the labyrinth's shape. Realizing it was progress.
But no assault team traces in the three rooms passed. Meant they'd gone the wrong way entirely.
Their straight path so far was "left" from start. Now blocked, time to redirect.
Backtrack and go right.
Go up.
Go down.
Nam Soyul pondered briefly, then dropped it. No clues, no point dwelling like at the start.
She picked lightly.
"Down this time."
The fourth and fifth rooms down also had monsters. But Nam Soyul handled them solo, so they moved on quickly.
Then the sixth room. Empty like the first.
And the second anomaly appeared.
"This one's blocked too!"
Left, now down—no door there either.