The Breakout Begins (Part 3)
What exactly was a relic?
I recalled the explanation Karen, our self-proclaimed labyrinth scholar, had offered back in the cafeteria: "They're special items unearthed from ancient ruins. Slip on a pair of gloves, and your agility spikes; put on a necklace, and fireballs shoot from your palms. That kind of thing."
In other words, they were the magical equipment you farmed as loot in the game. Five hundred years later, in this modern era, people simply called them relics.
Standing before us now was a pale iron door carved with the stern visage of a lion. And I knew precisely what it was.
First of all, Kiara... that isn't a relic. It's a spell.
Though I supposed if magic items were revered as relics, ancient spells might as well be treated like lost divine arts. Specifically, this was a 5th-tier spell: Living Door, a mid-tier Transmutation enchantment.
How on earth had the Warden cast something like this? The answer was simple: he hadn't. He had used a scroll. There was no way the Warden had cast it personally, nor could anyone else on this island have done so. An adept capable of commanding 5th-tier Transmutation magic would never need to force inmates to swing pickaxes in the dark. Transmutation featured a 3rd-tier spell called Structural Alteration. Cast that a few times, and you could carve out a subterranean tunnel in the blink of an eye. A master capable of weaving 5th-tier spells would certainly know lower-tier restructuring.
Furthermore, if my suspicions were correct, the definition of a 'wizard' in this era differed fundamentally from the class I knew from the game. Modern people had no idea what 'Memory Capacity' even was. The very concept of pre-collapse spell slots had likely vanished alongside the Labyrinth itself. Which left only one possibility: a scroll. A single-use sheet of enchanted parchment that unleashed its sealed magic the instant it was torn.
"What a seriously bizarre world setting..."
Ssssp, huuu.
In this modern age, people surgically grafted magic circuits into their flesh, dissolving the traditional class boundaries of the ancient Labyrinth. So long as you had circuits implanted, you could gain the brawn of a warrior or the swiftness of a rogue. Kiara had mentioned that particularly gifted individuals could even manifest magic through specialized circuits—and apparently, a few such guards were stationed right here in Berdal Prison.
Yet even though the Labyrinth was gone, its remnants lingered throughout the world in the form of ruins and relics. And ruins certainly weren't exclusive to this penal island. The scroll of Thinking Door used by the Warden had almost certainly been excavated elsewhere, then bought or gifted to him.
"Karen," Kiara spoke up, her low voice breaking the silence. "Do you know what that thing is?"
"...Yeah," Karen replied after a brief hesitation. "It's likely an ancient magic from the Labyrinth—a spell, that is. I think it was called Thinking Door?"
"A spell, not a relic..." Kiara muttered, stepping forward until she stood face-to-face with the relief-carved lion. "Speak the password."
"Any hints?"
"Denied."
Karen let out a heavy sigh, her feline ears drooping slightly. "Kiara, there are only two ways to break through that spell."
Countering a Thinking Door wasn't particularly complicated. Having memorized every magic item and mechanic in the game, I naturally knew how to bypass this reinforced iron barrier. And proving her claim as a labyrinth scholar wasn't mere bluster, Karen laid out the textbook solutions.
"First is bombarding it with the Knock spell until the lock gives."
Spot on. A wizard with a high Wisdom stat had the advantage there, since the success checks would roll in their favor.
"Second is speaking the designated password."
Also correct. If you figured out the passphrase, it was effortless. High-tier living constructs were too intelligent to trick, but a base Living Door functioned on rigid trigger conditions, swinging open and shut strictly according to its programmed logic.
However, there was a third method that Karen didn't know.
A free pass granted if you entered the 'Ally' state with the caster—the person who tore the scroll.
Ah, fuck me.
A jolt like lightning ripped through my frontal lobe. A flash of realization struck my skull like a sledgehammer.
If I had pursued the Warden Route instead of siding with Kiara, I could have walked right through without ever knowing the password. Befriend the Warden into an 'Ally' state, have the door open for us, and then stab him in the back. Slip through whatever secret escape route lay beyond, escaping completely on my own. The puzzle pieces finally clicked into place. Escaping through the Warden's private quarters was originally intended for the Warden Ally Route.
Then what the hell was the intended escape method for Kiara's companion route?
"The officers are coming."
With the acute hearing of a cat beastfolk, Karen picked up distant approaching footfalls. They must have caught wind of the commotion inside the Warden's office.
"How are they already...?" Karen muttered, her brow furrowing.
I parted the curtain slightly to peek out the window. Down in the courtyard, guards were brutally crushing the prisoner brawl with batons. Judging by the violent convulsions wracking every inmate struck, they were wielding electrified stun clubs. The atmosphere was completely different from usual. The prisoners weren't just being subdued—they were being hammered into bloody pulp.
"This makes no sense..." Kiara murmured, her jaw clenching as she peered through the slit. "Why are they suddenly so savage?"
Her words confirmed my suspicion. For reasons unknown, the officers' demeanors had drastically deteriorated. Glistening crimson eyes, strings of drool hanging from their bared teeth—it looked exactly like the [Frenzy] status condition from the game. Did the entire guard contingent suddenly lose their minds at once? Why now, of all times, after maintaining discipline for so long?
Faces grim, Kiara and Brun pulled the office doors shut and took up positions flanking the frame. Karen kept twitching her feline ears, straining to parse every sound echoing through the stone corridor.
"...We can claim the Warden summoned us to buy a moment," Kiara said, "but the real issue is when the magic wears off. Did you say it wears off in an hour, Ian?"
"Yes, roughly..."
We were running out of time. Even if I pushed myself to cast another spell, the guards outside heavily outnumbered us.
We're thoroughly screwed.
Think. What resources did we actually have left? If I pushed myself right to the razor edge of a madness seizure, maybe one or two casts of Mental Collapse. Four collared, mana-sealed inmates with zero physical leverage. The lockpicks had snapped; we had no tools remaining. Not a single usable tactical asset. It was a textbook wipeout scenario.
Thud, thud, thud!
The heavy bootsteps drew so close that even my mundane ears caught the vibrations. At least ten men by the cadence. The brawl outside had clearly been resolved.
Brun sighed, his bushy beard twitching in bleak frustration. "If that thing were a mechanical contraption or an arcane device, I could've dismantled it somehow..."
"Karen mentioned it earlier too, but... are spells and modern magic really that different?" I asked, looking toward the dwarf.
"Completely," Brun grunted. "'Spells' are ancient magic from the Labyrinth era. You can't cast them without an authentic scroll. Rumor has it they had their own special method back then—something entirely separate from circuits."
Their own special method.
Those words sparked a blinding epiphany in my mind.
The Memory Capacity system! The very mechanic Labyrinth wizards used to cast their arts!
Could it be...?
A wild gambit flashed across my thoughts. I'd pulled off something similar in the game during an edge-case run, so mechanically, it ought to work. But how would the reality engine calculate the check?
"Ian? Did you think of something?"
Crouched with her ear pressed against the wall, Karen was the first to look back at me. Brun turned next, followed by Kiara's piercing gaze.
"I figured out the password."
"...Really?"
Ignoring her skepticism, I strode briskly up to the iron door.
"Speak the password," the lion carving intoned in its hollow, resonant voice.
Come to think of it, my magic was undeniably bizarre. Even with an anti-mana restraint collar clamped tightly around my neck, I could cast without hindrance. Its output was grotesque, and it required no internal magic circuits whatsoever. Despite being a hidden class tailored for this dystopian future, its operational architecture relied entirely on the forgotten Memory Capacity of the ancient Labyrinth.
Karen had called it: "Ancient magic from the Labyrinth—a spell."
And Brun had insisted that spells and magic were two completely different phenomena.
That pointed to one undeniable truth: the two terms I had tossed around interchangeably meant entirely different things in this world. And what I wielded wasn't modern circuit magic—it was a genuine, pre-collapse Spell.
At last, the reason why I could cast despite the restraint collar became clear. It hadn't been magic from the start. The Abyssal Wizard was a primordial class belonging to the Labyrinth.
"The password is..."
I uncorked the vial at my neck and drew in a deep, desperate breath of the Ambrosia Petal's menthol fragrance. As much as my lungs could hold.
Then, focusing my intent on the sculpted lion, I calmly released the incantation.
A discordant screech straddling the line between a dying scream and manic laughter scraped against the inside of my skull. The ceaseless itch burrowing through my brain sharpened into a blistering, white-hot burn. My lips curled upward of their own accord, on the verge of spilling a deranged sneer, but something else surged up my esophagus far faster.
"Bleeeaaarrrgh!"
I doubled over, vomiting a violent splatter of scalding bile and dark blood onto the stone floor.
"Ian!!"
"What in the world—?!"
Through the haze of agony and nausea, I looked up. I had driven the iron door mad.
"Door... d-door, pass... password, speak... speak..."
Clank.
The latch released. The heavy iron barrier swung inward.
There's no way out.
Karen made her grim assessment in a fraction of a second. They were trapped between two thresholds: the entrance to the Warden's office on one side, and a reinforced iron gate on the other. Both were impassable barriers.
Outside the office door, the guards were converging. The moment that door breached and they discovered the Warden reduced to a drooling imbecile, all hell would break loose. And eventually, the spell neutralizing him would unravel.
Breaching the iron gate was just as hopeless. Because Karen understood that ancient spell better than anyone else here, she could state that with absolute certainty.
Our preparation was flawed...
If only she had questioned Kiara in greater detail when she first mentioned the locked door in the Warden's quarters. If only she had investigated the Warden more thoroughly to deduce the passphrase beforehand.
It's my fault.
Karen was the scout and intelligence gatherer of the escape team. Though her restraint collar rendered her magic circuits completely inert, her feline agility and razor-sharp hearing remained intact. Therefore, if a lack of intel led the party into a dead end, the blame rested squarely on her shoulders.
Sensing movement, she turned her head to see Ian stepping forward. Watching him approach the iron door, a question slipped out unbidden.
"Ian? Did you think of something?"
"I figured out the password."
Really...? How on earth...?
She swallowed the words before they left her tongue. The result would reveal itself momentarily anyway.
Ian stood before the iron door, his brow furrowed in severe concentration. The way he reached his left hand out overlapped with her memories of him earlier—the exact posture he assumed whenever he channeled that terrifying power.
...There's no way that'll work.
Ian's magic belonged to the mental sphere. Mind-affecting arts worked on living, sentient minds; they could never affect an enchanted slab of metal. Because at its core, it was still just an inanimate iron door. He had likely mistaken it for a living creature simply because the door could speak. But the barrier was obviously not alive. It merely appeared sentient due to the wondrous enchantment placed upon it. Even granting the absurd premise that it counted as a living creature, objects woven with ancient spells were completely immune to modern circuit magic. Only another spell or relic could interact with it.
Mystery had to be countered with mystery.
That was elementary common sense. Did his amnesia rob him of basic knowledge as well?
"Ian..."
Just as she opened her mouth to tell him not to waste his strength and help brainstorm another escape route—
That dreadful, prickling hum—the instinctual psychic alarm that resonated in her skull every time Ian unleashed his power—shrieked through her mind.
Clank.
"Door... d-d-door, pass... password, speak. Pass... word..."
...The spell had suffered a breakdown. There was no other way to describe the spectacle unfolding before her eyes.
"Ian... how did you...?"
He had done it. Through a method she had believed fundamentally impossible.