#44 Never Land (3)
#44 Never Land (3)
"Kyuu..."
Perry, weary, let out a drained cry. The little one was clearly fighting off sleep, but the harsh truth was that there was nowhere to rest peacefully in this place called Never Land. Instead, I gently stroked her, giving her a moment to close her eyes, however brief.
'Breaking through the maze isn't the hard part.'
I had been tracking the scent for a long while, but the end still wasn't in sight. Still, judging by the density of presences I sensed through Detection, the maze's boundary would come soon enough. There was a simple reason why pushing through the maze was easier than crossing the Labyrinth.
'Steeletons can reform even when shattered.'
As long as a Steeleton was in the Labyrinth, it was virtually unkillable—you could crush it or scatter its bones, and it would keep reassembling. Even when actually killed, it would just revive. That was why the creatures still lurked there even after the Raid Force had already pushed through.
'But the maze doesn't work like that.'
The Raid Force hadn't exterminated every last monster in the maze, but the lingering presences were few enough. One of them was trying to slither up from right underfoot. I impaled it with a shadow spike.
[Tunnel Worm consumed. Experience Points and Satiety increase.]
I devoured it in one go. Even with the heavy fog that scrambled the five senses throughout the maze, my senses were manifested as D-rank skills—paired with Relaxation and Detection, scrambling my perception was impossible.
'Looks like they took out the Underground Demon too.'
Like the Steel Giant in the Labyrinth, it was the boss-not-boss of this maze. It wasn't long before I found its corpse—hideously torn, crushed, and left in a mangled heap.
'Oh.'
The moment I saw the dead Underground Demon, I swallowed without thinking. The phrase "unearned gain" had flickered through my head.
Tunnel Worms that slithered freely through the maze, and the Underground Demon that commanded them. Despite being a maze boss with power far exceeding A-Class, it hadn't been able to stop the Raid Force. Everything still seemed to be proceeding smoothly—as it should.
'... Then what in the hell causes the annihilation?'
The Raid Force was no pack of fools. They wouldn't have overextended recklessly. Never Land had been opening for over a decade, and they'd have amassed information by now—did it make any sense for them to push too hard? The one plausible explanation was a Frenzy right before Closure, but still...
'For now...'
I started by consuming the barely recognizable remains of the Underground Demon.
[Underground Demon consumed. Experience Points and Satiety increase.]
[Experience Points at maximum. Lv.27 → Lv.28]
'Just from this little bit?'
In the novel, the Underground Demon was a creature that commanded Tunnel Worms—a monster dozens of meters long, like some grotesque hybrid of a dragon and a worm. Yet even a scattered fragment of it, so little you could call it scrap, netted me experience in the hundreds of thousands.
'What the hell would the full thing even...'
A hollow laugh escaped me at the thought that it might have rivaled or even surpassed the Earth Serpent. It hit me all over again—this place truly was the worst Malice dungeon. I refocused, following the traces left in the maze to chase after the Raid Force once more.
***
"Damn. It just never ends."
Kang Tae-ho let out a whistle as he swung his sword, the Conqueror's Great Sword, and split the jungle in two with that single blow. No—not the jungle. The creature masquerading as part of it: the monster called the Swamp Lord. Like trying to slice water with a blade, the wound closed and regenerated almost instantly.
"You persistent bastard... Are we there yet?!"
He glanced back. The mages' incantations still needed more time. If only Hong Yuri were here, it would have been so much easier. Someone shouted at the top of their lungs.
"Add! Two at seven o'clock, three at one o'clock!"
"We'll hold seven o'clock! One o'clock is Eun-ja... Hell. She's gone. Temple! Can you handle it?!"
"Of course. Leave it to us."
Baek Gun-tae nodded at the Ju-gyo's firm response, his eyes scanning the battlefield as he gripped his command baton.
"Garbage is pouring out at five o'clock! You bastards! Can't you plug the damn hole?!"
"Fuck, seriously! Reloading!"
"Hey, chicks! Where's the supply toss?!"
Chicks. That was the term for hunters ranked C-Class and below who had been given no specific combat role. It sounded like an insult, and in a sense it was—it was a name meant to tell them don't you dare try anything. When Never Land first opened to them, there had been close to twenty of them. Now, less than half remained.
'Some died, certainly.'
But most had lost their nerve and joined the Rear Unit. The fact that chicks were present at all was proof that Kang Tae-ho's scheme had worked—letting the greenhorns gain Never Land experience while pulling the heads of each clan along for the ride. There hadn't been a manpower shortage, but Baek Gun-tae privately wished every single one of them had stayed with the Rear Unit. Whether it was clan politics or sheer recklessness, they had stubbornly followed anyway.
In Never Land, the ways a C-Class or lower hunter could actually help were vanishingly small. The most those rookies could manage was throwing supply packs to the hunters actively fighting.
'Even so...'
"Distort!"
Baek Gun-tae glanced sidelong at the woman who had shouted—Lee Eun-ha. C-rank Mana Detection. He hadn't expected much from someone who'd basically been brought along as a detection shuttle, but she was proving surprisingly useful. The monsters flinched for just a split second in the warped space she created; hunters seized the breathing room and launched counterattacks. But then Lee Eun-ha's voice came again, and Baek Gun-tae's expression twisted.
"Add! One at three o'clock!"
"Clans we can rotate in... damn it!"
No slack anywhere. The field commander, Baek Gun-tae, shot forward himself. Spreading her Mana Detection wide, Lee Eun-ha frowned.
'My mana is starting to...'
She clenched her teeth and endured, but this was one thing she couldn't will herself past. Nearly two full days without even a moment's rest. In Never Land, rest simply didn't exist until a sector was completely cleared. And thanks to the peculiar properties of Sector 1, they hadn't been able to rest even there.
In that instant—from the five o'clock position, the exact spot Baek Gun-tae had screamed at them to plug—a Horn Mammoth rammed straight through the supply packs thrown by hunters and charged savagely into the very center of the formation.
"Scatter! I said scatter!"
A gargantuan mammoth standing ten meters high—who would dare try to stop it? Hunters scattered in every direction, panicked. But they were too slow. Not because the mammoth was fast. Because the hunters were slow.
Just a moment. If I could buy just a split second—Lee Eun-ha stepped forward, focusing her mind. And then—
"Explosion—!"
Her cry triggered a blast at ground level, and the mammoth's front leg plunged deep into a sizeable pit. Unable to overcome its own momentum, the charging mammoth pitched grotesquely into the air, front leg still caught.
'It worked...?!'
By all rights, it should have toppled straight in. But a force greater than she'd anticipated sent the mammoth's colossal body soaring upward instead, and the momentum didn't stop—it flipped over, lifting high. The creature rotated a full half-turn in the air, its back about to collide with the earth.
"Detrude!"
Lee Eun-ha propelled herself backward with mana, barely scrambling out from under the mammoth's shadow. Dust erupted and a deafening crash hammered her ears. The monster was already struggling to rise.
"......!"
It was hauling itself upright to prepare a second charge. That was when Gu Jin-ha, finally alerted to the collapsing formation, arrived in a blur and cut the beast's throat in one stroke.
One Flash. The undeniable killing blow pierced straight through the brain, and the mammoth toppled. Gu Jin-ha flicked the blood from his blade's tip.
"Well done, Eun-ha."
"......Thank you!"
"But we're not done yet. Keep detecting. Understood?"
Lee Eun-ha gave a short nod and expanded her Mana Detection again. Never Land Sector 2—originally Zootopia, a zoo that had transformed into a nightmarish jungle. Monstopia.
Against the endless, crushing tide of monsters, the only thing she could do was—
"Add! Two at nine o'clock!"
—raise a voice hoarse from exhaustion and stay true to her role.
***
Getting clear of the maze wasn't difficult. When I looked back, the fog still billowed thickly. No surprise there—its sensory distortion was the kind of thing that could make a person nearly vomit from vertigo.
'But the real problem is...'
Right here. The Plaza. After passing through both the Labyrinth and the maze, the final area of Sector 1 had revealed itself in full, fearsome grandeur.
It was less a plaza and more a colosseum—or perhaps an altar. The unique nature of Sector 1's "Fair Death"—the Plaza, Zone 3. If the Steeletons of the Labyrinth could reassemble when destroyed, the monsters in the Plaza would simply pour out without end.
'This one, there's no choice but to fight.'
The only way to advance from the Plaza into Sector 2 was to scatter death across it. That was the meaning behind Sector 1's "Fair Death": the death could be the Raid Force's or the monsters'—it didn't matter. When enough lives, enough existence, had been snuffed out in this Plaza, only then would the gate to Sector 2 open at last.
'In my case, it's two.'
All I needed was to fill the quota for Perry and myself. Unlike the Raid Force, I didn't have to sweep through on a massive scale—that much was a mercy. But even that wouldn't be easy.
{Эми тест тапшыруучу келгендиктен, тест башталат!}
An unknown voice. That was the announcement marking the Plaza's commencement of battle.
{Өзүңүздү кан жана өлүм менен далилдеңиз!}
Monsters began revealing themselves along the perimeter—not a single one looked easy. The weakest were at least Aranea-class, and many possessed power comparable to the Swamp Dragon, the boss I'd faced in the Forest Dungeon.
'That's a relief.'
And so, I could feel at ease. If this was all they had, there wouldn't be a problem. A black Ghost Flame (C) kindled and blazed up, roaring to life.
***
"Something feels... wrong."
"You mean what, exactly?"
Eun Ja-rim, commander of the Rear Unit, spoke, and Kim Joo-seop—the Road of Okyeon, the representative clan of Daegu—cocked his head quizzically.
"It's as if... No, it's nothing."
"......."
"... How much longer do you think it'll take?"
"The initial stretch was swept clean long ago, so there shouldn't be any trouble. An hour or two at most? We'll be able to link up with the Main Force within that window."
The Rear Unit's objective was to construct a forward base and build rafts. If they pushed as far as Sector 3, maybe things would differ, but as long as their goal was sealing Sector 2, establishing a base camp was necessary.
The structure of Sector 2 was an enormous jungle—with a long river cutting straight across that jungle. Conventionally, the area before crossing the river was called Area 1. The region beyond was Area 2.
Once the Advance Unit and Main Force, moving ahead, had cleared all the monsters up to the river, they would rest at the pre-established base camp. Then the Rear Unit would ferry across the river on their newly built rafts and begin clearing the entrance of Area 2.
After the Advance Unit and Main Force had rested and joined them, and the monsters of Area 2 were completely eliminated, the subjugation of Sector 2 would finally be complete. That meant the expedition's objective would be achieved.
'This expedition really has been successful.'
They hadn't overreached. Eun Ja-rim nodded to herself internally. No matter how many variables she tried to imagine, the odds of failing in Sector 2—not even Sector 3 or 4—were low.
Their goal was sealing Sector 2 from the start, so they wouldn't even be going to the next sector. Even if a Frenzy broke out... Kim Joo-seop spoke as she drifted in thought.
"Don't let it weigh on you too much. The operation will be finished in a day or two. You seem a bit worn down—would you like to rest for a moment?"
"...No, I'm fine. It's just me being oversensitive, I'm sure."
That was what she said, but the unease wouldn't fade.
A forced march, yes, but at this rate they could finish without a hitch. So why—why was it that despite everything proceeding so smoothly... an overwhelming dread, the feeling that something or someone was leading them all to ruin, kept seizing her and shaking her to the core?
"......."
Eun Ja-rim chewed her lip raw with anxiety.