Entering the Labyrinth
I told the party about the place I had just found.
They had been snatching what rest they could, always watching the shadows, and the news was met with undisguised relief. Until now, the knowledge that we were the only trainees on the entire 11th Floor had been a constant weight — every unexplored path likely hid monsters, and an ambush could come from any of them. Hearing that I had found somewhere safe was more than enough to lift their spirits.
"Where? Where is it, Party Leader?"
Nam Eun-ju, whose physical stats were the lowest and who had been having the hardest time of anyone, looked the most delighted of all.
With me and Na Seoyun holding the front, she was actually under the least physical strain. But she was also the least capable member of the party, and her position was Keeper — holding the rear. Worse, she was essentially covering two people by herself. Mentally, she was at her limit. The stress had been crushing her; rest was what she needed most.
"Right ahead. We'll reach it once we pass through this corridor."
I led them toward the Fixed Safe Zone.
They immediately stared into empty air for a long while — a system message must have appeared.
"Uh... the administrator is... you, Oppa?"
"Ah, yeah. I found it first."
"But there are all these restrictions..."
"Hold on. I'll lift them."
I opened the administration window at once and registered the party as exceptions. The change took effect immediately; their expressions eased considerably.
"Wow, I thought we'd have to sleep and eat and then leave the place we just found... I'd have been grateful just to get a decent night's sleep, honestly. But why did you put conditions like that on it?"
Na-yeon couldn't hide her curiosity even as the tension drained from her shoulders.
"There's a lot of potential for abuse."
"The administrator privileges are stronger than I expected, then."
"Strong enough to eject someone on the spot."
Joo Ha-yeon looked startled.
"Isn't that basically being the owner?"
"I think it's fair to look at it that way."
"...You're right. There's more than enough room for it to be abused."
And it would be. In practice, it was.
From the 11th Floor to the 20th, these zones would become Cartel strongholds on every floor. They weren't all the same group, but still. Most trainees would eventually pass through, the Cartel would gradually move upward, and more than a few of them would find themselves on the receiving end of revenge.
Call it karma, I suppose.
In the end, though, it was mostly just trash cleaning up other trash — an ironic situation, but that was the reality.
The party seemed to share my concern.
"But it'll reset once we go up to the next floor, right?"
"No. The only listed condition for releasing it is 'death.'"
"...Then it wouldn't be good if anyone found out. We should move to the next floor as soon as we can."
Joo Ha-yeon knew that no matter how strong we were, we weren't invincible. If anyone learned I held this kind of authority, they would try to kill me and take it. So she was urging us to flee upward — concern for me, nothing else.
"Well, I wasn't planning to stay long anyway. We'll keep looking for a passage to the next floor."
I didn't disagree. It was less about running away and more about finding a Hunting Ground that actually suited us.
There were things I needed from the Labyrinth, too. For that, pushing upward quickly was the right call.
Still, I had no idea when we would actually go up. The passages to the next floor spawned at random, after all. Most of them appeared when you cleared a cavern. Clearing a lot of them quickly would raise the odds. Even so, we had spent two days cleaning caverns and hadn't found a single one, so the probability wasn't all that high.
For the first time in a while, the party was able to rest properly for a full day.
Maybe it was because I wasn't deliberately pushing them away this time. The atmosphere was warm, almost cheerful.
I found myself realizing that Epathos had been right. I had thought the mood around me had been fine before, but compared to now, there had clearly been something awkward about it.
Na Seoyun had smiled, but she hadn't looked this at ease. Na-yeon had always seemed like she was forcing herself to start conversations. Nam Eun-ju looked far more settled than before, and she had even started using the good atmosphere as an opening to ask me about combat techniques — aggro management, that sort of thing. Joo Ha-yeon... honestly, I couldn't pinpoint what had changed on the surface. But her expression, the air around her, seemed a little softer than before.
For the first time in a while, we got to eat something that had actually been cooked instead of dry rations. When safety wasn't guaranteed, you made do with whatever you could choke down. This place, though, was a Safe Zone guaranteed by the System, and that let us live a little more freely. Surprisingly, Nam Eun-ju wasn't a bad cook. Na-yeon and Na Seoyun couldn't cook at all, and Joo Ha-yeon wasn't terrible, but she clearly wasn't used to it.
Once the cheerful meal was over, the party caught up on the sleep they had been missing.
I didn't say much either, and for the first time in a long while, I was able to rest properly. According to Epathos, the next leading party was still three days away from reaching the 11th Floor. I wanted to be on the next floor before they arrived.
After a full day of rest, we headed out to hunt again.
"I found something this time."
I told them about the numbers marked above the corridors.
"I hadn't found it that long ago. I came to 1-1 just in case, and we got lucky."
Honestly, those corridor numbers weren't anything special. More like a zone-and-room designation — the same idea as Room 302 meaning the third floor, room 01. Just a label so you wouldn't get lost. Of course, that same system would make it easy to find the temple on the 15th Floor, or Fixed Safe Zones like this one.
"...There was something like that?"
"Yeah. I found it yesterday, but everyone looked so exhausted I figured there wasn't much point in bringing it up, so I kept quiet. I didn't know what it was myself. Still, thanks to it, we didn't end up going in circles. Haha."
Ordinarily, this was the kind of thing you were supposed to share — especially if you were in a scouting role, like an assassin, thief, or archer. Those classes were expected to report anything they found to the party leader.
But I had a decent reputation to begin with, I was doing the scouting despite being a warrior, and I was the party leader besides. Whether to share it or not was my call. Sharing was usually the better choice, but the party hadn't been in great condition up through yesterday. Even if I hadn't said anything, none of them would have blamed me for it.
"Ugh... that's a little embarrassing. How did I walk past that without noticing?"
Instead of giving me a hard time, Joo Ha-yeon blamed herself. The reason she hadn't spotted it was obvious — aside from the first day, her condition had been poor the entire time. And she was a priest. Scouting wasn't part of her job.
They might have been a little hurt, sure, but the fact was their condition hadn't been good, so no one said anything. The result had been a good one, and they still weren't fully steeped in the Tower's ways. Those unspoken rules only really formed as time went on.
In the meantime, we found another Safe Zone, and I registered myself as administrator again. Same rules as before. This one had a two-month time limit.
"So there wasn't just one Safe Zone?"
"No. This one has a two-month time limit."
"The first one is a lot better, then. We got lucky."
We weren't planning to stay for two months anyway, so it didn't make much difference to us. For other people, though, it would.
Anyone who wasn't a top-tier party would need two or three groups working together just to clear a single cavern. Even then, two or three a day would be their limit. They wouldn't even keep up with the spawn rate. Our party was different. We could easily clear more than ten in a day. I was confident that even in the worst case, we would be heading up within five days.
My prediction was wrong.
In a good way.
"...So this is how they appear."
Na-yeon stared blankly at the blue passage that had formed in front of us. A corridor of stairs, set at a fairly steep incline.
"Is it not a fixed location? Does it appear once you clear a certain number? Or is it a specific room? This room's number is..."
1-22.
Not an intuitive number like 1-1.
"I don't know... is it just random? Don't tell me..."
That don't tell me was exactly right. There were people who had taken a portal after just a single day, as a famous example. Of course, given the level of the monsters, the smart move was still to hunt enough to raise your level and stats before heading to the next floor.
That said, they weren't so rare that they would never appear. If you hunted steadily, you would find a portal about once every couple of months. And once you were strong enough for the next floor, the monsters on the current one would start feeling easy, which meant you would hunt faster. If you were at that level and you wanted to, you could move up in a little over a month.
We were an exception from the start. So we headed to the next floor immediately.
You have entered the 12th Floor.
As expected, my administrator privileges for the 11th Floor's Fixed Safe Zone didn't disappear. Once I had confirmed that, I headed straight for zone 1-1, just as I had on the 11th Floor.
This floor had a Fixed Safe Zone in 1-1 as well, and I set it up the same way. That made me the administrator of two Fixed Safe Zones. Even in the first cycle, someone had managed to grab two. Nobody had gotten three. If I took the next floor's as well, I would be the first.
The monsters on the 12th Floor weren't stronger than those on the 11th — there were just more of them.
Nam Eun-ju's stress levels skyrocketed as a result. At the same time, though she probably didn't realize it herself, her skill was improving at a rapid clip.
No matter how fast we cut them down and pulled aggro, once the numbers climbed past a hundred, you couldn't hold every monster's attention at once. AoE taunts existed among provocation skills of Super Rare rank and above, but we didn't have one.
And yet, in that situation, not a single monster reached the rear line — not Na-yeon, not Joo Ha-yeon. That was proof of how desperately Nam Eun-ju had been working, and of how precise her judgment and actions had become as a tank and a Keeper. She had been watching me during every fight, and it seemed she had stolen my aggro-management techniques. She had asked about them now and then, too. Her effort was bearing fruit.
As a result, Nam Eun-ju's contribution soared, and she was able to level up at roughly the same pace as Joo Ha-yeon, who had been steadily using Shield of the Earth. Now every member of the party, myself included, was the same level. I probably still had the most experience, having spent the longest time at level 12.
The party's stats had risen a little as well, and more than anything, the increase in skill proficiency was proving useful.
Before I knew it, three days had passed since we had arrived on the 12th Floor. Personally, I had felt we were moving a little slower than on the 11th, and I had figured we might see the passage tomorrow — but the corridor to the next floor appeared.
I was genuinely glad to see it. The monsters changed on the next floor. Goblins became Hobgoblins. Brown gnolls became red gnolls. Enemies that actually gave proper experience would start showing up.
My stats had been growing a little lately. The potential of my body had risen thanks to the elixirs, after all. But without the support of leveling up, the growth was still painfully slow. So of course I was glad.
But at the same time, a startling message appeared before my eyes.
A trainee has entered the Fixed Safe Zone on the 11th Floor.
The leading group besides us.
They had finally set foot in the Labyrinth.