To the 11th Floor
Han Ba-da's party didn't return until well after I'd already found the Twin-Horned Minotaur.
They looked like they'd gotten some of their anger out. Han Ba-da was never the type to go easy on scum, after all.
"Sorry we're late."
"No. Well... it doesn't seem like it took that long."
Two or three hours? That was nothing. If anything, I had to admit they'd been considerate of me.
She'd” nearly died — and from a massive stab in the back, no less. Spending this much time getting revenge on people like that was, if anything, generous. They must have figured they couldn't keep me waiting too long.
I looked at Han Ba-da and the rest of her party. Their faces were surprisingly bright.
I let out a quiet snicker. An amusing thought crossed my mind.
Not long ago, these people had been ordinary modern civilians. Now they didn't seem particularly bothered by revenge that ended in killing. That was the Tower for you — a place far removed from morality, one that put people through so much in such a short span of time that it remade them entirely.
In the past, I might have felt differently. Now I just considered it a necessity of survival.
"Alright, then. Let's wrap this up."
We were finally leaving the 15th floor.
My own party would feel it, but Han Ba-da's people would feel it even more. This place had nearly become their grave. It was also where they'd trained themselves to the bone with my help — and grown stronger because of it.
The Twin-Horned Minotaur was definitely stronger than the Single-Horned variety, but to our group the difference was negligible. We'd already killed plenty of them. When you herded monsters for a drive hunt, a Twin-Horned would slip in among the Single-Horned ones every few packs. At the most, we'd even seen three at once. So nobody in the party looked particularly tense.
"Eun-ju."
"Yes?"
"Take it down."
"...Yes."
"Seoyun."
"Yes, Oppa."
"Support Eun-ju. Magic only, though."
The party looked thoroughly fed up at the sight of me running drills even now. But training had to happen whenever we had the room for it, and for all their exasperation, nobody actually pushed back. They'd gotten stronger, after all. Against an opponent like this, those two weren't going to lose.
Nam Eun-ju picked up on my intent immediately. She held back her own attacks and drew the Minotaur's attention. The Nam Eun-ju who'd grown this far didn't even use her taunt skill — she held aggro until the Minotaur dropped to Na Seoyun's Energy Bolt, and she did it cleanly.
Energy Bolt might not hit hard, but it was still magic. Managing aggro so it didn't bounce under those conditions was proof of how far she'd come.
In particular, the technique of striking the Minotaur the instant Energy Bolt landed — disrupting it and locking the aggro firmly onto herself — was something I'd personally pointed out and praised. It wouldn't work on a reasonably intelligent monster, but against the dumber ones it was more than enough, and it was one of those skills every tank needed to master. Nam Eun-ju had burned the evidence of her growth into all of us.
Na Seoyun was no different. Her Energy Bolt still couldn't match Na-yeon's spirit magic — Casa's Fireball.
Even with higher mana than Na-yeon, Energy Bolt's efficiency was still lacking, and the spell itself had no explosive force or heavy impact. It hadn't been refined, and without a catalyst stone, its power as magic was limited. The Minotaur taking those hits probably felt like some amateur who couldn't fight was shoving a fist at it.
The problem was that this amateur's physique sat in the top one percent.
Even so, the fact that she could cast magic under her own power was already remarkable. I didn't feel disappointed about it. She was going to keep growing. I'd simply parked her in the rear for a while instead of the vanguard, so she could get comfortable with magic. Once she was more at home with it, I'd put her back on the front line — she was a Magic Swordsman, after all.
In any case, Na Seoyun had proven her worth with magic once again. The rest of the party had no idea how impressive that actually was. They just praised her the way they always did — that's Seoyun for you.
Once the Minotaur died a miserable death, the passage we'd refused to take several times before reappeared, beckoning us onward.
This time, we had to go. I had no intention of ignoring it again. I led the party toward the 16th floor.
The monsters on the 16th floor were the same as always — the gnolls had shifted a little in color, the Hobgoblins had improved in quality, and there were more of them. That was it.
I told the party the floor was too far below our level, that we'd secure the Fixed Safe Zone and move on. They agreed.
For the same reason, we skipped the 16th, 17th, and 18th floors, then spent some time hunting on the 19th to raise our levels.
After two weeks of hunting, we hit level 20 and headed straight for the 20th floor. The level gap probably helped — growth on the 19th had been fairly fast.
The moment we arrived on the 20th, the party threw themselves into securing a Fixed Safe Zone. We found the boss room, but no Fixed Safe Zone.
"Don't tell me it's in a deeper sector..."
"I don't think so."
I lifted my gaze toward the boss room.
"The most likely place is behind the boss room. That's what I'm betting on."
"......"
Nobody answered.
We searched the 20th floor until we hit level 21 and still couldn't find a Fixed Safe Zone.
There wasn't one in sector 1-1, or in sector 5-15. We checked a number of rooms across sectors 1 through 10 besides the boss rooms, and all we found were packs of Hobgoblins and gnolls. No Fixed Safe Zone.
We had found and secured several regular safe zones, so it wasn't a crisis.
Truth is, it really is behind the actual boss room.
What I'd offered as a guess had been based on my memories of the first cycle. The Fixed Safe Zone really was behind the boss room.
And if I became its administrator too, every Fixed Safe Zone in the entire Labyrinth would be mine.
Honestly, locking down every Fixed Safe Zone wasn't easy, and I was quietly hoping there might be some kind of reward for it. It was something that hadn't happened in the first cycle.
The boss was a Twin-Horned Minotaur. Not a phantom. The real thing.
It was powerful, as a boss should be, but if our entire party piled on, winning wasn't impossible. If I went all out, it would actually be on the easy side. For all that it was a boss Minotaur, it was about on par with an ogre, or a little weaker. I'd killed an ogre by myself. There was no reason I couldn't kill this thing.
I wasn't as familiar with it as I was with ogres, but we'd had plenty of experience with the phantoms on the 15th floor, so I had a rough sense of how it moved. There was a real difference between a phantom and the genuine article, of course, but that experience still helped.
Getting from the 15th floor to the 20th and combing through everything had taken a little under two months.
Even so, most of the people behind us were still stuck on the 11th and 12th floors. Only a tiny handful — specifically, a single party — was struggling on the 15th. The ones who'd made it that far seemed to have charged in half-recklessly. They spent most of their time in the Fixed Safe Zone and only went out to hunt occasionally, apparently holding on through the Temple of Tribulation. It was slow, but it was a method.
I had to give them credit for finding the Fixed Safe Zone at all, given that it was in a different location from the other floors.
A few other parties that could be classified as upper-tier were spread across the 13th and 14th floors.
The fact that more parties were reaching the 13th and 14th at this point wasn't a good sign. Checking the lists, the rate of serious injuries was climbing. It meant people who weren't ready were forcing their way to the next floor. One or two, I could dismiss. A growing number of them meant they were coming up because they couldn't survive on the floors below.
Which meant a Cartel had formed on the 11th and 12th floors after all. I'd known I couldn't stop one from existing entirely.
But for people like that to already be showing up...
In the past, the Labyrinth had been a brutal place where climbing a single floor took nearly a year. That was because the Cartel interfered with hunting. Without them, anyone with decent talent could clear a floor in two or three months.
Even without talent, half a year was plenty. And they'd spent that time building a Cartel instead.
I felt the need to get down to the 11th floor sooner rather than later.
"I think we should just head to the boss room."
Personally, I'd wanted to hit the maximum level we could reach here — 22 — before moving on, but 21 wasn't insufficient. Our party's level wasn't low to begin with.
"Understood."
"Agreed."
Nobody objected. I headed for the boss room and spoke to the party as we went.
"Seoyun, you're back on the front line. Eun-ju, you're returning to Keeper."
"Yes, Oppa."
"Yes. Understood, Party Leader."
Na Seoyun's magic had improved by leaps and bounds over the past two months. She'd succeeded in adding explosive force and impact to Energy Bolt.
Drawing on her high mana stat, she'd managed to reach a level of destructive power approaching Casa's Fireball, and she'd even learned a new spell — Magic Arrow.
Watching Na Seoyun grow by the day, the rest of the party was feeling in their bones what a difference it made to have a mage and not have one.
Na Seoyun, whose magic was improving by the day, and Na-yeon the spirit contractor. The synergy between them didn't follow a simple 1+1=2. It was more like they were insisting 1+1 equaled 3 or 4, and that showed in our hunting speed.
Han Ba-da's party watched us with open envy. They had a capable archer in Jo Yeon-ju, but the gap between an archer and a mage was significant. Especially given my style of drive hunting, a mage who could massacre in bulk was even more valuable.
But the boss on this floor was a single target. Higher up, bosses that brought minions with them were more common than ones that stood alone — but not yet.
That was why I'd told Na Seoyun to return to the front. It was time she started learning how to use sword and magic together.
We walked up to the boss room without hesitation and stepped inside, holding onto a measured tension.
The boss registered our entry in an instant and locked its gaze on us. Then it unleashed a roar in our direction.
A presence on a completely different level from the phantoms we'd seen on the 15th floor. Even a simple bellow carried a pressure that was subtly, distinctly different.
Tension surfaced on the party's faces.
"Fight as usual. Han Ba-da, take the second line. Seoyun, you're free — support me, or join the rear for magic attacks depending on the situation. Yoon-hyung, Eun-ju, you're Keepers."
The rear line didn't need separate instructions.
I rattled off the orders, and the moment I finished, the Minotaur charged as if it had been waiting for me to stop talking.
I ran to meet it and signaled the rear line to fall back. We needed to take the aggro on this side while they found their positions.
I went for the legs first, looking to strip it of mobility.
My blade carved through the air toward its shin — and the Minotaur moved with a sharpness the phantoms had never shown.
Its hoof came up and caught my sword.
I hadn't wrapped the blade in Sword Qi, but it was still a weapon imbued with mana. The hoof was tougher than I'd expected.
The thing's face twisted into something like a grin. The grotesque expression soured my mood on the spot.
A taunt effect?
I'd been on the front line in the first cycle, but never as the main tank. This was the first time I'd taken a taunt from the 20th-floor boss myself. Techniques like this had almost always been used on trainees stronger than I was.
If it were me, I'd have used it on someone weaker.
That would have shattered a human formation in an instant. But the Minotaur hadn't done that.
I reined in my gaze, which had started to lock on too hard. I cycled mana to suppress the taunt and pulled my mind back into place. Purification would have done it cleanly, but using that in the middle of a fight was a tall order — it demanded a certain level of concentration, and I hadn't needed it enough to build any real proficiency.
The sluggish phantoms of the 15th floor had been a lie. The 20th-floor boss was a different creature from the first movement. It caught my swings on its hooves, then used the broken medieval manacles chained to its wrists to turn my attacks aside.
I was holding my strength to a certain level, true — but it was also proof that this boss was no joke.
"Magic Arrow!"
"Casa!"
While I kept the Minotaur occupied, the rest of the party had found their positions and opened up with supporting fire. Magic and arrows slammed into the broad expanse of its back.
The Minotaur's head started to turn. I went for the ankle again and succeeded in yanking its attention back to me.
The moment I had the aggro, the rear line hit it a second time. When its head started to swing around again, Han Ba-da stepped in.
"Haaah!"
She closed the distance in a single burst, and together we went for both ankles at once. The Minotaur panicked, catching Han Ba-da with one hand and blocking the other attack with a hoof.
But it couldn't stop its balance from breaking.
I slipped through the opening as it lifted a leg to block with its hoof, and carved across the opposite leg.
The Minotaur bellowed. It wasn't a clean severance or a killing blow, but the hitch in its movement was obvious.
Sword Qi would have made it a different story, but it wasn't time to show that yet. We were already putting on a high-level performance. Revealing it to the party this early would have been too soon.
I could get away with hiding it now. But over time, it would plant the sense that something about the present me had been off.
Bit by bit, our party stacked the damage.
Once it had taken a certain amount of punishment, the Minotaur's attack pattern shifted.
It abandoned its two-legged stance and dropped onto all fours in a single motion. Then it charged.
Han Ba-da startled at the sudden speed and threw herself backward. I was the target, so getting out of the way wasn't hard for her.
I didn't dodge. I charged the Minotaur instead.
A flicker of surprise crossed the party's faces, then settled just as fast. When it came to combat, my judgment was the best in the group.
Even so, they kept their attacks concentrated on the Minotaur's legs. The training had taken.
I sprang lightly toward the oncoming Minotaur's head. It adjusted its skull and torso to match my position — but I struck the horn with my blade, used the rebound, and twisted my body in midair.
It put a strain on me, but my stamina stat was more than enough to absorb the shock. I used the rebound to turn over and rake my sword across the Minotaur's back on the way past.
A scream of pain tore out of it. Its back had already taken a beating, and my blade dragging across it on top of that seemed to deliver more agony than it had bargained for.
Han Ba-da didn't give it a chance to recover as the charge ended and it tried to rise. This time she took the aggro, and I supported her.
But the fight didn't go entirely as planned.
From the midpoint, Han Ba-da's movements started to turn a little ragged. Before long, the share of her effort going into defense and evasion began to shrink, and the share going into offense began to grow.
...Tsk.
Han Ba-da was slowly getting caught in the taunt.