Entering the Lower Floors

We escaped the Labyrinth. The instant we did, messages bloomed before my eyes.

...A special reward?

The first part was what I'd expected. From here on, the Tower was no longer divided by floors, but by districts. Floors 21 through 35 were each labeled as a district, and Districts 21 through 35 together made up the Lower Floors. Districts 36 through 59 were the Middle Floor, and from the 60th floor onward came the Upper Floors. The 60th floor, where I had died, had been one of the Giant Districts of the Upper Floors.

The conditions for crossing from one district to another were level and quests. If your level was high enough, you could roam whichever district you pleased; if you had a quest, you could enter the next district even if your level fell short. Think of it as a level-gated field and you wouldn't be far off.

Trainees, though, had always called those district level restrictions the minimum entry requirement. Meaning exactly that — the bare minimum to walk in the door.

The districts shifted in the number and quality of their monsters so sharply it was as if the Tower itself were warning you: step in without the qualifications, and you die. The primary monsters of these floors were gnolls, kobolds, and lizardmen. The gnolls in particular — if you went in thinking they were anything like the ones in the Labyrinth, you would be dead before you knew it. In fact, gnolls had killed more trainees than any other monster. And the enemy I had to watch for most carefully on these floors... was a gnoll as well.

The Gnoll Hero. I had to stop its resurrection.

I was still turning it over when a voice struck my ear.

"Ha. This is — unbelievable. Someone actually fulfilled those conditions?"

A raspy voice, thoroughly scraped raw. It sounded male, but there was a faintly thin quality to it that made it hard to tell whether the speaker was a man or a woman. A figure in a somewhat filthy, shapeless hood was staring at me. Even the silhouette offered no clue as to gender. The inside of the hood was a well of darkness I couldn't pierce.

"...Who are you?"

I had no idea when the figure had appeared. The instant I heard the voice, my hand flew to my weapon. My companions, startled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠by the sudden arrival, scrambled into formation, their faces tight with alarm.

"I am the Floor Master of the Labyrinth. Akimili."

The Floor Master of the Labyrinth. I had assumed such a being existed, but in the first cycle this one had never shown up even once. And now, out of nowhere?

I spoke as if I couldn't make sense of it.

"...We've left the Labyrinth and entered the Lower Floors. This is the Lower Floors, isn't it?"

The stretch of the Lower Floors we'd arrived in was a bright afternoon. The road underfoot — one that looked to see regular human traffic — was lit not by the Labyrinth's characteristic luminescent stone, but by sunlight. Whether that sun was real, I couldn't say.

"Yes. This is the Lower Floors. But you. Because of what you did, I had to come all the way out here."

"...I'm not sure I follow."

"All-Floor Administrator."

"...And what of it?"

Ten floors of Labyrinth. Administrator of every last Fixed Safe Zone. I had wondered if that title would amount to something, and when it hadn't, I'd been quietly disappointed. Now the name had surfaced again.

"Maintain that status and leave the Labyrinth, and you receive a reward. Strictly speaking, eight or more will get you one, but... you have all ten. All-Floor Administrator. A genuinely rare case."

"...A reward. I won't say no to one, but..."

My policy had always been to stay on good terms with Floor Masters. But this Akimili looked distinctly irritated, and the atmosphere around him was so hostile I could barely bring myself to approach.

"Then take it and get lost."

Akimili tossed a strange crystal at me, turned on his heel at once, and seemed to go translucent before dissolving into the air as if melting into nothing.

Once he vanished, my companions — who'd been wound tight with tension — only eased the strength from their bodies once they were sure he was truly gone.

"Phew... What was that? If he's a Floor Master, he should be like Lord Epathos... I can't believe they're that different..."

Joo Ha-yeon looked as if she'd just lost ten years off her life.

"R-right... Lord Epathos never gave off an atmosphere like that..."

Nam Eun-ju sounded genuinely frightened.

Hm?

Been a while.

Can't say the feeling's mutual.

Gone all this time, and the moment we entered the Lower Floors she started sending indirect messages. An Administrator who never actually helped with anything. I couldn't have cared less.

...So there's something to that Floor Master after all?

...What?

Then that Floor Master is...

I had wondered as much. Floors 2 through 7 of the tutorial had been a continuous space, and even the dungeons, though split by floor, had shared a similar theme. By the 20th floor, you could even travel between them through the Fixed Safe Zones.

By the time you reached the Lower Floors and the Middle Floor, you could reasonably call the whole thing a vast continent. The System locked a great deal of it down as if it were a game, but taken as a whole, it was an enormous landmass. In practice, the Lower Floors and the Middle Floor were spaces where NPCs and the Tower's native residents lived side by side. Aside from a handful of key points, the bulk of the population was made up of those native residents.

Once I'd entered the second cycle and learned the concept of dimensions, I had quietly suspected that this place called the Tower had only been carved into floors for the growth and convenience of trainees — that it was, in truth, several dimensions stitched together.

Then this Labyrinth Piece is...

Semi-Mythic. A grade above even Legendary. I was, frankly, a little stunned.

I had been staring at the Labyrinth Piece for some time when my companions asked me about it.

"What's that, oppa?"

"...I don't know either."

I had no answer I could give Na Seoyun. I was seeing it for the first time myself. I had never heard of it, never seen it, even in the first cycle. As far as I knew, the highest anyone had climbed as a Labyrinth administrator in that life was the one who'd claimed the 2nd floor.

"We should... probably try using it, at least..."

Whether it was the atmosphere of the one who'd given it to us, my companions seemed a little uneasy about it too. That didn't mean we could just leave it sitting there.

I used the item.

A strange rift appeared in the air before me at once, and slowly began to split open.

"...What is this..."

I stared stupidly at the rift in front of me. My companions, too, looked startled by the crack that had opened in empty space.

The interior of the fully opened rift looked much like the caverns we'd lived in inside the Labyrinth. The differences were that there were no monsters, no passages leading to other caverns, and the space itself was maybe a tenth the size of those old chambers. Still, it was larger than your average studio apartment back on Earth.

I stepped slowly inside.

"...This is insane."

A space of my own. I never imagined it would be something like this. Uses for it started stacking up in my head. It would work as a substitute inventory, and it was perfect as a comfortable space for camping. And if I could bring other people in...

Crack.

"Kyaa!"

Na-yeon's scream cut through the air and I whipped my head around. She was standing well back from the rift, clutching her hand.

@!%!^!

She seemed to be trying to say something, but no sound reached me. I came back out of the rift at once, and only then could I hear my companions speaking in a rush.

"Shin-hoo! Are you all right?"

"Sister!"

Joo Ha-yeon asked the moment I burst out of the rift, and the instant she caught hold of me, Na Seoyun ran straight to Na-yeon. There didn't seem to be any serious injury to Na-yeon's hand, but the pain must have been considerable — her fingers were still trembling faintly.

"What just..."

"No one except you could enter that space, Shin-hoo."

"Mm..."

So that was what "a space of my own" meant? If I couldn't invite anyone else... its range of use was more limited than I'd thought.

I couldn't stand there inspecting it forever. I needed to confirm one last thing, then we had to head for a village.

"Let me check one more thing. I'll go into that 'Labyrinth' and close the rift. Please watch what happens."

"All right."

I went straight in, closed the entrance, and came back out a moment later. The result was exactly what I'd expected. The entrance I'd gone through vanished without a trace, and you could walk right through the spot where the rift had been. In other words, no problems at all. If an obstacle occupied the original location, the entrance would simply open in midair to avoid it — or appear in the same spot without affecting the obstacle in the slightest. Thoroughly useful.

"...You've obtained something incredible."

It was an extraordinary item. There was a reason it was Semi-Mythic.

I was amazed too. An unexpected reward, and it felt like I'd been given a gift. My mood had lifted considerably — but it was time to move.

I turned to my companions.

"For now, it seems this place is called the Lower Floors."

"Yes. We saw the messages too."

"It isn't marked by floors the way it was before. They're calling them districts."

"It doesn't seem like we'll be climbing one floor at a time anymore. It told us to head for the Middle Floor after the Lower Floors, so..."

"And after that, I imagine, the Upper Floors."

"If it's District 35, would it be all right to think of that as the 35th floor?"

"That's my personal guess, but I think that's right. We'll have to experience it to know for sure."

I passed the information along naturally, framing it as speculation.

"Then we should start looking for something — anything. There's a road in front of us, so there may be a village along it. It's still daylight, but we have no idea how far a settlement might be, so the sooner we move, the better."

"Yes."

We happened to be standing in the middle of a road that looked to see human traffic. It wasn't paved, but it had the look of a path worn in by regular use. Judging by the scattered traces, though, it didn't seem particularly well-traveled.

We followed it at a steady pace, keeping watch on our surroundings. After a little over an hour, a sound carried to us from far off.

"This is..."

"Sounds like a fight."

Na-yeon immediately used her spirits to survey the situation. I focused mana into my eyes.

"...A village."

"That's right. It's a village."

Na-yeon agreed with me at once. In the distance, a settlement of considerable size came into view.

A village that would one day grow into a city. Monus Village was under attack by gnolls.