Shall We Climb Again? (2)
Modern society had no structures that could truly be called dungeons.
People had not known of mana for very long, and there was no one capable of creating a dungeon in the first place. The only dungeons they knew were the pseudo-dungeons they experienced inside the Tower.
“Every last tip for dungeon exploration is pure nonsense.”
Use the right-hand rule so you don’t get lost. No—traps are often set with that very method in mind, so use the left-hand rule instead. Unravel a ball of string as you go, like in the Labyrinth of Crete. All sorts of methods were proposed, and every one of them was mocked for being useless in practice.
“Of course none of them work if you just slap labyrinth-clearing tactics onto a dungeon.”
And that went double for a dungeon whose layout changed every single time. Forks in the path were completely different, and trap locations shifted without fail. There were even posts claiming that from the eleventh floor onward, parties without healing or detection skills were wiped out with ease. The only actually useful information boiled down to which monsters appeared and what kinds of traps showed up on each floor.
“There’s a trap here as well.”
But for Esdel, who was exploring a true labyrinth rather than a dungeon, none of those posts were any help. She kept detection magic active at all times, mapping the locations of traps. Mechanical ones she shorted with electricity; magical shock devices she handled with mana bullets. She advanced slowly, crushing the bones of skeletons that clattered up from the floor along the way.
“Judging by the bones, these look human… Where in the world are they even coming from?”
Skeletons normally arose when the mana of a dungeon or labyrinth settled into the bones of those who had died there, turning them into monsters. Inside the Tower, where everything underwent a Reset, not even corpses remained. Monsters themselves left only magic stones behind when they died and then vanished. In other words, this labyrinth was structured so that skeletons could not form naturally at all.
“Hmm.”
Just like the portals, the labyrinth itself had a nature that repelled mana. She needed magic or mana to scan the structure, yet she was left frowning as she waved a skeleton’s hand bones this way and that.
“This one dropped a magic stone and still left its bones behind. Why?”
Strange things, every last one of them—enough to feel as though common sense itself was being denied.
Rumble—
“The layout’s shifted again.”
On top of everything else, the labyrinth moved at regular intervals as if it were alive, rearranging its structure.
“Find it—”
Detection magic located the exit.
“Making me work for it.”
The path ahead was blocked. Without hesitation Esdel turned back the way she had come. Clatter—bones scraped together as a skeleton rose from the floor. A one-armed skeleton missing a hand.
“Looking for your arm, are you?”
Esdel gave the skeletal hand a little wave in greeting. Red light kindled in the empty sockets of its skull. Click-clack—its jawbones rattled as it lunged. She swung her arm lightly.
Smack—
Struck across the cheek by its own hand bones, the skeleton froze for a moment.
“No need for self-abuse just because you’ve turned into a monster.”
Dealing with a skeleton was simple enough. Destroy the core that gathered the bones and made them move, and that was the end of it.
“The ones that come back to life don’t seem to have magic stones.”
In the Tower the magic stone usually filled that role. The revived ones, however, had a rock thick with foul energy lodged in their chests in place of a magic stone, as if a new core had formed. She thrust the hand bones between the ribs, struck only the core, and pulled it free.
Clatter-crash—
The bones collapsed in place the instant the core came out.
“Hmm. If the layout shifts and we run into each other later, it’ll just get up and start moving again.”
The eleventh-floor strategy guides on Taris were missing a great many details—the shifting structure, the skeletons rising again…
“The jungle floors weren’t any different, but from the eleventh floor on they’re openly discriminating, are they?”
She flung the hand bones she had been tapping against her shoulder back over her head.
“I can worry about it after I clear the eleventh floor. No rush.”
Esdel leaned against the wall and waited. A short while later a great noise rose and the labyrinth’s structure shifted once more.
“Shall we try again?”
She spread detection magic wide and mapped the entire labyrinth. Wherever the magic could not reach was where the portal lay—the exit of the eleventh floor.
“Found it.”
Esdel moved fast, tearing through the labyrinth in moments.
“Block it—”
She ignored the crude traps, shielding herself with defensive magic as she went. Before long she reached the zone that held the portal.
“Let’s see whether the structure still shifts even when I’m standing right here.”
Travel had taken enough time that the moment for the labyrinth to rearrange itself arrived. Yet no matter how long she waited, it did not move.
“So once you reach the goal, it’s over.”
Esdel stepped into the corridor leading to the portal chamber.
…Two, one.
Clearing it meant that even if she re-entered the labyrinth, everything stayed the same. She slowly retraced her steps, kicking at the piles of bones scattered here and there. They only clattered; none of them rose and charged the way they had before.
“What is this, some kind of amusement-park ride?”
She pestered the bones for no good reason.
“Might as well check how sturdy the walls are.”
Trap locations could be destroyed by either magic or physical force. So shouldn’t the walls that made up the labyrinth itself be destroyable as well? Esdel loosed a spell at the wall.
Boom—
The sound of impact rolled out and dust billowed in every direction. She stirred up a breeze to clear it away, then let out a short laugh at the result.
“Well now. Built it tough, did they?”
She had been able to tear through the jungle floors with ease, yet the labyrinth refused? The thought of those uselessly sturdy buildings the shorties used to put up left her in a foul mood.
“Burst—pierce—explode—”
She prepared a stronger spell than before and fired it at the wall. The result was the same. The wall remained completely unharmed.
“Is it because this is the Tower? Or did they pour anti-magic materials into the walls?”
Yet even when she shaped stone into a drill and drove it in, nothing happened. Physical attacks clearly did not work either.
“Fine. Let’s see if the twelfth floor is the same.”
Without hesitation Esdel headed for the twelfth floor.
“They said the traps on the twelfth floor are more varied and more numerous.”
Then it was no different from the eleventh. Whether traps or skeletons, more of them only meant more obstacles for her to clear away—nothing but a nuisance.
Even after ascending to the twelfth floor she continued surveying the labyrinth.
“These traps are nastier than I heard.”
Simple ones—arrows firing, floors dropping away, jets of flame—were only the basics. When she triggered a type that had not existed below, the ceiling plummeted in an instant and tried to crush her flat. She darted back just in case; after the walls rose again she found a skeleton smashed to powder.
“Any Awakener who’d only just entered the tenth-floor range would have been wiped out if they stepped on that.”
There were others too: boulders rolling down single-file corridors, bone piles dropping from the ceiling to form whole skeleton squads. Traps never mentioned in the Taris info posts filled the place.
“I didn’t expect much once it turned into a labyrinth, but this is beyond imagination.”
Creak-creak—
Her keen elven ears caught the sound of rusted machinery moving.
Behind me?
Click—
Something launched. Esdel, already listening, dropped low at once.
Thwack—
An arrow skimmed past her head and buried itself in the wall.
“It triggered even though I didn’t touch a thing.”
The wall was already melting; the arrow had clearly been coated in poison. A graze would have been fatal.
“Mm. This is completely…”
The peculiar sound of the machinery and the nature of the traps stirred a strange sense of familiarity in Esdel. The labyrinth walls built so sturdily. The complex trap designs that would have been difficult for a monster or a mage to create. Above all, the patterns carved into the walls looked familiar.
“They resemble the motifs the shorties used all the time.”
She wondered for a moment whether those fellows had built it, then shook her head.
“Even if they did, something that merely imitates them would appear—like that fake World Tree.”
Esdel waited for the labyrinth’s structure to shift, then moved again. The deeper she went, the denser the traps became.
“The layout changes, yet the traps still activate.”
So it wasn’t that the walls themselves were moving and rearranging? Her thoughts never stopped even as she advanced.
If the walls aren’t moving, then is the entire space being swapped out?
In that case the space she herself occupied ought to change as well.
If everything changes except the space I’m standing in…
What if she kept moving forward while the change was happening? The moment the idea formed, her steps halted. It was worth testing. She stood still and waited for the labyrinth to shift.
Rumble—
Vibration and the sound of structures moving rose together. At the same instant Esdel cast a spell and surged forward. With detection magic active she mapped the path in real time. Because of the moving walls she could only read the fork immediately ahead, but that was enough.
Right here.
When she went forward and then turned back, a wall blocked her path—one that had not been there moments before.
“Interesting.”
She would need a few more experiments to be sure. Forming a hypothesis in her mind, Esdel rapidly cleared the floor. She was about to step into the portal she had found when—
“Strange. Until now the area around every portal has been completely clean…”
She spotted bones lying in front of the portal. The question lasted only a moment. Then she realized the bones before the portal were different from every set she had seen so far, and her words trailed off.
“It can’t be…”
Surely not. She forced the denial and approached the skeleton that still held something of its original shape. Half the skull was smashed and several ribs were missing, yet she knew at once.
“Why do you remain in such a form in this far-off foreign land?”
She asked a question that could never reach him. Finger bones curled as though still gripping something. From the shape of the hand, the grip matched the size of a halberd haft—the kind those fellows had always favored.
"Hey, pointy-ears! Still alive, huh? If we both make it through today, let's grab a beer together."
The shorties who lived underground, digging tunnels and building labyrinths. The ones who went wild for beer and loved their own craftsmanship more than anyone else. The race that always charged to the front of every battlefield and died fighting bravely.
“Why are you lingering here in this distant place without even resting, shorty?”
One of the races that had stood against the Demon King in that other world.
It was the corpse of a dwarf.