104. Labyrinth
104. Labyrinth
A woman wearing a pure-white Faceless mask and a black uniform that seemed to drink in even the midday light.
The leader of Nameless, Shadowless, stood at the center of a vast cavern within the Labyrinth, catching her breath.
How long had she been pinned down here?
Roughly forty hours.
The floor of the vast cavern was littered with Monster corpses. Counting them one by one would take all night.
And just as many living Monsters still remained. How in the world had they managed to prepare this many Monsters beneath the Imperial Capital?
None of that mattered. It had already happened, and uncovering it was not her job.
And whether their numbers were a thousand or ten thousand made little difference to Shadowless.
She had not been pinned down here because of the Monsters in the first place. Something else was keeping Shadowless here.
The humans mixed in among them.
Humans whose minds had been dominated, who had lost their reason and were mingled among the Monsters.
Where in the world had they gathered those humans from?
They were not a single race.
Eastern, Northern, Southern, Western.
Multiple races were mixed together.
And their numbers were horrifyingly large.
If there had only been Monsters, breaking through this place would not have taken even a minute. But humans were mixed in among the Monsters.
Humans who could easily lose their lives with one wrong move of a hand or foot came charging in alongside the Monsters.
Because of that, the time it took to conquer the Labyrinth had been delayed.
She could not even call it delayed.
She had simply stopped here.
If she killed all those humans... she could escape this place. She had also long since identified the location of the Labyrinth's core. Through her Energy Sense, she could even feel to some extent what kind of ritual was being performed at that core.
But that did not mean she could slaughter them all.
If they had been humans poisoned by Demonic Energy and doomed to die in agony, she would have ended them with her own hands.
But there was no sign of that.
Perhaps because they had expected Shadowless to make that judgment, the humans were perfectly fine.
How was that possible?
There was no Demonic Energy in this space. And the humans stayed only within this space.
Therefore, if this Labyrinth were broken through, all those humans could return alive.
That was what held Shadowless's feet so stubbornly.
Of course, she had not done nothing. Just looking at the corpses strewn across the floor, they numbered over four digits.
She had killed the Monsters charging in alongside the humans without harming the humans.
In the process, she had even saved humans who were knocked down by collisions with Monsters and humans and seemed about to be trampled to death.
Thanks to that, not a single drop of human blood, let alone a human corpse, stained the floor of this cavern.
She had also considered picking out the humans instead of the endlessly swarming Monsters, knocking them unconscious, and gathering them in one place.
She could not.
When a human lost consciousness, the Monsters rushed in to kill the unconscious human.
So she had been forced to keep that great mass of humans from losing consciousness while striking down thousands upon thousands of Monsters one by one.
Among them were creatures whose blood was acidic, and creatures that exploded as they died.
She had kept fighting while protecting humans among such creatures for forty hours now.
What in the world lay at the end of this Labyrinth to pin her down like this?
She had received rough information.
A cavern somewhere in the underground waterways.
A massive door standing blocking that place.
She could not know what lay beyond the door, but the Labyrinth's retainers sought to open it.
And to open it, a key was needed.
But she had entered the Labyrinth without grasping what that key was.
Not long after entering the Labyrinth, she learned what the key was.
Her keenly honed Energy Sense made her aware of that existence.
A spirit.
A spirit, said to have abruptly vanished four hundred years ago, was inside this Labyrinth.
That fact made Shadowless impatient.
What kind of existence had created this, and what had it hidden away that it required a spirit's power?
And how in the world had the Demons learned of it first?
Grind— A rough sound came from beyond the pure-white Faceless mask.
Thinking and raging would change nothing.
First... she had to escape this place somehow and stop the ritual that was taking place even at this very moment.
Pushing away her idle thoughts, Shadowless changed into a new pair of gloves and readied herself for battle.
At the same moment.
"...This is."
A massive flow of Demonic Energy pierced through the entire Labyrinth.
It was only for the briefest instant, but that flow was intense enough to make Shadowless's mouth open.
A cold sweat ran down Shadowless's spine.
Goosebumps rose across her entire body, and her instincts sounded the alarm.
This was not Demonic Energy that some Black Wizard could dare to handle. A Demon, at minimum an upper Demon?
No, this was Demonic Energy of Legion Commander level.
Demonic Energy with a clammy, bewitching texture.
Luxrina of Lust.
And within that flow of Demonic Energy.
She felt a familiar presence.
Eliarnes Eustetia.
Her presence was swallowed by the Demonic Energy.
The moment she realized that.
A maddened killing intent erupted from Shadowless's entire body.
Crumbled— The ground beneath her feet disintegrated. The foundations of the Labyrinth twisted. The erupting killing intent made bloody foam burst from the humans' mouths, and even the mindless Monsters reached the point of feeling terror.
Crack— A crimson world began to open around Shadowless, and that was what made it so.
What had been a Labyrinth until just now was no longer a Labyrinth. A river made of clammy blood flowed, and that river stretched up into the sky.
The river of blood that reached the sky then soaked the earth once more, flowing toward the master of this world.
A world of Ideal built from Intent.
Just before Shadowless's Ideal Manifestation was completed.
"...Oh my?"
Shadowless's rage subsided.
*****
"Keurgh... kheok..."
Thud— Phaid, who had collapsed to his knees, spat out the thing boiling up madly from within him.
Splat— A black thing fell to the floor.
It was the Demonic Energy Phaid had failed to digest, and the dregs of organs rotted and festered by that Demonic Energy.
Phaid, who had looked down at it with a bitter smile, leaned his body, which seemed about to break at any moment, against the wall.
The familiar he had summoned through sacrifice had long since vanished.
That domain just now. No, it could not even be called a domain.
It had already been encroached upon by the Intent of a colossal existence and could no longer be called a domain.
By the waves of that Intent, everything in this narrow passage had been swept away.
Selfless Illusion.
It was Phaid's domain magic, imbued with his Intent, that erased the ego of those trapped within the illusion.
But the Intent of a colossal existence had been added to it.
The result... Phaid could not know.
He only knew that it was a high-level magic he could never use no matter how he trained his whole life and devoted himself to magic.
He could not know when the things sucked into the illusion would be expelled back outside, but it was over.
What came out after the Selfless Illusion ended would be beings that could no longer be called alive.
Samaella had ordered Phaid to bring clean corpses, but now he would be able to bring high-quality bodies that had merely lost their egos and were only alive.
Even though he had paid the price of losing several organs and sacrificing more than half his life force like this... it was fine.
Soon he would cross over to Ge Vihenum, regenerate his organs, and restore his depleted life force by switching bodies.
Of course, Phaid could not accomplish such a thing himself, but his master Samaella could.
"Keurgh... ptoo. How dreadful..."
But whether he could hold out until then... he did not know.
The minuscule amount of Demonic Energy remaining in his body was raging madly, trying to encroach upon his body. It would not subside no matter what.
Whose in the world was it?
Phaid had drunk condensed Demonic Energy from upper Demons time and time again.
But the Demonic Energy that had entered his body this time was on an entirely different level from anything he had accepted before.
Something that was merely Demonic Energy seemed to possess an ego, as if it were alive and moving.
And that was not all. When he had activated Selfless Illusion and expelled all the Demonic Energy from his body.
Something that was merely energy had seemed to smile.
It had felt as though it... recognized its opponent.
Who had the opponent been?
Eliarnes Eustetia.
And Eliarnes had spoken with a face that seemed to recognize what that Demonic Energy was, and whose it was.
Luxrina.
Of course, Phaid had denied those words.
He had never seen Luxrina's Demonic Energy or Authority, but he thought it could not be.
A Legion Commander's Demonic Energy was something that could not be obtained in Ge Vihenum no matter what price was paid.
For what reason would such Demonic Energy be handed over to a retainer of the Labyrinth?
In the first place, the very idea that Eliarnes could recognize that being's power was absurd.
"Perhaps because I'm dying. All sorts of thoughts are coming to mind... keuh..."
He just needed to conserve his stamina until everything ended like this, and when the Selfless Illusion ended, pick up Eliarnes, who would be no different from a corpse, and return.
Having thought that, Phaid spat out the dregs of his organs once more and relaxed.
That moment.
Rip—
Space tore open.
Right after.
"Hey, you son of a bitch."
A sharp voice drove itself into Phaid's mind.
Phaid turned his head toward where the voice had come from.
Cherry blossoms were blooming there.
Cherry blossoms blooming in profusion within the cold Labyrinth.
Eliarnes Eustetia.
"...What in the world are you?"
Although her cutely tied twintails had all come undone, her once-unblemished body was covered in wounds, and her clothes were torn here and there.
"What the hell did you just eat, you bastard?"
But her gaze and expression alone were sharper than ever before.
"Impossible... impossible..."
He had drunk a potion so high-risk that he had to be prepared for mutual destruction. He had used all the Demonic Energy in his body, and when that was not enough, he had drawn on his life force.
With that, he had trapped her in a perfect Selfless Illusion.
In exchange, he himself was dying.
And yet, that seventeen-year-old girl.
"What... what in the world are you!"
How could she be so perfectly fine?
"Are you... are you the Reincarnation of the Hero, Arisa Eustetia? Is that why that woman left behind a descendant with no blood relation?!"
"Ptoo, bullshit."
Eliarnes, who had approached Phaid with nowhere left to retreat, spat out the blood pooling in her mouth.
"I'm Ronan. You fucking bastard."
Bam—!
She drove her dainty fist into Phaid's face, whose eyes had flown wide open.