The Fall of Saynal

The heart of this game labyrinth, designed by Ragna, was adventure and exploration—pure and simple.

The moment Ryu Hwi entered the labyrinth, however, he found himself with no idea what to actually do. Standing alone and empty-handed in the middle of a village square dredged up memories of the trash-tier game labyrinths from the old days.

[The brief said adventure and exploration were the core, so I'd assume it means "figure it out and try whatever you like," Master.]

"These days, being that unhelpful is a great way to get review-bombed."

Still, this labyrinth had at least passed Yggdrasil 2.0's baseline. If Ragna had pitched something truly absurd, 5555 would have shut it down.

While Ryu Hwi was still wandering aimlessly, an old man approached him.

"Might you be a wanderer from another world?"

For an instant Ryu Hwi wondered if he was a resident of the labyrinth, but a marker immediately floated up in his vision, announcing that this was an NPC. A character planted for story progression, most likely.

"Welcome, wanderer. Whenever a wanderer arrives from another world, they always come here first. A curious thing, that."

The old man beckoned for him to follow. Ryu Hwi obeyed without complaint as the man climbed the hill road winding through the village.

"And of all times, you arrive now. The Saynal of today is not the peaceful land it once was. Do you see that cave over there?"

Beyond the hill, a cave mouth came into view.

"We used it for storage, but lately monsters have taken up residence. I apologize for the sudden request, but could you deal with them for me?"

[Rather than force-feeding a tutorial down your throat, it seems this labyrinth prefers to explain things step by step as you go.]

"The basics of the basics, then."

Thankfully, there appeared to be no risk of being turned away at the entrance. Intending to knock the tutorial out casually, Ryu Hwi stepped into the cave.

"……?"

The difficulty alert had appeared the instant he set foot inside.

"Don't tell me the difficulty applies from the tutorial?"

[It would appear so. Thorough, isn't it?]

"You're supposed to take tutorials at a leisurely pace."

Grumbling as he was, Ryu Hwi felt no sense of crisis. It was only a tutorial—worst case, he reasoned, it couldn't possibly be harder than the final stage of the City of the Demon God.

So he'd believed—right up until he suffered a game over a mere thirty seconds after entering the cave. Nothing remained but a pitch-black void and the words "Retry" hanging in the darkness.

Ryu Hwi lay sprawled in that black space, staring blankly for a while.

"So… what exactly just killed me?"

[Did Intuition fail to detect it?]

"No, it detected it. It did, but……."

The moment he'd entered the cave, Intuition Lv3 had sensed the enemies. It had even predicted how many there were and how they would attack.

"There were just too many of them, and too fast. I couldn't dodge."

Dying thirty seconds in—even for a joke, wasn't that going too far?

He contacted 5555 immediately.

"Hey, what the hell is this difficulty setting? Are you insane?!"

After poking around in the system for a moment, 5555 made an ominous sound.

⟪Yggdrasil got involved. I'd love to say "how dare it mess with my labyrinth without permission"…… but watching you suffer, I'm feeling merciful enough to let it slide this once.⟫

Yggdrasil.

It hadn't just expanded the labyrinth—it had laid hands on the difficulty itself.

Ryu Hwi decided to treat ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this as a challenge thrown down by Yggdrasil itself, and to meet it head-on.

"KUAHAAK?!"

[You lasted one minute. Well done.]

……

"GHHK?!"

[Fifty seconds. I've shaved ten seconds off your record.]

……

"Hck!"

[One minute, fifteen seconds.]

……

"Damn it!"

[Keep at it. Two minutes.]

……

……

"Are you kidding me?!"

He felt his sanity slipping. He had died in this labyrinth's tutorial more times than he'd suffered game overs in his entire life up to this point.

And this was with Intuition active—plus the Heavenly Demon Divine Art on top of it.

[You're being toyed with completely. The master of the one and only UR system, wallowing like this in a tutorial. What a spectacle.]

"Damn it."

It stung, but he had no comeback.

[Is this not the greatest humiliation of your life?]

"GRRRH!"

Every single word sank into his chest like a knife.

[In fairness, this is a difficulty Yggdrasil tampered with. Even the current you would struggle to handle it.]

"What's that supposed to mean?"

[Exactly what it sounds like. Yggdrasil intervened—which means it cranked the difficulty to the absolute ceiling a labyrinth allows. Whatever difficulty a human could set will be chewed up and swallowed whole.]

"And you're telling me this now?"

[Watching you flail was simply too entertaining to interrupt.]

"Why, you……."

The highest difficulty Yggdrasil could set. A lunatic difficulty that had killed him over and over in nothing more than a tutorial.

Come to think of it—could Mental Tolerance not be a skill you acquired separately, but one that simply sprang into existence after you'd been ground into the dirt by this nightmare enough times?

[What will you do? For the record, I recommend giving up. This is beyond what you can handle, Master.]

"Then could an S.E.N clear this difficulty?"

[Quite possibly. They possess the power to interfere with the domain of systems, so a difficulty like this would pose them no real problem.]

Those words set a fire in Ryu Hwi's chest.

It didn't matter that Yggdrasil had tampered with the difficulty. None of it mattered.

"If S.E.N can do it, I'm not giving up. This time, I'm clearing it for real."

Burning with fighting spirit, he selected Retry.

He hadn't simply been getting beaten senseless all this time. With every death, he'd been analyzing the enemies' patterns.

The number Intuition had discerned: fifteen entities. Small ones, barely knee-high, though their exact shapes were hard to make out. Their weapons were presumably close-range arms—swords or spears; nothing had attacked him from a distance so far. They were fast enough that tracking them by eye was a lost cause. Intuition could sense them, but reacting in time was another matter. One or two he could subdue easily enough, but all fifteen lunging at once left him helpless. Worse, the fifteen moved as a single body, unfolding perfectly synchronized combos. The moment combat began, he'd be swept up in their chain and game over in an instant.

First, he needed a way to break that chain. When he'd triggered Ten Thousand Demons Prostration before his last death, the enemies had evaded it with ease, as if they'd read it coming. Agile enough that they might well be carrying an Intuition of their own.

So how could he shatter their coordination and shut down that agility?

Time to experiment.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Ryu Hwi resolved to test every tool at his disposal without holding anything back.

Instead of entering right away, he checked the cards in his shuffle deck. No luck. Draw. One minute later, draw again. At last the card he wanted appeared, and Ryu Hwi took a single step deeper into the cave.

That instant, fifteen monsters came charging at him at a speed beyond the reach of his eyes.

Ryu Hwi immediately unleashed the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.

As if they had read his move in advance, the monsters leapt skyward—high enough to nearly graze the ceiling.

Now!

Ryu Hwi had moved on the premise that the enemies would pre-react to Ten Thousand Demons Prostration. He forcibly canceled the skill mid-cast!

His own body screamed at the sudden braking, but he paid it no mind and transitioned straight into his next action.

The instant Overawe activated, the enemies' movements slowed.

Seizing the opening without a moment's hesitation, he selected a card from his deck.

The characters for "Heavenly Demon" flared to life over the fist into which he had poured every ounce of his power.

Ryu Hwi hurled that power straight up at the cave ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ceiling.

The damage overflowed, punching clean through the rock above. The monsters registered their shock a beat too late—it was already over. His single strike triggered a terrain-destruction effect and brought the entire cave down.

KUUUUUUM!

A thunderous roar split the air, and the shockwave shook everything in every direction. Reacting in a heartbeat, the monsters managed to escape being buried under the collapsing cave. Surviving that—that, at least, was the caliber of monster Yggdrasil's meddling had produced.

"And here I was wondering what kind of monster it'd be—turns out it's cute little rabbits?"

Monsters that had moved through the darkness faster than the eye could follow. Their true forms were rabbit-shaped creatures with crude, makeshift weapons. With the cave collapsed, they could no longer make use of their cramped stage, and scattered across the rubble, their coordination was broken.

"If the combos are a pain, I'll just stomp them one at a time."

[That's not a Trickster, that's a Destroyer.]

The experience was insulting. After all that suffering, shouldn't it have paid out at least 15,000 Exp? The higher difficulty didn't come with better rewards, nor did it grant more experience. And recording the run for upload was out of the question—the whole process looked pathetic.

"What about the achievements, then……"

No difficulty-related rewards at all. Was there even a point to continuing?

5555 had definitely said the difficulty could be toggled on and off. Maybe he should just switch to normal difficulty. If he cleared this difficulty, no game labyrinth he visited afterward would ever trouble him again—but the rewards were far too meager for the suffering. Farming RP on this difficulty would demand a staggering investment of time and effort.

After long deliberation, he moved to turn the difficulty off.

[Didn't you say there was no such thing as giving up?]

"It's not giving up. It's a strategic retreat."

[Changing your tune this quickly, tsk tsk.]

Ignoring YggON's jeering, he selected Difficulty OFF.

"What?"

He kept hammering the Difficulty OFF option, but every attempt was met with the same alert: difficulty change unavailable.

"Now what the hell is this……"

[Yggdrasil has locked the difficulty change.]

"Where's the sense in that?!"

[As a result of Yggdrasil's intervention in the difficulty, it can no longer be changed. You must play Legend of Lambda on "Fall of Saynal" for the duration, Master.]

"WHY?!"

[Don't ask me.]

Continue with this pointless, thankless, garbage difficulty? For a moment, his vision swam.

"This is beyond the pale! If you're going to do this, at least balance the difficulty properly!"

He'd set out to earn a Mental Tolerance skill, and it felt like his mind was going to break first.

[Master, it appears Yggdrasil isn't simply out to torment you.]

"What's that supposed to—"

[Please check the Missions section, not the Achievements.]