Seal (1)
It was the same as before.
"A crevasse! Wake up!"
The moment the word cre left Alan's mouth, the party scrambled upright, hastily gathering their belongings and readying themselves to get away from the spot.
"We need to evade, quickly."
Anyone swallowed by it had a high chance of dying. Ten might fall in and only one would climb back out alive—and that went for Chairman Marshall and the Collector alike.
Unless something was hidden down there, of course.
Alan was sliding down the slope with that thought when Sion clamped onto his forearm. When the ice made her grip slip, she simply wrapped both arms around his waist from behind instead.
"Wait."
"Don't tell me you were waiting for the crevasse?"
"That's right."
At Sion's words, Alan stopped in his tracks. His heart, sensing danger, pounded fiercely—but he chose to trust the Chairman's words and hers. Perhaps the pulse itself was nothing more than the throb of a mystery hidden deep below.
At last, the frozen earth split its jaws wide. The surface caught the lantern light and gleamed a blinding, translucent white, while below yawned a bottomless dark.
Naturally, Alan and the party, losing their footing, plunged downward. Taylor shouted.
"Sion! Are we just falling like this?"
"Ah…."
Only then did Sion let out a startled gasp, as if she'd forgotten to say something.
"Honestly, that idiot."
Taylor snatched Shiva's arm and gripped Box's body.
Beep~
As the thing flailed its pincers wildly, Taylor barked at it.
"Alan installed a levitation device on you, didn't he?"
Beep!
Only then did the three of them begin to descend slowly. Leopard, who had learned to command the wind through the Dragon Golem, had been gliding from the very start, and Alan—who had designed everything—fell from the beginning like a feather.
He had confirmed the darkness untouched by the light's grace before dropping in, yet the very bottom turned out to be different. A light of unknown origin radiated from somewhere, staining the surroundings blue.
Walking along the straight path, Alan asked Sion:
"Why did the Chairman tell us about this location?"
Every human being had greed. When it came to the mysteries of the Labyrinth, that greed only deepened.
"She's curious what other explorers will look for, and how they'll investigate."
"Every person has their own character, so their methods of exploration would differ as well. In doing so, she might catch things she missed herself."
The Chairman was certain that something else lay hidden beyond. Since there was no way her people could ever reach it, she had told Alan. This was a kind of trade—she would give him the location, and in return he would show her what lay inside.
It wasn't a bad deal for Alan either. If not for Sion, he would have steered clear of the crevasse entirely—and then he might never have found this place at all.
"Here it is."
Alan discovered a massive door wrought from unknown metal. Slender grooves were carved across it like rays of sunlight, and at the starting point of each groove sat a hole.
"You insert the staff there."
"The size is a perfect fit."
When Alan unwrapped the cloth, Sion's eyes sparkled.
"There were no characters on the staff before…."
The staff seated itself with a precision so exact that no gap could be seen. The silver-gray door glowed red-hot, and the molten staff traveled along the grooves etched into its surface.
As the recesses filled completely—
Guuuwoong!
A deep, weighty rumble sounded, and the door opened. Waiting inside was a structure built of ice.
"A maze at a glance. Do we just walk in?"
"Uh…."
Sion hesitated.
"What's wrong?"
"It looks different from when we opened it. Last time I came, there were five entrances. Now there's only one. And the surface has gone smooth."
It was surely the work of the grave marker. As Alan studied the maze, he spotted people asleep within the ice. Not just one of them, either.
"They're all tall, so Undergrounders, I'd say. Were they always here?"
"No."
< The Staff (3) > — End
< Seal (1) >
A maze of ice spread out before Alan's eyes. Here and there, Undergounders lay embedded in the ice walls that formed its corridors—either sleeping soundly, or already dead.
"Are they really Undergounders?"
Alan pressed his forehead nearly flush against the ice, and Sion, sidling up beside him, did exactly the same.
"No thick calluses. Did they scrub their skin down diligently with a washcloth?"
"Could Undergounder skin ever be scrubbed off with a cloth?"
The calluses of an Undergounder—cracked like a parched rice paddy—could not be pared away by any means. Only a blade could carve them off, which rather defeated the purpose entirely.
The sleepers in the walls, by contrast, had smooth skin. Their builds, however, were strikingly similar.
Alan recalled the royal guards who protected the palace on the 20th floor and compared them to the sleepers. There was common ground in their appearance and bodies, certainly.
"There's clearly some connection, one way or another. Finding out what it is will be our job, I suppose."
"Shall we try waking one?"
"Is that even possible?"
"Just trust me."
Sion drew her sword with total confidence. Mana erupted around her, and a gray blade-light flowed down along the edge.
It was gray—neither light nor dark. Rather than two things blended, it was a hue that seemed to belong to neither side.
As the gray flame rippled ominously, the mana drifting peacefully around them startled and scattered in every direction.
Alan gave a small nod, and Taylor stroked his chin.
"She's learned to clothe her aura in her own color. It's far sturdier now, and sharper."
"She got stronger in the blink of an eye. Honestly, geniuses—look away for a second and they're miles ahead. The world's a profoundly unfair place."
"…."
"But that's just how the world works. What matters is not complaining about the unfairness but understanding it. Only then can you see what you can actually do. Ah—that's aimed at you, Shiva. Alan's the same breed as Sion."
"Brother, why do I suddenly come into this?"
Meanwhile, Sion stepped forward. No—before she did, the sword moved first. A silver flash caught the light seeping from somewhere, and gray sparks scattered in every direction along the ricocheting glow.
The ice wall directly before Sion was instantly veiled in gray. It was as if the flame had risen up with the intent of devouring the entire wall.
Alan's eye pierced through the spectacle and confirmed the substance beneath it. For all Sion's effort, the wall remained untouched.
"Ngh!"
A sound of gritted teeth. Sion moved larger and harder than before, and naturally the flame roared up with far greater force.
Of course, the result was the same.
"Sturdy, isn't it."
Just as Shiva said, the wall was unscathed. Not a single grain of ice dust had fallen, and not even the smallest scratch had been made.
"Icesteel—or rather, it reminds me of a massive crystal of it."
"It's close, but different. For one thing, Moon Crystals can't shatter it, and this ice holds no mana at all. That's what's interesting. Why would ice with not a drop of mana in it be this hard?"
No wonder Sion had stepped up so confidently. Hearing Alan's words, she narrowed her eyes.
"Don't tell me you knew it would turn out this way?"
"I only suspected that since Labyrinth terrain can't be broken, this place would be similar. The Chairman could come down here herself and it'd be the same."
"Hm…."
As Sion fell silent and tried to sink into thought, Taylor nudged her shoulder.
"Lead the way. You've been here before, you said."
"It's completely different from the maze I knew."
"Still, you have to go. Who knows what monster's waiting up ahead—but it'll be around Snowfield level."
The monsters of the Labyrinth grew stronger in sequence. No matter how exceptional, none could exceed the limit of its floor. An automaton on the first floor of a maze might carry the strength of a gatekeeper, but a royal guard was out of the question.
After walking a short while, Taylor frowned.
"Why is this so complicated? Was this actually made to be passed through?"
Just as his grumbling suggested, the maze was extraordinarily intricate. The paths branched not only forward and back, left and right, but up and down as well. There were even intersections where eight paths converged, meeting the eye at every turn.
Alan leisurely took in the scenery of the maze. It wasn't so much smoothed by hammer and chisel as it looked cast outright from a mold.
There was something stranger still. The ice was transparent enough to reveal whatever lay dormant inside it, yet oddly, the other side could not be seen through at all.
Sion walked with her hand resting on her sword's hilt, ready to draw at a moment's notice.
"The people in there give me the creeps."
"Why? They're just lying still."
"It feels like being watched. Don't you feel it too?"
"Hm…."
Alan's impression was a little different. Rather than discomfort, he felt pity. For what reason could they be sealed in a place like this? On the path they happened to pass, a child lay sleeping.
Though "child" only held true relative to Undergounder height—the child measured over 170 centimeters.
As they trudged on through the maze, whose location they couldn't begin to guess, a familiar stretch of terrain caught their eye. It was the entrance with the door where the staff had been inserted.
Taylor raked his hair back roughly.
"All that walking, and we're back here?"
"Haah…."
Shiva let out an exhausted voice too, but their hardship was only beginning. Entering the maze and emerging back at the entrance repeated itself several times over—and before they knew it, night had fallen again.
Sion, who had long since let go of her sword, eased the tension from her shoulders as well.
"Alan, what time is it?"
"Eight in the evening, by surface time."
Since they were back near the entrance anyway, they decided to camp. From the bags each of them carried, they produced a circular object of cloth and pliant metal.
Flung to the ground, the metal took its shape and the cloth unfurled, transforming into a tent. The cloth was made from the hide of the rubber lizard, compressed to its extreme and capable of spreading wide again.
As Alan inscribed [Heat] onto Shiva's tent and fitted a mana stone beneath it, he heard his voice.
"Come to think of it, how many rubber lizards must have died to make tents this fine…."
"Ah, this is cultured hide. We only borrowed the cells and grew it artificially, so don't worry."
"Oh, a corporation that minds its bioethics too. Whichever company it is, they'll surely be bless—"
"No. Culturing turned out cheaper than raising them, so the company simply changed course. It's the same corporation that used to cause an uproar for colluding with poachers, actually."
Alan cheerfully demolished Shiva's hopeful tone in the flattest voice he could manage.
Shiva nodded weakly and stepped outside the tent. He had the first watch. Even alone, he wouldn't be bored—with Box, who reacted to every stimulus with theatrical flair, and Leopard, who was gruff but an excellent listener.
Some time after Alan lay down, Taylor's voice drifted over from the next tent.
"Alan, you asleep?"
"…."
"Good. Tonight I'll finally sleep proper—yeah, right, as if. Stop rehearsing all that knowledge you've got crammed in your head and go to sleep."
"…How did you know?"
"Your breathing's different. A trained body-man could fake even the small things, but you're closer to a mage, so it's hard for you. If you don't sleep, your body wears down. Sleep. Now."
"Yes…."
He hadn't even finished today's review, but with Taylor lying there with his eyes open and watching, there was nothing to do but sleep obediently.
The next day they advanced exactly as before. There was only one difference from the day prior.
Beep—
Box was setting something down on the ground with its pincers. A miniature dish antenna.
The small mana furnace inside Box could melt metal and cast it into any desired shape. Its bulk still kept it far from delicate work, but within the Labyrinth it was plenty useful.
The antenna was, in truth, a compact mana-wavelength detector. Like a bat's ultrasonic cry, it fired mana waves in all directions, and Alan intended to record the reflected wavelengths as they returned and build a map from them.
"You could've started doing this yesterday, you know."
"Preparation is needed at all times. I still have to check how far the reflection reaches, and I made it extra sturdy on purpose so I can retrieve it afterward."
Now more than later, every mana stone and scrap of metal was precious. Or perhaps it was simply the thriftiness of a childhood spent picking through garbage dumps that still lingered in him.
This time, too, the party returned to the entrance without fail. It would have been understandable for spirits to flag, but no one strung together a word of complaint. Exploring the unknown had always demanded patience, and those who had descended this far knew that better than anyone.
Sion, apparently, did not—she grabbed Alan's arm and gave it a little shake. Despite the fact that he was wearing the Power Suit, he found he couldn't overpower the strength of those slender arms—