Chapter 177: The Wizard’s Rules
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 177: The Wizard’s Rules
I think I know what the most powerful thing in this world is.
It’s ‘rules.’
In a TRPG world, isn’t the rulebook the highest authority? Without it, you can’t even play the game.
The Labyrinth, the Ethereal Galaxy, the Labyrinth Master, even Wizus—they all have to follow those rules.
This place isn’t a game, it’s reality, but the rules still exist, and they are absolute.
First piece of evidence:
The White Lion used a scroll to summon the Lord of the Spirit Tower—a being from the Ethereal Galaxy that can normally only be called forth through the combined grimoire, the Book of Hegemony.
If this were a game, it wouldn’t be strange. A summon called by tearing a scroll and obeying its master’s will is perfectly logical within a game system.
But now that this is reality, didn’t even Dalstream recoil in shock when he saw it?
According to the lore, the Lord of the Spirit Tower is a part of the God of Wisdom's hegemony, manifested on the surface by Wizus himself.
But a Labyrinth monster summoned it? Wizus must be quite indifferent.
That’s when I heard the Archmage’s low murmur.
Rules transcend factional logic, like that of the Ethereal Galaxy or the Labyrinth.
Second piece of evidence:
Even now, with the Labyrinth having risen to create floors on the surface, those rules are still in effect.
When I tore the stair scroll, it worked exactly as I predicted.
‘Based on the rules.’
Just like in a game, monsters generated by scrolls offer absolute obedience to their master.
Just as the Lord of the Magic Tower obeyed the White Lion.
Then with these kinds of resources, there’s no reason for me to lose.
Riiip!
I tore a scroll.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 5th Floor]
A giant scorpion from the 5th-floor desert appeared.
“Shhhk!”
It let out a metallic hiss, clacking its pincers together.
“Ugh…”
The adventurers flinched for a moment, but the scorpion didn’t attack. It was clearly distinguishing friend from foe.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 3rd Floor]
This time, a Frost Hunter appeared, holding a bow.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 6th Floor]
An Iron Plate Mushroom popped out.
And even…
[Monster Summon Scroll: 4th Floor]
“The Blacksmith!”
Yernil and Neko jumped at the sight of the familiar silhouette emerging from the scroll.
The Blacksmith chugged a bottle of magic acid and casually tossed the empty container to the floor.
“Even a special boss can be summoned…?”
Mikhail from the Order of Nathaniel clicked his tongue in amazement.
The Blackdog Party didn’t show it, but they looked quite surprised as well.
They probably didn’t have much experience with scrolls like these. Monster Summon Scrolls themselves were incredibly rare, usually only found in treasure rooms. On top of that, they weren’t very practical, so no one deliberately farmed for them, making them even rarer.
“You can get any type of monster from a summon scroll.”
Only Blackdog seemed to know what was going on.
Riiip!
This time, I tore a 7th-floor scroll.
A massive octopus-like monster appeared and felt along the stomach wall of the whale.
It was a Glutton.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 1st Floor]
A Black Hornet.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 3rd Floor]
A Snowfield Wolf appeared.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 7th Floor]
A Void Sea Serpent.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 7th Floor]
A Ghost Ship.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 9th Floor]
A Hell Legion Commander.
[Monster Summon Scroll: 8th Floor]
A Primitive Tribe Spearman.
“Want to help?”
At this pace, it was going to take a while.
We all sat down and focused on the task together.
Deep Layer, high-floor, and mid-floor adventurers, all gathered in harmony.
It felt like we were a family doing a side job, gluing eyes onto dolls together.
The number of monsters swelled enormously.
‘Just you wait.’
You tried to summon the Lord of the Spirit Tower to kill Dalstream, right?
Now it’s your turn to get a taste of your own medicine.
“…?”
Meldini, the dean of the university, who had rushed to the front of the Public Security Headquarters, narrowed his eyes.
“What’s going on?”
The magistrates Krusla, Irha, and Delphin, who were holding the line in the Consul’s absence, had the same reaction.
“The enemy is retreating.”
The Watchers who had been pushing hard against the Public Security Headquarters were pulling back. They swarmed away like a receding tide.
Everyone recalled the alarm that had blared from the direction of the main building earlier.
“Did something happen?”
“Consul!”
Just then, the Consul, who had rushed back breathlessly, delivered the bad news.
“The White Lion’s body has been stolen.”
“What did you say?!”
“Is that even possible?”
“We didn’t see anyone suspicious leaving the headquarters in this direction.”
“I met the Labyrinth Master.”
At those words, the expressions of the magistrates and the cardinal hardened instantly.
“The Labyrinth Master took the White Lion’s body and teleported.”
The Consul looked up at the Gourmet Whale with a deeply troubled expression.
The monster, which had been hovering motionlessly in the sky, slowly began to move.
The enemy had achieved their goal. They had recovered the White Lion’s body and were about to return to the Labyrinth…
“…or maybe not?”
Meldini asked, squinting.
“What is it?”
The Gourmet Whale wasn’t moving to return to the Labyrinth.
A commotion had broken out inside the creature.
Swoooosh!
Amidst the rain that had been drizzling all day.
The whale’s massive mouth gaped open. Its eyes were filled with pain, its body twisting.
The leaders of Sohen covered their ears.
—BWOOOOOM!
A sound like a ship’s horn, far louder than the tolling of a bell—the whale’s scream echoed throughout the entire city.
Have you ever heard of the Labyrinth Intestine Theory?
It’s a hypothesis that the Labyrinth is the intestine of a giant demon.
And the monsters within the Labyrinth are slaves working inside the demon’s stomach.
What if a hard-to-digest thorn got stuck somewhere in your intestines, or you had a wound, or a tumor grew?
White blood cells would swarm to that location, causing an inflammatory response to remove bacteria and foreign substances and to repair the tissue.
A Monster Wave is no different.
The occurrence of some strange phenomenon within the Labyrinth. An enormous number of monsters marching to resolve it.
That is what’s called a Monster Wave.
“Let’s go!”
Hundreds of monsters began to reverse course in the Gourmet Whale’s stomach.
I couldn’t control each one with a click like in a game, but…
“That way!”
Like well-trained guard dogs, they understood my commands perfectly and moved.
“Be careful not to get buried among the monsters! It’s dangerous!”
Our first destination was the Caretaker of Rest. Then, we were going to seize all the ossuaries. Any enemies who stood in our way…
“Watchers!”
The Watchers of the 9.5th Floor Boundary began pouring in from the front.
“The Watchers are inside!”
Calm down, Yernil.
Watchers will probably keep flooding in from now on.
There isn’t just one staircase in a floor-village; there are tons of them. The Gourmet Whale probably has multiple passages connecting to the surface as well, aside from the one we used to enter.
‘They’re having a Monster Wave of their own.’
An unprecedented event was unfolding—hundreds of monsters were running rampant inside the Labyrinth known as the Gourmet Whale.
They would have no choice but to divert the entire army that was attacking the Public Security Headquarters into the whale’s interior.
“Attack!”
But right now, our forces were just as strong as the adventurers in front of the Public Security Headquarters.
An army large enough to be called a Labyrinth Eruption was on the move.
Rumble!
Liquid gold poured down from the tip of a spear thrown by a Golden Golem.
CRASH!
A Glutton’s tentacle slammed into a wall, sweeping away a Watcher.
However, the Watchers of the 9.5th Floor endured the tentacle with ease.
SPLAT!
But they couldn’t withstand the attack of the Hell Legion Commander. Its butcher knife sliced off a Watcher’s head in a single blow.
“Go!”
This was my first time inside the Gourmet Whale, so I didn’t know the way.
So I had to rely on two methods of detection.
First, the Watcher.
I sent it flying far ahead of the monsters to scout the path.
Second, Yernil.
“That way… I think?”
She was hesitant every time we reached a fork in the road, but I told her not to worry; I wouldn’t blame her even if she picked the wrong path.
“Let’s go!”
We were going to push in quickly and take down the Caretaker of Rest. With our own Monster Wave and the Deep Layer quartet, we could easily do it.
“This way!”
Yernil gradually grew more confident.
“This way!”
It seemed her sound mapping grew more accurate as we got closer to the target.
Of course, there were problems.
“There are a ton of Watchers around the corner!”
“It’s fine, we have a ton of monsters too!”
Fortunately, Yernil wasn’t wrong.
After moving about 200 meters along a foul-smelling, crimson wall, we encountered a massive horde of Watchers.
Beyond them lay a field of ossuaries, and behind those…
“Keeeeek!”
The Caretaker of Rest, a 3.5-meter-tall creature resembling No-Face from Spirited Away, revealed itself.
At the same time, the view ahead opened up. After passing through the dim interior of the whale, light streamed in. We had reached the Gourmet Whale’s mouth.
Giant teeth formed a fence-like perimeter, and beyond them lay the cityscape of Sohen.
It was pouring rain.
Led by the Consul and Meldini, the adventurers were charging toward the Gourmet Whale.
‘But Caleb.’
On the way here, Blackdog had said to me.
‘Our forces might be similar, but our recovery capabilities are different.’
I knew that.
If our Monster Wave clashed with the Watchers’ wave, we would eventually lose.
Because our healing capabilities were different.
In front of the Public Security Headquarters, an incredible Deep Layer adventurer, Cardinal Servan of the Order of Nathaniel, was super-charging the adventurers’ regeneration with holy oil anointments and Marks of Salvation.
No matter how badly they were injured, they would never die.
‘But Rococo’s specialty is different.’
Rococo, a former cardinal of the Order of Sanfriel, was also one of the top healers on the continent, just like Servan, but their fields were different.
Rococo’s healing was focused on powerful single targets or, at most, a party-wide scale.
He could resurrect them over and over again, but he didn’t know how to perform large-scale healing in a battle involving hundreds of units like this one.
So…
“Cumulonimbus.”
Leave it to me.
[Your turn. Time remaining: 60 seconds]
[Action Points: ■■■■■■]
After cycling through the entire series of ice-cloud spells—Hailstorm, Blizzard, Ice Cloud—I was back at the starting point.
“Cumulonimbus.”
As expected, the basic cloud, which costs one Action Point, is the most efficient.
Especially for combining with other spells.
I had learned two new spells at the university earlier.
The first was Enchanting.
It’s a spell that grants a party member’s weapon additional elemental damage.
In game terms, it looks like this:
[Enchanting]
- For 5 turns, grant the following effect to one designated ally’s weapon: Convert 50% of attack power into Earth, Lightning, Ice, or Fire damage.
It’s quite useful in its own right.
For example, when clearing a place like the Mushroom Forest in the 6th-floor demon den, it’s far more efficient for Aimus to have a Fire Enchantment on his iron staff than to just beat things with it.
But the true value of this spell is revealed when it’s combined with a magic circle.
By infusing a magic circle with Enchanting, a booby trap that would normally cast a Tier 1 curse transforms into an Enchanting Magic Circle. This resulted in the 『Book of Transformation Magic Circles』.
Instead of enchanting a single ally’s weapon, it becomes a persistent enchantment that affects everything within the magic circle’s range that can be imbued with an element.
For example, if I were to place a lightning magic circle in the middle of the battlefield now, the Golden Golem, the Blacksmith, or the Frost Hunter standing on it would receive a lightning enchantment.
“Cumulonimbus.”
Of course, the same applied to the rain cloud.
By installing a transformation magic circle inside a Cumulonimbus, I could enchant the raindrops themselves.
That would make it rain sand or fire. It deals more damage than a regular rain cloud, but not by a significant amount.
But by mixing in a single necromancy spell, it became something else entirely, creating the 『Book of Vampiric Magic Circles』.
[Your turn. Time remaining: 17 seconds]
[Action Points: ■■□□□□]
I had summoned one cloud before flipping the hourglass and four more after my turn began.
Among the pitch-black storm clouds filling the roof of the Gourmet Whale’s mouth, I mixed in a joker card.
In my build, the party doesn’t need a priest.
“Vampiric Magic Circle.”
Most of the people here were familiar with the various clouds Caleb had summoned before.
Yernil, Aimus, and Undead Back Attack knew them, of course, as did Neko, Mikhail, and Urgash. Krom had even had his casino flooded by one of those rain clouds.
But the rain cloud the wizard summoned this time was different.
“Wh-what is that?”
Undead Back Attack stared at Caleb with a bewildered expression.
“Did you do this?”
A magic circle glowed in the center of the rain clouds that had completely filled the space above their heads.
And from the clouds, red blood was pouring down.