Chapter 189: The Man Who Defeated the Labyrinth Master
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 189: The Man Who Defeated the Labyrinth Master
“Are you really taking this guy with us?”
Mugol found Caleb utterly displeasing.
He had gritted his teeth and endured all of Hyedam’s crazy antics so far—bringing along all sorts of riffraff and diving deep from the first floor—but this time was truly different.
“Isn’t this too much? He’s just a scrawny twig!”
The porters she’d brought before were at least strong.
But the fiancé Hyedam had brought this time, tucked under her arm, was a weakling who looked like his legs would snap if Mugol kicked him.
“You! Try carrying this!”
The moment the bag was placed on his back, he collapsed.
“Oof?”
The idiot plopped down on the floor, staring blankly, while Hyedam hugged him, squealing with delight.
“You’re so cute!”
Watching the two of them, Mugol felt a vein throb in his temple.
“Why does a guy with no strength have so much luggage?”
“Food, a sleeping bag, a pot, a toothbrush, and a few scrolls. And the amulet Hyedam made for me. Also… pasta that Hyedam likes!”
“Kyaaah!”
“I’ll cook it for you in the Labyrinth!”
“That’s my Caleb!”
Mugol touched his temple with a finger, checking to see if the vein had actually burst. Fortunately, it was still intact.
But he was absolutely furious.
This wasn’t what his Labyrinth adventures were supposed to be.
They were supposed to be about highly skilled, elite adventurers watching each other’s backs, breaking through dangers side-by-side.
They were supposed to be supported by the perfect harmony of sweaty camaraderie, friendship, and seasoned skill and strength.
And now she was throwing this into the mix!
What good would this guy be?
“Huh?”
They descended to the Labyrinth’s fourth-floor ironworks, with Mugol still grumbling.
There, Caleb discovered something strange.
“Wow! Look at this! It’s a magic hammer!”
It was the stuff of legends in Wyndham.
“Byullant’s Hammer! I think this is it! I heard rumors about it from the Sohen wizards before.”
Using Byullant’s Hammer could awaken a skill.
But it was an item that countless skilled adventurers had searched for and failed to find. How could Caleb just happen to find it popping out of a wall he was fiddling with?
Bipa tilted his head and asked.
“You… how did you find this?”
“It just appeared.”
Caleb answered nonchalantly.
But could something like this be explained away as just ‘good luck’?
Amid the confusion, Hyedam’s party used Byullant’s Hammer, but Caleb did not.
“Why aren’t you using it?”
“Because I don’t have any skills or magic.”
To Bipa’s question, Caleb once again replied as if it were nothing.
Now that he mentioned it, that made sense.
A few days later, as they continued their adventure.
“Wow! Bearhim’s Garden!”
“Uh…?”
Mugol was growing more and more confused.
While they were on the sixth floor searching for the stairs, Caleb had accidentally stepped into a spot, and a garden had appeared.
Along with shimmering mushrooms blooming on Bearhim’s corpse.
“Hyedam, did you know? They say Bearhim was betrayed and killed by a fellow god in the age of myths.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, someone set him on fire from behind and burned him to death. And these Aether Mushrooms are said to bloom from his corpse. I heard eating them gives you a permanent stat increase and a buff.”
He let Hyedam pick the mushrooms.
“Wow! They’re so pretty!”
Hyedam seemed thoughtless, but to Mugol, this whole situation was incredibly strange.
Things like Byullant’s Hammer or the Aether Mushrooms were quite famous as legends, so many people knew of them.
But no one had ever actually found them until now. How could they just pop up one after another?
Ever since that scrawny porter joined them, their Labyrinth expedition had taken a bizarre turn.
“Caleb, where did you hear about the mushrooms?”
Bipa couldn’t simply accept it either.
“I’ve wandered all over—the west, the central regions, the north. I’ve overheard a lot of things.”
“Aren’t you going to eat any?”
“Even if I got a buff, I can’t defeat anything in here.”
Once again, what he said made sense.
“Caleb.”
Unable to shake his suspicion, Bipa decided to ask him directly.
“Are you… by any chance, a Possessor?”
“No?”
“Right…”
There was a reason he had to accept that answer.
Caleb had already lived on the surface for several years without ever entering the Labyrinth.
Despite that, Wyndham’s Labyrinth hadn’t erupted.
And there was another reason.
Among the many Possessors Bipa had met so far, none of them knew the location of Byullant’s Hammer or Bearhim’s Garden.
His knowledge surpassed that of a Possessor, which, paradoxically, made it difficult to assume he was one.
And there was yet another reason.
‘He’s not afraid of the Labyrinth.’
Bipa considered that the greatest trait of Possessors.
The instinctive fear that people who used to soak in bubble baths and cut steaks in modern society felt when they were thrown into this other world.
They loathed the Labyrinth, forced to enter it with tears in their eyes only because of the two-week rule.
Caleb had none of that.
Of course, it might be different for a Possessor who had adapted after years of Labyrinth expeditions, but wasn’t this Caleb’s first time? This was confirmed by the elevator registration information.
A Possessor could never be like that.
Moreover, Caleb was a weakling with no skills or magic, yet he was charging into the Abyss on his first try with the Deep Layer trio, relying solely on his girlfriend, Hyedam.
Besides, Caleb already controlled Hyedam’s finances, so he wasn’t doing it for the money.
But still.
‘Even so, can someone really find treasures like this one after another just by luck?’
Bipa remained suspicious.
Even if he wasn’t a Possessor, he had to be hiding something.
Perhaps the secret wasn’t with Caleb, but with this Labyrinth expedition itself.
At a campsite they made while exploring the eighth floor.
Among the adventurers trying to sleep in their sleeping bags, Caleb, who had volunteered for the first watch, asked Bipa a question.
“Do you know a lot about Possessors?”
It was because Bipa had kept pestering him about whether he was one.
“I know a fair bit.”
Across the entire continent, Bipa was the one who knew the most about Possessors.
With the possible exception of Dalstream.
“Do you know the principle behind possession?”
“No?”
“Those people are champions summoned from beyond the Ethereal Galaxy to stop the Labyrinth’s eruption. Have you ever heard the term ‘Possession Constitution’?”
Caleb glanced at Hyedam.
Hyedam had mentioned something like that when she first met Caleb.
When Caleb had found the fox’s head without falling for its charm, she had asked him, ‘Are you a Possessor?’
“When I said no, she said I must have a Possession Constitution.”
“I was just repeating what I heard from the elders,” Hyedam said with a shrug.
“Hyedam is right.”
Bipa explained about the Possession Constitution.
“Some adventurers have a Possession Constitution. When such people are cornered during a Labyrinth expedition and make a desperate wish, they hear the voice of the Labyrinth Master.”
It was like the devil’s whisper.
Offering the power to protect your comrades in exchange for your soul.
Some desperate adventurers make a deal with the Labyrinth Master right there.
Then, their soul is trapped in an Ossuary, and their empty body moves according to the Labyrinth Master’s will.
A state of madness that can never be lifted.
Before long, that adventurer appears as a boss in the Labyrinth’s exit room.
Wielding the immense power granted by the Labyrinth Master.
“That’s what a madness-gripped adventurer is.”
“I see.”
“However, some with a Possession Constitution do not fall for the Labyrinth Master’s whispers.”
Those people are not bewitched by the Labyrinth Master. In that desperate situation inside the Labyrinth, they struggle to overcome it themselves.
Of course, they usually fail.
And they will be left with a tremendous sense of loss and anger. Their hatred for the Labyrinth will reach its peak.
Around that time, they hear another whisper.
“The voice of Wizus.”
The god of the Ethereal Galaxy targets the card the Labyrinth Master failed to claim.
He tempts them, offering to bring down a champion from beyond the Ethereal Galaxy who possesses great wisdom, urging them to destroy the Labyrinth through him.
“That’s when an otherworld Possessor takes over the body of someone who gave in to that offer.”
And the important point.
“A Possessor from the Ethereal Galaxy never falls into madness.”
This was a fact that had been perfectly cross-verified through numerous research materials from Bipa and Dalstream.
Just as the madness of an adventurer who appears as an exit boss can never be lifted.
The mind of an adventurer inhabited by a champion of the Ethereal Galaxy can never be controlled by the Labyrinth Master.
It’s like the board game Othello.
Just as placing white stones on either side of a black stone flips it to white.
Wizus and the Labyrinth Master were engaged in a strategic battle over those with a Possession Constitution.
“Isn’t it fascinating? Why are Possessors so important to them?”
Bipa’s interesting story about Possessors ended there.
When he looked around, Hyedam and Mugol were already asleep, and Caleb, wiping drool from his mouth, jerked his head up with a start.
“…”
Bipa stared at him from where he lay.
“Stand your watch properly.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to sleep.”
“Good night.”
Caleb woke Bipa, the next person on watch, a little late.
Even Deep Layer adventurers couldn’t always find the stairs to the next Deep Layer.
The Deep Layers were places inaccessible by elevator, and only a chosen few among those wandering the tenth floor ever discovered the stairs.
Thus, it was common for Deep Layer adventurers to run around the tenth floor in circles only to return empty-handed.
In that respect, this Labyrinth expedition was definitely strange.
“It’s the stairs!”
After finding the ironworks’ hammer and Bearhim’s Garden, Caleb had now found the stairs to the Deep Layer.
“Wow! All the way to the Abyss in one go!”
And at last, Bipa realized the source of the unease he had been feeling all this time.
It wasn’t Caleb.
It wasn’t that he was using extraordinary knowledge or luck to find all sorts of legendary items and places.
The series of strange phenomena happening now likely had its cause in the Labyrinth itself.
The Labyrinth was inviting them to the Abyss. Bipa felt a strong conviction. There was something beyond the stairs.
Something beyond human comprehension.
Perhaps.
‘The Labyrinth Master might be there.’
It would be incredibly dangerous, but Bipa was an adventurer too. He didn’t care if he died tomorrow, as long as he could meet the Lord of the Abyss.
As long as he could approach the secrets of the Labyrinth that had been shrouded in mystery for eons.
“Let’s go.”
Bipa and Mugol led the way as if by prior agreement.
“Still, going to the Deep Layer with Caleb is a bit…”
Hyedam seemed somewhat reluctant.
“Let’s go!”
Fortunately, Caleb showed no particular resistance.
The Deep Layer was a dark, parched, and dry place.
From somewhere, the sound of dripping water echoed, drip, drip.
A desolate wind blew.
It was a wasteland.
One could feel the tragic sorrow of a demon, left all alone in the world after devouring everything.
And.
[Abyssal Mental Realm]
A layer-wide magic existed there.
Like the cold and delirium of the third floor, the volcanic ash of the fourth, the sunburns of the fifth, or the spores of the sixth.
The Abyss, too, had a powerful magic cast across the entire layer.
“Be careful, Caleb.”
Bipa, Mugol, and Hyedam, who had already survived the Deep Layer several times, were familiar with it.
“This is a place where delusions and hallucinations become reality.”
It was the source of the treasures and magic that endlessly sprang forth from the Labyrinth.
Here, delusions of fear and hallucinations were accompanied by physical force. If you saw a warm bonfire in a hallucinatory state, it would actually generate heat and light. If you saw a treasure, you could actually pick it up and put it in your pocket.
The Labyrinth Master’s mental power transcended the physical world.
A land ruled by the unfathomable wisdom of a demon. The epicenter of the Labyrinth’s power.
The pinnacle of the Labyrinth Master’s mental strength.
If the Labyrinth was the devil’s intestines, this place was its brain.
And.
“Did someone…”
Mugol’s lips trembled, half-curled into a smile.
“Imagine that thing too?”
“No…”
Bipa smiled as well.
Because that was a being that couldn’t be summoned by delusion or illusion.
He had thought they might meet it this time. He was just surprised that his intuition had become reality.
He was seeing it for the first time, but he knew instantly.
“A pleasure to meet you.”
It was the Labyrinth Master.