Chapter 194: A Swift Breakthrough
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 194: A Swift Breakthrough
There’s something called aerated water.
At sewage treatment plants, oxygen is artificially dissolved into water to remove waste. This oxygen-supersaturated water is called aerated water.
And aerated water is dangerous. Its buoyancy is severely lower than that of regular water. A person who falls into an aeration tank will find it incredibly difficult to swim out. Instead of floating, you just keep sinking.
The Sea of Void is what you might call an extreme case of this.
“We’re sinking!” Yernil shouted, an air bubble covering her head.
The moment we passed through the gate, our entire party began to sink slowly toward the bottom.
“You really can’t swim in this,” Back Attack said, flailing his limbs.
Of course, I had warned them beforehand, but experiencing it for themselves left them all looking anxious.
“Calm down and wait. Until we reach the bottom.”
The deeper we went, the more the surroundings were filled with giant reefs and seaweed. Unlike the wide-open view above, the depths were like a maze.
From now on, we'll have to walk on two feet along the seabed like SpongeBob in Bikini Bottom, pushing through seaweed and navigating between reefs to find our way.
Though running would be difficult due to the water pressure and resistance.
“Shall we try using the iron staff now?”
We had something similar to an electric scooter.
Aimus’s Iron Staff of Tidal Waves.
As planned, we connected ourselves with ropes buckled to our belts, and then Aimus used the staff to create a wave.
And just like that, all four of us shot forward, bouncing along as if we were riding jet skis.
It was a method I had used in the game, too. It was also the very reason I always made sure to farm the Iron Golem Merman’s staff on the 7th floor.
I’d devised this method because mobility is severely limited when playing through the 7th floor. It worked well in the game, but would it work in reality…?
Swoooosh!
It was working perfectly.
With Aimus steering at the front like a helmsman, I, Yernil, and Back Attack were pulled along behind him like a string of sausages.
“If a monster appears, stop immediately and unbuckle!”
“Understood!”
So, what kinds of monsters primarily appear on the 7th floor?
First, the most common are ‘Water Ghosts.’
These wicked creatures don’t bother fighting adventurers so much as they try to destroy their means of breathing. They aim to pop the air bubbles and cause their victims to drown.
‘Smashing Gaia.’
But Aimus smashed their heads in first.
What other monsters were there?
Void Torpedoes.
If you stun and capture them, they become an ‘item’ classified as a bomb, but until then, they’re monsters.
Like real torpedoes, they float idly in the water until they spot an adventurer, at which point they charge at full speed and self-destruct.
But now…
‘Three-Point Shot!’
Yernil’s arrows shot them all down before they could even get close.
What else was there?
Mermaid Crossbowmen. They swim with exceptional speed, close in to a certain distance, fire their crossbows, flee, reload, and come back for another pass, but…
‘Leaping Ambush!’
This time, they didn’t even get a chance to fire.
Back Attack had already torn them apart with his dagger.
This is faster than I thought.
Our progress on the 7th floor, I mean.
Just like when we were auto-farming on the 3rd floor, our party was slaughtering every mob in sight.
I watched to see how things would play out, but it turned out I didn't even need to use magic.
“By the way, can you even use magic, hyung-nim?” Back Attack asked as we prepared to camp after the first day’s adventure.
“Why couldn’t I?”
“Your main spells are lightning and ice magic, right? If you use them underwater, won’t we all get barbecued together?”
Hmm.
I never thought Back Attack would make such a magically astute observation.
He was about one-third right.
I couldn’t use lightning. But I had my magic circle build. And as for ice magic, that was a different story.
“Spells like Frost Ray or Flash Freeze are fine because when cast underwater, they only spread a short distance from the wand. As long as we’re far enough from the monsters.”
“If it spreads out from the wand, wouldn’t we be the first to die…?”
“Nope.”
I wanted to explain why not, and just then, four mermaids cautiously approached in the distance, peering at us.
“Because I can do this.”
I flipped the hourglass.
That genius wizard was a monster of talent—a psychokinetic teleporter, a remote wand controller, capable of chantless casting.
First, he sent a wand flying into the middle of the enemies with psychokinetic teleportation, then remotely controlled it to cast Flash Freeze. Bam!
Being underwater wasn't a penalty for him; it was an advantage. Monsters that are permanently wet are fatally vulnerable to ice damage.
A terrible chill spread out in all directions from the point where the magic was cast.
Like a brinicle forming in the sea, cryogenic ice particles shot out in every direction, creating a massive block of ice in the middle of the ocean.
“They’ve become frozen fish.”
The four mermaids were trapped in the ice and froze to death.
Then, Caleb retrieved the wand that had fallen after unleashing its magic.
“Caleb always has a way…” Yernil said, eating an air-coated energy bar.
“It doesn’t feel like a Labyrinth adventure when you can’t even light a fire or cook,” Aimus remarked.
“Plus, we can’t use sleeping bags,” I added.
“Let’s find the stairs and get down to the 8th floor quickly.”
Of course, the 8th floor wasn’t exactly a comfortable place either.
“By the way, Caleb. Don’t we need to stop by the waterfall on the 7th floor?” Yernil asked.
“The waterfall? Why?”
“I just thought there might be something there…?”
Caleb’s party had awakened their skills in the 4th floor’s special zone, the ironworks, using Byullant’s hammer.
And in Bearhim’s Garden on the 6th floor, they had eaten Aether Mushrooms to gain permanent stats.
“So I thought there might be something in the other special zones, too…”
Yernil’s guess was reasonable.
“Of course, there is.”
The 5th floor’s special zone was the Oasis of Life.
It was a type of blessing fountain, but a super-sized version. Just like at a blessing fountain, you could gain a skill by immersing yourself in the oasis. And one more thing.
The health percentage of every person and monster who entered the oasis was averaged out.
In other words, inside it, no one dies until everyone dies.
If you scooped up its water in a potion bottle, you could temporarily create the same effect as the Oasis of Life.
It was an item with many applications, but it wasn’t what Caleb’s party needed right now.
The same went for the 7th floor’s special zone.
“The Waterfall of the Void.”
The Sea of Void was fundamentally created by the water flowing from that waterfall.
There, you could obtain a Void Vortex Orb, an item that creates a water-based portal in the Labyrinth, but we didn’t need that right now either.
“So for now, let’s focus on getting to the next floor.”
Strange.
This is really strange.
When things go this smoothly, it makes me anxious.
“The 8th floor.”
We found the stairs leading down to the 8th floor in just two days.
Aimus had given us a great ride on his surf, but even so, the 7th floor was supposed to take a long time to explore, so finding the stairs this quickly was abnormal.
Moreover, there were no monsters lying in ambush at the bottom of the stairs, no traps, nothing. I had steeled myself for the worst, learning from our experience on the 5th floor.
“It’s a wasteland.”
When we descended to the 8th floor, we were met with an endless expanse of ashen, arid land.
‘A primitive world.’
The wasteland of a still-growing ancient world was a dry, open plain, much like a savanna, with no trees in sight.
Walls and rock formations were scattered about haphazardly, with fern-like plants growing sparsely here and there, and ancient insects clinging to them, chirping.
“You’ll need to be on your guard from here on out.”
The 7th floor was a bit easy for our level, but the 8th floor was not.
“Huh?”
Suddenly, blood trickled from Yernil’s nose.
“It’s because of a virus infection. Everyone, take one of these pills.”
I had each of the four party members take a pill.
“The virus damage will be minimized while the medicine is in effect.”
Though our health would still drop little by little.
“The 8th floor isn’t a good place for a long expedition either. There’s always the risk of running out of medicine. But we can’t go straight to the 9th floor.”
That was because we absolutely had to stop by the special zone here.
‘The Primitive Altar.’
I needed to do something with an item there.
The Compass of Greed I received from Professor Meldini a while back.
Four grades of items appear in the Labyrinth’s Abyss.
Normal, Magic, Treasure, and Legendary.
Normal is just what it sounds like. Magic items are enchanted with skills or spells.
Treasure items are those with exceptionally powerful abilities or a combination of multiple enchantments.
Yernil’s Magic-Tipped Bow was a ‘Magic’ grade item, but it became Treasure grade at the university when it was combined with the Blowgun Nymph’s blowgun.
That was only possible because the blowgun was originally Treasure grade.
And as for Legendary grade items…
‘An item believed to have more unidentified abilities beyond its Treasure-grade powers.’
For example, the Staff of the Apex used to create the Memory Book was Legendary grade.
The staff’s hidden power was revealed when Meldini transformed into his Aether state and wielded it himself, but its grade remains the same.
So, what about the Compass of Greed?
This legendary item’s hidden power had never been unlocked.
“We’re going to the ritual altar to awaken it.”
“What happens then?”
“It will be able to find anything.”
It was a bit hard to explain, but it was true.
As long as the target existed somewhere in the world.
The compass that once located treasure rooms would become like a badass AI search engine, finding whatever the user desired. It could even find abstract concepts.
For example, if you asked it to find ‘something beautiful,’ it would lead you to the most beautiful thing you had ever encountered in your life.
In the game, I used to plug all sorts of random things into the compass’s search engine and find all kinds of strange stuff, but eventually, I lost interest and just used it for farming items.
But in this case…
I’m going to try asking it to find my memories.
Is that even possible?
Well.
We’ll have to try it to find out.
“More importantly, everyone be careful while exploring the 8th floor.”
Let’s change the subject and focus on the current adventure.
“There’s a chance we’ll be ambushed here.”
“Ambushed?”
All three of them flinched.
“Didn’t the Lizard Lord tell you to watch your back in the Labyrinth?”
Let’s review one thing.
I have a record of exiting the Labyrinth from the 10th-floor exit room in Wyndham, so why didn’t a similar record appear on Sohen’s elevator?
Because an elevator only connects to the nearest staircase.
So, while Ingelam’s portable elevator could share gate information with Sohen’s elevator, the Sohen elevator wouldn’t have information from the Wyndham elevator.
In other words, the numerous racial lords currently breaking through the Sohen Labyrinth were running up the stairs themselves.
Because they wouldn’t have the Sohen elevator data.
Of course, if they could acquire a large number of stair scrolls, they could just tear through them to get ahead.
Thanks to that, the stair scrolls in Sohen’s scroll shops and black market were now completely sold out.
And one of the groups that had bought them most aggressively was…
“The Western Lizards.”
Back Attack said he’d been marked by the Lizard Lord. If the Lizard Lord managed to acquire twenty-eight stair scrolls, he could very well be on the 8th floor.
He was a cruel, prideful, fierce, and belligerent warlord. He would surely seek revenge for the humiliation he suffered in a neutral city like Sohen, if only to save face in the unstable political landscape of the West.
“Besides, the wasteland on the 8th floor is similar to the climate in the West.”
If I were the Lizard Lord, I’d probably ambush and kill us on the 8th floor before heading down to the 9th.
…Or so I thought.
“What a mess.”
Half a day into our exploration of the 8th floor, we found the bodies of the Lizard Lord’s four-person party.