Chapter 205: Bipa
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 205: Bipa
There was a problem with heading down to the inter-floor village right away.
We had a piece of baggage with us.
“Wait a minute...!” The Emperor clung to us, his face pale.
“You mean... I have to go down to the 9.5th floor too...!?”
The only reason we’d been bringing the Emperor along was that we weren’t heartless enough to leave a powerless civilian in the middle of a field.
Besides, his Imperial Royal Guard was supposedly searching for him on the 9th floor, so we’d been hoping to run into them.
“But we don’t have a choice.”
That didn't mean I was willing to compromise our schedule. I wanted to finish my deal with the Spider Doctor here as quickly as possible and, if I could, kill the White Lion while he was still recovering.
“We’re going in. You can either come with us or wait here for your party members.”
“W-wait!”
The Emperor must have been at a loss.
If he went down to the inter-floor village now, he’d have no way of finding his party until he came back up.
His guards would keep wandering the 9th floor, searching for him, completely unaware he’d gone to the village.
“Th-then send a message.”
We had already considered that, but there was a problem.
“To send a message, you need to know the target’s face and name. I’ve never met your Imperial Royal Guard, so I don’t know who they are.”
“Not them.” The Emperor said, glancing at us nervously. “Send it to Bipa and Mugol.”
I tilted my head, surprised by the names that had come out of nowhere.
“Are they on the 9th floor right now?”
“Yes... I actually hired them.”
This was the first I was hearing of it.
“You never mentioned that,” Yernil pointed out.
“I’m sorry. But they should be on the 9th floor. We came down together. They were supposed to escort me to the 10th floor.”
I see.
I got it.
This was a lord of Wyndham, obsessed with saving face.
He’d kept quiet about hiring Bipa and Mugol because it could be seen as an admission that his Imperial Royal Guard wasn’t enough. He hadn't even told us until now.
“You know Bipa and Mugol, don’t you? Send them a message. Tell them I’m heading down to the 9.5th floor and to come get me there.”
He’d certainly come up with a clever little plan.
He wasn’t wrong. I could send a message to Bipa or Mugol.
Whether they could find the 9.5th floor was another matter entirely.
“If we had known sooner, we could have met up with them.”
Eastern adventurers rarely use message wands.
Hadn’t even Antonelli reacted with surprise when he got a reply from Hijikata after sending him a message?
The Imperial Royal Guard didn’t have a message wand.
But Bipa did.
The reason Bipa hadn’t messaged the Emperor until now was that it would have been pointless.
From Bipa’s perspective, he couldn’t expect a reply from the Emperor, nor could he pinpoint his location.
One-way communication only allowed him to tell the Emperor where to go or where to wait. But what could a civilian like him do with such instructions on the 9th floor?
“But if you had been exchanging messages with us, we could have arranged a place to meet.”
“...” The Emperor hesitated, then lowered his head. “I-I’m sorry.”
He’d been quite arrogant at the assembly, surrounded by his subordinates and safe from harm, but now his spirit was completely broken.
“Anyway, I’ll send them a message, then?”
The moment I took out my notebook.
“...!”
Yernil’s ears twitched, and she whipped her head around.
At the end of her gaze, two figures emerged, pushing through the hellish thicket.
It was Bipa and Mugol.
“Bipa! Mugol!”
“See, Mugol? I told you my dowsing sense was quite useful.”
“So it really was Caleb’s party.”
Then, both of them flinched in surprise at the sight of the staircase before us.
“An inter-floor staircase popping up in the middle of a field. What an unexpected sight.”
Bipa looked at me, gently waving his fan.
“Caleb. Did you find these stairs?”
“Yes.”
“You’re on your way to keep your promise with that Spider Doctor, then?”
“That’s right. And we’re going to kill the White Lion, too.”
Bipa paused in thought for a moment before asking, “Want some help?”
“What?”
“What are you talking about...” Cold sweat trickled down the Emperor’s cheek.
*
To summarize what happened next:
The Wyndham duo had apparently suspected the Emperor might be an Inter-floor Lord in disguise, so they had been observing him as they descended the Labyrinth together.
But he was just a powerless civilian.
“Of course I am! You suspected me?”
The Emperor threw a fit at that, but Bipa and Mugol paid him no mind.
They were more focused on their conversation with me.
“Caleb. We have business with the White Lion as well.”
It seemed Bipa and Mugol had planned to part ways with the Emperor’s party after reaching the 10th floor and then come back up to the 9th.
“That’s why we brought a staircase scroll.”
On the 10th floor, you can’t find the Deep Layer stairs with a scroll. Using one there usually just drops you in front of the gate leading back to the 9th floor.
“We were planning to return to the 9.5th floor and kill the White Lion.”
I see.
I could guess the reason why.
Because of the living sacrifices.
I remembered what Bipa had told me after the last assembly.
After he’d given me the fresh shock of telling me I wasn't a Possessor.
Bipa had said, ‘I prepared the Possessor village to counter the Great Labyrinth Eruption.’
If you sacrifice Primitive Spearmen at the Primitive Altar on the 8th floor, you can draw out and manifest the power of a god from its fountain.
It meant you could pull out something like a summoned creature of the gods devoured by the Labyrinth. That creature then becomes a force of the Labyrinth and attacks adventurers. The special boss of the Primitive Altar is one such summon.
And if you were to sacrifice humans from the surface, you could obtain the power of an Inter-floor Lord. It’s similar to how the kings of the era of the Nine Kings sacrificed their entire kingdoms to become Inter-floor Lords themselves.
So, what if you sacrificed not monsters, not surface humans, but ‘Possessors’?
What could you draw from the fountain then?
It would be like slicing open the gut of a greedy serpent and rescuing the person it had swallowed.
Otherworld Possessors are the antithesis of the Labyrinth. The fountain of the Primitive Altar, upon receiving them as a sacrifice, would be forced to disgorge, however incompletely...
...the gods devoured by the Labyrinth in the age of myth.
It was on this point that Bipa had a disagreement and parted ways with Dalstream.
Dalstream believed they should cooperate with the Possessors. He thought they needed to find one in particular: the Turn-Based Wizard.
Bipa did not.
He made more aggressive preparations.
Bipa created a village for Possessors inside the Labyrinth, kidnapped them, and imprisoned them there. He intended to sacrifice them when the Great Labyrinth Eruption occurred to turn the tables.
A counterattack from the deepest, emptied parts of the Labyrinth after the eruption.
That was what Bipa was aiming for.
“The Consul will fail. The Labyrinth is at its strongest right now. Defeating the Labyrinth Master is an impossible task. Not Blackdog, not the university professors, not the leaders of other races. No matter how skilled the adventurers on the surface are, they will never be able to stop the Great Eruption.”
Bipa had long since given up on cooperating with other Deep Layer adventurers. Instead, he and Mugol had been preparing this plan on their own for a long time.
When the Labyrinth erupted, the Spirit Race Deep Layer Taoist would summon a massive army of Ethereal Galaxies from the 8th floor.
“Only I.”
And with them, he intended to kill the Labyrinth Master.
“Only I can save this world. Killing the White Lion is part of that plan.”
Why?
Because killing the White Lion would return the power of the ‘Goddess of Gifts and Scrolls’ that he possessed back to the fountain.
Then, when Bipa’s plan came to fruition, he could summon something like a ‘White Lion of the Ethereal Galaxy Faction’.
“That’s why I can’t miss this opportunity, now that the White Lion is gravely injured. From the start, I planned to kill the Emperor if he turned out to be an Inter-floor Lord. And if not, I was going to return to the 9th floor to kill the White Lion anyway.”
“...” The Emperor’s face turned white.
“But didn’t you talk with Caleb and the Spider Doctor after the assembly?” Aimus asked.
“I did.”
“Then why didn’t you suggest killing the White Lion together back then?”
“Because back then, I didn’t think you’d be of any help.” Bipa answered frankly, tapping his lips with the tip of his fan.
My party members didn’t look pleased, but I understood.
“But now, you seem to have reached a level close to the Deep Layer.” Bipa said, looking at me intently as if seeking my agreement.
“That mess you made with the ice down in the cemetery, was that you?” Mugol asked.
“Yes, it was.”
“...” Mugol stroked his chin, lost in thought.
“You grow so much every time I see you, I can’t get used to it. To think that Caleb has changed this much...”
“Thank you.”
“That’s good enough. Shall we go to the inter-floor village together?”
Negotiations over.
Great!
Let’s all team up and defeat the White Lion together!
Let’s do this!
Just before we shook hands and set off, the Emperor jumped in fright.
“W-wait a minute!” He was completely pale.
“Bipa! Mugol! This is a breach of contract! You’re supposed to escort me to the 10th floor!”
“We are not in breach,” Bipa said.
“It will be safer for you to venture into the inter-floor village with the six of us, including Caleb’s party, than for the two of us to hole up with you on the 9th floor.”
This Spirit Race Taoist’s long years of experience certainly showed.
He was quite skilled at wriggling his way out of being held responsible.
And he probably had another motive, too.
“Then, I will notify the Imperial Royal Guard.” Bipa sent a message to the Emperor’s party members.
[The Emperor is on the 9.5th floor. -Bipa-]
With this, the Emperor’s guards would also come to the inter-floor village.
*
They were difficult people as enemies, but as allies, they were honestly reassuring.
Our party’s strength had reached the point where we could tackle the 10th floor field, and now we had the famous Wyndham duo behind us.
At this rate, I felt we could take on the White Lion even if he was at full strength.
Of course, since the White Lion had gone so far as to invite us, he must have something else prepared.
He might even have other Inter-floor Lords with him.
This might not be an ordinary battle.
But this wasn’t the full extent of our power, either.
“How do you plan on finding the White Lion?”
In response to Bipa’s question, I took a small capsule out of my pocket.
It was the item I’d used once on the 6th floor, but failed because of the beetle.
There was no reason for it to fail this time.
He himself had given it back to me after the assembly and promised. That this time, he would definitely come.
[Spider Web Capsule]
Inside the round capsule was a tangled ball of spider silk.
With this kind of item, you just had to open the lid and toss it into the air to create a small gate.
Just like this.
Kwang!
A red gate opened in the sky of the inter-floor village.
From beyond it, the familiar silhouette of the giant Spider Doctor emerged.
“Ah... at last.”
The Spider Doctor took a deep breath as he descended to the ground.
“We have arrived in the White Lion’s territory.”
Then he glanced at Bipa, Mugol, and the Emperor and made a joke.
“If I join in, that makes a perfect party of four.”
“Get lost,” Mugol snapped, as if creeped out.
“Very well. Everyone, follow me.”
The Spider Doctor led us toward the White Lion’s fortress.