Chapter 52: Monster Wave
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 52: Monster Wave
“W-Wait a minute!”
The Fox Spirit, Soyul, finally came to her senses and interjected.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Is a soul really supposed to get sucked into an ossuary that fast?”
Yes.
She might not know it, but that’s exactly how it works.
An adventurer falling to madness happens in the blink of an eye.
There was even an example right next to us.
“The moment Back Attack jumped into the 1st Floor gate to rescue Aimus, he became an Exit Boss and appeared right behind him.”
“……”
Aimus swallowed dryly.
“B-But! Right! I’ve never heard of two adventurers captured by madness existing on the same floor!”
That was a valid point.
Even in the game, I’d rarely seen such a case.
But it was possible under certain conditions.
“It’s possible if one of them appears as an Exit Boss.”
“What! Then don’t tell me…”
“Yes. Your companion, Gildal, has probably appeared somewhere as an Exit Boss and is waiting in an exit room.”
“What! Gildal!?”
“Yes.”
To make an analogy, Gildal was the product that had already been shipped out, while Antonelli was the one right behind him, waiting for dispatch.
“But even if all that is true, is there any reason for us to be scared?” the Kappa asked, making another sharp point.
“Antonelli is already dead, isn’t he? So isn’t it over?”
Instead of answering, I first asked Aimus a question.
“Aimus. Did Back Attack originally have skills like Wall Walk, Invisibility, or Cautious Step?”
“Ah… No?”
Aimus shook his head.
“He had a lot of skills when we traveled together, but nothing like that. It was just Throwing Dagger, Plunder, and Leaping Ambush.”
Of course.
Back Attack’s level was higher than Yernil’s or Aimus’s, but even accounting for that, he had far too many skills.
Think about the skills he used when he appeared as an Exit Boss.
Magic Throwing Dagger, Leaping Ambush, Shadow Leap, Plunder, Cautious Step, Wall Walk, Invisibility.
Why would a low-floor adventurer have so many skills?
It was because he had received immense power from the Labyrinth upon becoming an Exit Boss.
He had acquired skills that normally would have been mutually exclusive choices.
And that power remained even after his resurrection. It was one of the reasons I was so keen on recruiting him.
‘When the Labyrinth captures an adventurer and makes them an Exit Boss, it grants them power befitting their new status.’
To a rogue who wanted to traverse the Labyrinth’s complex maze to find Aimus, it gave skills like Wall Walk, Shadow Leap, and Cautious Step.
And to Antonelli, who had begged the seven adventurers who captured him to spare his life, it gave eternal life.
“Becoming a Lich.”
It was a trait that often manifested when necromancers became Exit Bosses.
They become divided into a first and second phase, much like a Venomic Spider.
Once they die, they enter the second phase by turning into a Lich.
Antonelli was seized by madness just before he died. The process of becoming a Lich must have begun after his head was severed.
And by now…
“He’s probably gone down to the 3.5th floor.”
“What did you say!”
Hijikata shot to his feet.
“Knowing his personality, he’ll probably harvest the souls from both Gildal’s ossuary and his own. And that will trigger a Monster Wave.”
“Dammit!”
“We have to run!”
“Gadozumi! Soyul! We’re going to the 3.5th floor!”
Hijikata didn’t run.
“I won’t let that son of a bitch have Gildal’s ossuary!”
“It’s already too late!”
I quickly moved to block his path.
“He’s been my friend since we crossed over from the East together.”
“……”
“You have no idea what it’s like for Eastern Beastfolk like us.”
How could I not know, after playing this game for so long?
Hijikata, an Eastern human, would have faced plenty of discrimination in this place. It was obvious what it must have been like for a Dokkaebi, a Kappa, or a Fox Spirit.
“He’s like family to us. We have to save him. Even if I die trying.”
“I’m not stopping you because the odds are slim. I’m telling you it’s already too late.”
If his head was reattached in the morning, he would have been up and about by the afternoon. As a being who was now part of the Labyrinth, Antonelli didn’t need to wander. There were stairs leading down to the inter-floor spaces all over the Labyrinth, and he would have taken the nearest one down.
He was probably already near the ossuaries. In the worst-case scenario, he might have already finished harvesting the souls.
“It’s useless to go down there now.”
“B-But… then… what happens to Gildal?” the Fox Spirit asked.
What do you think happens?
With his ossuary gone, he would have become a Stairing Eccentric Boss.
He would have personally opened the exit room door to find out which bastard had the gall to touch his ossuary.
In other words, there were now two Stairing Eccentric Bosses on the 3rd floor.
But there was a much more serious problem.
“We can deal with the Stairing Eccentric Bosses somehow. The problem is the Monster Wave.”
It’s fine if the soul in an ossuary returns to its owner, like with Back Attack or Aimus.
But if a third party harvests the soul, the Labyrinth considers it a theft of a vital resource.
The Labyrinth does not tolerate such situations.
“We won’t be able to handle it when the Monster Wave hits. Get up! Back Attack…!”
I turned to wake him, but he was already up, likely roused by our conversation.
But Yernil, with her much sharper hearing, was surprisingly still face down in her sleeping bag.
“Yernil! This is no time to be sleep—”
“Caleb!”
So she wasn’t sleeping.
“Caleb…”
Seeing her face, pale as a sheet, drove home just how fucked we really were.
“I hear footsteps from down the mountain…”
She was lying flat on the ground because of the sound of a massive legion on the march, a sound so faint only she could perceive it. She was trying to gauge its origin, location, and direction.
“They’re coming this way!”
“……”
As I thought, it was already too late.
It was a Monster Wave.
*
Have you ever heard of the Labyrinth Intestine Theory?
It’s a hypothesis that the Labyrinth is the gut of a giant demon.
And the monsters within the Labyrinth are slaves working inside the demon’s stomach.
Let’s use an analogy. What if a sharp thorn got stuck somewhere in your intestines, or you got a cut, or a tumor started to grow?
Wouldn’t white blood cells flock to that location and cause an inflammatory response?
A Monster Wave is no different.
The occurrence of some strange phenomenon within the Labyrinth. A massive number of monsters marching to resolve it.
That is what’s called a Monster Wave.
This situation almost occurred once on the 1st floor. There was an unusual incident where the field boss monster, a Black Hornet, abandoned its larva and left.
If the larva had starved to death in front of the exit room, goblins would have swarmed it, the Black Hornet would have gone on a rampage, and the resulting chaos and confusion would have slowly snowballed into a Monster Wave.
THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
The sound of countless footsteps echoed across the ground.
Now we could hear it too, not just Yernil.
How many were there?
At least in the thousands.
Vibrations traveled up from the ground. The snow on the mountain peak was popping up in all directions like popcorn.
“……”
Even Hijikata’s party, known as the most experienced veterans of the 3rd floor, was frozen stiff by a situation like this.
To say nothing of Aimus, Yernil, or Back Attack.
The only person here with their wits about them was me.
“Don’t move!”
I shouted at them with all my might.
The reason the Monster Wave was heading this way was to secure the stone monument first. I had a good idea why.
‘The Monument of Mass Annihilation.’
Every monument contains a Tier 10 magic spell. A spell so powerful it can never be stored in a wizard’s memory book and will evaporate from a scroll in less than a minute.
‘If I could activate that, I could stop the wave.’
But I hadn’t deciphered the code yet.
The Monster Wave was heading here first to eliminate that possibility.
To occupy the area around the monument.
“We have to run…” Hijikata muttered.
“No! Stay put!”
If we tried to run now, we’d be caught anyway.
“Everyone, over here! Next to me!”
It was better to wait for the monsters to swarm right up to us.
Because the monuments are not easily occupied.
While you couldn’t say the monument was on the adventurers’ side, it wasn’t on the Labyrinth’s side either.
“Everyone gather at the monument and stick close to it!”
“They’re… they’re here!”
Hijikata, who had run to the front of the monument, gripped his two-handed sword tightly.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
“Kaaack!”
The first things we saw at the far end of the snowy mountain field were hundreds of wolves charging up the slope at incredible speed.
And behind them, Frost Hunters were also rushing in like mad.
When a wave hits, even those cunning bastards don’t bother with ambushes or surprise attacks from the hills.
They just charge forward to tear everything apart, like a scene from a zombie movie.
“No way…”
Hijikata was terrified by the sheer, overwhelming numbers.
“We have to run!”
“Not yet!”
Hijikata and I yelled one after another. The terrified Fox Spirit Shaman took a hesitant step back. But with the monument behind her, there was nowhere to retreat.
Yernil had an arrow nocked but couldn’t even think of firing. Aimus’s parasol would be pierced in an instant.
But…
“Wait longer!”
The very moment the wolves got within ten meters of the monument.
“What the…”
The Kappa’s jaw dropped as he looked up at the sky.
“It’s an avalanche!”
*
The Fox Spirit Shaman, Soyul, had heard many stories about Caleb.
How he had led Bernard’s party out of the sentries’ encirclement on the 1.5th floor.
How he had survived.
For a moment, she thought that perhaps, even in this worst-case scenario of a Monster Wave, Caleb might have a plan for survival.
When Hijikata screamed that they had to run and Caleb yelled to stay put, that was probably why Soyul hadn’t moved.
‘But something like this…’
A tremendous mass of snow was pouring down from the sky.
Normally, an avalanche is a large amount of snow on a mountainside sliding down a slope, but what was happening now was different.
This snow was falling vertically from the sky.
“Crazy…”
Hijikata let out a sharp breath.
A massive avalanche can weigh in the tens of millions of tons.
If you were buried in it, even just one meter of snow on top of your body would exert about 200 kilograms of pressure.
This colossal avalanche would probably bury the monsters, but it would do the same to the adventurers.
‘This is the end.’
For a moment, Soyul gave up on survival.
There was no way anyone could get out of this ali—
Fwump!
A giant magic parasol opened above Aimus’s iron staff.
And…
Fwoooosh!
Suddenly, a powerful wind shot up vertically over the parasol.
It wasn’t just any wind. It was a dry, hot wind, like that of a desert—a type of combat magic.
‘Heat Gale!’
Caleb was casting magic over the parasol.
Normally, it would be impossible to block that avalanche with a mere Tier 1 spell like Heat Gale, but this gale was incredibly intense.
‘Stacked casting!’
Soyul recognized it at once. Caleb was a chantless, high-speed caster. He must have cast and stacked that Heat Gale at least three or four times in an instant.
The stacked spells created a layer of high-temperature air above the parasol.
He didn’t need to block all the snow.
He just needed to create a slope.
Instead of burying Caleb’s and Hijikata’s parties, the snow would slide along the slope of wind, sweeping away the monsters in front of them.
It would flow down the mountainside, taking the monsters with it. That was the plan.
But the physical mass of the avalanche was so immense that some of it still broke through the Heat Gale and fell vertically.
Most of it melted.
But some of it didn’t melt and fell in clumps.
Aimus’s parasol blocked those.
“……!”
It was working.
Amazingly, they were actually blocking the cataclysm falling from above their heads.
And from the rear.
The overflowing snow from behind should have swept the adventurers away long ago, but they had cover.
‘The monument.’
That mysterious, massive chunk of rock wouldn’t break in a mere avalanche.
His positioning was perfect.
And what’s more…
“Dust Explosion!”
Caleb blew up a wolf being swept away by the avalanche, then raised his wand again.
‘He’s casting again!’
Another high-speed cast. He set up two more Heat Gales to the left and right of the party, centered on the parasol.
To prevent the snow from encroaching on their position from all sides.
‘Just how many is he casting!’
This wizard’s method of survival was somewhat insane.
The Heat Gales plastered above them and to their left and right acted as breakwaters, while the parasol served as the final line of defense.
*
The disaster was immense, but it passed in an instant.
After silence fell on the mountain peak.
“Hah…”
Hot, terrified breaths finally burst out from all around.
“Hah… hah…”
“Is… is everyone alive?”
Hijikata checked on his party members one by one.
The summit, having been swept clean by the massive avalanche, had changed shape considerably.
The coniferous forest and icebergs we had seen on the way up were all gone.
So were the rocks, big and small.
And the monsters.
The avalanche had washed them all away.
“Let’s go. We can’t stay here.”
I started moving immediately.
There was no time to get sentimental. We had to hurry.
Because the Monster Wave was just beginning. More would be coming soon.
And one more thing.
“There’s a staircase to the 3.5th floor near here.”
There were several staircases leading to the 3.5th floor scattered across the 3rd floor, and there was always one near a monument like this.
If Antonelli had harvested the ossuaries on the 3.5th floor and triggered a Monster Wave, what would he be doing now?
‘He’ll be coming back up the stairs.’
He might even emerge from the stairs near the monument…
“Shit.”
That bastard is fast.
“A Lich.”
“It’s Antonelli.”
Back Attack and Aimus let out gasps.
The Lich that had gobbled up two ossuaries was ascending the slope. He wasn’t even struggling to walk. The monster was now floating in mid-air.
“Ah. You’re those guys. Caleb, and his friends.”
“Wh-What the hell, that thing can talk?”
A few of the adventurers were stunned.
“Thank you. Thanks to you, I feel I’ve reached the ultimate stage of necromancy I’ve been pursuing.”
Antonelli burst out laughing.
“With this, I can even make it to the 5th floor.”
“Ah…”
Suddenly, the Fox Spirit Shaman’s eyes welled up with tears, and she grabbed Hijikata’s arm.
“Hijikata…”
“Wh-What…”
Hijikata’s eyes widened.
“What the fuck, no! Tell me it’s not true!” the swordsman yelled, gritting his teeth, as the Fox Spirit Shaman delivered the tragic news.
“Gildal’s soul… it’s been devoured.”
The Fox Spirit’s racial trait, Soul Tracking.
The soul of the Dokkaebi, Gildal, whom they had searched for for so long, was not in an ossuary, but inside the Lich’s gut.
The Labyrinth is filled with far more unfortunate tragedies than dramatic happy endings.
Not every adventurer seized by madness can return like Back Attack.