It was the same for Oliver as well.
Because Oliver was such an ardent fan of Phantom, to the point of chasing after his adventures, his hardships, everything.
‘Don’t get nervous, act like when you were Hudson.’
Oliver steadied his breathing as much as he could.
He didn’t want to look like a sick person.
He also didn’t want Phantom to worry about his health.
If that happened, his engagement with Serengeti in Pangaenia might fall through.
He still hadn’t been able to tell Serengeti that he didn’t know when he would die, and that he was, in fact, not a human of Pangaenia.
There was no way he could.
Fortunately, Phantom didn’t show any sign of having noticed his illness yet.
‘As normal as possible.’
But what did normal even mean?
He hadn’t met outsiders for so long that he had forgotten how to act normal.
Still, it wasn’t a bad feeling.
To meet, in reality, the existence he had fervently followed.
No matter how hard he tried not to get nervous, he kept getting nervous, his whole body trembling.
It felt like a dream.
The fact that Phantom was still right before his eyes was unbelievable.
‘Let me be of help, even if I have to burn up everything I have!’
How many years had it been since he felt this much motivation in reality.
Oliver had only ever received help from him until now.
It was Phantom who broke the egg that had imprisoned him.
If not for him, he wouldn’t have met Serengeti again. He would have died, forever regretting it.
Gaining a spirit and catching a glimpse of hope, seeing Phantom’s overwhelming majesty, his refusal to give up, his grit, all of it was still vivid, as if it were yesterday.
An unbending, unyielding hero who charged in headlong.
He wanted to emulate that.
He wished he too had such an indomitable will.
And so now, it was his turn to be of help.
Zeal flared up in Oliver’s eyes.
***
《Bow proficiency has risen to Lv.10 (max).》
《To achieve a higher proficiency level, you need the corresponding class.》
《‘Rapid Growth’ is promoted to level 2.》
《The stats of your ‘disciples’ have greatly increased across the board.》
《Fame increases by 50.》
For several days I stayed in the castle, going back and forth to Pangaenia.
All of it was to prepare for the labyrinth battle.
I didn’t neglect training with Isaac and Isabella either.
And at last, when all preparations were complete.
《‘Abyssal Labyrinth’ has opened.》
《‘Abyssal Labyrinth’ is now connected to all warps.》
《To enter, 1h of Fragment of the Broken Golden Rule will be consumed.》
At last, the Abyssal Labyrinth had opened.
At the same time, warps appeared all over Earth.
In Pangaenia, they forcibly linked to the warps that already existed.
So that every warp could now lead to the ‘Abyssal Labyrinth.’
Not just me, but countless challengers were already prepared.
There was no time to waste.
《1h of Fragment of the Broken Golden Rule will be consumed.》
《Remaining time is 968h 38m.》
《You are entering the ‘Abyssal Labyrinth.’》
《Upon entering the ‘Abyssal Labyrinth,’ a random ‘action condition’ has been added.》
《If you keep your head bowed for more than 5 seconds, you will be forcibly expelled from the labyrinth.》
《‘Action conditions’ change every day.》
A condition imposed on everyone who entered the labyrinth!
‘Tricky.’
At a glance, it looked easy, but unless you consciously corrected your behavior, you would be kicked out in no time.
Especially in a labyrinth where you never knew what might pop out, just having one more thing to worry about was an enormous penalty.
On top of that, it changed daily, and if it restricted some truly trivial behavior, you could easily end up in a completely hopeless situation.
‘All the better.’
But I wasn’t worried.
No, it was actually good.
Because I had a countermeasure.
《Heart of the Eternal Monarch deletes one random condition of the Abyssal Labyrinth.》
《‘Action condition’ has been deleted.》
Let’s delete one before we start.
Labyrinth merchant
A floor that squelched with rotten water.
A foul stench of something rotting.
Fwoosh!
I lit the torch and looked around.
“······!”
Isaac couldn’t believe his eyes.
Neither could Isabella, nor I.
Abyssal Labyrinth.
We had expected it to be a difficult place, befitting the name, but this was beyond that.
‘This place is… the abyss itself.’
Huge walls stretched around us, their ends nowhere in sight.
And on those walls, countless ‘hands’ of all kinds of species were attached.
The hands were alive and moving, and they dragged anything they could grab back toward the wall.
The floor was littered with corpses that had been torn apart as they resisted those hands.
A sight both majestic and grotesque beyond words. But there was no time to dawdle.
“What are your ‘action conditions’?”
“We’re not allowed to clasp our hands together for more than 3 seconds.”
“I’m not allowed to shake my head left and right…”
As expected, they were tricky.
The only saving grace was that none of them restricted walking.
“What about you, Successor?”
“None.”
“Is it even possible to have none?”
Suspicion flickered in Isaac’s eyes.
“But I’m going to act like I do.”
“Ah, to confuse them, is that it?”
I nodded.
Action conditions. From what I’d heard, most of them were “don’t do ~” types.
My condition had been deleted by Heart of the Eternal Monarch, but no one else knew that.
In that case, I could use it in reverse to sow confusion.
After a brief moment of thought, I spoke.
“Don’t swing your right hand consecutively. Let’s go with that for today.”
And thus, an arbitrary action condition was added.
***
Walls stretching endlessly.
We trudged through the mire between them.
Swoooosh—!
Thud!
An arrow flew in and buried itself in my side.
‘Ghk!’
I almost screamed.
“Success······.”
“Shh.”
But I placed my index finger on my lips and silenced the two.
My pierced side burned with maddening pain, but dealing with the situation took priority.
I had heard the sound of an arrow cutting through the air.
It was fast enough to pierce my side before I could even react.
If I hadn’t twisted my body at the last moment on instinct, just from the sound, my heart would have been skewered.
‘A trap.’
It hadn’t been shot by a person.
It was a trap.
When I checked the direction the arrow had come from, I saw a crossbow installed on the wall.
What kind of gutsy bastard had thought to mount a crossbow there.
Even for me, that particular trap had been unexpected.
“There’s a trapper ahead of us. And a pretty high-level one at that.”
Trapper.
That was definitely something a person had set up.
It didn’t have automatic fire, but it was designed to snipe a person’s heart the moment they entered its range.
Gush, gush, gush!
I pulled out the embedded arrow and downed a potion I’d prepared in advance.
The blood that had been gushing out stopped, and new flesh grew over the wound.
“How could they have gotten ahead of us?”
Isabella asked as she wrapped a bandage around the wounded area.
We had entered the moment it opened, so we’d assumed we were at the very front.
Yet someone ahead of us had been laying traps.
Someone skilled enough to deceive all of our senses.
“Unless their entry point was in front of ours, or they prepared some kind of mount…”
Isaac answered.
Entry positions to a labyrinth were random.
Of course, that didn’t mean you could spawn right in the central area, but small differences in position were possible.
‘What a nuisance.’
Trappers are one of the most annoying classes to deal with.
Especially in such a confined space, they have overwhelming power.
If it was a high-level trapper, they could set traps that didn’t simply trigger when you stepped on them, but attacked with a time delay as well.
“Isabella, you watch the rear, Isaac, keep your eyes on the front.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
***
There were a lot of traps.
However, once you paid attention, they weren’t enough to threaten your life.
Rather than carefully placed, they were going for sheer quantity.
In other words, they knew we were catching up.
Because the speed at which we broke through the traps was far faster than the speed at which they were being set, they were carelessly placing them just to slow our feet.
‘Got them.’
A group came into view in the distance.
We had finally caught up.
Two people continuously setting traps, and one warrior guarding them.
“Al, already? We’ve already been caught up to?”
“What the hell, those bastards!”
The two trappers shouted in panic.
They must have already realized their traps were being dismantled. Their reaction was only natural.
“That’s what you get for half-assing it with those flimsy traps. Just leave it to me.”
A warrior with dark, bare chest.
Hair braided straight down, a battle axe in his hands, the very picture of a barbarian.
【Lv.9】
He was a strong opponent with a high level.
But judging from that hairstyle, he was clearly a Great Warrior of the Desert.
Braided straight like that meant he was a royal guard under the Desert Queen.
They called them Barbarians.
“······ Hm, wait. I see a familiar face.”
The barbarian’s gaze stopped at one person.
Isabella.
Once he recognized her, the barbarian burst into loud laughter.
“Hahaha! Snake princess, Fugitive, so this is where you were hiding!”
“Butcher Yagumo…”
“You fell for that Star Bearer or whatever, and after you ran off with him, you ended up here?”
“Why are you here?”
Isabella asked coldly.
But I couldn’t understand it either.
Why was a barbarian, who ought to be protecting the queen in the desert, here in the Abyssal Labyrinth?
“This place will be your grave, snake princess. Traitor who betrayed Her Majesty!”
There was no use talking.
As the barbarian charged in like a bulldozer, Isabella spoke.
“··· I will face him.”
“Do so.”
They were both level 9.
In the past I would have stopped her, but she had grown since then.
“Snake princess! You couldn’t beat me even in the desert, what makes you think the result will be any different now!”
“I am not the snake princess. Trash.”
While the two of them faced off, Isaac and I slipped past the barbarian at the same time.
The barbarian hadn’t been interested in us from the beginning.
When the barbarian didn’t move to protect them, the two trappers panicked.
“Wh-what the hell!”
“Yagumo! We paid you good money, so you’d better be worth the price!”
“FUCK! Log out!”
“Log out!”
They were trying to exploit the rule that logging out would forcibly remove you from the labyrinth.
Which meant that unlike the barbarian Yagumo, the two of them were players.
Soon, their figures started to overlap.
Their Pangaenian and Earthling appearances flickered back and forth.
At the same time, a warp appeared behind their backs.
The warp tried to suck them in.
Kya kya?
Hel, who had somehow ended up perched on my shoulder, tilted her head.
Then the smoke wrapped around Hel’s body turned red.
Snap!
In that instant, the warp that had been sucking the two in, stopped.
“W-what, why can’t I log out?”
“Wh-what is this! Are you kidding me?”
It was strange.
Under normal circumstances, logging out should forcibly remove you from the labyrinth.
The mechanism was that a warp would form behind you and forcibly transport your real body back to its original location, the continent.
But the two of them were still crawling on the ground in their trapper forms.
‘Hel has the ability to manipulate warps within her range.’
That confirmed it.
Hel not only cut away warps, she also possessed the ability to deny or allow them.
However, she couldn’t cut just any warp.
After a few experiments, I’d learned that Hel could sever ‘ownerless warps.’
But if a warp manifested within her range, she could manipulate it.
Just like now.
Hel had ‘denied’ the two of them taking the warp.
‘In the Abyss, you can’t log out unless you ride a warp.’
And I’d learned one more thing.
This place was the abyss.
Unlike the regular continents, this was a place largely beyond the goddess’s reach.
If you didn’t ride a warp to move your true body back to where it belonged, to the continent, you couldn’t properly log out.
That was why, when someone logged out, a warp automatically appeared first.
Step.
Step.
As I slowly approached, fear seeped into the trappers’ eyes.
“S-spare me!”
“What the hell…!”