“Labyrinths. The lowest effort puzzle in existence,” Rakna grumbled as he walked through the long pathways with nothing in them except torches.

He groaned when he reached a dead end. “Is this what they meant by the fearless will die and the strong will fall? That we are going to give up on life out of frustration?”

“{Well… it does seem to be working…}” Higure commented wryly. She had been listening to Rakna going through a crisis for half an hour now. Nothing had changed at all since the moment they got inside.

“You bet it is,” he uttered and retraced his steps with a sigh. “I wonder if I should just break out of here with Rift Shuttle…”

“{Don’t you think that’s a bit overkill…?}”

“No.”

“{…it probably wouldn’t work well anyway. It’s not dimensions that you’re dealing with here. You wouldn’t be able to destroy the walls with just Rift Shuttle. In any case, you are far too untrained in that skill. I won’t let you use it carelessly.}”

Rakna shrugged and continued to walk until he finally saw something different; a big intersection with more than five different possible paths. He face-palmed. “This place is annoying me… If I want to continue sticking to a wall, this will eat so much of my time…”

“{I never really dwelled too much on it but… why do people always choose to a wall when doing labyrinths?}” Higure asked curiously. “{I always hear people saying that but never the reasoning.}”

“Math,” Rakna replied as he went into one of the paths.

“{Math?}”

“Yes. Labyrinths are technically geometrical figures with two openings. For example, let’s say that you draw the map on paper and then get rid of all the angles; you end up with a circle with a couple of small holes. At that point, the answer becomes obvious. If you enter from one of the two holes and stick to either the right or the left whilst following the circle’s perimeter, you will arrive at the other exit. It is a tactic without fail despite its time-eating nature.”

“{I see. That’s obvious if you think about it. But that only works if…}”

“If the labyrinth doesn’t autonomously change its disposition,” Rakna completed and clicked his tongue when he saw a dead end after turning. “But I don’t have any other choice. There isn’t any information that would give me a solution to find the exit. The words at the entrance still do not make any sense to me yet as well…”

“{True… if taken at face value, they’re basically saying that you need to be weak to pass.}”

“Weak, huh?” He mused on the idea as he reached a new path, he sniffed the air and paused. He frowned under his mask and activated Fabled Sight. The ellipses of Scherzo turned golden and Rakna almost gagged at the combination of his increased field of view and the eye skill.

“Damn… I didn’t account for this...” He muttered but quickly got used to it. He then inspected what had triggered his smell. He looked down and through his skill, saw a dry and almost gone trace of blood going down the path in front of him.

He followed it with an alert mind and ultimately came across another dead end. But this one was considerably different from the others, due to the pile of rotting corpses in the corner.

Rakna beheld it coldly and calmly crouched next to them to diagnose them. He didn’t need to be a genius to tell the main cause of their deaths. Half of them died from bisection and their bones had been crushed. As for the other half… their heads had been ripped off and based on the marks left around the neck, the ‘weapon’ used to do that were rows of small pointy blades…

“Or teeth,” he said the most likely explanation out loud. “These people are Hosts, aren’t they?” He muttered as he spotted a few spatial rings around their fingers, which he placed inside his own without much remorse. The dead didn’t require belongings.

“{It does look like it… These are not ‘decor’ to make this Ordeal look intimidating. These are people that challenged this place since the last Reset and died. But… what killed them? We haven’t seen any monster at all after nearly an hour.}”

“All of them died facing the wall,” Rakna noted. “In fact, one of them still has his upper body against the wall, as if his head had been eaten while he was desperately banging on it. This behavior is generally induced by…!” He abruptly stopped and every hair on his body stood in attention.

He didn’t dare to move at all and Scherzo’s eyes were glitching due to his being shaking. He slowly reached for his wrist where the watch was and certain sounds began to echo from behind him.

▂▅▃▂▁▂▅▃▂▂▅▃▂▁▂▅▃▂▂▅▃▂▁▂▅▃▂▁▁▁▁▁

Stomping and growling noises reverberated on the labyrinth’s walls. There was also a screeching sound of something metallic scraping on stone. It gradually became louder and louder until a giant hand grabbed onto the wall that formed the turn toward the dead-end.

A horned head emerged and readily snapped toward the wall full of bodies. It was a large and terrifying face with an obscenely wide mouth and hundreds of teeth. It had two pairs of eyes with swirling pupils and three pairs of horns that protruded from its head in all directions.

The creature stepped forward and completely came out from behind the wall, out of the shadows, and into the light of one of the torches.

Its skin was brown and putrid with mismatched patches of fur. It had a pair of bulging arms, one of which was dragging a spiked weapon the size of a tree trunk. Its legs had two different knee-like articulations and ended into disproportionate hooves. The monster was about as tall and wide as the labyrinth’s passages were.

▂▅▃▂▂▅▃▂▁▁▁▁?

It looked around at the empty dead-end as if it was confused. Its head rapidly snapped from left to right with sickening bone creaking noises and after a moment, the creature approached the pile of bodies and put its head lower to smell it.

After a few sniffs, it growled and lifted its weapon and hacked down several times with demented fervor. It struck the ground as if it was enraged; or like a child throwing a tantrum. The instrument turned the ground into crumbling bits of stone and with a last huff, the creature turned around and walked away.

When the footsteps and metal grinding faded, a spot on the roof of the labyrinth distorted and two purple lights appeared, followed by the rest of the writhing mask and the hooded coat. In the span of a few seconds, Rakna had reappeared out of nowhere whilst hanging to the roof with his claws pierced into the stone.

❮ ◈ ❯

Fear Resistance has Ascended!

Fear Resistance has leveled up!

❮ ◈ ❯

He exhaled shakily and soundlessly landed in front of the mess of blood and flesh. His claws were retracted and Andante began to fix the holes that had been made to accommodate them. Rakna took his mask off and gasped. He rubbed his face and then combed his hair.

‘That’s… probably… how Despair Aura feels like to others, huh?’

[Are you all right?]

“{Are you okay?}”

Alexa and Higure asked at the same time. Both of them had actually been panicked. They were not eager to think of what would have happened if he had been found by the monster.

‘Yeah…’ He mumbled and put his mask back on. ‘So, that’s how it is,’ he added as he pulled up the results of the Appraisal he had cast on the creature. He hadn’t worried about him being found out because of it since he had confirmed Absolution of Belphegor would conceal that as well.

❮ ◈ ❯

Name: ---

Age: 10 | Level: 300

Race: Nightmare Chimera

Titles: Guardian of Terror

Attributes:

STR: 300 | END: 300

SPD: 50 | DEX: 100

INT: 10 | LCK: 1

Description:

The boogie man of the labyrinth. If it catches you during its rounds, pray that it does not see you or your life will be forfeit.

❮ ◈ ❯

‘The reason why the cowards survive and the weak win… they hide,’ he said. ‘They hide and they play dead until they’re safe. That’s probably what that message meant. Shortly said; hold your breath if you want to live.’

“{It seems like it…}”

Rakna grunted very quietly as he stood up. His eyes turned golden again and he stared at the ground where the monster had left the trace of its weapon. He hadn’t noticed it previously because the labyrinth was very sturdy in itself and only a small scratch was made by the weapon.

‘If we follow the logic… avoiding the Guardian might lead me to the exit. Which means I have to find a path that doesn’t have this kind of mark,’ he thought. ‘But it’s easier said than done…’

“[Call of Hounds,]” he intoned and two Stone Wolves were summoned through the walls. Rakna ordered one of them to lead the way as he followed at least a turn behind with the other.

After a bit, he returned to the intersection from earlier and checked the marks on the ground while his hounds kept a lookout.

‘I can’t hear it… even earlier, it took me a lot of time considering how close that thing was,’ Rakna thought in passing. ‘Does the labyrinth have a passive effect hiding its presence?’ He questioned and found two paths that didn’t have a mark.

For all he knew, one of them could lead to a path connected with a dangerous zone, or both could be traps and he should retrace his steps back to the entrance of the labyrinth.

‘The most important thing here is that I don’t put myself in a dead-end… this is too dodgy. I’ll have to settle for an equally risky tactic with more escape possibilities,’ he decided and summoned a dozen more wolves. “Scatter,” he ordered and they separated to head in every path in groups.

Rakna closed his eyes and connected his senses to his wolves. He could feel their relative presence to him and after a while, two of the groups he had sent found a dead-end. Three others had once again separated to explore divergent paths, and the last two…

▅▃▃▃▅▃▃▂▃▅▅▅▂▃▂▃▅▃▂▂▅▃▂▁▁!!!

One wolf was suddenly destroyed and Rakna shivered. He connected himself to another wolf of that group, and he saw the chimera rush toward it and crush it with its hand. “Fuck,” he spat and ordered the last wolf to merge with the wall and track the Guardian as best as it could.

“Quick, quick…” He mumbled as he waited for the other wolves to find the exit. About two minutes later, he began to hear quickened footsteps coming from one of the paths and the wolf showed him a view of the monster nearing the intersection.

▅▃▅▂▃▂▃▅▃▃▂▅▃!

❮◈❯ Fear Resistance has leveled up! ❮◈❯

“{My heart can’t take this…}” Higure croaked out. “{Just run already!}”

‘Just a bit more,’ Rakna replied nervously as the stomps became increasingly louder. Then, right as the behemoth’s hoof was about to step into the intersection area, he spotted light through one of the wolves’ eyes and flash-stepped right into the correct path.

▂▂▅▃▂▁▂▂▅▃▂▁▂▂▅▃▂▁▁

The growls that resounded behind him were fortuitously tame. The creature didn’t seem to have seen him. He still ran as fast as he could, using Flash Step and Shadow Step as much as it allowed him to. He even deployed his wings in the middle of it and he finally reached the exit.

He collapsed next to it and sat against the wall to recover his breath. This was the first time he had felt so scared of something in his entire life. He took one out of his cigarettes and the moment he lit it, the item’s effects promptly applied. The passive intimidation of that chimera was washed off from him and he sighed in relief.

“Right… these things did do that, didn’t they?” He mumbled as he huffed a cloud of smoke. He got on his feet again and looked out the exit where a bright room with a pedestal was.

He looked at it for a moment and his expression under the mask went through a change. He looked back from where he came from and pondered something.

“{Rakna?}” The lioness raised her voice.

“Hey, Higure,” he said oddly calmly and pulled out a few things from his storage. “What do you say about… hunting the boogie man?”