by Fujino Omori
“Don’t let your guard down, Lido.”
“Yeah, I know! That reminds me. What happened to Fels? It’s been a while…”
The golden-feathered siren fluttered down beside the excited lizardman. They were among the strongest of the Xenos and, together with the gargoyle Gros, the oldest group. Their relationship was similar to the one among Finn, Riveria, and Gareth in Loki Familia .
“Moving alone. Fels mentioned discovering some kind of monster storage vault, but…” Rei continued in a lowered voice. “Fels said it would not be long and to search for a path up to the next floor in this area in the meantime.”
“Off planning some trick alone again, huh?! Can’t be helped, I guess!”
“Also, we’re allowed to go up to the thirteenth floor .”
They were currently on Knossos’s sixteenth floor, given permission to advance until right before the twelfth floor, where Aiz’s group had burst in. The lizardman warrior bared his fangs. It was a ferocious smile, though only a certain boy among the humans could recognize it as one.
“Lido…are you going ahead?”
“Wiene…”
A dragon girl had overheard their conversation, approaching them—the vouivre who Bell had protected to the end and who Aiz had let go.
“I want to go, too. To the place where the goddess and Bell and the others live…I want to protect it, too!”
The dragon girl thought of a certain childish goddess and her followers as her beautiful amber eyes overflowed with resolve. She was humanoid, but beneath her black robe was the body of a full-fledged dragon. The girl had particularly enhanced senses, even relative to monsters—second only to Rei’s echolocation when it came to sensing when something was off.
Wiene had volunteered for this dangerous mission herself. The girl who could do nothing as Bell protected her was nowhere to be seen. These monsters were just like people. They would fight for the sake of their bonds, for the things that were precious to them. Oddly, her figure was like a mirror image of Aiz once she hardened her resolve to battle.
“Wiene…All right, come! Together with the adventurers, we will protect Lady Hestia, too!”
“Yes!”
“Gros, we’ll leave this to you! We are going to search a wider area!”
Leaving the cleanup of the remaining vividly colored monsters to the gargoyle’s group, Lido, Wiene, and Rei moved out. The crimson stone in the vouivre’s forehead flashed as she put all her effort into returning the favor she owed to the people aboveground.
“—! She’s coming! ” Riveria bellowed.
Riveria had a magic circle extended on standby as she followed behind Aiz, who was racing around. She had been maintaining the large-scale extermination spell—Rea Laevateinn —making sure it was ready to go at any moment. The jade magic circle reaching out from her feet could identify all obstructions, including distinguishing between enemies and allies.
The strong reaction that touched the outer edge of the circle, approaching at extreme speed, was without a doubt that of the creature. As soon as Riveria unleashed her warning, the squads were visibly on edge. Aiz was running at full speed at the head of the group, opening her eyes wide, and all of a sudden, she slammed the brakes hard enough to skid against the stone flooring.
“Pull back! All the way to the room where Arcus and the others are waiting! Hurry!”
They had continued advancing all the way until then, but at Riveria’s order, they quickly started racing in the other direction. It was a complete retreat, like a wave pulling back into the sea. If Aiz was the radar to search out the location of the spirits and the lure to draw out Levis, then Riveria was the warning siren.
Though it gradually wore away at her Mind, she had kept the magic circle across an extraordinary range from the moment they entered Knossos. It was a measure taken to sense as soon as possible when their incomprehensibly powerful enemy was approaching, so as to quickly withdraw. That was why Riveria had been given command of that party—and why the city’s strongest mage had been sent along with Aiz.
“Aiz, don’t get ahead of yourself!”
“…I know!”
Having drawn out the creature, if Aiz tried to take her on one-on-one now, that would have been the worst possible strategy. At the very least, Finn would never allow it. Riveria ordered her to face Levis in the room where they had already positioned a fully armed and equipped squad.
Just this once, Aiz sealed off her fighting spirit, the strength she had gained while fighting the Warlord. Responding to Riveria, she followed the familia members.
Meanwhile, Riveria left the rear guard to Aiz now that the squad had flipped directions, and she raised the crystal in her hand to her mouth.
“Finn—hook, line, and sinker.”
“Good job, Riveria.”
The oculus delivered her voice to the supreme commander of the operation. The goal of Riveria’s diversionary squad was to catch the creature’s attention, lure her out, and draw her as far as possible from Finn and the others. Levis posed the greatest threat to them. With her position known, the biggest source of concern had been cleared up.
“Squads, increase your speed! This will be the decisive point of the operation—push now and don’t let up! ” echoed the prum’s order through the magic item.
After determining Levis’s location, every other squad picked up the pace. More precisely, they had been moving in ways that maintained an escape route, but now they discarded thoughts of retreat and devoted themselves to attacking. Bete’s squad howled, Gareth’s rampaged, Tione’s shouted, and the Xenos’s roared. Each party began devouring the labyrinth, moving deeper and more fiercely inside.
The operation switched gears.
There was Finn’s command, the ability of Aiz’s group to be a match for anyone, and Fels’s cheat-like magic item that shattered the barriers of space and time. All of them meshed together, allowing the plan to proceed without any hitches.
As one, the scattered adventurers charged forward with a battle cry, almost like a single organism, consuming the giant labyrinth.
CHAPTER 5
OBSESSION MANIFEST
“…” Barca, the descendant of the master architect Daedalus and the effective sovereign of Knossos, held his tongue.
…It’s too fast.
He was speaking of the rate at which the enemy was advancing, the number of floors that the adventurers had swept through.
It’d already been half a day since the allied familias had begun their operation—or maybe it would be more accurate to say it had been only half a day.
With Loki Familia leading the way, the adventurers raged forward as though a roaring fire, blazing through the labyrinth as they cleared floors. The fastest squad, the one with animal people, was already on the eighth , and every other group had made it to the seventh.
In all honesty, it was unimaginable. He might have been able to believe their feat if this had been in the Dungeon—explored to death and thoroughly mapped. But they were in Knossos, an unknown area to Loki Familia . And yet.
When Levis approached the Sword Princess’s party…all the other groups suddenly started moving differently. Even the monsters on the lowest floors.
There was no way for Barca to know that this was thanks to the magic items provided by Fels. The power to precisely convey information between distant locations was an enormous help for strategic purposes. For Braver to read the subtle changes on the battlefields and give precise orders to each squad in real time was a blow more powerful than any multitude of weapons. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the oculi were the final key to clearing Knossos.
The scenes playing out on the watery screen attested to the extent of the threat posed by these items.
They had lost count of the plants that had been destroyed. The production of new monsters could no longer keep up. The violas were being exterminated by teams of adventurers, and the vargs were being annihilated by the vanguards’ unrestrained charges. The remnant
s of the Evils were putting up a fight, but they could not hold out, causing a series of meaningless suicide bombs to go off everywhere.
Using all the information that they gleaned from the two excursions into Knossos before to their full extent, huh…?
Loki Familia was using everything in their arsenal of knowledge as a foundation for their attacks: from the first battle where they withdrew after sustaining casualties and the second attack where they managed to take Barca and the others by surprise. All of it.
While the tempestuous battle of first-tier adventurers had unfolded, the other familia members had made note of the routes taken, which set the course for this assault by illuminating the demons’ lair.
They’d managed to weaponize their rage at the loss of their comrades and their knowledge as adventurers, and they were looking to crush Knossos.
“I guess the thousand-year history of my ancestors can be overcome…”
He was being shown the difference between the Dungeon, which defied even the gods’ calculations, and Knossos, which was created by mortal hands.
Built by humans, it would inevitably produce some sort of regularity, some sort of order. The stone paving, the routes, the position of the doors—all had a definite intention behind them. And if the creator was a person and not a god, it could not be perfect. Barca felt like he had a small taste of the anguish that Daedalus had felt while pursuing the perfect chaos.
Loki Familia had closed in on that pattern during their previous two encounters with the labyrinth, boldly adapting to it while building up countermeasures.
Why should those who challenged the depths of the Dungeon, which exceeded fifty floors, find an eighteen-floor man-made area difficult?
Barca shuddered as the scenes reflected on the screen continued to disappear, a measure of the speed with which Loki Familia was advancing, destroying all the observational eyes as they went. In a detached way, he idly wondered if this was how rulers felt right before their castles fell.
“They’re pressing onto the eighth floor now!”
“What do we do?! What do we do now?!”
“At this rate, there’s no choice but for the leaders to go…!”
“…” Barca was silent in thought as he glanced around the labyrinth master’s room at the leaders yowling like rabid animals.
The prided stronghold of the Evils was being cleared out. There were those among the lawless villains who already recognized what was happening, starting to try to escape the labyrinth. It was still too early to draw a conclusion, but at this rate, if they did not play the ace up their sleeve and release the spirits, Knossos would fall.
Barca’s goal was not to join the God of Death’s believers in their fate. He would do whatever it took for the sake of his dearest wish. In which case, he was left with a certain option—
“Barca, dear.”
All of a sudden, Thanatos snaked his arm around Barca’s shoulders. He had silently walked up behind him at some point.
“Are you thinking of selling information on Knossos and siding with Loki Familia ?”
“…”
“Would you betray us…for the sake of protecting Knossos?” A smile loomed on the face beside him. The slender arm wrapped around his shoulders was serpentine.
The god had seen through Barca’s inner plan.
Barca wanted to finally fulfill Daedalus’s greatest wish: the completion of Knossos. If he could accomplish that, then there was no need for him to fixate on the Evils. He had been one of Thanatos’s followers until now, but that was only because it had been convenient for the purposes of expanding Knossos. Barca had no loyalty. All he had was an ancestral delusion that had been passed down for a thousand years.
It was to the point that he was willing to surrender and hand over their desired information if Loki Familia , who was allied behind the scenes with the Guild, was trying to eradicate all those who were looking to destroy the city.
“But you see, even if you sold us out, while it would let you live…I can’t imagine the Guild…that Ouranos…would allow any further expansion of Knossos. No way.”
“…”
“Because any area connecting to the Dungeon would be an obstacle to the peace in the city,” Thanatos continued, etching his dark warning into Barca’s heart, as if conferring on him a god’s divine revelation.
And his words found their mark.
Even if Knossos avoided destruction, no further construction would take place.
If there was another slipup, as with the Xenos incident, the monsters would be able to advance aboveground, and there was no way the Guild would allow any area connecting to the Dungeon to exist.
Barca glanced at the god who made no effort to look at him. The God of Death, androgynous and degenerate, continued to smile—in either scorn or affection for a foolish child. Thanatos slowly turned away from the scenes displayed on the screen to meet Barca’s gaze.
“Your desire can only be realized on our side. You knew that.”
“…”
“And besides, you aren’t an elf. Seeing Knossos to its completion will be impossible for you. You said so yourself. Or could it be that greed is rearing its ugly head?”
“…”
“If it can’t be accomplished by your hand, then…let’s try to remove as many hinderances for the sake of the next generation. By doing whatever it takes .”
There was a long silence. The words whispered in Barca’s ear were the simple truth.
“…Yes, I know.”
In the reflection of the god’s eyes, Barca saw himself nodding back expressionlessly. As Thanatos pushed Barca to throw in his lot with them, his eyes arched like a taut bow before he unwound the arm snaked around Barca’s shoulders, allowing him to walk out of the room.
“Baaaaarca. Is there anything you need help with?”
“Nothing. If I’m not here, you won’t be able to control the doors. I leave the commands to you,” Barca responded emotionlessly to the mirthful voice calling out behind him. His gait took on the quality of a wandering soul, causing the frantic familia members to stop and fearfully yield the way to him.
Barca had entirely understood Thanatos’s divine will and recognized what was being asked of him. And if Barca, who held the sovereign power over Knossos, was going to leave the labyrinth master’s room, where they operated the doors, then it could be for no other purpose than to stop the invaders—no matter the means or what it took .
“…”
He walked down a dark hall. His footsteps echoed in the ears of the man with the vacant expression. The inky blackness of the labyrinth ravished his thoughts, exposing his internal hesitation like never before.
—Barca Perdix had no memory of ever being attached to something.
In other words, though the years took their toll on his body, he was no different than an infant.
He had never gone aboveground. He had never been exposed to the light of the sun. He did not have normal morals or relations with gods or other people. He knew nothing of love or friendship, ideals or logic.
That was why he lacked emotions and always projected a blank expression.
That was the reason why he was not cognizant of morals, even now that he was aware of them intellectually.
Because of that, Barca could not totally grasp the boundary between self-awareness and the lack of it. Not that he needed that distinction to begin with. In fact, in order to fulfill Daedalus’s thousand-year delusion to complete Knossos, this excess functionality was something that needed to be stripped away.
Why…am I replaying the moment I became who I am now…?
It was a scene that Barca could see in a dreamish, illusionary state. The memory of his origin always began with the sound of water.
The water roared, breaking. Barca had been born into this world in the dark labyrinth, bloody body coming out from the womb of the person he called his mother.
With his first wail, the new life was thrust before an open book: Daedalu
s’s Notebook. The blueprints to Knossos were inscribed in it.
“ ”
The baby ceased his sobs, frozen in place with his left eye snapped open wide.
Even though it could not fully observe its surroundings, this eye, inscribed with the symbol D , could see that notebook.
“Burn it into that eye! From now on, you will inherit Daedalus’s wish! You shall become the next Perdix!”
Perdix. The next manifestation of their ancestor.
The elderly man with the title of Father had wept tears of blood from his veiny eyes, spittle flying from his black-stained teeth, bellowing. His face was etched with obsession as he shouted those words at the living being who hadn’t yet been given the name Barca. While the woman suffered, the father gazed at the child with eyes of hatred and emptiness.
Of course, Barca was not troubled by it.
Barca had been cursed moments after his birth. His destiny had been swindled from him by that damn notebook. By the fate of his lineage, an innocent infant had turned into a prisoner of Daedalus in the first minute of his life.
There’s no mistake—not now or in the future.
From that point on, he had continued as a prisoner in service of the labyrinth: chipping away at the stone face even as his nails tore off. Continuing to expand the labyrinth until he was on the brink of starving to death. Capturing women and forcibly breeding with them.
When those of his family who could not bear the destiny carried by the descendants of Daedalus killed themselves, he carved out their eyes to create new keys.
He was inorganic, beastly, without even the minimal requirement that made a human being. And Barca devoted all his activity to Knossos. In the course of that, exchanging a pledge with a god to receive a Blessing was a natural result.
“—You have a monster in your heart, Barca.
“—A monster: cruel, unsightly, and pure.”
When he became a follower of the God of Death, Thanatos had said that of him.
Barca thought nothing of it.
Out of necessity, he’d developed the ability Enigma. Out of necessity, he’d become a hexer, forged those repulsive cursed weapons, mass-produced them. Out of necessity, he’d slaughtered people and monsters.