Chapter 141

Despite their intense nervousness, nothing happened by the time they reached the top of the incline. Everyone stared back down the slope they had just climbed with hollow expressions.

The area beyond the climb was quite different from the other side. The path unfolding before them wasn’t a single track with giant pillars stretching to an invisible ceiling; it was a labyrinth. The only similarity was that the maze walls also extended all the way up to that same unseen height.

Just as they were about to enter the maze, thinking they were in for quite a struggle, they spotted a clearing to the right of the entrance. Stepping inside, they found a spring, a campfire, and fruit-bearing trees.

It was a relief, considering their status gauges were hitting rock bottom. They sated their hunger and thirst with the fruit and spring water before huddling around the campfire.

“Don’t they say you can escape a maze by just keeping your right hand on the wall?”

Father nodded at Theo’s question.

“Yeah, that’s right. I’ve heard that too. I don’t remember if it was the left hand or the right hand, though.”

“If that method works, we won’t have to worry about getting lost, right?”

Blaine asked hopefully, but everyone else’s reaction was lukewarm. They had already experienced firsthand that nothing here was easy. Amidst low sighs, Noquia—who had been poking at the campfire—tossed the twig she was using as a poker into the flames and spoke with an air of resignation.

“That’s just wishful thinking…. There’s no way those developer bastards made it that simple.”

Once they had rested enough, they dusted themselves off and headed to the maze entrance. They extended their right hands, pressed them against the wall, and began to walk.

The interior of the maze was a bizarre sight. There were windows set into walls that looked at least five meters high, while other endless stretches of wall were completely draped in vines. Sunlight streamed in from unknown sources, and footbridges connecting the walls occasionally passed overhead.

Even while keeping her hand on the wall, Father peered upward and muttered.

“It’d be great if we could just cheese it by climbing on top of the walls.”

At Father’s words, everyone looked toward the ceiling. Certainly, if the walls had been lower, they would have tried to travel along the top. They wouldn’t have gotten lost, and the exit would have been in plain sight.

As they walked along grumbling together, they approached a corner where a rhythmic shing, shing sound began to echo. It sounded like something spinning at high speed.

They halted before the corner and peeked around to investigate. They quickly discovered the source of the noise.

Several sharp saw blades were spinning rapidly, traveling along both walls. The gruesome sight left everyone speechless.

“So, what, they just want us to die?”

Holanghee muttered in disbelief. The blades were moving so fast that dodging them seemed impossible. Just as they were wondering if this was even meant to be beatable, Father noticed something and pointed.

“Hey, the height of those blades only goes up to about waist level, doesn’t it? We could probably just crawl under them.”

Just as Father said, the blades were set at an awkward height. Standing up would mean certain death, but at that height, crawling on their bellies would keep them perfectly safe. The other blades were simply moving back and forth at the same level.

“It’s worth a shot.”

Noquia made a show of rolling up her sleeves and took the lead. Wary of potential traps on the floor, she cautiously tapped the ground a few times with her foot. When nothing happened, she dropped down and began to crawl forward. The sound of the blades whizzing past just above her head sent chills down her spine, but her head remained firmly attached to her shoulders.

Following Noquia’s lead, the others dropped down and trailed behind her. However, Blaine—with his tall height and large build—was so close to the blades even while prone that he practically had to do a low-profile commando crawl to get through.

Everyone thought things would go smoothly if they just kept this up. Then, as if to mock that thought, Noquia spotted a saw blade rapidly approaching at a much lower height.

“Ah, dammit!”

Noquia screamed. Panicked and trapped with nowhere to go, Noquia flailed and accidentally pressed down on a section of the floor. Immediately, a section of the adjacent wall opened up, revealing a space just large enough for a single person to huddle inside.

Noquia scrambled into the alcove and curled up.

Whoa, I’m alive! she thought, but what good was surviving alone?

By the time she regained her senses, they were back at the very beginning.

As they stood in the middle of the jungle once more, an unidentified bird flew overhead, letting out a trilling cry. It sounded exactly as if it were laughing at them.

By the time the bird’s cry faded like an echo, Noquia was tearing at her hair and pacing wildly. “Are you kidding me! This is driving me crazy! How are we supposed to get all the way back there again!”

Just then, Father roughly shoved the frantic Noquia aside and asked abruptly.

“Hey, why did we die, anyway?”

Theo and Blaine also looked at Noquia and Holanghee with confused faces. Since those two were in the lead, they ought to know the reason.

Noquia, still clutching her hair, glanced at Holanghee. However, Holanghee just stood there with a deeply grimacing face, clutching her neck as if in pain. Swallowing a sigh at her own disheveled state, Noquia spoke.

“A saw blade came from the front… a low-profile one. I pressed something on the floor and a hiding spot opened up, but it was only big enough for one person….”

As Noquia’s voice trailed off, she looked at Holanghee. It seemed that while Noquia had hidden, Holanghee had been struck by the blade. Finally understanding the situation, Father nodded.

“So we weren’t supposed to go through there together….”

Holanghee, finally taking her hands away from her neck, nodded in agreement.

“Yeah. We had to go one by one.”

A collective sigh erupted. Everyone glared at the massive ruins towering before them, then shook their heads and began to climb the stairs.

“When are we ever going to get back there?”

“I just want to throw in the towel and go home to rest.”

Complaints and grumbles echoed continuously, though it was impossible to tell who they were coming from.

Having returned to the saw blade trap, they took the lesson from their first failure to heart and began to crawl through one by one. They agreed to shout a signal once they reached the safe zone.

In this manner, everyone managed to reach safety without further incident and finally straightened their backs.

“I’m mentally exhausted,” Theo muttered in a weary voice, stretching his cramped spine. It wasn’t just mental fatigue; his fatigue gauge was completely full.

“Let’s take a nap here before we move on.”

Theo built a campfire using twigs and matches while the others unrolled their sleeping bags and lay down. He craved a real sleep—not just closing and opening his eyes for a moment—but the system allowed for no such luxury.

Once their fatigue gauges were replenished, they packed up their sleeping bags and began to navigate the maze once more. They sipped from their canteens as they pushed through several near-death crises, repeating the cycle of dying and respawning until they finally discovered a glowing door set high up on a daunting wall.

“Is that… a treasure room?” Theo muttered as if possessed.

Everyone stood on their tiptoes or craned their necks to get a better look. They stared upward for so long that their necks began to ache.

Father massaged the back of her neck and looked down, speaking in disbelief.

“I mean, even if that really is a treasure room, how are we supposed to get in?”

The height looked to be at least 10m. Jumping was out of the question, and there were no visible handholds to climb. Just as everyone’s mood was turning sour at the sight of the “pie in the sky”, Holanghee spoke up.

“Let’s give each other piggybacks. We can stand on each other’s shoulders and stack up until we reach the top.”

“Piggybacks?”

“Yeah. If we stack all of us in a line, wouldn’t the person at the very top be able to reach it with a decent jump?”

At Holanghee’s hopeful suggestion, everyone looked back at the treasure room. Noquia shaded her eyes with her hand, gauging the height before speaking.

“Forget piggybacks; I think we’d barely reach it even if we stood directly on each other’s shoulders.”

“Whatever it takes, let’s just try it!”

Since there were no other options and the plan wasn’t half bad, they decided to go for it. To start, Blaine and Theo—the tallest among the five—were assigned to the bottom layer. The problem was that Theo was incredibly reluctant to step on Blaine’s shoulders.

“I can’t do it. How am I supposed to step on him?”

Blaine might have been tall and large, but in Theo’s mind, the equation was firmly set: Blaine was still just a kid.

“Good grief, why can’t you? Just step up and stand there!” Noquia retorted, find it absurd.

Theo replied even more incredulously, “He’s a child.”

“You’re really doing too much. Fine, then step on me! I’m a ‘grown-up,’ so I’ll stand at the very bottom!”

“Fine, you do it.”

“What, you punk?”

“You said you’d do it!”

“You do it! I’m gonna step on you!”

The two of them began to bicker and scuffle.

“Will he wear out if I step on him? Will he? Huh?”

“He’ll wear out! He’ll definitely wear out!”

Clicking her tongue at the unsightly and childish argument, Father stepped in to break them up.

“Ugh, you lunatics, seriously—stop messing around! I’ll just stand on top of Blaine! I’ll do it!”

It seemed the childish debate and the seating chart would finally end with that clear declaration. However, Blaine approached Theo with troubled brows and spoke in a whiny tone.

“Hyung… I want to be stepped on by you….”

He surely didn’t mean it that way, but the phrasing sounded somewhat dangerous and scandalous, causing Theo to freeze on the spot. As Theo stood there breaking into a cold sweat, unsure of what to say or how to react, Blaine added with a shy blush:

“I’d really like it if Hyung were the one to step on me.”

Father, Holanghee, and Noquia, who had been silently watching this baffling “romance,” wore lewd expressions and began to whisper loudly. “Oh my, oh my….”