Chapter 188

“Th-Imperial gold coins? And this massive of a crowd?”

“Master desires for you and the adventurers gathered here to testify. And that pile of gold coins is the ‘expense’ provided to you for that purpose.”

“……!!!”

“As long as Master’s orders are faithfully executed, what you do with that pouch of gold coins is entirely up to you.”

The terror lingering in her eyes was instantly swept away by greed.

“I-I will make sure it happens no matter what! I hold a fairly influential position around here, so it won’t be that difficult!”

The maid gave a nod.

“Good. You may go now.”

However… perhaps she had gotten a bit too excited.

As she picked herself up while cradling the gold coins, she suddenly asked the black-haired man a question she really shouldn’t have.

“Um… young master.”

“Mmm?”

“W-What happens if… by some chance, I fail to carry out your request?”

The black-haired man tilted his head slightly, then scratched his cheek with an awkward smile.

“Do you truly wish to know?”

“Uh… yes.”

“Well, if you insist.”

Thuuuuud…

The next instant, something invisible slammed down as if stamping her into the dirt.

“……!!!!!!”

It felt as though someone had tightly seized her heart, making it impossible to breathe.

“Gah…!”

No, was it her lungs that were seized? Yes. If it had been her heart, it wouldn’t be violently leaping out of her chest like this.

Thud.

Ultimately, her legs gave out, and she collapsed in a heap.

Lying flat on the ground, she gasped for air and clutched her chest with all her might.

‘Gasp, gasp, pant… W-What is this? Murderous intent? Pressure? Carisma?’

Desperate not to die like this, she painfully forced her head up to beg for mercy, only to find him looking down at her with a bone-chilling gaze.

It was a look she had never received once in her entire life—as if he were staring at a mere bug—and it left her mind completely bleached white.

“I don’t particularly enjoy being inconvenienced. …I trust you will handle it well.”

“Y-Yes, sir…! S-So please stop…”

And a moment later.

The pressure crushing her vanished as if it had all been a lie. By the time Vivisha, who had remained curled up for a good while, finally managed to push herself off the ground—

“Ah…”

—He had already vanished from sight.

While she had been rolling around out of her wits, he must have entered the labyrinth with those women.

Vivisha bit her lip forcefully, trying to calm her still-pounding heart.

Somehow… she felt as if she had just glimpsed the reason why a crowd of women that you might only see once in a million years served him as a collective unit.

“…Shit. He’s so damn cool.”

Kate grumbled as she guided them through the 1st floor of the labyrinth.

“Ugh. I don’t even know anymore. How do you even plan to clean up this aftermath?”

“What’s there to worry about? There are so many eyewitnesses who can testify to our legitimate self-defense.”

“I told you, legitimate self-defense isn’t the problem! Marquis Kesra is the problem. Marquis Kesra! The ruler of this marquisate, or rather, the marquisdom!”

At her words, the rest of the party let out faint snickers and giggles.

Kate looked thoroughly bewildered by the bizarre atmosphere.

“What? Why is everyone laughing?”

“Ah, don’t pay it any mind. More importantly, you said he’s a sixth cousin, right? Then it’s nothing major, really.”

“Sigh. I’m telling you it is major! Of course, the Marquis probably doesn’t even know Gedra’s face. But the issue is the literal fact that ‘a relative of the Marquis was murdered by someone.’ It means the Marquis has to take action strictly to save face. Do you honestly think the guild turned a blind eye because we were terrified of Gedra?”

“Ah, that’s fine too. We can just use the Countdom as a shield.”

“The Countdom? …Do you mean the Countdom established by the Sword Master, Count Carmen?”

“Is there any other Countdom nearby?”

“…And how exactly does that solve this?”

“It’s simple. Kelly here belongs to the Countdom. To be precise, she is the hidden right-hand woman of Count Carmen.”

Kelly’s eyes widened into perfect circles at my words.

“I am? Since when was I that Carmen bitch’s right-hand woman?”

“Right now. From the exact split second I mouthed it.”

“…Aha.”

“What on earth are you two mouthing about? She just became a right-hand woman?”

“It’s nothing. Just internal business.”

“…Whatever. Keeping secrets.”

I flashed an awkward smile toward the grumbling receptionist and carried on with my explanation.

“At any rate, if we frame it that way, we no longer need to take the Marquis’s face into account. Count Carmen is someone whom he must treat as an equal… well, if not an equal, at least someone whose face prevents him from throwing a tantrum over mere prestige.”

In truth, the power gap between the marquisate—or rather, the marquisdom—and the Countdom was still night and day.

With the tacit approval of the Baran Empire, the Countdom was expanding its territory at a terrifying pace by absorbing surrounding estates… but even so, it couldn’t leap over a legacy of nearly 300 years in such a short timeline.

Even so, the reason Marquis Kesra couldn’t outright ignore Carmen was that the Baran Empire was actively pushing the Countdom as a counterweight to the marquisdom.
Strictly saying, it was because I—or rather, Grand Master Gildong, no, Go Geom-shin—had instructed them to do so, but that was beside the point.

“To be precise, instead of the narrative being ‘How dare a trashy Adventurer A murder my relative?! Arrogant fool!’ it shifts to ‘Count Carmen’s right-hand woman clashed with my sixth cousin? He’s dead? Why? What transpired?’”

“From that exact moment, it becomes a question of whose fault was greater.”

“And no matter how grand a Marquis he may be, he can’t possibly claim that a sixth cousin whose face he doesn’t even know is more precious than the White King of Carmen’s right-hand woman. Above all, since that side picked the fight, it’s a closed case.”

“…But that bastard is dead, isn’t he?”

“Even taking that into account, it’s correct to assume the scales still tip heavily toward the White King. A sixth cousin? A Marquis likely has hundreds of them. Honestly, it’s embarrassing to even classify them as a relative, isn’t it?”

“Indeed… th-that is true.”

Exactly. I didn’t cause a scene strictly out of a reckless ‘Eh, if things go south, I’ll just beat everyone to death…’ mindset.

…Well, maybe a tiny inkling of that was there, but regardless, it wasn’t the main reason.

‘If worst comes to worst, I can just throw on the shell of Grand Master Gildong and shove the Dukedom of Drygon that I received from the Imperial Emperor in his face. In terms of status, I don’t lag behind Marquis Kesra anymore.’

Furthermore, the Dukedom of Drygon I received wasn’t just an honorary title in name only, but a proper landed fief.

Well, it was an honorary title at first, but while unintentionally riding the line between the Imperial Capital faction and the autonomy faction, I ended up receiving territory from both sides.

Apparently, that was the only way both factions could rest easy.

‘Granted, it’s nothing but a wasteland devoid of a single person… but the mere fact that a fief exists is what’s critical.’

“Though to be completely frank, I figure there wouldn’t be a major issue even if I just went boom-slam and leveled everything… but doing that would make things exceptionally tedious.”

“Pardon? What did you just say…?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. I’m just saying it’s fine.”

Kate let out a low sigh at my deeply confident explanation.

“…Well, you’re not one to mouth empty words… so if you say so, Sword God, I suppose it is. At any rate, we’ve arrived. Right ahead is the Teleportation Portal plaza.”

“The portals with fixed markers are installed every 5 floors from the 10th to the 30th floor, correct?”

“Yes. You’ll be heading to the 25th floor, right?”

“Mmm… no. Let’s start from the 20th floor for now.”

Guided by Kate, we took the teleportation gate from the 1st floor down to the 20th floor hallway village, then stepped directly into the 21st floor—the start of the deep zone.

Shia questioned from atop my shoulder.

“I believe you said the final floor they were spotted on was the 27th floor. As Kate suggested, wouldn’t it have been better to teleport directly to the 25th floor?”

“Just to be safe, I want to check from the upper sections first.”

“Do you intend to traverse every single floor, one by one, starting from the 21st? Won’t that take far too much time? Didn’t you mouth it yourself? That no matter how strong your avatar is, if too much time passes, there’s no telling what might transpire.”

“It won’t take nearly as much time as you think. As long as we are on the same floor, I can flawlessly sense my avatar’s presence.”

“Ah, I see. Meaning there is no necessity to execute a manual search.”

“Yeah. We just have to sprint straight down. Well, shall we slowly get moving?”

“““Ohhh~~!”””

How should I put it, traversing the labyrinth was smoothly executed to an absurd degree.

In the first place, there was absolutely no way things wouldn’t be smoothly executed. The floors around the 20th floor were zones that could be effortlessly traversed even by a Platinum grade party—meaning, a party consisting of three or four respectable Gold ranks and a couple of Platinum ranks (a Blaster or a Mage).

Yet into a place like that stepped one True Silver grade (Mithril) practitioner in the form of Disis (based on her current status), four individuals equivalent to quasi-True Silver grade (Sodin, Chel, Kelly, and Elizabeth), and two mature Platinum grade practitioners (Hest and Ailet)… so really, that says it all, doesn’t it?

“Why do you refrain from including yourself in the combat strength layout?”

Drooping her body downward from atop my shoulder, Shia questioned in a soft whisper.

“Me? Well, I left myself out because I’m off-the-charts. It constitutes an absolute rule breach if I draw my blade in a low-level zone of this caliber, doesn’t it?”

“Then what about this lady?”

“Combat strength aside, you hold absolutely zero intention of fighting anyway. Isn’t your singular objective strictly to stick tightly to my shoulder and enjoy the sequence of events as if watching a movie?”

“Well, that is indubitably true.”

And… sure enough, from that exact split second, our party began to sprint forward with the momentum of a literal bamboo-splitting torrent.

[21st Floor]

Our navigation system—or rather, our pathfinder, Kate—guided the way exactly like a machine.

“Go straight, turn left, go straight again, and at the four-way intersection, you just need to select the third path.”

By the way, if you’re wondering why the directions were delivered with such a lack of detail, it was because the party’s movement speed was just that exceptionally rapid.

Even though we were beating down every single entity that needed to be beaten down along the way, our pace was verging on the full-out sprint of a track-and-field athlete, so that says it all.

Right around then, Ailet, who had been keeping pace at the very rear by combining Flight and Psychokinesis, slightly knit her brows. It appeared that something had been detected by the trap-detection magic she was currently overseeing.

“It is a trap. Arrows, to be precise. Since they won’t be normal arrows, they are likely poison arrows or curse arrows.”

“Ignore it. We’ll just take it with our bodies and pass through.”

Swish, swish, swish, swish!

Clang, clang, clang!

While the pitch-black arrows were completely blocked by a physical barrier and a passive aura reminiscent of a steel fortress wall, bouncing away haphazardly, Sodin concurrently issued a warning.

“Calyntrax (Karaktis, labyrinth spiders). Twenty-two of them. They will pop out the exact moment we execute a left turn.”

“Kelly.”

“Yes, Orabeoni.”

“Clear them out before we clash.”

“Understood.”

Kelly accelerated, charging ahead entirely on her own. The exact split second she raised her twin halberds, her passive aura shifted over to the weapons, structuring a massive blaze of aura.

And then—

Craaaaaaaaash!!!

A colossal wave of aura detonated from the ground where the halberds collided. It surged through the labyrinth corridor, sweeping everything away exactly like a tidal wave.

That singular strike, which served as a literal textbook definition of excessive firepower, cleanly shattered not only the monsters we hadn’t even set eyes on yet but concurrently dismantled all the traps, fizzling out only after sprinting for close to 100 meters.

Keeping pace with Kelly as she retrieved her halberds, I smoothly patted her head continuous times.

“Refreshing. Splendid. Let’s carry on exactly like this.”

[22nd Floor]

“It’s a monst—”

“Clear it.”

“It’s a tra—”

“Shatter it.”

The party carried on with their sprint at a velocity that made one wonder if a runaway train would feel exactly like this.

“Gasp, pant… Right, left, left, enter the second corridor, and if you look at the left wall, there is a secret passage…”

Watching Kate, who was struggling to keep pace with the party sprinting for nearly two whole hours yet steadfastly refrained from saying a single complaint until the very end, I let out a low exclamation of admiration.

“Is it difficult for you?”

“Gasp, pant. A little bit? At any rate, everyone is genuinely magnificent. I held a decent amount of confidence in my own physical stamina as well… but those at Platinum grade and above truly belong to a different tier.”

“There is no necessity to push yourself. Shall we take a brief rest before proceeding?”

“No. Gasp… I am well aware that you are hurrying, so I cannot permit that. I am explicitly still fine for now.”

“Mmm… then shall I carry you on my back?”

“…Pardon?”

“Believe it or not, I happen to possess an absolute abundance of stamina. Carrying a single person like Manager Kate won’t impose much of a burden at all, you see.”

At that, a conflicted expression temporarily surfaced on Kate’s face, before she flushed slightly. She gave an awkward smile and answered.

“A-Ahem… W-Well, shall we? Then, if you’ll excuse me…”

The exact split second she attempted to hop onto my back while continuing to run—

Snap…!

A bone-chilling murderous intent swept through the labyrinth.

Sprinting at the vanguard to lead the party, I felt a shudder run down my spine from a murderous intent so intense it felt as though it would freeze me solid. I whipped my body around in surprise.

What was that? A monster? A beast?

However, the only things visible were my party members following directly behind me with perfectly bright, cheerful smiles on their faces, and Kate, who for some unknown reason had turned stark white and was sweating buckets.

“…Didn’t something explicitly just manifest just now?”

At my query, the party members chided me while maintaining their exact same smiling expressions.

“Eh?”

“No.”

“What are you on about?”

“Nothing.”

“There was nothing at all.”

“Isn’t it a mere misunderstanding?”

“Orabeoni is acting strange.”

“I-Is that so?”

“““““Yeah.”””””

“How bizarre. Was it a mere illusion? …At any rate, Manager Kate, are you not going to hop on?”

“Ah, th-that, well, yes, u-uh… I-I-I am perfectly fine.”

“Mmm? You do not look fine at all, though. You’ve grown multiple times more haggard in just a brief moment… Stop holding back and let me car—”

“Please save my life.”

“…Pardon?”

“Please save my life.”

Mmm… I suppose she must have come down with a rare disease where hopping onto someone’s back results in instant death.

Forty minutes later.

Riding on the back of the Saber-toothed Tiger thanks to Elizabeth’s courtesy, Kate signaled with her hand to bring the party to a halt.

“Mmm?”

“If you turn this next corner, a reasonably massive underground lake will surface. It’s a spot where water replenishment is achievable and monsters rarely manifest, so it is frequently utilized as a resting area, but…”

“Is that so? No wonder the air felt a bit humid… Then shall we rest there for about 30 minutes before moving on?”

“No, that’s not what I mean… As I just mouth-ed, because it serves semi-permanently as a resting area, there is an exceptionally high probability that we will cross paths with other parties if we head there.”

“Ah, is that so? But does that pose a problem?”

“Uh, well… because the beauty of the members here is what it is, if we cross paths like that, there is a high probability that trouble will break out, exactly like what transpired at the labyrinth entrance…”

“……?”

“…Of course, your party would never find themselves in any inkling of danger, Sword God, but if you despise being inconvenienced, taking a slight detour is concurrently…”

“……??”

“…Right, of course you would say that. Let’s proceed. I shall guide you.”

And just like that, after traversing a suddenly narrowed corridor for about three minutes, the view right ahead abruptly opened up, and a lake verging on 50 meters in diameter manifested before our eyes.

And occupying a spot on a sandy bank of the lake were three unfamiliar parties.

Those three parties, who explicitly did not look to be on particularly good terms with one another, had been taking a break with a moderate distance between them and their weapons drawn. The exact moment we suddenly appeared, their eyes widened to perfect circles.

“Huh?”

“Mmm?”

“Oh…?”

And completely as a matter of course, exclamations and gasps followed directly behind.

“Wow… holy shit.”

“…What on earth am I looking at right now? A dream?”

“No, why are such magnificent individuals present in a humble place like this…?”

…Turn your attention away, you bastards. Unless you wish to have the lid of your head cleanly shorn off like a certain rabbit mage from earlier, that is.