by Aneko Yusagi
“And no one has ever escaped?”
“Right. But I have heard of monsters coming out of the entrance of the labyrinth.”
“Hold up—that means the monsters were able to get out!”
“I don’t understand it. But from what I’ve seen, giant dragons and unusual magical monsters were thought to have come from the labyrinth.”
Huh?
There was a hint in there somewhere.
Were we really supposed to believe that giant monsters solved the labyrinth’s riddles and were able to escape?
“Could exits occasionally appear in random places maybe?”
“I guess they could. But how would you ever find them?”
Good question. You can’t wait around expecting an accident. That was just idiocy.
But why would only large monsters find their way out? There had to be a reason.
“So have you ever seen any of these monsters?”
“I’ve seen something like them.”
So how were they getting out?
Just a second—she said the labyrinth was formed when the wizard’s magic went wild and stitched together a bunch of different spaces, right?
“Could those monsters...”
“You have an idea?”
“Just a hunch. What if a really large monster wandered into a small squeezed space?”
“Uh-huh.”
“If the monster had too much mass for the space itself to contain, then... maybe they get popped out?”
I’d played a game like that once, a long time ago.
In the game, you collected furniture and used it to furnish a house. But if you put too much heavy furniture on the second floor, the game would warn you and then the furniture would break through the floor.
This place was complicated; there were so many spaces stacked and connected that the exit had disappeared.
So what would happen if a monster living in a small space grew too large for that space to contain it? Would it stretch the limits of the space and eventually get ejected out of the labyrinth?
“It’s not a bad idea, but what are you going to do? Raise a giant monster from the egg?”
It was going to take some creative thinking.
It would be easier if I could control a monster, like I could with Filo. But I didn’t know if it was even possible to add monsters to your party here.
Kizuna’s question was an answer itself.
If we found an egg, it would still take a long time to raise the monster. And I wasn’t able to invite an already grown monster into my party, either.
“It won’t work.”
“Just trying it would be a ton of work.”
We could keep the idea as a last resort option.
Damn it... I was all out of ideas.
And I didn’t want to waste any more time in this damn labyrinth!
Ost sacrificed herself to make this path for us. I had to find Kyo and make him pay for what he’d done!
Maybe it was more realistic to take the path that Kizuna had found. We didn’t have any other options, anyway, so I started to fold up the Barbarian Armor, and the Filo kigurumi, so they’d be easier to carry.
Then I saw something. There was something in the pocket of the Barbarian Armor.
I’d forgotten all about it. Actually, I’d put it there just in case I ever needed it.
And now I’d found it.
Then I looked through the drop items I had stored inside my shield.
“Hey, Kizuna.”
“What?”
I smiled.
“I think I have an idea.”
Chapter Two: Escape
“And this is the smallest space around, right?”
Kizuna led us to a small room in the labyrinthine structure.
We ran into a few monsters on the way, but we followed Kizuna at a distance, so she was able to take care of the monsters before they could pose a threat to Rishia and me.
The room she led us to was small. Its few seats and small altar gave it a church-like atmosphere. Inside, a large suit of armor paced back and forth like it was on patrol, clattering and crashing the whole time.
“As far as I know, this is the smallest room in the labyrinth. I can’t think of a smaller one.”
“Hm.”
The stained glass was broken, and I could see darkness outside. I wasn’t sure if I was looking at the night sky or not.
“Can you see outside through that?”
“I think I saw some dark clouds and a forested area. The spaces aren’t connected naturally, so you can’t actually reach that place. Judging from the look of the walls and floor, I think we are underground.”
Every time I had an idea, a new obstacle popped up to stop me.
“Hey, I did what you told me, but do you really think it will work?”
Since I was such a low level, I didn’t have enough magic power to do it myself. I had to ask Kizuna, who was a much higher level than I was, to do it instead.
I wasn’t sure it would work, but when she added it to her weapon, the same skill unlocked, which struck me as a good sign.
“It’s really interesting. Does it work like a shikigami?”
“Don’t get too excited. I don’t have very much left,” I said, making sure she understood before turning it over a few times in my hands and finally giving it to her.
“I don’t know if it will work, but there’s no harm in trying.”
I ducked through the archway that connected the spaces and aimed for the back of the room. Then I tossed the bioplant seed. Luckily it landed on the ground, between two split stones near the altar, and I saw it take root in the dirt there.
The suit of armor noticed us and started clattering in our direction, but we slipped out of the archway before it could catch us. According to Kizuna, the monsters couldn’t follow us through the archways.
“Did you do it?”
“Yeah. It took root and started growing really quickly.”
Standing on the other side of the archway from the church, I noticed a snapping, crackling sound. It looked like the plant had shot straight through the suit of armor.
It got worse—the plant grew inside of the suit and started to control it.
“Uh-oh. What are those seeds doing?”
“Making monsters.”
The suit started to prowl around the room, but the plant must not have had complete control over it yet, because the movement was tilted and strange.
I was watching the suit of armor when I started to hear a loud rumbling. Looking up, I saw that the archway itself was shaking, and sparks were flying out of it.
“You want to go through that? Doesn’t it look dangerous?”
“I know how you feel, but have you ever seen an archway do this?”
“No,” Kizuna said, smiling. She must have been thrilled at the chance to escape her boring life inside the labyrinth.
“Feh...”
“Rishia, stop freaking out and use your head.”
“Oh... Okay...”
Ugh... Without Raphtalia around, I had to depend on Rishia to get experience points. It was almost too much to bear. I couldn’t get experience by fighting with Kizuna, because she was one of the four holy heroes.
“He who dares wins! Let’s go!”
“I’ll go first. You two follow me.”
“Got it.”
“Here I go!” Kizuna shouted as she ran to the arch and swung the lure of her fishing rod at the rampaging suit of armor. A second later, she ran her tuna knife through the monster with ease. It clattered loudly to the floor.
It was amazing... or it looked amazing. I didn’t actually know how strong the monster was.
We ran through the sparking archway and found the church bursting at the seams with the rapidly growing bioplant. The whole space itself began shaking. The bioplant started to swirl and spin like a vortex, like it was being sucked into another place. Then the whole space started shaking violently, like an earthquake.
The black clouds started to suck in the walls of the room, and everything except for the area around the bioplant began to vanish.
“That hole! Let’s go through it!” Kizuna shouted while she sliced through the bioplant vines that whipped and snapped at us.
“Okay!”
“Wah!”
“Be careful!” I grabbed Rishia by the hand and pulled her after me as I ran for the hole, jumping and bounding over writhing bioplant vines along the way. A large one whipped in front of me, but I jumped onto it, used it as a springboard, and jumped through the hole.
It reminded me of what happened when I used Portal Shield. The scenery around us changed in an instant. There was a split second when I could see the church crumbling far off in the distance.
Then my field of view was filled with blue sky... and I realized I was falling.
Far below I saw a building that looked like a Shinto shrine set on manicured grounds. I couldn’t tell how far down it was, but I knew it was far enough that the impact would kill me.
“Air Strike Shield!”
I had very little SP, but there was just enough to use Air Strike Shield to make a landing pad. The shield wasn’t very large, but it was big enough to stop my fall.
“Feh!”
Rishia was hanging off the side of the shield by her fingertips.
Not to be the bearer of bad news, but the shield wasn’t going to last very long, anyway—and I didn’t have enough SP to use the skill again.
“This shield is about to disappear...”
“Naofumi.”
Kizuna held her hand out from her little space on the floating shield.
“You have an idea?”
She nodded, so I grabbed Rishia and took Kizuna’s hands.
Then Kizuna swung her fishing rod over her head and cast the lure far down to the shrine, where it hooked onto the roof. There was a high-pitched whir as the reel activated, and the whole shield lurched down toward the building.
“The shield is going to disappear. There’s no time.”
“We’re going to make it.”
The shield vanished, and I felt my stomach turn as we began falling again. The ground rushed up at us, but then I felt a strong jerk.
We’d stopped in the air, hanging by a thread, a mere two meters off of the ground.
“Looks like we made it.”
“Guess so.”
We jumped down and took in our new surroundings.
I looked at the building that looked like a Shinto shrine. We seemed to be on its manicured property. Then I saw the bioplant that had fallen with us. It was still growing quickly.
What should we do about that?
I passed some of the weed killer I’d made earlier to Kizuna.
“That thing is dangerous. If we don’t kill it now, it’ll destroy this whole place.”
“Looks that way. You said you increased its mutation and growth abilities? We better get rid of it now.”
Kizuna kept her distance from the approaching bioplant while she jumped in circles around it, scattering weed killer over its writhing body the whole time.
When I made the seeds, I gave them very weak immune systems, so the bioplant died quickly. I’d have to be careful. Anything left alive that still touched the dirt could easily spawn another main body.
The bioplant shriveled up and died, shooting a bunch of fresh seeds at us when it did.
I picked them all up, just to be safe.
“So? Think we made it out?”
Kizuna jumped when I spoke. She must have been zoning out. Then, when she realized where she was, a huge grin spread over her face and she started to jump up and down.
“Yes! We’re out! We’re finally out! This is it! This is a different world for sure!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Thank you! Thank you! Oh! I can’t believe it! I don’t have to be alone anymore!”
I couldn’t blame her for being excited, especially considering how many years she’d been locked in that labyrinth.
I had to start figuring out what to do next. My level hadn’t changed—it was just as low as it had been. I checked the hourglass icon in my menu. Once again, it displayed the time left until the next wave, and it was counting down.
There was no doubt about it. We were out of the labyrinth.
“So where are we?”
It looked like a shrine enclosed with a low wall. The entrance to the shrine itself seemed to be locked, and we weren’t able to see inside.
As for the wall, it looked like it was made of wood, but for a wooden wall it looked very tough and imposing. The gate was closed tightly. Even though the wall looked pretty tall, I figured I could probably think of a way over it.
Kizuna must have been thinking the same thing. She swung her fishing rod and caught the lure on the top edge of the wall. “You can go first,” she said.
“Are there guards or anything?”
“It’s the entrance to an inescapable labyrinth. Why would anyone want to get near it?”
“There could be monsters that escaped?”
“That hardly ever happens. I’m pretty sure it’s safe. Actually, it’s probably more dangerous to keep standing here.”
She had a point.
“Rishia, stick with us, okay?”
“Alright, what should we do with our belongings?”
That’s right. Between Kizuna’s things and our equipment, we had quite a bit of stuff with us. It would be hard to climb a wall with all of it on our backs.
“I’ll bring it all. Hurry up and climb,” Kizuna said.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s fine.”
She insisted, so I climbed up the wall first. When I got to the top, I looked back down.
It was a very tall wall. It must have been four meters off of the ground. Still, it wasn’t so tall that you couldn’t get down if you hung and dropped.
“You’re next, Kizuna.”
“Okay, I’m coming up—move over and make space.”
I did as she said, and she flipped the reel on her fishing rod. The reel whirred as it effortlessly carried her up to the top.
I was starting to like that fishing rod of hers. Then again, I had the Rope Shield, and I was pretty sure that I could do something similar with it.
“Alright! Let’s get out of here!”
“Yeah, before anyone comes to check on the place.”
“We... We’re running away?”
“Of course we are! This place is a labyrinth... a prison!”
As far as anyone that was associated with the labyrinth was concerned, we were their prisoners—and we’d basically just pulled off a shocking prison break.
We jumped down from the wall and cautiously left the grounds.
Chapter Three: The Unknown World
We ran through the forest, keeping an eye out for any trouble the whole time, and then we came across a road. We started to let our guard down a little bit, figuring that we were far enough away from the shrine.
“So? What’s next?”
“What do you mean?”
“We only teamed up because of the circumstances, right? So what do you want to do now? Split up?”
“Why would we do that?” Kizuna asked, apparently confused by the suggestion.
“Feh... Naofumi? We should stay with Kizuna. It’s dangerous out here.”
It was probably the best way to avoid trouble. But we had only known her for a little while, and she herself said that she was friends with Glass. So I had to be sure.
“Well, if I don’t make sure you’re on our side, you might lead us straight to the altar.”
“You really aren’t very trusting, are you? Besides, if you’re working with Glass then I’d have no reason to challenge you. Besides, I’m not on very good terms with this country, so I’d rather not travel alone. I’d really prefer if we stuck together for now.”
“Hm...”
I didn’t really understand the particulars of her situation, but
she said she didn’t want to be alone.
“Crossing the border may prove difficult.”
“Can’t you use a teleportation skill?”
Hey, there’s an idea. I decided to check out my Portal Shield skill.
I called up the list of saved locations, but it was empty.
I guess you had to start over when you went to a new world. The skill itself was still available, so maybe...
I looked in the help menu but couldn’t find any useful information.
I guess the only way back to my world was to wait for the next wave to come.
“There are limits on what I can do. To go anywhere with it, we’re going to have to get there first. Our skills might work differently.”
“I guess so. Mine is called Return Transcript. But you need a tool to make it work, and I can’t use it in this country.”
“Mine is called Portal Shield. I can save three places that I’ve already been to, and then I can teleport to them whenever I want.”
“How convenient.”
“But right now, it looks like all the places I saved are gone. It must have something to do with the distance to the destination.”
“I get it. Sounds like a great skill—but you still can’t use it,” Kizuna said as she brushed dust off of her haori. “We have a couple of options. One of them is that we could head for the border. That way we can get to a country that is safer than this one.”
A border crossing... I hadn’t ever managed to do that successfully. When Melromarc had declared me a wanted criminal, they had deployed a bunch of troops, not to mention the other three heroes, to the border to keep me from getting across it.
“But we’d have to get through a few checkpoints. We might be able to buy our way through, but then we won’t have enough money for the journey.”
“You mean we can bribe our way out?”
“If you buy travel passes, then yes. I’ve only heard of it through the grapevine, but I hear it’s like Edo-period Japan. It’s easy to cross into the capital, but they make it hard to leave.”
Judging from the way that Kizuna and Glass dressed, I was starting to think that this world had a definite Japanese aesthetic. But then again, L’Arc and Therese didn’t dress the same way, so I couldn’t say for sure.
