by Fujino Omori
All for the sake of Daedalus’s desperate wish.
And yet…I keep replaying the past…replaying Dix’s face.
Dix Perdix had been born later from the same womb as Barca, shown the notebook after establishing his own self, and suffered. Barca could not fathom his anguish. Obviously. He had not been equipped with the functions of sympathy or conjecture. But he viewed Dix as a menace for despising Knossos and hindering the completion of their greatest wish from time to time. How he loathed this obstacle.
Dix must have felt similarly toward Barca, who had become nothing more than a function for the purpose of expanding the labyrinth. The only reason they did not try to kill each other was for a mutual benefit. Ironically, that was their one and only fraternal feeling.
What’s this sensation?…Well, no matter.
Barca had no faith—no free will. He did not even have the capacity to wonder whether he was a puppet controlled by his blood and a notebook. There was his compulsive obsession, and that was it.
“…”
His sickly white skin was illuminated by the blue light from the magic-stone lamps set in the wall. Wandering down the passage like a lost soul, he approached a hidden room of his own creation, gripping a black notebook in his hand.
Daedalus’s Notebook.
He had retrieved the blueprint to Knossos without any strong emotions after Dix had been ruthlessly killed. After silently examining it, he pushed another item in a bag into his belt and hurried to where he was heading.
He arrived at a circular room, narrower than the labyrinth master’s room but of a substantial size. The ceiling was high and expansive like an auditorium. There were four entrances. As with the labyrinth master’s room, there was a pedestal in the center, which contained a large crimson orb that only descendants of Daedalus could operate.
“Dix…For it to come down to this. For me to rely on your resentment,” Barca muttered, murmuring the name of the deceased.
Before his eyes was a maneuvering mechanism. It was the same one that controlled the orichalcum doors, but this one would release the support pillars of the designated floor. The result was a total cave-in. After understanding Thanatos’s divine will, Barca was going to use it to collapse an entire floor to crush Loki Familia .
It was obviously not a functionality that was recorded in Daedalus’s Notebook, for none other than Dix had created that mechanism. His brother from a different father who had resented the notebook, cursed his fate, hated Knossos itself—the man whom Barca did not consider family. As his final rebellion against their ancestor, he had left this behind.
Dix longed to be freed from his cursed blood and dreamed of destroying Knossos itself to achieve his goal.
Barca stood before the destruction mechanism as those meaningless thoughts crossed his mind.
He palmed the notebook in his hands. Thumbing through the pages, he arrived at the operation instructions that Dix had scribbled in the margins.
Barca turned the crimson orb to the left a half spin and then two full rotations to the right. Finally, he pressed it, silently imagining the destruction. He dictated the collapse to happen on the eighth floor—the area that Loki Familia ’s allied forces were advancing through. With this, he would be able to eradicate the invaders.
“…”
After pressing the orb disinterestedly, Barca hesitated for a moment.
Even if it was just a single floor on a delusion passed down for a thousand years, its collapse would cause major damage to Knossos. If he did it, the labyrinth’s completion would recede beyond his life span, ensuring he would never be able to see through his ancestor’s wish.
Though he knew that he would never see the fruition of that obsession, there was a tiny bit of ego that had clung to that distant possibility.
This was the one and only emotion of the man who had never seen the light of day, who was a degenerate, who was sickly white, who did not have the ability to be excited by his emotions. This was his desire and wish. He was conflicted by that lingering attachment.
Ironically, that almost-human ego drew the fateful line between success and failure.
Wrenching open his lips, he started to chant, “Destructi—
“ Gh?!”
Shling! A sharp sound rang out in the room, which should have been empty. A beat too late, he heeded the warnings of his sixth sense and bent backward.
A moment later, something cut through the wind, whizzing through the air, drawing a line across Barca’s neck. Blood sprayed.
“Guh…?!”
Somehow managing to barely dodge it, Barca kicked the ground, trying to retreat in his wobbly state. Daedalus’s Notebook slipped from his hand to the ground. Barca could pick up a voice as his blood spurted out, staining his body and the floor.
“—Missed, huh?”
Before his wide crimson eyes, the base of the pedestal started to shimmer. A beautiful woman appeared from thin air, holding a black helmet in her left hand, speaking in a dignified voice.
“…Perseus?!”
A billowing white cloak. Aqua hair paired with silver glasses. Occupying the space before him was the human Asfi Al Andromeda.
“Barca Perdix, if I’m not mistaken. And according to Ikelos, the half brother of Dix Perdix, a descendant of Daedalus…and one of the leaders of the Evils, who killed our comrades.”
With a flick, the bloody shortsword in Asfi’s right hand whistled through the air. At that signal, several other adventurers materialized from the empty space behind her.
“…Hermes Familia .”
A chienthrope thief, a prum mage, a war tiger vanguard. All told, a group of ten people appeared, causing an unusual disturbance in Barca’s empty heart. Pressing his hand against his bleeding neck, he felt his parched tongue get caught in place as he tried to say, “Impossible.”
“Could you possibly have…a magic item to become invisible?”
Every one of them was holding the same black helmet. From the fact that they appeared by taking off the helmet, he could deduce that they must have been magic items of Perseus’s design. They had become invisible, silently encroaching in an attempt to slit Barca’s throat.
“But how did you get here…? You shouldn’t have been able to find this room without anything short of a miracle, even if you searched the floors high and low…”
He’d managed to process the fact that they’d suddenly appeared before him, but he couldn’t help asking this question.
This room was one of the Evils’ most important locations in Knossos, along with the labyrinth master’s room. Naturally, it was in one of the most complex and deep areas of the labyrinth. It was not a location that could be found by haphazardly stumbling upon it.
“Simple. We caught a person and asked,” Asfi offered matter-of-factly, unlike Barca’s confused blubbering.
Behind her, the war tiger adventurer tossed a captured person down: one of Thanatos’s robed followers. Pulling back the hood revealed a face that Barca recognized. He was someone who served as a commander among the Evils’ Remnants, frequently moving around in areas proximal to Thanatos.
“He was prepared to blow himself up, but…when someone invisibly approaches from behind, it leaves no time to execute.”
“…!”
“After that, we used an item to have him answer our questions truthfully.”
Tossed callously on the ground was a short needle almost resembling an assassin’s blade. It must have been another one of Perseus’s magic items. They had interrogated him, just like they said, finding out the bases and important locations in Knossos—and securing the location of Thanatos and Barca.
The eyes of the leader lying on the floor were cloudy, rolled back, and twitching.
“…All to find Thanatos and me…?”
“And this notebook, too.”
“!”
“To capture the central figures in the organization and steal the blueprints to Knossos. With those in hand, Finn Deimne’s original plan fo
r a short, decisive battle can be brought to action.”
Bending down, Asfi plucked Daedalus’s Notebook from the floor. Because Finn had found out about its existence from Ikelos during the battle on Daedalus Street, he had prioritized getting their hands on the blueprint that spelled out the construction of Knossos. With it, it would eliminate the need to waste any more time mapping the place. It was an imperative of similar value to capturing the critical figures Thanatos and Barca. That notebook was key—the shortcut to success.
“We of Hermes Familia were charged with two tasks: to search for clues as to the identity of Enyo…and to concurrently find this notebook.”
It wouldn’t be wrong to claim that Loki Familia ’s advance was for the purpose of acquiring that notebook. The left eye inscribed with a D opened wide as Barca was struck by a premonition that traveled through his body almost like a shiver.
“You mean…from the very start…?”
“Yes, everything has gone exactly according to Braver’s plan.” Passing the notebook over to the thief, Asfi confirmed his suspicions. “You could say that all the encroaching advances until now acted as our cover to prevent you from noticing our detached force.”
Barca’s thoughts ran wild as he tried to grasp the situation upon hearing that shocking reality.
Finn had used not just his own squad but all his forces as a diversion. The overabundance of recruited mappers, the invasion by five separate squads, the human-wave tactics—all their efforts to clear Knossos were for the sake of deceiving Barca’s side. While they were focused on the advance tearing through the labyrinth, Hermes Familia had used the magic item Hades Head to become invisible and move around in secret—allowing them to capture the man on the floor and gather information about the key locations in Knossos.
“This large-scale operation was a trap…? Impossible…”
No one would have believed that Loki Familia ’s entire forces were being used as a diversion. In truth, the Evils’ side had their hands full trying to grind the adventurers’ advances to a halt. No one noticed that Hermes Familia had suddenly disappeared somewhere along the way—not even Barca, who had been tirelessly observing the battle from the labyrinth master’s room.
This was when Barca had a realization.
Finn hadn’t been directing the others to blind all the labyrinth’s eyes to keep Barca and the others from watching their every move. It had been in preparation for stopping them from noticing the abrupt disappearance of Hermes Familia .
Dionysus Familia bolstered numbers, Loki Familia offered battle teams, and Hermes Familia had a detached force specializing in investigative and secret operations. Finn Deimne had devised a plan that happened to bring together all three of the familias in an alliance to outwit the Evils.
“Not without roadblocks. I mean, our handy helper went off somewhere, and it was super hard to find one of the leaders who knew the path. It took suuuuch a long time…”
“Silence, Lulune…Well, I guess it was fortuitous that you happened to be here with the notebook, but that was simply chance.”
Asfi shrugged as the chienthrope thief flipped through the notebook, running her eyes over the pages with an ungodly speed. Behind her, the other members of the familia destroyed the pedestal and destruction device installed on it. Barca was unable to stop them, barely able to open his mouth, pleading for an answer to the final question that gnawed at him.
“What about the key…? Including the single group of monsters, Loki Familia has five different squads in operation. Even if you were able to get Ishtar’s key, there should only have been five…” he pressed, trying to deny the reality staring him in the face.
There were the keys taken from Ikelos Familia and stolen by Loki Familia during the Xenos incident and the one that Ishtar had in her possession before she was sent back. Meaning the Knossos forces had lost only five keys.
But by the movements of Finn’s battle forces, there should have been no way for Asfi’s group to move freely about the inside of Knossos.
Asfi pushed up her silver glasses before speaking to the bloodstained heir of Daedalus.
“I created it.”
“ ”
Her voice echoed through the room.
Time stood still. He did not actually comprehend the meaning of the words at first.
“It’s not like we were kicking our feet back during the ten days before the operation. Braver had me examine one of the real keys, and we investigated how the orichalcum gates worked with it…and then created a new one .”
She held up a metallic orb made out of mythril. There was a red orb in the center with a mesh of red lines that had the appearance of a spiderweb engraved in it instead of the D symbol.
“With petals from blood-licorice plants, crimson crystals, the compound eye of a deformis spider, and the tears of a moris…it was possible to replicate your family’s eye with items from the Dungeon.”
Based on the information that her patron god had gotten from Ikelos, Asfi knew that the eyes of Daedalus’s descendants were used to make the keys, which allowed her to create a magic item with the same properties as the Daedalus Orb. Of course, Perseus wasn’t omnipotent. And it would have been impossible to create this key from scratch without hints.
But it was a different story if she could directly examine a key that Loki Familia had stolen and painstakingly pore over it.
The cursed blood of Daedalus’s descendants—the eye inscribed with a D —radiated a special kind of magic that activated the gates to open and close. Upon noticing that, Asfi analyzed the frequency of its magic after significant trial and error and then combined various ingredients from the Dungeon to imitate it. Pouring in all her knowledge, skill, and Enigma ability, she had managed to re-create a key to Knossos.
“With only ten days, one was my limit, but…that is sufficient.”
The woman called a peerless item maker lived up to her reputation. Barca was finally at a loss for words.
“I don’t believe I’m particularly prideful, but…I guess I got inspired when shown an irregular magic item. As an item maker myself, I didn’t want to lose.”
Asfi cast a sidelong glance at the oculus in Lulune’s hand. The very existence of this magic item that made advanced communication possible inside the Dungeon across different floors—and the existence of its creator, Fels—had provoked Perseus’s professional pride.
“We’ve got the notebook! I’ve got a grasp on all the routes!”
And as if to demonstrate the power of that item, Lulune held an oculus to her mouth and shouted. With the notebook in one hand, the thief revealed the locations of the key facilities, spreading Knossos’s hidden knowledge in one fell swoop.
“The enemy’s base is on…the ninth floor!”
“The demi-spirit is on the tenth floor! With open areas where a floor boss could run wild! Braver, give us your orders!”
Finn clenched his fist as Lulune’s voice called out from the oculus in his hand.
“Press in on the enemy’s base first! Leave the demi-spirit for now!—To the ninth floor!”
““Yes, sir!”” Tione and the rest responded in unison to his command.
Cutting through the wall of monsters in their way, they lunged forward as if a wild animal hunting down its prey.
“What floor are you on? Tell me about your surroundings, and I’ll try to figure out your location and guide you along!”
“’Bout damn time!”
The oculus was conveying the information to Gareth’s squad, too. After they cheered over this moment, which they had been waiting for since Finn explained the strategy, Gareth rattled off to Lulune the details of the surrounding area that their group had mapped.
“Miss Filvis!”
“Yes! Aura, spread the word to Enol and the others!”
“I know!”
The morale of the elven girls shot through the roof. Even though she barked back at Filvis for calling out to her, Aura spread the news, and Dionysus Familia bro
ke out in a roar of excitement.
“How many entrances are there? And where are they?! Gimme all the deets!” Bete howled.
“I—I got it! There are three! In the north, southeast, and southwest! ” a panicked voice shot back in response.
The team of animal people advancing to Knossos’s ninth floor picked up speed again.
“Secure all the passages between the Dungeon and the ninth floor! We can’t let Thanatos get away! Tell the group behind us! We’re splitting up! Bete and I are taking one team, and Raul will take the other!” The second-in-command, Anakity, shot off orders, hammering out their squad’s next movements.
Once they had finished off the enemies, the stairway had become a safe zone, where she placed Dionysus Familia members to seal off any routes of escape to the other floors. Loki Familia was exterminating all the monsters while taking control of the only three ways out of the ninth floor.
Suddenly, they had closed the net around the ninth floor and the enemy’s base.
All according to Braver’s plan.
“Check. We got them cornered on one side of the board now.”
“And what if they have something up their sleeve to turn things around?”
“Well, maybe if this labyrinth went BOOM and transformed into a giant fighter…or the spirits ran wild. But those are the only options,” added Loki, cracking jokes with Dionysus as the enemy soldiers cried out in despair and scattered before them.
But her eyes narrowed.
“—They got me.”
Finally, Thanatos closed his eyes and leaned back in the labyrinth master’s room, where he’d been watching over their movements, facing the ceiling, as if admitting defeat.
“Can you hear that? Can you hear the footsteps of destruction closing in around you?”
Stomping echoed all through the labyrinth, as though the march of a military force. Barca was dumbstruck as it reached his ears. While Lulune was sending out a never-ending stream of instructions through the various oculi in her possession, Asfi coldheartedly informed him of the battle’s outcome.
