By the time they reached the hidden room, the elf had gone completely numb.

What kind of respectable adventurer deliberately stepped on every single trap along the way?

Especially the obvious ones. The absurdly, insultingly obvious ones that no normal person would ever trigger in the first place.

She could not fathom how this man's brain was wired.

Not that it mattered to Banxia. Traps or no traps, the result was the same, a few casual slashes and the whole thing was gone. If anything, triggering a monster trap was practically hitting the jackpot.

"..."

The elf followed behind him in silence.

Actually, what was that slashing technique he kept using?

A combat skill with that kind of destructive power, and she'd never heard of it. She'd been too strung out on edge the whole way to think it through. But looking back now, she realized something strange: when Banxia unleashed those slashes, she hadn't felt even the faintest ripple of Battle Aura.

No. That wasn't quite right. It wasn't that there was no ripple, it was that his Battle Aura had been contained to a degree that defied comprehension. Not a trace of it bled out when he struck. Even with her sight as elven royalty, it seemed like something that simply shouldn't be possible.

Just how far down the warrior's path had this man gone?

It was inconceivable.

"This must be the hidden room."

"Yeah." The elf snapped back to reality and followed his gaze. "We've reached the end of the path. It should be here."

Banxia didn't hesitate. He stepped forward to "greet" whatever was inside.

One casual kick sent the heavy stone door flying.

Dust billowed outward. The elf silently tightened her grip on the magic tool in her hand.

She had a feeling. Whatever was waiting on the other side of that cloud, it wasn't going to be simple.

Bzzzzzz,

From deep within the room came the sound of countless tiny wings beating in a frantic, unbroken drone.

The dust slowly settled.

The elf's emerald eyes shrank to pinpoints. "Those are Nether Needle Bees — the legendary ones!"

A species of highly venomous demonic insect, known only from records dating back to the mythological era. Each one was roughly palm-sized, jet-black from head to thorax, with a stinger that gleamed a dark, metallic purple.

The worst part wasn't their venom.

It was that they never traveled alone.

Every wall. Every inch of ceiling. Every stone pillar in the room, all of it was blanketed in them, layer upon squirming layer, a slowly rippling tide of black.

"Aren't these things supposed to be extinct..." The elf took an involuntary half-step back, face draining pale, and warned Banxia: "Don't let them sting you. One sting, you might pull through. More than ten — even a high-level warrior won't survive it."

She raised the magic tool in a flash, ready to activate the ancient artifact and throw up a barrier.

But something moved faster.

"Slash."

The same as every trap before it, slashes blanketed the entire room in an instant.

[Ding. Monster killed: Nether Needle Bee. Total lifespan: 12 years. Remaining lifespan: 3 years. Absorbed.]

[Ding. Monster killed: Nether Needle Bee. Total lifespan: 13 years. Remaining lifespan: 4 years. Absorbed.]

[Ding. Monster killed: Nether Needle Bee. Total lifespan: 12 years. Remaining lifespan: 1 year. Absorbed.]

Kill notifications cascaded across the panel like a waterfall, number after number, too fast to read.

Banxia watched the digits tick upward and felt the corners of his mouth curl.

Each individual bee gave pitiful returns. But the sheer number of them, that made it a windfall. A genuinely considerable one.

When the last notification finally went quiet, the total had climbed to a new height.

[Held Monster Time: 7,354 years (Fusible)]

"They're... all dead already..."

The elf stared, not quite trusting her own eyes.

The Nether Needle Bee swarm. The creature that, according to legend, required an entire squad of a kingdom's finest elites, moving with extreme caution, just to have a chance of handling. In this man's hands, they hadn't even managed to struggle.

Her hand still hung in midair, magic tool raised, the defensive barrier she'd readied having never found a use.

She had still underestimated him.

Those were casual swings. Offhand slashes he hadn't even bothered to aim, and they'd shredded mythological-era monsters by the hundreds.

Just how strong was this guy?

"Stop staring. Time for the next floor."

"...Oh."

---

The sixth underground floor.

"We actually made it to the final stage!"

"We barely lost anyone, and we've fought all the way down to the deepest floor of a mythological-era labyrinth, this feels like a dream."

"It's all thanks to the great Dragon-Slaying Hero, Lord Griffin! Without the leadership, how could we have pushed through every obstacle this easily?"

"That's Lord Griffin for you, claiming none of the spoils and leaving almost everything for us. What incredible magnanimity!"

Excited praise echoed through the adventurers, one voice picking up where another left off.

Griffin stood at the center of it all and did not smile once.

The aged warrior's eyes were fixed on the final door ahead. Settled deep within that clouded gaze was a gravity no one else in the room could read.

None of them knew what was playing on a loop in Griffin's head right now. A secret. One known only to a small circle of the kingdom's nobility.

Legend held that even the Great Sage of the mythological era had attempted to master magic tied to lifespan, and failed. Magic was a world of imagination; humans could not conceive of a way to extend their own lives, so true immortality had always been beyond reach.

But monsters were different.

The world could give birth to things no human mind could imagine.

What the Great Sage could not solve, a creature from the mythological era had managed with ease.

And behind the door directly in front of Griffin slept precisely that kind of existence.

Rumor said it could grant a person immortality. All it asked in return was a negligible price...

Griffin slowly tightened a grip on the sword hilt, then looked up and turned to face the adventurers with a resolute smile.

"Don't worry, the monsters on the sixth floor are nothing. As long as we stand together, we'll break through this labyrinth in no time!"

"Oooooh—!"

The cheer detonated through the darkness of the sixth floor like a wave.

Only Finger, alongside a handful of knights and court mages representing noble interests, all of them disguised as ordinary adventurers, had already quietly finished their preparations.

Once the weaker monsters were cleared, every one of these adventurers would become an offering. A gift of introduction, presented to that esteemed lord.

---

➤ Next: Rejuvenation (Prismatic)

Chapter 80 - Rejuvenation (Prismatic)

"I didn't expect Soul Eaters here! Everyone be careful — they attack your consciousness!"

"Slash."

"There's actually an Immortal Stone Guard-class golem protecting the door! Fall back, we need to consult Lord Griffin about a countermeasure!"

"Slash!"

"Over here..."

"Slash slash slash!"

"The monsters..."

"SLASH!"

"...Uh, no, what I meant to say is — all the monsters in this room have already been cleared by you, my lord..."

"Oh."

BOOM,

Another door caved in. Progress on the sixth floor of the Lova Labyrinth ticked forward once more.

"Monsters! Mine! They're all MINE!"

"...Who the hell is this guy?"

The adventurers exchanged helpless glances as the young man tore through the floor like a berserker who had just discovered the concept of joy.

This was supposed to be the brutal sixth floor. The floor every veteran dreaded. Yet the run had gone smoother than anyone could have predicted, not a single casualty, not even a close call.

All because of this one guy.

Some unknown young man who had apparently sprinted up from the rear of the main force and attached himself to their group, who was he, exactly?!

Ever since he'd joined, it hadn't mattered whether the monster was low-tier or high-tier. One slash. Done. Clean and effortless as cutting vegetables.

They had traveled thousands of miles to conquer this labyrinth. Now they were standing around like tourists on a guided tour.

"Slash!"

The word barely left his mouth before another wave of monsters dropped in unison.

Several of them were powerful enough that even Gold-rank adventurers would need a full party to bring down.

"..."

Everyone had gone numb.

Whatever this unnamed adventurer's strength was, it had almost certainly surpassed Lord Griffin, the Dragon-Slaying Hero.

"Just who is this person..."

"Forget him for now. Look over there — is that an elf?!"

"An elf?!"

Heads turned. In the rear of the group stood a blonde elf pressing one hand to their forehead, wearing the expression of someone who had long since run out of the energy to be exasperated.

Most adventurers at their level had gone their entire lives without seeing a single elf.

The elf, for their part, had long grown used to being stared at and paid the attention no mind.

What held the elf's focus was the young man ahead, specifically, the near-feral killing intent that came over him the moment he spotted a monster.

There was no other explanation. Either his family had been destroyed by monsters, or he carried some wound so deep it had never healed. Nothing else could account for the way he became a completely different person the instant creatures entered his field of vision.

"Just what happened to you..."

The elf's emerald eyes stayed fixed on the figure ahead, on that back that kept swinging and swinging and swinging. The gaze was complicated.

Just imagining the worst possibilities sent a wave of something nameless through the elf's chest.

...

"Slash."

The sharp strike landed. The last monster in the room went still.

[Ding-dong. Slain: Hardstone Colossus. Total lifespan yield: 1,200 years. Current Remaining Time: 200 years. Absorbed.]

[Held Monster Time: 13,800 years (Can Fuse) (Can Enhance)]

Banxia let out a slow breath and stopped walking. His gaze settled on the panel floating where only he could see it.

"Can Enhance?"

That new function had probably unlocked when his monster time broke past ten thousand years. Same as how "Fuse" had appeared at one thousand, thresholds scaling by a factor of ten.

One thousand years, one gate. Ten thousand years, another.

"Just the time alone makes this trip worth it." The labyrinth's main boss hadn't shown up yet, but based purely on what he'd accumulated so far, this run to the Lova Labyrinth was already in the black.

He focused on the new function. The description surfaced quickly.

[Enhancement Pill: Consumes 10,000 years of lifespan. Enhances one skill or item to Prismatic grade. Success rate: 100%.]

"One hundred percent chance to hit Prismatic?"

Banxia frowned.

Guaranteed odds, sure. But it still felt like a bad deal.

From his synthesis experience so far: leveling two ordinary skills to lv.3 ran about a thousand years, fusing them cost another thousand. Two thousand years total, with a solid shot at a Prismatic result. His three Prismatic skills from fusion had taken four attempts combined, one failure across the board.

Even if luck turned ugly and he bombed a few extra times, the average cost would never crack five thousand years.

Dropping ten thousand years for a guaranteed single Prismatic felt like a loss any way he calculated it.

As for items, his own body was already his strongest weapon. That avenue was a non-starter.

Unless...

Banxia suddenly remembered a lv.3 folk magic he had nearly forgotten entirely.

[Magic That Can Make the Body Younger lv.3]

That spell had handed him twenty free years of lifespan. Not a bad windfall.

The catch: it could only affect the same person once. Repeated casts on the same target produced nothing. And he still hadn't found any other skill that could pair with it for a fusion.

"Hmm..."

Banxia hesitated for all of one second.

He was sitting on a mountain of resources. Compared to actual lifespan, ten thousand years of monster time was pocket change. The Human Forbidden Areas on the map weren't going anywhere, he'd drop in on each of them eventually and rake it back in.

Right now, he might as well splurge like a man who had more time than sense.

"System. Consume ten thousand years of monster time. Enhance [Magic That Can Make the Body Younger]."

The moment the words landed, the number on the panel sheared off a massive chunk and tumbled into four digits.

[10,000 years of monster time consumed. Obtained: Enhancement Pill ×1.]

[Enhancing,]

[Year 1: You develop an unprecedented fascination with "Magic That Can Make the Body Younger" and receive a sudden epiphany. This seemingly ordinary folk magic, if pursued further, may become something beyond imagination.]

[Year 10,000: Through relentless study and the countless flashes of insight that have surfaced across the long years, you finally elevate this magic to a height that even you find difficult to believe.]

[Enhancement complete.]

[Rejuvenation (Prismatic) lv.1: Guided by mana, reverse the river of life. Each use significantly reverses physical condition and extends lifespan. Can take effect on the same target multiple times, but effectiveness diminishes with each use. (Note: This skill violates the world's laws of life and may incur the aversion of Life Spirits, producing unexpected effects.)]

"Significantly reverses physical condition and extends lifespan?" Banxia stared at the description. Ten thousand years well spent, no question about it.

The note at the end, though, gave him pause.

Violating the world's laws of life. Potential aversion from Life Spirits. Unexpected effects.

If Life Spirits took a disliking to it, "unexpected" almost certainly wasn't going to mean anything pleasant. The only question was whether the cost would be something he could actually absorb.

"I need to find someone to test this on first."

Banxia had no intention of being his own first subject.

They were still mid-dungeon. If the backlash turned out to be severe and threw a wrench into his monster harvesting, the loss would far outweigh the gain. And with the consequences described in terms that vague, there was no way he was casually trying it on himself.

He turned slowly.

His gaze settled on the group of adventurers who had been trailing behind him this whole way.

➤ Next: Boss Room — Words Unspoken