Chapter 166: Ryuu's Dark Artificial Labyrinth (Patreon)

Unlike Dix, who spent nearly all his time moving between the Dungeon and Knossos, he kept himself informed about matters up on the surface too.

"[Cunning Rat] was the strategist of the Astraea Familia."

"She used to be quite famous — once ranked alongside the Braver, and some even said she was the most fitting successor to the Braver."

"Oh?" Dix finally showed a flicker of interest.

But the next moment, he immediately spotted the problem. "The Astraea Familia?"

"Wasn't that whole bunch of justice bitches wiped out entirely ages ago, by Jalo's dumb cat?"

"Don't tell me some of them slipped through the net?" Gran gulped, a faint sheen of sweat beading on his forehead.

"Not a survivor."

"The Cunning Rat really is dead. Jalo saw it happen with his own eyes."

"Her body was cut into several pieces."

"Then what are you even trying to say?" Dix's frown deepened.

Gran hurried to remind him.

"Boss, have you forgotten we've got a partner on our own side who came back from the dead?"

Dix's pupils contracted sharply.

"You mean that idiot [White-Haired Demon] Olivas?"

Gran's bald head bobbed up and down rapidly, like a chick pecking at grain.

"Yeah."

"You think — could those people be tangled up with that strange bunch too?"

"Didn't we see that leader make a move before, too?"

"What she used was clearly the magic of [Crimson Justice Blossom]!"

"There's no way I'd mistake that for anything else!"

The expression on Dix's face turned wonderfully complicated in an instant.

Shock, surprise, and excitement all tangled together, and the corners of his mouth slowly curled upward.

"Hey, hey, seriously?"

"That bunch of weirdos actually managed to pull that whole gang of justice bitches over to their side?"

"Straight from world-saving heroes to Absolute Evil?"

"Is that show from four years ago about to play out all over again?"

The more he talked, the more worked up he got, until he finally burst out laughing.

"Hahaha!"

"These guys just keep getting more and more interesting!"

20th Floor, the center of the blast zone.

Lyd brought Gros back to rejoin the group.

Kuroneko, meanwhile, led the others to keep gathering floor materials — this had already been promised to Tachibana Kanade as a commission, and they couldn't just abandon it halfway.

Since the huge horde of monsters had just been wiped out in one stroke, this stretch of the floor was actually safer than usual for the moment.

Especially near the blast's center — the Dungeon itself was still repairing the environment, so no new monsters would be hatching here anytime soon.

Rei and the others took charge of sorting through the monsters Dix had captured earlier.

Anything that wasn't Xenos would be handed over to Natsuka to deal with.

Right now, Natsuka was exchanging information with Asfi.

"I haven't found Ryuu."

"But I think she's most likely still following the Evilus lead."

"So a few days ago, I started keeping an eye on the Ikelos Familia."

"Out of everyone on the lower floors, they're the group most likely connected to Evilus."

"I've been tailing them the whole time, hoping to follow the thread back to the enemy's real lair."

Asfi sat on a tree root, her tone even and unhurried, laying out her line of thinking from the past few days.

"I just didn't expect you all to suddenly show up out of nowhere."

"And I definitely didn't expect it to get tangled up with [Enhanced Species] monsters, of all things."

"So you don't have any word on Ryuu either?" Natsuka asked, frowning. "Where on earth did she go?"

Asfi shook her head.

"I don't know."

"All I can confirm is that she's not on any of the nearby floors."

"Otherwise, with the huge commotion you all just caused, there's no way it wouldn't have drawn someone here."

"Like the Ikelos Familia, hoping to profit off the chaos."

"Or, say, Lion, who'd definitely come running to help."

As she said this, she glanced at Lyra again, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly.

"And then there's your face on top of it."

"Knowing that useless elf's temper, she'd probably come charging in roaring the whole way."

Lyra sat cross-legged on the ground, nodding with a serious expression.

"She probably would."

Natsuka turned to ask Rei next.

"What about you all?"

"Has anyone seen a masked, green-haired elf on the nearby floors?"

Rei immediately called a few of her companions over and asked around in a low voice.

In the end, she shook her head.

"No."

"At least not on any of the floors around here — none of us have seen an elf like that."

Natsuka frowned, piecing the clues back together bit by bit in his mind.

Ryuu wasn't on the lower floors?

But there was clear evidence she'd entered the 18th floor.

Unless she'd doubled back up to the upper floors sometime in the middle of the night.

Or else...

She'd gone straight down to an even deeper floor.

But that didn't add up.

If that were really the case, there should still be some trace of her left behind.

Could it be — that she'd plunged headlong into the Knossos?

Even as the thought crossed his mind, Natsuka himself found it absurd.

The reason he'd never seriously considered the Knossos as Ryuu's destination was that the odds were absurdly, ridiculously low.

First, Zanis Lustra would have to be able to summon the Knossos's core members.

That step alone was already difficult enough.

Second, that core member would have to be foolish enough to lead Ryuu right up to an entrance that had gone undiscovered for hundreds of years.

Third, so long as that person had even a shred of sense, there was no way they'd let Ryuu get her hands on the key.

Without the key, Ryuu would just be stuck wandering the outskirts, and all her efforts would come to nothing.

Finally, she'd have to happen to run into the person who actually held the key, and correctly identify the [Daedalus Eye] as the thing that opened the door.

All four conditions had to line up — missing even one made it impossible.

So Natsuka had never once seriously entertained this possibility before.

But now—

"Once you rule out every impossibility, whatever's left — no matter how absurd — has to be the answer."

He let out a long sigh.

Hearing this, Asfi's eyes snapped over to him.

"You know where Ryuu is?"

"I can't be sure yet." Natsuka rubbed his brow. "But if it really is the place I'm thinking of, then we've got a serious problem."

"That's not a place a group as small as ours can just breeze through."

Put plainly — it was way beyond their current league.

That place was meant to be tackled in the mid-to-late game, not now.

Lyra's face went taut, her eyes flooding with urgency.

"Even if it's dangerous, it doesn't matter."

"Even if it's just me going alone, that's fine."

"Just tell me where it is."

By now, Lyra had long stopped caring much about life or death.

And besides, she was naturally well-suited for relaying information.

If they really had to pick the person best suited to go in first, she genuinely was the best fit.

"Fair enough."

Natsuka pulled a map out of his 4D Pocket and spread it on the ground.

"Right now, what we can confirm is that Ryuu really did enter the 18th floor, and no one saw her leave."

"So my read is that she's most likely still somewhere inside the 18th floor."

Asfi cut in immediately.

"I've already searched the 18th floor for two days."

"I never once found any sign of Gale."

"Are you sure you've searched every inch of the 18th floor?" Natsuka looked up at her. "Including the areas no one's ever explored?"

Asfi froze for a moment.

Then shook her head.

"There's no such thing as an unexplored area on the 18th floor."

"Adventurers have lived here for hundreds of years."

"If a place like that really existed, it would have been discovered long ago."

"That's just what you all assume, isn't it?" Natsuka replied evenly.

He couldn't just dump everything he knew about the Knossos out in the open, so all he could do was hint around the edges.

Asfi clearly found the idea far-fetched.

But no matter how far-fetched, she couldn't say it was entirely impossible, either.

She looked down at the map, her expression gradually turning serious.

"If there really is a hidden domain hidden inside the 18th floor that no one knows about... where would it be?"

Natsuka stared at the map too, a wave of worry rising in him.

He needed to find as natural a way as possible to gradually feed them this information.

Lyd spoke up quietly at that moment.

"Maybe we could interrogate the prisoner we just caught."

Lyra shook her head immediately.

"I already tried that."

"That guy's mouth is sealed shut — he won't give up a single word."

Natsuka hadn't really expected the man to cooperate anyway.

Anyone who ran with Thanatos was bound to be at least a little unhinged.

That kind of person would blow themselves up without a second thought — you couldn't judge them by normal standards.

Just as everyone was momentarily at a loss...

Shadow, now fully recovered, gave a casual flick of his hand, and a throwing knife flew from his grip.

It landed with a soft thud.

The knife struck precisely at a point on the 18th floor's map, near its eastern edge.

His tone was as flat as if he were commenting on the most mundane thing in the world.

"Right here."

"I can smell darkness."

Natsuka stared at where the knife had landed, utterly stunned.

Because that exact spot was the eastern edge of the 18th floor — right where the entrance to the Knossos lay.

He'd almost forgotten.

This guy Shadow had absurdly good luck in the strangest places.

And somehow, that absurd luck always seemed to zero right in on the enemy.

Natsuka immediately seized the opening and launched into a loud, confident analysis.

"As expected of Lord Shadow!"

"This spot is far from Rivira and sits right at the edge of the labyrinth."

"Lake on the left, cliff on the right — the terrain forms a perfect blind wedge."

"A place like this is exactly the kind of blind spot everyone would overlook!"

He said it all with a perfectly straight face, though in truth he was just making it up as he followed Shadow's lead.

Asfi looked at him, her eyes brimming with suspicion.

"Why do I get the feeling you two just picked a random spot?"

"The edges of the 18th floor were precisely surveyed a long time ago."

"That's already the boundary of the floor — logically, there shouldn't be any hidden domain there."

Of course you wouldn't know.

Because some construction-mad lunatic had, through generations of his entire bloodline, forced an imitation of the 18th floor's own Knossos into existence right there.

Natsuka silently griped to himself, while his expression instantly turned stern on the outside.

"I won't allow you to question our leader's judgment."

"Whether there's a hidden domain or not — we'll know once we've gone and seen for ourselves."

Pleased by this, Shadow turned around at once, crossed his arms, and struck an air of enigmatic profundity.

He spoke in a low, oddly sultry murmur.

"Let's go, 'X.'"

"No need to waste any more time on trash."

He was in high spirits right now.

Earlier, his injuries had cost him the chance to really show off in front of the villains.

[Author's Note: Please give flowers~]

Now, of course, he had to go all out.

"Yes, Lord Shadow!" Natsuka bowed his head at once, the motion so practiced it carried not a trace of hesitation.

"Heeey, Shadow-sama!" Lyra chimed in with a laugh.

Yuuki went so far as to pump her fist into the air.

"Let's move, let's move!"

Asfi watched, utterly bewildered.

"Hey, what exactly are you all putting on here?"

Lyd stepped forward a couple of paces as well.

"Do you need our help?"

Natsuka mulled it over for a moment, then shook his head.

"It's better if you all stay near Rivira for now."

"Let's do this."

As he spoke, he produced a few vials from his person and handed them over.

"This is my blood. It'll let me pin down your location."

"If you need backup, I'll open a door right beside you."

"Whether it's for reinforcements or a retreat, it'll work either way."

The Knossos — Knossos.

This place was a man-made wonder built with the hands of Daedalus, one of the very first members of the Familia of the god who founded the city.

In scale and sheer audacity, it was arguably comparable even to the Great Wall.

Once Daedalus had laid eyes on the Dungeon's grandeur and Mystery with his own eyes, he became obsessed, as if possessed.

He swore he would build, with his own two hands, a divine structure that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Dungeon.

For the sake of that goal, he'd even carved his obsession and his curse alike into his own bloodline, passing them down generation after generation for hundreds of years.

By rights, a wonder of this magnitude, if made public, could easily have become a treasure of the human world.

It might even have served as a bulwark for conquering the Dungeon, sheltering countless lives.

But as fate would have it, Daedalus was a craftsman through and through.

He cared only for his own creation.

It never once occurred to him to share this knowledge with the world.

And so this structure, which might have benefited countless people, never became a light for the world.

Instead, it became a nest for filth and corruption, a breeding ground for malice.

At this very moment—

in the central control room of the Knossos—

a man with messy white hair, a thin scruff of stubble on his chin, and heavy dark circles under his eyes stared through the control equipment at a scene somewhere deep within the labyrinth.

Another figure stood beside him.

It was an effeminate male god with long purple hair, draped in a cloak, his very voice carrying a deliberately drawn-out, coquettish lilt.

"What's wrong, Balka-chan?"

"You don't look very happy, you know."

"There's a rat that's snuck in again," Balka replied flatly, his face expressionless.

Barca Perdix.

He was Dix's half-brother, born of the same mother but a different father.

He was also, in this generation, Knossos's craftsman and caretaker.

Unlike Dix, who reveled in hunting and stirring up trouble,

Balka couldn't care less about conflicts on the outside.

All he wanted was to quietly finish his mission in peace.

Which was why nothing irritated him more than having his peaceful work interrupted.

Thanatos, hearing all this, didn't seem the least bit bothered, and simply drawled lazily.

"It's just a rat. Ignore it like always, and it'll be fine."

"Give it a few more days and she'll starve to death in there on her own anyway."

That wasn't much of an exaggeration, either.

Because nearly every passage in the Knossos was forged from ultra-hard metal.

And the great doors connecting the key sections were made from the hardest metal of all.

Once sealed, almost no one could escape from there on their own strength.

That had always been their greatest source of confidence.

But Balka's next words still made Thanatos's expression change.

"That rat has a key."

Thanatos's head snapped around.

"A key?"

"Where did she get it from?"

"Wait, doesn't that mean our existence could be exposed at any moment?"

His voice climbed several notches higher.

"This isn't good."

"And Dix isn't even here."

"Should I call Valletta-chan back first?"

Balka fell silent for a moment.

Then, slowly, he shook his head.

The corner of his mouth pulled into a smile, but there was no warmth in it at all — only an unsettling emptiness.

"She's just a rat, after all."

"Once Dix comes back, he'll take care of her, naturally."

"But before that..."

"...she'll have to survive long enough in my labyrinth to still have a life left worth taking."

On the projection screen in the central control room—

an elf in an emerald cloak, a mask over her face, a plain white fitted short-sleeved top, a wooden sword in hand, was creeping slowly along the wall through a cold, dim corridor.

It was Ryuu.

She'd already been trapped in this labyrinth for two full days.

After surviving hidden arrows, rolling boulders, collapsing pits, and one sudden trap after another, her movements had long since shifted from cautious probing to extreme wariness.

Every step she took was light.

Every breath she drew was pressed down, kept perfectly steady.

She felt her way along the edge of the rock wall, all the while recording the routes she'd taken and every change in her surroundings.

But even so, she still couldn't find the entrance she'd first come in through.

Because, from the very beginning, this labyrinth's layout had never been fixed—