NOVEL WEB Chapter 104
A woman wearing a pure white mask with no face, dressed in a dark uniform that seemed to absorb even the light of midday.
The Nameless Captain, Muyeong, stood in the center of a massive cavern within a labyrinth, catching her breath.
How long had she been bound here? About 40 hours.
The ground of the vast cavern was littered with the corpses of monsters. Counting them one by one would take an entire night.
And with that number, many living monsters still remained. How was it possible to prepare this many monsters underground?
Such matters were unimportant. It had already happened, and uncovering that was not her job.
Whether there were a thousand or ten thousand, it made little difference to Muyeong.
She wasn’t bound here because of the monsters in the first place. The beings that bound her were different.
Those humans caught in between.
Mind-controlled, humans lost in thought, mingling with the monsters.
Where on earth did they gather those humans?
They weren’t of a single race.
East, north, south, west.
Various races were mixed together.
And the number was terrifyingly high.
If it were just the monsters, she could have broken through this place in less than a minute. But the humans were interspersed among the monsters.
One wrong move with a hand or foot could easily cost those humans their lives as they charged alongside the monsters.
Because of this, the time taken to conquer the labyrinth was delayed.
It couldn’t even be called a delay.
It simply stopped here.
If she killed all those humans… she could escape this place. She had already pinpointed the location of the center of the labyrinth. She could feel through her own senses that some sort of ritual was being performed in that center.
But that didn’t mean she could just kill them all.
If they were humans suffering in agony from magic addiction, she would have ended them herself.
But there was no sign of that.
Perhaps Muyeong had expected such a judgment, as the humans looked fine.
How could that be?
There was no magic in this space. And the humans remained inside this space.
Thus, if the labyrinth were to be broken, all those humans could return alive.
That kept Muyeong’s feet stubbornly grounded.
Of course, she hadn’t done nothing. Just looking at the corpses strewn across the ground was enough to see more than four digits.
She killed the monsters rushing alongside the humans without injuring them.
During that process, she tripped over and saved even the humans who looked like they would die if stepped on.
Thanks to that, there wasn’t even a drop of human blood on the floor of the cavern.
Instead of the continuously pouring monsters, she thought about knocking out the humans and gathering them in one place.
But she couldn’t do it.
When a human lost consciousness, the monsters rushed to kill the fainted human.
Thus, she had to keep countless humans conscious while beating down the thousands of monsters one by one.
Among those, some had acidic blood, and others exploded as they died.
For 40 hours, she continued the battle, protecting humans from those kinds of monsters.
What on earth awaited at the end of the labyrinth to bind her like this?
She had received some basic information.
A cavern located somewhere in the underground waterways.
A massive door blocking it.
What lay beyond that door was unknown, but the minions of the Labyrinth sought to open it.
And to do that, a key was necessary.
However, she stepped into the labyrinth without ever figuring out what that key was.
Soon after entering the labyrinth, she realized what the key was.
Her sharpened senses revealed its existence.
A spirit.
A spirit that had suddenly vanished 400 years ago was inside this labyrinth.
That fact made Muyeong anxious.
What kind of being created this and what was hidden here that required the power of the spirit?
And how did the demon race learn of it first?
Creak- A rough sound came from behind the pure white mask.
Thinking and getting angry wouldn’t change anything.
First… she had to find a way to escape this place and stop the ritual that was happening at this very moment.
Pushing aside her thoughts, Muyeong slipped on new gloves and got into a combat stance.
At that moment…
“…What is this?”
A massive flow of magic pierced through the entire labyrinth.
It was just a fleeting moment, but the intensity of that flow was enough to make Muyeong open her mouth.
Cold sweat ran down her back.
Goosebumps spread across her body, and her instincts were ringing alarm bells.
This was not magic that a Dark Mage could dare to wield. A demon, at least a high-ranking demon?
No, this was the magic of a Legion Commander level.
A sticky, malicious feeling of magic.
The lustful Luxrina.
And within that flow of magic…
She felt a familiar presence.
Eliaernes Eustetia.
Her presence was swallowed by magic.
The moment she realized that…
A mad killing intent erupted from every part of Muyeong’s body.
Crackle- The ground she stepped on crumbled away. The foundation of the labyrinth twisted. Emerging killing intent caused blood foam to spew from the humans’ mouths, and even the soulless monsters began to feel fear.
Thud- The newly opened red world began to form around Muyeong.
What had just been a labyrinth no longer was. A river made of thick blood flowed, leading to the sky.
The river of blood that touched the sky then soaked the land, flowing to the master of this world.
An ideal world created by ideation.
Just before Muyeong’s manifestation was complete…
“…Oh my?”
Muyeong’s rage settled.
*
“Grrrk… Kugh…”
Plopping down, Paid knelt and expelled what was boiling inside.
Thud- A black substance fell to the ground.
The remnants of magic he hadn’t digested yet, and the remains of internal organs rotting due to that magic.
Paid looked down at it with a twisted smile and leaned against the wall, feeling as if he would break apart at any moment.
The summoned servant he had brought forth through the offering had long since vanished.
That area. No, it couldn’t even be called an area now.
It had already been consumed by the will of a massive being, so it could no longer be called a territory.
In the tidal wave of that will, everything in this narrow passage was swept away.
Void Illusion.
A spell containing Paid’s will that erases the self of those trapped in an illusion.
But a massive being’s will was added to that.
The result… Paid could not comprehend.
All he knew was that it was a highly advanced magic he could never use even after a lifetime of training and immersing himself in magic.
He didn’t know when those sucked into the illusion would be expelled back out, but it was over.
What came out after the void illusion was finished could no longer be said to be alive.
Samaela had commanded Paid to bring her clean corpses, but he ended up with high-quality bodies that simply remained alive, having lost their sense of self.
Though he paid a price by losing several organs and sacrificing more than half of his life force, it was fine.
Soon, he would cross over to Gebihenum to regenerate the organs, and switching bodies would solve the depleted life force.
Of course, Paid could not accomplish such feats, but his master, Samaela, could.
“Grrrk… Ugh, how disgusting…”
But whether he could endure until then… he did not know.
The minuscule amount of magic left in his body raged, trying to consume him. It couldn’t be settled down.
Whose was it?
Paid, who had condensed the magic of a high-ranking demon countless times, found the magic that had entered his body this time incomparable to what he had accepted before.
Magic, merely magic, seemed to possess a self, alive and moving.
And that was not all. When he triggered the void illusion and expelled all the magic in his body…
What was once nothing but energy seemed to smile.
It felt as if it recognized its opponent.
Who was the opponent?
Eliaernes Eustetia.
And it seemed Eliaernes recognized what that magic was, whose it was, and said with a knowing expression.
“Luxrina.”
Of course, Paid denied that.
He had never seen Luxrina’s magic and power, but he thought it couldn’t be.
No matter what price he paid in Gebihenum, he could never obtain the magic of a Legion Commander.
Why would such magic be handed over to the minions of the labyrinth for any reason?
From the beginning, it was nonsense that Eliaernes could recognize the power of that being.
“Maybe because I’m dying, all sorts of thoughts are crossing my mind… Ugh…”
He decided to conserve his strength until the end, and once the void illusion was over, he would return with Eliaernes, who was as good as dead.
With that thought, Paid expelled the remnants of his organs once more and loosened up.
At that moment…
Rip—
The space tore apart.
Following that…
“Hey, you dog.”
A sharp voice pierced Paid’s mind.
Paid turned his head towards where the voice came from.
There, cherry blossoms were blooming.
Cherry blossoms blooming beautifully even in the cold labyrinth.
Eliaernes Eustetia.
“…What the hell are you?”
Though her cute twin tails were all unraveled, her body, previously unscathed, was now covered in wounds, and her clothes were torn here and there.
“Just what did you eat a moment ago?”
Her eyes and expression were sharper than ever before.
“Words… don’t… don’t even think about it…”
She had consumed a potion so dangerous that it was worth preparing for mutual destruction. She had used all the magic in her body and even drawn upon her life force.
Thus she had completed, the perfect void illusion.
As a price for that, she was dying.
But that seventeen-year-old girl…
“What are you… what the hell are you!”
How could she still be so okay?
“You… could you be the reincarnation of the Hero, Arisa Eustetia? So that woman left a descendant with no blood ties!”
“Pfft, shut the hell up.”
Approaching Paid, who had nowhere to retreat, Eliaernes spat out the blood pooling in her mouth.
“I am Ronan. You bastard.”
Kwaaaang—!
She punched Paid right in the face, which was widened in shock.