The situation in the Ever-White Desert Oasis was growing more chaotic by the day. Everyone wanted a share of the spoils, everyone wanted the famous Resurrection Stones.
It did not help that Asura had explicitly announced that it would buy those stones for a high price; for ordinary adventurers, the amount offered was more than enough to become rich overnight.
Obviously, many mercenaries from the Kingdom of Gaia were also drawn in, but above all, those who gathered there were residents of the Desert Continent.
The structure of the Labyrinth was somewhat complex, like a maze. And to advance through the floors, some kind of symbol or totem was almost always required, something only obtained by defeating monsters that possessed it.
From the very first floor, you would be facing powerful Rank B Trolls. On the first floor, they only appeared alone; even so, they were monsters with tremendous strength and regeneration, difficult to kill.
The only good thing about them was that they were relatively slow, but that would change as the floors went deeper.
On the earlier floors, some of them could appear in small groups of three or four, and beyond the twentieth floor, they appeared with monsters domesticated for hunting and riding, as if the labyrinth had decided to add teeth and claws alongside those giants.
Beyond floor twenty-five, Mutant Trolls began to appear and became a constant the farther down one went.
Mutant Trolls were, at minimum, Rank A. Some had red skin and were much faster than a conventional troll; some had black skin and carried poison in their claws and blood.
All kinds of insane mutants could appear, and there were even reports of Rank S Trolls, such as Troll Kings and Immortal Barbarian Trolls.
Those were bosses of an extremely high level, even for Rank S adventurer parties, and a successful hunt would be an achievement in itself in the world of adventurers.
Unfortunately, little attention was paid to that fact. It was hard to pay attention to danger when the walls of the Labyrinth contained Purple and Blue Stones capable of reviving people.
Even though they were rare, that did not stop people from being ambitious and throwing themselves into the deeper floors to try their luck at the greatest prize.
But just like a game of chance, you could never know for certain what you might find.
On floor number fifty-seven, a group of adventurers called the Heaven Dawn Crew had just run into an Immortal Barbarian Troll, a Rank S monster.
They hunted as a party of seven: three swordsmen, one archer, two mages, and one healer. For the Ever-White Labyrinth, which had very few traps, this was a great group; it was the kind of formation that, in other places, would provide enough security to move forward without thinking too much.
But with a single axe swing, the enormous ten-meter-tall troll slaughtered the three swordsmen, displaying the speed and ferocity of a Barbarian Troll.
The sound of the impact was thunderous, and what should have been the front line turned into crushed flesh and metal in an instant. Thus, the other four had no choice but to use Resurrection Stones on their friends.
That was another major advantage of hunting and fighting inside this Labyrinth: even if you died, you could still be revived by your close companions, as long as there was still a decent corpse left.
Stories of people reviving inside the Labyrinth were the most famous tales in the Oasis. Basically, if you had already revived once, you gained a certain status and mystique around you, as if death itself had tried to take you, but failed.
Only this time, that was not enough. That was the trap of this Labyrinth.
Death had become more trivial, dying once or twice had become an option, and in that way the group of seven was once again exterminated by the Immortal Barbarian Troll.
Its regeneration, as the name implied, made it an almost immortal beast. It was not something the two mages could overcome with their magic, nor could the warriors pierce the monster's thick hide deeply enough.
The cold and cruel reality struck the adventurers when the Resurrection Stones were completely wasted, down to the last one.
The troll, once again, cut and tore them into pieces. After doing so, it grabbed one of the swordsmen, tossed him into the air, and swallowed him in a single bite, like a snack.
Covered in the red blood of the adventurers, the Troll turned its back and was about to leave, as if it had been nothing more than another casual meal.
But at that moment, it heard a new voice.
"Nine Flying Heavens."
A blade's ring sounded, and the air shifted violently.
A hooded man cut through the labyrinth faster than sound, and the Barbarian Troll did not even have the chance to process its new opponent before being evenly divided horizontally into ten pieces by the nine slashes spread across its colossal body.
Its life was ended with the same ease with which it had done the same to other adventurers not long before.
The body collapsed across the ground like grotesque, enormous steaks, green blood spilling everywhere, mixing with the dust of the rocky, sandy floor. The hooded man looked at the adventurers and complained, with dry and genuine irritation:
"Fuck! What a bunch of imbeciles! How many idiots are there in this world?!"
He removed his hood, revealing an ordinary face, with brown hair and eyes of the same color. He did not seem special at first glance, but his gaze was sharp, and his posture, along with his obvious mastery of the sword, left no doubt about his identity.
This was Jino Britz.
He walked over to the victims' bodies, closer to a mage carrying a staff with a purple crystal, and witnessed the same strange event once again.
On the rocky, sandy floor of the Labyrinth, he could see, without a shadow of a doubt, the mage's corpse sinking very slowly into the rock.
Or rather, it would be more accurate to describe it another way: little by little, the Labyrinth was devouring the adventurer's body.
Jino had arrived in Begaritt some time ago already. Not to mention the important information he had discovered outside; there was something far more important that he noticed after wandering freely through the interior of the Labyrinth.
He looked around at the other bodies, cut into pieces, crushed, dismembered, blood everywhere, that scene was far too common in that place.
Even so, there was something they all had in common. It was imperceptible at first, and even Jino had only managed to notice it initially because his senses bordered on the supernatural.
Slowly and gradually, all the bodies were being swallowed by the Labyrinth.
The idea seemed insane at first, but after it appeared in his mind, Jino decided to test it.
He mentally marked positions, observed the outline of the surrounding rock, and memorized where each fallen limb was.
After a few hours, he confirmed his theory: whole bodies were completely sucked into the walls of the strange Labyrinth and, clearly, Resurrection Stones appeared again in its walls, small at first, but slowly and continuously, fed by the constant deaths.
That was truly disturbing.
Jino sighed and looked at the Troll's body, which was also slowly being sucked into the ground.
It was not fast enough to seem like teleportation magic or a traditional trap; it was more as if the structure of the labyrinth was digesting.
He sat down right there and pulled out some dried meat that he kept in a pouch.
While analyzing the scene and trying to decide what he should do next. The necklace around his neck still hid him from Hitogami, but unlike Celestial Sealing Magic, this necklace had a time limit.
And that made everything more urgent.
What worried Jino was that everyone in that Oasis, everyone in that Desert, was advancing against the Labyrinth like starving beasts.
The death rate was, without a doubt, far higher than the rate of obtaining Resurrection Stones. It was dangerous and risky work, but try telling them that.
The look in the adventurers' eyes when experiencing or witnessing resurrection was pure greed.
Mercenaries and adventurers already risked their own lives in their ordinary work, so they simply saw no problem in risking their lives there.
It was an indisputable logic from the individual point of view. But the numbers said otherwise, this was leading to large-scale extermination.
Jino could not even count how many dead adventurers he had already found inside the Labyrinth; in comparison, the number of "successes" was extremely low.
He sighed as he updated Aisha on the progress of the investigation. He did not want to admit it, but his initial suspicion about this mission had been foolish.
With everything he had discovered, he was certain that something big was happening, something truly dangerous. His Sixth Sense constantly told him so.
He was also certain that if anyone else had been sent in his place, the investigation would be far more delayed than it should be. And that person would probably die in the process.
While sending the report, however, he shivered slightly and lifted his gaze, staring into the dark depths of the Labyrinth, which continued for miles ahead.
He could hear clearly, and smell it even from that great distance,
Jino looked at the Troll's corpse, torn apart near him, and sighed again, immediately rising to his feet.
---
A few minutes later, two figures approached the area.
One wore a dark blue cloak and kept his hand on his blade, walking casually, as if he were taking a stroll.
The other was a man with a cadaverous appearance, wearing an eyepatch over one eye; his skin looked lifeless, and his posture was quiet and rigid.
The man in the blue cloak looked at the bodies and frowned.
"Huh? Shouldn't there be a Troll here for us to fight?"
He searched with his eyes, trying to find any sign of the monster. His partner ignored him and answered without emotion:
"It must be nearby. That is better. It saves us from having to fight another one of those."
The cadaverous-looking man walked toward one of the mages and crouched down, searching for something on the body, among the belongings. Meanwhile, the man in the blue cloak complained:
"Tch! What a pain! Those things are easy to beat! They're just kind of hard to kill."
He kept walking and looking at the corpses around him, still unable to find any sign of the Troll. Then he saw a pile of rubble, particularly out of place.
He looked at it for a second longer, but did nothing.
At that moment, the man with the skull-like face spoke in a neutral tone:
"It is with me. Let's go."
In his hand was a ring that the mage had been wearing until not long ago.
As soon as he got confirmation, the man in the blue cloak nodded. Then the two left through the same place they had come from, without looking back.
A few minutes later, Jino appeared again. He looked in the direction the two swordsmen had gone, with a serious expression.
"Master Gall Farion... there you are."
Without the two of them knowing, they had just gained an official pursuer.
-----
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