I had sent 2 clones back to the ruined city to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Maybe secret buried passages, hidden treasures etc. Meanwhile, the team and I would go back and challenge the labyrinth. This will probably be my most tiring dungeon yet. I would have to constantly make sure these slackers don’t drown. I thought we would train to be able to be prepared for anything, why am I the only one who can remotely deal with this situation? I thought I was fooling around quite a lot in my training but these guys seemed to have surpassed me in this. I surely hope they are god-mode on dry land.

Anyways, rant over, keeping everyone alive is important. I came to the realization. Wouldn’t it be faster if I left them at the city that had air, then solve this myself, and then bring them after I figured out the correct path? Will they put up with sitting there for hours or even days while I possibly risk my life? I doubt it. Pain in the ass method it is!

Woofus was fearless as always trying to run out of the bubble without protection. Reckless as ever.

I stopped. Wait is this how my buddies see me? Crissy was screaming and preventing the doggo from doing dangerous stuff.

Naah, there is no way.

I created a big bubble that fitted everyone and we moved back to the labyrinth through the corridor. Crissy was holding on to Woofus.

We stopped right in front of the entrance of the labyrinth.

Right, I don’t think I need to tell you guys but this is a labyrinth, don’t go wandering off, especially you Woofus! The moment you get lost is the moment I will start thinking what to put on your tombstone!

Crissy held Woofus tight. “Don’t worry, I won’t let Woofus separate from me!”

Famous last words. Ow! Stop smacking me, Greg!

What is the plan? You can’t cheat with your Elgards eyes I assume?

Hmm, no but I suggest we slack here a bit and send our shadow clones in and get an idea of what’s going on here. I can make 12 now, how many can you make Greg?

I can make 32, that sounds like a good idea.

We sent our shadow clones to explore while we chilled at the entrance. Raishin was trying to flirt with Crissy while Crissy was trying to flirt with Greg and I guess Hayley was flirting with me. We’re in a dire situation and all they can think of is flirting…

“Hey, are you listening?”

No, let’s focus, save the flirting for other humans. Some of my clones disappeared Greg, did you find anything funny? This map of these ancients doesn’t seem super accurate…

Some monsters but a sizeable amount of my clones has disappeared too… Also this consistent [Gravity] here prevents us from swimming upwards a lot what does this mean?

I made a hologram of the map that I had found which was updated with what my clones found. I stuck to the format of the map and used red areas for where my clones disappeared.

Hmm, can you link me up and let me help update the map?

I linked him up and he added to the map, also with red areas. We kept doing this until we only had red areas.

Is this labyrinth unsolvable? What’s with all this red? All my clones are gone and I don’t know if they’re dead.

Same, how about we dispel them and send them out in groups of 2? We went with Greg’s plan.

Hey Agnis, I’m bored!

Go flirt with Crissy, I’m busy!

But she isn’t interested in me…

Then go flirt with Hayley. Greg, I don’t think this labyrinth is a 2 dimensional labyrinth…

Yeah… It seems that there are different floors where the labyrinth continues but information exchange between the floors seems impossible…

Great, exactly what we needed a 3D labyrinth! Couldn’t these ancients make it any harder?

At that moment the whole labyrinth shook.

An earthquake!

I wanted to comment that the whale might have just rolled over or is moving but I can’t tell them we’re in the belly of a whale.

Well, you just had to jinx it Agnis, look!

I had no idea what I was looking at. The entrance slid away. A lot of blue stone or ancient material, whatever this labyrinth was made of passed by until everything stopped moving and a new entrance appeared.

A shifting labyrinth… I guess we’ll die here…

“Noo! I’m too hot to die!” Hayley’s words didn’t match up with her actions as she doesn’t seem to be worried. She might be a female Raishin but at least she knows how to stay calm although she is allowed to panic in this situation as we’re quite fucked.

This is a problem… do you think the layout on the other floors of the labyrinth changed too?

For maximum obnoxiousness, probably yeh…

But at least we found that out now instead of when we were halfway right?!

I don’t think it matters… Let's send another wave of shadow clones Agnis. We did so and our current map was even more useless.

Aaagh! I’ve had it! Time to blow this place up! This is not worth whatever treasure this place has!

Hmm even though I agreed to this, we might have to remember that we have human passengers.

Great, nerfed by humans. Let’s see if I can cut through these walls. I got Shirayuki out.

Oh, you had weapons for us, right?

Oh right! I took out the weapons I had made for Greg and Raishin.

They have notes on what they can do. Nobody has time to explain it to you.

Let’s cheat and cut down all the walls, Shirayuki! I focused and used an [Iai: Winter’s bite], the walls got a small cut.

Of course… these ancients and their pointlessly strong materials. I focused again and used [Iai: Nilah] and busted down the wall.

Ugh, it's going to suck doing this all the time. At least we have a shortcut now. Let’s go!

We went through the hole I made and followed the new map our shadow clones made. We got met with some monsters but that was Raishin’s job to deal with. I had to make sure we had a sturdy bubble to make sure we didn’t drown.

“Hey, Agnis, look up there, it looks as if the water is draining.” Hayley pointed and we all stopped to look up.

Ugh, what is it this time, I don’t think the ancients will give us a break and drain all the water. I bet it has some meaning.

We kept walking and the water slowly disappeared from the labyrinth. At least the part we were at.

I dislike water but I dislike this even more.

There was no need for me to keep up a bubble anymore because besides some puddles it was quite dry here now.

It reminds me of what happens before a Tsunami hits, be on guard Greg.

Guys, can we leave? My intuition is going crazy. I’m not against adventure but I think something bad is going to happen soon.

Woofus seemed to take this as a sign and jumped out of Crissy’s arms and started running.

Oh shit, here we go again.

“Haroldus!”

I’ll get him, this dog is too wet behind the ears to outrun me!

“Take me with you!”

Hey, Hayley let me go!

“Aaah! He went around the corner!”

Ugh, you humans are a pain in the ass!

I ran after Woofus with Hayley clinging on to me. I easily caught Woofus after chasing him for a good 20 minutes, he was cheating because random monsters ignored him. He ran into a dead end so that’s how I caught him.

Stupid dog.

I picked him up and the labyrinth started to rumble again.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Woofus, please tell me this is you farting…

I saw a strange transparent barrier appear not too far from me and the ground under us started to tilt.

Ugh, I wanted to say hold on but you’re already doing such.

I think the part that I’m standing on is moving just like the part of the entrance before. At least my buddies will also get moved with us. As the ground kept slanting more and more, I saw Gregory, Raishin and Crissy behind the transparent barrier, quite unmoving.

Oh… this is a problem.

Woofus was barking and Hayley was screaming. It feels like this part is trying to slide us off. I ran at a wall and used it as a floor. The area started slowly moving us into the water so I remade a bubble around us.

The moving stopped. It seems the part we were at turned 90 degrees and not in a direction that is human or 9t friendly. At least it didn’t send us falling off the labyrinth. Our previous floor was now a wall. I then noticed that the floor down below also had a maze. My 9th tail instantly came up with a possible explanation.

This labyrinth probably has labyrinths on all sides, so if this part turns 90 degrees again there will be a different labyrinth on the new floor. My 9th tail also had a possible scenario that sounded like it would make this whole obnoxious puzzle even more obnoxious.

Hey Hayley, are you familiar with puzzles?

“Stay calm Hayley, I’m with a mythical beast, everything will be alright, stay calm. Eh, what? Puzzles? Uhm a bit why?”

Let’s ignore that this is a labyrinth. Do you know any popular cube like puzzles that have moving parts? Hayley took a pensive stance.

“Hmm you mean that this labyrinth might be a puzzle like that? Hmm, I can only think of that puzzle with colors, I forgot what it was called but it was made out of small cubes 3x3x3 and you had to turn them all to get each side to have the same color! Wait… you’re not suggesting this labyrinth is like this right?”

I don’t know what puzzle you’re talking about but my tail suggested something similar to your description. Although I doubt that this labyrinth has 27 cubes that can move independently… No wonder that other ancient civilizations couldn’t figure this out. Even while knowing how it works, solving it is a completely different beast. Ugh, we might be stuck here for a long time, sorry Hayley.

“A 3D labyrinth on a colorcube, that is some high levels of sadism…”

Taking obnoxious puzzles to the max. If I ever find the one who came up with this idea, I’ll [Vaporize] him…

I jumped down with Woofus and Hayley. The [Gravity] Greg mentioned seemed to have little effect on me but I assume this labyrinth is impossible to solve standing on the walls. Everything here seemed green. Everything was blue before we got moved and it was quite dark and eerie here. Does every floor have a different color?

I think it was safe to say we were on the top floor when we started. So, the top floor is blue, and the second floor is green? Are we on the second floor? If this is 3x3x3 it has at least 3 floors. But it’s not guaranteed that the ancients stopped at a simple 3x3x3 cube. What if this labyrinth has something stupid like 8x8x8? Solving 512 individual smaller cubes is going to literally take forever…

Aaagh! I hate this place!

I put my tails to work on how to solve this. There must be a mechanism to force these to move. Then there is the issue of moving between layers without moving the smaller cubes.

“Hey what is that?!”

More headache! Let’s see.

We were in a small hall and we moved to where Hayley pointed. A small pillar with inscriptions is what we found in a corner. The inscriptions had unimportant text but it showed the labyrinth and all its smaller cubes. It didn’t show any path but it just indicated on what floor we were. It seems that this dynamically changes so remembering where these pillars are on each cube might be useful.

Hmm, hmm, 4x4x4 cube and we’re on floor 3 and the bottom of each smaller cube is a floor of the big cube making for 4 floors. That’s good to know, solving 64 smaller cubes though… still sucks.

“Ugh, I hate puzzles, so how do we beat this?”

No clue, my best bet is to have Gregory remember every permutation of this cube and from there move these cubes and solve this retarded 3D labyrinth.

“But he’s not here…”

Yeah, I also can’t reach him. But this split up is I think the best scenario, Greg and Raishin can together make an air bubble. If there had to be a split, those 2 would have had to stay together with one or more of you chicks. I’ll be fine alone.

“Isn’t that lonely? But don’t worry I will keep you company!”

Ugh, just my luck, I’m stuck with the Raishin chick.

“Hey! My name is Hayley! Not Raishin chick! I’m better than him!”

I sent out shadow clones to make another map. I made them pay attention to when they would move to a different cube. So far, I still needed to find up how to go up or down cubes besides getting kidnapped by a whole row or column of cubes. The red zones did that but… no red zones on this floor. My clones did find strange structures though.

I assume this [Gravity] is so that nobody can cheat, I can cheat when I’m alone but not with you and Woofus. You guys kinda have to obey [Gravity].

“Huh, mythical beasts are immune to physics?”

Of course not, but my race seems to poorly interact with gravity and the more I think about it, Greg might have something with light or shadows. I don’t know about Raishin though. So, I guess we’re selectively immune to physics?

“Fascinating! They don’t teach us about you on uni!”

For a good reason. Anyways we need to run, my clone spotted an annoyingly strong monster!

“But where do we go? This is a labyrinth! And where’s Crissy’s dog?”

I thought that you had him… I swear this dog…

I ran around dragging Hayley with me. Did this dog seriously jump out of the bubble? What a reckless woofer.

I found him not much later being cornered by the monster I tried to avoid.

Hey isn’t keeping a dog on the leash quite normal for humans?

“It is, I’m sorry but I don’t have the leash, Crissy has it…”

Of course, she has…

“How come he’s fine, aren’t we deep underwater? And doesn’t he need to breathe?”

That is a very good question, I guess he’s Woofus the Breathless. Time to save this troublesome dog.

I used [Water Dragon Dance] and sent water dragons at his uhm what is it? It looks a bit like those strange sharks I fought with Thalia and Toxic Donkey but it was a bit less shark and more uhhm whale? Is this a joke? Are there mini whales in this huge ass whale? The water dragons pushed it around but didn’t seem to do a lot of damage.

Right Hayley, I’m making the bubble a bit bigger, back off for a bit, I’ve had it with this clown show.

Hayley backed off and shifted my stance to use [High Voltage] and fried the abomination.

Huh, weak to lightning eh, that’s a pleasant surprise.

I collected Woofus who tried to continue exploring and threw him at Hayley.

“Hey! He’s wet! And why are you fine so long underwater? Come on you can tell me! I will keep it secret from Crissy!” She tried to discover Woofus’ secret.

I inspected this strange structure while Hayley was playing with Woofus. My eyes didn’t tell me much about it.

I knocked on it, it seemed hollow. I followed the structure with my eyes. It went into the ground but also all the way up into the ceiling. Is this our ticket up? Is it an elevator? I walked around it but no door.

Strange. My clone found a hole to go down. I don’t know if going down is a good idea. I had to make sure I kept track of where we were going. I don’t know on which cube we are at the moment on the 3rd floor but when we got separated from the rest the labyrinth moved us eastward.

So, I guess our row moved to the right. I guess that means we were on the 3rd cube from the left when we moved to land on the 3rd floor. Ugh, thinking in 3D like this is such a pain. So, we were somewhere in the 3rd column of cubes when we moved. Does that put us at the edge of the labyrinth then?

Let’s think, to make sure we minimize movements when this happens, we should go to the 8 cubes in the center of the labyrinth. No matter what bullshit happens we will only move 1 cube relative to our starting point. As far as I know, we didn’t move to the next cube so if we would head west, we would eventually get there.

Let’s go Hayley, we’re going to cheese this labyrinth a bit, if we go to the center, we won’t be moved a lot!

“Huh what? Ok!”

We moved west and I dealt with annoying monsters by zapping them. I stopped running when my tail notified me of something.

Hayley bumped into me. “Ow, what’s up?”

We should blow up this place… my tail just told me how many possible combinations this shitty place has…

“How many?”

7 401 196 841 564 901 869 874 093 974 498 574 336 000 000 000, that’s a 7 with 45 0’s behind it if you were curious… this is literally going to take forever if there’s not a mechanism to solve it, it also seems these small cubes have mazes on all 6 of their sides so might as well throw them into the mix…

“You have an idea, right? Right?”

Besides blowing this place up not really… My tails are having issues going through so many combinations… Maybe we should put Raishin in charge and let his intuition carry us. Using logic will probably take too long… so hope his intuition can brute force luck and the result…

“You said the center doesn’t move a lot, right? Maybe that’s a clue?”

Hmm solving a 2x2x2 and then just changing the outside, it’s worth a shot, thanks that was helpful! My tails can brute force solve a 2x2x2.

Getting to the next cube was harder than I thought. Many paths led to holes to go down or tubes to go up I assume. It took us 4 hours to finally get to the cube west of us. I was paying close attention. My other clones were helping out too and I concluded that these smaller cubes were 10 km in every direction, not small but well that means the whole labyrinth is 40x40x40 km. Which is ridiculous. How did they even build it? Couldn’t they have gone for something easier like 40x40x40 meters or something? And this labyrinth isn’t helping either.

“Ugh, I’m so tired…” Hayley sat down next to a wall as I had moved the bubble to the side. She was still in her bikini and looked… pleasant, for a lack of better words.

Yeah, this was brutal. Go rest up a bit.

The labyrinth rumbled and I got a bad feeling.

Ugh what now?

The water on this floor also started to slowly drain. My clone notified me that those tubes were moving with the water level. The holes to go down closed after the water drained from this floor and holes appeared in the tubes through which we could swim up. So, besides all this bullshit we also have to wait for tides to go up and down? Which sadistic asshole thought of this?! It was midnight, the topmost floor drained 6 hours ago, a floor drains every 2 hours? Will they fill up after that every 2 hours?

Ugh, this dungeon is too much for me. If my suspicion is correct then it means this floor will flood again in 4 hours. Now the question is to go up one cube or stay here? We will still be in the center 8 cubes if we go up from here, I didn’t keep track of when this labyrinth randomly moves a row or column of cubes. Can it also move cubes on the horizontal plane? It should, right? So, staying in the middle 8 cubes is always a good idea. On the outer cubes you get moved way too much. I caught Woofus who tried to escape since Hayley fell asleep. I swear this dog just hates behaving.

Look here Woofus, it’s hard to keep your secret if you act as reckless like this. Hayley might notice.

Woofus barked but I have no idea if he understood me. I would like to think this dog is smart but everything suggests that he is quite stupid. I didn’t like this idea but I had to curl in my tails and have Hayley and Woofus inside them too, it would protect them when the floor would flood again. I carried Hayley to a safe spot and I curled up protecting them from whatever other bullshit this labyrinth will throw at us.