Emilia saw another set of two gigantic metal balls falling down directly on top of her. With the sheer size of it, if it ever fell down on her safety wouldn’t be guaranteed. Sliding to the side, she gathered her Malum and launched an attack on the metal ball that had just landed.
Empowering her rapier, Emilia struck the metal ball multiple times within the blink of an eye. Attacking the same spot with precise accuracy, increasing the power behind her attack with each strike.
After she finished her move, the only thing she could see was a small dent in it. She perfectly knew just how destructive her technique was but faced with a nearly indestructible metal, she was helpless.
“These traps are indestructible! The only thing we can do is dodge it!” Emilia informed everyone.
Those remaining below could see how dangerous it was if they were ever to slip up. Despite this, from the looks of it, it was still doable. The only problem was how dangerous it would be after it scaled up.
“What are you waiting for? Going to let them die? The faster you move, the more likely they’ll survive.” Arin motivated the rest. Right now, it was still a relatively safe situation, as long as they kept on the move they wouldn’t be in any real danger.
The remaining Bind Solvers snapped out of their confusion and rushed in. They knew the very basics of what they needed to do next. The room they were in was connected to another, forcing everyone to move at the same pace. If one were to fail, it would mean that the rest would be implicated.
To put it into perspective, a completely normal person would be able to do this for as long as their stamina allowed them. Dodging the traps wasn’t the issue, it was how well they worked with one another.
Previously, when Layla activated a switch, another metal ball appeared on Emilia’s side, increasing the difficulty on her end but at the same time, opening up an area that she could further explore.
Currently, there was nothing for Emilia to do here but wait which meant that someone else needed to proceed forward and join in on the effort.
At once, the remaining people except for Arin joined in. They were all teleported into their respective trapped rooms. One room was trapped with spikes all over the floor, a red glow would appear a second before it activated. In another room, a moving robot followed behind the girl, it had a symbol of a bomb on it. It moved extremely slowly but once someone activated the mechanism in their room, it suddenly started running faster.
“At the very least, they know what to do.” Arin watched each one of them perfectly perform their tasks. It was simple, dodge the trap, activate the mechanism, and then move forward.
This continued on for a bit which caused the severity of the traps to exponentially increase. At this point, twenty metal balls were falling down on Emilia constantly. It had come to the point where there was no downtime for Emilia to catch her breath.
As for Layla’s room, the dripping liquid substance was only a few drops ever so often but now, it was a stream. The droplets of this substance even got on her skin. Layla audibly groaned in pain from seeing her skin show signs of necrosis.
The other girls were also struggling but not as absurdly. The later they joined, the easier it was for them to continue. Eventually, it came to the point that there was no more way to progress. Emilia jumped to the side once more but saw that a metal ball from within the air clashed against another one, redirecting its trajectory.
With their slowly growing exhaustion and exponentially increasing difficulty, they were struggling.
Using her rapier, she stabbed the ground and used it the propel herself out of the strike zone. She looked behind her only to see her beloved weapon rendered into scrap metal. Emilia reached out her hand in shock but the next metal ball was on top of her leaving her no time to mourn.
“Arin! Join in already! What are you waiting for?!” Emilia roared out, any kind of mistake on her end would result in her demise. Everyone else was starting to feel the difficulty of this Maze-level Trial.
Arin had been putting this off for as long as possible to see what other secrets this place held. He tried checking every nook and cranny only to find nothing of value. Having no other reason to delay it, he entered the entrance and was teleported to a similarly trapped room.
Within this room was a miniature replica of a forest with multiple diverging and converging paths. Looking closer in, he could see that every single option led to this point. From within the paths, it could be seen what they would’ve gone through.
If they had taken the ‘Journey’ path then it would’ve taken them twice as long to get here. From the looks of it, taking the ‘Survive’ route was the correct option.
In front of Arin were two doors, one on the right and one on the left. Between these two options, the one on the right had a peculiar aesthetic to it, one that gave it a more archaic feel with how many runes were etched on it. On the left door, was presented a simple door, similar to the ones that everyone else had gotten.
Looking at the door on the right, there were three icons, a coffin, a star, and a skull. Below each icon was a word that needed to be written for it to be activated. Seeing this, Arin grinned as he finally understood what he needed to do the next time he entered this Maze-level Trial.
Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t go through this door for the time being. He turned his attention to the door on the left, it had nine sections with an accommodating riddle for each one. He immediately understood what he needed to do.
Each section needed a word or a phrase to be activated, this would let them continue on going deeper in. This would be trivial if not for the fact that they were too far apart to communicate with each other. At best, the neighboring rooms could shout at one another to relay information.
“The kind of Trial that punishes more participants that enter it. Also paradoxically locking behind the higher quality rewards behind the difficulty. That’s good to know.” He started noting down everything that he could do better the next time.
The very first question, “Death looms right behind you, ever close, ever creeping.”
Arin shouted and explained to the person right behind him what they needed to do. Following that, he told her the riddle.
The ninth person in the trapped rooms heard this and looked behind her. It was the creeping explosive robot following right behind her. She shouted out, “Bomb or explosive! Something along those lines!”
Arin went over to the door and wrote ‘explosive’ in human language. As soon as he finished, the word he had written turned into a shifting rune. With this kind of mystic language, for as long as the intent is held, it would give the respective meaning.
The door clearly reacted to this change as it activated the mechanism.
The girl who was being followed by the explosive robot suddenly sped up one more time. It was to the point that she started to have difficulty in outrunning it. Fortunately, there was another area that opened up where she could escape. She immediately ran ahead towards it only to realize that…
“I can’t go back… what does that mean…” She stopped in place and juked the explosive robot right behind her before coming to Arin. “Arin, I can escape right now but if I do I won’t be able to go back anymore! Do I do it?”
Hearing this, Arin couldn’t help but break out in laughter, “Hahahaha! Of course, it’s like that! Sure go ahead!”
“Really? Alright! This thing’s speeding up and I’m starting to have trouble with it!” She sighed in relief. She was about to run off when Arin’s next words caused her to almost lose her balance.
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“If you want your friends to die by your hands then go ahead.” Arin teased her. “Tough luck, you have to keep going unless you don’t want your friends to die. Go explain to the next person what’s happening.”
She clenched her fists in anger, “This is no time for jokes! Everyone’s life is at stake!” Even so, she ran off to explain to the next person in the other room everything. The person in the eighth room was struggling as the floor below her was starting to fill up with water.
This was ordinary water, the only problem was that this was time-gated. She had to start from the top and travel downward, bringing along the water with her as each section was unlocked. This meant that if she waited too long, she would need to swim upward, passing through the areas she had already gone through and back up to get some air. There will come a point where she will not be able to progress due to the increasing pressure on her lungs.
Fortunately, everyone worked extremely fast, completely understanding what each person needed to do. Right now, she was the one that was the safest with the water barely filling up anything.
“The last thing a king takes, the very first thing life brings, take it and wallow in despair.” the eighth girl heard this and immediately referenced it to the trap she was in. Shouting back at the girl in the ninth room, “Breath! It’s breath!”
Due to them joining in at the exact same time, they didn’t see what everyone else had. This made it hard for them to realize the trend of these riddles. Soon enough, the girl in the eighth room heard something activate, causing the previously relatively tame influx of water to spew in at an exaggerated rate.
She was extremely surprised but after hearing that they were in a time crisis, she immediately carried on this piece of information to the next person while the other girl came to Arin’s side to get the next set of riddles.
When Arin heard the next keyword, he confirmed his hypothesis. “Every single riddle refers to the trap inside them. If I wanted to I can solve everything at once…”
As the only person who observed everything from a distance, he knew everything happening. He knew every single trapped room the rest was in.
Without a shred of doubt, he should immediately write it down and let them escape. The only problem was their coordination.
“How willing are they to trust me?” Arin wanted to see just what decision they would make given a choice of life and death. “Their lives… it’s up to them.”
“Listen, in five minutes, every single person should be waiting for the next area. After you say this to the next person, escape as soon as possible.” Arin went away, immediately starting the timer in his mind.
“Arin? Wait! What are you talking about? Don’t you need us for the riddles?” This was talking about their life and death, she wasn’t willing to blindly trust someone like Arin.
“Time’s ticking. Four minutes and forty-eight seconds left.” Arin replied with cold indifference.
The poor girl felt completely helpless against how difficult Arin was being. But at this point, what other option did she have? At the very least, she should relay this information.
Arin didn’t immediately open everything up for one simple reason, for every single mechanism activated, the traps would progressively get more and more severe. If they took it slow then there was a realistic outcome where one of them would die.
This wasn’t an outcome anyone wanted. With this move, Arin was achieving multiple goals at once. As time slowly ticked down, the message was slowly spread.
“Arin said to go wait around the door to the next area. When it opens-” The girl groaned as an audible slashing motion could be heard. “Dammit! Just go in when it opens! Tell Emilia this as well! We don’t have enough time!”
Layla’s right side was visibly rotting off. Parts of her skin had already decayed to an extremely unfortunate sight. The liquid substance flowing down from the skies kept spreading droplets that would land on her skin. Unfortunately for her, the Fragment she owned couldn’t do anything about this.
After hearing this, Layla waited for the trailing stream of liquid to arrive just beside her. She jumped off the wall and juked it, escaping what seemed to almost be a nearly deadly situation. She quickly ran off, dodging the floor that had already been stained with this hazardous liquid.
The limited amount of space before her was making her struggle even more. From the looks of it, she had the second more perilous situation.
“Emilia! Are you still alive?!” Layla cried out. The traps were arriving to the point where it was nigh impossible to deal with despite being Bind Solvers.
“Still kicking!” Emilia could be heard breathing in quite deeply. From the sounds of it, she was struggling to even stay conscious right now. “What is it?”
“Arin told everyone to wait at the door to the next area! He’s going to let us out! I need to dodge the trap in this room, don’t mess it up!” Layla jumped off the wall once more, gliding by the wall to arrive at a safer area she had been saving. At this point, she was no longer able to get back to this place, it was a point of no return.
When Emilia heard this, she couldn’t help but have doubts.
“Arin’s going to let us out? But… the area around the next section is the most dangerous! If I go there then if I don’t move perfectly, I’ll get crushed.” Emilia clenched her fists. She had no idea how Arin was going to do it but ever since Arin entered through the entrance, the difficulty of the traps had exponentially increased.
With the correlation that with each step of progress the more difficult the traps became, she couldn’t help but bank on this one desperate fact. If Emilia thought of this then without a doubt, the rest had also had the same ideas. This was essentially believing in this villain for their survival.
“Do I believe him or not?” Emilia looked up at the skies, at this point, fifty gigantic metal balls were falling down non-stop. At some points, there were even two or three balls dropping at the exact time. There would be a small shaking as each one dropped.
With everything that had happened, Emilia wanted nothing more than to get away from Arin as soon as possible. Despite being a normal person without the ability to control Malum, she was more wary of him than anyone else.
“He killed someone for the sake of it. He berated us for being human. He even threw away lives as he saw fit! He’s a complete lunatic! But… he never does anything without reason.” Emilia saw the fifty metal balls immediately double at once.
A hundred metal balls were dropped at the exact same time…
Emilia knew that she wouldn’t be able to survive this time around. Running towards the next area at max speed she couldn’t help but think, “Even until this point, he didn’t use the slave mark. But you aren’t exactly giving me a choice here, you bastard!”
A phantom armor piece covered her entire body, enhancing her physical attributes well beyond what her normal body would be able to. She hadn’t been using this at all due to how exhausting it would be to use. If she wasn’t in combat then there would be no reason to use it.
Her speed exceeded well beyond the speed of the 100 metal balls dropping at the same time. Even if she took her time in this form, she would still be able to make it with ease. Although she might not be able to break these metal balls, there was no difficulty in out-running it.
Emilia saw the door open up giving her the only way to escape her current predicament. With this form, she easily got in, letting her get inside to see a particular room that was connected to the other rooms.
This was decorated with statues of a person with stern eyes overseeing the entire room. Emilia looked to the side to see faces she had never been more relieved to see. She ran over in tears, comforting the others who had also suffered the same.
Most of them had injuries while some were relatively well off. The two people who had it the worst were Layla with her necrotic injuries and another girl who had her thigh pierced with a spike.
“Layla, Iana, Kori, Gwelyn, Janet, Parsce, Q’iya, and… Milanda…” Emilia named every single person that came out. She was tearful as everyone had made it. She celebrated everyone surviving this time around.
Their victory was quick-lived as the main man opened the door to see such a sight. Arin casually looked at the aftermath with a relatively surprised look on her face.
“Everyone’s alive? I didn’t expect that.” Arin emotionlessly answered. “I was sure that at least one of you would’ve had second thoughts. After all, you’re basically giving me your life to play with.”
Emilia wanted to berate Arin but thinking further about it, she needed to know something.
“How did you do it?” Emilia needed this question answered.
“There were riddles inside… Arin answered it all at once…” Milanda was out of breath after running from that explosive robot the entire time. Despite this, she still pulled through in explaining it.
Emilia oddly looked at Arin.
“Not appreciating you savior? Typical.” Arin mocked them. Even though he said this, his eyes were being lured in by the rest of the room.
Even as she hated him, even as she wanted nothing more than for this to end, what Arin did let them all survive. Even if Arin forced them to enter this Maze-level Trial, it was part of their job, casualities were to be expected. For no one to die, it was already a blessing.
Out of Emilia’s pure volition, she kneeled before him. “Thank you for letting all of us survive.” As soon as Emilia did so, everyone else followed her lead.
She hated that she had to do this but it was the truth. If not for Arin, one of her people would’ve died. Even if Arin was the one who forced them into going in, a job was a job. It was already fortunate that no one died.
At this point, Arin had been testing them the entire time. With this, he could confidently say that they only had a 20% of betraying him with the exception of Emilia who could never betray him. This was a good haul, for the time being, he no longer needed to be so aggressive with them.
“As you keep doing what I want you to do, there won’t be any problem.” Arin walked over to the obviously important piece in the middle of the room. There were a few other objects in the area but this scroll was what took Arin’s attention the most. One last scroll to read as a precursor to the end.
There had been an ominous gate that had opened itself up as Arin walked through the items on the pedestals. As it turned out, there were exactly the same amount of gates as the amount of people there.
Taking the scroll in his hands, Arin was teleported away. Everyone saw Arin disappear and couldn’t help but be relieved as this was the treasure room. Everyone took something that fancied their eyes.
Once Arin opened his eyes, he was now outside the Maze-level Trial with the very same scroll he had taken. “Completion Rate, 86%. My best one yet.”