Every minute the last racer will be killed by the labyrinth. It took time for the king’s words to settle in Keynes’s mind. Now, the king’s previous mention of certain death made sense.
It only enraged Keynes more as he thought about Bonolo, Hawthorne and Haruka. Neither of them had told Keynes the full truth. Keynes wasn’t going to retaliate against them but he no longer considered them to be his friends.
Meanwhile, the last racer descended from the stands. Bonolo was back to where his wife sat.
So that was betrayal, master? Alice asked.
Yes.
Why does it hurt?
I wish I knew, Keynes replied as he watched the king and the queen take out two golden sceptres from their dimensional spaces. Clearly, the items of power.
Then a part of the stage started to rise, creating a sort of a table with two holes in it. Both sceptres were inserted into the holes and upon twisting the sceptres the rim of the underground entrance lit up with hundreds of runes.
What the hell is that?!
A complex runic structure, Alice replied.
But how? Runes required tones of mana.
A shimmering surface appeared at the level of the hole.
“Once you jump in, your only way out is through winning the race. GO!”
Racers didn’t hesitate and started diving into the hole. The air rippled as they crossed the shimmering surface. Doubt reached Keynes and rooted his feet. No matter what the vision wanted, he couldn’t shake off a feeling of danger that lurked down there.
When more than two third of the racers were gone, Keynes clenched his fists and ran to the entrance. Others tried to block his way but they were too weak. He easily shoved them aside and jumped.
Welcome to the Labyrinth of Worth!
Current Rules:
* Weapons are forbidden.
* Spells and Talents are permitted.
* Killing is permitted.
Some rooms have special rules.
The System message? Keynes asked. What’s going on?
That is not the System message, master. These messages come from the runic structure.
Keynes found himself in a massive cave with many exits. Each second a tribesman had appeared on the ground and shortly after that got up and ran toward one of the exits.
Rows of luminous runes ran around the cave at different levels and around the exits.
Hawthorne had told Keynes that the first exit didn’t matter as the routes would eventually merge into one. It was all about dividing the participants.
Keynes moved, picking the closest exit. Immediately, three Level 2s ran to intercept him.
“Filthy outsider! Die!”
Keynes dodged their fists and moved away from them. He’d been warned that others might gang up and try to stop him in here, though Hawthorne had used the word ‘forestall’ instead of ‘kill’.
“Come back!”
Keynes entered the exit and found a narrow tunnel with walls completely covered by luminous runes. The ground was a different story. It was covered by black sand with boulders scattered throughout the tunnel.
Do not step on the sand, master. It feels lethal.
Keynes frowned then felt a push from behind. A moment of distraction was all the tribesmen needed. Keynes went over the threshold and was falling to the ground.
“Die!”
Master!
Except he could fly and he didn’t hesitate to use [Flight] to save himself and land on the nearest boulder.
He faced his attackers. They all looked similar in their wood and leather armours. Their eyes were full of shock.
Keynes smiled.
“If you want to pass this room, you must go through me.”
Out of the four tribesmen, two retreated and left the room, perhaps hoping to find an easier route. The other two quickly squashed their shock and attacked.
But they were idiots. The boulders’ positions, shapes and sizes weren’t random. There were two other boulders that could be jumped on from the ledge at the entrance of the tunnel but one was farther away and the third one was quite small.
Keynes watched them try. Perhaps, they had some smart idea of beating Keynes to the exit on the other side. Who could say what went through their heads? The tribesman who aimed for the farther boulder miscalculated the distance and dropped a half a metre shy of the destination. The black sand swallowed him in a second, not giving the man a chance to properly scream.
The other guy made a mistake of glancing to the side at the death of his companion. His foot missed the small boulder and he plunged into the black sand, disappearing under it.
“I didn’t know runes can do stuff like this,” Keynes muttered to himself. “Where did they find so much mana to make it work?”
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You should not wait, master. We do not know how many people are behind you.
Ah. Right. Death every minute. Who the hell built this thing? Because it wasn’t the royals from the Capital. That much Keynes was certain.
The next room was also a tunnel but instead of black sand, it was filled with water. Alice was unable to sense any danger in the water. Keynes didn’t plan on testing it though. He moved above the water without disturbing its surface, which did the trick and didn’t activate any traps.
The third room was many times larger. To Keynes’s left was an exit from a different tunnel. This room had a more circular shape with irregular walls. In the middle of the room was a pool of lava and in the middle of the pool was a pedestal.
The exit from this room was on the other side, near the ceiling.
Keynes made a step forward and then saw three people jump out of the other exit and run toward the lava pool. They saw Keynes but ignored him.
He saw one of them jump over the pool and swiftly land on the pedestal. The man pressed something on its surface and the room rumbled. Hundreds of ropes unravelled, falling from the ceiling.
The pool started to overflow.
“Easy.”
Keynes jumped over the ledge onto the gravel.
All spells are restricted in this room.
“You’re joking me...”
***
Aurora turned invisible after Princess Venarys had given her a sign to follow the outsider girl. The king was likely to make his move now and the princess needed to know how it would play out before she was going to act. One wrong decision and Princess Venarys might find herself facing dire consequences of a wrong choice. But that was the price one needed to pay to play in this game. Aurora thought that the princess shouldn’t take part in this at all. The situation in the Capital was strained enough since the first outbreak. Every faction fought to get the most valuable resources and items from the rifts.
The appearance of the Level 3 rift brought the worst out of the royal family. Their greed pushed them to discard the tribal law and compete in the Covenant of Tribes. But they couldn’t stop there, they decided to take advantage of two powerful outsiders. The princess might have recognised the danger soon enough but instead of distancing herself from the whole scheme, she wanted to use it to take control of the Capital.
Aurora stopped at the top of the stairs and glanced back. She’d been a child when the current king had killed the previous one and usurped the throne. Aurora’s parents had betrayed the previous king and were betrayed in turn sometime later.
History was repeating itself. All because of greed. The fall of the Capital was due. This place, like the royal family, outlived its purpose.
She turned her back on the stadium and rushed after the outsider girl.
***
Vivena reached the gates of the Capital and stopped. Over a hundred guards tried to surround her. At first, they’d attempted to be discreet but they did a poor job.
She shook her head, disappointed. She’d been schooled on how to deal with betrayal and yet it stung. It seemed that their betrayal reached further than she’d expected.
One of the guards broke away from the group and came forward.
“Leave your dimensional pouch on the ground then put your hands on your head.”
He was Level 3 and in the Medium stage. One of the strongest tribesmen in the Capital Vivena had seen. His piercing amber eyes stared at her unyieldingly. His armour and weapon were crafted from rift materials so they boosted his attributes but without proper rift items, he didn’t have access to true power or spells that usually came with rare rift items.
“What’s this about?”
“You’ve been charged with treason,” he responded. “You have to go with us. If you refuse to go, we are prepared to take you by force.”
In response, Vivena took the poison serum out of her dimensional pouch and injected it. Seeing this, the tribesmen rushed at her. Vivena’s naked stats at Level 4 were 30 points per attribute. With the serum that contained 15 weak poisons, her attributes were boosted by 150% to 75 each. She didn’t bother with all her rift items. It’d be overkill. She didn’t think she’d be able to control her strength enough to avoid killing the attackers.
Vivena’s world exploded with sounds, odours and many other stimuli. It was a good thing that her Mind attribute was equal to Perception otherwise the stimuli would have overwhelmed her. The jump in attributes was so substantial that the first man that reached her died from a single slap, his neck twisted.
With monsters on the savannah, Vivena hadn’t needed to rein herself as she tried now. Back then she let go of the shackles that restrained her and let herself be a death to the monsters.
It took her a few moments before she got a good grip on her reaction time and the force of her slaps. The tribesmen were also much more reluctant to get close after a few of theirs had been killed.
“What are you waiting for?!” their leader shouted. “Attack her!”
Armed with their rungus and shields, the tribesmen advanced once again, everyone at once.
“I don’t want to kill—”
She twisted as an arrow flew past her. More were coming from the top of the wall.
Thinking she was distracted, two young Level 2 guards came at her, they swung their rungus, aiming at her calves. She let the weapons hit her. The attack didn’t do any damage to her. She didn’t even feel pain.
“How?” one of them mumbled under his nose. Her boosted Perception easily picked it up.
Vivena dodged the other arrows, then decided to finally use the [Flight] skill. She didn’t want to do it but those maniacs weren’t going to stop and she would be forced to kill them all.
She jumped into the air and kept going up until she was out of reach of—
An arrow grazed her shoulder. She wasn’t quick enough to dodge it in the air. Her control of the skill was quite poor.
I’m out of reach of any ordinary bow, she said to her spiritual companion. How … ah, either a rift item or a Talent. It was easy to forget that some people had strong Talents when she had spent her time facing monsters. In fact, she didn’t even know Bill’s or Haruka’s Talents.
As more arrows kept coming, Vivena hurried away, disappearing from the archer’s sight.
What about your friend? Isako asked.
Keynes… Oh. Yes, I will be back for him. But I need to contact Wagner first.
***
Keynes watched the lava pool overflow and cursed the vision for making him enter the death race. The others who activated the pedestal were climbing up the ropes, escaping the heat. Not all of them were lucky though.
One of them grabbed a rope that immediately unattached itself and he plunged into the lava.
This place is insane.
Keynes checked the first rope, it held, then started moving from one rope to another, always checking their attachment and after witnessing the other guy’s fall, he was careful about the process, making his progress slow.
The other two didn’t share Keynes’s survival instinct and pressed forward recklessly until they reached the exit. The lava level started to rise faster once they’d left the chamber, ropes began catching fire. The sense of urgency became prevalent.
Master, if you keep your current pace, we will not make it, Alice informed him.
How do you know?
I calculated it. You can use the ropes they used.
It was a good idea.
Immediately, he crossed the distance to the first rope he remembered the other two had used and from there progressed haphazardly toward the exit near the ceiling.
The temperature in the chamber was rising sharply, every rope was on fire. As Keynes placed his foot on the ledge, every rope fell off and the lava stopped rising. He took a deep breath, aware of how much of this was smoke. He didn’t care.
It wasn’t exactly a close call but if not for his prodigious memory, he’d be dead. He had to admit that the obstacles were nothing Hawthorne and Bonolo had prepared him for.
With rekindled rage, Keynes left the lava chamber.