Chapter 211: The Price of Greed (3)

「Ahem, okay, I’ve definitely got it down this time!」

After letting out a brief, self-conscious cough, Ain systematically began cycling through her active buffs for the final phase.

Whirrrrr.

Two distinct wavelengths of magical energy rippled outward alongside Angel’s Basic Swordsmanship, which she had temporarily deactivated earlier.

Boom! In an instant, her Potential Explosion stack threshold simultaneously spiked to its maximum of three layers. Any HP continuously drained by the skill’s recoil was immediately siphoned back by shredding Parmu’s main carapace.

Having perfectly locked in the optimal damage output required to trigger a clean dismemberment without over-killing the mob, Ain flashed a highly confident smirk.

「See? My damage calculations are completely flawless, aren’t they? Honestly, at this rate, I might actually burst it down faster than you can coach me!」

「Didn’t I literally just get done telling you not to kill it too fast…?」

「Ah, I know, I know…! I was just playing around.」

Through the neural network of their Assimilation, Hyun caught the subtle, micro-tremor of her internal emotions. Another bluff. Yet, knowing she was throwing out a completely transparent lie that she knew he’d catch instantly somehow made him chuckle rather than feel annoyed.

‘The second Ain locks into combat mode, she completely tunes out the finer technical details.’

While that hyper-fixation was precisely what allowed her to unlock flashes of superhuman reflex and focus, a systematic raid—unlike a raw PvP duel—was a domain that prioritized calculated patience over explosive instinct.

「Don’t get too tense.」

「Huh?」

「When it comes to pure raw reaction speed, you’re actually a cut above me. As long as you keep the tactical checklist straight in your head, we’ve got this bag secured.」

Thump. Hyun felt a warm wave of genuine pride ripple through his emotional core. Before he knew it, a broad, goofy grin had spread across Ain’s face.

Had he been a bit too generous with the praise? Well, it didn’t really matter. No matter how deeply Ain buried herself in the thrill of the fight, there was zero chance she would blank on the strategy after he had hammered it home this many times.

[Parmu’s overall stats have increased by 10%!]

Screeech!

The creature’s very first leg was cleanly severed. Instead of dropping to the floor as raw organic matter, the amputated limb dissolved into a violent explosion of holy power. Where the detonation cleared, threads of pure woven light aggressively colonized the architecture.

Crackle! Spark!

Every single time Parmu scuttled across the woven pattern, hyper-intense arcs of lightning discharged from the luminous strands. The network of webbing rapidly anchored itself across the surrounding masonry, floors, and cavern ceiling. It took a mere handful of seconds for the entire structural geography to dissolve into an absolute chaotic wasteland.

As it underwent successive forced evolutions, the monster’s physical volume actually condensed down to a streamlined one-meter frame. It became exponentially more agile to compensate for the loss of bulk.

BZZZZZT! BZZZZT!

Sprinting wildly across the geometry while spinning webs at Mach speed, the creature’s frantic movements transformed it into a literal ball of lightning bouncing off the walls.

“Damn it! What the hell is this pattern now…?!”

The players who were genuinely thrown into a state of absolute panic by this sudden environmental shift were the members of Blood Raven. Having never experienced advanced aerial or multi-surface raiding mechanics, it was entirely natural that they couldn’t process an encounter that required them to simultaneously defend against blind spots beneath the floorboards and directly above their heads.

“Ah…”

Zap! A blinding flash of lightning sliced through the air.

Accompanied by a brief, choked gasp, one of the players dissolved into particles of light. A stray bolt of electricity had erupted straight out of the bedrock.

No, that wasn’t a random lightning strike—it was Parmu itself, riding a vertical web strand from the floor straight to the ceiling at blinding speed!

Watching the Blood Raven members lose their absolute minds as they frantically dove away from the electrical discharges, Hyun let out a dry, wry smile.

‘Tch, they can’t afford to die right now.’

The reason Parmu was sprinting across every available surface to spin these luminous webs wasn’t merely to secure advanced mobility routes. The trail the creature left in its wake was a massive, synchronized magical circle. Its true purpose was to manifest a colossal boundary field engineered to forcefully teleport every single living soul trapped within its perimeter.

‘Well, losing just one guy shouldn’t break the mechanic, right?’

Hyun decided to completely tune out the external distractions. Keeping his focus locked onto coaching Ain was infinitely more valuable than micro-managing the survival of a few vultures.

Ain’s tactical approach to the encounter was the literal definition of pure, unadulterated aggression.

If Hyun had been behind the wheel, he would have prioritized layering slow debuffs to systematically dismantle the creature’s mobility before precisely lopping off its legs one by one. Ain, however, chose to initiate a reckless, head-on speed contest against an hyper-agile Named Monster.

The truly mind-boggling part was that despite her base movement speed being technically outscaled, she continuously managed to land heavy offensive blows by utilizing her signature, unpredictable feints. It was as if she was actively reading Parmu’s AI script frames before they compiled. Watching her play gave Hyun the uncanny illusion that he wasn’t observing a standard boss raid, but rather a high-stakes PvP duel.

[Parmu’s overall stats have increased by 40%!]

[The skill: ‘???’ has unlocked!]

‘It’s live!’

Ain had successfully managed to sever precisely four of Parmu’s legs.

Screeech! The more limbs it lost, the more its thread-spinning velocity spiked to an absolute frenzy. The geometric patterns woven by Parmu’s threads had rapidly crystallized into a highly complex, symmetrical matrix.

The exact moment a final vertical beam of solid light pierced straight through the ceiling down into the bedrock, the geometric symmetry achieved absolute completion.

Whirrrrr. BZZZZZZT!

A hyper-dense cluster of luminous energy began humming violently from all directions. It was the terminal casting animation for the Spatial Transfer magic.

「Ain, you remember the checklist, right?!」

「I’ve got it! I swear I didn’t blank on it this time!」

‘Biorythm Acceleration!’

For a brief, three-second window where her physical frame felt light enough to take flight, Ain’s mobility completely outpaced Parmu’s frame data.

「Gotcha!」

Crunch!

Ain roared internally as she buried Ifrit’s Claws deep into the monster’s dorsal armor plate. Utilizing the weapon’s leverage, she aggressively anchored herself, dragging back Parmu as it attempted to phase out of the perimeter.

The absolute next heartbeat, the entire world went completely white.

Everyone caught inside the perimeter experienced the eerie illusion that the flow of time had ground to a grinding halt. Thousands of electrical arcs materialized simultaneously, connecting Ain, Parmu’s core, and the open-mouthed players frozen on the lower floor.

Flash!

By the time the blinding radiance dissolved entirely, the cavernous space where the chaotic raid had taken place stood completely vacant.

Rumble.

The labyrinth slowly began humming as its automated environment systems repaired the fractured masonry, restoring the layout to its factory default. Within a matter of short minutes, the entire sector settled into a profound, heavy silence, as though a catastrophic battle had never occurred there in the first place.

Papi, who had been advancing down the corridors alongside Louise, abruptly locked his boots to a dead halt.

“Hmm? What’s the matter?” Louise asked, tilting her head in confusion as she observed Papi staring intently at the ceiling architecture.

Papi’s expression twisted into a deep, anxious frown as he replied, “It feels as though something highly irregular is unfolding on the upper tiers.”

“Irregular? Meaning what?”

“An individual possessing a remarkably dense concentration of divine power is currently inside our immediate radius. There is a distinct possibility that it could be an operative tracking your whereabouts, Holy Maiden-nim.”

Despite being a fellow Celestial, Papi’s innate sensory perception fell a cut below the elite tiers of his race. Consequently, for him to actively register a spike in divine power meant the source had drawn uncomfortably close to their exact coordinates.

“Someone hunting me…? I’ve spent the last five years in absolute peace without a single incident. There’s zero reason for them to mobilize now.”

“Perhaps a trail was inadvertently left behind during one of your recent excursions outside the perimeter, Holy Maiden-nim…”

“What did you say? Are you implying this is my blunder?!”

“I cannot say for certain… however, if we continue ascending the labyrinth along this current vector, it is an absolute mathematical certainty that we will cross paths with them.”

Louise pinned a sharp gaze back onto Papi. “So, how many of these divine-energy wielders are we actually dealing with?”

“Hmm, there are two… no, wait, it’s just a single individual.”

“How does a count fluctuate from two down to one in a single breath?!”

“My apologies, I momentarily misread the feedback signatures. It appears one of the two signatures belonged to a Labyrinth Sacred Beast. Its presence has completely vanished from my sensory radar now.”

“Hmm…”

Louise fell into a deep, silent contemplation. It remained entirely ambiguous whether this highly dangerous individual had tracked her down via a high-value bounty warrant, or if they were hunting for the signature of ‘Darkness.’

‘The statistical probability of the latter should be abysmally low, but…’

However, if this intruder had actively received a divine oracle of light to hunt down the essence of ‘Darkness,’ the tactical situation shifted from a minor nuisance to a catastrophic crisis. Papi currently operated under the absolute impression that she was merely a tragic, exiled Holy Maiden. If he were to discover the reality—that she was, in truth, an Archdevil of the Abyss—an absolute catastrophe would unfold.

While he had gracefully chosen to look the other way regarding her manipulation of demonic energy, that silent tolerance certainly wouldn’t extend to harboring a literal devil.

‘No, think about it logically. If their primary objective was hunting Darkness, there is zero reason for them to stroll in entirely solo! Right, it has to be a bounty hunter tracking the warrant, or simply a random user who stumbled into the labyrinth by pure coincidence!’

It definitely wasn’t a divine oracle. If the Heavens had actually issued a direct decree, hundreds of Holy Knights and high-ranking priests would have stormed the dungeon in a massive, synchronized crusade just like they did five years ago! Once she concluded that she wasn’t the primary target, a wave of profound relief washed over Louise.

“Oh?”

However, the very next moment, Louise found her boots completely glued to the floorboards exactly like Papi, her eyes locked onto the ceiling.

“Holy Maiden-nim…?”

‘This specific aura!’

She, too, had just registered a massive spike through a unique sensory perception of her own. The catalog of wavelengths an incomplete entity of Darkness could inherently sense was severely restricted. Yet, even with her Empathy sealed tight by the system, she could flawlessly identify the unique energetic signature drawing closer within her immediate radius.

‘Could it seriously be… Hyun?!’

Her chosen Shadow was operating within spitting distance of her current coordinates!

‘He wasn’t simply offering up prayers from afar… he was actively charting a course to find me!’

“Holy Maiden-nim, what is unfolding?”

Hearing Papi’s voice cut through her racing thoughts a second time, Louise snapped out of her daze and offered a smooth reply.

“It’s nothing… I simply caught a sudden premonition that we will be crossing paths with someone on our way up.”

“Wait, isn’t that precisely what I just got done explaining to you?”

“Oh? Is that so? Right you are…!”

Visualizing the specific face she would be encountering shortly in her mind, the duo slowly resumed their steady march along the path leading toward the surface.

Enshrouded by a highly unique current of magical energy, the subterranean deeps of the Labyrinth contained an absolute wealth of enigmatic secrets completely unmapped by average users and basic NPCs alike. Every single time one of these mechanics was unearthed, it systematically propelled the players involved either right next to a legendary treasure cache, or directly into the absolute depths of a living hell.

Parmu’s teleportation boundary field belonged firmly to the latter category.

BZZZZZT!

The exact millisecond the boundary field achieved maximum activation, the electrical arcs that had condensed into a singular pinpoint coordinates detonated, evenly dispersing across a colossally vast spatial zone. It was the precise moment the souls trapped within the field were forcefully transferred into random sectors across the 16th floor.

“What the hell, our coordinates randomized out of nowhere!”

“The Named Monster is completely gone too! Wait, what do you mean half our squad vanished from the party list?!”

「Where did everyone get dropped?!」

「I have zero clue, but our health bars are completely green, so we aren’t dead!」

「Locate the Named Monster immediately!」

The structural architecture of the labyrinth was engineered in the shape of two colossal pyramids fused together at their bases in opposite directions. Descending from the surface down to the 16th floor, the spatial volume expanded exponentially outwards, before systematically narrowing back down into an inverted pyramid layout from the 17th floor down to the 32nd tier.

In other words, the 16th floor stood as the single most hyper-expanded, colossal zone in the entire dungeon.

While average players found it entirely impossible to accurately map its true dimensions, Hyun had previously accessed the legacy source files during his Asra days and had been left completely speechless upon discovering that the 16th floor boasted a staggering grid size of 20 kilometers by 20 kilometers. Consequently, there was an absolute zero percent chance that the systematically scattered members of Blood Raven could accurately assess each other’s tactical situations.

「Did it clear?!」

「Yeah, we landed perfectly!」

Conversely, Hyun and Ain had been transferred to a drop zone close enough for their internal voices to echo seamlessly.

Screeech! The giant spider, currently letting out agonizing screeches from the intense system feedback of the forced phase shift, was also nested right within their immediate radius. Parmu’s Spatial Transfer possessed a hard-coded logic that dragged along any entities actively maintaining physical contact with its model frame during the casting window.

「Don’t chase it down.」

Hyun deliberately held her back, letting the limping Parmu—which had been stripped of its entire web matrix—scuttle away into the dark corridors.

「Why?」

「We’re going to need to piggyback off its teleportation mechanic one more time when we chart our course back up to the surface later.」

They could harvest Parmu’s rare crafting drops whenever they pleased, but if they inadvertently deleted its HP bar now, they would completely lose access to its unique spatial transit utility.

「I’ve already anchored its exact positional data on our map grid, so we can hunt it down whenever we want.」

Hyun smoothly logged the real-time coordinates of Parmu onto his mini-map as it clung to a distant ceiling tile, slowly cycling through its automated recovery loop.

‘Man, this zone’s layout is just as maddening as I remember.’

Navigating the deep corridors of the labyrinth while maintaining Assimilation with Ain, a sudden wave of buried Asra memory logs flashed through Hyun’s mind, sending a cold shiver down his spine.

The 16th and 17th floors of the Labyrinth contained an absolute total of zero enemy mobs. Aside from Parmu, which was currently dangling from the ceiling structure, there wasn’t a single living entity populating the entire zone. Furthermore, despite the complete absence of lethal environmental hazards or hidden traps, a profoundly suffocating aura permeated the air.

「Hyun, didn’t we literally just walk down this exact path a second ago?」

「It looks structurally similar, but the grid coordinates are entirely separate.」

「Wait… then why are you suddenly guiding my character straight into a dead-end wall…?!」

「…Because it’s not a real wall.」

Slide. Ain’s physical frame phase shifted straight through what appeared to be solid, impenetrable masonry.

The absolute next heartbeat, a completely unmapped corridor illuminated by a sea of eerie, emerald flames unfurled before their eyes. The 16th and 17th tiers were completely saturated with advanced sensory-distortion illusions and visual trick mechanics. Among the complex magical arrays carved directly into the bedrock, there were even modules specifically engineered to continuously warp the directional feedback of ambient audio.

Hyun casually visualized the absolute nightmare the players tracking them were currently processing.

‘Did I overdo it a bit? If I had to spend the peak hours of a massive post-patch economy completely locked inside a layout like this… honestly, I’d probably delete my account out of pure insanity.’

The 16th and 17th tiers were a colossal, multi-dimensional maze. No matter how many kilometers a player ran, they would continuously cycle through identical, looping visual tiles, and attempting to smash through the bedrock structure would achieve nothing but completely drain their mana pools.

Ultimately, the absolute final tactical recourse for players who realized they were permanently marooned in this zone was to trigger a character suicide. Yet, unless you were an NPC, even that escape route was systematically gatekept. Since players in Asrian were immune to hunger and dehydration ticks, riding a lethal fall damage velocity was practically the exclusive means of forcing a respawn—a mechanic that was mathematically restricted to a tiny minority of classes with abysmally low Agility scaling parameters.

‘Well, it’s pure karmic retribution for their greed. I just hope I don’t have to look at their IDs ever again.’

If they lucked out, the scattered members might randomly bump into each other and coordinate a shared fall-damage suicide strategy. If their luck ran completely dry, they could easily spend a solid week aimlessly wandering the labyrinth architecture. Either way, it was a problem that occupied zero space in his mind.

「Ain, you’ve never cleared past this specific checkpoint before, right?」

「Yeah… pretty sure I haven’t.」

「I actually mapped out this zone entirely solo before we paired up back in the day. Even back then, I physically couldn’t locate a valid exit vector anywhere. I ultimately had to submit a priority support ticket to the dev team begging them to manually extract my character file.」

「Did the developers actually bail you out?」

「No… they completely ghosted the ticket. Seriously, just logging those memory files again gives me absolute goosebumps. It was a nightmare.」

「Oh, really…? In that case, the system definitely won’t bail them out this time either, right?」

Out of nowhere, an incredibly mischievous, sinister grin spread across Ain’s face.