Chapter 168
Chapter 168: Easy Pickings (8)
“Have you given it some thought?”
Erik smiled from the end of the long corridor.
Following his fresh smile, a brilliant radiance naturally bloomed.
“How arrogant.”
The Saintess of Lu-Solace, who appeared from the opposite end, furrowed her brow deeply.
She gazed at Erik, who had entered the dead-end space.
“Holy Son Erik, you are choosing death.”
The gimmick and the flower of the Labyrinth.
A Hidden Piece brimming with vast treasures.
Erik stood alone in the midst of the pile of firewood that ignited the hearts of the Adventurers.
His enormous and brilliant appearance remained unchanged, but-.
“To covet the Flower of the Labyrinth and walk into a dead end of your own accord.”
It was a clear fact that he had no way to retreat.
The hidden places of the Labyrinth were similar to the true walls of the Labyrinth that formed the Labyrinth itself.
In other words, this space could never be destroyed.
“Did that little card tempt you?”
The Saintess approached Erik, her brow still deeply furrowed.
Then Erik reached out his hand and pointed to the wall.
“Even if I'm going, there's no harm in taking a look first, is there?”
Whoosh-.
Erik kindled flames in the way of Lu-Solace.
That power lit the long corridor like a torch within the Labyrinth.
And at the sight thus revealed, the Saintess stopped in her tracks.
“The Moon and the Sun…….”
Mythical paintings decorated the walls of the corridor.
A scene of a silver dragon with red eyes clashing with a scorching sun.
And countless allies thrusting swords and spears toward the sun.
Erik asked:
“What do you think it means?”
Instead of answering, the Saintess ground her teeth.
The meaning of the picture was clear.
Wasn't it a depiction of the clergy of the Astia Religious Order and soldiers clad in the armor of the god Alman helping the silver dragon bring down the sun?
“It seems Lu-Solace was trash even before he left the world.”
Erik sneered.
“Do not insult one who has already departed.”
“Why is stating a fact an insult?”
Erik pointed again at the painting of the sun.
A massive sun wielding chains of flame.
At the ends of the chains were people with the mark of the sun engraved on their foreheads.
Their numbers were countless.
“I thought the Restriction had flowed on and on until it became the Punishment Soldiers of today, but it turns out Lu-Solace was doing such things from the very beginning.”
Erik clearly grasped the identity of this space.
A mural carved with ancient truths.
Certainly, the Sun God in the painting was being treated as a public enemy.
Moreover, the atmosphere depicted in the mural was truly close to that of a villain.
Wasn't it as if the sun were being treated as a Demon King?
“You're silent.”
The Saintess only blinked and gazed at the mural.
And so Erik continued speaking alone.
“As a result of those terrible deeds continuing, the Black Mage Group gave birth to an unprecedented leader named Makia Jangche.”
“How does that concern our-.”
“Didn't I clearly tell you? She came from the Punishment Soldiers.”
The Saintess turned her head to look at Erik.
Her eyes blazed.
A vicious heat could be felt, as if she wanted to kill him on the spot.
“The Foreign God you faced was a being created by Makia, the Black Mage Group's Representative.”
The Saintess's eyes wavered.
Sensing it as an opening, Erik drew out his trump card.
It was the Saintess's true blood relative.
He was mentioning the Holy Son who had departed the world before her.
“Do you plan to leave as emptily as your idiot brother?”
“You again? Do not insult a pure child.”
“Is a Holy Son over a hundred years old a pure child?”
The Saintess was left speechless once again.
Who was this Erik?
Divinity at fifteen…….
The brat wasn't simply strong.
Erik's way of seeing the world was peculiar as well.
The mad notion that the Empire must truly unify the continent.
It wasn't mere delusion, but a concrete thought with a clear cause.
Following the teachings of the Solar Holy Kingdom and Lu-Solace, the Saintess had known nothing of the world until she became an adult.
All she had done was recite doctrine.
Her brother was the same.
But this could not be an excuse.
It's strange to compare us, over a hundred years old, to a fifteen-year-old Erik in the first place.
Unlike her brother, who lived like a child, the Saintess had thoughts of her own.
That was why she had sealed herself and lain asleep in the Holy Kingdom's capital……
“To my eyes you seem quite pure as well. Only your speech is that of an adult; your mind is no different from a child's.”
“Are you treating me like a child right now?”
The Saintess was truly dumbfounded.
The age difference was more than tenfold.
“Insolent brat. At the very least, I will make you recognize the tier of power.”
The Saintess raised a vicious blaze.
In an instant, its heat filled the sealed corridor.
Then Erik smiled and pulled out an oddly shaped earring.
Click.
He put it on and left a single remark.
“It's not too late even now. If you wish to atone, follow diligently.”
Flash!
Erik vanished from this deep underground cavity.
And then-.
“You madman.”
The entire corridor began to shine around the Saintess.
The densely carved Sacred Circles had begun to activate.
Kaboooom―!!
***
“Dreadfully vicious bastard.”
The flames grew in size and soon took the form of a person.
The Saintess, shattered into pieces because of Erik, had finished regenerating.
Grind-.
The Saintess gnashed her teeth.
Then her healthy teeth crumbled with a pattering sound and fell to the floor.
Immediately new teeth sprouted, and the Saintess had regained her clean, original appearance before she knew it.
O Lu-Solace.
The Saintess closed her eyes.
Then darkness appeared, and within the darkness, numbers made of flame revealed themselves.
[623,425]
***
[632,981]
The numbers kept increasing.
This meant that those bound by the [Restriction] were dying in such numbers.
I thought it might drop below 500,000, but it's filling right back up.
The meaning was clear.
In the war between the Empire and the Solar Holy Kingdom, many Punishment Soldiers were dying.
The same would be true of those living as slaves.
“Is this power truly wrong?”
Left alone, the Saintess gazed steadily at the mural.
It was a scene of everyone treating the sun as an enemy, thrusting spears and swords at it.
I too wished to stop the Restriction.
The Saintess had wanted to put a stop to it.
That was why she had even called in the Holy King's clan and scolded them.
It had not worked.
In the end, the Saintess compromised with the reality she could not change.
She had shut herself away beneath the royal castle and sealed herself.
This too would be nothing but an excuse.
The Holy King's clan had long since yielded to the flames of Lu-Solace.
For such a royal family to put an end to the [Restriction] was close to impossible.
The fifteen-year-old Holy Son, Erik.
Was it because of him?
I was the one who needed to hear the bitter truth.
The Saintess's heart wavered.
Perhaps she had been afraid.
The numbers she saw when she closed her eyes.
They represented the count of people who had died from the Restriction, and these were in turn the source of the power the Holy Son and the Saintess held.
They were also proof of the faith that Lu-Solace had created.
“Aaah-.”
The Saintess squeezed her eyes shut once more.
The mark of the sun surfaced on her forehead.
Sizzle-.
Dense heat sent up pale smoke.
The restriction carved into the Saintess had begun to activate.
That the Restriction has activated on me means…….
The capital of the Solar Holy Kingdom.
It meant a problem had arisen there.
That meant the front line had been pushed and pushed until the Imperial Army had begun to invade the capital.
“Do they truly mean to pull that stunt in the capital?”
The Saintess could not believe the will of the Seven Flames, the leaders of Lu-Solace.
The activation of the Saintess's Restriction meant a duty had been given to her.
That duty was.
“To bring the sun…….”
It meant making a Fragment of the Sun rise in the very center of the capital.
“All forces!!! Surround the capital!”
Meanwhile, in the capital of the Solar Holy Kingdom.
The Imperial Army advanced with irresistible momentum.
In an instant they destroyed the domains surrounding the Solar Holy City and advanced right up to the capital called the heart of the Holy Kingdom.
“Holy King, the Saintess has permitted the sun's procession. Now only your permission remains.”
Even surrounded by the Imperial Army, the Seven Flames of Lu-Solace were calm.
Rather, as if this was exactly what they had aimed for, they took action at once.
Sizzle-.
“Ugh, I-I permit it.”
The Seven Flames of Lu-Solace and the Saintess of the Sun God.
And the permission of the Holy King of the Holy Kingdom.
Every being had agreed to summon a Fragment of the Sun.
“I-is this truly the right choice?”
He had given his permission under the pain of the Restriction, but the Holy King had doubts about his present choice.
“What is the problem now?”
The largest flame looked at the Holy King with a tilt of its head.
It was because the Holy King had never once harbored such doubts before.
“Won't a considerable number of the capital's people die as well?”
“Faith fills back up, and new believers are born as well.”
The Seven Flames of Lu-Solace showed a smile full of rapture.
They pointed to the windows of the royal castle.
At their end, the Imperial Army surrounding the capital came into view.
“The capital's people will die too, but the Imperial Army will take even greater damage than that.”
The Sun God's wrath burns up everything.
“We merely call down the sun's wrath upon this land according to doctrine.”
When the flame's words stopped.
The sky suddenly grew dark.
As if the sun itself had vanished, pitch-black darkness descended.
And a moment later.
Rruuuumble―!!!
Light began to bloom between the capital's royal castle and the temple of Lu-Solace.
That power was fire, the intense heat of the sun.
With the force to burn everything in the world, a crimson fireball rose above the Solar Holy City.
***
“So what's the reason you stopped here?”
Erik caught up with his party.
He had shaken off the Saintess on Floor 22, but he had met his party on Floor 24.
They had climbed only two more floors.
“Well…….”
Looking at Erik's thoroughly contorted face, Park Chang-ho lowered his head.
Then he hurriedly began his explanation.
“Just now, Nishida went up as a scout, but……. He was hit by an instant-kill attack and died.”
The account said that since he had died on the next floor, he could not return to this one.
Erik smoothed his creased face.
At last he had caught up with them.
“Good work. And what else?”
Erik listened calmly to Park Chang-ho's report.
“It looks like those bastards didn't go any higher and parked on Floor 25?”
Five Floor Masters from Floor 60 and above.
That much was a confirmed fact.
Such monsters had stopped at a mere Floor 25.
“Are they trying to use the Trial Corridor too?”
Erik voiced his question as if truly amazed.
“The Trial Corridor? Isn't that just where you get a title?”
“Well, I suppose you wouldn't know.”
In the game, the [Trial Corridor] had been nothing more than a place that gave a title called [Limit Break].
But reality was different.
To those who conquered the Corridor, it opened the transcendent's path called Limit Break.
“All the supreme powerhouses of the world have cleared the Corridor on Floor 25.”
The Emperor, of course, along with Master Riferoze, the Pope, and so on.
Every renowned powerhouse had passed through the Trial Corridor on Floor 25 of the Labyrinth.
“T-then……. Doesn't that mean the Black Mages who descended as Floor Masters are parked there to break their limits?”
Park Chang-ho asked, startled.
At that, Erik nodded.
It was a correct statement, but unlike Park Chang-ho's worry, they were quite likely struggling.
“Parking means they're not resolving it well.”
Erik recalled the contents of the test in the Corridor.
“The test itself is simple, but its content is the problem.”
In the Trial Corridor, one meets a clone with specs 100% identical to one's own.
Only by killing that being can one pass through the Corridor, and-.
“A Floor Master has to kill a Floor Master, so those bastards can't find an answer either.”
It was not something Erik could easily answer either.
He knew how to clear a Floor Master as a human, but he had no feel at all for how to clear a Floor Master as a Floor Master.
You'd have to have lived as a Floor Master to know.
Then Park Chang-ho shuddered once more with a start.
“Y-your own clone?”
“Identical in looks and power.”
Which meant.
“So you mean you have to beat yourself to death, Brother?”
Just as Jang Du-sik had feared, it meant there would be two Eriks.
“Beating myself to death, that's a bit of a way to put it?”
“Am I wrong?”
“No, it's accurate.”
Erik nodded.
“Hmm-. Then does that mean there'd be two Divine Temples too? No, in the first place, how can anyone even kill you, Brother?”
Jang Du-sik poured out all manner of questions.
This was a shared question for everyone.
Park Chang-ho swallowed hard.
Honestly, two Eriks make even less sense than the Floor Masters.
He was a god, an object of reverence.
But he was still Erik.
Everyone fretted over such worries.
Erik himself, however, was composed.
“It's not something for you to worry about. Du-sik, shouldn't you start by worrying about beating yourself to death?”
“Me? Can't I beat myself?”
Jang Du-sik was a being with a body that regenerated with every blow, a Mana Body, and who spammed Hellfire spells.
T-then-.
Park Chang-ho glanced at Jackson.
The Guardian Knight Jackson, who had put everything into Defense Stats.
His defense was absurdly high, and his own combat power was that of a Sword Master.
Just how strong is he?
The party's martial prowess was formidable.
Come to think of it, I…….
Park Chang-ho tried picturing himself facing himself.
Compared with the previous three, his own trial seemed like it would be easy.
Whoom-whoom!
Jang Du-sik, who had been fighting an imaginary self by swinging his club through the air, suddenly stopped swinging.
“Du-sik, did you work out how you'd beat yourself?”
“I did!”
Jang Du-sik smiled brightly.
Then Erik said:
“The person who worked out that plan will appear as your enemy, so practicing now will be meaningless.”
“Then why are we gathered here? Wouldn't it be better to hurry up and go up?”
Jang Du-sik blinked.
“Du-sik, what did I say?”
“W-well……. You said so many things-.”
“Didn't I say I'd pit the Saintess of Lu-Solace against the Floor Masters?”
Aha!
Jang Du-sik smiled brightly.
“It's almost time for her to catch up. Wait a little longer.”
The time had finally come.
“We will cross over to Floor 25 together with the Saintess. Then we'll set the Saintess and the Floor Masters who descended against each other, and-.”
That time meant the moment of truly taking the Labyrinth by free ride.
“We enter the Corridor.”
While the Floor Masters and the Saintess fought.
It was the resolution to raise their specs inside the Corridor.
“When we come back stronger, we collect the Floor Master rewards the Saintess has killed, and hunt the Saintess, whose strength will be drained to nothing.”