A Sinner’s Chance

A delve into the Labyrinth that could just be done on a whim, there was a large amount of preparation that went into each trip, the most important being supplies. Thankfully I could lighten our load as I was able to make any cloth related items on demand, which meant we could bring more of the most important things, such as food. Water was taken care of by magic, and we didn't need to worry about shelter as I could easily set up a temporary nest within an hour or so.

Our staff supervisor was none other than my old magic tutor, Elaine. It had been a while since I needed her help with anything and she was no longer employed by the Eldur household but rather the school itself now. She was more than happy to be the supervisor since she was getting a bit tired of the stuffy and well-regulated school rules, such as the dress code. In addition, the fact that she was a Succubus helped us save even more room as while it wasn't impossible for her to subsist on food and water, it was much better for her to feed off the mana and life force she drained from others, in this case that would be me. Arya had already signed off on it and both mana and life force were something I had an overwhelming amount of.

It took around two weeks before the preparations and required paperwork was finished and we were cleared to set off. Despite the looming deadlines that I had to deal with, my tensions were high as we began the inspection to enter the first floor of the Eldora Labyrinth. I'd done a few fantasy-like things during my fourteen years of life, but delving into a dungeon was probably one of the most staple fantasy tropes, aside from using magic, or fighting a dragon. On top of that, it would be the first chance to actually gain experience from killing monsters, and to fight outside the Dreamscape. I didn't count the  incident with Arya in the bath since it wasn't really a proper fight.

The first floor was simple and posed no challenge as the monsters were the weakest of the weak, slimes and basic goblins. The goblins could be a bit of trouble if they grouped up for most groups, but that was actually a situation that benefited our group more, well I say that, but Elaine wasn't allowed to help unless things got dicey or she deemed that we could learn a valuable lesson from her interference, and she had a single use teleportation scroll that would bring us safely to the school should something go horribly wrong. There was an exception to this, and that was that we were able to pass the tenth floor without her help.

Each five floors spiked in difficulty and had a boss room that matched the difficulty of the monsters on the floor. No one knew how the boss was always there for each party that passed through, in fact, not much was actually known about Labyrinths themselves only that they were trials given by the Mortal Gods, and that the further one went the better quality things appeared, though it wasn't always something you wanted.

Besides things like magic weapons or other useful equipment, it was possible to get things like food, clothing, money, and all manner of items. Apparently there was a special liquor called Labyrinth's Brew that only appeared in Labyrinths and was impossible to recreate. While it sold for an astronomical sum, most people chose to keep it due to the rarity. The goal for our trip was to get either equipment of the highest quality allowed in challenges, or the material with which I could make some. There was also the practically cheat Skill Seshat's Library that would let me identify and value most the things that we would find, unless it was a unique never before seen item, though we'd likely have to delve beneath the explored floors for that to happen.

We breezed through the first four floors without challenge, something I imagined was rather common as the difficulty was simply too low. I was not, however, prepared for the difficulty spike that the fifth floor had. I thought it would be along the lines of evolved goblins, and maybe a hobgoblin or two, but what we got was far different. The basic fodder on this floor were goblin knights and shamans, a tough combo that even now there were many fourth years who were unable to beat them in the Endless Assessment, the very first combat assessment I'd gone through.

However, this floor posed not much of a challenge as I had been able to beat them when I was a first year, and I had grown much stronger since then. On top of that, Arya provided me with long range support in the form of fire magic, or by using a bow I'd made especially for her. That wasn't to say she couldn't fight close range, it was just easier to have me carve into the enemy and go wild while she picked off the farther off targets, or simply bombarded the area I was in.

The boss of the fifth floor was a Goblin King, along with around twenty knights and ten shamans. I still remembered the first time I fought against them and lost in the Endless Assessment, but now it didn't make much of a difference as me and Arya cleared out the room without really breaking a sweat. There was of course a decent amount of treasure that we could loot, but nothing too fancy, so we decided to pass up most of it. The lower floors would be even better and it wasn't like any of us were strapped for cash.

The sixth floor was very much similar in difficulty to the fifth, though rather than goblins, we were now fighting orcs. Orc were smarter and stronger than most goblins, but they also had the tendency to fight amongst themselves to be the strongest. Our pace slowed slightly but we still managed to push through the stony cave-like halls until we found the stairway to the tenth floor. While this time I was prepared for the difficulty spike, but the Labyrinth once again surprised me when as we stepped into the tenth floor we found ourselves coming out of a mountainside overlooking a large forest. I hadn't thought that the dungeon was able to recreate outside environments so I'd been prepared to deal with the same grey stone the entire time we were here.

In fact, the sole reason I knew that we weren't outside was that I couldn't convert Yang energy from the light source in the 'sky'. The same went for Arya, while it seemed like the sun, it was a fake that didn't provide the same benefits or drawbacks, it was simply a moving light. We'd already pushed for nearly seven hours nonstop so it was about time we rested, something simple as I set up a nest in the tops of the trees along with several threads that spread out around the area that would alert us should something approach. I couldn't imagine what kind of monsters we'd be fighting here but I was looking forward to diving further into the Labyrinth.