My Servant System

"I will continue to say it till I'm purple in the face; this place is freaky as hell and I do not have a single iota of an idea on how you managed to stay here as long as you have without going insane."

Lilith chuckled at that, the black skinned Demoness tilting her head and staring at Jahi for a few moments before responding "Please do, I think purple suits you. Ah, and sanity is far too overrated; I think everyone here would agree with that, no? I don't think I've managed to pin any of you as particularly 'sane' according to the average person."

"I think I am quite sane, thank you very much."

Lady Fenyras just chimed in randomly as we looked down at a pit filled with various monsters all fighting one another, the silver eyed Demon Wolf drumming her fingers on the pommels of her blades while also clearly contemplating the idea of dropping down fifty some odd feet into the ocean of combat.

"Certainly."

We had all apparently come to the agreement that there was no need to humor the Demon Wolf at all times, and as we continued to watch a goblin throw itself onto the back of some elephant-esque monster to stab it through the skull with a bone spear we were just reminded of how interesting of a place this was.

"Any idea on how close we are to the center? Is that somewhere you've been before, or are we treading 'new' grounds right now?"

"Ah, I like how inquisitive you can be~! Yes, I've been to the center, and yes we are close, but close is quite relative is it not~? Tell me how you would define 'close' in this sense..."

Again she just led us down a random line of questions that helped fill up the time, and as we left that monster pit behind to continue our journey towards the center I decided that I was going to take it upon myself to go through what felt like pulling teeth; I asked questions whenever they popped up, and Lilith was more than happy to entertain me, if only because she had a tongue made from quicksilver. Find your next read on My Virtual Library Empire

Whatever answer she gave me was barely considered an actual answer, usually posed as a question that gave me a modicum of an idea to answer what I asked her while also flooding me with even more questions that definitely needed answers.

It was a good way to occupy the mind as we came to another startling realization as we marched; with this herb keeping the monsters at bay, there was truly nothing within the Labyrinthian to capture your attention.

All of the resource nodes that might have existed were being guarded, and with my newly taught skill being put to liberal use I was able to guide us around those nodes since the monsters atop them were extremely powerful.

Like... the first one that we had glimpsed was back in the grassy plains from before, from roughly two miles away, and even from that distance the thing just... looked gigantic; it was a serpent of some kind coiled around the only tree in the area, and even from this great distance it lifted its head and stared straight at us the moment we saw it.

That shook me a little since I had never seen a monster that size before, and likely was never going to see something that large unless I set sail out on the ocean, an idea that had never crossed my mind and was never going to come to fruition if I could avoid it.

Lilith didn't seem at all surprised by the sight of such a thing, though the usually flippancy and talkativeness of the Demoness was gone as she just stared at it solemnly like the rest of us, with the real sign of her seriousness coming from how she gave us a straight answer after Draka asked what it was.

"That is something that I call a Behemoth. Just one big, strong and intelligent monster that's grown inside of the Labyrinthian instead of perishing. The things it guards are worth entire Kingdoms, but for such a high reward... well... the risk is obvious.

These things can level Kingdoms if they ever found their way out of the Labyrinthian, and even the Empire would feel threatened by just one of these things, let alone the dozens - if not hundreds - of them that exist inside of these 'walls'. If they got out..."

She just shook her head and left us with that image to ponder on as we made sure to give the serpent its space, watching it just as much as it watched us; it was tense, but once we got around it and left its sight the pressure surrounding us dropped exponentially, and we were back to the long hours of tedium as we took the safer, more guaranteed journey to the center.

Perhaps we should have allowed ourselves to have more of a taste of this place, perhaps we had done ourselves a disservice and created a problem for future us, but as we walked I came to the realization that boredom was preferable over the idea of constant fighting, especially after the few times we were forced into it.

The deeper we went the more potent these monsters became; they leapt upwards in levels exponentially, their magic ripping out of their flesh sometimes as they tried to kill us, and whenever we killed them their magic crystalized into something amazing.

Raw, potent Mana Crystals were lodged within these monsters alongside their Cores after they died, and both were overflowing with power that was pleading with us to tap into it, setting the flames of greed alight in us briefly as we stared at the dozen corpses around us, each one bearing two treasures and then some more.

To have so much mana inside of yourself that your Core isn't enough to contain it should be a death sentence, and yet the monsters were seemingly born with an extra Core in the form of a Mana Crystal, sometimes doubling their capacity and turning them into overpowered freaks of nature that were roaming around like a common field mouse.

Hells, even the handful of field mice that we stumbled upon had flawless gemstones inlaid inside of their tiny bodies, and each one was damn near equivalent to the average person's yearly salary, just scurrying around deep inside the Labyrinthian.

They were ferocious little buggers too, nipping at our boots and trying to 'kill' us, but a simple kick usually did the trick... though the fact that they spat flames or hardened themselves into little rocks before charging at us was equal parts adorable and terrifying, honestly.