Those Who Live Without the Law

Chapter 93

Dimensional Maze (3)

While Kairus was descending the stairs with a meal in hand, Nora Galatea, who had been diligently hammering away at the wreckage, also stood before the entrance to the Dimensional Maze.

“Whoa, whoa. What am I supposed to do with this now.”

From Nora’s perspective, there was no need to overthink. She was fairly certain that Kairus and his group had passed through this door.

If they hadn’t, there would have been no reason to clear the wreckage.

The problem was, unlike Kairus, Nora Galatea had no way of passing through the massive door into the Dimensional Maze without damaging it.

“I mean, I could break it if I wanted to…”

But she had already consumed a considerable amount of her battle gear’s output while clearing the debris, so she would have to wait here until it finished recharging.

Having made up her mind, Nora unpacked her gear, sat down on the floor, pulled out some drinking water, poured in some powder, shook it, and gulped it down.

A meal substitute.

“Oh my, little lady. What brings you here?”

Nora, sipping the mixture from her water bottle, turned her head toward the voice she heard.

What her pupils caught was a rusted anchor of enormous size flying straight toward her.

Nora kicked the anchor. The shock spread outward, and the anchor, struck by her kick, shot up toward the ceiling.

“Wow. It shrank!”

The massive anchor that had shot upward shrank in an instant to something the size of an earring, then zipped off somewhere.

Where the now-miniature anchor flew off to, four people could be seen.

The woman wearing a metal mask: Lea Pirandel.

The hunchback holding a fishhook: Dallas Ketop, along with a scarecrow whose name was unknown.

And lastly, Dublin, whose body had been partly replaced with beast parts.

“Hello. You're the ones hired by Areumdri Pawnshop, right? Did you come because you heard the noise of the wreckage being cleared?”

Nora Galatea had already gathered some intel on them. And she didn’t particularly want to fight them.

“Um, I’ll just pretend that didn’t happen, so…”

“Uhooooooh!”

Just as she was about to continue speaking, the hunchback whipped out the fishhook he had strapped to his back and charged like lightning.

What was visible in his eyes was clearly vile obsession and lust. The fishhook he swung wasn’t meant to kill, but to capture.

“…”

With a baffled look, Nora dodged the hunchback’s frenzied attacks.

But the fishhook didn’t even graze her clothes. As she dodged, Nora was momentarily lost in thought.

“Hey, if you keep this up, I’ll have no choice but to fight back.”

Before she could finish speaking, the giant anchor hurled by the masked woman flew in to join the fishhook in their assault.

The rusted anchor was charging straight at the back of Nora’s head, and five fishhooks swung by the hunchback stretched toward her from five different directions, each on its own path.

“It’s your choice.”

Nora’s desire not to shed blood wasn’t a principle she was willing to uphold at the cost of her own life.

If they pushed her this far, then in the end, the most peaceful option would be torn to shreds like a piece of paper.

Without even looking back, Nora reached behind her and caught the giant anchor flying toward her.

“What... what is that.”

No human joint should be able to move that way. At the same time, she dodged all five of the fishhooks the hunchback swung at her.

Her entire body moved as if every joint twisted in directions they absolutely shouldn't—yet it all happened with uncanny naturalness.

“Uh…”

Dallas hadn’t expected her to dodge them all, and the massive anchor came crashing down right above his head.

“Son of a—!”

Lea Pirandel hastily shrank the rusted anchor. The anchor, which had just begun to reduce in size, grazed Dallas’s forehead by a hair’s breadth.

Had she not reduced its size, Dallas’s skull would’ve been smashed in by that thing.

“If you surrender too late, there might be no turning back.”

From this point on, Nora was moving to kill.

If they surrendered, she’d obviously stop attacking but if they were too late, in the worst case… even shouting their surrender might not save them.

“No take-backs later~”

With words that sounded like a joke, Nora moved at high speed. But there was no sound of movement. At least, nothing a human ear could detect.

In an instant, the group lost sight of Nora’s position, and she used that gap to slip into the shadows of the sewer system.

The unseen Lunaseeker.

It was one of the Lunaseeker agents’ victory strategies. Then, she bit down on a token-shaped addon and shouted,

“Bye!”

She opened her mouth and spoke, but the place where Nora’s voice echoed was not where she was standing.

Her voice rang out from a completely different direction.

Just as the rusted anchor was thrown and Dublin came charging in, shaking the ground, a giant bear paw tore out from his arm and struck the air.

“She’s gone?!”

In the moment of Dublin’s confusion after swiping at nothing, a hand holding a yataghan shot out from the darkness and touched the hunchback Dallas’s neck.

“Wait, I sur—!”

Feeling the blade at his throat, Dallas tried to shout his surrender in a panic but there was no way his tongue could move faster than the blade.

“Sur—!” was all he got out. That fragment of a word became Dallas’s final words.

And all of this was the price he paid for not knowing the gap between his skill and his enemy’s, and for not surrendering fast enough.

“…”

Dallas’s head dropped to the floor, and once again, Nora Galatea melted into the darkness.

“This goddamn bitch. You think we’ve got no options?!”

At Dublin’s shout, the Scarecrow channeled battle gear output into an addon designed to emit light.

With a large amount of output allocated, the surroundings lit up like broad daylight in an instant. Nora pulled out a small stick from her waist and snapped it.

With a sharp snap, the brightness around them was immediately swallowed by darkness again.

“Alright, I surrender.”

Now that things had escalated to this point, Lea raised both hands and took a surrendering stance without hesitation, then shrank the giant anchor and slipped it into her pocket.

Tick. Nora’s index finger tapped her metal mask as she smiled.

“You’d have been dead if you’d been just a little slower.”

Nora’s next target had been Lea. She was, after all, one of the most aggressive attackers alongside the hunchback.

“Well… lucky me, then.”

The first one’s the hardest. The rest come easy. As soon as one surrendered, the other two followed suit in the blink of an eye.

In the end, the only one who died an unjust death in this mess was the hunchback Dallas, who’d been decapitated.

“Are you unable to speak?”

Nora turned her attention to the Scarecrow and asked. The pumpkin-headed figure nodded.

“Oh dear.”

Having satisfied her curiosity, Nora let out a courteous, sympathetic-sounding remark, then turned to the three who had surrendered.

“To break through that door, I’ll need battle gear. Mind lending me yours?”

Nora Galatea’s request had been made casually, without much thought. But asking to borrow someone else’s battle gear was, by nature, an extremely rude act.

In most cases, it was taken as a challenge.

“…”

Normally, everyone present would have been confident enough in their skills to respond by grabbing their gear and standing up,

“If you wanna borrow it, try and beat me first.”

Something along those lines.

But no one here was stupid enough to say that after surrendering.

Surrendering meant forfeiting your pride. In the end, the three handed over their battle gear without complaint, obediently following Nora’s request.

“Thanks~”

As if it were no big deal, Nora accepted the battle gear, then first powered up the small anchor.

‘This should be enough.’

After finishing her calculations in her head, she clenched her fist, took a stance, and threw a punch at the massive door blocking the path to the Dimensional Maze.

When her fist struck the giant door, a satisfying crack echoed through the air, and stone dust scattered like rain.

“…Did my battle gear really have that much output?”

Lea, witnessing Nora’s strike, wore an expression of disbelief. It was battle gear she had been using for years. There was no way she didn’t know its limits.

But just now, Nora’s strike had clearly exceeded the output capacity of Lea’s battle gear.

The easiest way to utilize battle gear output was to enhance muscle strength. The people here might not know it, but Lunaseeker agents had muscles capable of reverse contraction.

Since they could use more of their muscles, even with the same battle gear, a Lunaseeker agent could easily produce more than twice the strength.

“This thing’s tough! What the hell is this?!”

Yet Nora, who had just punched that massive door, didn’t look very satisfied.

She hadn’t expected to break it in one hit, but she had hoped for better results than this.

“If I keep pounding, it’ll open eventually!”

Once again, she drew more power from the borrowed battle gear and swung her fist. And she kept repeating it.

Until the massive door—heavier than the gate of most fortresses—either opened or was broken down.

“Okay, so this Dimensional Maze is made of something called fiber-reinforced concrete?”

Meanwhile, Kairus’s group was still investigating the Dimensional Maze, listening to Melvin’s explanation.

“That’s right. It’s reinforced by mixing the stems of iron mugwort into the concrete blend.”

“You’re saying it changes that much just from mixing in some plant stems?”

It was Irena who answered Tanya’s question.

“Fibers extracted from refined iron mugwort are strong enough to be used in stab-proof vests.”

They say it could endure heat over 500 degrees and still maintain high strength and elasticity.

Of course, the one used by the Dersos civilization hadn’t been refined, just raw iron mugwort stems—so its performance might fall short…

Still, its durability would certainly be guaranteed.

“Well, yeah. For a structure to last this long, they must’ve known what they were doing.”

Naturally, they were having this conversation to steady their minds.

“There’s no knowing when this ends, or even if we’re going the right way.”

At Irena’s words, Kairus let out a quiet sigh.

“Just like life.”

“If there’s a guide, even a maze without an end can feel like a dew-kissed hill of green grass at dawn.”

At Tanya’s words, both Kairus and Irena sighed simultaneously.

“Guess we really are relying on luck here.”

Kairus murmured, then turned to Tanya and said,

“How about you choose the next fork in the road, Doc?”

At Kairus’s suggestion, Tanya let out a surprised “Huh?” and gave an awkward smile.

“Would that really be okay?”

“Your father wouldn’t lead his daughter somewhere strange, would he?”

At his words, Tanya’s face grew complicated.

“Of course, the path my father prepared would be the best one for me. But… I can’t be certain it’s the best one for you all too.”

After saying that, her expression darkened.

“The best path for me… could be a living hell for you.”

“Judging by your face, that sounds like experience talking.”

At Kairus’s remark, Tanya nodded.

“Kairus, you don’t really want to hear the full story, do you?”

“Of course not.”

Anyway, the method Kairus’s group had been using to navigate the maze was basically picking a direction based on gut feeling whenever they reached a fork.

“So now it’s your turn to pick. Let’s see how good your father is at finding paths.”

So in the end, it was just switching the person who was guessing—from Kairus to Tanya.

“Don’t doubt my father. You’ll be struck down by divine punishment.”

“Oh, I’m so scared. Alright, let’s get moving, self-proclaimed daughter of Itera.”

Kairus responded breezily and gave Tanya a solid slap on the back.