However, because there were always "spies" that the Speakers had infiltrated even into this place, there was an unspoken rule that you must never say anything from which your personal information could be inferred.
-Oh? If you log out after more than 24 hours, they give you a survival bonus.
-Stop lying, bonus? You think Pangaenia is a joke?
-Our Goddess does not know the concept of a bonus.
-No, I'm serious. I even got a Constellation from the Pantheon attached to me. Maybe the very goal here is to survive in the labyrinth for a long time?
-I got a survival bonus too.
-What, seriously? What do you get?
-Not telling.
The atmosphere suddenly surged like a tidal current.
A survival bonus.
They were saying you get a reward just for surviving 24 hours.
From the way they were talking, it sounded like a pretty decent reward.
Just as many people were starting to think, 'Should I try again?'
-Ah, shit, everyone get out. I just saw the Death King.
-Death King? Which Death King? Don't tell me the Death King of the North?
-You mean one of the rulers of Kramdel?
-Yeah. So if you don't want to die, get out. This isn't a place for random riffraff to butt in. At minimum, this place is for transcendents only.
-You saw the Death King and still got out alive? Aren't you the one bullshitting?
-I ran away after seeing the Death King and the Thunder Emperor fighting.
-The Thunder Emperor Darkstar and the Death King?
The Thunder Emperor Darkstar.
One of the Seven Heroes, a player known as "the fastest human."
A high ranker known to have almost no equal, except for the Master and Gracia.
And that man was fighting the Death King.
The Death King was a notoriously infamous monster as well.
A super elite raid boss monster.
The King of Corpses.
The absolute ruler over all that is dead!
-Who's winning?
-The Death King was just toying with him.
-So is he going to become one of the Six Heroes now?
-Crazy lolololol is this real?
If the Death King had appeared in the labyrinth, this was no ordinary matter.
The Death King was famous even among the players.
If the Thunder Emperor Darkstar had fallen to the level of a mere plaything, then players beneath his level should not even think of attempting this.
A second attempt was something they shouldn't even dare to dream of.
-I've been saying the Seven Heroes are overrated. Honestly, Mintchocoisdelicious is probably stronger than the Thunder Emperor.
-The Mintchocoisdelicious cult is here again, get lost.
-Do you think Randolph will challenge it this time too?
-It's going to be pretty brutal for him to join in here.
-He's put up ridiculous records so far, but won't he avoid a direct clash this time?
-Seeing how he's stayed hidden until now, it's clear he's deliberately avoiding direct confrontations.
-Well, yeah… once he joins the fight, his identity will be exposed in an instant.
-If we help him out, wouldn't it be possible?
-Don't be stupid. The moment you enter your name here, you'll be assassinated within twelve hours.
-I say six hours.
-I say three.
-Honestly, even within one hour is possible.
-Either way, it's a shame. If someone's going to take it, I'd rather Randolph than a bastard like the Master.
Everyone thought Randolph would not challenge the Abyssal Labyrinth.
If he attempted the labyrinth, his identity would be exposed in an instant.
A place where countless players were gathered.
In this arena of fierce competition, hiding one's identity was impossible.
***
"You have eliminated a Golden Goblin."
"You have eliminated an event monster and gained 30 labyrinth score."
"You have eliminated a Golden Goblin."
"You have eliminated an event monster and gained 30 labyrinth score."
"You have eliminated a Golden Goblin."
"You have eliminated an event monster and gained 30 labyrinth score."
...
Right now, I was monopolizing the Golden Goblins of the underground labyrinth.
A full ten of them.
The score I gained amounted to 300 points.
Just the Old Empire coins came to 44 million gold.
If I added in the golden statues and treasures, the total would easily exceed 60 million gold!
Now and then, decent talismans and equipment dropped as well.
"The achievement 'Golden Goblin Butcher' has been granted."
"Honor has increased by 100."
"By eliminating 10 Golden Goblins alone, you are connected to the 'Golden Abyss.'"
A golden warp leading underground suddenly surfaced right in front of me.
It meant that if I jumped down there, I would reach the 'Golden Abyss.'
'Golden Abyss?'
A name I'd never heard before.
To begin with, there shouldn't be anyone capable of hunting ten Golden Goblins alone.
Golden Goblins only appeared in so-called prime lands, and even there, places where more than ten appeared were rare.
Let alone finding them all and hunting them solo, that was impossible.
If it weren't for Hel and the soul of the Abyss Knight, it would have been impossible for me as well.
"You have entered the 'Golden Abyss.'"
There was no need to hesitate, of course.
I jumped in without delay.
And when I saw the enormous golden mountain spreading out before me,
'…Jackpot.'
Is this how a ginseng digger feels upon finding a whole cluster of wild ginseng?
The treasure laid out before my eyes made a gasp slip out on its own.
And among the treasures I could see, there were things whose value could not simply be measured in gold coins.
'Golden Essence, Jar of Greed…!'
Those two especially caught my eye.
And of course they did.
Golden Essence and the Jar of Greed were both materials for unique-grade equipment.
While everyone else was struggling and competing in the labyrinth, I alone was here, searching for treasure.
Rumble!
At that moment, something buried beneath the golden mountain began to rise.
"The ruler of the Golden Abyss, 'Greed,' has awakened!"
…A gigantic Golden Goblin, as large as a giant.
Endless rewards, rewards, and more rewards
The abyss within the abyss.
A place called a layered abyss, or a lower abyss.
It was a pattern that appeared from time to time, but this 'Golden Abyss' was a first.
However, because it was still an abyss, if I wanted to leave, I had to kill the 'ruler' all the same.
Unless the 'ruler of the abyss' permitted me to leave.
The latter almost never happened, so in the end, it meant I had to face it.
[Lv.12]
The problem was the goblin's level.
A creature outright named 'Greed.'
Its level was as high as its name implied.
A head-on one-on-one fight was impossible from the start.
But.
-The bold intruder who has entered my treasure vault, it has been a while.
The gigantic Golden Goblin, Greed, spoke.
Unlike other Golden Goblins, it was intelligent enough to talk.
Compared to most rulers of the abyss, who attacked intruders without a word, its personality was actually quite mild.
-Battle, or gamble. Choose.
It even gave me options.
Greed came right up in front of me, stroking its chin as it eyed me with interest.
Whatever I chose, it meant it was confident it could win either way.
"Gamble."
-Haha! Good. From now on, everything you and I possess will be given a value. We will wager that 'value' and play a game.
Whoosh!
My vision shook violently for a moment.
Greed had rearranged the space.
Then all the treasures that had lain before my eyes began to be marked with numbers.
A roughly 10,000-gold pile of coins was given a value of 1.
Just the Golden Essence and the Jar of Greed each had a value of 30,000.
If I added up all the coins and treasures here, the total would easily reach 200,000.
On the other hand, even if I put together everything I owned, the value only came to 7,000.
'Crush me under overwhelming value?'
Greed had a reason to be confident.
The amount of value it possessed was on an entirely different level.
No matter how many times I went all-in, to Greed it would be like shaving off a bit of dirt from under its fingernails.
It was a game I could never win from the start.
Whether it was a fight, or a gamble.
This was the place that stripped the bones of those who had grown cocky from killing ten Golden Goblins.
-Khahaha! Now then, let's play a game. The first game is odds or evens.
Rrrrrrumble!
A massive amount of gold coins surged up like a tidal wave.
Dividing into two sides, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of coins swirled and mixed chaotically.
It was overwhelming.
Just watching it was a breathtaking sight.
Greed bared its golden teeth in a grin.
-So then. Odds, or evens?
***
Gracia clicked his tongue softly.
'Finally found the path.'
So the surface labyrinth had been bait from the very beginning.
Using a labyrinth ticket to break through the wall and find the path leading underground, that was the real clue to the labyrinth, it seemed.
"You are the eighth among current entrants to set foot in the underground labyrinth."
"You have obtained the achievement 'Challenger Who Was Eighth to Discover the Underground Labyrinth.'"
…The eighth?
Gracia naturally frowned.
It seemed there were people who had solved this trick faster than he had.
But it was puzzling.
The labyrinth merchants should be monopolized by the other heroes, so when did they get their labyrinth tickets?
When on earth did they come in?
There were already seven people who had entered the underground labyrinth ahead of him.
'If not for the Death King, I would have gotten here sooner.'
The Thunder Emperor Darkstar.
He had sent out an SOS.
Saying he had run into the Death King, one of the Four Great Masters of the northern fortress city Kramdel.
He said his advance was blocked by the Death King's undead legion.
So Gracia had cleared a path for him.
Reluctantly, with the intent of putting him in his debt.
Besides, he was curious why a being on the level of the Death King would enter this Abyssal Labyrinth.
'Are the monsters of the North trying to expand their territory?'
In the end, he had not been able to ask why.
Because he hadn't met him directly.
But he could make an educated guess.
Recently, he had received intelligence that Kramdel's power had been growing at a rapid pace.
Powerful monsters were gathering in Kramdel.
In numbers so great that they could not be handled by Kramdel and the cities held by the Four Great Masters alone.
Thus, there was a possibility that they had set their sights on this Abyssal Labyrinth.
'A land that even the Death King covets. I have even more reason to claim it now.'
Just what kind of land was this, that the Death King and so many of Pangaenia's powerhouses were coveting it?
One thing was certain, it was by no means ordinary land.
'If the underground labyrinth is the real game, then somewhere here, the Sword of Stars Riley will be.'
He could yield on everything else, but not that.
The Sword of Stars Riley was his prey.
Gracia's eyes glinted with a chilling light.
But only for a moment.
"You are…?"
He opened his mouth in disbelief as he saw a woman pass before his eyes.
At first, he thought he had seen wrong, that it was a ghost.
But the woman who had just walked right past him was clearly,
"Saintess Seah?"
Stop.
The woman halted and turned her head, then smiled brightly.
"Oh my, do you know me?"
***
Isaac and Isabella crossed paths as they leapt.
A tactic to confuse the opponent's eyes and throw them into disorder.
The rabbit with golden eyes died a futile death.
"We're a pretty good match, aren't we?"
When Isaac held out his hand, Isabella ignored it and recovered the rabbit's corpse.
With an awkward cough, Isaac lowered the hand he'd offered.
'What a prickly one.'
Training and fighting together had made their coordination quite good, but Isabella was still difficult for Isaac.
Rather than quietly waiting for Randolph, who had vanished via the golden warp, they had decided it was better to do something in the meantime, and so they were on the move.
After a while, as he watched Isabella retrieve a ticket from the rabbit's corpse, Isaac spoke.
"So, if we kill event monsters, tickets drop."
"If we gather these tickets, it looks like a path to the Sword of Stars Riley will open."
"Tch, if the explanation is right, we have to gather a thousand, don't we?"
Event monsters were hard even to find.
And on top of that, the drop rate for tickets was random.
It seemed far more likely that their Fragments of the Golden Rule would run dry before they managed to gather a thousand tickets.
Still, for the moment, they had no other choice.
As they were roaming the underground labyrinth, hunting event monsters for quite some time,
Isaac and Isabella stepped into one area and could not help but stop.
"Did a war break out here or something?"
"…!"
The whole space looked as if a war had taken place, utterly devastated.
The terrain had been reshaped, and here and there the air was thick with the smell of burning and fire.
And at the center of it all, a woman lay collapsed.
Shhing.
Isabella drew her dagger.
Everyone they had met in the labyrinth so far had been an enemy.
If the woman was alive, she intended to slit her throat.
"Wait. Don't kill her. This woman…!"
"…?"
Isaac, having approached and checked the woman's face, was shocked.
It was only natural that Isabella didn't know her, since she had lived only in the desert.
"That's Saintess Seah! Wasn't she supposed to be dead?"
Just in case, he listened to her heartbeat.
Fortunately, she was breathing, and her heart was beating.
She was alive.
But it was strange.
Saintess Seah had officially been announced dead during the great expedition.
Even Isaac knew that much, no matter how much he had stayed in Kramdel. The great expedition had been quite an issue even among monsters.
So why was Saintess Seah lying here alone, in the underground labyrinth, on the verge of death?
Who on earth had she fought?
"We should get out first. This place doesn't look safe either."
Isaac slung Saintess Seah over his shoulder.
Whoever had fought her might come back.
They needed to leave this place before that happened.