Chapter 119 (2/2)

Snake Eyes tilted her head slightly, but Straight Face didn't offer an explanation and turned back to Seol Jihu.

“80.”

Seol Jihu understood her intent and slowly nodded his head. “Sure. We'll switch after 80 rooms.”

Straight Face snorted, but that was all she had to say. Seol Jihu had performed beyond what he had promised and had even offered a new method. Lara had also proven she wasn't a freeloader.

“What are you doing? Get over here.”

As Straight Face urged Snake Eyes, Seol Jihu couldn't help but smile on the inside. It felt like the wound got st.i.tched up stronger. Of course, it had yet to heal completely.

“f.u.c.k!” Snake Eyes spat out a curse. Her complexion, as she looked at the frontal door, was one of exhaustion. “Snake Game my a.s.s! We should have just gone to the centermost room to begin with. We did all that work for what?”

Embarra.s.sed, Sophie dropped her head. The group had taken the method she suggested, but no one expected that they wouldn't find the exit before reaching the centermost room.

“That's not necessarily true. Maybe the exit isn't in a fixed room. Maybe, we have to enter every room before the exit opens.”

When Seol Jihu sided with Sophie, Snake Eyes narrowed her eyes, “Wait, you're telling me that the exit might not be in the next room?”

“…We'd have to go through the 39 rooms on the rightmost side.”

“AAAAAAAAH!” Snake Eyes pressed her temples and screamed.

“I was all excited for the Banquet! The h.e.l.l is this?”

“Where's all the killing and backstabbing and, you know, the fun stuff? It's gotta be more hardcore than this!”

Seol Jihu wanted to say, 'I don't think that's it', but he kept quiet thinking there was no reason to provoke her. Judging by what Snake Eyes was saying, the Banquet was supposed to be much more difficult.

“Ah, f.u.c.k. I want to say f.u.c.k it all to the Banquet or whatever. I'm going to cry if Stage 2 is like this too—” Snake Eyes spat out one complaint after another before pus.h.i.+ng Straight Face to the side and throwing the door open. Taken aback by Snake Eyes' sudden action, Lara moved to stop her but stopped almost immediately.

With Snake Eyes' skills, it was likely that she acted after checking for any potential threat. More importantly, her spazzing eyes seemed to be searching for a target to vent her anger.

Soon, the word, “f.u.c.k!”, rang out from the room. The six of them, who stepped into the room late, all stood stunned as if they had all promised to react the same way before entering.

They saw a normal room that was no different than any of the others.

“Why aren't there any doors?”

The only difference, like Snake Eyes said, was that the door they used to enter was the only door.

'…Huh?'

After examining the room slowly, Seol Jihu noticed this incongruity.

'The door we used to enter the room is the only door?'

That meant that they couldn't have entered the room through other directions. It was then…

Kirik! A familiar sound rang out. Drrrk! And a tremor shook the room. It was the same phenomenon they experienced in the room they were summoned to.

“The door disappeared!” Maria shouted.

Seol Jihu turned around instinctively and frowned. Just like what Maria said, the door they used to enter was gone. It had disappeared without a trace as if it blended into the wall.

Straight Face pulled out her glowing, silver longsword and slowly backed off.

“s.h.i.+t….”

Snake Eyes picked up her weapon for the first time as she also backed off slowly. Seol Jihu did the same while tightly holding onto his Ice Spear. The five combatants stood in a circle around the two Priests.

The room quickly turned silent. Maria's m.u.f.fled chants were the only sound. Tension slowly seeped in, but Seol Jihu decided to first wait. Activating the Nine Eyes, he saw that the room was glowing with a golden light just like before.

'I did everything I could.'

Although he wasn't happy with the process, he had succeeded in preventing the team's collapse and brought all seven members here. Although one person died, he was already on the verge of death when he entered the stage, so there was nothing anyone could do.

Right, he had done everything he could. If the Nine Eyes wasn't lying, if this s.p.a.ce really was a place of Golden Rule, then now was time to accept the result.

At that moment, a cool breeze tickled his forehead. Seol Jihu turned his head up, his eyes immediately widening.

It wasn't just him. The seven members of the group were all looking at the slowly splitting ceiling with looks of disbelief. As if a huge box was opening up, or as if a huge bird was spreading its wings, the ceiling opened up and a clear sky revealed itself.

Immediately….

Kigik! Kigiiigik! Unpleasant noise struck their ears. In the next moment, their sense of balance shook, and their bodies tilted sideways.

“Uaaah?”

Seol Jihu stopped Maria from falling and was shocked to see the walls around them going down.

No, that wasn't it.

“What? We're going up?”

Like Snake Eyes said, the ground they were standing on was going up. Like an elevator, the ground rose toward the opened ceiling. Once the ground pa.s.sed the ceiling, the outside scenery appeared. Seol Jihu looked down in a daze.

He could see the ground getting farther and farther away from a rectangular structure. The shape of the labyrinth was just as Lara had guessed.

“What happened…?” Someone muttered. However, no one could answer that question. They could only guess.

“As I thought….” Lara mumbled to herself, and everyone's gaze naturally fell on her. She flinched in a fl.u.s.ter and then opened her mouth.

“Ah, I meant the Banquet. I'm convinced now.”

“Convinced?”

“There are several theories… but I think the Banquet really is the Empire's inheritance.”

[Some say the Banquet is a stage created by a G.o.d from the era of the ancient Empire to carry out some sort of a test. Others say it is a game created by a grand magician for his amus.e.m.e.nt. Some even call it a lair that the extinct dragons created as a dummy.]

Jang Maldong's words flashed by Seol Jihu's head. Lara stomped the moving ground with her foot.

“Don't you think so? The Kingdoms' technology isn't enough to make this stage. To have created something like this, at the very least, it would have to be the Empire, which is said to have reached the pinnacle of magic engineering.”

'That makes sense, but…'

Seol Jihu was only half-convinced as he looked around the area. The labyrinth they left now looked like a dot. Looking at it, his lower stomach churned. He didn't have acrophobia, but he couldn't help but be a little nervous as the platform went up endlessly.

In the end, he had to take a couple of breaths before the surrounding scenery entered his sight. The first thing that caught his attention was a giant mountain that stretched endlessly into the sky. He couldn't see the peak, even though the platform continued to travel up since leaving the labyrinth.

“Hey, there are people there.”

Seol Jihu immediately turned his head at Snake Eyes' words. The place she was pointing to was several hundred meters away, so he couldn't see well with his naked eyes. But that didn't seem to be the case for Lara and Snake Eyes who were Archers. They both were clearly staring at a single spot.