The trial had begun.
The timer burned a bright red 10:00 on the wall screen above, its numbers ticking down with merciless steadiness. The maze pulsed with life, walls grinding against stone, pathways reshaping with a low, mechanical hum.
Avilio blinked once, steadying himself. He had been dropped near the outer wall of the labyrinth, the stone slick with frost, the air unnervingly quiet. No voices, no footsteps, no allies. Only the cold sound of the shifting maze. Then movement. Not far down the corridor, a figure stepped from the shadow of a narrowing passage. A girl, clad in light armor, her twin daggers gleaming faintly in the torchlight. She wasn't one of his teammates, he remembered her face from the waiting area.
The girl slipped into the shadows of the maze, vanishing without a sound. Avilio scanned his surroundings carefully. His breath caught when he realized where he was—at the farthest point from the rendezvous, directly opposite the timer screen. Worst possible spawn.
Their strategy had been simple: everyone would head for the wall closest to the timer's display. It was the one fixed point they could all rely on, the only way to guarantee a proper rendezvous. But Avilio had been dropped on the other side of the labyrinth, meaning he would need to cut across the entire maze in less than ten minutes.
Ten seconds had already vanished from the clock. He tightened his grip on his sword and prepared to run when the stone behind him groaned. The outer wall split open, a dark void appearing like the maw of some beast.
The Phantom Door. For a heartbeat, he froze. Step through it now and he could win, easily. No maze, no monsters, no risk. But then Barnacle's grin came to mind. The other teammates, waiting. Avilio's jaw clenched. Without another glance at the door, he turned his back on the easy escape and sprinted into the twisting corridors, discarding perfection for loyalty.
Avilio darted through the winding paths, his footsteps light but steady. At first, it almost felt easy. The so-called monsters of the maze were nothing more than sluggish mud golems, their heavy limbs scraping the floor as they tried to give chase. A few sidesteps, a quick strike at their joints, and Avilio was already moving on.
The other competitors he passed didn't even spare him a glance, everyone was too consumed with their own survival and reunion strategies. Good. Less wasted time. But the maze itself was another enemy entirely.
A sharp rumble shook the floor, and Avilio skidded to a halt just as a wall slammed down in front of him. Massive stone blocks shifted with unnatural speed, rearranging passages in an instant. What had been a straight corridor became a dead end. What had been an open route twisted into a loop.
"Tch… so this is why it's called Infinite Mage," he muttered, doubling back.
Every few steps, the labyrinth moved again. Walls shot up behind him, forcing him forward. Entire sections crumbled only to re-form in new shapes, cutting him off from where he wanted to go. The maze wasn't just trapping them, it was herding them, breaking their plans, testing their resolve. Avilio clenched his jaw, eyes fixed on the distant glow of the timer screen whenever it flickered through a gap. He would get there. No matter how many times the walls tried to push him astray.
Avilio pressed on, weaving through the shifting passages. Twice he was forced to backtrack as stone blocks thundered into place, slamming down like jaws eager to crush him. Once, he nearly slipped into a pit that hadn't been there a moment ago—only to watch the floor reseal behind him, as though mocking his narrow escape.
The golems were relentless too. One burst out from a collapsing wall, its rocky fist grazing his shoulder as he ducked under and rolled away. Another lumbered into his path just as the walls behind sealed shut, cornering him. With a quick feint, Avilio baited the creature into smashing the side wall, darting past the rubble before the shifting stone could trap him again. His breath was steady but his pace was unyielding. Every second mattered. The timer ticking down in his mind.
Then, as he rounded yet another twisting turn, he froze. "Avilio?!"
Barnacle stood just ahead, back to a wall, driving his heavy wooden staff into the chest of a collapsing golem. Dust rained down as the creature crumbled. His face lit up the moment he spotted Avilio.
"Finally! I thought I'd be running this cursed maze alone!" Barnacle shouted, his booming laugh echoing even in the chaos.
Relief flickered across Avilio's eyes. "You're still alive. Good. Come on, we don't have time to waste."
Without another word, they fell into stride together, Barnacle taking the lead when brute force was needed, Avilio cutting through the gaps when speed and precision mattered. The walls still shifted, the maze still fought to scatter them but now they weren't alone. Together, they pushed deeper toward the rendezvous point. The two pushed through the maze's treacherous bends, dodging falling debris and ducking sudden shifts in the walls. Their pace was relentless—each turn tested their nerves, but every obstacle they cut through with grit and instinct.
Finally, the familiar wall came into view. Relief swept through Avilio like a cool wind. They were close - closer than he thought possible with how much the maze had fought them.
Barnacle wiped sweat from his brow, his grin wide despite the exhaustion. "Six minutes left! We might actually pull this off."
As they drew nearer, Avilio's sharp eyes caught movement at the edge of the wall. A figure leaned calmly against the stone, arms crossed, her stance steady as though she had been there for ages. It was Viera.
She raised her hand in a casual wave, her expression unreadable but her presence solid—a beacon that steadied their nerves. "Took you long enough," she said coolly. "I've been waiting."
Barnacle let out a booming laugh. "Hah! Looks like we're not the only ones with some luck on our side."
Avilio nodded once, his gaze flicking to the ticking timer above the maze. Six minutes. Enough to regroup… if the rest of their team could find their way in time. The three of them stood together, finally catching their breaths. The heavy silence of the maze was broken only by the distant grinding of shifting stone. Then, from the corner of his eye, Avilio noticed a flicker on the giant display. His heart skipped. Another name had been added to the disqualified list.
Cael. All three froze.
Barnacle's jaw clenched, his grin vanishing. "No… no way. That idiot was tough. How could he…" His voice trailed into a growl.
Viera's usual calm expression cracked, her brows furrowing as she muttered, "This… changes everything."
Avilio stared at the glowing letters of Cael's name, his mind spinning. They had planned to regroup, to push forward as a whole team—but now, one of their five was gone. Just like that.
The weight of uncertainty pressed down on them. Barnacle turned sharply to Avilio, frustration burning in his eyes. "What do we do now? Without Cael… can we even pass as a team?"
No one answered immediately. The timer above ticked down mercilessly—5:32 left.
The maze shifted again, walls grinding into new positions, as though mocking their hesitation. Barnacle slammed his fist against the wall, frustration leaking into his voice. "Damn it! Without Cael, and Korren still missing, we're screwed. What's the point of waiting here if our team's already falling apart?"
Viera's sharp gaze flicked between them. "So what now? Do we search? Split up? Or gamble on the door?"
For a moment, Avilio was silent, his eyes fixed on the timer above—its glowing red numbers slipping away, second by second. Then, unexpectedly, he chuckled. A low, almost careless laugh.
"There's no sense waiting for Korren anymore," he said at last, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "If he isn't here by now, he's probably chasing the Phantom Door on his own. And Cael… well, we can't bring him back."
Barnacle scowled. "So you're saying it's over?"
Avilio shook his head slowly, smirk sharpening. "Not over. Just different. Like you said before, Barnacle, it's luck. All we need is a little bit of it."
Viera narrowed her eyes. "Then what's the plan?"
Avilio glanced at both of them, leaning back against the cold wall as if the chaos of the maze didn't matter at all. "The plan?" His smirk widened. "We do nothing. Just hear me."
Avilio crouched near the wall, tracing a quick circle in the dust with his finger. "Listen carefully. The maze is circular, right? When I sprinted across earlier, I measured the diameter in my head—about a hundred meters. That makes the circumference roughly three hundred and fifteen."
He jabbed a dot into the circle. "Now, the Phantom Door is about three meters wide. It appears once every ten seconds, which means in one minute it'll pop up six times, covering around eighteen meters of wall if we assume it doesn't repeat the same spot. Ten minutes… that's about one hundred and eighty meters—more than half the circumference."
Viera's eyes narrowed, quick to pick up. "So… probability's close to fifty-fifty that it shows up here."
"Exactly," Avilio said with a smirk. Then his voice sharpened. "But here's the trick—we're not just sitting ducks. A person can sprint twenty to thirty meters in ten seconds. If we anchor ourselves here, we can cover a range on both sides, say, forty to sixty meters in total. That shifts our odds. In practice, it pushes us close to a ninety percent chance of catching the door if it spawns anywhere within reach."
Barnacle leaned closer to Viera, whispering, "What in the hell is he talking about?"
She crossed her arms, not breaking eye contact with Avilio. "No idea. But it sounds… convincing."
Avilio chuckled at her dry tone. "Call it statistics, call it instinct doesn't matter. The only variable we can't control is whether the door already spawned here before we arrived."
Viera's voice was steady, certain. "It didn't. I spawned just a little away from this wall and reached here within forty, maybe fifty seconds. If the door had appeared, I'd have noticed. No trace."
Avilio gave a small nod. "That's good… and bad." The clock ticked down mercilessly. 03:00.
Avilio leaned back against the wall, exhaling slowly. "Now all that's left is luck."
The air grew heavy with silence, broken only by the low grind of shifting walls in the maze. Every second stretched longer than it should. Viera's hands tightened around her daggers, knuckles pale from the cold. Barnacle was tapping his foot nervously, the sound echoing like a drumbeat.
02:30.
Avilio's eyes never left the wall, every muscle taut. His earlier confidence now sat like a mask, hiding the unease creeping in. Don't tell me… the odds are failing us.
The walls groaned again, sliding into new shapes. Their vantage point shrank, paths twisting out of sight.
02:00.
Barnacle muttered, "Damn it. If it doesn't show up here, we're screwed—"
Then, without warning, a shimmer rippled across the stone, right beside where they were resting. A black outline widened like ink spreading across paper, forming into the arched frame of the Phantom Door.
"Door!" Viera hissed. But before they could react, another candidate—someone they hadn't even noticed in the shadows bolted forward. His expression was fierce, desperate. He didn't hesitate for a heartbeat, throwing himself toward the door.
"Move!" Avilio snapped, surging to his feet.
Viera and Barnacle rushed alongside him, boots pounding against the stone floor. The rival candidate dove first, vanishing into the void of the door just as its shimmer began to waver.
The timer blared above them—01:40.
Avilio clenched his teeth. If we miss this window, it's over.
In a single breathless motion, the three of them plunged into the dark glow, the Phantom Door swallowing them whole just before it collapsed into nothingness. The maze behind them went silent.
They had passed.