Crimson light burned all around me, removing the third floor room of Oscar's mansion from sight.
When the teleportation effect finally faded to nothing, a different but familiar environment graced our sights.
Yue and I looked around, our shared ability to see in the dark piercing through the veil surrounding us to find rocky brown walls that reminded us of exactly where we didn't want to be.
To make matters worse, sections of the walls above, beside and behind us slid back to reveal holes with sharpened bits of metal peeking out of them.
Cursed energy responded to my call at near light speed and Yue's wind construct brightened up the vicinity, encapsulating us in a golden dome.
Before the attacks arrived though, the ring I looted from Oscar's corpse trembled lightly on my middle finger. I twisted my hand and gazed down at it, a light bulb going off in my head after a second of contemplation.
When I brought my gaze back up, the metal bits and the various holes they inhabited had disappeared, Yue's protective construct following suit.
"Huh… that makes sense," I said and held out my left hand, gesturing at Oscar's ring. "No way someone on a god's shitlist would leave the way to his hideout unprotected."
"Mmm…" she murmured in assent and interlocked her fingers with mine.
"Well… off we go."
Trusting in Oscar's ring and the promise of light at the end of this tunnel, we began a steady march, following the single path and picking up speed when any doors we met unlocked on their own and activated traps behaved themselves and calmed down.
After a multitude of twists and turns, we finally saw light, real, golden sunlight, and it was at the end of a literal tunnel. If I couldn't feel Yue's brightening emotions nor myself be glad for this, I might've rolled my eyes.
We both tore our gazes off the end and shared a smile before launching ourselves forward, crossing the last stretch in an instant.
Yue's grip on my hand tightened as she looked about the revealed canyon, the sun's rays beating down her joyful and melancholic expression. She shielded her eyes as she stared at the gigantic bulb in the sky for a good long while, and I kept silent and let her be.
When she finally lowered her hand and found my eyes again, I stopped her from saying anything and wrapped her in a hug, letting our thoughts and emotions do all the talking.
We stayed like that for about a minute, even when we both sensed the monster that couldn't read the room swoop down towards us.
"Babe, sorry about this…" I said and broke the hug, repositioning myself in front of her.
Loud whooshing sounds accompanied what could only be a demonic pterodactyl closing in on us with the aid of its wide leathery wings.
SMACK!
'Read the fucking room,' I thought and threw a backhand, hitting the stupid monster on the side of its head.
Its flight path got diverted instantly, the hit slamming it against the ground dozens of meters away and reducing it to a gory smear of blood and pasted flesh.
For a second I gazed at the sight and my hand before clenching the latter into a fist. If the calculations I'd done some time ago were accurate, my strength after eating the snakes had settled firmly in the +100 ton range.
Naturally having no concrete idea—c'mon, I was a normal guy not long ago—of what that meant exactly , I'd been hoping to test myself thoroughly once we arrived here.
Didn't think I'd be taking one of those tests so soon.
A couple of more screeches broke me out of the short reverie and I looked up to find more of the fearless dinosaurs flying to join their partner on the ground and in death.
I didn't even get to brace myself. A slew of golden balls the size of apples shot forward from behind me into the jaws of the creatures and turned into golden spikes that went through their heads and jaws.
The dead creatures all went slack and shifted into spinning nosedives, falling down with repeating bangs as I turned to face my girlfriend, who stared at one of the golden balls hovering above her open palm with confusion.
"Something's fighting my magic, making it hard to use," she said and looked at me, dismissing the construct with a wave.
"It's the Reisen Gorge's special effect. I read it in one of Oscar's books. Magic doesn't work here,"
"Ohh…okay. The spell should've torn them to pieces. Not this…"
Clearly sensing her displeasure and the blow to her pride, I made no mention of it and changed the topic.
The magic compass settled in my hand and answered my call, its needle spinning wildly. "Don't worry. With how much mana you have, the dispersion shouldn't affect you much. Besides, we aren't staying here."
Yue looked at me in surprise. "But I thought…"
"Ha… you think I want to jump into another labyrinth right after escaping one? I'm sure we can find it in no time with this," I gestured to the compass, "but it doesn't matter. I want money, real food, and proper clothes. Miledi Reisen can wait. What do you say? I'm sure you want to do some shopping too, hmm?"
She just smiled lightly. "What you want is what I want."
Click.
I shut the compass after ascertaining the right direction and drew closer to her, giving her a quick kiss and sweeping her into a bridal carry. "I don't deserve you."
Her left arm went around my neck and her right hand felt up my face. "Mmm… same."
Thump!
Wind whooshed in our ears as the almost cage-like gorge disappeared, replaced with vast empty space and soon, some tiny white clouds.
Our innate durability more than up to the task, we both treated the harsh speeds of the jump like air and stood in the sky on the golden platform Yue created, fixing our hair and makeshift clothes.
The compass came out again and I looked up from the device in the direction pointed by the needle to find nothing. "There's a town that's been built around the entrance to the Orcus Labyrinth. We'll find everything we need there. See anything?" I asked Yue, knowing she had the Farsight ability.
"Mmm… not really. Unless we get closer maybe?" She looked at me and the compass.
"Sure. Let's go," I responded and swept her up again, jumping off and cracking her wind platform. God I wish I could fly.
.
.
.
.
I didn't know if it was a common or universal thing, but Yue and I could adjust the values on our Status Plates.
Not increasing our actual attributes—that would be crazy awesome—but instead decreasing them to levels that wouldn't draw any undue attention.
This is how we were allowed passage into Horaud Town by the guards posted up at its fort-like entrance.
Though the disguised but still high enough numbers and the shabby state of our clothing posed enough of a juxtaposition for them to give us second looks and treat us with some wariness.
Neither of us knew how to sew or adjust clothing, and none of our abilities could be used to shape fabric, leather or any similar materials.
So we borrowed some of Oscar's many clothes, cutting them down to size and tying and stuffing them in places to make sure they fit. We couldn't do this for footwear though, so barefoot we went and had been this whole time.
As we entered the town and took in its unique architecture, bustling streets and many, many stalls, the various people partially crowding the streets and going about their normal business noticed our uniqueness too.
If looking like homeless people wasn't enough, the fact that both of us sported heads of white hair and red eyes like that of monsters made even the most urgent passerby pause and do a double take.
"Rick?" Yue asked and followed her nose to where my gaze was fixed, a man turning some juicy looking kebabs over a grill.
"Let's keep moving," I shook my head and resumed walking. "We need money for that. If the guards are right, the Adventurer's guild should be… this way. Yeah."
The door to the guild appeared before us soon enough, and it was a thick, metal thing. Easily pushing the hunk of steel, or iron, I didn't know aside, Yue and I got treated with the worst ear assault as the interior was revealed to us.
This had to be intentional.
Boisterous laughter and avid but unintelligible conversation poured out of the opening as we strolled in. For some reason I was reminded of some college dorm rooms I'd had the misfortune of entering.
The hall wasn't a mess per say, but it definitely looked like multiple groups of frat boys had been through here more than a few times.
Ignoring the stale mix of alcohol, sweat, and other unknown scents hanging in the room like a cloud, Yue and I paid the silence our entry suddenly bestowed no mind and went straight for the receptionist.
'They let bums in here now?' 'That girl with him though… tsk tsk tsk…' 'Ehhh who gives a fuck… '
Words like this that were spoken with every intent of being heard hit our backs and crumbled before our nonchalance.
Stopping before the counter, the young woman, a teen really, greeted us with the signature service employee smile and asked how she may be of well, service.
"Good morning. I want to know if you buy monster parts, and if so which ones? I'd like a full list of items and prices if there's one."
"Oh okay… please wai—"
"Hey!"
I hung my head low as I closed my eyes, the urge to facepalm swelling up within me.
Please don't tell me this is happening right now. Please let it not be the case. People possibly can't be that stupid and obnoxious. There's no way— I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder and try to turn me around—of course there's a way.
There were always people like this, even back on Earth. Why did I think this place would be any different?
"Rick?" Yue called out, through her soothing voice and our connection, snapping me out of the year long sigh. She seemed to be snapping me out of a lot of things today.
"Hey! Look at me when I'm talking to you," came the gruff voice a second time, the force in his grip intensifying.
With no plans whatsoever to prolong this nonsense, I let the meaty hand spin me around. Taking a second to observe the owner, I looked up at him and then the silent audience behind him.
He stood several inches higher and wider than me, his bulk and build reminiscent of that of the mountain from Game of Thrones.
Questions as to why he was doing this come to mind, and a big part of me wanted to forgo asking and just be done with this. Still, I held on and let him talk. Maybe I was overthinking or misunderstanding things.
"Yes?" I said and pushed his hand off me. "What do you want?"
He frowned at his now empty hand, probably because of how easily I removed it.
He gave Yue a short glance and focused back on me, jamming his double sausage finger into my chest while saying, "Your kind doesn't belong here. This is a place for serious people. Not wannabes."
"Okay? So?"
"So I'm telling you to get ou—urkk!"
His words died in his throat as I seized him by the neck, squeezing the fat, almost invisible thing until it fit in the palm of my—compared to his—small hand.
Yanking him low until he was parallel to the ground, I cast a deadpan glance along the length of the room and turned to face the girl behind the counter, dragging him along and ignoring his massive arms beating futilely against my normal sized, albeit heavily corded one.
"You better get your guildmaster here or he'll die."
The girl's frantic eyes darted from me to the reddened face of the stupid giant, his weakening struggles and popping eyeballs conveying the urgency of the situation to her.
She bolted and vanished behind a corner, the rapid ascent of what had to be a staircase reverberating through the quieted hall.
Yue now sported a small smile as she joined me in facing the counter and looking away from our shocked audience. The scapegoat in my grip had long ceased his pointless struggles, his entire body slack and arms laying bonelessly on the ground.
The staircase began to creak again and a man revealed himself to us.
He was shorter than the giant but still taller than me and most people for that matter. The aura of a wizened leader radiated with his every movement, something not even the long gnarly scar running over his left eye could diminish.
His bald head and well maintained figure made him look many years younger than he actually was, if his grayed out eyebrows were accurate indicators of his age.
"Hello sir," he said with a small, amicable smile. "Please put him—" Thud! "—down… so we may attend to you."
"Hi," I responded and stepped forward, empty hand waving in a greeting. "I'm Rick. This is Yue. You're the guild master?"
"Loa Bawavis. Branch Chief of Horaud Town's Adventurer's Guild."
I lowered my hand. "Great to meet you. I asked for a list of items and prices just now, but we'd like some privacy as well. We'd be very grateful if we could conduct our business in a less… open area."
Mr. Bawavis looked up from the unconscious giant and gestured to the receptionist. "Of course. Take our guests to the sorting area and see that they are attended to."
Nodding her head like it was made of lead, the girl gestured for us to follow her with eyes and movements denoting subtle fright.
I smiled helplessly at that. Clearly I had left too much of an impression.
She led us to a large area bustling with workers moving boxes and crates of stuff with a warehouse just beyond it. "Please… wait here. I'll go and get the list."
Our collective nod was the gunshot at the start of a race for her. She spun and walked away so fast I nearly burst out laughing. She didn't think I was some crazy psycho or something right?
Yue's reactions to my thoughts didn't go unnoticed and I turned to her. "You think I went too far?"
She shook her head. "No. I've just never seen you like this. I'm happy to see more sides of you."
Sides of me huh. "Aren't you a little bit curious?"
Again, she shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Whether you tell me or not, I'll always stay by your side."
I was going to keep saying this wasn't I?
Another "I don't deserve you" burned on the tip of my tongue but stayed there. The sudden coyness in her smile though, told me everything.
"I'll tell you anyway since we're together. If there's someone who deserves to know more about me, it's you," I said and gently drew her into me, arm going around her.
I basked in the comfort of the close contact and continued, "For now," I spied the receptionist returning, Loa Bawavis leading her towards us. "Let's just say, at some point in my life, I learned just how effective the threat of death is.
There's nothing quite like it."
.
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.
.
Turns out the pelts, bones, claws, and fangs of monsters were not really sought in Tortus. The sale of pelts saw some slight action but the rest? Not so much.
This made the pile of them I had sitting in the Treasure Trove no different from garbage.
Thankfully, another pile of items I'd hoarded was part of the really short list provided by the guild.
Nearly every monster Yue and I encountered had one of these mana crystals lodged somewhere in their bodies. My various abilities told me nothing of them, and my memories of this world weren't so great.
Nevertheless, their bright red luminescent beauty combined with my excess carrying capacity made me hoard them. Who knew they'd come in handy at such an unexpected moment?
Anyways, I sold the bulk of the mana recovery potion ingredients and earned a good chunk of money, or to be precise, Luta, as this world's currency was called.
There wasn't much to do in the guild after that.
Yue and I registered as adventurers, asked for recommendations about places to eat and sleep, and asked a few questions about current affairs and any interesting news.
Once we finished with all that, we left under the cautious gaze of the adventurers littering the hall, Mr. Bawavis' calm expression, and the receptionist's relieved, almost tearful one.
A shopping spree came after that, Yue and I moving through the town and buying lots of beautiful and fitting clothes, shoes, jewelry and anything that caught our fancy really.
We settled down in one of the inns recommended to us about an hour later and took a long and fulfilling bath. Still famished despite the multiple sticks of meat I wolfed down, I helped myself to a generous meal on the inn's ground floor and left the table nearly pregnant.
With that, most of my goals for coming to the town had been met. All that was left was the information gathering.
I needed to know when we were. Finding out whether the hero kids had been summoned was easy enough. The church would be blasting the news far and wide if they had done so.
This alone told me I'd been brought here before the events of the main story, but that wasn't enough data to go on. For all I knew it could be ten years. I wished it was ten years, but I was sensible enough to assume the worst.
The numerous history books I'd devoured in the past day and the current year and month I'd come to discover did jack shit to bridge this information gap.
Tired of my attempts to establish a timeline going nowhere, I decided to focus my efforts on more actionable things.
It did not matter when or where I was, power was the one thing I could bank my hopes on to not only help me survive anything this world threw at me, but also thrive in it.
The ability I gained after clearing the Orcus Labyrinth gave credence to this course of action. The someone or something that dropped me here wanted me to get strong and most likely, wanted me to face this world's god.
In the face of all this uncertainty, what else could I do but follow this single, well laid path in front of me?
That's how Yue and I found ourselves back in the Reisen Gorge two days after we first set foot here.
Unlike before though, we were both clothed in proper attires that fit us and accentuated our most eye catching features.
Clad in a white dress shirt with more than enough buttons opened at the front, a good chunk of my marble chest felt the cool air at all times.
The same went for my forearms, the sleeves of the shirt folded back to the spot right above the elbow and leaving my guns free to breathe.
Going down saw nothing special come to sight, just a simple black belt holding up a pair of equally dark pants that ended right below my knees and disappeared into a pair of you guessed it, high black boots.
All things considered I thought I looked pretty normal and unassuming with this ensemble.
However, the stark difference in the manner of looks I received after putting them on and walking about the town made me reevaluate things, especially when most of the interested looks came from women and even some men.
I made sure to respond with friendly smiles all around and move along quickly, no matter how enticing and inviting the faces and figures behind the looks were.
I had eyes for one woman only, and said woman's changes were even more breathtaking than mine.
Yue wore a white blazer with dark gold trims that was more like an overcoat due to its length.
Covering her collar bone was the frilled collar of a black, inner long-sleeved blouse, and hiding a small portion of her thighs was a short black skirt.
Meeting the mini skirt headon were a pair of stockings that left little to the imagination and accentuated the perfection of her legs.
Ending her ensemble were again, a black pair of calf length heel boots that made me imagine situations where her legs lay on my shoulders and said feet were locked around my neck.
If the wry smile she showed me was anything, there was no reason to not try it the next time we found ourselves alone and on a bed.
Sadly, though there wasn't a bed nearby. And while I had no qualms pressing her against the wall and taking her in this place, we had a labyrinth to clear.
"Is this really the place?" Yue asked disbelievingly, her heels clacking against the ground as she turned to me and then back to the pink, obnoxious welcome sign embedded into the wall near the open door to Miledi Reisen's labyrinth.
The trusty compass led us straight here, so I had no doubt about the legitimacy of this place. Plus, the annoying nature of the labyrinth and its creator itself had burned itself deeply in my memory.
It almost made me shudder to think about the times ahead.
"Come on. Let's get this over with," I said and pushed the door wide open, revealing it to be a rotating door that spun and pushed the both of us inside.
Night Vision did its work instantly and revealed the objects cutting through the air towards us. They were pitch black arrows heading straight for our vitals.
Beside me, Yue gently waved her hand upward and a gust of wind hit the stealthy projectiles head on, stopping them in their tracks and scattering them on the ground.
"Ehhhhh?! You can use magic here? Looks like we have some strong challengers this time. I can finally bring out the big guns. Hope you have a great time! Hehehehehe…"
A loud and offensive voice that grated on the ears and one's patience emanated from many points in the room, and I groaned, recalling the nonsense Miledi put Hajime and his party through.
Determined to beat the crazy woman at her own game, I focused on the magic compass and resumed the journey a moment later, Yue in tow.
"The dispersion effect is stronger. I'm going to need more mana for all my spells," she informed as we went farther into the labyrinth.
"Don't worry. I'll handle most of the obstacles. You focus on conserving as much mana as possible. When we arrive at places where I can't do anything then you intervene."
"Mmm…" she nodded.
We went around a bend and entered a hallway. A quick check of the compass needle confirmed that we were on the right path so I kept moving forward.
A few steps in and a rumbling could be felt clearly beneath our feet and the walls around us.
"Fufufufufu… let's see how you deal with this!"
A spherical hunk of rock came rolling down the hallway and I cracked my neck, performing a few light stretches before walking forward to meet it.
My booths thumped a good beast against the trembling ground as I neared the charging boulder. Once it reached the right distance, I stopped and reeled back my fist, cursed energy responding to my call as I launched my arm forward.
Fist met rock and the latter shattered into a shower of shrapnel that shot back and tore into the walls nearby and at the far end of the hallway.
"We've got not one but two monster challengers today! Let's see how much they can handle! Fufufufufu!!"
Right on point, more of the rock spheres rolled over from the hallway's end and bunched together on their way to crush us.
Appearing before the first in a flash, I slammed a fist into it and reduced it to rubble, the burst of cursed energy released on impact preventing none of the dirt from touching me.
I rushed up the wall to my right and ran along it sideways, landing behind the last rock in line. What came next didn't have to be stated.
Cracking and crashing sounds filled the hallway as the last of the boulders joined their buddies on the ground and in the walls as tiny rocks.
With the hallway cleared, Yue returned to my side and matched my pace in clearing the rest of it, the compass case flipping open to confirm the path.
My movements ground to a halt when the initially north pointing needle now adamantly pointed west, or to be more precise, the wall directly to my left.
Miledi could indeed shift the labyrinth around like legos. Too bad for her and thank goodness the artifact worked like I expected. Our time in this dungeon wouldn't be as long as I imagined.
Click!
Shutting the compass case close, I gestured for Yue to step back before slamming my fist into the wall right next to me, creating a rapidly expanding net of spiderwebs that spread from the point of impact and reduced it to rubble.
"Hey! Hey! Hey! You can't do that. That's cheating!"
No. Cheating is you using the rumble of the giant rocks to move around the labyrinth thinking we wouldn't notice.
Wrapping my arm around Yue and her also doing the same, I checked the compass and leapt into the darkness towards a rock wall with Miledi's stupid writing on it. I didn't bother reading and rather sent a quick mental update to Yue.
She maneuvered herself on my body and ended up on my back, freeing my arm for what I was about to do.
Reeling it back like many times before, I smashed my fist into the wall and destroyed it along with whatever aggravating message Miledi had inscribed on it.
We ended up in another hallway that came alive with our presence, the walls on both sides ejecting rapidly spinning saws that rapidly closed in on us.
Cursed energy reinforcing my hands, I caught the first one and stopped it in its tracks, bending it like I would aluminum foil. Fashioning myself a proper handhold, I tore it out of the wall with a crash and looked at the others rushing to a similar fate.
I look at the compass and then Yue with a smile, noting how Miledi hadn't said anything for a while now. She had to be cooking something special for us rule breakers, but it didn't matter.
We were not going to spend more than a day in her shitty playground.
.
.
.
.
"Try and open the doors. I'll hold them off."
Our teamwork seamless, Yue heeded my words and jumped, using an updraft spell to glide towards the large set of doors at the end of the room we found ourselves in
It was the latest obstacle course Miledi had shifted onto our path, and the door's presence in addition to the army of knight armor coming to life to try and stop told me all I needed to know.
We were in the final stretch.
Gazing at the mass of animated metal charging me from above and below, I channeled all the anger I'd accumulated into my fist and shot forward, outputting cursed energy at the last instant.
The glob of invisible energy merged with the wind before my fist and shot into the midst of the metal charge, blowing a basin sized bow in the formation, the knights caught in the blast blown backward with parts of them crumpled.
This was the same application of the method I used to generate wind slashes with the master swordsman skills and the darksword. It heavily depended on how fast I swung my fist not how much strength was behind it.
And with the sheer amount of speed I could bring to bear if I truly let loose, it was no surprise to see the tide of knights held back by these invisible blows alone, my arms blurring and delivering a multitude of them per second.
Whatever they were made of though, the blows couldn't outright tear them to shreds, but the knights couldn't go past the wall of force and wind I'd erected either.
"Hohoho! I wonder if you can solve it. If you can you better hurry. You don't have much time after all!"
Miledi's annoying voice reverberated through the room, creating a spike in anger on both sides of the connection between me and Yue.
Even though we'd beat her at her own game despite the plethora of hasty, last minute adjustments she had to make, there were some nasty surprises she managed to set up for us once she realised she couldn't stop us.
One of them involved a rain of poisonous scorpions, a shower of some sticky white stuff and the absolute worst of them all, an acid bath.
She'd set up one of the walls I had to break down to keep moving to be one of the sides of a tank containing a vat of potent acid.
So when it came down, a wave of the corrosive substance washed over me, melting a portion of mine and Yue's clothes to nothing, even managing to leave marks on our skin, Yue more so than me.
My skin just reddened like a full body welt that lasted less than a minute. Yue's face, forearms, and lower legs were left sizzling and bubbling, though her improved physique and gallons of mana saw her back in top shape in mere moments.
Miledi's laugh when that happened had been particularly aggravating.
I didn't care much for myself, but seeing Yue with her skin peeling off and the maverick saying she had recorded our sorry states and the looks on our faces sent me over the edge.
Especially when she commented on my exposed dick, calling me a "dastardly demon" for having such a thing. It went without saying she'd made an enemy in both Yue and I.
'It's open,' Yue sent over through our connection.
With a flash I was beside her near the altar with the puzzle she completed to unseal the door. Said door opened too slowly for my liking, prompting me to grab it and yank outward.
Thousands of points of strength allowed me to throw them open, smashing them into the walls of either side of the room.
Ignoring the shaking and dust falling from the ceiling, I gently grabbed Yue by the waist and jumped out into the infinitely wide space, landing on one of the many square platforms hovering and moving about the place in haphazard patterns.
The platform slowly moved forward, taking us.... somewhere.
While we watched for whatever was next, I felt a sudden sense of alarm from Yue and looked straight up at what her Foresight indicated.
I widened my eyes and pushed her away without even looking, a mountain of metal slamming into me a split-second later, the platform crushing against my spine like many more others on my way down.
"Rick!"