"I don't get it. How does leveling even work?" The question had been nagging at him since the first kill. He had never heard a satisfying theory — not in school, not anywhere. The system handed out experience points with no explanation, and no one seemed to know the logic behind it.
"The easiest way is to kill others, but you can also gain if you do what your class is supposed to do." He was even more curious about the subject. Classes were where most of an Awakener's real power came from — the foundation everything else was built on.
So many questions, so few answers. What Daemon heated most, was having so little knowledge, to him this was a punishment, an undeserved one at that. "I hope a time will come when I can read freely and have access to all kinds of information.
He retrieved the axe and kept moving.
***
Time passed slowly — or at least it felt that way.
Groups of goblins became the norm. The darkness remained constant. But as the fights accumulated, something shifted. Where he had once relied on brute aggression and luck, he began to rely on pattern recognition.
Instead of simply overpowering the poor goblins, Daemon started to outskill them. The difference was quiet, but it was real. The more he was fighting them, the deeper the knowledge and easier to deal with them. He would instinctively improve over his earlier, more random attempts.
As more time passed Daemon had the same routine trying to stay alive and hunt goblins for levelling up.
Still, exhaustion had its own way of evening the odds. By the time he finally stopped moving, he could barely think — his body heavy, his mind starting to blur at the edges.
He had been fighting for so long that he could barely think from both the mental and physical exhaustion.
"I really need to find the road towards the Hidden City"
Only in that place could he rest but no matter what direction he went he seemed to still be in the dark zones.
"This doesn't make any sense." He stopped, pressing a hand against the wall to steady himself. "I know I'm not directionally challenged. Even without the light crystals, I should be getting somewhere by now."
He ran the possibilities. "Could the labyrinth be changing its layout?" He turned the idea over, then discarded it. "No. I've never heard of that happening. Not once. And I can't be that unlucky for it to start happening to me specifically. I'm sure about that."
Daemon felt an inexplicable sense of annoyance, the dark zones were supposed to be rare.
The annoyance that followed was almost comforting in its familiarity.
The labyrinth was vast, yes. Multi-layered, yes. The tunnels twisted without logic, often looping back on themselves or collapsing into dead ends without warning, and they were full of monsters at every turn. He had made peace with all of that. But dark zones — tunnels with no crystals at all — were supposed to be rare.
He checked his status out of habit.
***
Name: Daemon
Titles: N/A
Race: [Human]
Level: N/A [EXP: 99/100]
Age: [17]
Classes: N/A
Talent: [Divergent of Error]
Talent Rank: A
Talent Ability: [Eyes of the Epigone]
Attribute: [Light; Darkness]
Stats
INT: 4
END: 4
STR: 2
DEX: 2
PER: 3
SPR: 3
MAG: 2
Free Points: 0
Equipment: N/A
Daemon had already killed enough monsters he just needed one more experience point to get his first level.
"One point I need one more experience point to hit level one, and here I am, lost in a dark zone with no monsters in sight and barely enough energy to lift my sword."
Just as exhaustion was getting the better of him and he was genuinely considering sleeping where he stood — goblin ambush be damned — when he saw it.
Light. Small, faint, and distinctly bluish.
He went still. "Light crystals?"
Hope flickered, and he immediately distrusted it. There was at least one type of creature down here known to mimic the glow of light crystals. He might be paranoid from exhaustion, but paranoid was better than dead. He approached slowly, weapon ready.
What the light resolved into was not what he expected.
A tunnel. Large, and unlike anything else he had encountered in the labyrinth. The walls were built from weathered black stone bricks, fitted together with a craftsmanship that had no business existing this deep underground. Whoever had built this had known what they were doing. The construction was almost magnificent in its own aged and forgotten way.
Daemon frowned.
The only real construction in this labyrinth was supposed to be the Hidden City. But if he were anywhere near the City, he would know it — the thing was impossible to miss, by all accounts. That was practically the one thing everyone agreed on.
"Great," he said flatly, sarcasm seeping out of him. "Even more unknown variables."
"Sometimes I think my luck works like a jump rope," he said to no one in particular.
He stood at the entrance and considered his options with the detached clarity of someone too tired to panic. Behind him: the dark tunnel, familiar and definitely dangerous. Ahead: the unknown, which could be more dangerous, less dangerous, or something else entirely.
"Seventeen years I have managed not to gamble," he said, "and now, for the first time, I have to do it with my own safety."
He thought it through. Given his luck, whichever path he chose would probably turn out to be the more dangerous one — that much felt like a safe assumption. So the question wasn't which was safer. The question was which gave him more to work with.
The answer was the new tunnel, and for one simple reason: light.
It wasn't a grand advantage. But it leveled the field. If there were goblins inside, they would lose their sensory edge. There was also the possibility of finding useful items — and beyond that, if things went truly sideways, he still had his trump card. A dangerous situation wasn't a dead end, as long as he was willing to use it.
"The new path it is."
He stepped inside.
The tunnel was larger than it had looked from the entrance — considerably so. He moved carefully through the unfamiliar architecture, analyzing everything as he went. Then his eye caught something.
The exit behind him was gone. Sealed, as if it had never existed. And where there had been one path ahead, there were now two.
He stopped walking.
"I knew it, I got in the most dangerous one." He almost laughed genuinely surprised at how easy it was to predict the future. " I should try it more often."
Daemon wandered at first, he had tried to look for clues but later realizing it was pointless, he had started to pick a direction at random. He walked and as always new exits appeared; old ones closed behind him. The tunnel rearranged itself around as if it had all the time in the world.
"Is this a labyrinth?" He looked back at where the entrance had been. "Did I just walk into a new labyrinth? A labyrinth within a labyrinth?" He let the silence answer.
"And this one is one that changes constantly. Did I jump from a lake straight into a well?"
He stood there for a moment, genuinely marveling at how thighs got from bad to worse. He expected it but nonetheless he was amazed at the situation.
Daemon was amazed, " My luck is genuinely terrifying. If I can find a way to weaponize it, I could become a menace."