Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 37 In an age long forgotten, giants ruled the fertile Enril Plains. Their massive forms devoured everything in sight, eventually turning the lush land into a desolate desert.
Requiring vast amounts of water every day, the giants could not endure their thirst. They enslaved humanity, squeezing the blood from their bodies to quench it. Thousands perished every single day.
However, on a pitch-black night when not even the moon rose, a Night Hunter of the Frea Divine Clan arrived. He hunted and killed every last giant, delivering humanity from its plight.
The liberated humans offered three of the most beautiful maidens in the land as his brides. From them, three children were born, each inheriting a unique power: the power of concealment, the mastery of shadows, and the art of toxins.
After the Night Hunter ascended, the three brothers fought over who would succeed their father and rule the desert.
The eldest, who possessed the power of stealth, did not wish to fight his brothers and departed. But the second, who controlled shadows, and the third, who crafted poisons, clashed fiercely, plunging the desert into chaos and grief.
Finally, the eldest returned. He defeated his two younger brothers and seized hegemony over the desert. He was the progenitor of the Zahar...
[You]
[Are not]
[The Night Hunter]
At the auditory hallucination echoing from the void, Turan recalled the contents of a religious text he had purchased at Komad's bookstore.
Why is that god's name being mentioned all of a sudden?
Is it related to the Zahar nobles who are already inside?
Technically, Turan was a distant descendant of the Night Hunter, but considering how diluted his bloodline was, he could hardly be considered a pure Zahar.
As he pondered this, advancing through the pitch-black space for several minutes, an anomalous life form entered his range of perception.
Based on his experience using the Holy Relic, ordinary living creatures possessed a small, flickering flame within their hearts. In mages or magical beasts, that flame felt as if it had spread throughout their entire bodies.
And though he had only seen one example, judging by the mermaid Armani, other races seemed to have their flames attached to different parts of their anatomy compared to humans.
However, the nature of the being he felt now resembled none of those.
Inside a massive shell, the interior was hollow. It was as if the flame itself was flowing like water, animating the body. It looked like a blue fire trapped inside a doll, manipulating its limbs.
As Turan cautiously approached, the creature hidden in the darkness revealed itself.
[□□□—]
The first thing that caught his eye was its mismatched eyes.
One was excessively large while the other was tiny; the two glass-like spheres rolled independently, scanning the surroundings. Its nose was nothing but a sunken hole, and its mouth hung open in an oval, lined with saw-like teeth. Its arms and legs were long, with an extra joint in each that creaked unstably.
Viscous mucus dripped over its flayed skin—the kind of substance that looked impossible to wipe off once it touched you. It was a twisted, repulsive creature that inspired immediate disgust.
But the moment Turan took a step closer to get a better look, the thing suddenly whipped its head around as if perceiving him and let out a shriek.
[■□■□■□!]
As if that single scream were a signal, three or four more monsters approached with erratic movements, swinging massive hands that served as forepaws. Their speed and momentum were enough to overwhelm even a typical noble.
"Ugh!"
With his thoughts accelerated, Turan saw five fingers, much like a human's, tipped with hooked claws. Leaning back to dodge the strike, Turan struck his palms together to ignite a spark and sprayed a raw burst of flame forward.
Perhaps because they lived in total darkness, they were unaccustomed to light and heat; the creatures shrieked and retreated from the fire.
How did they notice me?
He was currently maintaining the absolute stealth magic unique to the Zahar bloodline. In this kind of darkness, using stealth was as natural as breathing. This meant these monsters possessed the power to see through even a Zahar's concealment.
The only saving grace was that their range of perception wasn't very wide.
Once he moved about twenty meters away—a distance where he couldn't be seen and could only be caught by the senses—the monsters seemed to lose him. They looked around briefly before scattering.
Good. At least I have the initiative.
Turan watched the flickering trails of blue flame in the darkness and loaded a stone into his sling. Since he had plenty of time to prepare, he swung the sling multiple times, infusing the projectile with mana.
Infusing mana beyond a certain point was usually inefficient, but it was useful when he needed to silence a target with a single, precise shot.
Take this!
CRACK!
The stone, launched with about ten percent of his total mana, instantly caved in the monster's head. Turan confirmed that the other nearby monsters didn't react to the impact before approaching the corpse.
Good, it's dead.
The stone had accurately pierced the center of the mucus-covered face and exited through the back of the head. After recovering the stone, Turan returned to the body and attempted to absorb its mana.
Before long, he felt power seeping into his body.
It's definitely a magical creature...
Ordinary humans or animals lacked mana, so he couldn't absorb power from them. The same applied to beings like the Dark Elf Necromancers. Therefore, these things had to be classified as either magical beasts or mages.
The strange part was that the amount of mana absorbed wasn't very large. According to his experience, a creature with this level of speed and durability should have yielded more mana. Furthermore, for some unknown reason, the Holy Relic didn't absorb the creature's mana this time.
What exactly are these things?
It was hard to classify them as magical beasts, and above all, there were too many of them that looked exactly the same. When he expanded his senses, he detected over fifty or sixty of them within just a few hundred meters.
[You are not the Night Hunter—]
The tedious hallucination echoed again.
Sighing, Turan quickly shifted his position as he felt a presence from behind. The nobles he had seen earlier were approaching.
*
"Halt."
Perga Zahar frowned as he looked at the scene before him and issued the command.
What appeared before the ten or so nobles was the corpse of one of the mysterious creatures that haunted this place.
"What? Did we come this way already?"
"Who knows? My sense of direction went to hell a long time ago."
Letting his companions' murmurs drift past his ears, Perga reached out without hesitation to touch the squelching, mucous skin, checking the wound.
The wound was between the eyes, and the weapon was something about the size of an egg... He suspected this was the source of the faint scent of earth that had led him here.
"Everyone, show me your weapons."
After checking every person's armament, Perga's expression turned grave.
Chakrams, bows, daggers, axes. None of the weapons they carried were capable of inflicting such a wound. If it had been a case of fratricide among the creatures, the marks didn't look like teeth or claws either.
"What's wrong, Perga?"
"There's someone else here besides us. Inside this place."
"Hm? Could it be a rescue party?"
"If it were, we would have noticed them long ago. Moving loudly in here is incredibly conspicuous."
Because they hadn't known that fact, Perga's group had suffered immensely on their first day. Because they had shouted for one another after being separated in the dark, they had been swarmed by over a hundred of the mysterious creatures.
"First, from now on, we move in a wide circle."
"Why?"
"If someone is eavesdropping nearby, moving like this will make it difficult for them to maintain their distance."
Following Perga's orders, they immediately began moving in a large circle, keeping the dead monster's corpse to their right. In the meantime, Perga called out to a man of slight build standing nearby.
"Galten?"
"Yes, Lord Perga. Please give your command."
Galten Rosmun, the head of the Rosmun family that ruled Banipel, bowed his head deeply. Originally, the head of a vassal family didn't need to be so subservient unless it was to their own liege—the head of the main house.
However, the relationship between Galten and Perga was different; Galten had inherited his position by marrying Perga's sister, despite his mediocre abilities.
"I need you to set traps nearby. We need to catch the rat hiding in here."
"A rat, you say?"
"No doubt sent by either Rahman or Alma. To bury me in here once and for all."
"But surely my brothers are guarding the outside..."
"There's no way they could stop a Zahar noble if they weren't prepared for it, is there?"
True to a family whose ancestor had seized power by eliminating his own brothers, the Zahar power struggles reeked of blood. Perhaps it would be different in the main house, where the family head—who was practically a god—watched over everything, but in a place like this, one could attempt to cut down a rival at any time.
"I understand. Please wait a moment."
The Rosmun family belonged to the Barrier Master bloodline and was skilled at planting magic into space. At its simplest, they could make a specific area emit noise the moment someone passed through, or cause flames to erupt and the ground to collapse.
Of course, since this labyrinth was a structure built with the power of the gods, they couldn't manipulate the ground, but a sudden burst of flame would be enough of a deterrent.
"Imelda, keep illuminating the surroundings."
"Even if my bloodline ability is suited for this, the mana consumption won't be light, you know?"
"You'll have to endure it. It's better than having your throat slit in your sleep."
"Well, that's true..."
Imelda, a noble of the Illusion bloodline who dealt with light, cast a brilliant glow according to Perga's instructions. Due to the labyrinth's unique darkness, this light couldn't reach beyond twenty meters, but any assassin wouldn't be able to perceive them from outside that range anyway. And if they entered the range, they wouldn't be able to maintain stealth for long within this overwhelming white light.
"Remember. If even one person is attacked, create light around them and fire it off."
Everyone nodded. However, there was one person standing behind them who was shaking his head: Turan.
They're preparing so hard amongst themselves.
While Perga was passionately giving orders, Turan was eavesdropping on the entire conversation while hidden just over twenty meters away. Thanks to the power of the Holy Relic, he could clearly observe their movements and maintain his distance.
Turan gauged his opponents' strength through the size of their flames. The mana of the nine people—whether they were friends or vassals—was similar to or much less than Turan's, but Perga alone possessed more than twice Turan's power. That was likely the level of strength held only by the top-tier elites of the Great Houses.
I should keep a reasonable distance and look for a way out.
Leaving behind the group that was setting traps and scattering light, Turan moved back into the darkness.
*
For the next three days, Turan and Perga's group lived in a strange sort of cohabitation within the dark labyrinth.
Fortunately, the traps set by the Barrier Master weren't much of an obstacle. Because the Holy Relic detected the mana used for magic, the traps were clearly visible. In fact, there were times when the nobles themselves, unable to see in the pitch-black darkness, stepped on their own traps and suffered for it.
Furthermore, because the Illusion noble was effectively removed from the fighting force to maintain the light, Turan had unintentionally ended up whittling down their strength.
The only inconvenience was that he couldn't sleep comfortably. Unlike Perga's group, who could take turns standing guard, he was alone; the moment he was caught by a creature or another noble while in a deep sleep, he was a dead man. Still, he was used to sleeping lightly while camping, so it was manageable.
Unlike Perga's group, who couldn't even gauge their direction, Turan used the power of the Holy Relic to establish several locations as bases and slowly expand his search range.
Occasionally, a certain direction would be blocked by such a large number of creatures that it was difficult to break through alone; in those cases, he borrowed the strength of Perga's group.
"They're coming again!"
"Damn it, why is the frequency of their attacks increasing?"
"It's probably because we have the light on."
He would draw the monsters' attention by throwing a fireball, then deactivate his stealth and run with all his might, only to veer off at the last second just as he was about to run into Perga's group, successfully luring the monsters to them. Although the monsters' mana was taken by the nobles, he didn't mind since they didn't provide much power anyway.
As he repeated the cycle of exploring, resting, and observing Perga's group, more vagrants carrying food and water entered from beyond the ruins. The nobles tracked the incoming vagrants using scent, then naturally took their lives to seize their supplies.
"Since they keep sending them, we're starting to have a surplus of these."
"It's probably because they're sending them assuming the knights are still alive."
"If I'd known it would be like this, maybe I should have tried to keep them alive instead of letting them die. It's inconvenient not having anyone to wait on us."
"You don't mean a word of that."
Judging by their conversation, it seemed they had abandoned all the knights who had entered with them to the monsters. Turan recalled the nobles of the Baltas family using their own knights as shields. The people before him, laughing about their dead knights, were even more contemptible.
Perhaps it was a relief that he didn't have to feel guilty about luring the monsters to them.
After about two more days of exploration during this uncomfortable cohabitation, a massive door appeared before Turan's eyes. It was about four meters wide and seven meters high—a size fit for giants.
As he approached, a large eyeball appeared in the center of the gate, looking down at Turan as it spoke.
[You. Hunter. Pursuer.]
[Conditions not met.]
Having said that, its gaze shifted slightly down from Turan's face.
[Wave Walker. Mimic.]
[Conditions met.]
[Will you enter?]
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