Chapter 39

While Perga’s party battled the monsters, Turan did everything he could to help them from out of sight. Concealed, he mingled his attacks with their spells, fought the smaller monsters at close quarters with his dagger, and even activated his guardian magic tool to take several dangerous blows in their stead. Without that help, the nobles would have been completely overwhelmed.

Yet his efforts proved futile as the nobles died one after another. Perhaps things would have been different had they been in good condition, but with their vision blocked by darkness and exhaustion from their long confinement underground, they could barely muster half their usual strength.

After a long struggle, only Turan and Perga remained alive. All the smaller monsters were dead as well, giving Turan a little breathing room. As he watched Perga face the giant monster alone, he pondered how to bring it down.

["Diiiie!"]

The labyrinth’s chief had lost an arm, had a crushed leg, and was covered in countless other wounds, yet it still displayed tremendous vitality. How could he defeat that thing...?

His attention first fell on the magic tools left by the dead nobles, particularly the weapons. A bow, a staff, a dagger, and an axe.

Of the three, he ruled out the bow first. His unfamiliarity with it would make it inefficient, arrows would be difficult to find, and above all, it hardly seemed likely to be much stronger than his sling.

Judging by how its owner had used it, the staff seemed to be a defensive magic tool, so he ruled that out as well. The dagger granted access to the Pyromaniac bloodline’s power, but since its owner had died wielding it directly, it had probably exhausted its daily uses.

Finally, the axe had already proved sufficiently powerful a short while ago—but...

‘It’s too heavy.’

He crept over and tried lifting it, only to find that he could not possibly wield it properly. It was excessively heavy even for its size, probably because of the magic placed upon it. A bloodline suited to close combat would have allowed him to lift and swing it easily enough.

That thought brought the words of the eye on the door flashing back to him. The ability of his Holy Relic was called “Mimic.” Putting that information together with the Strongman bloodline mana stored inside it led him to one conclusion.

‘Using this liquid should let me mimic the Strongman bloodline’s power.’

He had had a rough idea how to use it from the moment he first saw the liquid. He had merely put it off because he was uncertain. Turan clicked open the lid and tipped the sloshing pale-green liquid straight into his mouth.

‘Ugh.’

First came an icy chill running down his throat. But it soon grew hot as fire, heating his entire body, until a tremendous strength unlike anything he had ever felt welled up within him. His mana had not increased. This was a rise in purely physical ability.

‘So this is the Strongman bloodline’s power.’

He clenched his fist so tightly that he almost feared his grip would crush his own hand. Just then, he saw Perga finally fail to evade the chief’s attack, perhaps having exhausted his stamina. Hooked claws pierced his abdomen and chest.

Turan seized the enormous axe and immediately leaped at the monster. The weapon shifted his center of gravity, and his newly strengthened legs threw his trajectory slightly off, but fortunately, the axe could still reach a vital spot.

["You! Fake Night Hunter—!"]

As he had suspected, the monster could evidently see straight through Zahar’s stealth, just like its kin. To conserve even that small expenditure of mana, Turan dropped his stealth and swung. With a heavy thud that reverberated through his hands, the enormous axe sank more than halfway into its neck.

‘Damn. Still not enough to kill it in one blow.’

["Diiiie!"]

Perhaps because Perga was still impaled on its left hand, the chief swung the stump of its right arm at Turan as he hung from the axe. He was sent flying faster than he had leaped and slammed into a wall of the labyrinth.

"Urgh..."

His whole body ached, but unlike the time a monster had rammed him, it was tolerable enough. That was thanks not only to the guardian magic tool, but also to the physical enhancement granted by the Strongman bloodline.

Of course, he had gotten off this lightly only because it had struck him with its severed arm. Those claws would not have let him escape so easily. Seeing Turan rise unharmed, the chief flung aside Perga’s impaled body and charged.

["Faaaake! Diiiie!"]

For all its furious shouting, its limping approach was not particularly intimidating. The flames inside it, visible through the Holy Relic, had long since grown far weaker than before. With blood gushing from the neck where the axe had lodged and come free, it would plainly die even if he left it alone.

‘But I can’t let it end that way.’

There was no need to fear it so much now that its numerous wounds had slowed it. More importantly, there was the question of what exactly counted as “defeating the labyrinth’s chief,” the condition the eye on the door had given for opening the escape route. What if it judged death from blood loss as the chief dying on its own and refused to open the exit?

Accelerating his thoughts with Arabion’s secret art, Turan watched the five hooked claws drift slowly toward him.

‘First, dodge...’

He used the short close-combat steps Haram had taught him, and the claws skimmed narrowly past his eyes. The creature’s left side lay exposed.

Instead of aiming for its torso, he swung the axe upward with all his strength. With a thud, the chief’s forearm was half crushed.

["It huuuurts!"]

‘One blow won’t do it.’

Then he simply had to strike again. Turan pulled the axe free and brought it swiftly down before the creature could raise its arm. Like felling a tree with a chop from either side, the blows from above and below severed the arm at the same spot.

["Hurts! Wicked! My children! Killed them all! Night Hunter! Fake!"]

Seemingly driven utterly mad, the chief babbled incoherently and thrust its last remaining weapon at Turan: its sawlike teeth.

Biting, of course, was a dangerous act that required exposing the head, any living creature’s greatest weakness. When Turan flung himself aside, the chief drove its head straight into the floor. It was a most convenient position for cutting off its head.

CRUNCH!

One chop into the neck glistening with sticky liquid. Its body went limp, perhaps because the nerves leading down from its head had been damaged, but it remained very much alive. Turan brought the axe down into the same notch a second, third, and fourth time.

["Fa...ke... My... child..."]

How tenacious could it be? Even with its head dangling half severed, it was still struggling to speak. Though perhaps “speak” was not the right word, since it was projecting its voice mentally rather than opening its mouth.

But when he brought the axe down one last time and severed its neck completely, the mana flowing throughout the chief’s body stopped. Only then could he be certain the monster was truly dead.

"Whew..."

With a deep sigh, Turan tossed the heavy axe aside. Perhaps because the tension had left him, he felt all the strength draining from his body—

No. Turning his attention inward, he found that it was no mere feeling. The Strongman bloodline mana flowing within him really was fading. At this rate, perhaps all of its power would disappear in about half an hour.

Then again, even for a Holy Relic, granting a permanent bloodline ability this way would have been absurd. Simply being able to store and use power like this already made it an extraordinary object.

Swallowing his slight disappointment, Turan approached the last survivor lying some distance away: Perga Zahar. He was staring blankly at the ceiling, blood welling from his mouth.

‘One puncture in the lung... another close to the heart. He won’t survive this.’

Wizards possessed greater vitality than ordinary people, but surviving wounds like these was difficult. Of course, just as he had borrowed the Strongman bloodline’s power, Turan might be able to save him by absorbing mana from the Healer Bloodline noble and treating him. But he had no reason to go that far.

"You, who are you...?"

Perga turned his gaze toward Turan, but his eyes were visibly unfocused. He probably could not even recognize Turan as human, let alone make out his face.

"Shall I put you out of your misery?"

Though this relative was far older than him, Turan felt no inclination to address him respectfully. Over the past few days exploring the labyrinth, he had seen the bodies of knights and vagrants who had died agonizing deaths. They, too, must have wanted to live as much as Perga did, perhaps even more.

"Save me..."

"That’s a request I can’t grant."

Turan shook his head, but Perga seemed not to understand and simply kept muttering pleas to be saved. A little later, the Holy Relic’s senses revealed the flames remaining throughout his body fading and gathering together.

‘He’s dead.’

Turan rose and looked behind him. More than a hundred small monsters, a dozen or so nobles, and the labyrinth’s chief lay dead. Personal gain aside, if he did not want to see them all rise as wraiths, it was time to harvest their mana.

* * *

Turan first absorbed the smaller monsters’ mana. The stronger a wizard became, the less point there was in absorbing the mana of weaker beings, so it was most efficient to start with the weakest and work upward whenever possible.

As expected, his power barely grew despite absorbing a total of 145 creatures. They possessed little mana relative to their abilities, falling at best somewhere between a knight and a noble, so it could not be helped.

The dead nobles came next. Since the Holy Relic could detect the mana of the dead as well, he could absorb it in order without having to remember how strong each had been in life. As he absorbed the nobles’ power, the Holy Relic began separately drawing in and storing mana.

Barrier-user, Illusion, Berserker, Healer, Hunter... The mana-infused liquids separated into layers by bloodline within the relic, allowing him to isolate a particular power easily with magic.

What would happen if he swallowed several bloodlines’ powers at once? The thought piqued his curiosity, but considering he might truly need them later, there seemed no reason for a rash experiment.

With each successive absorption, Turan’s body and soul were tempered ever stronger. Five of the nobles were so much weaker than him that they offered little benefit. Four, however, had been only slightly weaker or about his equal, and contributed a substantial amount.

The final, decisive additions were the labyrinth’s chief and Perga Zahar. The instant he finished absorbing their mana, each having possessed roughly twice his power, intense pleasure struck his mind. It was on an entirely different level from the sensation of temporarily gaining the Strongman bloodline’s strength.

Focusing inward, he sensed slightly less than twice the mana he had possessed upon entering the labyrinth. Barring unusual circumstances such as war, an ordinary noble would need decades or more than a century to accumulate this much power. Of course, most would hit their growth limit before accumulating anywhere near this amount.

‘Come to think of it, I might be nearing my own growth limit.’

A person’s mana growth limit was generally anywhere from several to dozens of times the amount they were born with. He could not remember precisely how much mana he had possessed while living on Hisaril Hill, but at a rough estimate, his current power seemed to be eight to ten times what it had been then.

Surely that locked bloodline ought to open by now. Did he really have to become as strong as the Head of a great house? After briefly considering it, Turan shook his head and stood. It was time to leave this labyrinth.

‘I’ll have to leave the magic tools, of course.’

After all, Zahar, a house specializing in tracking, would investigate these deaths. Having used tracking magic extensively himself, he knew that while searching for just any magic tool was impossible, one could specify a tool of a particular shape.

If dozens of Zahar nobles scoured the land for them, he would be caught within days, no matter where in the Enril Desert he hid. Unless he intended to spend his entire life on the run, taking them was not an option.

Turan continued roaming the empty labyrinth, repeatedly using tracking magic to locate and remove hairs, blood, and every other trace he had left behind. His last stop was the door with the eye.

"I killed the chief."

The eye did not answer. Had it ceased functioning when the door swung wide open? Turan tried speaking to it a few more times, then shook his head and stepped inside.

"Oh."

The room beyond resembled a grand hall. At its center, a pitch-black vortex had formed, just like the one through which he had entered. That was probably the exit. Rather than leave immediately, Turan decided to look around a little more.

‘Mostly useless decorations... No, there’s something up there.’

A small book lay beside a chair that looked rather like a throne. Though rather than a book, it looked more like a few sheets of paper stitched together with thread... A title written in a somewhat rough hand on the first page caught his eye.

[Experiment to Reproduce the Night Hunter Job Advancement Process]