A friendly-looking guard, just above level 300 with a body-hardening skill in a full suit of C-Class grade armor waves us down from almost 10 meters away.
Lydia raises her gaze to meet his as the man yells out.
“You all made it back just in time, and you’ve brought reinforcements. Even better.”
She crosses her arms as we all approach and then comes to a halt right beneath the bold black lettering of the sign spelling out [Restricted].
“Yes, we have made it back. How are things on your end? It seems like we’re up to the 18th floor.’
The man gulps and his tone completely changes.
“If that’s true, the collapses are only happening faster. It was less than 6 hours since the last one.”
He pauses.
“A-And 11 or 12 hours before that was the one before.. And almost a full day-“
The white-haired mage cuts him off.
“So, half the time between every collapse. At this rate, it should be completely break in 6 hours… The Director sure does like to cut it close.”
He nods in response.
“It seems that way. We don’t have any hunters eligible to defeat floor 20 and above right now. We’ll have to leave the higher floors in your hands.”
His eyes move to me, then Abby, Fisher, Maria, and Arie. He looks back to Lydia before continuing.
“A team of 6 Elites. I’m happy to see all of you here, but are you sure you’ll be able to make it up to floor 25? Even split up? That’s well past your classification of a B-Class threat.”
I raise an eyebrow and interject.
“What do you mean split up? Why would be have to do that?”
Fisher laughs and butts in.
“I mentioned this earlier to your teammates, but you weren’t here to listen.”
Abby and I turn to each other, then back over to the smug blue-haired hunter as he takes the lead.
“While we climb the Labyrinth floors, the ones we venture through won’t just disappear because we’ve passed it. The entire Labyrinth will only collapse once the final boss is taken out.”
I nod slowly, piecing together this information.
The water mage continues.
“So, while some of us continue to climb, others will have to wait behind on lower floors to protect the city from the dangers within. If we just abandon the lower floors before they fully break, monsters can easily run loose through that shielding.”
He points to the massive rectangular metal contraption in front of us.
The guard closes his eyes and nods while turning to bang on the side of the silver wall three times.
“Yeah, this thing can hold back level 350 to 400 level threats at most. It’s nearly impossible to craft shielding at a higher grade than that in mass qualities without spending a fortune. The surges have never been this bad, we never thought the Labyrinth would break…”
I stay quiet, as the chatter of my teammates and hundreds of hunters in the square all begin blending together.
It seems this is really a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. Labyrinth breaks are this rare, that they never even though to prepare for it. There must be some incredible loot, and even stringer monsters in there.
The face of that Arch Demon’s Body Double flashes in my mind’s eye as I grin and mutter to myself.
“Looks like I’ll get to go all out.”
Fisher throws a friendly arm around my shoulder.
“Yeah, that’s right. Let’s see if you’ve improved this week. Maybe you can guard the 18th and 19th floor while Lydia and I finish the job up top.”
I reply, seeing my teammates get riled up behind me at this statement.
“Yeah, we’ll see what happens I guess.”
The B-Class Ice Mage lets out a chuckle, then turns away back to the guard handing him a tablet. He begins to sign off and write information down as I think to myself.
Fisher can’t sense my mana control at all.
It makes sense why he’d think I’m still rather weak in comparison to him. Just less than a week ago in real world time, he trained me to finally defeat a monster on the 19th floor of a Labyrinth. Those monsters were barely breaching level 400.
Plus… I’m the strongest of all my team members. If that was my power back then, he must still think even more poorly of them.
In reality, all 3 of them are nearing his mana control level themselves. I’m sure he’ll come to his senses once we finally get onto the battlefield.
The corners of my lips begin to curl. The now very stern and serious guard unlatches the thick silver door while speaking up.
Mental on metal scrapes and a blinding white light pours out of the contraption. The light hum of shielding fills all our ears mixed with his steady voice.
“Alright, you 6. On behalf of every Solaran here, I thank you for fighting. The average citizen may not ever know the magnitudes of evil you’re about to face.”
The guard pauses as my foot touches the cool hard white surface of the shielding room. Then, continues.
“I may not ever know myself, but we thank you. Best of luck in there.”
After that there’s silence. We all enter the metal box and see a white staircase heading down underground.
Everything is white.
The walls, the floor, the stairs, everything.
It’s just like the training room we left in the city, but shaped like a stairway downward with twists and turns having no apparent end in sight. The 6 of us head down about 10 meters, then make a sharp right turn leaving us with flat white slightly vibrating ground for another 5 meters or so.
The footsteps of the 5 other team members around me are slowly drowned out by the increased humming noises in the tight white walls.
Another staircase brings us 10 meters further underground.
The small flat hall leading to the next staircase glows a tint of red. Wisps of fog creep around the corner and I can sense there’s a portal very close by.
As we turn the corner to head down the next staircase, it reveals itself before us.
A violently spinning dungeon break comes into full view at the bottom of the next flight of stairs.
The Labyrinth breaks spins and vibrates, shaking the shielding all around us just slightly.
I’ve seen worse breaks, but the edges of the spinning mass on its edges is dissolving into the air and beginning to slowly fill this white-walled hallway with dark red mana-imbued mist.
In a meter of hours, it’ll definitely be a completely different scenario here.
I reach under my armor and cloak to pull out my sword.
Everyone around me either begins to glow, draws their weapons, or both.
The 6 of us all step down the last staircase and jump through without a word. This is our mission.
We enter the labyrinth.
Red swirling mist clouds my vision as I step through. The dark crimson fog slowly fades to white as transfer magic activates.
Everyone is brought to a rugged mountain range, covered in rocks without many trees in sight. The ground is hard and brown. For as far as the eye can see it’s littered with stones and occasional dark green shrubs.
Looking ahead, the sky is grey and the mountains stretch out indefinitely.
I whisper under my breath as we walk forward.
“The 18th Floor… this should be a breeze. We’ll be fighting the Labyrinth Boss in no time.”