VOLUME 1

- CHAPTER 5 - PART 1 -

WHITE LABYRINTH

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There’s nothing but water, dark viscous unbreathable water.

Besides the faint feeling of pain surrounding his drifting body, there was something underneath, swimming in the same direction as the water flow, or perhaps the flow was solely made by these unseen creatures rashly moving for their lives. Whatever the case, one thing was certain, those slimy creatures kept leaning on his feet, passing near his hands, some even sliding on his chest as he sunk further and further into this chaotic tempest.

He was an abnormality. He realized that better once those fish-shaped creatures completely surrounded him. They were forced to change courses, slip around his body, rush faster to keep the flow, bump into each other. But none of them dared to move him, all of them were trying their best to ignore he even existed.

The more he sunk in, the more pressure it was, the more viscous it was, becoming more and more unbearable by the second, not by any means of density, but by pure psychological pressure, the longer he spent here, the more he wanted to move his body, to make those creatures go away, to go back to the surface and breathe again.

???:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “It’s a dead end--”

Far away, beyond millions of those creatures, it was possible to hear a drowned voice. Faint clicks then emerged in his ears, and water began entering his nostrils and fill his lungs. The clicks gradually became stronger and stronger like knocks, and then to muffled steps.

???:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Hurry, to the left!”

- - / -

A crash breaks my drowning in the dream world, my eyes open to see bricks falling and an Ogre looking at me with its six red eyes and three angry heads, his imagery goes beyond my field of vision as the one carrying me continues to dash in a turn. The first thing I do is cough out the water from my lungs, but my mouth doesn’t have the strength to open nor there is any water to come out, my parched throat rips in pain, making me remember that my entire body is sore. I close my eyes tight to hold the agony in.

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “One more at the right!”

…what’s happening?

I reopen my eyes weakly.

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Here! Come here!”

The white brick walls move quickly to the opposite direction I’m facing, while I see the entire world upside down.

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ Where-

Once the shaking health bar appears on the top-left corner of my eyes, erratically going up and down, I remember.

[125#/3710]

I’m inside the game.

?Man:­ ­ ­ ­ “We need to kill them, there’s no other way,” – he says in a deep angry voice.

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “K-Kill them? How are we supposed to do that? There’s four of them now!”

To my right, the first one to grab my attention is the tall guy, his grey shirt tight on his muscled body, wearing red-ish brown gloves and pants made of leather, his dark-brown hair spiked like tall grass, wearing golden earrings, and with a fully metallic black battle-axe at his back. Running behind him, a skinnier boy is wearing some blue mage’s robes and wielding a big dark-brown staff made of wood with a big blue pearl near its tip.

The man turns his head, showing his sharp red eyes and thick lips to talk to the boy behind him as he keeps running forward.

?Man:­ ­ ­ ­ “It’s the damn NPC, drop him, he’s luring them!”

I look up to the corridor path, sensing not only the earthquakes but managing to see at least three of them running behind us. All the Ogres have different tree logs as weapons of roughly the same size, and strangely as before, their weapons keep passing through the wall without trouble as they charge forward.

?Girl:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Then that makes the point of this dungeon, right? It’s an escort mission.”

Her voice soothes my ears, and only now do I fully realize that I’m being carried over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes and that my head was towards the ground. She’s short, enough so that my hands drag on the floor if both my torso and arms are left relaxed. I only manage to see part of her back from my position, but her golden long braided hair tied with white ribbons and pink coat are easy enough to note.

?Man:­ ­ ­ ­ “Escort my ass, I didn’t accept this mission to be smashed by a dozen of those monsters.”

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Elay!-”

The floor shakes and the wall next to me explodes with a strike. The girl jumps to the side, barely managing to evade the attack of an Ogre that just appeared right in front of us from a corner, her feet need a couple of hurried steps to regain her balance before she can run again.

?Girl:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Steven! I thought you were looking ahead!”

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “I’m sorry, t-there wasn’t any in front of us, I swear! I thought I’d conserve some Energy.”

?Girl:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Just--… just keep your Vision on.”

?Man:­ ­ ­ ­ “The only thing running will do to us is use all our energy and stack even more of those monsters. Drop the NPC and we’ll cut our losses. That NPC is useless.”

?Girl:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Let’s just wait until he wakes up, he might have some clue as to what to do next.”

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “I- I’m not an NPC,” – I mumble.

?Girl:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “See?! Now he’s going to tell us what to do.”

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Huh?... I’m lost just like you guys… I don’t know what this is all about.”

I feel nauseated by the amount of bumping.

?Man:­ ­ ­ ­ “Wow, he’s useless. No need to thank me, now, -for my mother’s sake- just drop him already.”

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Wait!- Don’t drop me, the Ogres are going to kill me!”

The man looks back with a doubtful frown, they stay a few seconds running in complete silence until the boy speaks up.

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ “This labyrinth had something to do with the Gonkdim’s old king,” – he thinks aloud. – “It was something about trials where people were sent to kill each other until only one survives. I was considering this was unsolvable but… I’m not sure…”

?Girl:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “What do you mean?”

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Y-You see, this labyrinth won’t end until the trial ends. No matter where we go, there won’t be an exit.”

One of the Ogres tumbles and falls behind us.

?Girl:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “So, we spent twenty minutes running for nothing then?”

The boy shrugs as he runs.

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Maybe, but there must be something we need to do for the exit to appear.”

I bend my back upwards, with my arms supporting on Elay’s back. Behind us, two Ogres charge furiously as they get closer.

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “That’s true, the labyrinth keeps changing itself, it’s completely random, I saw it before going inside the game…” – Then I mumble to myself: – “I see, it doesn’t make sense if its purpose is to be a labyrinth, this is an arena.”

Elay looks back on her free shoulder.

?Girl:­­­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “There’s two of them now. Shouldn’t there be five?”

The boy and the muscled man look back.

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “’Random’, huh? They could be tiring up. Or if what the NPC is saying is true, maybe the labyrinth is separating us from them,” – he says with his eyes glowing yellow, – “b-but again, I wasn’t paying attention to that until now.”

?Girl:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “So, we keep running,” – she says tiredly.

?Boy:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Don’t get too far away from each other! If we distance ourselves too much we might end up separated. J-Just in case.”

I turn my vision on, being able to see the Ogres' names and bars above their heads, and then it clicked, the idea to see who the people helping me were, so I twist my body.

The tall man called “Mark” has the nametag [Markolain Warrior, House of Bluecats (Level 94)]; while the “Steven” boy is [Tak Sorvak, House of Bluecats (Level 107)], and for the one carrying me, I’m surprised to see a popup at her back, her name “Elay the 7th, House of Bluecats (Level 98)” is over its window, but below it, I can see skill icons and her equipped items.

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ I can see her skills? What--

I look at her arm holding near my waist.

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ Wait, if she’s carrying me I can see her skills? That wasn’t in the game before. Did she allow me to? No, I would have to send a request first or use a skill to spy on it.

The earthquakes getting closer redirect my focus, behind us the Ogres were basically at their weapons range. I wide my eyes and instinctively poke the air thinking about the word “Character”, and in front of me a popup appears with all my information, just like Elay’s but even more detailed.

“DArkstrider [Level 75]” is in its title, and below it, there are my equipped items, then my main attributes, and finally my skills, two rolls of six icons each.

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ Right! I’m not in Combat, the Ogre that attacked me isn’t here anymore, I can change my skills.

After quick thinking, I tap one of those icons with my index finger and another popup appears on the side, a big wheel-like skill tree is separated into three parts, each having a color and a different mark on the background. I spin the wheel and stop when the transparent blueish third is on top and I poke one of the outmost skills. With only that, my skills switch places.

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Get closer to me! I’ll use speed boots on everyone!”

Mark:­ ­ ­ ­ “I don’t like this,” – he says indecisive.

­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ Hope this works…

Elay:­ ­ ­ ­ ­ “Get closer guys, he’ll use something.”

The three of them obey, and when I see that the distance was right, I imagine my speed boots skill and it instantly molds itself in my feet with blue magic, but not only that, with the three of them in mind a circle echoes in the air surrounding me, traveling and enchanting their boots as well, wings popping on their feet. The Skill Resonance I put in just now worked exactly as I thought it would.

The wind pushes everyone’s back, making me almost fall from Elay’s shoulder by the speed and the Ogres to distance themselves from us.

­ ­ ­ ­ ­

By the time the skill wore off, the earthquakes stopped and there were no more Ogres in sight.

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