I awoke the next morning to the sound of people walking by my room and giving it a knock. I wasn’t sure if it was a cultural thing or if they were just fucking with me. Either way, I was up and started heading above ground. Taking with me the three bags of rations as I didn’t know how safe they would be in my room. There was only a cloth for a door so it wasn’t exactly safe. Once there I saw the Emperor standing near the field as if he was waiting for someone. That someone who he was waiting for was in fact, myself.

“Finally here?” Emperor Nakhasha asked with a joking tone.

“Sorry, I heard people banging on the wall of my room so I got up. I’m still a little tired from the other day.” I replied apologetically.

“It’s fine. I don’t mind since it means I don’t have to start working yet.” Nekhasha replied with a light chuckle.

“No, it doesn’t! Get over here and help us!” one of the men plowing the field yelled out at Nekhasha.

“In a minute.” Nekhasha yelled back to the man before turning back to me. “Anyways, today I’ll be having you work with a few experts.”

“Experts on what?” I asked with a confused look.

“The labyrinth.” a woman said from behind me. Turning around I saw a short pale man and a tall pale girl in their mid-twenties. Both were dressed in almost skin-tight leather dresses that only went partway down to their knees. Their hair was cut short and was only a tone darker than Nekhasha’s tanned skin.

I thought no one had been down in the labyrinth?” I said to Nekhasha with an even more confused look.

“The lower parts perhaps. Anyone can go down to the third level because there aren’t any traps. However, if you go down further then you need to be more cautious. These two have been down to the fifth level without springing any traps.” Nekhasha explained.

“Yeah, we’re pretty proud of that accomplishment. However, we can’t go any further because the layers of traps are far too dense for us to pass through. We figured that you could help us with disabling them.” the short man said.

“I see. Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Nero.” I said extending my hand.

“Good to meet you as well. The name’s Alhabba.” the short man said before shaking my hand.

“I am his wife, Roshabba.” the tall woman said as she too shook my hand.

“Well, I’ll leave you three to it. Please be careful.” Nekhasha said before walking out into the field and grabbing a plow.

Alhabba and Roshabba took me back down into the first level of the city, past my room, and to another large doorway. The door was held open to reveal a set of elongated stairs with ramps on the side for carts to come and go between levels. Going down to the next level they each pulled out a torch. I just forced magic into my staff so that the end would glow which both of them wanted to carry as soon as they saw it. However, neither of them could keep it glowing as they didn’t know how.

“Does anyone really go down here?” I asked as we wandered through the second level of the city.

“It’s mainly just storage. However, there is one person and their apprentice that stay down here in order to practice different ways to brew alcohol.” Roshabba explained.

“Is that all they do?” I asked.

“Yeah, pretty much. Neither of them likes being around the rest of us so they keep to themselves. I doubt we’ll even see them.” Alhabba answered as we passed by several abandoned homes.

After wandering through the underground city we finally made it to another large door. It was no different than the other one except that it took a bit longer to open due to several large dirt clumps blocking up the seams in the doorway. I assumed that they came from Harbings. A hand-sized flying creature that used dirt to make its nests and produced a spicy substance that if cooked can become very sweet. The spicy substance also happened to line their stingers which could give someone a serious rash if they were stung with it.

Ignoring the possibility that we would see some Harbings we pressed onward towards the fourth floor. Unlike the floors above, the third floor had a different style of architecture which used more curves. Rather than there being straight roads that intersected there were several curved roads that surrounded the innermost part of the city. Some straight roads intersected these curved roads allowing for us to reach the center with ease.

Unlike the first floor where there was a fountain in the center of the city, there was a giant pool. Lining the entirety of the pool was a strange blue glowing fungus that I had never seen before. Despite my lack of desire to even touch it, Roshabba and Alhabba dunked their waterskins into the pool and began filling them up. As soon as they were full they began drinking them before filling them up again.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s an interesting plant that glows blue when the water is safe to drink. It also releases a minor healing aid into the water that acts like immune support. After the Empire fell we had to put this here to see if the poison was still in the water. Now it grows like wildfire.” Alhabba explained.

“It also tastes like the freshest water you’ll ever drink. The Elder says that the water tastes even better the further you go down because of all the filtering it goes through.” Roshabba added.

Taking a sip I had to agree that it tasted pretty good so I filled up a waterskin for myself. Continuing to the door that led to the next level we passed by several buildings with the same curved architecture. Most of them used arches between them to keep the buildings stable. Even if they were mainly used for structural integrity, it didn’t stop the designers from carving them to look ornate.

“We’re finally here.” Alhabba said as we approached the door to the next level.

“What now?” I asked.

“That’s simple. We do this.” Roshabba replied before pushing the doorway open. As soon as she did she jumped back and fire shot out from the wall on either side.

“Was that a-” I began to ask but before I could finish Alhabba grabbed me. Dragging me down the stairs before stopping at the twelfth step from the top. Roshabba ran with him and stopped at the same point.

“We don’t know why but that inscription on the wall regenerates after five seconds. Of course, so does every trap we set off. However, that one is a pain because it just shoots fire at anything that goes near it.” Roshabba explained.

“Sounds like a trap rune. However, I’ve never heard of one that could regenerate.” I said before walking over to it. As soon as I did Alhabba grabbed me by my robe and yanked me back towards him and Roshabba. A gout of fire extended from the rune across the hallway.

“Weren’t you listening? Don’t do anything stupid like that or you’ll get yourself killed.” Alhabba said, chastising me.

“Sorry.” I replied before looking at the rune from a distance.

The makeup of it wasn’t anything special. It was a fire symbol overlaid with two activation sigils, each representing something that could activate it. One was the sigil for movement and the other for attempting to destroy it. The only thing that stood out about it was that there were three healing runes attached to it. Each one was connected to the other with a circle to produce a regeneration effect. It was simple yet relatively ingenious.

“Can you disable it?” Roshabba asked as she watched me think.

“Yeah. just give me a second.” I replied before drawing the iron sword that was given to the prisoner that died in the swamp. Extending the blade out towards it caused a fire to gout from the rune. As soon as the fire stopped I stabbed the circle keeping the regeneration effect active. As soon as the circle was severed the rune shot fire once more before dying out.

“That should take care of it.” I said proudly.

“If it was that easy we would have done it way earlier. In fact, we did try that and it didn’t work.” Alhabba said with a bit of anger. I think I may have hurt his pride.

“Well, I had to stab a certain part of the rune. Had I stabbed anywhere else it would have burnt me without a second of delay.” I said, hoping that that would heal his pride a bit.

“Well, we’re happy that you came along. We’ve been doing all kinds of stuff to try and destroy those things and they never work. Maybe we’ll be able to make some progress.” Roshabba said gratefully, making Alhabba feel bad for getting angry.

“On to the next one then. It’s right here.” Alhabba said before pointing to a rune on the thirteenth step from the top.

Taking a look at it I saw that it was just a simple rune that made you lose your balance near it. I guess whoever put this one down figured that they would fall down the stairs and either die or become injured. Gradually scooting towards it so that there was no reason for me to be losing my balance. Looking more closely I saw that this one was the same as the other in which it would regenerate if damaged. However, this one was a passive rune so I guess they figured someone would try and destroy it at some point.

Just like the other, I cut the circle on the regeneration sigil before making a few marks on the imbalance rune so that it would invert itself and thus, be destroyed. This repetitiveness continued with them pointing out every rune on the fourth floor and me destroying them. After several long hours, we finally had taken care of every runic trap on the floor and we felt tired as could be. However, we still had to take an hour to head back up to the first floor.

Much to our surprise, everyone was getting ready to take a bath before dinner. We had thought that we had missed dinner but I guess being in the dark messed with our sense of time. The next morning I got up and met with Alhabba and Roshabba so that we could work on disabling the traps in the fifth level. Since we didn’t know how long we would be spending down there due to how many traps there were, I decided to bring the three ration packs like I had the day before.

Spending the whole day disabling runes. Some of which was just guesswork as I couldn’t identify many of the runes. However, all runes follow the same basic principles that allow them to be altered in the same way. Once altered I can destroy them with ease. Since we didn’t want to go back up to the first level as we had yet to finish taking care of the traps we slept in one of the buildings on the fifth floor.

Eating a little bit of the rations I had for our dinner and breakfast. The rations themselves were just cuts of cheap meat with a layer of salt between each one packed into a metal container. There was so much salt in fact, that even drinking water with it didn’t stop it from drying out your mouth. The meat itself wasn’t all that bad but it wasn’t like Alsenia had put much thought into the rations. They just grabbed whatever would cost them the least and packed it away so that it wouldn’t go bad for a long time.

Before long we had taken care of all the runes and went to the door that led to the sixth level. However, this door was different from the rest. When we tried to touch it we were launched back from it. I assume that it is a runic trap set from the inside that would make it impossible for us to open normally. It seemed that both Alhabba and Roshabba had tried to get past it before but nothing worked.

In the end, I had to figure out what rune it was and disable it just based on what it did. The issue was that it could be the same as the others which had a regeneration circle, making it impossible for me to disable it. We found a way around this by using an explosion spell on the door and blowing it apart. Magic at its finest. If you don’t understand something then you should just fuck around and find out. Works every time.

However, I quickly found out why this was a bad idea as I woke up alone, in the dark, and with no idea where I was. Using my staff I was able to light up the place to find that I was not anywhere that I recognized. There were no ornate arches nor were there any runes nearby. It was as if I had been taken to somewhere far deeper than I was before. What made me worry though was the large number of corpses that had been scattered around. The smell wasn’t bad though as most of them had decomposed enough that they were just skeletons.