Daphne was in the middle of harboring doubts.
“As expected of the Ice God!”
She was doubting none other than Hio Pavlenko, the Supreme Heavenly Demon.
“Let’s keep going like this. Turn right over there... That’s it, Ice God!”
No matter how fine a compliment it was, wasn’t he saying “god of ice” far too often?
After hearing it over and over, it began to feel strange—almost as if he were being sarcastic...
“Uh...? Monsters are coming from over there? Let’s go, Rafflesia!”
On top of that, the Supreme Heavenly Demon had not revealed his abilities even once.
The power that was said to have ended a war by his strength alone, and to have protected Imenia by facing Ataolf.
Of course, Daphne’s own martial prowess was more than enough to break through the labyrinth... but if he stepped in, would they not move a little faster?
And yet, he refused to take action until the very end.
“......”
That attitude, combined with the first impression she had received when they met, made her suspicions grow luxuriantly.
Perhaps he was a fake impersonating the Supreme Heavenly Demon. Perhaps a swindler who had imitated the Guardian Knight’s Token had fooled the guild members.
Well, there was no particular reason for a mere swindler to go that far, but there were also far too many odd points to say for certain that he was the Supreme Heavenly Demon.
However, Daphne was someone who made her priorities clear.
She was the administrator of the Abyss, the one responsible for Hell Garden, capable of bringing one world—her own homeland—to ruin.
So for now, she had no choice but to believe what that man said and move along the path he indicated. After all, there was no other way to攻略 the labyrinth.
“Good. There isn’t much left.”
Yet even the cold-blooded Daphne could not help asking around the halfway point.
“Supreme Heavenly Demon. Were you not originally more taciturn?”
The man claiming to be Hio Pavlenko was not particularly talkative or frivolous.
But there was such a thing as an image.
An image shared by anyone who had played Ventair.
The image held by the overwhelming number one, the Supreme Heavenly Demon.
A person who always silently ran himself ragged to prevent destruction, doing his utmost, and who never flaunted his overwhelming power.
Taciturn and cold, yet warm on the inside; someone who distinguished between public and private matters while subtly taking care of even the smallest details, and who, despite being incredibly strong, did what needed to be done without showing off.
Was that not the image everyone expected of the Supreme Heavenly Demon?
Daphne had met the Supreme Heavenly Demon more often than ordinary users had, but the Supreme Heavenly Demon within her mind had taken on precisely that form.
In other words, she had never imagined him forcibly wearing a robe beneath his cloak, walking around with a strange pointed hat and a staff meant for posturing, shouting, “Fighting, Ice God!”
“Well, they say environment makes the person.”
People were free to think what they liked, but from Hio’s perspective, it was enough to feel wronged.
First of all, they had been of different nationalities, and therefore had no reason to converse.
And Hio back then—Lee Hyeonseung—had been floundering in despair, shut away in the corner of his room.
It was only natural that he was different from now.
“...I see.”
Of course, Daphne, who had no way of knowing that, did not withdraw her steadily growing suspicions.
* * *
There was one fact I confirmed once again while heading toward the center of the labyrinth with Daphne.
Traits did not activate for skills embedded in artifacts.
It was something I already knew from my experiences in the game, but still, it had to be made certain.
The trait “Can’t Live Without Style!”, which made effects more extravagant, did not activate for the skill contained in the staff, “Dark Insight.”
Therefore, the penalty of the hidden trait also did not apply.
In a way, it was only natural. A trait was an ability possessed by an individual, not an ability possessed by an artifact.
「The skill of the ‘Staff of the Authority of Darkness’ - ‘Dark Insight’ is activating.」
The moment the skill activated, mana was sucked into the staff. The staff devoured it greedily, and its own magic was triggered as Hio’s eyes turned black.
Soon, the surroundings lit up brightly. Of course, it was something only Hio could see.
What entered those blackened eyes was a clear destination. Amid the darkness thick on all sides, there was a place especially dark, as if it were truly the abyss itself.
There was no need to think twice. That had to be the center of the labyrinth.
“This time, we can just keep going straight.”
After saying that to Daphne, he tried to turn off Dark Insight.
The amount of mana the staff was devouring was no joke.
Well, it was a skill worth that much. Was it not similar to most high-grade guide skills?
It allowed him to peer through the path, driving away all sorts of interference, including the darkness of the Abyss.
Just as he was about to cut off the flow of mana—
“......”
His walking feet stopped dead.
His head snapped to the side and stiffened, while goosebumps rose along his arms and the nape of his neck.
It was because, in one corner of his vision through Dark Insight, he had seen something grotesque.
That thing, whose presence he had no idea how long it had been there, had been shaped like a human eye, staring directly at Hio.
「Mental attack detected.」
「Trait - ‘Can’t Live Without Style!’ is activating.」
But it was only for the briefest instant.
By the time Hio turned his head, it had already disappeared.
It was not an illusion. It had clearly been looking into him, and Hio, too, had recognized its existence.
—I looked into the abyss. The abyss also looked into me.
What suddenly came to mind was the first sentence of the message Kreutzwald had left behind.
And then—
—Please be careful. At times, it is better not to look.
What followed it was the single line of warning written at the very end of the skill, Dark Insight.
The goosebumps did not subside, and his stopped legs remained rigid, unable to move.
It had only been a very brief moment, but he had seen it clearly.
A colossal eye, split long and horizontally.
What should he call it? Would the Eye of the Abyss be fitting?
Thoughts chained one after another. Unable even to think of turning off Dark Insight, he stared at a single point with eyes wholly turned black.
Just briefly meeting eyes with it in passing had caused this much dissonance.
That alone had activated the trait that defended against mental attacks.
The chain of thoughts accelerated further, eventually reaching a memory from quite some time ago.
—Only an extremely small number of those who vanish after being caught up in Gates ever return dramatically.
It was something he had once heard on Earth about Gate returnees, after failing to攻略 the first floor of the Abyss.
—And every last one of them, without exception, goes mad. I don’t know what on earth they saw in that place, but...
The stories of survivors who returned alive from unknown spaces.
Their endings were all the same.
—In the end, they cried out for someone to save them and took their own lives.
Could they perhaps have gone to the abyss?
Could they have glimpsed, even slightly, that place Kreutzwald said he had looked into, that place where he said the battle still continued?
If so, then the thing he had just seen, and the thing that had seen him, was...
「The skill of the ‘Staff of the Authority of Darkness’ - ‘Dark Insight’ has been deactivated.」
He cut off his thoughts and immediately deactivated Dark Insight. The mana that had been greedily sucked in stopped moving, and the black pupils that had taken over his eyes returned to their original size.
“Why all of a sudden? Is something wrong?”
At Daphne’s question, Hio could only close his eyes and shake his head.
“No. Let’s hurry. There isn’t much time left to clear this, is there?”
“...Understood.”
There was nothing he could answer rashly. The only thing he could cautiously convey was—
“Let’s go... with a little tension.”
It was nothing but a baseless intuition that the end of the labyrinth would not come easily.
* * *
The closer they drew to the center, the fewer Abyss monsters appeared, and the stronger the ones that did appear became.
Well, even so, they were still labyrinth monsters.
As stated before, the reason labyrinths were troublesome was because finding the path was difficult, and because monsters and traps leaped out while one’s senses were confused. It was not because the monsters were exceptionally strong.
Should this be called the trade-off?
The darkness covered one’s eyes even more thickly, and confusion came to the other senses as well. It meant that unless one had a guide skill, reaching the center of the labyrinth was remote, and that the one serving as the guide had to use their skill more and more frequently.
「The skill of the ‘Staff of the Authority of Darkness’ - ‘Dark Insight’ is activating.」
He activated Dark Insight and searched for the path, peering clearly through the dense darkness.
Of course, he was not only searching for the path. That eye from earlier.
He tried to find it again, that thing which had made goosebumps rise and stopped his steps merely by meeting it, but wherever it had gone, it did not appear again.
Only an inexplicable sense of dissonance grew the more he used Dark Insight.
“At this rate, there shouldn’t be much left before the center.”
It was his first time experiencing a labyrinth in reality rather than as a game, but he could feel that they had grown close to the center.
An achievement accomplished in merely half a day after entering the Abyss.
It was a speed made possible because he knew the path exactly and moved straight ahead without hesitation.
“You truly will not participate in battle until the end. Supreme Heavenly Demon.”
As quickly as they moved, battles had occurred almost without rest, and Hio had not participated in a single one.
“Or are you even truly the Supreme Heavenly Demon?”
To the point that Daphne’s suspicions, which had been gradually swelling, finally slipped out of her mouth.
No matter how capable Daphne was of handling the labyrinth monsters alone, was it not too strange that he never stepped forward at all?
She had only come this far because the path at least seemed to be correct. If not, she would have questioned him long ago.
“It feels strange to say it with my own mouth, but I am the Supreme Heavenly Demon.”
“Then show me proof.”
They would soon reach the center.
At the center was the orb of that floor, and a boss-class monster guarding it.
She intended to make things certain before they arrived there.
“If it is proof, have I not already shown it?”
Hio took out the Guardian Knight’s Token.
If she was a possessor—if she was a possessor capable of seeing an item’s information—she should be able to recognize the value of this medal, the only one of its kind in the world.
But Daphne shook her head.
“There are all sorts of ability users in the world. I know an ability user who can falsify item information. I had no choice but to come because the攻略 took priority, but I mean to know who you are and for what reason you came.”
It was not especially difficult to verify.
If he truly was the Supreme Heavenly Demon, he would prove it, and if he was not, he would try to slip away somehow.
“...Can’t we just hurry up and finish clearing this?”
Yes.
Exactly like that.
“At first, it was merely a light suspicion, but now it is truly strange. If you are indeed the Supreme Heavenly Demon, should you not simply bring out that power? Why are you trying so hard to hide it?”
She could not tell what was inside him at all.
Had he not stayed out of battle to a strange degree, merely watching? There had been countless situations where he could have lent a hand.
As if he were someone who could not use his power.
Daphne slowly drew back her bowstring.
Her target was Hio Pavlenko.
“If you feel wronged, prove it. That is all.”
If he only showed power befitting his renown, befitting the recent deeds that had been passed around, then that alone would be proof, and this would become nothing more than a minor incident.
Hio let out a small sigh and nodded.
“Fine, then.”
The staff lifted lightly.
Mana gathered, and will moved.
「Skill - ‘Blue Flame (靑炎)’ is activating.」
Within the sinister darkness, blue flames that shone all the brighter poured endlessly from the tip of the staff.
A mysterious flame that, according to Hio’s will, could burn everything it touched—or not.
Daphne should be able to fully feel the tremendous power of the Blue Flame.
She would have no choice but to acknowledge the power of the blue sun surging within the Abyss.
“This is...”
As expected, Daphne murmured as if her soul had left her while looking up at the Blue Flame.
The strength gradually left her hand, and the tautly drawn bowstring naturally loosened.
“Is that enough?”
Mana vanished quickly, as befitted a highest-tier skill.
At least the Blue Flame consumed little mana when doing nothing; otherwise, it would have been troublesome.
The mana consumption of a highest-tier skill was enormous.
Since Hio had also expended a considerable amount of mana using Dark Insight on the way here, all he could think of was deactivating Blue Flame as quickly as possible.
And just as Daphne was about to nod without further objection—
—□□□□-!
An unfamiliar noise came from behind them.
The moment he heard it, he knew. It was not a noise that any creature of this world could make.
The administrator who managed the fiftieth underground floor of the Abyss, and the boss-class monster guarding the floor’s orb.
For some reason, it had left the chamber where the orb was and was approaching Daphne and Hio.
A presence different from anything before.
However, it was not a major problem.
Even if it was a midsection Abyss monster, in the end, it was still a labyrinth boss monster.
The reason labyrinths were troublesome was because one had to find the path and complete the攻略 within the time limit, not because of the monsters’ strength.
But if Daphne’s gaze was fixed not on the boss monster, but on Hio Pavlenko, it became quite a problem.
“You step forward this time.”
She even unsummoned Rafflesia and stepped back, making things considerably awkward.
“If you really are the Supreme Heavenly Demon, it shouldn’t be difficult.”
An awkward smile settled on Hio’s lips.
An Ice God urging him to commit violence.
“...This is troublesome.”
It was quite troublesome.
[Hidden Trait: No Violence! (Endurance: 935 / 1000)]