By Zephyria Ero blinked and asked blankly.
“Lost… you mean?”
“Yeah.”
Leonardo, answering plainly, rubbed his furrowed brow with his hand. Eventually, he leaned against the blocked wall and plopped down on the floor. As his concentration wavered, the Magic Circle floating in the air became transparent and slowly disappeared. At the same time, the heat that had been shaking his clothes quickly stopped.
Ero, who had been staring blankly at the scene, spun around and scanned the path where the participants were sprawled out again.
In fact, when wandering around in the maze, it was difficult to tell whether a place was the same as another, as they all looked the same. Moreover, he had been following his older brother closely all along, so he hadn’t left any marks….
“Can’t you tell even with that Magic Circle? It’s so big?”
“The Magic Circle being big has nothing to do with finding the way quickly.”
Leonardo replied in a tired tone and tapped the floor as if telling him to sit next to him. Ero plopped down on the ground so hard that he suspected his legs were broken. Then, he approached Leonardo on his knees.
Leonardo’s fingers, heated to a high temperature, were tinged with a reddish color. The two people’s gazes converged on the end of his fingers.
“Look closely. Something’s wrong here.”
The fingertip, which had reached a temperature high enough to melt the dirt floor, drew a complex stroke across the ground. Ero, following the trajectory, glanced at Leonardo and then turned his eyes back to the floor.
“What is it?”
“This is where we first came in, and this is where we are now.”
Leonardo began to roughly draw a map of the maze in his head.
It was already surprising that he had realized it was a path they had passed once, but Ero couldn’t help but be amazed as the complex passage was reproduced from his fingertips as if he had taken a picture. But the strange thing was that the maze in the picture was somehow unnatural. The paths were not connected and were cut off like fragmented puzzles.
He tilted his head, resting his palm on the ground and leaning his upper body forward to look closely.
“From the entrance to here… we can’t come in? In the picture, the middle is blocked, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The paths don’t connect and are misaligned. The structure here is also subtly different from before.”
Leonardo raised his head and stared at the path he had walked.
“Whether it’s a distorted dimension or some other device… there was definitely a path with wind flowing nearby earlier, right? But as soon as we got near here, the flow suddenly stopped. Suddenly.”
“What are the chances that you’re misremembering the path…?”
Ero asked cautiously. As the sharp gaze turned to him for a moment, he quickly shut his mouth.
“Well, it could be. Human memory isn’t perfect.”
But Leonardo nonchalantly looked up at the sky and muttered.
“Even someone with such a good memory can’t remember a kid they met a few years ago.”
Ero scratched the back of his head at the generous yet ambiguous answer. Leonardo, resting his elbow on his leg and propping up his chin, rolled his eyes and looked at him.
“So, do you remember anything? I even drew you a picture?”
“Ah… well, the truth is….Ero was about to say that he was so focused on collecting Tokens that he didn’t remember anything, but he couldn’t tell the truth because he was afraid of being abandoned by his older brother. Instead, he desperately racked his brains to devise another method. Then, clapping his hands at a thought that suddenly flashed through his mind, he jumped up from his seat.
“Brother, would you like to meet a guy who claims to have a good brain?””
“What?”
“Whining and all that, what are you up to now, coming in pairs?”
The participant, still tied up in vines, asked boldly, looking at the two shadows cast on his face. Of course, the stone fragment he had been gnawing at to cut the vines was hidden in his trembling hand.
He was almost done cutting it, but suddenly it was 2 against 1. It became difficult to expect a chance of winning. Ero pointed the gun at the participant’s head and murmured in a very vile tone.
“Hey, use that brain you boasted about. Where’s the path you ran away from after encountering Thanatos? If you don’t tell me quickly, this Joker will put a bullet hole in your head.”
‘He saw something somewhere and copied it.’
Leonardo, standing next to him, watched Ero’s actions with a disapproving expression. The acting was awkward, and it didn’t seem like the guy tied up in front of him would be of much help.
“One, won. Why would I tell you that when I’ve already lost my Tokens? You idiots, Joker or Joke, you should be making a deal, not threatening me. I have nothing to lose.”
As expected, the participant, who was pathetically tied up, didn’t seem very willing to cooperate.
“Well, if you give me about 10 Tokens, I might tell you.”
“…….”
“From what I can see, you guys want to avoid Thanatos, but if you dawdle, he’ll come this way―.”
At that moment, Ero grabbed the participant’s nape and dragged him somewhere. Then, he forcibly shoved his head into a hole in the wall. The participant, whose hands were tied, struggled, saying, ‘What, what is it?’ But after his body was halfway into the dog hole, his struggling subsided for a while. Then, he suddenly screamed.
Because he had a seizure, the stone fragment he was holding fell and rolled at his feet. About 5 seconds later. Ero, thinking it was enough, pulled him out of the mental torture room again.
“So, again. What were you saying?”
The participant’s face turned pale in a short time.
“I, I’ll tell you! I will! If you go straight this way and keep turning right, there’s a wide space!”
Leonardo and Ero exchanged glances at the map that was coming out smoothly. Soon, Leonardo’s flame, which had shot out like an arrow, traveled the path as the guy said. However, the flame, which was supposed to move smoothly, soon collided with the wall again and burned out.
As the Magic Power he had sent out returned as wind, Leonardo, frowning, tilted his head and took a step forward.
“Hey, it’s blocked?”
“What, what? That can’t be! How brilliant is my brain, I remember most paths! More than that, how would you know when you haven’t even been there?”
Leonardo, scoffing at the obstruction and rolling his eyes upward, retorted coldly.
“So, you’re saying I’m lying?”
The atmosphere shifted instantly, and the other’s tone became noticeably more polite.
“That’s not it…! Ah, or maybe the path has changed!”
“The path changed?”
Leonardo and Ero asked simultaneously. Noticing their interest, the participant nodded quickly and added.
“Sometimes blocked walls open up… or open paths get blocked! Two or three of the guys I was with said they experienced similar things, so I couldn’t have been mistaken…”
The participant explained that such phenomena occurred rarely, but more frequently the deeper one went into the maze. There were also sounds of something heavy dragging across the floor, or the ground shaking with thuds. Sometimes, passing through holes in the walls would cause the number of Tokens to decrease drastically, unlike the average deduction.
Silently listening to the story, Ero habitually took out his Token to check. Soon, his eyes widened.
“Huh?”
81, no. He had passed back and forth across the wall Thanatos was leaning against, so his Token count should definitely be 80.
But the number displayed on the Token was ’60’.
“Brother, the number—.”
Leonardo, who had taken out his own Token to check at a similar time, also wore a subtle expression. His Token count was ‘532’. The number had decreased by 11, not 1, since he last showed it to Ero.
The two looked back at the barrier standing firmly opposite them. Just crossing this one wall instantly deducted the number equivalent to 11 moves? Suspicious.
Before anyone could stop him, Leonardo moved first. He lowered his head and thrust his body into the hole.
“Brother, you need to save your Tokens!”
At once ―11, Ero couldn’t rashly follow and waved his hand, but Leonardo had already passed through the wall. He came completely over and checked his Token again, and the number was now ‘521’. It wasn’t a coincidence. Then this wall itself might be the cause of the maze’s unnatural flow.
“Wait a moment.”
After a simple request, Leonardo tapped the surface of the wall.
‘…?’
It was hard, but the properties and hardness of the wall were subtly different from other places. To break or melt through a wall in this maze would require considerable strength and Magic Power. He had tried once before, but it took a long time, and he quickly gave up to conserve energy, not knowing how the game would progress. But this time, it seemed easier to melt than the previous attempt.
Sure enough, when he concentrated heat on his palm and brought it to the wall, his hand sank into it as if it were molded. The molten Boulder was about to cover his wrist, so he quickly pulled it back.
“This might be….”
Leonardo, shaking off the lava-like Boulder, looked around again. He moved the participants who had fallen near the wall to the side and loosened his body. He shouted loudly to Ero, who was on the other side of the wall.
“Ero, get out of the way!”
He didn’t give the person to move a moment’s notice. Leonardo leaped powerfully and kicked the center of the high barrier with his heel.