Chương 161: Chapter 236 - Return to the Labyrinth

When Xecatl next saw her, she froze.

"I sensed your communion with Ceiba Yan… but I almost didn't believe it. Your fourth soul ascension?" Mirian nodded.

"Congratulations are in order, then. Some days, I envy you, able to steer your own soul." She looked at the sacred tree.

"But I also know I wouldn't give up what I have. It is a beautiful bond."

"It is," Mirian agreed. For the next few days, it was difficult to bring her attention back to more mundane matters. She felt her mind playing with the language of glyphs and runes to explain what she'd felt, because words seemed wholly insufficient. Eventually, she had an actual conversation with Xecatl. They sat on one of the balconies, looking over the city at dusk. Mirian was beginning to make a mental catalog of her favorite sunsets. This one was nice, but not even in the top ten.

"I'm not needed here," she told the Emperor.

"You have things under control. Jherica can take care of communication between the Council and you, as well as the knowledge exchange." Xecatl said nothing, but she nodded.

"I expected as much. You aren't one to stay in one place."

"I suppose not, anymore. I'll spend a few cycles in Torrviol, then see if I can figure out what's going on in Zhighua. Gabriel clearly isn't going to make it there on his own any time soon."

"Very well. Ceiba Yan will miss you." Mirian smiled at that.

With Jherica taking over the expeditions to Tlaxhuaco, Mirian's preparation time was drastically cut. Opening the Elder Gate to Mahatan and retrieving the lotuses she needed took less than an hour. With no need to bring supplies or people down south with her, she could use accelerated levitation to fly directly to Cairnmouth, then take a train to Palendurio. Drilling beneath the river was mana intensive, but not difficult.

The most time consuming part of opening that gate was procuring the magichemicals and elements needed to grow the requisite conduit crystals. Conductor remained steadfast about following the rules. That setup, though, could be completed in a single day. Then it was a matter of setting up the research she needed done. Viridian and Seneca would be in charge of extracting and testing various magichemicals.

Jei would be in charge of conduit crystal creation, while Torres and her team would help fabricate any of the new artifice needed for tests or trials. Endresen would work with Jei to optimize mana channels for maximum capacity. Endresen would also work with Viridian to investigate the issue of waste mana. Instead of using detectors from Torrian Tower, they'd create a minor spirit construct that Viridian could commune with.

That took a week, with most of it taken up by the setup of the spirit in Viridian's greenhouse and train him on the techniques he'd need. It took a few more days to revamp several rooms in Myrvite Studies to accommodate her tests of jeweled lotus spirit constructs. By the end of it, she knew she'd made mistakes in the process that could be corrected for efficiency. She made a note in her soulbound spellbook to better leverage the artisans in Torrviol. Recruit more stonemasons and carpenters, she wrote.

Most of them had worked for the Academy before, so they knew the exacting standards needed for the more delicate projects. Can more be trained? she wrote next to that note. That, however, was only the preparation work. What she really wanted to see was what resources she had access to right beneath her feet.

Getting to the Labyrinth under Torrviol was annoying. It had taken her nearly a week of exploring the Torrviol Underground to find it the first time, though she hadn't known what she was looking for at the time. It took her two days this time. She'd noted down information about the passage back on the 198th loop, but that had been over four years ago, so it took some time to rediscover. The first thing she did was drill a passage directly up to see where she was.

The answer, as it turned out, was 'under Torrviol Lake.' Mirian was drenched by the unexpected torrent of water, but she was able to use a force barrier to block off the water while she repaired the impermeable layer of stone that she'd cut through. Fortunately, it was a relatively shallow part of the lake, or the water pressure might have done much worse. That would have been an embarrassing way to end a loop, she mused as she finished reinforcing the ceiling with shape stone.

Still, being able to map the exact coordinates of the location onto the surface would save her time when reentering the Labyrinth. Hmm. It's by that old tower Nicolus liked to sit at. Briefly, she let the memories of the time they'd shared there play through her mind. Still likes to sit at, she corrected herself. Such a pity they never change. Thoughts of what she'd shared with Nicolus led to thoughts of Jei.

No doubt, she was pushing herself to her best of her ability, but even her brilliance felt like it had dulled. It wasn't her fault that Mirian had to explain the same concepts over and over. It made sense that she still saw Mirian as her student. Even if she could logically accept that was no longer true, emotional truths were often harder to change. Jei made it clear she'd do whatever Mirian wanted, but obedience wasn't what Mirian craved. It was an equal.

To be a time traveler is to be alone, she thought, not for the first time. Then she cleared her head and flew back into town to gather a pack and supplies. Most of what she brought was food and water, though she packed a few magichemicals and a mapping device requisitioned from the Artificer's Tower. Mirian remembered her first descent into the Labyrinth. How nervous she'd been. Now, there was nothing for her to fear. She casually cut through any labyrinthine horrors that showed their face.

When a slithering swarm tried to ambush her, she ground it into dust and took its soul for mana. Within a few hours, she'd found a staircase leading down to the next level. She levitated down. A greater labyrinthine horror awaited her, rearing up and displaying its spiny arms. Mirian cut it into pieces, then spat out a cone of flame to sear them. She moved on. The maze-like passages constantly dead-ended, meaning Mirian spent a great deal of time back-tracking.

However, the first two levels were as they were in Frostland's Gate—trivial to navigate. From what she'd heard from Liuan and Gabriel, things got trickier in the lower levels. However, it also seemed that not every Vault was as absurdly punishing as the one she'd navigated up north. She knew Gabriel couldn't have handled a Vault if it involved the long magic-suppression path she'd taken through two greater horrors or the obstacle course. Despite the swagger he put on, Gabriel didn't like a painful death.

That was why he stopped going below floor four in a Labyrinth. That was why he was clearly done trying to move into Zhighua, and was stalling. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Mirian, on the other hand, had gotten over dying painfully. Mostly. Six hours later, she returned to the surface, slept, then headed back down as soon as she was rested up. With her new ascension, absorbing and incorporating mana into her aura was easy.

She could address a great deal of soul destabilization before it became a problem. A few days of exploration later, she'd thoroughly mapped the third floor of the Labyrinth. It had no Vault for several square miles, so she moved on. She'd found two staircases to the fourth level. Picking one, she descended again. Here, she would start to fight real monsters. At the base of the stairs, Mirian ran into a labyrinth causter.

Gabriel, when he'd last talked about his own incidents in the Labyrinth, had described the creatures as, "the reason I drink." When asked to elaborate, he'd said, "they're little bastards that spit acid, and they'll turn a force shield to heat energy so you can't even block it." Mirian was prepared. She sent intensified gust of wind spells in the causter's direction to blow the acid spittle back towards the creature. By the time the creature could destroy the spell, she was already casting a new one.

Then, she sent a bolt of greater lightning right through it. It had been easy, but she didn't let her guard down. From what she'd heard, the passages and rooms in the fourth level started to have their own traps and challenges. That, and there could always be an econode somewhere inside, spitting out myrvites. In the next room, the corridor split three ways. Carefully, she sent out a probe trap spell.

This was a tri-bonded spell that combined a small sliver of soul energy with an orb that gave out light, murmurs of sound, and a bit of heat. After hearing about Gabriel's encounters—and a little bit of what Liuan had seen—she'd been sketching out ideas of how to beat various Labyrinth traps. There were traps in the Labyrinth, and they triggered off detecting something. The probe trap spell had most of what a living creature produced, just in smaller amounts.

Mirian's foresight was rewarded when a stone door slammed shut in the left corridor. From behind the door, she heard a terrible wailing noise and then something slamming into the stone repeatedly. There was another inhuman screech, and then the door rumbled back open revealing an empty passage. She gave the corridor a dubious look. The worst part was, that corridor very well might end up being the best direction to take. Before, she'd been blitzing through rooms. Now, it was time for caution.

Her probe spells moving into the central and right corridors didn't trigger anything—but that didn't exactly mean they were safe. Mirian kept her spellbook open to her combat page and was using the dervish form that accelerated her reaction time. Cautiously, she headed for the right passage. Two greater labyrinthine horrors burst from shadowy corners. Mirian snapped up a prismatic shield then unleashed greater chain lightning. When the corpses were still, she moved on.

A swarm of regular horrors tried to ambush her two rooms later. She pondered the results of her test. Do different elements of the Labyrinth respond differently, or does it learn? She certainly hoped it wasn't the latter. Three rooms later, a much larger swarm of horrors came at her. For a solid half-hour, she stood in place, grinding up labyrinthine horrors with burning force blades until they stopped.

Good to know the swarms aren't endless, she thought, as she used repeated force push casts to sweep away the thick piles of corpses. She continued on, auric mana still plentiful. The ambient mana was thicker here, and her new ascension hadn't just made it easier to absorb mana from myrvites, but from the ambient mana as well. More evidence that eventually the ambient mana thickens enough to coalesce into leylines. Another probe trap spell failed to trigger anything, so Mirian proceeded ahead.

She entered the room— —and suddenly started to panic. She couldn't breathe. Looking around wildly, she didn't see anything. Then, she saw a faint form, like a horror the size of a mouse was hovering in the air in the corner. Desperately, she lashed out with force blades, but the form vanished in a flash of light. Illusion, she recognized. But there was something in the room with her.

She switched to the dervish form of Lone Pine On The Mountain to endure the lack of air, then attempted to use manipulate gas to funnel air into her lungs directly. Somehow, the air just smashed up against a barrier. From what she could tell, there was a sphere around her head where no air was penetrating. Her lungs felt like they were on fire, and her vision began to dim. Desperate to breathe, she cast blink, and then gasped as she took a deep breath. This time, she held it.

It felt strange as a lack of air surrounded her head again, and all the sound of the room faded. No matter where she moved, the vacuum barrier followed her. Whatever monster was doing this, she couldn't see. Mirian summoned Eclipse, then used the blade to cut at the barrier. White light and soul energy crackled as the vacuum barrier was disrupted, but reformed just as fast. She looked around. Soul sight wouldn't pick up anything because labyrinthine creatures didn't have souls.

She flipped to a utility page in her spellbook and cast a series of sight spells that would allow her to see light in other parts of the spectrum. Two forms danced about in opposite corners. Again, they burst apart with sparks of light. More illusions. Why would it bother making illusions I couldn't see without special spells, unless—unless those are just distractions. More figures popped up, but Mirian used a sound-based mapping spell to ping the area. A mental picture of an empty room came to her.

It wasn't hiding anywhere in the classical dimensions. Mirian flipped back to her combat spells, lungs straining. She tried blink again, but it didn't catch the monster off guard again. She could still feel the absence of air around her head. Her vision began to narrow again. She closed her eyes. They couldn't see where she needed to hit. She sent out another divination pulse, this one to map the arcane dimension's boundaries in this room.

She grit her teeth and swung out with the same kind of spells she'd used to discourage Apophagorga from hiding, sending powerful lightning, blades, and burning pulses everywhere in the room. Heat washed over her. Her auric mana drained rapidly as she lashed out. There was a high pitch shriek, and the sounds of the room came flooding back. Mirian gasped for air, drinking it in greedily, heart pounding. In the corner of the room, a thin stream of ichor was dripping, seemingly out of nothing.

What in the five hells was that? Mirian wondered, still shaking. She'd gone too long without a real threat. That's the kind of thing that would kill an expedition all on its own. The power of an archmage doesn't matter if you can't see or hit what's attacking you. I need to be more thorough with my divination spells. I need a better handle on the arcane dimension. Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched. Mirian whirled, and saw a cloaked figure standing in the hall she'd just come from.

The same one she'd seen before when she'd spoken the Ominian's true name, the same one she'd seen in her waking dream on the Divir moon. This time, she got a better look at them. Beneath that hood, she could see slivers of dark metal embedded in the skin. The eyes were missing, the flesh healed over. And they had no jaw. Instead, there were strange metallic tubes running from the upper jaw, down the neck, and into the torso. A heavy robe covered the rest of the person.

"What are you?" Mirian whispered. The cloaked figure vanished. Immediately, Mirian cast a series of divination spells. Nothing. No trace. Not even a lingering smell. Had it been an illusion? She didn't think so. Something had made her turn around. It had interacted with her in some way. My aura? My soul? She shivered. Her mind raced with possibilities. What if that's Scebur? No, you're jumping to conclusions. You encountered that priest that Carkavakom had influenced. It could be an agent of His.

Or it could be an entirely different faction, or some other Prophet of the Gods. The Ominian isn't the only one who has Prophets. This crisis must have the other Gods' attention. But why now? For what purpose? What's the connection? There were too many possibilities, and she had nothing solid to stand on. Still shaken, Mirian rapidly made her way back up to the surface.