Chương 165: Chapter 240 - The Sixth Level

The next loop, Mirian opened the Gates, retrieved her father, then sent letters demanding explanations to both Jherica and Liuan. Jherica's letter arrived fast enough Mirian guessed they'd sent it before even seeing her letter. Apparently, Liuan had been killed in one of her own Labyrinth explorations. Jherica had tried to stop the invasion themself, but had been thrown into prison for their efforts. The letter was full of repeated, profuse apologies.

Liuan's letter a few days later said the same thing, only it was terse and full of excuses. Mirian spent an hour pacing back and forth, thinking through the letters. Jherica's letter had the seal of the Vadriach post, and had come fast enough it was unlikely Liuan could have interfered. It was a reasonable explanation. She'd certainly died enough times exploring the Labyrinth. Still, she needed to get eyes in Akana Praediar.

Nicolus's uncle was a start, but he was also sidelined and went into hiding when things really kicked off. Selesia? she thought. That brought back memories of when she'd been younger and stupider. When she'd learned that Selesia had a crush on her, that had been enough for her to fall head over heels herself. A simpler time, she thought wistfully. Still, she was easy to recruit, she spoke fluent Eskanar, and she had no real loyalty to her own country because of Akana's history in taking over Takoa.

She'd be out of her depth in Arborholm, but it should be simple enough to keep an eye on the airship base. Then, it might do well to see if she could at least have people keeping an eye out for Ibrahim. She spent the next few days discussing what she needed with some of the students and faculty. Professor Runer seemed amenable to visiting Rambalda.

Apparently, he'd developed an interest in the history of Persaman enchantments and wanted to write a comparative study on how Persaman and Baracueli enchantment work had diverged over the past few centuries. That worked for her. She sent him and his two apprentices down south with instructions to send reports back.

Professor Marva, her old illusionist teacher who'd directed her to Lecne's cult to learn body-shaping soul-bindings, would be perfect for infiltrating just about anywhere, but their talents didn't match up with their personality. Marva could be intimidated into acting as a spy, but clearly didn't want to. Mirian dropped the issue. Mirian had Cassius form a basic militia. At the very least, she'd have patrols out starting on the 27th.

She and her father could clear out all the nearby bog lions and make sure the woods were safe. They needed the soul energy anyways. It was when she was reviewing the militia that she saw Daith, her old combat magic partner, that she remembered his connection to events. He had a sister who was implicated in the Palendurio conspiracy. He'd grown up in the city, and that gave her a useful way to keep an eye on the usual events of the city. He'd also be able to keep an ear to the conspiracy.

Mirian already had Nicolus and Nurea making regular trips back and forth to Cairnmouth. It wouldn't be much more effort to have Nurea talk to her contacts in the Syndicate to keep an eye on the criminal networks. Then, she'd at least have enough of a network to prevent any more unwelcome surprises from sneaking up on her. Then there was the matter of the Akanan agents. If she stuck around in Torrviol, she usually had Magistrate Ada round them up, but maybe, she could put them to use.

Not Specter, obviously; she killed her early in the cycle, along with Hache, the agent acting as captain of the Torrviol Guard. She'd never had any luck convincing them anything, so she didn't bother. It was Agent Idras that she went to with a proposal. He had always been concerned by the operation in Torrviol and had tried to report the problems he saw to his superiors. Mirian explained the situation to him and several of the other spies. After several hours of discussion, they agreed to help.

After all, it was the salvation of Akana on the line too. Mirian was pleased with the result. As she left the meeting, though, she turned from the door for a final statement.

"Oh, in case you hadn't thought through the implications of the time loop, let me lay them bare. This is an experiment. This is not the final cycle. I will see the results, and then I'll be able to iterate. For now you have my trust. If you've lied about helping me, I'll find out. In the end, no truth can be hidden from me. Ominian watch over you." One of the agents shivered as she looked at them one last time, then she shut the door and left. She flew to Magistrate Ada's office.

"Begin the reconciliation process. Keep Mayor Wolden in jail, of course. Ethwarn is a better mayor, and the merchants are all much happier with him in charge."

"Yes, Prophet," Ada said, bowing. Mirian flew off to meet her father. His preparations for the Labyrinth would already be complete.

"…and they're all so shortsighted!" Mirian said as she blasted through another greater labyrinthine horror on the third level.

"It always takes hours of explanation and demonstration of knowledge I couldn't possibly have otherwise. Most of them sort of get the idea from the glowing eyes and the archmage-level spell intensity, but then you still get people saying, 'ah, but what if she's lying about the world ending?' Well why the hell would I bother? I can get as much gold as I need trivially. Do they think I want to deal with all this nonsense?" Gaius Nezzar nodded along as she continued her rant. He was a good listener.

"Here it is. Fourth level," Mirian said.

"Then it's a few miles to the next staircase. The stuff down here is all trivial too, it only gets annoying on the fifth level, but there's that econode for us to recoup soul energy at. Oh, and feel free to offer critique on any problems you see with my spellcasting. Mostly soul magic. I'm still working on increasing my mana efficiency with black shield, especially regulating the extra arcane force that results from attacks, and soul detonation. Can't really practice that one on labyrinth creatures."

"Hmm. I'll keep a closer eye." For a time, they were both silent, the only sounds the echoing screeches of labyrinthine creatures and the spells tearing them apart.

"You have a lot on your mind," Gaius said.

"Yes," she said.

"I don't get a lot of chances to talk about myself. Too busy manipulating people. Lily and I used to talk through our problems. I can't do that anymore. Alright, up ahead, there's four greater horrors. The walls in the room lower as part of an ambush, then there will be two causters coming from the front. After that, there's a passage full of water, then two doors close when you enter it. Have to be careful with the force spells so you don't accidentally get hurt by your own pressure wave."

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Her father nodded. They continued.

When they reached the desert econode, they refilled their soul repositories and Gaius stood watch while Mirian took a brief nap. She woke up feeling a lot better.

"Onto the sixth level," she said. There was a hall where the sides of it were made of molten rock, somehow held in place by the Labyrinth without any force spells. After that, there was another voidling ambush, then two more carapace-crushers that came from different halls. Fortunately, one of the lures could get them to smash into each other, and cleanup was easy from there. After that, one of the halls was completely devoid of all air.

Mirian had to bring air with her, keeping it tightly constrained to her body so that the Labyrinth defenses didn't strip it away. Gaius just walked through.

"… then there's a curtain of liquid stone that resists closing, and right after that, a magic suppression field with a greater labyrinthine horror in it. It's not a problem, though, any of the dervish forms can let me take on one of them no problem. Only becomes a problem if there's two." Gaius watched as she manifested Eclipse and butchered the horror. The fight ended with Mirian getting on top of the beast and drawing the blade across its back.

As it thrashed, she cut apart its torso-head, slicing it until the body finally stilled.

"Impressive," her father said as impassively as he could. Mirian grinned.

"I'd ask if you had a heart attack, but I know you don't have a heart anymore." The old necromancer cleared his throat.

"I'll admit, it's a bit nerve wracking watching my wonderful daughter take on a beast of that size with just a rapier," he said.

"But I suspect you heard me say something like that last time."

"Indeed I did. Come on, let's go." This antimagic suppression field only encompassed the single room. Mirian drilled into several sections of the room, depositing the glyph-marked stone chunks into a bag she'd made Gaius carry. Unlike the Vaults, the larger Labyrinth wasn't so resistant to stealing little pieces of it, as long as she didn't drill too deep. She could feel the pressure on her aura lessen, so she knew she'd taken something relevant, though her study on it had been interrupted last cycle.

"What's next?" her father asked.

"I don't know. This part is unexplored." Gaius nodded. Both of them began fortifying themselves with various defensive spells, and they started going through the room-testing procedures. First, Mirian cast a probe trap spell, then threw one of Gaius's enchanted lures. The air sizzled as a voidling created an airless bubble around the lure. Mirian cast a dimensional locate spell—one of her new designs—closing her eyes so she could better feel where the voidling was hiding.

There, she thought, and sent a burst of force detonations into that spot. There was a screech, then a splash of ichor.

"Voidling. Dead," she said, then started going through her divination spells.

"Room seems clear," she said, and they proceeded forward. Only two rooms later, Mirian was surprised to find a staircase sitting in front of them, looking suspiciously pristine. She raised an eyebrow at Gaius. Mirian started down the stairs carefully. Her divination wasn't looking for just horrors. She was looking for traps and environmental hazards. Each step echoed in the silence. The stairs led to a long hallway.

"Did I tell you about centiscerators?" her father asked.

"Yes."

"Well, be prepared. This is the level they start appearing. At least if we find a Vault it should be simple enough."

"Hmm?"

"The Triarchy discovered that the shallower a Vault is, the more puzzle rooms. The deeper, the fewer."

"Ah, yes, I think you did mention that. Hallway seems clear." The corridor was gray and featureless. As they approached the first room, Mirian immediately sensed something was off. For one, the room was far larger than any she'd seen. It could have fit the entire Stygalta Arena building inside it. Unlike most rooms in the Labyrinth, it had a huge vaulted ceiling. More importantly, there were two large circular doors on the far side of the room. Two Vault doors. Mirian looked to her father.

"Have you seen anything like this before?"

"No," Gaius said, looking concerned.

"And the bounties of the Labyrinth are always guarded. Always. Be ready for anything." The lure enchantments didn't lure anything out. The probe trap spell encountered nothing. Mirian even cast her illusionary double, a spell she could only maintain with great effort since it was so complex. The illusion radiated heat, exerted force beneath it with each step, and even had a thin force shield around it so that the illusion disturbed the air in the room the same way she would. Nothing. The room was still.

The Labyrinth was silent.

"No antimagic field of either kind. I'm not detecting anything hiding. There's much more ambient mana here, though." When she closed her eyes and focused on her aura, she could feel it. More interestingly, she could feel differences in the mana. It was spontaneously forming patterns. She would have bet a pile of gold Florins that the pattern was a smaller version of what she saw in the leyline data. Mirian recast her defensive enchantments, and they walked into the room.

When they were twenty feet in, a door rumbled shut behind them. Mirian experimentally blasted it with shatter stone and found the door was being protected by a force barrier. When she attempted to cut off the mana supply to the barrier, her own spell dissolved. She was familiar enough with the Labyrinth by now to get the hint.

"It has a challenge for us, then." The floor rumbled. On the far side of the room, huge petals of stone peeled out of the floor like a colossal lotus blooming. As it opened, it unveiled two creatures. One looked like the ice carnipedes she'd seen in the frostlands, only the armor looked thicker, the legs sharper, and there were thousands of thin spines protruding from its carapace, each coated in glistening fluid. When Gaius had described the centiscerator, he hadn't done it justice.

It was the thing next to the centiscerator she didn't recognize. It floated above the ground, looking like a billowing shadow full of misting light, with a center made of what looked to be a speckled black and white crystal. Four arms protruded from the center, thin and long, each ending in a nasty looking scythe. When she looked at it with detect life, it wasn't like there was no soul energy. It was like there was an absence of soul energy, a sucking void instead of the mere nothing that should have been there.

Gaius's eyes had gone wide.

"I didn't think they were real," he said, fear in his voice.

"They violate too many known laws of magic."

"What is it?"

"An enervator. Said to attack souls directly. Take care of the centiscerator; you're better in the four-dimensional arena. I'll do what I can against it." That her father was scared of this thing sent Mirian's adrenaline spiking. Two hundred legs all clattered onto the stone. Then, with frightening speed, the centiscerator charged.