Chapter 343

It was as Bruce had said. The staircases didn’t lead down one path.

After climbing a dozen meters upwards, the staircase split into two paths.

The first path splits into three paths. The second path split into two paths.

The Connectors split up into parties as they headed down the various paths.

There was a chance that their enemies were using a divide and conquer strategy. There was a chance that the parties were walking into a trap. However, they didn’t have the time to worry about such a thing.

The only thing they could do was to be a bit more vigilant of their surroundings.

Thankfully, there were no traps. However, Sungyoon realized in time that he would have preferred traps to what he was facing right now. He ground his teeth.

“Uh?”

Tim, who had been walking in the front, sounded fl.u.s.tered.

Sungyoon’s face crumpled.

‘Again?’

It was as he had expected. They had run across another party. It was the party that took one of the other paths.

The warriors were wearing helmets, so he couldn’t see their expressions. However, he could see the expression on the faces of the magicians since they wore cloth over their heads.

They all looked taken aback.

“K...Knight’s party? Why are you coming down from above?”

The warrior in the front asked the question.

“We’ve been climbing up our staircase.”

Sungyoon replied.

“What? That can’t be! We were climbing our staircase too!”

“In truth, you guys aren’t the first ones we’ve encountered so far.”

Sungyoon brought his hand up to the back of his head to scratch it. He did it out of habit.

However, he had to lower his hand when his gauntlet clashed against his helmet.

“We’ve encountered another party before we arrived here, and we had the exact same conversation. From our perspective, we were climbing up the staircase, but it looked as if they were descending the stairs.”

“Like right now?”

“Yes. Like right now.”

The warrior tilted his head. He had an idea what was going on.

“Shit! The tower’s labyrinth is playing with us!”

The warrior clicked his tongue. However, Sungyoon shook his head from side to side. He told the warrior a more horrible truth.

“If the tower is just a labyrinth, there is no way we’ll get confused as to whether we are climbing or descending the tower. I believe space is distorted within this place.”

“Are you talking about the phenomena that sometimes show up in the Great Labyrinth?”

“Yes. I think it is something similar.”

The warrior let out a sigh. He probably let out a round of curses within his heart.

Sungyoon had done the same thing. He had inwardly cussed when he found out the truth.

“It can’t be helped. Did you mark the path that you traveled through?”

“I did.”

Sungyoon took out a specially made pen.

“We also marked our path. In the next crossroads, let us take the path that we didn’t take before.”

“Understood.”

The two parties walked past each other.

“This is causing a headache for an entirely different reason than we had expected.”

Tim checked the time as he spoke. In the beginning, they had moved in silence, but they had encountered unexpected difficulties.

“It can’t be helped. We can only do our job right now.”

Sungyoon kept calm as he spoke to Tim.

However, his face had turned stiff to a frightening degree within his helmet.

***

Three hours passed, and everyone returned to the original spot. No one looked happy.

“Did you guys come back after getting lost in the twisted staircase?”

“Yes.”

Russell became disappointed at Sungyoon’s answer.

“What about you, Sir Russell?”

“It was the same. It wasn’t just our party. It was the same for everyone.”

The gathered Connectors had branched out in small groups to explore the tower. Everyone came back grumbling.

“We held out hope that you experienced something different from us.”

“I’m sorry for letting your expectations down.”

“You don't have to apologize. Everyone here failed too including me.”

Russell patted Sungyoon’s shoulder once. Then he walked towards where all the Connectors were gathered.

“Thankfully, everyone made it back!”

It was the only good news. When Russell spoke loudly, the Connectors focus their attention on Russell.

“Did you draw a map?”

“We made a rough one.”

Someone handed a piece of paper towards Russell. It was a map of the tower made by piecing together everyone’s information.

It was very rough, but it was better than nothing.

“Alright! Everyone copy it!”

Each party sent out a representative to copy the map. Grace stepped forward for Sungyoon’s party.

If no one in the party was good at drawing, members from other parties drew for them.

“Are you all done drawing it?”

“We did.”

Each representative waved the piece of paper in the air.

Russell clapped once to get everyone’s attention once again.

“This damn tower is playing with us, but we cannot retreat! We have to find the ‘something’ that can save earth! I have no idea what that ‘something’ is, but we have to find it at all cost!”

He was making an extremely unreasonable demand, but no one refuted his words.

Earth was facing an existential threat, so they had to put their hope into something unreasonable.

“I want you to comb the tower! Don’t miss any spot that gives off a weird vibe! Since we are in a distorted space, the tower is much bigger inside than expected. We can’t go by how large it is from the outside. Still, we have to do this! Be prepared to draw every inch of this tower!”

All the Connectors nodded their heads when Russell spoke.

***

‘It seems someone walked past this place already.’

Sungyoon thought to himself as he looked at the clear mark pointing towards one of the forked paths.

Grace drew in another pathway on her map.

‘This is getting way too complex.’

Sungyoon shook his head from side to side when he looked at the map in Grace’s hand.

Grace was drawing the inner structure of a tower, so it looked very different from a normal map.

However, he understood what he was seeing. Grace was a talented drawer, so the map was very detailed.

‘The parties with no one good at drawing will have a terrible time.’

Grace put her map away.

Sungyoon’s party started to move once again. They decided to go down one of the paths not drawn on the map.

When they turned a sharp corner, something appeared in front of them. Sungyoon and Tim reflexively swung their weapons.

‘Sir Russell!’

The two men desperately aborted their swing. Russell had also swung his sword towards Sungyoon and Tim. He quickly retracted his sword.

“It is you guys.”

Russell lowered his sword.

“You surprised me.”

Tim placed a hand over his heart. Russell let out a light laughter.

“We feel the same way, Ross.”

His gaze headed towards Grace.

When he checked she was ok, he asked Sungyoon a question.

“Did you find anything out of the ordinary?”

“No. We found nothing. What about you, sir Russell?”

“It was the same for us. The only things we saw were stairs and stone walls.”

Russell knocked on the wall.

“Let’s copy each other’s map.

When Grace heard Sungyoon’s words, she took a step forward. A member of sir Russell’s party stepped forward too.

The two of them looked at each other’s maps, then they started to fill in the empty spots on the map.

“You filled in a lot.”

Russell spoke as he glanced at the map that was starting to become fleshed out.

“We ran into other parties occasionally, and we exchanged information. Moreover, we’ve been doing this for a while.”

“It is our biggest problem right now.”

Worry entered into Russell’s voice.

“We have no idea how long our troops outside could hold out.”

“Has it been around a day since we entered the tower?”

Sungyoon looked at his watch.

“Correct. We brought a lot of the elite Connectors, and Connectors are a sturdy bunch. They won’t break from fighting for a day. However, the casualties must be mounting.”

Currently, the Connectors were desperately fighting against the monsters.

“I copied it all.”

Grace returned with the newly revised map. Sungyoon nodded his head as he looked at Russell.

“Let’s start moving once again. We have no time to waste.”

“We should.”

Russell agreed with him.

“Be careful.”

“You too, sir Russell.”

The two parties walked past each other, and they forged ahead once again.

“Do you think the map is close to being finished?”

Sungyoon asked the question to Grace.

“We’ve checked most of the paths. There aren’t many paths that we haven’t explored yet.”

It meant that their task was close to being finished. However, Grace, Sungyoon, Tim, and Emily didn’t look thrilled about that prospect.

“Still, we have no idea if the unexplored paths diverge further.”

It was as Tim had lamented. The unexplored paths diverged further into numerous paths.

However, this worry paled in front of their other worry.

“What if we don’t find anything out of the ordinary after we search all the paths?”

No one replied to Emily’s words. They were slowly mapping out the entire tower, and their biggest worry was finding nothing.

“Let’s worry about that after we search all the tunnels.”

Sungyoon tried to soothe his party members. Sungyoon and his party members pressed down on their worries as they started walking once again.

“You are probably right, Mr. Sungyoon. We should worry after we...!”

Tim stopped speaking. He came to a halt as he looked at his surroundings. Sungyoon and the others came to a stop too.

“…what the hell is this?”

Tim’s words expressed what everyone was feeling.

Sungyoon slowly looked around his surroundings.

“…it seems we found the ‘something’ that we’ve been searching for.”

The stone walls surrounding the staircase were nowhere to be seen. Only darkness could be seen. Sungyoon spoke in a low voice.

It wasn’t as if they couldn’t see, because it was dark. Connectors could see their surroundings using magical energy, and there was plenty of magical energy in their surroundings.

In fact, the magical energy in this place was very dense.

It was like being in a Great Labyrinth. Their vision hadn’t been blocked.

“There is nothing here.”

Emily’s voice rang out through the space. Tim carefully waved his hand towards his side. His arm moved through the space without disturbing anything.

It was a space with nothing except the staircase, which Sungyoon’s party was standing on.

“L...let’s head back for now. Sir Russell said we should return if we found something out of the ordinary.”

Emily expressed her opinion, but Grace disagreed with her.

“I want to, but we have no way of doing that.”

“No way of doing what?”

Instead of saying anything, Grace pointed backward.

Emily’s eyes widened when she looked backward.

“The staircase...is gone?”

It was as if the staircase had been built up to this point. The stairs came to an abrupt stop behind them. There was only absolute darkness behind them.

“Huh? What the hell? We came here using the stairs!”

“Please stay calm.”

Sungyoon pacified Tim, who was fl.u.s.tered.

“This is probably the distortion of space within the tower that has been troubling us up until now.”

“What should we do?”

Grace asked for Sungyoon’s opinion.

Sungyoon stood at the edge of the severed staircase, and he looked downwards.

“I’m guessing it’ll be a bad idea to jump off here.”

Tim, Emily, and Grace nodded at the same time.

“Since we can’t go back, we have only one remaining option.”

Sungyoon looked up the staircase. The others followed his gaze upwards.

Unlike the dead-end staircase behind them, the stairs continued upwards. Moreover, they could see light emanating from an exit.

“Let’s go. It seems we have no choice.”

Sungyoon and his party members started climbing up the staircase.