Chapter 193: So many issues but no exit

Chapter 193: So many issues but no exit

Sofia stored the book by habit and kept looking around.

One thing is clear from that; it looks like this was a nightmarish place even before the system copied it to make it a part of the spire.

If it isnt all made up, at least. Going by everything so far, I would say that this probably exists in the real world too, and its likely in or under the spirit forest. This place may be from a time much older than Zerei even.The origin of this chapter's debut can be traced to N0v3l--B1n.

When it said consumed by the encroaching, I wonder if thats referring to the living trees or something else.

And they were guarding these doors, I guess? Well, I came from there

There was a single other door in the room, a regular one, wooden and half-broken, it seemed to lead to a small and tight corridor.

Pareth doesnt fit in there.

She wasnt about to not explore it, so she sent paladins ahead to make sure it was safe, stored Pareth, and eventually entered the corridor herself. It felt less like a part of the maze and more like a service corridor in a castle; several doors were on each side. Bedrooms for the knights, some armor, and swords are left over inside. Two beds per room, ten rooms on each side. So there were only twelve knights left out of a potential forty? The question is, did they leave, or did they leave? Either way, the ones who stayed had a bad ending

Sofia did not stay in the bedroom section for too long, the corridor ended in a full turn to the right, and after the scouts ensured it was safe, she advanced too.

After the turn, the corridor abruptly became as large as they usually were everywhere else in the maze. That surprised Sofia, but what surprised her more was her tracking of the Paladins position. The two scouts and three more that had been walking ahead of her were still there in her sight. The others she felt were now what felt like several kilometers above her. And as fast as she got that weird signal, it disappeared.

Sofia turned around. The small corridor was nowhere to be seen. It was just another three by three meters maze corridor, at the end of which she saw a large and seemingly empty room where the room full of wooden knights had been.

It looks like I caught one of the maze changes. Was I teleported down is what it is? So I need to be wary of corners? Or was there another trigger that I missed?

The weird part is that the skeletons ahead are still with me, but the ones behind vanished. But Im certain I felt their position way up above, so Is this place like a big layered thing? And the layers melt into each other? This is the sandwich theory all over again

So far, the general layout doesnt change, at least, so that makes mapping easy.

I think I get it.

Sofias theory was that the skeletons disappeared not because they crossed a certain point specific to the maze but because they were too far from her. With the birds on both sides waiting still, she took a few steps toward the starting cell. As she expected, another bird from the other side vanished as she walked further from it.

Thats all it was this whole time Sure took me a while to figure it out

Then when I felt the paladin skeletons be way up They were also too far away, so they vanished. Someone without golems or undead would never find that out. Now the question is why do they disappear when far away, and how do I use this to my advantage?

Now that she understood the process of disappearing skeletons better, she felt safer to sent Pareth to the edge of the range to observe the birds as they vanished. Once he was there, the birds started flying away again, and to Sofias surprise, nothing happened to them. After some more testing, she discovered that not only herself but also Pareth served as some kind of anchor that the mist skeletons couldnt get too far from. Pareth was far out of her brown anchoring range with a group of birds when she concluded her final test to have Pareth teleport to her from there.

He appeared at her side, and the birds left behind all instantly disappeared.

The skeleton Paladins disappeared simultaneously, stunning Sofia, who looked around and panicked until she realized they had just timed out.

More than three hours since I summoned them against the master already Im still mana-locked from the rune, and the books running low on fog. Guess its just me, Pareth, and the remaining eight birds.

Feeling like she couldnt learn more from her current spot, Sofia started manually exploring again. She picked a random direction since they were all unexplored in the current layer anyway. A few turns later, the birds tasked with spotting the corners warned her of the presence of an enemy.

You handle that. I need to preserve my mana.

Pareths halo, armor, and weapon all flared up at once, and once the sanctified grounds activated, he engaged the enemy.

What Pareth was faced with was a tall and gaunt zombie with long semicircle claws. It looked kind of dry and didnt smell much for a walking corpse anyway. If Sofia had to guess, it did not look especially powerful despite being as tall as the current Pareth.

When Pareths sword failed to cut the undeads neck, she recognized that there might be an issue.

When it struck back faster than Pareth could react, cut straight through his armor, and sliced his left arm clean into six pieces, the issue had suddenly grown out of hand.