＜ 23. Test (3) ＞
“Sir, no, are there any bastards with no concept like that? Is there a hole in the head? Can you do that?”
Tricia wheezed, unable to contain her anger. Mimic, who would normally have helped a bit, kept silent when she saw that the atmosphere was unusual.
But Andrea wasn’t looking at Trisha. What he was examining now was Emilia’s complexion.
A situation where the token was stolen right in front of the nose. If it had been Emilia before, she would have been blaming herself for not being able to kill the monsters quickly, but now Emilia was muttering to herself with a sinister expression.
“・・dirty・・diabolical・・just meeting it・・twisting your wrists・・・・・.”
After going through negative things, it seems that the personality of when he became an archangel came out. Andrea hurriedly restrained Emilia, fearing that if left alone, she might kill the thief herself.
“Emilia.”
“… hit me in the head with a stone…”
“Emilia!”
“yes? yes?”
Startled, Emilia retracts the shadows cast over her face. Andrea tapped her on the shoulder.
“Wake. In times like these, we need to be calm.”
“Ugh, that’s how it should be. yes.”
Emilia turned her head with an expression that was not clear. He probably felt uncomfortable with himself for suddenly saying such a thing.
‘Right now, just waking me up like this can bring me to my senses… but I’m a little worried.’
If you attack the challenger from the bottom floor, something you can’t handle will happen. It was Andrea who thought that she would have to keep an eye on Emilia to see if she would do anything unexpected in the future.
“So what, Andrea? Any way to find him? Or should I give up and look for other monsters?”
Contrary to her angry words and actions, Trisha was thinking quite rationally.
I would like to find it by searching the labyrinth like teeth, but doing so would consume too much time. If there is no hope of finding it, it would be better to catch another monster as soon as possible.
Fortunately, Andrea knew how to catch the thief.
“Let’s go to the exit. No matter where that guy is right now, to escape from this labyrinth, you have to go to the exit anyway, so if you wait there, you will definitely meet him.”
“Ah, there was such a way!”
Trisha clapped her hands as if it was good. However, the brightened face quickly darkened again. There was one practical problem in putting that method into practice.
“By the way… where is the exit?”
Before entering this place, Andrea explained that the Great Labyrinth was created completely randomly, so she couldn’t figure out the way. According to that, even Andrea, who has been here before, doesn’t know where the exit is.
However, Andrea had a confident expression on her face. He handed over the tokens of courage he had acquired to Trisha.
“Look at the back of the signs. It’s different that everything is drawn, but there are clues to where the exit is.”
Come to think of it, when I got it, I thought I saw something from the back. Mimick and Emilia stood next to Trisha and looked at what was drawn on the back of the sign.
Excluding the overlapping ones, what was drawn on the sign could be deduced into three things. First, the word ‘vomit’. The second, a strange shape that looks like a horn or a bottle, and the third, a picture of a fish and the word ‘salmon’.
I was able to recognize the first and the last, although I didn’t know what the meaning was, but I couldn’t even figure out what the second picture was. Seeing the party frowning, Andrea added an explanation.
“It’s a figure called Klein’s bottle. In fact, if you just notice that it’s a clue, you know where the exit is right away.”
Contrary to the description, there was no sign that anyone in the party noticed. Tricia tilted her head and opened her mouth.
“I don’t know at all. Hey Mimic. Do you understand?”
“I don’t even know Mimic. It’s just a strange looking disease, isn’t it a disease without any special features? Except the entrance and exit are the same.”
For a moment, silence fell as if a rat had died. A fleeting moment to ponder your thoughts.
And at the same time, exclamations of exclamation came out from Trisha and Emilia.
“ah!”
“Ah, so…”
“What, what is it? Did you figure something out, bowman?”
Only Mimic, who had given the correct answer, looked around frantically, not knowing what it was. Emilia burst into a small laugh and explained to Mimic what each picture meant.
* * *
“As you can see, this bottle has the same entrance and exit. And salmon have a habit of returning to their original habitat to spawn before dying. At this point, you all know where the exit is, right? Yes, that’s right. The entrance you came in is the exit.”
After Jericho’s explanation, exclamations erupted from all over the place. Challengers nodded their heads and murmured. However, one of the challengers raised his hand with a face that he did not understand at all.
“By the way, Mr. Jericho. So what does ‘vomit’ mean here?”
Jericho looked at the challenger with a gaze of light contempt, as if he didn’t know that.
It was said that it was inevitable to pass through the upper layer stably, but thinking that even these idiots who do not know how to do anything on their own could pass through the lower layer, my stomach twisted.
“What is ‘vomiting’? Doesn’t what you ate come out again from where it went in?”
“ah! okay.”
I secretly clicked my tongue and burst out laughing. Needless to say, vomiting, could there be a more appropriate expression to refer to the people lined up in front of him right now?
‘Guys like vomit…’
Still, they were challengers who would serve as a foundation for him to go to the 100th floor. Jericho couldn’t help laughing on the inside, but on the outside he continued to be a benevolent demagogue.
“Okay, then, from now on, we will give out free tokens of courage! Let’s all gather together!”
Hearing that, a man standing in front of Jericho made a puzzled expression. It was Gustaf, the man who killed the ‘Dream of the Black Sheep’ and stole the token.
“My, Mr. Jericho. Is it different from the promise? I heard that the tokens are given out for free only to those who help Mr. Jericho, and that the others sell them for money and share the profits?”
“Um, did I? I can’t remember.”
“Oh no! Then why did I take that risk?”
Jericho let out an exaggeratedly deep sigh and shouted at the challengers.
“Everyone! This person here says that he will sell the Mark of Courage for money. If you agree, we’ll take your money and sell it, otherwise we’ll just give it away. What would you like?”
Jericho’s unexpected action made Gustaf contemplate. The challengers murmured with angry voices.
“what? Where is that?”
“You mean you’re going to call the domination in the middle of this?”
“You’re a greedy guy…”
“This is nonsense! Ignore him and hand out the tokens for free as promised!”
Then, bloody gazes as if they were going to die poured down on Gustav. Jericho looked back at Gustav with a satisfied smile.
“Now, what will you do, Mr. Gustaf?”
Gustav was sweating profusely, and eventually lowered his tail.
“No, give it away for free.”
I couldn’t get the Mark of Courage back from Jericho anyway. In the labyrinth, you can’t hurt other challengers, so you’ll be safe right now, but there’s no guarantee that you won’t be retaliated against when you get out of here. Gustav turned his head and gritted his teeth reluctantly.
Jericho didn’t even care about Gustav anymore. In the first place, he was a human who had exhausted his usefulness at the point of taking the risk of stealing the mark. Jericho smoothly handing out tokens for free.
But when I couldn’t even share how much, I heard a very ominous noise from the back. Jericho took out the ‘Clairvoyant’ card from the deck and used it to search for the source of the noise. And soon I witnessed an unbelievable sight.
Kwa-ang!
Kwa-ang!
It was Andrea who broke the wall with her fist and came forward in a straight line.
‘Damn it!’
In the labyrinth, challengers cannot harm each other. But somehow, Jericho had a hunch that something big was going to happen if he stayed here. As befits a challenger who followed his instincts and reached the 90th floor three times, he trusted his intuition very much.
“You take care of the rest!”
Jericho scattered all remaining tokens of courage into the air. Then, using ‘blink’ toward the entrance and exit, he ran away.
“What is it, my sign!”
“It’s mine, get out of the way!”
“Aagh! Don’t push!”
Of course, the labyrinth became a mess.
Those left behind struggled to pick up the tokens that had fallen on the floor. As if they had become pigeons competing for food.
In the meantime, there would be unintentional physical fights, but the challenger who pushed the opponent too hard would be sucked in somewhere and disappear, probably because it was judged to be an attack.
Kwa-ang!
“Everybody stop moving.”
But when Andrea arrived through the wall, all the fuss subsided like a lie.
The sound of someone swallowing saliva was unusually loud. A sharp, piercing silence. Everyone froze, not moving a single step.
Andrea looked all over the challengers. It was not difficult to find Gustav’s figure in a corner. Andrea approaches with clenched fists.
“Give me, the token of courage you stole.”
“to···?”
“Since you’ve seen everyone’s faces, don’t pretend, and say it one last time. Give me a token of courage.”
“just······.”
Gustav looked as if he was about to urinate at any moment. The root of his tongue hardened as if it had turned to stone, and he could not utter a word. He barely pointed at the other challengers with a trembling finger.
“I, the author… the authors took them all!”
“···what? Did you share it?”
“Well, that’s not it… But anyway, the authors took them all!”
Andrea slowly turned her head. They couldn’t attack each other here, so I wondered how they took away the other challenger’s, but seeing that there were many tokens of courage on the floor, it didn’t seem like a lie.
Andrea speaks in a low voice to the challengers.
“Put everything in your pockets, everything you are holding in your hands. If you don’t want to look bad.”
The challengers hesitated and looked at each other. When I remembered Andrea’s power, I wanted to throw it away and run away, but it was because I remembered the rule that challengers cannot attack each other.
At that time, a courageous or overly reckless challenger stepped forward.
“Don’t be afraid! Did you forget Jericho-san said that if the challengers fight, they will return to the first floor? Even if you say that, he can’t touch us!”
A murmur spread like a wave. Inspired by the courage of the person who came out first, the challengers hardened their thoughts in a bad direction. In other words, they decided to hold out without showing any signs of courage.
“Well, there are so many tokens, so we can share some of them…”
“It’s something you can’t take away, but the bluff…”
“Take it wherever you want it! Only your mouth survives!”
Andrea closed her eyes and remained silent. The challengers, who had been talking about their dissatisfaction, gradually became more energetic as Andrea stayed still and began to provoke them.
Trisha and Emilia finally reached the entrance through a hole in the wall. Challengers who denounce Andrea as if she had done something wrong, Andrea who doesn’t say anything. Seeing the situation going back, my eyes were furrowed.
Andrea finally opens her eyes and opens her mouth when the commotion subsides.
“Did you talk?”
“If you were all talking, what would you do?”
“Who is the mastermind behind this plan? Only one person on a first-come, first-served basis will be spared.”
The challengers are now starting to snort openly. He seemed completely convinced that Andrea was threatening nothing but nothing he could do. Of course, no one confided that the ringleader was Jericho.
“No, don’t just talk softly. If you want to try something, do it? Challengers cannot fight each other here!”
“Surely that is true.”
Andrea sighed and nodded. Inevitably, it seemed that revealing who the ringleader was would have to be done after slaughtering everyone.
“But the non-challengers can kill you, right?”
At that word, the challengers all felt a frightening sense of survival. Andrea gestured toward the party with a leisurely movement.
“Mimic, come here. Just do what you were told to do.”
“Ah, I see.”
Mimick opened his mouth in front of Andrea. Andrea held up the subspace bag upside down and brushed it off. It was a pocket containing all the gold he had collected so far.
churrr –
A golden waterfall flowed ceaselessly down the Mimic’s mouth. The Mimic swallowed the coin and let out a bizarre moan, whether it was joy or pain.
As the gold entered, an immediate change began to occur in the Mimic’s body. The limbs swelled like a log, the cover and body gradually gave off a lustrous luster, and the steel teeth smelted as if they were going to chew and swallow even cast iron.
When the gold in the pocket was exposed, the mimic became three or four times larger than before. The challengers looked stunned as the huge box monster cast menacing glances at them.
Andrea tapped Mimic on the leg with a satisfied face.
“We need to find out who the ringleader is, so let only one person survive. It doesn’t matter if I kill everyone else.”
“Kreurreuk, kreurureuk…! aaagh!”
“aaagh!”
Whether he understood it or not, the Mimic screamed and charged at the challengers. The challengers run away screaming and screaming.
Puck – !
It was an absurdly slow speed compared to the runaway mimic, and soon corpses with all of their bones smashed were flying in the air.