Chapter 358: The Ascendant’s Cradle (4)

The two of them simultaneously understood the meaning of the gate’s landscape and nodded.

“It means we have to step on them to go up.”

“Can you use the monocular?”

At Evelyn’s suggestion, Lennok picked up the monocular and tried to rotate his Mystic Eye, but then he frowned slightly.

“……I can’t. My eye feels overloaded.”

“What?”

Evelyn spun around, strode towards Lennok, and grasped his cheeks with both hands.

“Your eyes? Are they okay?”

“……”

With thin fingers, she carefully pulled back Lennok’s eyelid and stared intently into his pupil with her green eyes.

Lennok, brought back to his senses by her unhesitating demeanor, calmly gripped her wrist and stood up.

“I’m fine. It seems to be a side effect from using the Mystic Eye too frequently.”

“But…”

“I should have learned about this limitation as soon as possible after acquiring the Mystic Eye. This is my mistake. I haven’t paid much attention to its abilities until now, and this is what happened.”

Evelyn spoke with a firm expression.

“You should refrain from using it for a while. I’ve heard many rumors that truly powerful Mystic Eyes demand the user’s eyesight as a price.”

“……Right.”

The Mystic Eye, awakened through encounters with high-ranking Cartel executives and experiences at the Blaiver Tower’s Western Continent branch, still held much room for growth and considerable potential.

Lennok had tried his best to refrain from using the Mystic Eye, considering the possibility of damage to his optic nerves. However, he now realized he should have understood its limitations earlier and clicked his tongue softly.

While caring for his body and health was important, if he couldn’t use the Mystic Eye’s power to view through the monocular at crucial moments, maintaining his current labyrinth-clearing speed would be impossible.

‘I should visit the Cartel when I return.’

Lennok pondered, quietly massaging his throbbing eye.

Among the superhumans Lennok knew, Mystic Eye wielders were extremely rare, yet there was undeniably a leading authority on eyes among them.

The Chairman of the Cartel, Olivera Ron Maize, an 8th-level sorcerer who possessed The Seven Debts Jewels Mystic Eye.

Given their current collaborative relationship, Olivera wouldn’t outright refuse if Lennok asked a few questions about the Mystic Eye.

Even without this, the frequency of his Mystic Eye usage had recently increased significantly, and he was able to do various new things with it.

He needed to correctly set the direction early, as soon as he found a clue to its growth.

As Lennok thought this, Evelyn, who had been watching him with concern, turned her gaze away.

“I’ll go first. You watch from there for now.”

Perhaps she thought it was more rational for her, being relatively nimble and light, to go ahead and check for traps.

In fact, ever since they entered this labyrinth, Evelyn had been focusing on assisting Lennok, even taking on the role of a ranger.

Evelyn carefully leaped and stepped onto one of the floating blocks in the air.

Thump!

The block slightly sank from the recoil.

While Lennok nodded at the sight, Evelyn sharply turned her gaze to him.

“Just so you know, it’s not that heavy.”

“……Were you talking about your weight?”

Ignoring her sudden protest, which even Lennok took a moment to understand, Evelyn immediately moved again.

Evelyn’s form vanished from sight in an instant, lightly treading on the floating blocks and leaping.

She shot hundreds of meters upward in one go, heading for the gate floating in the sky.

The moment Evelyn reached out for the gate with her accelerating speed.

Whoosh!

“Oh?”

Her body vanished as if it had been snuffed out, then reappeared right next to Lennok.

Lennok nodded slightly at the sight.

“So it’s not just a simple trap or trick…”

“Ugh, I almost touched it… What was the problem?”

Lennok watched Evelyn, who was running her hand through her hair and standing up, then turned his gaze.

“I wonder if there’s a specific rule for the order or direction in which you step on the blocks.”

“A rule… you mean?”

“Otherwise, it’s hard to explain the force that forcibly moved you right in front of the gate.”

Lennok looked up at the gate floating in the sky and replied.

“It’s unlikely that Jindun is refusing intruders now. So, we can only assume it’s because we didn’t follow a sequence. Perhaps there’s a special law at work within this space.”

“Hmm… Now it feels more like an Ascendant’s labyrinth.”

A powerful categorical imperative capable of forcibly designating and moving a 7th-level Archmage. If even an expert like Evelyn couldn’t perceive it, then the spell wasn’t merely elaborate and natural.

It would be impossible without space manipulation abilities akin to physical laws. Considering that this labyrinth’s existence was a type of materialized construct created by barrier magic, it was, if anything, unbelievable even by Lennok’s knowledge.

If one mastered barrier magic to its utmost limit, could they create new laws under specific conditions that even Archmages couldn’t evade?

Evelyn quickly loosened up, lowered her stance slightly, and drew forth her magic.

Woong!!

As a light gust of wind rose at her feet, she instantly transformed into a black flash and vanished.

She then dashed towards the gate, passing through the blocks in quick succession.

Flash!

She appeared next to Lennok without fail, but as if on cue, she changed direction, grabbed another block, and shot upwards.

“It seems that if you don’t match the order of crossing the blocks, you have to start over from the moment you stop.”

Woong!!

Evelyn, who had landed on the closest block, said that and immediately stepped onto the block next to it.

She waited for about 3 seconds in that state, and her body moved through space, appearing next to Lennok.

“This is proof that this sequence isn’t the answer. If I had gone to the block behind me instead of the one next to me and waited…”

After 3 seconds, she didn’t move from the block.

Evelyn spread her hands and smiled awkwardly.

“That’s all I’ve figured out for now. There are so many blocks that it’ll probably take a long time to find the right combination.”

“Hmm…”

Lennok, lost in thought, looked down at Evelyn’s feet, and his eyes suddenly gleamed.

“Stone fragments are falling. This means the blocks themselves aren’t indestructible.”

“Ah, I know that too. I even experimented beforehand. But…”

As she imbued magic into her finger and poked a block, the block burst apart and shattered.

Phew!!

Evelyn pouted her lips, looking at Lennok.

“See? It’s restoring itself immediately. It probably won’t mean much.”

As she said, the shattered block quickly reassembled, restoring its original form.

It was slightly different from what he expected, but logically, it was natural. Wouldn’t it be much easier to restore the blocks to their original form even after they were destroyed, rather than making all the blocks in the gate indestructible even by a superhuman’s power?

However, Lennok shook his head despite Evelyn’s words and reached into his sleeve.

“The important thing is that the block restores itself after being destroyed.”

Click!!

Lennok pulled out his sniper rifle, instantly loaded a bullet, and knelt on one knee.

Seeing him bring the scope to his eye, Evelyn belatedly realized Lennok’s intention and muttered.

“……No way?”

Instead of answering, Lennok pulled the trigger.

Bang!!

The bullet fired from the rifle struck the block next to Evelyn, crushing its interior and embedding itself, stopping there.

The impact scattered the block’s debris into the air, which then restored itself, burying the bullet’s form inside.

Lennok reloaded his rifle and muttered.

“This is number 1.”

“You’re going to embed bullets in the blocks and use them as markers? That’s a very creative idea…”

Evelyn clicked her tongue, stepped down from the block, and muttered from behind Lennok.

“But distinguishing and numbering floating blocks won’t change much, will it?”

“It’s important. Because these blocks don’t seem to react to life signs, but to a power source like magic.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll embed bullets, use them as conduits, and transfer magic to pre-check the sequence of the blocks.”

Lennok answered, pulling the trigger without pause.

“We don’t need to embed bullets in every single block. It’s enough if the bullets can transfer magic to nearby blocks.”

“A direct approach, after all…? But that still means we have to calculate an enormous number of possibilities. The calculation itself will take quite a while.”

It was an obvious fact that both Lennok’s and Evelyn’s judgment and memory were far superior to other superhumans.

Transferring magic, remembering the direction and trial-and-error, and excluding candidates was not a difficult task itself, but the problem was time.

Ultimately, if they couldn’t find a shortcut or trick, they would only gain the merit of having started solving the gate’s puzzle slightly earlier than others.

But Lennok smiled despite Evelyn’s words.

“No… This method will work.”

[Master truly can’t do anything without me.]

Davi grumbled, rubbing his eyes and sitting up from inside the coat.

[To treat a great computational spirit like me as merely a calculator… Now all of Master’s phone batteries are removed.]

“If you finish the calculation on time, I’ll give them all to you.”

Lennok smiled and stroked Davi’s head.

“So, please take care of it, partner.”

[…Hmph.]

Davi snorted at Lennok’s words but said nothing more.

Lennok then focused on embedding bullets between the blocks.

There was no need to embed bullets in all thousands of blocks.

It was enough to satisfy the range where the bullets could be used as conduits to distinguish nearby blocks.

Lennok’s rough estimate was that the work would be finished with slightly less than 200 bullets.

There was a minor commotion as Evelyn, watching from the side, busily tore open magazines and threw bullets with her bare hands to help, but it didn’t take long.

“Let’s begin.”

[Ready.]

As the wizard and the spirit simultaneously solidified their wills, the floating blocks throughout the massive cavern began to flash with blue light.

Beep beep beep beep!!

“This is…”

Like electrical signals flowing within precise mechanical parts, magic lights, flashing hundreds of times per second, brightly illuminated the cavern.

Even with Evelyn’s dynamic vision, it was difficult to discern the pattern or sequence as the magic lights flickered chaotically, but after a short while, their appearance began to change little by little.

Flash, flash, flash, flash!!

Amidst the magic lights of the blocks, which continuously brightened and extinguished, blocks that no longer went out but continuously maintained their magical light began to appear one by one.

The sight of blocks, one by one, revealing their presence while maintaining their light amidst the flickering radiance, as if illuminating a path in sequence.

Evelyn’s eyes widened as she confirmed the long path of magic extending from the block closest to the ground.

“Wait, no way, did you start the calculation already? What kind of computing device do you have that the speed is like this…”

[Please correct that archer’s misunderstanding.]

Davi protested, peeking his head out from inside Lennok’s coat, flapping his three tails.

[You need to tell her that the computational abilities of a great computational spirit are not to be compared to a mere calculator.]

Instead of answering, Lennok held out his phone from his pocket to Davi.

Davi stopped speaking as soon as he saw it and immediately began sucking on the bottom of the phone with both front paws.

[Nom nom nom.]

Lennok glanced down at Davi, then immediately turned his gaze to the blocks floating above their heads.

Already, more than half of the blocks in this space had stopped flickering and were shining brightly, maintaining their magical light.

Evelyn also confirmed the path created by the illuminated trail and frowned.

“……It’s completely haphazard. It would have taken a really long time if we had to calculate each one individually.”

The sequence of a path that started from one block would appear on a block on the complete opposite side of the cavern, then emerge from a deeply sunken block, and then shoot back up.

Sometimes the sequence would only align with blocks that were intentionally far apart, while other times it would connect to a block right next to it.

There were even cases where the sequence wouldn’t continue unless they returned to a block they had already crossed.

The ability to resolve all these trials and errors at an abnormally fast speed, instead of going through them, was due to Davi’s presence, who possessed the powerful computational abilities of a strong AI.

Davi had received control of the magic light emitted by Lennok and was individually applying all possible combinations from thousands of blocks with his powerful computational ability.

The crystallization of computation, acting as a proxy for simple, repetitive tasks beyond human capabilities at an unimaginably fast speed.

For Davi, a computational spirit specialized in algorithmic learning and creation, it was a relatively much easier task.

Lennok saw this and immediately stepped towards the closest glowing block.

“Let’s move.”

“Already? Wouldn’t it be better to cross after the calculations are all done? What if we get confused halfway through?”

Even as Evelyn spoke, she quickly followed Lennok, moving between the blocks.

She had her own thoughts, but for now, she was doing as Lennok said.

Lennok also used float magic to step on the blocks in sequence, replying.

“We don’t know when other intruders might follow us into this cavern. Given the high level of those gathered here, they’ll quickly figure out what this light means.”

“True, if we show it to them for even a moment, they’ll quickly remember and follow…”

“Instead, if we erase the traces of the blocks we’ve passed through, latecomers won’t catch up quickly.”

Lennok and Evelyn thus diligently began crossing between the blocks, erasing their tracks and magic as they passed.

[Progress 62%. 3 minutes until calculation complete.]

“Gah?!”

“Estimated time is 10 seconds. It seems to reset if you stay in the air longer than that. We need to be careful.”

There was a minor commotion when Evelyn stumbled halfway and Lennok saved her, causing them to reset, but it wasn’t a big problem.

That is, until Davi, who was busily solving the magic light sequence through repeated trials, suddenly stopped all calculations.

[Progress 96%. Calculation suspended.]

“What?”

[There is an unidentifiable variable. It’s impossible for magic to persist if transferred from this block to any other block.]

“You’ve checked all the blocks we’ve already crossed?”

Davi nodded at Lennok’s words.

Evelyn, who had been waiting for Lennok’s decision behind him, asked.

“Is there a problem?”

“……It seems there’s something hidden in this cavern that we haven’t figured out yet.”

As Lennok roughly explained the existence of the variable, Evelyn’s slightly excited expression also fell.

“They don’t seem to want to let us through easily.”

“……”

Davi said that the progress of calculations, including all floating blocks in the cavern as variables, was 96%.

If so, the number of remaining blocks to reach the gate shouldn’t be many.

What kind of problem occurred, and what kind of significant variable emerged that caused the computational spirit’s calculation to be interrupted?

Even by extending magic perception around the cavern, he couldn’t detect any major problems other than a strange sense of unease emanating from all directions.

There was only one way.

“We’ll have to wait until I can use the Mystic Eye again.”

“……Aren’t you pushing yourself too hard?”

Evelyn bowed her head with a worried expression.

“At the very least, we need to confirm what the problem is before moving on. It would be good if we could find the variable before that, but— ”

CRASH!!

Before he could finish, a powerful explosion erupted beyond Lennok’s shield.

Flaming heat enveloped the two of them, not a friendly magical force at all.

With a wave of her hand, Evelyn dispersed the flaming heat raging over the block and leaped to her feet.

“It’s from below.”

“Yes, I see it.”

At Evelyn’s sharp voice, Lennok’s eyes also deepened.

Below them, on the ground of the cavern they had passed through, a dozen or so superhumans had emerged from the dozens of doors cut into the rock, glaring at them.

“Finally found you, you motherf**kers.”

The sorcerer who had shot the explosion, with a sharp expression, spat out vulgar curses at Lennok.

“It was fun hiding in the snow mountains and blowing off other people’s heads, wasn’t it? Now you’re all dead, you son of a…!!”

Bang!!

Before the sorcerer could finish his sentence, a bullet flew and he tumbled down, scattering blood.

Lennok reloaded his rifle with an indifferent expression and retorted.

“If you wanted to say that, you should’ve dodged that just now.”

“Yurin!!”

“You bastards!!”

“Bring them back alive. They won’t die a peaceful death!!”

The empty death of their comrade, whose traces had vanished above their heads.

Other superhumans, enraged by this, roared loudly and leaped onto the blocks to catch Lennok.

Lennok gazed down at them indifferently, but instead of aiming his reloaded rifle again, he looked back at Evelyn.

“Shall I count for you?”

“No need.”

Click!!

Evelyn replied, nocking an arrow onto the short bow strapped to her left forearm.

Her expression, which had been full of worry for Lennok, had now calmly settled.

“It’s the archer’s job to time it, isn’t it?”

Zing!!

The arrow, drawn and loosed from the bowstring, flew straight across hundreds of meters, shooting down towards the bottom of the cavern.

The arrow’s trajectory was not aimed at the superhumans currently dashing across the blocks towards them, but at the very bottom ground where they had just stood.

Superhumans who failed to match the block sequence and waited more than 10 seconds were forcibly transferred back to the ground.

“Huh?”

They were successively struck in the forehead by the arrow Evelyn had shot beforehand.

Puff-puff-puff!!

The latecomers collapsed without even a scream.

There was no time to search their pockets for additional information.

“For having arrived at the second gate first, their response was terrible. It seems their combat power isn’t as good as their scouting abilities.”

“Or maybe they just got lucky.”

“Anyway, it’s clear that other intruders are starting to arrive inside the cavern.”

“Right. I hear sounds.”

“……Sounds?”

Evelyn didn’t need to answer that.

Rat-a-tat-tat!!

Along with noisy footsteps from outside the cavern, loud roars began to erupt from the doors pierced all around.

CRASH!!

“Aaaargh!!”

“It’s the Kavahim Knight Order!!”

“Enolas Magic Tower is here too!!”

“These soldiers don’t even understand proper language, where the hell are they from?!”

“There’s only one woman here. She’s insanely strong… We might all die!!”

The silent cavern instantly became noisy, with shouts echoing continuously from all directions.

Although their methods of finding the path were all different, each was breaking through the real-time moving maze and approaching the second gate in their own way.

Whoosh!!

The first to arrive were not major military organizations like knight orders or liberation fronts.

Walking out from a door in the center of the cavern with quiet steps was a woman with a stiff, cold expression.

In one hand, she held an unidentified ball of fur, and in the other, the collar of an already dead body.

The moment Lennok’s face hardened at the strange magic rising from her entire body,

Maiya quickly looked around and met their gaze.

“Found you.”