episode_0021

21. Mentoring Program (7)

“Hello Cain!”

“Oh, sister, are you here?”

“Hello, Brother Cain!”

“…….”

On the morning of the day I applied to explore the labyrinth, I met Tanya’s party near the tier movement hall in the center of the labyrinth city.

Just like yesterday, Robin and Tanya were so close together that they looked like a couple, and Roy was staring intently at the parchment I had given him.

Tanya didn’t have any luggage, and Roy and Robin were carrying backpacks and putting on their gear, dividing up the stuff they bought yesterday. All three of them were shining brightly.

Tanya was wearing a light robe over her regular attire, as I had advised her yesterday; Roy seemed to be going to be the vanguard, as he was carrying a large shield and a club on his waist; and Robin was equipped with a one-handed sword and a buckler.

All together, it would have cost 1 gold to equip it?

“Mr. Robin? You didn’t bring your helmet?”

“Haha, it’s only 1st level, so a helmet is uncomfortable. It also blocks the view.”

“What about Mr. Roy?”

“…”

Both were wearing decent breastplates and greaves, but Tanya and all three were not wearing helmets.

And since Tanya took a step back yesterday, Robin’s guard has been lowered considerably and he’s starting to treat me more comfortably.

“But… Brother Cain, oh… Can I call you brother? What’s the burden…”

“Oh, in our party, I also act as a porter.”

“….”

“Really? Cain must be strong~”

Molkang-

Tanya, who had been forcibly gathering her non-existent breasts, came over to me and clung to my arm, rubbing her breasts while looking up at me and saying something meaningful.

Wink!

If it was the first time I saw him, Robin would have been a bit more restrained, but it’s strange to see him not saying anything… First, I have to go to the labyrinth and look into the relationship between the three of them a bit more.

“Then let’s wait until noon and go in.”

“Question! Cain, why do I have to wait until noon?”

I guess you didn’t hear anything during actual training.

“I usually go in around noon to make it easier to calculate the time.”

“Aha?”

“Mr. Roy? Did you bring the sandglasses I bought yesterday?”

“Ah…yes.”

Roy, who had been looking at the parchment at my words, instinctively pulled up his waist to show me four-hour, eight-hour, and twelve-hour hourglasses hanging from it.

“Then shall we grab a quick bite to eat and go?”

“Okay! Roy~”

“..uh…uh, got it!”

Naturally, I stood on Tanya’s left, Robin on her right, and Roy took the lead in front as we quickly finished eating at a nearby street stall.

Of course, Roy did the calculations too.

And around noon, in front of the entrance to the hierarchy transfer hall, the three of them stood with their mouths wide open in surprise.

“Wow… It’s huge even from far away. Cain, if we go in here now, is it a labyrinth?”

“Okay…”

“…gulp!!”

“First, you have to enter the portal inside and enter the layer to enter the labyrinth. Should we say that this is the border between the city and the labyrinth?”

The dome-shaped structure, called the Hierarchy Movement Hall, was a simple structure with a large arched entrance on the north side, a gray-white dome-shaped structure roughly the size of Sangam World Cup Stadium.

The entrance was about 20 to 30 meters wide and 10 meters high, so there was no significant inconvenience even if many people came and went.

“Then shall we go in?”

“Oh…it’s scary…”

“Nothing much, sis. Eat comfortably. Mr. Roy, please return the hourglass.”

“Ah… Yes!”

“Brother…”

When we were all nervous about entering the labyrinth, all three of us panicked and spun the hourglasses on our waists.

at that time.

“Eeee!!!!”

“Joe…Joewell!!!”

“Damn it! You freak!!”

A group of people who appeared to be returning from exploring inside passed us and exited towards the city. A dark red aura flowed out from one of the men and he began to scream.

“Cain! What…what is that..?”

Tanya, startled by a sudden scream from next to her, trembles and clings close to me.

“Ah, I was about to explain that, so that’s good. When you cross from the hall to the city, if a dark red light comes out of your body like that, you have a strange phenomenon. But…..”

Thud thud!!!

“Kkaaa …

“No!!! Honey!!!!”

“Mitchell no!! That’s!!!”

The man’s body fell to the floor with a terrible sound, inflating and deflating repeatedly as if a balloon was being filled and deflated.

“Eeeeek!!!”

“Tongue…brother…is that?”

“Ah, there’s no answer to that even if you go to church….Ouch….”

The worst quirk among quirks, the one that requires the most unlucky of all, the demonization, was unfolding in real time before our eyes.

I’ve only heard of such an oddity in the Labyrinth City for two years, but this is the first time I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I tried my best to act calm in front of the newbies, but it’s terrifying.

Among the party members, a woman who appeared to be his lover tried to approach the man while sobbing despite the other party members trying to stop her.

“Just a moment, let me check.”

The man was dragged out by both arms by the security guards who came near after hearing the noise, and the security guards began to surround the fallen man.

“Haaa.. No, go to the church.. If you go to the church!!! I can save you, please!!!!”

The woman who was dragged out struggles to shake off the people and holds on to the leg of a man who appears to be a police officer’s superior, pleading.

“Confirmed demonization. Deal with it.”

“”””Yes! “”””

Choaaaah!!!

“Kwaaaa …

Soon, the man’s outer skin, which had been swelling, bursts like a balloon and transforms into a grotesque creature of enormous size.

And then the police officers who were confronting him stab the man with their spears.

“No!!! Noeeek!!!!!”

Phew!!!

puck!!

Phew!!

Phew!!!

“Keeek!!!”

The woman’s screams and the man’s screams of pain as he becomes a monster echo for a moment, and then the monster collapses.

“Call the rookies and the processing team, and return the rest to their original positions.”

“”””Original location!!!””◦””

Among the several security guards, the one who looks the most confused runs towards the aid station while the rest return to their waiting positions near the entrance to the tier transfer hall.

“Ugh….ugh!!”

“Oh my… crazy…”

“…..!!”

Tanya, who was watching the scene from close range, started to feel nauseous, and Roy and Robin’s faces also turned pale.

“Oh my, I’ve only heard about it for 2 years, but there’s such a weirdness.”

“Ka…Kain.. I..That?”

“Ah, if you’re really unlucky, you’ll get this quirk. Other quirks can be removed at the shelter, and some are as mild as bad habits, so don’t worry too much. ”

“What?”

“And the quirk doesn’t appear every time you go to the labyrinth. It only happens once in a while if you’re really unlucky. So that person is like being struck by lightning out of the blue.”

“….”

A female explorer and her colleagues stood with sobbing expressions, hugging the remains of her boyfriend, now reduced to a piece of meat.

At that moment, three masked men carrying a large box that looked like a coffin on their backs slowly approached the corpse of the man who had turned into a monster.

They were the processing team people.

“No!!! Let go of our Jowell… Jowell!!!”

“Calm down, Mitchell….”

When a man who appears to be the party leader and another female companion try to get the dead explorer’s lover off the woman’s body by clinging to her body, they all do not budge, perhaps because they are all on a similar level.

After a long struggle, the party leader’s eyes met with those of one of the dispatchers, and the party leader nodded with a frown.

Then one of the dispatchers walked up behind the female explorer and stuck a needle into her neck.

Phew!

“Ouch!”

dump!

The woman rolls her eyes, falls down, and reaches out her hand to the party leader.

“Hoo…..”

Jjang-

The impressed leader took a silver coin out of his pocket and handed it to the processing team, and the rest of the processing team started collecting it.

When the body dies larger than a person and cannot fit into a single coffin, they cut the body into pieces and place them evenly in boxes, then pour a potion onto the blood-stained floor.

Cheeek-

A strong smell came out along with the sound of blood and flesh dissolving, and soon the floor became clean.

The processing team members who finished their work slowly disappeared in the direction of the relief center.

“What…what was that just now?”

“Ah… They’re called the disposal squad. They’re the people who collect the bodies of explorers who die when a murder occurs in the city or when they cause a ruckus due to a monster-like quirk.”

“That…is that so?”

“By the way, since the volume is large, I cut it into pieces and take it with me.”

When I turned my head, Roy’s face was pale and he was shaking all over, but Tanya and Robin were more fine than I thought?

The moment I turned my head, Tanya and Robin exchanged glances and smiled.

‘ah…..!’

Tanya, who is the party leader but seems to have no knowledge of the labyrinth, Roy, who acts as if he is being dragged there against his will, and Robin, who spends a lot of money on new equipment and keeps it all tidied up… as if he is telling Roy to look at Tanya, openly teasing her.

However, seeing Roy as someone who cannot rebel, or rather cannot even think about rebelling, a rough picture is formed.

I remember a sister who in her past life tried to get her husband to kill her and then persuaded him to remarry her.

Even though I took the dark evolution route of breaking off an engagement and then eating married women, I was a bit hesitant to go as far as murder… so I took a step back, but when I saw her get caught trying to have an affair with another man, I knew she would do that.

The smiles Tanya and Robin were giving each other now were similar to the smiles my older sister used to give me back then.

If this is the case… I have to save Roy even more. Wouldn’t it be better to live with Tanya taken away from me rather than being defeated unjustly?