episode_0174

CLXVI.

Daedalus ascended to the intermediate level of the Demon Race and added restrictions in exchange for favorable conditions for Labyrinthos.

This means that you are restricted from entering the labyrinth.

Then how did we end up facing Gray and his group now, or more precisely, inside the Labyrinth?

To find out why, let’s go back in time for a moment to just before Nitas disappeared.

As mentioned before, Daedalus’ Labyrinth is a labyrinth that even the highest level demons, as well as the upper level demons, fear or are reluctant to enter.

It’s hard to get them into the labyrinth, but if they can just get them in, that is, if Daedalus swallows them, then we can say that Daedalus has won almost 90% of the time.

However, even with this masterpiece called Daedalus, the reason he did not carelessly swallow the highest level demons or the upper level demons was because the powers of the demons were so bizarre.

Usually, when aiming for the upper or top tier, you would wait for an opportunity, consider many variables, and aim for it, and you would even swallow one of the upper tier demons that way.

Above all, unlike in the middle or lower levels, if you really rush in with the intention of killing someone in the upper level, it can lead to a serious situation.

For example, something like targeting the heart like we are doing now.

“Fuck! F*ck! Aaaahhh! It sucks aaah! ”

Daedalus caused a commotion for a while in an empty room, spewing out magical energy in all directions.

“I know! Me too! It’s a shame. It’s a shame!”

He answered like that, shouting in the room where he was alone, as if he was talking to another personality.

After being outraged for a while, he sighed deeply, perhaps out of exhaustion or resignation, then clasped his fingers together, straightened his palm, and stabbed himself in the chest.

Phew!

Daedalus put his hand where the heart would be, seemed to grab something, and then pulled it out.

There was no blood-stained, pulsating heart or grotesque splattering of blood, because what Daedalus took out of the chest was not something like a heart.

What Daedalus was holding in his hand was a brown lump of dirt. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was something brown that looked like a lump of dirt.

A lump of dirt the size of a child’s head continued to move, churning.

“Fuck. Labyrinth is so useless… … .”

He said this while looking at a clump of dirt moving around. It was called a labyrinth.

“Fuck you!!”

Daedalus let out a howl that was either a scream, a yell, or annoyance, and grabbed the clump of dirt that was writhing and moving in his hand.

Instead of putting the heart into the labyrinth, the labyrinth took the place of the heart.

Rather, it was only after reaching a higher level that he was able to shrink to such a small size and add subspaces inside. Before that, he had to build a labyrinth under the ground of the Demon World and work to lure his enemies into it.

Instead, he never had a moment of peace, as he was always on guard against any chance that another demon would harm Labyrinth, his structure and the center of his power.

However, after he was able to put it in his body and shrink it, he started to stir up trouble in the demon world.

I was proud, confident, and thought I could be cocky.

He was destroying that labyrinth with his own hands.

The reason is,

“You have to live first.”

This is because the survival instinct, which can be said to be a racial characteristic of the Demon Tribe, has been activated.

Because I have to live first.

So Daedalus destroyed the Labyrinth with his own hands.

The Labyrinth is initially in the form of a building. Whenever a strong being is swallowed, it tends to turn the labyrinth into a mess. Every time that happens, the labyrinth needs repairs.

But Daedalus imposed a restriction that he could not enter the Labyrinth. So what about repairs?

For such an event, he built the Labyrinth, a dungeon that could be turned on and off.

However, if there is food inside like now, a problem occurs, as if you were to put chopsticks between the blades of a hard-spinning fan and stop it.

The problem here was that the Labyrinth had to be completely rebuilt.

But Daedalus had no choice.

Because I couldn’t just sit here and die.

That is why Gray and Daedalus are now facing each other.

In fact, the funny thing here is that Daedalus had no intention of meeting Gray and his group face to face.

Isn’t that obvious?

He is not a demon specialized in combat.

I was going to take only the heart and leave. The moment I took the heart out, the people inside the labyrinth would escape, but that was a problem to think about later.

However, it is not a simple process where you can just pick up the heart and put it in your chest. The process of separating the heart from the labyrinth and placing it in the body also took quite some time.

It should have definitely taken them longer to get here.

But before Daedalus could separate the heart from the labyrinth, Gray and his party appeared before him.

“Fucking human babies.”

“Hey~. Hello!”

Gray greets Daedalus, whose face is mostly covered by his flowing hair, by raising his hand as if he is greeting a friend he hasn’t seen in a long time.

“How… … . Damn it.”

“. You really look like a human. Nice to meet you. I mean. You can’t even imagine how much I’ve missed you. I really, really, really, really missed you. My friend. ”

Gray was smiling with both his mouth and eyes, so much so that anyone who saw him would have thought he was saying this out of genuine joy.

Daedalus couldn’t hide his expression of incomprehension at Gray’s welcoming greeting.

“What? Why?”

“Why is why? You have to decide how to torment them based on what they look like. If they have four arms, you should grind three of them, and grind the remaining one slowly and sparingly as much as possible.”

“You crazy bastard.”

“Thanks for the compliment. But I won’t let you see it. Clown.”

“Yeah! Honey!”

“Shut up!!!”

Daedalus’ voice, as he shouted briefly while spreading both palms out in front of him, was filled with earnest sincerity.

“What is it?”

So much so that Gray responded to that brief cry.

“Let’s fight fair. Just wait 2 minutes.”

Gray and the Arcana’s faces become strangely distorted, as if they had eaten a candy that tasted like poop.

It’s ridiculous that the devil’s little brat would even say the word “upright and fair,” and then he asks us to wait for two minutes with such confidence.

“Really? Hmm. Well, then I guess there’s nothing I can do.”

“Yes. If you are the hero of the continent, the candidate chosen by the gods, then you should act properly.”

“Yeah. No.”

“What?!”

“Clown, cut that thing in a few places. Where is he talking nonsense with a human face?”

“Yeah~. Honey~.”

The clown disappeared with the liveliest voice he had heard since entering the labyrinth. Then he appeared behind Daedalus, holding up his bloody side.

“Okay, sleep… bang!”

Before Daedalus could even finish his desperate cry for a moment, he was hit by the clown’s ‘Myeongjonsae’ and let out a suffocating scream.

“Ah, di, reul, ja, reul, ka, yo, goal, la, ju, se, yo, ding, dong, dang! Hohohoho. First, one arm.”

Sigh―.

Daedalus’ left arm fell off, making a sound similar to the sound of the wind blowing past your ear on a windy day. The arm of a high-ranking demon.

and,

“What is this? What is so weak about this?”

As if he thought he would avoid it, the clown looked at Daedalus, whose arm had been cut off, and did not hesitate to say the words that would kill him twice.

“You couldn’t avoid this? You didn’t avoid it?”

“Ugh!”

“What? Are you crying?”

“No!!”

Gray and the other Arcana members couldn’t hide their bewilderment at Daedalus’ unexpected reaction.

but,

“This is strange, my lord.”

Only the Arcana Pope, the woman Gray called Hwang, was looking at the situation seriously.

“Yeah. That’s weird. He’s like a demon, but he’s not a demon, he’s a fucking demon.”

“Yes. That’s strange too, but… … .”

“Huh? That too? Is there anything else?”

“That. It doesn’t feel like a demon at all.”

Only then did the faces of Gray and the other Arcana harden at Hwang Yi’s point.

There is no feeling of a demon.

This cannot simply be interpreted as saying that one was good at disguising oneself or that one was good at camouflaging.

Because in this place, there are not only the Arcana, but also the leader of the Caligo sect and a fanatic of the god.

Gray’s gaze naturally turned to Pope Judas.

“Hmm… … .”

Gray’s face hardens and becomes serious as he looks at Pope Judah with anticipation.

If even the Jewish Pope had failed to find it, it would have been a very serious problem.

“I can’t feel any magic at all.”

Everyone’s faces became serious. The fact that the Demon Clan couldn’t sense magic was a truly serious problem.

It is understandable that Gray and his party have serious expressions on their faces.

But the reason Daedalus looks more serious than Gray and his group is not simply because death is imminent.

Rather, Daedalus was more surprised than Gray and his companions by the statement, ‘The demons do not sense magic energy.’

‘Damn it!! I can’t let this get out.’

It was something they absolutely could not have been caught doing. The fact that they were wearing human skin like this.

The power of Tegus, which could deceive even the Seraphim, who were called messengers of God, was so highly secretive that it was specially managed in the Demon World.

‘These lowly humans arrived too quickly! No, no. That’s not important right now… … .’

Daedalus glanced around, observing the troubled expressions of the humans.

‘I can’t help it. I’ll die cleanly. But I won’t die alone!’

And I strengthened my resolve.

This information was serious enough to make the Demon Clan, who valued their own safety more than anyone else, decide on their own death.

‘Labyrinth.’

A labyrinth that was forcibly shut down.

Daedalus briefly let out his thoughts as he called out the true name of the labyrinth, which was his masterpiece and his alter ego.

Daedalus thought that even while he was building the device, his mouth felt bitter until the moment he actually started operating it.

‘Self-destruct code activated.’

Crunch!

As Daedalus had intended, an eerie sound effect of locks locking together echoed throughout the labyrinth.

“Khahahaha. Let’s all die! Let’s die together!!”

Daedalus let out a triumphant laugh.

Ddd …

As the floor of the labyrinth shook violently as if an earthquake had occurred, and Daedalus waited for his imminent death with uncharacteristic ease,

“See? What did I say?”

Gray’s calm voice, completely out of place in this situation, cut through the noise and entered Daedalus’ ears.

“Didn’t you say that was just another brain teaser?”

It was a tone of speech that was so calm that it felt even more eerie to Daedalus.

“Yeah! As expected, oppa is amazing!”

At the sound of the lively young girl’s voice, Daedalus instinctively turned his head there.

And there he saw a scene he found almost unbelievable.

“Am I already… … . dead?”

It’s so hard to believe that you might be dead and seeing a dream-like illusion.

Hand of the fox tribe.

In those small, white hands, Daedalus held his heart, which was the purpose of his visit to this place and the core of the Labyrinth.