Infinite Realm

"Another dead. *sigh*"

A sigh rang out in a dimly lit room that had only one entrance. The room was empty, with no sign of prior habitation. There was no furniture or even windows; save for the door behind, there was nothing worth noting in here. At the other end of the room was a point covered in pitch-black darkness but with the aid of the weak light scattered throughout the room, one could make out the shadow of a wall there.

A figure was standing within the room, just in front of the door, seeming a bit disappointed at the fruitless findings.

It had been 18 hours or so since Sato's second challenge had begun. During these hours, Sato had yet to experience much; apart from finding dead ends and junctions.

After he had extricated himself from the corridor from before, Sato had come into contact with one of those junctions and this one had a total of 7 different entrances that looked equally similar and exuded the same aura. The only thing that made them "different" from each other was their position.

Starting from left to right, the holes arranged themselves beside each other like eerie portals. Even when he stood before all 7 holes, Sato hadn't been able to spot a difference between them. Eventually, he had chosen the 2nd one from the right. 

As he kept going forward, however, Sato had encountered similar forks and junctions to the point that if not for him recording his path with the aid of the system interface, Sato would have gotten lost or maybe gone mad. This was because the entire corridors and paths in the labyrinth looked exactly the same. There would always be that exact number of paths in a junction(7) making it seem as if he had walked in circles. 

If one's willpower or fortitude were weak, they would be overly anxious at their situation, not knowing whether to move forward or retreat. Added with the fact that the mission had a duration but didn't display one's progress, it would be a lie to say that Sato wasn't a bit anxious.

Even when Sato didn't experience the 'repeating roads', he would either encounter dead zones like the one before him or just be led around on a single trail for more than an hour before finding a fork[1].

Sato had previously gone through a lot of similar places like this one since the start of his 18 hours-long exploration, leading to him feeling slightly exhausted. That added with the anxiety he got from not knowing his progress, lead to him having an almost spiritless look. Nonetheless, Sato tried to keep himself calm, in order to prevent a mental breakdown, while still pushing forward despite the aura of despair and seemingly hopeless journey. 

In the beginning, Sato didn't hope to be able to find the exit but planned to be within range of it. In other words, he was looking for a pass rather than an excellent rating. This was because Sato already knew his abilities and he figured out that the challenges within this trial wouldn't be so easily resolved. But with all the roads looking the same, Sato's confidence in being able to pass began to waver.

"There's no use thinking about it. I've already gone quite deep so who knows, maybe I'm actually close to the end." Sato thought out loud as he turned around to exit the chamber.

Suddenly, from within the darkness at the edge of the room, a pair of forest green eyes came to life. Within the pupils of the image was Sato's departing back. 

At a speed slightly above Sato's walking pace, the green eyes approached him but Sato seemed to be ignorant of it. Even as the owner of the eyes steeped from the shadows, a strange layer of darkness seemed to wrap itself around it, blocking the creature from being spotted. Since the room was dimly lit to start with, it was difficult to spot this absurdity.

As the owner of the green pair of eyes got within 2 metres of Sato, a flash erupted from its eyes as a claw appeared from that layer of darkness that wrapped itself around the creature. The claw was fast, almost like a fleeting shadow, and struck out at Sato.

"Hmph."

Sato rolled forwards just as the claw was about to get a hold of him, dodging it by a hair's breadth.

After Sato had rolled forward, creating a 2 metres space between him and his assailant, he suddenly turned back and threw out an object he had taken from his space bag.

*Bang*

As the object was in mid-air, just a few feet from the looming shadow, it exploded violently, releasing a blinding surge of light that covered the entire room.

[Flash grenade]

The bright surge of light lit up the entire room for 3 seconds. During those three seconds, the brilliant light behind was too strong to the point that Sato couldn't look at it. He lifted his left arm and used it to shield his eyes as his head dropped low.

Just as the 3 seconds count was about to be done, with the flash intensity dropping, Sato noticed that it wasn't just one figure that had tried to attack him but 3. 

Apart from the figure that tried to kill him, 2 other strange creatures stood at his right and left-hand side respectively. If not for the timely explosion of the flash grenade, the 2 other monsters would have joined hands together with the first one such that even if Sato had blocked its attacks, he wouldn't have been able to react to the other two.

"That was close…"

The only reason Sato managed to notice the monster was due to the killing intent it leaked out at the last moment. Otherwise, he would have been a goner.

Upon realizing this, cold sweat swept through his back as Sato didn't hesitate to run back towards the entrance after dropping off a comment.

There were 3 monsters and 1 Sato. Considering the difficulty of the trial alongside his past opponents, Sato presumed that the monsters were between level 9 Elite rank to level 10 Elite rank. If it were a one-on-one battle then it could be said that Sato stood a chance against them as long as it wasn't stronger than a level 10 Common rank. But facing 3 such monsters alone, even if they were level 9 Elites, was nothing short of suicide. Sato barely understood the terrain enough and his goal wasn't to kill monsters but to find the exit. If he spent all his time facing off against monsters, he would inevitably fail the trial. Unless when necessary, Sato planned to avoid fighting any monster unless he can take it down in seconds. If that wasn't possible, then he would simply retreat. Even if it seemed cowardly to do so, Sato didn't care. Surviving and passing the trials was more important than showing off his skills to a few monsters.

The flash died down as the 3 monsters regained their sight. Without attempting to do anything else, the 3 figures chased right after Sato, who happened to have gone quite a distance already.

"Awooo!"

"Awoo!"

Continuous ghostly howls blared from behind Sato. Despite having made the move first, the monsters had almost caught up to him and Sato was at risk of getting killed.

He was indeed right.

Just a couple of metres behind him, 3 eerie dark patches of fog sped towards him like meteors. The aura they exuded was the same as the 3 monsters in the dark room.

Nonetheless, Sato didn't lose his composure but kept a calm and collected face as he analyzed his various escape routes.

As things stood, Sato couldn't retreat to the path he had followed. This was because at the time of his escape, he simply chose the closest path before him and that happened to be one of the unexplored corridors he had yet to go through. In a bid to escape the pursuit of the 3 monsters, Sato had taken this path.

While there didn't seem to be any problem with this, there was. This was the fact that since Sato had yet to explore here, he couldn't be sure of what to expect. Chances were that he would either end up lost, encounter a dead end, or even worse, come across another monster. Getting lost was the least of his worries as the other two possibilities would mean that Sato would likely up dead. 

There was also the probability that Sato would lose the monsters on his way since the labyrinth was filled with so many different routes. This was the possibility Sato hoped for the most.

'There!' 

Sato suddenly came across a junction and just like the previous ones, it diverged into 7 separate courses. He hadn't noticed it on time due to the poor lighting but as he came close to it, the 7 entrances exposed themselves like the maws of a demonic beast. There was nothing but pitch-black darkness within them and Sato couldn't make out what was hidden there.

In actuality though, the darkness wasn't really real. The [Labyrinth of Helios] seemed to entail a specific rule that limited the vision of anyone within to a certain radius. It may look like up ahead there was no source of light, but as one would get closer, the area would mysteriously brighten up as if the light was naturally existing. This was very mysterious because there was no visible source of light anywhere; be it a lit candle, an opening to the skies, or maybe a luminous gem, there were none. The light just existed and was spread apart in all directions at equal intensity, concentration, frequency, and similar color. Because of this, it was impossible to spot the origin of the light unless the light originated from every spot.

Without any consideration or deliberation, Sato hurtled towards the one by the extreme left. Since he couldn't see the interior of the entrances, he decided to go with his guts and randomly chose a direction.

'Hopefully, I can get rid of these guys.' 

Was Sato's last thought before he went in.