Chapter 342: The Missing Checkpoint

Aurelia looked down at the Golden Behemoth beneath her sword. For a moment, she had nothing to say.

"I don’t think this one needs it anymore."

The first Behemoth was barely clinging to life. Cassian’s army had four fighters at or near Mythic strength and more than a hundred Legendary Nine-Stars. Their concentrated attacks had almost finished it before her sword was ready.

Sylvara smiled.

"Then take the next one."

She turned the control team’s spells on a second Golden Behemoth. The moment its movements slowed, Aurelia’s blade fell.

The ten-meter edge passed through it without stopping.

Two halves of an enormous golden body crashed to the ground.

Gasps rose around the battlefield.

"That’s a Grade-A skill at Transcendence?"

An Extreme troop with more than half a million Physique, killed in one strike.

Aurelia smiled at their expressions.

"Skyblade Descent takes time to cast. I can barely move while preparing it, and it isn’t a flexible attack. If it didn’t make up for that in power, it wouldn’t deserve to be Grade A."

The others could hardly argue with that.

[Your Hero Aurelia Dawnwing has slain a Golden Behemoth.]

[Battle Essence +18,000,000 | Aether +800,000.]

[Troop Sigil: Golden Behemoth — Legendary ×1.]

[Legendary Chest ×2 | Advanced Physique Tome ×1 | Advanced Aether Tome ×1.]

More items followed. Cassian’s enthusiasm rose with every line.

"Keep going! This is exactly what we came for!"

He had chosen an Orc Domain with Golden Behemoths partly because he could clear it quickly. The Sigils mattered more.

Ordinary Legendary Sigils were easy enough to buy now. Aether was no longer an obstacle to those purchases. Extreme troops were another matter.

Even an ordinary Behemoth was Legendary. Its balanced attributes made it a different prospect entirely. Buying its Sigil would not give him a Golden Behemoth.

If Darian could gather several hundred of these monsters, what an army that would be.

Within ten minutes, all twelve Golden Behemoths and the six Legendary Orc Heroes were dead. The higher-Level enemies gave a welcome boost to the drop rate. Cassian obtained a second Golden Behemoth Sigil among the rewards.

The ordinary loot scarcely held his attention anymore.

Half an hour later, the last Orc troops fell. Their city collapsed with a rolling crash.

"Another sixty million points and three billion Battle Essence." Cassian grinned. "Wonderful."

And those were only two parts of the harvest.

With Divine Dragon Amber helping his drops, every city offered a small fortune. A dozen or more Legendary fighters and hundreds of Epics could yield seven or eight thousand Legendary items between them.

His warehouses already held hundreds of thousands of Legendary items. The Epic stock had passed a million.

He had no immediate use for most of it. That did nothing to spoil the pleasure of watching it pile up.

This time, he kept the points and led his forces back to the Domain to recover their Aether.

With his stronger army, Cassian cleared thirteen Domains in the twenty-sixth stage. Sixteen Extreme Troop Sigils joined his inventory before he moved on to the twenty-seventh checkpoint.

——

Several days later, another city fell.

[Thirtieth checkpoint cleared. Labyrinth Points +5,000,000,000.]

[Find and destroy the thirty-first checkpoint within 24 hours. Failure will end this attempt and return you to the Human Hall.]

The Domains beyond stage twenty-six had remained Rank XIX, but each stage had been harder than the last.

One squad of Legendary troops had become three. By the thirtieth stage, even those troops were Four-Star or higher.

After stage twenty-eight, Cassian had stopped choosing cities with Extreme troops. He had paid for Dragon’s Blessing, and Liora had drawn on her Abyssal Grimoire to unleash Demonic Calamity.

He had even considered using Bramrik. A Peace Strike would have filled hundreds of kilometers of passage with destructive power, making the route nearly useless afterward. The Peacebringer remained in reserve.

The points earned over those days had gone straight into Battle Essence. Cassian bought the necessary Souls and advanced more of his existing Legendary troops to Nine-Star, turning each victory into strength for the next.

Even that had not made the thirtieth checkpoint easy.

During the battle, he had paid the Blood Chalice’s costs to call all six Blood Emperors. Their hour of service helped break the defenders, but the entire siege still took five hours. More than a hundred of his troops had died.

"Five billion points. Just as I thought..."

A trace of regret crept into his satisfaction.

If he had known how sharply the rewards rose after stage twenty, he would have brought Darian, Elara, Nessa, and Seraphine with him. Let a few more of his secrets show. It would have been worth it.

Each of them could have earned more than ten billion points. Exchanged for Battle Essence, that would support thousands more main combat troops apiece.

There was no changing his choice now. Cassian put the thought aside and studied the dark passage revealed behind the ruined city.

"Thirty-one. How many stages does this place have?"

His brow furrowed.

"If the pattern from twenty-one to thirty holds, the next checkpoint could be a Rank-XX Domain. Level-105 troops..."

Even he might have reached his limit.

"We’ll see if there’s a weak target first. Otherwise, this is as far as we go." He sighed. "A pity I haven’t found a Mythic opponent."

Legendary items were overflowing from his warehouses. What he lacked were Mythic drops. Even a piece of equipment would be welcome.

Several minutes passed.

"Seven? Nothing yet?"

"No checkpoint within two thousand kilometers along any of the three passages, Lord."

Cassian’s expression changed.

The narrow, twisting passages interfered with the Echo Crystal Bats’ sonar to some extent. Even so, the distance between checkpoints had never been more than a few hundred kilometers.

Two thousand without finding anything?

An idea struck him.

"Are we near the end?"

His eyes brightened.

"Perhaps the thirty-first checkpoint is the Labyrinth’s final boss."

Mythic.

The possibility was enough to make him eager again.

"Seven, Eight, Nine. Take one passage each and keep scouting. Everyone else, back to the Domain. Recover your Aether. Then we’ll clear more cities in the thirtieth stage."

Rhea looked toward him.

"Lord, we lost too many troops in that last battle. Clearing more of these cities will cost more than we gain."

A hundred fallen Level-85 troops represented over thirty billion Battle Essence. Even counting the points at their exchange value, a thirtieth-stage city brought in only a little over ten billion.

Every additional battle could swallow tens of billions from his reserves.

"I know." Cassian nodded. "But I doubt the next checkpoint will be easy to find."

He was right.

The three scouts traveled more than ten thousand kilometers along their routes. All three passages ended in solid walls.

Cassian had already begun attacking a city on another route.

Eighteen hours later, he had destroyed three more thirtieth-stage Domains at a net loss of fifty billion Battle Essence. One had belonged to the Divines. The premium Aether Crystals he supplied to Godslayer kept the Battle Name active, and its doubled effect against that race had spared him an even greater loss.

Beyond those three cities lay nine more passages.

Every one was a dead end.

The countdown reached zero.

[Progression failed. You will now leave the Thousandfold Labyrinth and return to the Human Hall.]

[You may exchange for a Prism Bridge and reenter through the Labyrinth entrance within 24 hours. After 24 hours, your challenge will end.]

Cassian’s face remained calm. Inside, his concern was growing.

At this rate, he might spend all his Battle Essence and time before he even found the possible Mythic boss, let alone killed it.

"Let’s hope there’s more than one route to stage thirty-one."

Otherwise, he could be facing three to the thirtieth power in possible passages. Even an Eternal would never finish searching them all.