Chapter 26: Exam (6)

The remaining mirror constructs shattered into harmless, glittering dust shortly after.

As the dense fog finally dissipated, the heavy silence in the obsidian chamber was broken only by the group’s ragged breathing. Oliver was already kneeling where Lily had vanished, staring at the empty stone floor with an expression of profound, theatrical grief.

"I wasn’t fast enough," Oliver muttered, slamming his fist against the ground.

"It wasn’t your fault," Ella said softly, walking over and placing a comforting hand on his armored shoulder. "She got caught off guard. You did everything you could to save her."

Rowan watched the exchange with cold, detached clarity. He said nothing. He knew better, even if he had been excluded from politics all his life he had common sense. He needed Oliver’s combat strength to reach the center of the Labyrinth, so he shoved the horrifying truth down into the pit of his stomach and kept his mouth shut.

A loud grinding noise drew their attention to the center of the room. The obsidian floor parted, and a heavy iron chest rose from the ground. Inside, resting on a bed of velvet, were twenty-five low-grade essence stones, five for each reflection they had defeated.

Oliver immediately stood up, his fake grief vanishing as he reached for the chest, opening his spatial bag to collect the bounty.

Before he could scoop them up, a hand reached in and snatched exactly five stones.

Oliver snapped his head up, his eyes narrowing at Tristan. The youngest Verneuil casually tossed the stones into his own leather satchel, ignoring the glare.

"Call it risk management," Tristan replied, offering a lazy shrug. "You’re the vanguard. If you take a fatal hit and get teleported out, your spatial bag teleports with you. I’d rather not lose all our points because you do something dumb."

"Have a little faith in our leader, Tristan," Ella scolded, clearly exhausted by the constant Northern bickering. She looked toward Rowan. "Right, Rowan?"

Rowan kept his face perfectly neutral. "I don’t mind either way. I don’t have a storage bag to hold my share anyway, so Oliver can carry it."

It was a calculated risk on Rowan’s part. He was deeply suspicious of Oliver, but he also knew how the exam’s rules worked. The stones were automatically divided among whoever made it to the center. Oliver was terrifyingly point-hungry and determined to pass; as long as Rowan stuck to him and made it to the exit, the system would enforce the split regardless of whose bag they were in.

Tristan didn’t argue further, just patting his satchel with a smirk, and the remaining twenty stones went into Oliver’s spatial pouch.

The moment they stepped out of the mirror room, the rippling glass doorway vanished behind them, replaced by solid limestone.

They had barely walked a dozen paces when a horrific sound tore through the Labyrinth. It started as a chorus of panicked shrieks, abruptly cut off by a deep, guttural roar that violently shook the dust from the ceiling. The sheer acoustic power behind it made Rowan’s enhanced eardrums ring.

"The Minotaur," Rowan whispered, his blood running cold. "It just caught another group."

"Then we need to move. Now," Oliver ordered, his previous arrogance entirely absent.

The next hour was a grueling, frantic blur. With the constant threat of the Fallen-class monster at their backs, they pushed their pace to a brutal march. They narrowly dodged a tripwire that unleashed a barrage of acid vials, fought off a pack of venomous cave-crawlers, and navigated a series of shifting floor tiles. Slowly but steadily, they accumulated more essence stones.

Rowan’s perception skill proved invaluable, keeping them out of the worst ambushes, but his essence reserves were beginning to run dangerously low.

Their strangest encounter came when they stumbled into a circular chamber guarded by two identical stone statues of knights. Behind each statue was a swirling portal.

An inscription on the floor read in ancient text: ’One speaks only truth, one speaks only lies. One path leads to fortune, the other to the fangs of the Strays. You may ask one question.’

Ella and Oliver immediately started debating the logic puzzle, trying to formulate the perfect paradox question to trick the statues.

Tristan didn’t even slow down. He completely ignored the statues, pointed at the left portal, and said, "That one."

Before anyone could stop him, he walked straight through. The group panicked and scrambled after him, only to find themselves in a tiny alcove containing a pedestal with a pile of essence stones.

"How did you know?" Ella gasped, scooping them up.

"Lucky guess," Tristan lied effortlessly. Then, he turned and pointed back toward the other portal. "Alright, now let’s go into the other one."

Rowan stared at him. "The inscription literally said the other one leads to monsters."

"Exactly," Tristan grinned, his eyes gleaming with greedy pragmatism. "Monsters drop points. Why solve the riddle when we can just loot both rooms? It’s free essence."

Rowan wasn’t sure if violently brute-forcing the logic puzzle was how the Academy proctors intended the exam to be taken, but Oliver, ever hungry for points, agreed instantly. They stormed the second portal, slaughtered the waiting pack of Stray-class dire wolves, collected the drops, and moved on.

Their luck finally ran out three corridors after the statue puzzle.

Rowan’s essence reserves were scraping the absolute bottom of his core, forcing his enhanced perception to flicker and dim. Because of that lapse, he didn’t spot the slightly elevated limestone tile until it was too late.

Oliver’s heavy armored boot came down on the pressure plate with a sickening ’click’.

"Down!" Rowan screamed.

The walls on either side of the narrow corridor abruptly retracted, revealing rows of glowing, crimson runic arrays. A deafening roar filled the tunnel as twin torrents of white-hot, superheated flames blasted out from the walls, crossing paths to incinerate everything in the hallway.

"Shield!" Oliver yelled, diving backward.

Ella thrust both of her hands forward, crying out from the strain as she commanded her sand golem to step directly into the crossfire. The hulking, six-foot construct threw its massive arms wide, acting as a physical barricade against the inferno.

The heat was agonizing. Rowan shielded his face with his cloak, coughing as the ambient air in the corridor flash-fried his lungs. He could see the pure, blinding fire washing over the sand golem, sustained for ten agonizing seconds before the runic arrays finally clicked off and the walls slid back into place.

When the smoke finally cleared, Rowan stared at the vanguard in horror. It was no longer a golem. The extreme, supernatural temperature of the trap had completely flash-melted the condensed sand. It now stood as a twisted, translucent statue of solid, glowing-orange glass, radiating waves of blistering heat.

As the cool cavern air hit it, the glass cracked loudly, freezing the construct in place forever.

"Well," Tristan muttered, wiping sweat from his soot-stained forehead. "That’s a lovely piece of modern art."

"I can’t move it," Ella gasped, collapsing against the stone wall and clutching her chest. She held up her hands, trying to summon another, but only a few pathetic grains of sand trickled from her fingers. "I’m out. My core is completely empty."

The group slumped against the walls of the safe zone, taking a desperate, enforced break.

Rowan leaned his head back, closing his eyes. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest. Around him, the heavy panting of the others confirmed they were all in the same boat. Worse, his ears were still working. Somewhere in the distance, another agonizing scream echoed through the stone, violently cut short by a guttural roar.

The Minotaur was still hunting. And it was gaining ground.

Rowan forced himself to tune back into the team’s hushed arguing. Oliver had dumped his spatial pouch onto the floor and was rapidly counting their haul, completely ignoring Ella’s exhaustion.

"Eighty-seven," Oliver stated, his eyes gleaming with point-hunger. He looked up at Tristan. "How many did you steal from the chest?"

"Five," Tristan replied lazily, taking a sip from a waterskin.

Rowan did the mental math. Ninety-two stones. If they survived to the center, it would round out to roughly twenty-three stones per person. It was a massive haul, easily enough to guarantee all of them a high placement in the entrance exams.

The real issue was surviving long enough to cash them in.

"Without the golem, we have a structural problem," Oliver stated, packing the stones away and standing up. He looked between Rowan and Tristan. "I cannot take point. If I step on a paralyzing trap or take a heavy hit, we lose our main strike force and the stone carrier."

Rowan narrowed his eyes, reading the subtle, nervous twitch in Oliver’s jaw.

’This guy just doesn’t want to be the meat shield.’

What to do now.