Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken (LN) - Volume 13 - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH

I do remember saying something like “Give your all,” yes. Don’t worry. I’m not losing my marbles yet. It’s only been around three years since I was reincarnated, even. No need to worry about that.

But still…

As I watched the big screen, I began to wonder if those words were really mine after all. Did I really say that? After all, the screen was showing my army pretty much kicking everyone’s ass out there. Which is great. Super. No problems there. But the content was just too much to watch. It was such a lopsided thrashing that I just kept my mouth agape the whole time.

Gobta was acting very cool, very non-Gobta-like, as he stormed around the battlefield and crushed tanks with his bare hands. Unified with Ranga, he both looked and raged like someone who deserved being called part of the Big Four. And Gabil, to his credit, had transformed into a real strong-looking dragon-ish kind of monster, smashing up enemy ships with some kind of crazy powerful energy reaction. And not just him—everyone on Team Hiryu had undergone transformations, too. I realized at once that this was Dragon Body at work, but since when had they mastered it so well…?

Also, that Dragon Body skill—something I left for later and never got to—I had no idea it was so amazing. It’s got a time limit, and you can only be active in it for around ten minutes, I guess… But the crazy power more than makes up for the disadvantages. It’d be suicide if you used it the wrong way, but it’s a nice little card to add to your deck, I think.

But even Gabil and company lost the spotlight to that giant midair explosion. I don’t know what the heck they did, but the enemy’s flagship had a thermonuclear meltdown or something, and it took out the Empire’s entire airship force with it. That surprised even me, but as a result, the Empire’s airpower was essentially destroyed—every single ship crashed to the ground.

That kicked off a major offensive by the Tempest forces. With Gobta’s and Gabil’s forces joining up, everyone could see that we had gained the upper hand in the war. Even in modern warfare, helicopters had an overwhelming advantage against tanks—and in much the same way, Team Hiryu was mostly using breath attacks from the air, inflicting heavy, one-sided damage on the Empire’s ground forces. And because they were such small targets, the tank guns weren’t even a threat. Really, as long as they don’t hit you, it’s not worth worrying about.

The Empire didn’t just sit there and take a beating, of course, They tried fighting back several times…but we squashed every attempt they put up.

The big performers in that respect were Veyron and Zonda under Ultima’s command. Those two were definitely old demons, all right. They seemed to have an eye for spotting the strongest among their foes, and regardless of whether they were squad captains or regular soldiers, they only chose the most powerful…and tore them apart. Their butler and cook outfits (respectively) weren’t exactly appropriate, but for the imperial troops, they became a symbol of fear.

Looking at the enemy’s supply units, Hakuro was slashing away at them with his sword, offering no mercy. Apparently some of them even tried to introduce themselves first—“Goddamn you! I am ranked ninety-seventh—!!” and so on—but Hakuro’s white blade made them spew blood before they could finish.

“Forgive me,” he said to the bleeding masses. “Sir Rimuru is watching this battle. He has ordered us to go at full power, and thus I can offer you no mercy.” That really wasn’t how I meant it, but now I understand how much of a big deal it was to them.

You know, though… I couldn’t really withdraw that order now. If I butted in at this point, it’d just cause confusion on the field. So I took the long view and decided to watch how the battle unfolded.

This turned out to be a pretty good decision. Frankly, the imperial soldiers Veyron, Zonda, and Hakuro picked off were equal to or better than paladins in ability. That, and their gear was pretty insane, even better than the spiritual armor worn by paladins—Legend class in quality. Looking at the big picture, they were way stronger than any of those guys, a fact that shocked me when Raphael gave me the results. I wasn’t sure how they got this kind of equipment, but they did, and that was that.

Maybe the people granted this gear were the heavily rumored Imperial Guardians, huh? Gadora told me about them, this group handpicked from the best the Empire had to offer, including otherworlders. There were around a hundred of them, he said, and I guess the “rank” stuff they mentioned was proof of their membership. If people like that were given a chance to really strut their stuff, things might’ve been a lot more chaotic out there.

It was smart of us to take them out before they were fully ready, just like Hakuro did. Veyron and Zonda did the same, too, taking action before anyone knew what was going on. They all had a good eye for spotting the most fearsome of our foes, like they had stats floating above their heads. If all their champions had bonded together, I don’t think killing them would’ve been so simple, but it’s their fault for being careless on the field. Got a problem with that? Well, you should’ve gone all out from the start.

That, of course, could be said for us as well. If we showed any needless mercy to the enemy, there was a good chance they’d take advantage of it. If that happened, the damage would’ve been unthinkable. I refused to let us do anything foolish like hurt a friend to rescue an enemy soldier. I couldn’t help but want to show a little compassion sometimes, but that would be the same as letting up because I assumed victory was in the bag. We were fighting a war here—best to keep our minds hardened and let them all do their best till the end.

So regarding the surrender I was expecting to receive from them… Well, while I was admiring the exploits of Hakuro and the gang, something strange was going on in the Empire’s command HQ.

Report. Activation of the large-scale destructive magic Death Streak confirmed. The user is the subject Testarossa.

Hearing Raphael’s report, I hurriedly projected things on the big screen. There they were, Testarossa and Ultima, standing around with big smiles. Nobody else was alive. The nearly one thousand tanks the Empire had left were silenced, all the infantry deployed around them fallen. It’d have to be in the tens of thousands, I estimated. Death Streak, was it? That’s one ridiculously dangerous spell…

Understood. Death Streak is a type of nuclear magic, a magical death ray that kills all living creatures. As a side effect…

Raphael was happy to analyze and explain the situation to me, but I really don’t think I could be blamed for almost shouting “Don’t use that kind of dangerous magic!!”

Ultima’s nuclear blast was called Nuclear Flame, apparently, but this move seemed several times more dangerous. Not that Testarossa was stopping her, either, but…

Either way, the moment that spell triggered, that pretty much decided the match. There were no surviving enemy commanders left, and it was only a matter of time before we weeded out the remaining troops. So our battle with the Empire over on the Dwarven Kingdom side ended in a fantastic victory for us.

The imperial army, which we considered to be a decoy, was annihilated—literally wiped off the face of the earth, and not just in strategic terms, either. It was absurd. I didn’t think telling them to “go all out” would result in something like this.

Also, Benimaru was starting to act a bit scary.

“…If this was the result, was there any damn point to my strategy in the first place?! What the hell’s up with our intelligence officers down there?! You said they were under your control, Sir Rimuru, but can you explain this, please?”

Yes, I had been keeping a few things to myself. Benimaru didn’t need to yell at me with a freaky smile like that. I mean… You know. Did we really have a strategy at all? And look, Benimaru, you’re not the only one who wants an explanation. In fact, I wanna get some answers on this, too!

…But I couldn’t just shout out everything on my mind, so I glanced at Veldora for some assistance. He averted his eyes. I knew this in advance, but it was pointless to rely on Veldora for situations like this. The same went for Ramiris; she wouldn’t pitch in, either.

“No, um, I told you, right? Those are the new guys that Diablo recruited and brought in for us.”

“I know they’re Diablo’s people.”

No dancing around the topic, then. Ah well. So I decided to be honest and tell him everything. If it was Benimaru and Geld, I was sure that revealing that these ladies were super-freaky Primals would be greeted with a smile and a nod. Besides, Diablo was responsible for everything related to them, so if something came up, we could discuss it then.

Armed with this theory, I prepared to tell the truth.

“So uh, do you know what a Primal is?”

“A Primal?”

Benimaru didn’t seem to, but Shuna, currently offering us some coffee, interrupted.

“You’re referring to the Seven Sovereigns, the source of all demons? I overheard a conversation about them the other day, so I got curious and looked it up, but I was surprised to see that Diablo is one of them.”

I didn’t know the Primals— the origins of all demons—had such a fancy moniker. And really, why was Shuna smiling so peacefully as she unveiled all this classified information?

The smell of coffee drifted across the Control Center, easing the tension a bit.

“Um…?” Benimaru seemed confused.

“Oh, you didn’t know, my brother? Well, it’s not just Diablo. Testarossa, Carrera, and Ultima are all sovereigns of demon-dom as well.”

“They are?”

“They are.”

Shuna’s smile almost blinded me. Faced with it, Benimaru could no longer state any doubt. And seeing him fall silent like that, I thought: Wow, Shuna’s actually a pretty big deal, huh? I was steeling myself to tell this horrifying secret, but having it revealed so readily was sort of a disappointment. Kinda felt better this way, though.

“Diablo, I want you to explain it.”

“Very well, Sir Rimuru. Benimaru, I must admit that I am as she says, a Primal Demon…”

I sipped at my coffee as I listened to Diablo’s speech. Mmm. Tea is great and all, but I do like me some coffee, too.

“…All right. I understand,” Benimaru said. “That certainly explains everyone’s strength, then. But if that’s the case, I wish you had told me about it from the beginning.”

“Well, you know,” I began, “I thought people would get all scared if they knew the truth. Me and Veldora are one thing, but I didn’t want you guys to have more unnecessary stuff to worry about.”

I was worried for my friends, so I kept quiet. I made sure to emphasize only that point. Let’s not dwell on how I gave them bodies and names and stuff, if we could.

“Well, I wasn’t afraid of them, neither!”

Even Ramiris was on my side. Hopefully everyone else wasn’t too freaked out by this…

“I believe your concerns were unnecessary, Sir Rimuru. If you have accepted them, then we all welcome them as our friends.”

“Yes, Benimaru is right. Nobody here would discriminate against others based on strength or appearance.”

Benimaru smiled as he said it, Geld preaching stone-cold fact to me. They helped me banish my worries for good. Not even Shuna had any concerns about Diablo and the rest of the demons; the fact that they were still treating each other as they always had was proof of that.

“Well, great, then. Now I feel bad for worrying so much.”

“Ha-ha-ha! You should have more faith in us.”

“Exactly. But I do have to thank you for worrying about us enough to assign Carrera and the rest to us.”

It was a little awkward, but I was glad Benimaru and Geld accepted it. But what about Gabil and Gobta and the rest? They seemed to be doing fine, as far as I could tell, and let’s hope they continue to be.

“Well, we’re all getting along well with Diablo. I’m sure it’ll be okay!”

Shion gave him her stamp of approval, not that I was ever worried about her.

“What do you mean, Shion?”

“I mean exactly what I said, Diablo.”

Shion, my first secretary, and Diablo, my second, glared at each other. Being called a Primal sounds real pretentious, but this was how he mainly acted. Once again, I was relieved that I had worried over nothing.

With that behind us, we discussed the day’s events a bit longer.

“I assigned Testarossa and Ultima to the field army because if the enemy had a demon lord–class threat on their side, I thought we’d be in trouble. Then, well, they put in a little too much of an effort.”

This was all thanks to that order I sent out, but I really didn’t expect everyone to go this out of control. It was just so wild, so over the top…and so cool, too. They just annihilated an entire enemy army, and they didn’t flinch even once.

“Keh-heh-heh-heh-heh… Seems they got a little too excited and carried away, didn’t they? I’ll be sure to give them a good lesson about it later,” Diablo said cheerfully.

“Keep it in moderation!” I didn’t forget to add. But ah well. Diablo could take care of himself, and I was sure he’d continue educating them…again, without overdoing it.

Next up, we surveyed our damages. Just two hours after the start of battle, all the fighting was over. It looked like we had a lot of injured on our side, but as for the final damage report…

“All casualties have reportedly been fully healed!”

A cheery voice echoed across the Control Center.

All the demons who had gone into battle had been given Tempest-made High Potions, ten per person. That allowed them to immediately heal most wounds. And that even applied to people I thought were dead at first; in fact, they were only playing possum, and even their severed limbs had already been fully healed with Full Potions. They were playing the decoy role with serious aplomb, just as Benimaru ordered them to.

“I told you, didn’t I? I told you not to worry.”

“You sure did. And I trusted you and everyone else, of course.”

Everything went according to Benimaru’s plan. The one random element he didn’t expect, apparently, was the demons’ performance. As a result of that, despite going through a lot of potions, we didn’t suffer a single casualty. It was an utterly unbelievable way to win.

That being said, we weren’t totally unscathed. It seemed Gabil and Team Hiryu suffered some fairly serious bodily fatigue due to the side effects of the Dragon Body skill. I was pretty wowed by that move, but sure enough, the ten-minute time limit wasn’t the only minus. The moment battle ended, the overexertion crashed on them like a tidal wave, and they all lay prone on the ground, as if paralyzed. This wasn’t an “injury” per se, so potions wouldn’t help them. After taking in all those magicules and becoming so strong, maybe this was the body rejecting all that foreign matter out again.

This fatigue penalty seemed to apply to all of Team Hiryu, not just Gabil. But I was fine with that. Best to have them think “You should be glad it wasn’t worse” and leave them be.

It would later transpire that this paralyzing condition lasted for around twenty-four hours, so after some debate, we decided to limit Dragon Body activations to no more than once every other day, tops. Their full strength scored them the win this time, but invoke that move at the wrong time, and it could come back to bite them. A real double-edged sword, you could say. So I advised Gabil to be very careful with that.

Next we turned our attention to the Empire’s side.

The Magitank Force led by Lieutenant General Gaster had two hundred thousand troops; Major General Farraga’s Flying Combat Corps had forty thousand. That, as confirmed by the wizard Gadora, was the first size of the imperial forces.

But we didn’t take any POWs this time. They were all dead—around two hundred forty thousand in all. What a massacre. And look, it’s not that my heart didn’t ache over it. But when I became a demon lord, I did it by killing twenty thousand people by my own hand. By this point, I guess I was just done making excuses.

Either way, after killing all two hundred forty thousand members of this force, I guess their souls were being “offered” within me. A little while after battle began, I started feeling the souls accumulating at a frantic pace. This must be what collecting souls from the people working for you feels like, that classic demon lord perk. Thanks to that, I had an exact grasp of just how many enemy soldiers we beat.

But…I mean, really, this many human souls? Because, like, ten thousand was enough to upgrade me from regular to “true” demon lord. What would two hundred forty thousand do to me?

The answer: Nothing! The moment I awakened to true demon lord, that must’ve been the end of the road. Makes sense. Otherwise, Guy Crimson would’ve been busy eradicating the entire human race, reaping souls all over the place. He kept the needless slaughter to a minimum because he instinctively knew there was nowhere higher to go from here.

That was when I received an unexpected notice.

Report. The amount of acquired souls has exceeded the set limit. It is now possible to awaken subordinates connected to you via your soul lineage. The following people are eligible…

Pretty outrageous even by Raphael standards.

Apparently, if you gave a set amount of souls to a qualified receiver, you could awaken them. I assumed capturing excess souls was pointless, but even if they didn’t affect your own evolution, you could still use them to evolve the people under you. As Raphael put it, several people close to me had met the requirements for this awakening. Giving them the souls I had acquired would, it seemed, grant them the same kind of awakened strength that I enjoyed as a true demon lord.

The number of souls required was one hundred thousand. Sheesh. I didn’t think ten times would be needed to awaken someone else. No wonder nobody else knew about this until now. Maybe someone like Guy did…but who could say? Even if he did, it wasn’t like he could execute on it all the time. Besides, it’s a lot easier to befriend a demon lord and have him boost you up than try to do it yourself. Maybe that was how the Walpurgis got its start—a gathering of the big bosses, a way for Guy to see who was really worthy of joining up.

But maybe there was some other reason for it. Maybe I was giving him too much credit, and he really didn’t know after all; I couldn’t dismiss that notion. At the very least, a hundred thousand souls was nothing to sniff at. It was killing an entire city, basically, so you couldn’t be casual with it.

Anyway. As of right then, I had around two hundred fifty thousand extra souls on me, which would let me awaken two people. My pool of qualified subordinates: Ranga, Benimaru, Shion, Gabil, Geld, Diablo, Testarossa, Ultima, Carrera, Kumara, Zegion, and Adalmann—twelve in all.

…Create a soul corridor to evolve a subordinate?

Yes

No

Based on how Raphael put it, I guess I could awaken people even if I wasn’t physically nearby. A soul corridor would allow my target and me to be unaffected by time and space, kind of like how Veldora and I used to be; it would also strengthen the bond between us, which wasn’t a bad thing, either.

So what now?

In my case, awakening made me incomparably stronger than before. It evolved my unique skill the Great Sage into the ultimate skill Raphael, Lord of Wisdom. If someone like Benimaru could evolve to that level, then I had no reason to hesitate.

But hang on. What was the deal with that “soul lineage” thing? If I had to guess, it referred to the soul connection we had after I gave those people names. Naming a monster causes an evolution, and I definitely wasn’t shy about doing that all the time, but I also knew it was kind of dangerous. I wasn’t afraid to name with confidence because Raphael was now assessing the safety risks for me. Get it wrong, and I’d be stripped of all my power and maybe even die—that or be permanently weakened.

In my case, I had Belzebuth’s Stomach, a tremendously useful skill, and I used it to store any excess magicules I had. If I was short, I could apparently borrow some from Veldora, too… But either way, Raphael managed all that, and I didn’t need to worry about a thing.

So unfair, isn’t it? Normally you needed your own magicules to name something, which made it no small feat. I bet that was even true for Guy. That’s why so few people were really connected to others at the soul.

But as far as I was concerned, my friends were irreplaceable. I meant that, too. And I didn’t mind experimenting on myself, but I wasn’t gonna use my friends as guinea pigs. Raphael was recommending this option to me, so I didn’t think it was dangerous…or I liked to believe that. But something told me this was playing with some serious fire. Besides, I didn’t even know who I should pick, and there were a bunch of other problems, too. If magicule energy was the main factor, I really thought Soei would qualify as well—but he didn’t, so it made me wonder about the conditions for staging an awakening.

Everything about it was so unclear, which really gave me pause. During my Harvest Festival, there was a long period of dormancy before I evolved, known as my Initiation. There was no guarantee that wouldn’t happen again this time, so I really wanted everything worked out in advance. Most of all, however, this war wasn’t over yet. The imperial army’s main force, some seven hundred thousand of them, was on the march toward our capital. Going on wacky adventures during such urgent times really wasn’t a good idea.

So the answer is no for now. Let’s leave this matter until things settle down.

I ordered the goblins to go on salvage duty, collecting the intact tanks and surviving airship wreckage for me. Gabil and the dragonewts would be knocked out for a while longer, so I had the Wyvern Riders transport all the stuff they got over to the Dwarven Kingdom. I wanted them to have all the recovery time I could give them.

Instead, I sent the Blue Numbers to join up with the goblins. This was on Benimaru’s suggestion; he said there was no need for them to hurry back to the capital, since even if they did, they wouldn’t be in time for the final battle.

Gazel, to his credit, also asked if I needed any reinforcements. I told him we had no problems for now. The dwarves, too, were still in the middle of war. Hostilities at the Central entrance were done, but the East exit bordering the Empire was still staked out by an imperial force of some sixty thousand. Gadora identified them as Yuuki’s division, deployed as a diversionary tactic…but we didn’t know what was to come, so I really didn’t want to drop the ball with them.

I was sure Gazel could take care of that…and in fact, I was sure he was fully on the case that very minute. Our mission right then was to settle the score with the Empire’s main force. The opening battle was a huge victory for us, but the enemy still had a force far too enormous to downplay.

In terms of numbers, we were at an overwhelming disadvantage…but my staff couldn’t have been more motivated. Shion couldn’t wait to get cracking, even saying stuff like “I can’t let those demons hog the spotlight! I have to go out there and show them what real strength means!!” She sounded so frustrated. I almost wanted to ask exactly who was her enemy in this war.

“Aren’t you supposed to be my bodyguard?”

The moment I pointed that out, she regained her composure in a big hurry. Nothing good comes from being too eager to fight, after all.

But Shion wasn’t the only one raring to go among us.

“My lord! Ultima’s been bragging shamelessly, saying our forces achieved a huge victory in the first round! Oooh, I can’t wait to get my turn! Would it be all right if I went over and put in a few choice words?”

Carrera’s cheeks were flushed as she flew into the Control Room. I had ordered her to stand by with the rest of the Second Army Corps, but I guess the demons were all Thought Communication-ing with each other. Her fellow demons boasting about all the murder they committed must’ve been more than she could stand…but I couldn’t have her working solo right then.

“A few choice words?” Benimaru asked. He knew Carrera was a Primal, but he still dealt with her the same way. Maybe I really was worrying too much.

“Yes, I thought I could give them a little nuclear magic as a gift.”

She said that with the most endearing smile. Jaune, the Original Yellow, sure lived up to her reputation.

“Denied!” came Benimaru’s disgusted reply.

“Carrera, please be patient until further orders,” Geld added. “Your actions take on meaning only when they’re applied at the most critical moment.”

Carrera wasn’t too happy about that, but she had no intention of disobeying Benimaru. She reluctantly nodded at Geld’s rebuke.

“All right. I just wanted to show you what I could do, but maybe there’s a time when that’ll be more effective, huh? I’ll sit tight and wait.”

Glad she saw things our way. It looked like she respected what Geld had to say; maybe they were a better pair than I thought.

“Ha-ha-ha! Carrera, life is about more than going on the rampage, you know. It’s only when we become a sword for our leader that we can truly shine!”

“Yes, Shion, I understand you. Maybe I’ve been a little too hasty, huh? I’m going to go cool off a little.”

Are you really one to talk, Shion? I thought. It was a nice thing to say and all, but coming from her, it sounded so unconvincing. Weren’t you the one who wanted to go on a big rampage just now? But let’s hold back on that. It’d be a bad idea to rehash the conversation when it was over now. I gave Shion a judgmental frown as Carrera left.

So morale definitely wasn’t a problem.

On our side, we had the forces inside the labyrinth as well as the rested Second Army Corps. Everyone from my top officials to the soldiers deep down the chain of command seemed to be in high spirits, eager to give it their all—they must have heard my orders. The Empire, meanwhile, totaled seven hundred thousand troops. We’d never compete in numbers, but this was quality over quantity. The other side might still have had some strong characters lurking in the background, but we had one killer defense mechanism in the labyrinth.

“The key to victory is gonna lie in the labyrinth. Veldora… Ramiris… I’m counting on you guys!”

“Yes, of course. Do not fear. I’ll take care of everything!”

“Right, exactly! We’re all backing you up, so you just rest easy!”

Their eager replies soothed my heart.

The important thing here was how we’d avoid casualties, and luring the enemy into the labyrinth was the best way to do that. Inside the Dungeon, we could reduce the wear and tear on our army down to zero, and that wasn’t all—we could also add the monsters of the labyrinth to our forces, letting us make up for any numerical disadvantages without much hassle. Count the lower-level monsters, and the total number would add up to several hundred thousand.

“Then we’ll just have to see how much the Empire believed in Yuuki’s cajoling, huh?” I said.

“Isn’t it the other way around? You can’t trust him, and that’s exactly why he’s led them to have their suspicions of him.”

“Ah, that does make a lot of sense!”

I was sure Benimaru was right. If you looked at Yuuki as an enemy, he was quite a nuisance. We might’ve been in a temporary partnership, but there was no way to trust him as an ally. Maybe the feeling was mutual on the imperial side?

“Someone that fishy, maybe it’s safer to have him infiltrate the enemy instead of fight with him as allies.”

That was an unusually accurate statement from Shion.

“At least we don’t have to expend any effort worrying about whether we’ll be betrayed,” Benimaru added with a nod. “The imperials, on the other hand, probably don’t consider Yuuki to be a complete ally. They’ll be wary of him, suspicious of whatever he has to say. In other words, they don’t really know how the sixty thousand troops by the East exit of Dwargon are going to act. The Empire might make their strike there, so we’d best tell Gazel to be on his guard.”

“Knowing King Gazel, I don’t think we’ll need to worry. But no, there’s nothing more annoying than an untrustworthy ally. If I were you, I’d be the first to crush him.”

I already told King Gazel about Yuuki, and like Benimaru said, I’m sure he took all necessary measures without me checking up on him.

Our main concern should have been the Empire’s main force. Even as we spoke, they were attacking from multiple sides, trying to surround us. The only thing left in our city was that huge gate, so there was no great need to panic, although we still couldn’t help being nervous.

My main concern was that they’d skip Tempest entirely and instead attack Farminus, the new kingdom established by Yohm. He had people like Razen and Gruecith around to defend it, but that nation honestly didn’t have the wherewithal to wage large-scale war at the moment. We were still in the middle of providing them support as they reformed their ways, so we really didn’t want it to become a battlefield. It’d be up to us to provide reinforcements, of course, and that’d really complicate matters as far as I was concerned. So along those lines, we were glad it didn’t seem to be turning out that way. Regardless, we couldn’t let our guards down.

If the Empire didn’t trust Yuuki and instead opted to whiz right by us and into Blumund…then we’d have Geld’s force attack them from the rear. It’d be easy to send the Second Corps over with my teleport spell…but we’d still have a ground war on our hands. The Second Corps would get far less support from the labyrinth, and I was sure it’d be a tough battle. We should have been able to recruit a good number of volunteers from the labyrinth, but even so, we couldn’t force monsters out of there if they didn’t want to go, so the numbers would have to be smaller. Besides, if we fought on the ground, we couldn’t leverage the labyrinth’s features at all, and thus we’d have to be prepared for serious casualties.

Ideally, we really wanted the enemy to enter the labyrinth. Bringing the battle there, in Benimaru’s eyes, was both the safest route and the one most likely to succeed. If we fought on the ground, we’d lose our advantage in the labyrinth; we’d have to fight them head-on, in a level playing field. Which was how it usually was, of course, but in war, the key to victory was all in building an edge for yourself. I didn’t think the labyrinth was exactly fair or whatever, but if we won, then hey, we were in the right.

So while (hopefully) the labyrinth would serve as the main battlefield, our basic strategy was still the same even if we fought on the ground. Job one for us was to ferret out the strongest fighters on the opposing side, and just like how we used the goblins as bait for that before, we’d use Geld’s force for that this time. That common core was in each of Benimaru’s proposed strategies.

Really, I guess they were doing this to protect me, their supreme general. I care deeply for all my friends here, and Benimaru and the rest put me first just as much—or even more, in fact. I didn’t want them to get killed for my sake, but Benimaru’s much more of a tactician than an amateur like me—he kept damage to almost nothing in the previous battle, even.

So as long as I left everything to him, I could just sit back in my chair and relax. That, and I wanted to keep trying to make people feel secure in relying on me.

We had set up a large gate on the ground in order to make it easier for imperial troops to come storming in, but looking back, maybe that felt a little too deliberate? I, at least, was a bit worried they might think it was a trap—but my fears were unfounded. I didn’t know if someone out there was granting wishes for me today, but in the end, it turned out just as I had hoped.

“The enemy’s fanning out in front of the main gate!” the operator reported. On the big screen, we could see rows of imperial soldiers lined up in an orderly fashion. If Argos was presenting this to us, it had to be true, but Soei’s group was monitoring them as well, so this definitely wasn’t illusory magic or whatnot.

The Empire had clearly taken the bait, and all seven hundred thousand of them were on the scene, not bothering to stick to stealth any longer. Their attempt at intimidation, maybe, not that it’d work on us. We had zero intention of surrendering by now. Maybe we’d run to fight another day, but capitulation was never gonna happen. Besides, we couldn’t hope for a more ideal setup.

“We’ve won,” I muttered to myself.

“Yes,” Benimaru briskly replied, “we have.”

Factually speaking, indeed, we were already guaranteed a tactical victory. Once we were all in the labyrinth, we’d take zero damage—as long as we took our time, we were guaranteed to win. Beyond that, as long as they didn’t have some kind of unimaginable champion who could beat a demon lord, we had an insurmountable advantage.

“Good thing those greedy bastards let the labyrinth catch ’em.”

“Very true. I thought Sir Rimuru’s bait was a little too obvious, but I’m glad they took it for us.”

“Yeah, well, looks like you did a good job on it, Gadora.”

The enemy was now revealing their full extent to us. If they had spread them out a little more around the forest, we might’ve been anxious about the stronger among them hiding out somewhere. Spreading your forces thin is generally a bad idea, I think, but right there, having them all together like that actually helped us a lot. I imagined they were gonna start filing into the labyrinth soon, so really, the only question was how much of the army they’d keep on the surface.

“Well, either way, I imagine it’s not strategically sound for the Empire to skip our nation. If they decide to blockade this labyrinth gate and keep marching west, that’s trouble, but…”

“Yeah, if they left, say, a hundred thousand out of seven hundred thousand, that’d be enough to surround the gate easy.”

Then, if the remaining forces marched over to the Western Nations, they’d have little to worry about behind them. If that happened, by the way, we’d still be able to transport ourselves in and out—but our destinations would be restricted to places we had spent some extent of time in before, and we couldn’t access anyplace with space-freezing barriers over it. Practically speaking, if we could undo the seal on the entrance to the Dwelling of the Spirits (Ramiris’s old haunt), we could come and go through that. Still, though, we’d essentially be trapped in the labyrinth, left helpless as we watched them overrun the Western Nations—and if it came to that, we’d have to find a way to force ourselves out and attack.

So in the end, it might wind up turning into a ground war anyway. But we couldn’t avoid that, really. So before that happened, we’d want to cut down the enemy’s strength as much as we could.

“Are we going to send a warning to their ground forces?”

“Yeah, maybe we can agitate ’em into deploying more soldiers inside.”

Veldora and Ramiris had some interesting opinions on this.

“You know, there’s something to be said for that… But nah, no warning,” I said.

“No? Why not?” Veldora asked.

“You know about the words we put on the gate already, right, Ramiris?”

“Oh! Right, there was that…”

We had actually carved a message on the massive gate. It read:

THROUGH THESE GATES, THE WEAK ARE UNWORTHY TO PASS

So how were they gonna react to that?

“I’d love to see what they do when they read it,” said Ramiris.

“Indeed, if it were me, I’d snap and come storming through the gate. Although, I’d nonetheless keep my troops at bay,” added Benimaru.

I’m sure that was exactly what Benimaru would do. Trap or not, he’d totally ram his way in.

“I would pay it no mind. I am all-powerful!”

Yeah, sure, Veldora. I didn’t ask you.

“Me, I dunno… If Beretta insisted on going, then I guess I’d follow along, that kind of thing?”

Ramiris… If you’d be too scared of it, then don’t press your luck, okay? And you name-dropping Beretta is just making him snicker.

“If anyone is foolish enough to ignore that warning, they forfeit their right to Sir Rimuru’s mercy. They have no right to complain about what happens.”

I didn’t know why he was looking so gleeful about it, but yeah, Diablo was correct. This message did have the nuance of a warning, after all.

“Of course, if they’re too much of a coward to go through the gate, they deserve to be in this battlefield in the first place. We must annihilate them all and make them understand the folly of antagonizing Sir Rimuru!”

Shion? If you put it that way, then we’re all gonna have to fight ourselves, aren’t we? Can you maybe think a little before you provide advice in the future? You’re making Geld crack up.

Really, though, the rest of my main staff were of similar minds. Super motivated, all of them, and super eager to dedicate more victories to me. Testarossa and Ultima donated a whole bunch of souls. Whether they knew that or not, everybody here seemed eager to follow in the pair’s footsteps.

Testarossa—or demons in general, really—apparently have a taste for the residual emotions left in each of those souls. There are assorted ways of consuming these, but Testarossa told me she loves to see faces frozen in fear the most. That smile of hers really is scary. I probably would’ve been petrified pre-reincarnation, but by this point, well, that’s how it is.

Which is fine and good for demons, but what about the other monsters? It’s not like they’d know what to do with the souls they’ve collected. I learned about all this only a few moments ago, besides, and I’m still wondering why it’s this big competition now. I’m sure it’s like the spoils of war for them or something, but I really don’t need those kind of spoils…

…Seven hundred thousand, though, huh? If we really did score all those, that meant I could awaken seven more people. The fact that thoughts like this were naturally coming into my mind now was frightening, but…

…No, no, no. I gotta stay firm with myself. Can’t have my mind turn monster on me. With that resolve in mind, I faced the big screen.

“They’re on the move.”

Row upon row of imperial soldiers were now moving in formation, calmly storming the gate as if they weren’t scared at all.

“Just as planned,” I muttered. If at least half of them can go in for us, it’d make things a lot easier later…”

Benimaru gave this a calm smile. “I have no intention of letting even a single soldier escape. I’ll go in, too, if need be.”

Geld nodded. “My Second Corps has approximately seventeen thousand troops. Compare us by numbers, and it looks dire, but in ability, we don’t miss a beat. We can take advantage of the terrain to entrap the enemy.”

“Great to hear. And if I burn the inner halls with my flames, anyone left standing oughtta be strong enough to put up a worthy challenge.”

“I’m sure Carrera would be glad to help with that. She’s been wanting to let off some steam for a while now, so I’m sure she’ll be eager to exercise her skills.”

“No, there’s no doubting the power of a Primal. It’s a tough act to follow.”

Hang on. This conversation was going a lot differently than I expected. Benimaru and Geld were going on like this was already won. Real bold of them, considering how I was still a little worried about this. Carrera had become a part of their strategy as a matter of course, too; there wasn’t even a shred of hesitation about tapping a Primal’s power.

“That’s not fair, Benimaru! If we’re aiming to wipe out our foes, that’s where I come in!”

Even Shion was stepping up. Yet again, she’d forgotten that she was supposed to be bodyguarding me… But then, there was no place safer for me than the Control Center. Team Reborn, the force Shion led, prided themselves in their relentless tenacity. It’d be a shame to leave them idle this whole time, so if this turned into a ground melee, I’d like to get them out there.

So…yeah, I could see myself giving deployment orders to Shion if she wanted them, but…

“Shion, calm down. We need to gain an accurate gauge of what the enemy’s doing first. Depending on how things go, though, I may need to tap your abilities, yeah.”

She’d have to be content with that for now.

“Keh-heh-heh-heh-heh… If Sir Rimuru needs a bodyguard, I alone can more than fit the bill.”

Well, if Diablo’s volunteering for that, then if things really get hairy, we could call Testarossa and Ultima back. They can teleport in no time flat, after all.

“If you say so, Sir Rimuru, then fine. In that case, you’ll be up, Shion.”

“Right! You can count on me, Benimaru!”

Shion beamed as she thanked him. I have trouble understanding why she loves fighting so much, but—hey, if she’s happy, then great.

“Good. In that case, Rimuru, it is time to prepare!”

“I’ll join ya, Master! Time for us to show ’em just how terrifying the labyrinth can be!”

“Quite so. And with me as your final defense, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“If you’ll excuse us, Sir Rimuru…”

Brimming with enthusiasm, Veldora and Ramiris left the Control Center, Beretta following behind. The room suddenly felt a lot quieter.

For Veldora, this would be his first real day of work as the master of the labyrinth. I wasn’t entirely sure if he’d have a role to play here, but either way, his zeal was certainly encouraging.

“Right. Let’s see what the enemy has in store for us.”

I tried to sound as demon lord-ly as possible as I watched the rows of people marching through the gate. Everyone else nodded. And with that, our battle against the seven-hundred-thousand-strong main army of the Empire began.

Caligulio, commander of the Armored Division, smiled at the sight of things going to plan. He looked over his army with supreme confidence. One after another, his rows of elites were streaming through the massive gate. It connected to the labyrinth, no doubt, and that labyrinth was bound to bring Caligulio immense wealth.

By now, the monsters must have been in a panic over the unexpected six-figure-strong force at their doorstep. But it was all thanks to long, careful planning—and soldiers strong enough to execute on it.

………

……

…

After a great deal of discussion with the main brass over their route of invasion, they decided to send the Magitank Division in first, standing out as much as they could. In addition to this, they also deployed a hundred airships from the Flying Combat Corps, their ace in the hole, so they could fight off the evil dragon Veldora if he happened to show up.

The Flying Combat Corps was also responsible for transporting the Magical Beast Division westward, with Gradim commanding them—but their journey would be chiefly over the sea, guaranteeing a safe trip. It was therefore decided that the airships wouldn’t need any armaments, so Caligulio’s only remaining responsibility was providing logistical support. This he planned to do by operating three hundred airships at full capacity, transporting the necessary military supplies at the same time as Gradim’s force.

They had concentrated their forces in a single area mainly for the projected battle against Veldora. The other hundred airships deployed to the Forest of Jura were each outfitted with a full set of the most elite magicians the Empire boasted. With this final piece of the puzzle, their support system was fully complete, and Caligulio believed it all enough to let them take over the entirety of the West—and if Gradim’s force attacked the capital of Englesia, the war would be over in no time at all.

It was a simultaneous dual-pronged operation, and Caligulio’s Armored Division would play a major role. If they succeeded, they’d be putting up dazzling military results. That would grant Caligulio more power in the Empire no matter what, and the thought made it impossible for him to wipe the smile from his face.

The basic outline of this operation worked like this: The Magitank Division would make a conspicuous entrance. The enemy would latch on to them, and once they did, Caligulio himself would lead the main force in a grand display of power, attacking the stronghold of the demon lord Rimuru.

According to intel, the demon lord could apparently transport his entire capital into the labyrinth for safekeeping. It sounded ridiculous on the face of it, but it was true. All that was left on the surface was a large gate opening up into the labyrinth. So they decided that the first thing was to surround the gate, blocking any escape routes. A handy magic canceler or two working on the surrounding space would make it impossible to magically teleport out of there. It seemed possible to completely seal off the area.

The problem here was the strength of the Armed Nation of Dwargon. One underestimated the Heroic King Gazel at their own peril, and the dwarves are known for their stoutness. They remained undefeated for a millennium for good reason, and anyone who downplayed their might was bound to be burned.

However:

There’s no way we can lose. Breaking out old-fashioned antiques against two thousand magitanks? It won’t even be a fight.

Dwargon’s purported neutrality didn’t even register in the Empire’s mind. They had let the Armed Nation go unchallenged so far because they’d be a thorn on their side—but if they could win now, there was no need to pull back. With a combination of magic and science, they had built an all-powerful force based on a completely new system of combat. That, in a nutshell, was the Armored Division Caligulio led.

Gazel was a champion among dwarves, yes, but what could he do by himself? It may have been quality, not quantity, that could potentially turn the tide of battle, but knowing what he did about how destructive his tank guns were, Caligulio saw fighting with swords and magic as nothing but an anachronism. The dwarves—only capable of producing outdated, obsolete armaments—could never imagine the true value of this next-generation army… And by the time they realized it, it’d be too late. All that awaited the dwarves was a lopsided rout.

These ideas were all fundamentally wrong at the core, but Caligulio had no way of knowing that at the time. He was so happy with himself, and so assured of his victory, that he never imagined for even a moment that he’d be defeated.

And just moments earlier, the long-awaited report came in. An envoy from the enemy had paid a visit, but negotiations had broken down, and hostilities were already underway. Receiving this news, Caligulio and his team stuck to the plan and marched forward—and now they had captured the lands believed to comprise the demon lord Rimuru’s stronghold.

………

……

…

Caligulio, perfectly at ease, contemplated his troops.

Rather a waste to give Gaster a free shot at Gazel’s head, but ah well. You can’t give ’em the stick all the time—the troops won’t follow you otherwise. They need a carrot now and then.

Lieutenant General Gaster and Major General Farraga were among the most capable of Caligulio’s subordinates. He had no doubts that they’d fail to live up to expectations. Both Gaster and Farraga were dead at this point in time, but it’d be asking too much of Caligulio to know that.

“So have we heard from Gaster yet?” Caligulio asked one of his men.

“Not yet, sir! Not since he reportedly entered battle!”

“Ah. I’d think the dust will have settled by this point. Bit lazy of him to delay his report. He can’t be having trouble over there.”

“I’m afraid I have nothing else to report, sir.”

“That’s fine. So what about Farraga?”

Gaster’s first on-the-field battle in ages must have been getting to his head. With total victory in sight, Caligulio reasoned, he must’ve been too focused on the fight at hand. But what about Farraga, then? He must’ve had a balcony view, dreamily floating up in the clouds, and he’d surely be able to give an accurate report. But the liaison officer assigned to Farraga was acting strangely, sweating profusely as he desperately tried to make contact.

“…What is he doing?”

This put the brakes on Caligulio’s good mood. He was irked, and that emotion no doubt came out in his tone of voice.

“Major General Farraga,” reported the harried liaison, “has reportedly encountered a monster believed to be Veldora! He said he would send a follow-up once he could confirm it…”

…But nothing had come since then. Just that first report—and then total silence.

According to the communications wizard on duty, the Forest of Jura was so thick with magicules that voice transmissions could easily be jammed. That made sense to Caligulio for a number of reasons. This entire forest was created by his archenemy Veldora, and it was home to a demon lord to boot. It stood to reason, in his mind.

Deciding there was no use worrying about it, Caligulio shuffled the concern out of his mind. If they were engaged in combat, they wouldn’t have time to send superfluous reports. And like the wizard said, there were more than enough magicules in the atmosphere to block incoming and outgoing magical calls. Plus, if Veldora himself was out on the field, no way any calls would make it out anyway.

So Caligulio mentally switched gears.

“Hmph! We’ll have to wait for the good news, then. If they truly did encounter Veldora, it’s perfectly natural to expect silence from Gaster and Farraga. But no point shuffling our feet over them. We’ve got a labyrinth to capture!”

Given the vast size of the force he provided Gaster, Caligulio didn’t give a moment’s thought to the idea that he might be defeated. In his mind, he had completely discounted the possibility long ago. In fact, this lack of contact could even be a good thing for him. If Farraga was engaged with Veldora in the skies above the forest, that meant only the demon lord was inside this labyrinth. He had heard stories about their Big Four and the threat they presented, but the Restructured Armor Corps would make quick work of them.

So without further hesitation, Caligulio’s eyes turned toward the labyrinth.

Before him lay a clearing—a vast one, big enough to house a large city. Near the middle of it loomed a huge gate serving as the labyrinth entrance. Magic-based probing revealed no traps or other threats. It was a simple gate, just waiting for Caligulio’s force to challenge it.

The words carved into it—THROUGH THESE GATES, THE WEAK ARE UNWORTHY TO PASS—told Caligulio that his strategy was right all along. Hiding everything from us because you’re too afraid we’ll plunder it all, eh? Pretty cheeky thing for a bunch of monsters to do.

Looting in the name of “supply procurement” was something any nation was afraid of. Securing enough provisions to keep an army fed was always a challenge, especially to one as large as the Empire’s. Taking the enemy’s supplies was always an effective tactic, too.

Well, tough luck!

Caligulio laughed at the monsters’ shallow intelligence.

His soldiers, having been enhanced via surgery powered by magic and otherworldly science, could work at full strength without food or water for a week. A single one of the nutritionally balanced energy bars they carried with them provided enough sustenance for a day’s worth of activity. Twenty were included in a soldier’s standard equipment, and their consumption rate was as previously calculated. Each soldier had been given a refreshed supply, and they’d have no problem keeping themselves sustained without plundering the enemy’s food. These portable, lightweight energy bars made logistics infinitely easier for the Empire—and potable water, the other piece of the puzzle, could be conjured up via magic.

So no problems whatsoever. By their calculations, their elite soldiers could stay active within the labyrinth for up to twenty-seven days if need be. The enemy might’ve pinned their hopes on their vast army running out of supplies—the biggest weakness with any force this size—but they were about to learn just how naive they were.

“Think you’ve won because you’ve cut off our supplies? Think again, fools.”

Caligulio gave the thought a mocking laugh. It caught the attention of one of his staff officers, a man of noble birth trying to latch on to Caligulio’s coattails.

“Ha-ha-ha! Ah, my good Caligulio, don’t be so mean to them! The demon lord Rimuru began this entire campaign by making a mistake. He misjudged our Restructured Armor Corps so badly that he sent out his greatest asset, the evil Veldora, to meet them. And now, the next thing he knew, he’s being surrounded by these teeming masses of champions!”

“Well, I can’t blame him for making that move. Bait or not, it is quite a large force over there.”

“Exactly. I can certainly see why he’d want to pit his maximum war power against them.”

Hearing the officer chatter egged Caligulio on further.

“Hmph! Call him a demon lord, call him what you will, but I think it’s clear just how out of his league he is! I’m sure he’s all curled up in a corner of the labyrinth somewhere right now, shivering from head to toe!”

Scoffing at the demon lord’s low intellect, Caligulio and his team couldn’t have been more confident of their success.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! You’re absolutely right. Now all we have to do is drag this demon lord out and have Commander Caligulio chop off his head. Then he’ll become a demon lord–slaying hero!”

The noble officer never wasted a chance to flatter his superior. Caligulio didn’t mind it much.

The first step, as he saw it, was to seize this labyrinth and use it as a foothold. Establishing a military base here would help maintain their momentum, no doubt, as they pressed on and overran the West. If they didn’t hurry, in fact, Gradim and his Magical Beast Division would conquer and pillage the West from the north side, and he really wanted to be out of the Forest of Jura before then.

But no need to panic. If things turned out that way, his list of accomplishments in this campaign wouldn’t be quite as long, but there was no need to quibble. Defeating Veldora the Storm Dragon was the Empire’s long-held desire for ages, and if they could achieve it, any other badge of honor was insignificant by comparison. If they took the head of Rimuru on top of that, Caligulio would undoubtedly become the greatest achiever of this entire war.

And the rest of his staff were just as assured of their victory as he was. This was a force of seven hundred thousand, after all. With a force that size, none of them could even think of defeat.

“We can make this area our camp once we build a barrier around it. Once that’s done, they can start marching in. The labyrinth will never know what hit it!”

“We’re on it, sir.”

“Fine. Proceed as planned, then.”

There were no objections. Things weren’t urgent enough that anyone wanted to create trouble for themselves being contrarian. Gradim could have his glory over in the West if he wanted it—that’s what everyone here agreed on. For now, the major prize was all the money and goods they’d be able to score in the labyrinth. Greed had won the day in their minds.

It was a pretty simple plan, really—just overload the labyrinth with sheer numbers and strip the whole place bare. The fact that nobody objected to it was proof positive that greed, and the potential for instant profits, was already blinding them. Being so assured of victory, Caligulio and his team weren’t bothering to hide their desires any longer. Whatever share of the labyrinth’s booty they got, it was bound to make them fabulously rich.

And so their conquest of the labyrinth began…and with that, the poor oblivious soldiers joyfully descended a staircase they would never climb back up again.

The labyrinth never refuses anyone who comes for it.

That applied even if the invading party didn’t respect the rules. But the safety was already off on this loaded gun, and what awaited them beyond was the labyrinth as it truly was—a living hell beyond anything anyone had ever experienced.

In one of the deepest rooms of the labyrinth, there exists a secret conference room not even Rimuru knows about.

Gathered within its vast confines were the rulers of the maze, people who usually didn’t come together very much. The fact that they were all here right now indicated just how vital they considered the topic of discussion.

………

……

…

The meeting was chaired by Beretta, Ramiris’s aide/representative/gofer and general manager of labyrinth affairs. Seated in the four cardinal directions were the labyrinth’s four Arch Dragons—the Fire Dragon Lord, Frost Dragon Lord, Wind Dragon Lord, and Earth Dragon Lord. In the middle was a round ebony table, currently seating the following individuals:

• “Nine-Head” Kumara, guardian of Floor 90

• “Insect Kaiser” Zegion, guardian of Floor 80

• “Insect Queen” Apito, boss of Floor 79

• “Immortal King” Adalmann, guardian of Floor 70

• “Death Paladin” Alberto, Adalmann’s advance guard on Floor 70

These comprised the so-called Ten Dungeon Marvels, and they were joined by three others: Gadora, the old, sharp-eyed wizard, was seated next to Adalmann; meanwhile, Bovix and Equix, co-guardians of Floor 50, sat huddled at one lonely corner of the table, aware of just how much they stood out among all these titans. They both once thought they could beat any opponent who came their way… But now, seeing the very pinnacle of the labyrinth before them, they realized just how stark the difference was.

It made them squirm uncomfortably in their seats, but that wasn’t the only reason they were cowering a bit. The real reason: Everyone in this chamber had a bad habit of incessantly squabbling over who was the strongest among themselves. They were clashing over the issue now, in fact, weighing down the very atmosphere as if it were warped apart by some strange force. Gadora, despite being the new kid on the block, was an active participant in the debate, making Bovix and Equix realize all the more exactly how they stacked up by comparison. As they saw it, some foes were just too insurmountable to ever beat. And given that these were two former rivals who fought each other for a literal century, it showed just how much of a presence Gadora struck around here.

Beretta and the Dragon Lords didn’t join in this competition, but they had no motivation to stop it. If that was what they liked doing, then “Fine” was their attitude. And whether they intended to or not, that only spurred the debate over who was strongest among the Ten Marvels.

Adalmann’s promotion in floor rank, following direct praise from Rimuru, was still fresh in everyone’s minds. It instilled a new enthusiasm in everybody present, all of them believing they were the most useful among the guardians. This was especially true among the Marvels tending the deeper floors, since they frankly didn’t see much action during regular Dungeon operations. Any chance they had to strut their stuff, they seized.

Even Gadora, the new guy, was eager to be of service to his old friend Adalmann. If he could make an impression with his performance here, he believed, it’d work wonders to ensure a position for him. Adalmann, meanwhile, wanted to work even harder for his beloved Rimuru than he already had. He wanted to be awarded even higher levels, and on that score, the other guardians were nothing but obstacles—not enemies, no, but definitely in the way. Alberto followed Adalmann’s lead with this, but in his mind, he, too, had a desire to improve his fighting performance and make himself a household name. Despite appearances, he was surprisingly ambitious.

Apito and Kumara, the two female Dungeon Marvels, had (to say the least) a strained relationship. Kumara, in particular, guarded Floor 90 and thus almost never received a chance to perform in public. Apito got an opportunity to tangle with the paladins before, and Kumara was intensely jealous of that, leading her to treat this as much more of a battle than it really was. Apito, for that matter, was pretty competitive herself, refusing to back down a single step from her rival. This put them at odds over pretty much anything and everything.

Zegion, meanwhile, acted like he was above the fray, and realistically speaking, he did stand at the pinnacle of the labyrinth, the target of everybody’s envy. Whether he asked for it or not, he constantly got dragged into the debate.

Thus, to sum up, things were kind of acrimonious among the most powerful denizens of the labyrinth. But did they truly hate each other, deep down? The answer was no. Their goal, in the end, was to prove they alone were the best, not to try to kick everybody else down. There was a lot of jealousy but a lot of respect, too. They might have fought a ton, but there wasn’t any real hate involved. Every one of them saw each other as diligent rivals, nothing else.

………

……

…

Despite the crowd sharing this meeting hall, it was surprisingly quiet right then. All eyes were fixed on the main seats in the table, currently unoccupied. They belonged to Veldora, king of the labyrinth, and the great Ramiris, its creator. They had been called to the meeting two hours ago, and while there was much carrying on between the Marvels earlier, they all quieted down once Beretta showed up.

“Sir Veldora and Lady Ramiris will arrive in a few moments. Please remain quiet as we wait for them.”

Beretta sat down at his chair.

“Chairman, can I ask you a question?” said Kumara, and Beretta nodded back. “Why are we gathered here today?”

“For the reason you’re all imagining, I presume. We need to discuss how we will dispatch the foolish army attempting to invade the labyrinth.”

Everyone fell silent. They were all aware of the situation. Nobody told them exactly what this meeting was about, but they had accurately guessed its purpose already. Maybe they had been jockeying with each other for position before, but with the imperial army at the door to the labyrinth, hostility toward the enemy had replaced their competitive spirit. What did it mean to make an enemy out of the labyrinth? They were all of a single heart now—they needed to make their foe fully understand the answer.

A heavy tension filled the hall. And then:

“Heya! Sorry for the wait!”

“How nice of you all to gather here!”

Ramiris and Veldora appeared, upping the fervor in the hall that much more. It delighted Ramiris even further as she addressed the crowd in an unusually serious tone of voice.

“Today we’re facing an unprecedented crisis—a kind that hasn’t been seen since the labyrinth’s foundation! So I wanna hear some of your thoughts, people!”

That was the signal for things to begin.

Kumara reacted first.

“Hmm? Well, isn’t it obvious?”

She could barely wait to express her thoughts, but Apito beat her to the punch.

“We kill them all.”

The two glared at each other.

“So are you going to leave things for my level this time, Apito? You got to play with those paladins for so long, you have to be happy by now.”

“What are you talking about? Lady Hinata is one thing, but the Crusaders were all so weak that I had one of the most boring times of my life!”

A different kind of tension ran through the hall. Veldora, oddly, stepped up to defuse it.

“Kwah-ha-ha-ha! Stop fighting, you two. And worry not! This time, I will give you all a chance to wage battle. From what I’ve heard, they think that the deepest level of the Dungeon is merely Floor 60. Considering we’ve advertised a hundred floors from the beginning, I find it simply absurd, but here we are. Can you believe that?”

No! everyone thought.

Veldora gave them a nod. “I thought it would be fun to play along with those expectations… But really, it seems too much trouble to me.”

“Yes! Exactly!” Ramiris agreed. “Like my master said, it’s too much trouble to wait for them to get past Floor 50—not just for us, but for our foes, too.”

“Indeed. There are currently seven hundred thousand soldiers jamming the area around the gate. I’ve been instructed by Rimuru to lure as many of them as possible into the labyrinth…”

“But making such a huge crowd navigate that entryway is gonna take forever, won’t it? Honestly, you have to wonder why they brought so many folks along! So instead of that, we decided to divide up the enemy, one thousand soldiers per floor, and then repeat as necessary!”

Luckily for Ramiris, the Empire’s soldiers were matching in neat, well-disciplined rows. This allowed for smooth entry into the labyrinth so far, but this was clearly going to take a lot of time. If the first few rows got in a fight, it’d interrupt the entire flow, and then there’d be no telling how long it would take to cram everybody in.

“How does that sound to you? And if you get a lucky draw, you might even wind up facing a real strong opponent or two!”

“Kwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Who knows, indeed? One of them might be the grave threat to Rimuru that Benimaru has been searching for! I think he’s far too worried about that for his own good, but if you can find the man, that’ll be a feather in your cap.”

Ramiris and Veldora made all eyes in the room sparkle. To the labyrinth guardians, the Big Four serving Rimuru were the targets of intense admiration. Benimaru, in particular, was Rimuru’s closest friend and most trusted confidant; everyone wanted a chance to fight him someday. Veldora might have said No, no, I am his stoutest of allies if anyone brought up Benimaru’s name, but they didn’t, so things continued smoothly.

“So…we all have a chance, then?”

“Well, if that’s the case, I have no complaints at all.”

Apito and Kumara immediately seemed to patch things up with each other. They weren’t alone—everyone else was driven by similar motivation and ambition.

“All right,” intoned Adalmann, “does that mean we can do whatever we please with whoever enters our territory?”

“Exactly!” replied Ramiris.

Now everyone was treating this more seriously.

“They’re still filing in right now,” she continued, “but I’m just gonna connect them straight to Floor 41 for starters. Once a thousand make it in, I’ll move on to the next floor down, so be patient! Bovix and Equix, I’ve got another job for you two, so I’ll brief you on that later.”

Jealous glances shot toward the pair at once, making them tremble with anxiety. Now they were huddled down closer than before, trying their best to get through this social awkwardness. It’d be far better, they both agreed, if they could just fight those foolish invaders instead of facing up to this.

But Ramiris paid them no mind.

“So the idea here is to spread all these troops out and take ’em in at each floor. We’re talking one hundred thousand people total from Floors 41 to 50; one hundred thousand from Floors 51 to 60; one hundred thousand from Floors 61 to 70; one hundred thousand from Floors 71 to 80; and one hundred thousand from Floors 81 to 90. Then maybe, like, we can have each Dragon Lord tackle ten thousand at once? And if we get any more comin’ in after that, I can stash ’em in the higher floors, too!”

Thus the labyrinth would house a maximum target of five hundred forty thousand invaders at once. Ramiris wanted this number to be at least three hundred fifty thousand, if possible.

Last, but not least:

“Now, the one thing I don’t want you guys to forget is that these are one-time rule changes to the labyrinth. Each Dragon Lord chamber has been expanded to ten times its initial size, and I’ve switched the floors around as well, so if they make it past Floor 90, they’ll be plunging right into those Dragon Rooms. But that’s not really important. What is important is that I’ve changed the conditions for ‘beating’ this labyrinth!”

Ramiris did a little dance in the air to accentuate her point.

What kind of conditions were these? Well, for starters, once you went through the main gate at the surface, you couldn’t go back out until you beat the labyrinth. Beating it, in this case, was defined as defeating Veldora, so the Empire would have to deploy pretty much everything they had to stand a chance.

In order to gain the opportunity to face Veldora, however, a would-be invader would need to collect ten keys, passed out to each of the Ten Dungeon Marvels. If you wound up starting on Floor 80, you’d have to backtrack to earlier floors to defeat the requisite Marvels.

The moment they heard this, the Marvels immediately perked up. Even the Dragon Lords situated behind the table rumbled their approval.

“In that case, we really do all have an equal chance.”

“You’re right. It’s a race to see how many we can hunt down!”

Many among them were already out for blood.

“Heh… Hopefully I can find someone worthy enough to lift my sword up against.”

“Don’t be cocky yet, Alberto. All we must think about is laying waste to our divine enemies.”

Master and servant were brimming with spirit. But others among them were meditating in silence over this. In their own way, everybody in the chamber was in high spirits for the upcoming battle. Gauging them, Beretta—the overseer of the Marvels, more or less—spoke up.

“So, Lady Ramiris, regarding the matter I asked for your assistance with…”

“Ah, right, right. Yeah, Rimuru gave it the go-ahead, so let’s see how things unfold with it, okay?”

“Thank you very much. In that case…”

After that quick exchange, Beretta stood up and surveyed the Ten Dungeon Marvels.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Lady Ramiris has assigned me the title of Dungeon Master. I would normally share this title alongside my duties as chairperson of the Ten Dungeon Marvels, but…”

Beretta saw that overseer job as a bunch of garbage dead-end work and little else. Ramiris thought having ten Marvels sounded better than nine, so he got tossed in to fill up the ranks. The job, as one would expect from Ramiris’s birdbrained ways, changed from day to day. Sometimes it was little more than being Ramiris’s gofer, which—to put it bluntly—was not his cup of tea.

Treyni, despite having roughly the same position, seemed far more valued by Ramiris than he ever was. A lot of that was because Treyni never lectured Ramiris about anything… And Beretta couldn’t see what was fair about that, either. Besides, Treyni pretty much did whatever she pleased, too, jetting off on these mystery trips out of nowhere (although gaining Ramiris’s advance permission for them).

It was a real problem for Beretta, who secretly grumbled over it quite a bit. Regardless, he was still named one of the Ten Dungeon Marvels, whether he liked it or not. He really wanted to give that position over to someone else… And now the perfect opportunity had arisen.

“…I think I would like give my position to whoever puts in the best performance in this battle.”

The Marvels had to resist the urge to whoop for joy. Even Bovix and Equix were filled with ambitions not quite in line with their talents, hoping against hope that they could join the Ten Marvels. Unfortunately, their ambitions were shattered by the next thing Beretta said.

“For this current battle, I will provisionally grant Sir Gadora my position in the Ten Dungeon Marvels. Given Adalmann’s attesting of his powers, as well as his own knowledge, both Lady Ramiris and I have no qualms about this appointment.”

Gadora, facing this sudden announcement, was surprised but calm. Given how long he had lived, he was used to situations like these.

Yessss! This is my time to shine! And if I put in an eye-catching effort, I won’t be “provisional” for very long at all!!

Gadora had always been an aggressive man. He had to be, or else he couldn’t hone the right-place-at-the-right-time knack he used to navigate the world for so many years. And Gadora knew his place, too. His steely eyes told him just how powerful the Ten Marvels were. Some were lower or equal to him, while others were so far above him that even making a comparison was ridiculous. He’d never be appointed overseer of the Marvels if he let those titans be—something he understood well enough—and so his goal was merely to gain membership to start.

“I will humbly accept your offer!”

“You will? Thank you, Sir Gadora. It helps me a great deal.”

Gadora and Beretta had a real you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours moment. And while still temporary for now, that was the last change made in the lineup before the Empire war. Beretta was out of the Ten Dungeon Marvels, and Gadora was in.

“Oh, yes! I’m just as glad you’re taking the offer, Gadora. I’ll be assigning you to Floor 60, with the Demon Colossus boss, and I hope you’ll make good use of that one!”

Everything wrapped up without a hitch. They had already discussed all this with Rimuru, and they had decided to put Gadora to the test on a trial basis. Gadora had already been helping with Ramiris’s research and so forth, so he didn’t need much convincing to accept the job. In fact, to him, being entrusted with the demon lord’s Demon Colossus was a real dream.

“Great! In that case, shouldn’t we give Gadora some kind of nickname, too?”

“Oooh yeah. Any ideas, Gadora?”

Being asked this out of the blue, Gadora had nothing to offer.

“Well, let’s see…”

Is this really important? he couldn’t help but think. The Empire was already invading labyrinth space. They really needed to take up defensive positions ASAP, something everyone must’ve been thinking (if not saying out loud). But the big bosses didn’t seem too concerned about time and were treating this like just another chat.

Heavens… My hat goes off to them. Emperor Ludora is a great man, too, but I fear he’s no match for this group. But given the labyrinth we’re in and the Storm Dragon we’re with, I suppose it’s only to be expected…

Gadora was truly impressed. He was never one for loyalty, but seeing Veldora and Ramiris—and most of all Rimuru, so adept at manipulating those two—he couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe.

“How about the Rune Master, then?”

“Ooh, how catchy!” Ramiris gushed.

“Yes, is it not? When push comes to shove, I always have the right answer! Kwaaah-ha-ha-ha!!”

There was no possible way Gadora could object.

It seemed like everyone had their orders, but Ramiris still had one thing to announce.

“Oh, oh, right! I had a real important role for Bovix and Equix!”

The two of them almost leaped out of their chairs, still nervous about what they’d be asked for.

“Wh-what role is that?”

“What would you like us to do?”

Their nervous questions were greeted with a matter-of-fact reply.

“So I’m gonna have you two stand by on Floor 30. You can use the bosses there however you like, so if you see any invaders trying to escape, wipe ’em out for me, all right? I set the resurrection point for your bracelets at Floor 30, too, so even if you get killed somehow, no worries! Do your best up there!”

By the sound of things, Ramiris assumed this would be easy work for them. All they could do was nod their agreement. They were motivated, yes, but more than that, they were anxious. If they didn’t deliver at a time like this, they feared being abandoned for good. If they put in a half-hearted effort, they could be fired from this most prestigious of positions. They exchanged firm nods, promising they wouldn’t let that happen.

The boss of Floor 30 was an ogre lord, ranked a B-plus, along with his five minions. Following orders from the A-ranked Bovix and Equix, they were all bound to become a great team. Gadora, despite being so new, had readily accepted his appointment into the Ten Dungeon Marvels. Given they had been part of the labyrinth far longer than him, they couldn’t afford to embarrass themselves here.

That, and the two of them realized something else. Even if part of the imperial force did make it past Floor 30, there was still no escape for them. That held even if they climbed all the way back to Floor 1. They’d just have to turn back, and along those lines, Bovix and Equix’s assignment was extremely low stakes, come to think of it. And they both also realized that losing to those soldiers meant getting killed however many times it happened—an unpleasant experience.

“Well, let’s do it. We’re guardians, too. And if we can earn some recognition for our exploits, we’re bound to get a promotion!”

“Yes, you’re right, my brother. No need to take turns or hold back this time. Let’s crush our enemies with everything we’ve got!”

“We’ll crush every single fleeing imperial soldier we find!”

“We will! And I promise we’ll live up to your expectations, Lady Ramiris!!”

If their backs were against the wall, the only place to go was forward. Their anxieties instantly vanished, the two of them burning with enthusiasm.

Now everybody had their assigned roles.

“Rimuru has asked us to lure as many imperials into this labyrinth as we possibly can! And if we wanna do that, you’re gonna have to show these guys a good time, to some extent! Got it?”

They all nodded, understanding. Everybody saw what their role was—for day one, at least, they’d keep quiet and watch how the enemy moved. Then Ramiris, giving them all a satisfied look, dropped one more bomb on them.

“Good, good. Well, good luck, guys! And by the way, Rimuru said he’ll be watching this battle. We’ll be deciding who’s the next overseer based on this, but it’s a good chance for all of you to show off, okay?”

Everyone’s faces turned dead serious.

“…Sir Rimuru will be watching?”

Even Zegion, silent until now, felt the need to gravely ask the question. It really surprised Apito. The Insect Kaiser was a taciturn individual, rarely speaking at all. Apart from his loyalty to the demon lord Rimuru, Zegion was interested in little besides strength.

“Um, y-yes. Rimuru said he’d be observing the whole thing, okay?”

The unanticipated pressure made Ramiris stammer a bit. Not even she had the opportunity to see Zegion talk much. Her surprise was only natural.

“Zegion, there are no lies in Ramiris’s words. Rimuru has a great curiosity about the strength of his labyrinthine ranks. That is why he trusted you all enough to give you such a major role in this war.”

Veldora, following up for the flummoxed Ramiris, saw Zegion as an excellent student, one he had been training in combat for some time. He was stronger than even Charys, who had been with Veldora for a very long time, and if the conditions were just right, he could fight evenly (or better) with Veldora himself. He was, in essence, too strong. Nobody in the labyrinth except Veldora could handle him—and that’s why he was so excited for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“…Ah. Sir Rimuru, watching us… This is so emotional for me. I’ll be sure to show him just how much I have grown.”

“Hee-hee-hee! Of course! He said he was expecting a lot out of you all, so let’s give him a big surprise!”

Ramiris might have been giving them an innocent smile right then, but deep down, she was merciless. Being a self-styled demon lord, she wasn’t afraid to abide by “survival of the fittest.”

Everyone who enters the labyrinth—including Empire soldiers—is presented with a set of rules. After each person is confirmed to be a willing participant, they are then asked—directly to the instincts in their mind—whether they’re okay with never leaving unless they beat the Dungeon. Would they see it as a threat or a warning?

But even if people heard that and thought Oh crap, I’m in trouble, nobody seemed to be turning back. They all filed into the labyrinth like ants to sugar, dreaming of the fortune and glory inside—and at that moment, Ramiris ran out of mercy. Without reservation, she welcomed all of them as her enemy…and soon, the soldiers of the Empire would discover the true nature of this labyrinth. The fear it caused.

“Let us dedicate this victory to Sir Rimuru,” muttered Zegion as he left his seat.

With that signal, everyone was on the move. Visitors would soon start arriving at the hellscape, and they had to wait for them.

Column by orderly column, the soldiers of the imperial army were marching down into the Dungeon, their movements methodical and without fancy frippery. Each had a safety belt around their waist, connected front and back so each column stayed around ten feet away from each other. In addition to these troops, there was a separate designated combat team, not connected by ropes and able to move freely around; when not engaged in a fight, they held on to the main force’s lifelines. With enough sheer quantity, no labyrinth was ever going to be a problem. They had prepared everything well in advance, and this entire force wouldn’t have any issues getting lost as they marched onward.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Caligulio’s mind turned toward all the riches he was set to gain shortly.

This maze is mere child’s play. The problem is all the monsters that live inside…

Not their strength, per se, but the time they’d have to spend dealing with them. Their preliminary intelligence indicated the labyrinth ran a total of sixty floors, but they hadn’t received confirmation on that yet. At least one rumor pegged the actual number at a hundred, but the other officers had dismissed that as unrealistic—a bluff.

Still, the deeper the floor they reached, the more valuable the treasure they’d be bound to discover—and most importantly, the purer the magic crystals they were likely to find. That alone made this a very attractive offer, but the deeper you went, it seemed, the stronger the local monsters would become. That, Caligulio thought, had the potential to become a big hassle.

Well, once we find out exactly what kinds of monsters we’ll encounter down there, we can figure out how to subdue them the right way. That’ll make for more efficient hunting, too.

Stroking the beard he was unduly proud of, Caligulio had made his conclusion. Seeing the well-trained soldiers spread before him, their grand majesty a symbol of the Empire’s authoritative power, this labyrinth hardly seemed like a threat at all.

They had all undergone training to simulate the style of battle that would likely unfold down there. Practitioners of spirit magic would map out the path ahead, and then the special-ops teams would disarm any traps. The combat team would then dispatch the local monsters, then the cleanup team would scavenge for salvageable materials and magic crystals. The lead member of each column was responsible for overseeing this entire process from start to finish.

Once all the treasure was gathered, it would be sent rearward by the soldiers tied to each other, all the way back to the entrance gate, where the platoons standing by there would take it to the nearby command HQ. Linking soldiers together like this would allow them to quickly handle any unexpected changes in the process; if something came up, the soldiers were carefully trained to retreat at once in order to report to their superiors.

Caligulio’s plan worked extremely well…at first. But then something strange happened in there. After approximately one thousand soldiers went through the gate, all contact was suddenly lost.

“What should we do, sir?”

What happened to the soldiers? It was unclear—but judging by the surgically clean cut on the rope, someone must have been messing with spatial links in there.

We were briefed on that—the labyrinth can change its structure at times. But they said it happened once every twenty-four hours at most…

It troubled Caligulio, but he didn’t let the brigade of soldiers stop. For a while longer, he allowed the storming of the labyrinth to continue.

What they later found, after some more observation, was that the labyrinth changed structure with every one thousand people they put in.

…Wait. Not quite.

“I see… It looks like the enemy’s welcoming us with open arms.”

“…? How do you mean, sir?”

“Simple. I’m sure it doesn’t suit them much if the labyrinth’s crawling with people. The stairs we see there don’t lead to the second basement floor but likely to some other floor instead.”

“Really?! They can do that…?”

Caligulio gave his surprised staff officer a Well, what do you think, doofus? look and a bit of a snorted chuckle.

“Well, I’m sure they can. This is a demon lord we’re fighting, remember? If they can’t pull that off on their home turf, they would have been destroyed ages ago.”

He had predicted what would occur in the labyrinth with decent accuracy so far. From the soldier chatter before they lost contact, there was no indication that anything unusual was going on. It didn’t seem reasonable to think that something had just happened to them out of nowhere.

“Besides, we lost contact once exactly one thousand people came in. What do you make of that?”

“Hmm… Yes. That’s very insightful of you, sir.”

With a nod of acknowledgment, Caligulio considered their future plans. Even in these early stages, they had already retrieved a few bits and bobs of treasure—finely made personal accessories, for example, or weapons and armor made of magisteel. It was all top-notch stuff, and what’s more, the magic crystals they harvested were similarly high in quality, producing energy with unquestionably high efficiency.

If they halted the invasion now, the fates of the two thousand people in there already would be all but sealed. Best instead to stick with the original plan and keep pushing all their masses of people inside—that was Caligulio’s decision.

“They’re trying to threaten us—trying to make us give up on conquering this labyrinth so he can buy some more time. Expecting some reinforcements from Dwargon, no doubt.”

“Heh. Laughable, isn’t it? Because by now, those reinforcements must be…”

“…Exactly. Stopping now is exactly what the enemy wants us to do. Make sure everyone’s aware of that!”

“Yes, sir! Continuing with our primary objective to conquer!”

Caligulio was satisfied with this. The enemy tried to trap him, and he was sure he saw through it. And weighing the potential profits from the treasure against the lives of his soldiers, he decided to ignore any lingering uncertainties in his mind.

That moment alone decided the imperial army’s fate.

A day had passed since the invasion began. The march had continued day and night, and by now, some three hundred fifty thousand soldiers were in the labyrinth.

Like clockwork, they were being sent to different locations every time a thousand new soldiers came in. Apparently those soldiers taken to very certain floors were still able to bring at least a part of their bodies back outside the spatial rift, and the kinds of treasure they were still ferrying back was constantly changing. Nearly none of it was low quality, and there were even a few weapons with strange, concave holes inserted into them—some kind of new enemy weapon, perhaps.

There was no better indicator of just how panicked the enemy was right now. They would doubtlessly have retrieved these weapons if they had the time to. If they didn’t, it was proof that events had hurried them along involuntarily.

They’re all but putting out the welcome mat for us, and now that push has come to shove, they’re finding themselves in trouble. So foolish.

Using the labyrinth to attract people from surrounding nations, he thought, was a pretty neat idea. But not being able to handle matters right at this most crucial of moments made the whole thing seem shoddy to him.

So while Caligulio had at first been openly derisive of the demon lord Rimuru and his team, now that a day had passed, he decided to halt the onrush and see how things unfolded. The soldiers around HQ were thus allowed to take breaks in shifts. Really, they could have kept going, but suddenly Caligulio was feeling uneasy.

“It’s three hundred fifty thousand troops in there so far, right?”

“Yes, sir! Half our army has invaded the labyrinth.”

He might have been losing contact with them every thousand troops, but so far Caligulio’s predictions were correct—not much later, he got a report that soldiers inside the labyrinth had made contact with the ones who went in first. Now the Empire was gaining momentum. Everyone was on edge about the missing troops, so knowing that their comrades were safe in there came as a relief to everybody on-site. They had been hiding their anxiety before now—getting worked up about every little hitch would make you an embarrassment to the Empire—and the good news energized everyone all the more. They had nothing to fear now, and the speed of the labyrinth incursion was accelerating.

Thanks to all that, now a good half of their entire army was sucked into the Dungeon. But:

“We’ve put hundreds of thousands in there, but they still haven’t fully plumbed the labyrinth…?”

“Not even I thought it was this vast, no.”

“Sixty floors… I thought each floor shrank the farther down you went.”

“That’s what we heard, sir. I think they’ll reach the lowest depths before too long, but…”

The plan called for the imperial army to conquer the labyrinth long ago, but things hadn’t turned out that way—and the problem was, once they stopped throwing new soldiers inside, that de facto meant they lost contact with everybody already in the labyrinth. Reconnecting with the advance forces in there meant a pretty vast quantity of treasure was coming their way, but that caravan had been halted as well now that the invasion was on hold.

“And not one person who went inside has come out yet?”

“N-no, sir. Apparently the labyrinth must be fully ‘beaten’ before anyone can get out…”

“Yes, I heard about that. Everyone who went in had a question run through their heads, didn’t they?”

“Correct, sir. But while the conditions are clear enough…it seems that before they can slay the king of the labyrinth, they have to defeat the guardians who are defending ten keys…”

“Ah. And we haven’t beaten those yet?”

They had an answer. But it wasn’t the one Caligulio was looking for. The “king of the labyrinth” was likely to be Rimuru, and if killing him “beat” the labyrinth, that was exactly what the Empire wanted…or should have wanted anyway. Instead, all they had done was stop sending in follow-up troops, thus cutting off contact with everybody inside.

“Do you think a force of three hundred fifty thousand can beat the demon lord?”

The staff officers were at a loss to answer. But it didn’t take them long to drum up their previous vigor.

“The blunder the Kingdom of Farmus made, I believe, is that it ran into Veldora. If it’s just the demon lord Rimuru alone, we should have enough resources to beat him.”

“I agree with him, sir. We have a great number of over-A troops in this initiative. Good news should be coming our way, in time.”

His staff, seemingly relieved that they were apparently on the same page as each other, rejoiced loudly over their assured victory. But Caligulio just couldn’t shake off his unease.

“All right. First, I want contact made inside the labyrinth. Send in a liaison team and have them try out all our comm methods.”

Accepting the order, they went through the checklist of imperial communication protocols they had handy. None of them worked. Magical calls, telepathy; nothing elicited a response.

By this point, the staff officers were having trouble kidding themselves any longer. Their hearts, bursting with visions of all the booty the labyrinth was about to give up, were now down in the doldrums, faced with a suddenly unforeseeable future. Having no contact with the inside was starting to seriously affect their mood—without any idea of the battle situation, they couldn’t even adequately perform their jobs.

“In that case, sir, we’ll resume the invasion once we reorganize our ground troops.”

“Right.” Caligulio nodded. No matter how this turned out, they needed to send someone to check on the situation. If they kept them on ground level, there was no way to check on what was happening down below. The large gate remained wide open, showing no signs of closing up; nothing had changed with it since first discovery…and yet the moment people stopped filing through it, nothing at all could be sensed from beyond the entrance archway. Even the steady flow of goods from the inside had cut off—and partly thanks to that, the command HQ was starting to become an uncomfortable place.

Two more days passed.

“Why aren’t we receiving any further reports?”

“With every thousand people being taken to a different place, sir, it might be hard for them to find troops who found themselves deep in the labyrinth.”

“Are you telling me the labyrinth’s that vast?!”

“You don’t think…?”

“What?”

“You don’t think they’ve all been defeat—”

“Shut up, fool! Lost your nerve, haven’t you, huh?!”

“Calm down. I think this was the demon lord Rimuru’s plan all along. He wanted to make us suspicious, paranoid, and force us give up on his labyrinth.”

Now, unlike in the early stages, only a thousand troops were allowed to enter each hour, out of an abundance of caution. At that rate, however, it was hard to retrieve any new information at all, to say nothing of treasure. Thus, the first day saw three hundred fifty thousand soldiers march in; the second day saw one hundred fifty thousand more; but on the third day, only thirty thousand were allowed passage. This left the number of imperial forces on the ground at one hundred seventy thousand total.

“Would it be wiser to conserve our numbers at this point?”

“Hmmm… I’d hate to play into the enemy’s strategy, but it may be unwise to cut our forces any further, yes.”

“We did send supply teams into the labyrinth; that’ll extend the operational time frame of our troops. Perhaps we could toe the line and see how things unfold for the next, say, twenty days?”

“Rather a passive approach, don’t you think?!”

“Perhaps, but we still haven’t made contact with Lieutenant General Gaster or Major General Farraga, either. They might be in the middle of intense combat, or maybe…”

Several intelligence units had gone down as well. None had returned. Trusted friends and dedicated imperials were now completely out of touch.

“It’s because the magicule count’s too high in here. What other reason would there be?”

Caligulio was assertive about that, at least. He didn’t want to see morale go down any more than it had—but the atmosphere around the place was already very unsettled. There was an indescribably eerie silence throughout, and every person on the scene had long since begun to foster ominous premonitions.

Even their commander, assertive as he was, felt the same way. He still had one hundred seventy thousand soldiers here—but turn that around, and you could say there were only one hundred seventy thousand left.

Perhaps I’m making a terrible mistake…

Now the doubts were coming clear as day into his mind. The towering gate before them seemed incredibly creepy to him now, contributing to his anxieties. And the fates of all those who cared to cross it into the labyrinth? Caligulio would learn about them all very soon.

Labyrinth Floors 41–48

The exact fate of the imperial soldiers who entered the labyrinth varied widely depending on the floor they were dumped into. Those put between Floors 41 and 48 were, by and large, the lucky ones. It housed some pretty tough monsters, but we were still talking in the B-ranked range, nothing for these surgically enhanced soldiers to sweat about.

Things proceeded very quickly with their advance. These were all extremely capable soldiers, ranking at least a C-plus by adventurer standards, and their skills were first-class. A group like that would never panic when faced with monsters.

So the troops kept marching in an orderly line, their affiliated combat team taking protective action a little behind them. Setting up base points at each corner, they made sure every passage was clear before proceeding, following training as their numbers filled up the floor. In less than a day, they had discovered both the ascending and descending stairways.

In this mission, the top priority was to kill the demon lord with the full brunt of their strength. Plundering the treasure on the earlier floors would be left to other troops or saved until everything else was over. Once the stairs were fully occupied by the combat teams, the invasion continued.

Near the stairs was a room whose door had been sealed shut. A sign reading REST STOP was nailed to it. It was exactly how their intelligence described it, with the exception that the door refused to budge.

“It’s not opening, sir. It’s likely been disabled.”

“Hmm. I’m sure. Can we break it down?”

“Guns and magic did nothing to it, sir. I think it’s safe to assume it’s as indestructible as the labyrinth corridors themselves!”

The captain nodded at his reporting soldier. This was natural; nothing worth being surprised about. Maybe they could try a magitank gun on it or some kind of large-scale magic, but that could compromise the safety of everybody else in here. A nuclear magic spell would lead to untold casualties. So as originally planned, the captain decided to keep making their way straight down the labyrinth. A human-wave strategy, basically. Not being able to use the rest stop irked him to high heaven, but he accepted it.

“Report up top for me about this. And tell them the invasion’s going smoothly.”

“Yes, sir!”

Being isolated down there, kept to a force of one thousand, unnerved him at first. But getting downtrodden by this would make him unworthy of being an imperial officer. So the captain decided to continue the attack, and this turned out to be the right answer, for after a while longer, they managed to rendezvous with another team.

This floor was much larger than expected, but thanks to help from an elementalist and a surveyor, they were proceeding at a rapid pace. The magic crystals dropped by the monsters they slew were high quality, and they were finding excellent treasure from the chests they discovered. The people who took the stairs down reported back to say that they were close to completely conquering Floor 42. Cheering could be heard across the halls—the Empire would never be defeated.

On the second day, they completed their search of every chamber on Floor 41 and journeyed onward to Floor 42, joining up with the team they previously made contact with. There, at breakneck speed, they headed for Floor 43—and before day three even began, they were just a few steps away from reaching Floor 48.

It was beyond all expectation…but Floor 49 would be a much different story.

Labyrinth Floors 49–50

“Ah, aaahhh, there’s something on my neck?!”

“I’m sinking! I—I— My legs are melting…!”

“H-help! Help me! I can’t get my hand out!!”

It was pandemonium.

A moment’s inattention, and the slimes came. Everywhere, from here to the other side of the floor—tons and tons of slimes. Slimes, slimes, slimes, slimes, slimes. Take a break for a moment, and slimes fell on you from the ceiling. Turn a corner, and slimes would scatter and destroy entire platoons. Slimes on the wall, slimes on the floor. Weapons and armor were laid waste to, soldiers rapidly losing their stamina.

“Dammit! Haven’t they made it through yet?!”

“Sir, there’s a monster presence across the entire floor, so our magical detection isn’t working very well. In addition, it seems to be highly resistant to physical attack, so basic strikes aren’t working on them!”

“Yes, and they proliferate at an unbelievable rate! Pain doesn’t seem to register with them, so they don’t even flinch at our attack!”

A single slime was hardly any concern, but when they were this gigantic, burning one to death suddenly became a massive effort. They were proving much more troublesome than expected. And while they didn’t have to retreat yet—thanks to the reinforcements who arrived every few hours—they were losing time fast and failing to post up the results they wanted.

In the end, they didn’t have the floor entirely explored until the end of day three. Only when more soldiers from higher floors came down were they able to human-wave their way over the crest.

Then, on Floor 50, they encountered a literal pile of the wounded. The passage resembled a dark, dank, gloomy cave, the sounds of battle ringing in their ears.

“Dammit!” came an enraged shout from beyond. “Those monsters revived again!”

Ahead of the group, a gigantic snake, like a living embodiment of darkness, had wriggled its way into the passage, growling as it blocked any forward progress. It was a tempest serpent, and the Empire’s regular-grade magic and gunfire couldn’t even put a dent in its armor-like scales. Even if you wanted to take a sword to the serpent, its Poison Breath had a reach of well over twenty feet, bathing the target in a deadly mist before they’d ever come close enough.

“Bastard! These narrow passages were practically made for these creatures!”

“We could go around it if we had enough space, but there’s no way to do that here.”

“Can we get a magizooka ready?”

“Negative. We just fired it. It’s got two hours left to recharge.”

A magizooka was a new type of magical weapon, one of the most powerful types of portable offense the world had seen yet. Unlike spellguns that ran on magic stones, these ran on charged magic, using magicules taken from the atmosphere. The spell tucked inside them was the elemental magic Airbuster, which compressed atmospheric air before firing out in a series of concussive blasts. Easily aimed and not reliant on combustion for its force, it was an ideal piece of magic for inside buildings and other closed spaces—and it packed enough of a punch that just carrying one could earn you an A rank.

The problem with a magizooka, though, was the intense amount of energy it consumed. That’s why it was designed to be rechargeable, but even in the magicule-laden atmosphere of the labyrinth, a full recharge took three hours. Usually, that’d be fast enough for most purposes, but here, that still wasn’t enough.

“Whoa, are you kidding me? So these monsters are regenerating faster than we can kill them?!”

The tempest serpent was clearly unique. There was a ring placed around its neck, giving it a presence that set it apart from other monsters. Most important of all, though, no matter how many times you beat it, it’d come back within three hours. In other words, no matter how many times they captured this floor, the battle would start all over again once enough time passed. And worst of all: No part of this floor was safe from the creature.

But that still wasn’t all.

“Ah, ahhhhh, there’s one over here, too!!”

The sound of warfare began echoing from another passage. No, that was not the only tempest serpent—in fact, they had confirmed the presence of at least ten. A tangled web of serpents, each ranking an A-minus in terms of danger, was dominating an area uniquely built to take full advantage of their characteristics.

It was, simply put, a den of black snakes. Typically, the tempest serpent and its reserves would serve as the boss monster of Floor 40. For this emergency, though, they had all been deployed at the same time on this floor.

In the end, reinforcements from the upper floors came in to give them some better arms to work with. Only then did they have enough magizookas to take on all the tempest serpents at once—and only late into the night of day three did they finally subdue them all.

“Right. We need to stay on this floor and watch for any more potential regenerations. Evacuate the sick and injured to the upper floors.”

“Yes, sir!”

So the imperial army took this opportunity to reorganize their forces inside the labyrinth—and with that, they stepped forward into an even greater hell.

Labyrinth Floors 51–60

Floor 51 featured a modern-looking passageway. The Empire had already gained control of this floor by the looks of things, and they could see soldiers at every corner. All the signs of fierce combat strewn about suggested that this was another hairy floor to tackle.

One of the unit captains tried to make contact with the people on the field.

“What’s the situation?” he asked the guard sentry, trying to keep quiet enough not to wake the resting soldiers.

“It’s a mess. We really underestimated this demon lord.”

“What do you mean?”

“The traps on this floor are awful. The path you see us guarding every corner of is the correct way—don’t even try to venture outside of it. I think we’ve destroyed most of the traps, but there might still be some activated ones out there.”

“All right. By the way…”

The captain asked for details he could report to his superior officers. The story he was told involved a large number of chemical weapons, the likes of which not even the Empire made use of. There was a tasteless, odorless gas that damaged the eyes and throat; showers of neurotoxins and corrosive liquids; large, vicious traps that ensnared lots of people at once. The soldiers all thought this sort of thing was the exclusive domain of Empire, and that made it seem all the more threatening.

“From this floor on, you won’t find any monsters. Instead, there are these damned magicule-powered golems roaming around. It looks like they’re self-repairing, too. It took forever to fully dismantle them.”

“That sounds real tough.”

The captain wanted to talk about how tough he had it, too, but kept silent, urging the sentry to go on.

“Yeah. The injured and exhausted are resting down on Floor 55. Make it there, and you’ll be able to eat in safety, at least.”

“Thanks. So where’s the front line at the moment?”

“The front line? …According to a story I just heard, it’s on Floor 60. It sounded like a joke to me, though. If we reported it up top, they’re gonna think we lost our minds down here. It’s crazy, but do you still wanna hear it?”

The captain had to nod at the sighing soldier. “Yes, please.”

“You’re sure? Well, okay, then. Supposedly, on Floor 60, there’s this giant humanoid weapon ruling over the place! And as for its strength…”

The more he heard, the sillier it sounded. That was how sublimely grand it was. Even an entire army of A-ranked warriors, apparently, couldn’t find a glimmer of hope against the guy. Its entire body was made of magisteel, making it impervious to swords and guns, and it had a permanent barrier as well, so not even magizookas worked on it. They had exhausted all options, and that was the latest the guard knew of.

“Also, apparently this giant golem talks, and get this—it sounds exactly like old Lord Gadora. It’s totally unbelievable—and I’m supposed to report this? This is way above my pay grade…”

Despite the guard’s valid complaints, the captain still felt obliged to report to his commanding officers and ask for their judgment.

“We’ll have to go in. I’ll have us aim for Floor 55 first. We’ll discuss our future plans there.”

“Yes, sir.”

In a situation like this, the captain knew that his boss’s reply was going to be yes and nothing else. He had no alternative ideas, nor any other concerns with the plan. But this was kicking the can down the alleyway. They’d need a solid answer before long—but the word retreat simply didn’t exist in the imperial dictionary.

“You’re going? Yeah, I’m sure you are. Well, good luck, but before you go, I forgot about one other warning. We’ve confirmed the presence of five special monsters in the area. Keep an eye out for them.”

“Special monsters?”

“Yeah. Nobody’s successfully beaten them yet, as far as I know. They’ve got to be uniques, I’m sure of that, and they’re nasty. They’ve killed several of my comrades already.”

They were a red slime, a golden skeleton, a deathly ghost, a heavy suit of living armor, and a small but powerful dragon. This vicious band was apparently patrolling the halls around this set of floors, a highly unusual presence among the herd of golems. Encounter them, the guard warned, and you were as good as dead.

The survivors from the upper floors took that advice to heart as they moved on. It would be just a bit longer before they knew what was waiting for them. Deeper and deeper they went, incessantly and in strict formation, not knowing of the killing fields awaiting them.

Labyrinth Floors 61–70

“What? You still haven’t won yet?”

“I’m sorry, sir! Looks like we failed to achieve a breakthrough again…”

Hearing that report threw all the soldiers into despair. Floor 70 was home to a massive gate, a sort of boundary between this one and the great citadel of death.

………

……

…

Pushing their way through the swarms of undead monsters, the imperial soldiers swaggered across the labyrinth. It was going well at first—at first anyway.

All the monsters that appeared were of the undead variety. Get used to the stench of rotting meat, and it wasn’t anything an imperial soldier would have much trouble fending off. The first thousand troops sent here managed to establish a base of operations, and after meeting with others, they decided to continue the invasion downward. Losing contact with the surface was a painful blow, but they weren’t completely isolated. More would arrive when the time came, they decided, and so it was not a major problem.

So like a raging torrent, the troops stormed down the floors. On day one alone, they had explored and mapped out most of the terrain between Floors 61 and 69.

Floor 70 was the problem. For some reason, this floor was a large, hilly area, one where all the vegetation had withered away. It was the eerie remains of a battlefield, with a hint of death in the air, and at the far end of it loomed a massive gate, similar in size to the one up on the surface. Made of bones, it was located in the middle of a wall that surrounded a fortified city. Why was this in a labyrinth? That was the question on everyone’s mind.

Apart from this gate, there was no other entrance into the city. There were no drainage pipes, no service gates, none of the other facilities you’d expect to be required for regular life. It made sense. This city was occupied by the lifeless—the immortal undead—and on day one, its gates remained firmly shut.

They tried to destroy the walls, but they proved tenaciously thick. Any section they destroyed, the undead would come swooping out to repair it, so the demolition work proceeded slowly, if at all. Even coming close to the wall exposed them to the armed Skeleton Archers up top. It was too much trouble to attack in small numbers, so the Empire forces decided to wait for reinforcements.

On the morning of day two, the imperials now had over ten thousand troops on hand—and just as they were about to begin their attack, the large gates opened soundlessly out of nowhere. Behind it awaited a hideous-looking wight king. It was a skeleton—but was that the right word? Its pure-white bones, polished to perfection, shone in the light as it spoke fluently to the soldiers.

“Welcome to my kingdom Deathtopia. I am Adalmann, the Immortal King. Our preparations for the feast are complete. Now, it is time to enjoy ourselves. Let us begin!”

Immediately after Adalmann introduced himself, an oppressive wave rushed over the army. This king was served by a band of unholy death knights, along with a death dragon that still loomed in all its majesty, long after life had escaped its clutches. Its evil roar was unleashed with enough sheer force to flatten the entire space—and then, from the sky, the death dragon landed just past the gate. The deadliest of dragons, the king of the mountain when it came to undead, had now bared its fangs at the imperial army.

And that wasn’t all. Once the large gates fully opened, the legions of undead swarmed out from inside. Massive armies of death knights, themselves led by a set of Death Lords, came crawling out one after another. The soldiers lined up in front of the gate were immediately thrown into confusion as the battle suddenly began.

This death dragon was an A-ranked monster, a fearsome adversary that required careful advance preparation to take a whack at. Its attribute was “undead,” meaning that it could not be defeated unless its soul was directly attacked—and as proud as the Empire was of its great war power, if their foe was impervious to their attacks, they were helpless.

“G-get back! We can’t just go slashing at random— Hrrkk!”

“Dammit! We have to fight fire with fire here…”

“No! He regenerates faster than he burns!”

“You have to get out of here! If you don’t, its miasma will hit you and rip your spirit apart!”

The army was in chaos—and as if to laugh at them, the dragon’s jaw opened wide.

“Look out! That’s— Aghh!”

“Brrrt…”

“It’s…my bodyyy! It’s rottinggg…!!”

The death dragon’s Zombie Breath rained down from high above, bathing all its earthbound targets. The majority of them failed the resistance check and promptly stopped living. And that wasn’t all, for those contaminated by the dragon’s miasma became zombies themselves, readily obeying the orders of their superior beings. In this case, the “superior being” would be the wight king in the area—in other words, Adalmann. All the casualties the Empire took from the miasma were inversely proportional to the rise in Adalmann’s strength.

And that wasn’t the only tragedy for the imperial force. Even those who managed to escape the death dragon’s rampage weren’t safe, for now the death knights spurred on their death horses as they chased down the would-be escapees. In the blink of an eye, the Empire’s numbers were decimated—and in less than an hour, the force of ten thousand was wiped out.

The devastation would be passed on to the rest of the army by the few people who survived—and now the battle for Floor 70 was in full swing.

………

……

…

From day two onward, the imperial army made many attempts to break into Floor 70. The first one ended in painful defeat; the second and third saw similar results. Nothing was going their way, and the overwhelming threat of the death dragon was just the start of it.

Although their numbers were only in the low thousands, the death knights experienced no death, no fatigue, no exhaustion. They earned an A-minus rank as a threat, and their regenerative skills kept them going no matter how many times they were beaten down. The Death Lords commanding them must have been on par with the best warriors the Empire could offer. They surpassed them in quality, even, and their army’s ability to carry on fighting through untold damage far overcame their numerical disadvantage.

On top of that, Adalmann had the Death Paladin Alberto working under him as part of the Ten Dungeon Marvels. Even the imperial elites on the ground here couldn’t find a way to fight against this army of immortals.

“…But that will end with this offensive. I expect great things from you all!”

A colonel with the imperial army had just wrapped up his speech to his soldiers. He was part of a group from the upper floors who arrived here on day four; they, along with the combined existing forces, were about to wage total war.

The Empire wasn’t incompetent, of course. There were all kinds of ways to deal with an undead enemy. If you had a marauding army of zombies out to kill humankind, holy magic was an all-purpose go-to. Humankind had committed sizable resources to researching and demystifying the principles of this holy magic, and the Empire had succeeded in developing techniques that had a similar effect as offering prayers to a higher being. People well versed in these techniques had been gathered from across the labyrinth and assigned to the units here on Floor 70. They’d provide resistance to the dragon’s evil miasma and penetrative power against the “undead” attribute. That was the crux of this operation.

The imperial army was now in formation atop the hilly terrain, numbering seventy thousand in all. Adalmann’s forces, meanwhile, numbered less than forty thousand, and even that was accounting for all the zombie reinforcements he’d won for himself over the past few days. The Empire had a clear numerical advantage, and now every member of their force believed that victory would be theirs at long last.

Then the decisive battle began…and the king made his move.

“Think you’ve outsmarted me? Think again. Extra Skill: Holy-Evil Inversion!”

The Immortal King had perfect control over all his forces, down to the end of the line. Once his power reached across his entire network, their weakness to the holy attribute was no longer an issue. The Empire, wholeheartedly relying on that weakness, would soon realize just how off target their scheme was…and how massive their ensuing defeat would be.

With that defeat, the imperial soldiers’ wills were broken. The survivors were driven to despair, frantically fleeing toward the upper floors. They completely forgot about the conditions for beating the Dungeon; the only thing left in their minds was the thirst for life, the urge to survive.

Labyrinth Floors 71–79

The soldiers dropped off at these floors were instantly forced into a never-ending battle against swarms of insects. The onslaught was incessant; unafraid of death, they continually attacked, not letting up for a moment.

For the troops sent here on day one of the labyrinth invasion, the first twenty-four hours against these swarms were a sobering experience but not a truly fearsome one. Building their base in a passageway they gained control of, they immediately stepped up to take countermeasures.

These insects, dozens of times larger than regular ones, were not only terrifying sights; they packed a punch, too. Let your guard down, and you’d be eaten alive in a matter of seconds—keep your cool, though, and you’d realize that each individual one wasn’t that strong. Plus, if these swarms never stopped attacking, that meant the potential for magic crystal harvesting was enormous. It was all prime quality, too, lighting up the faces of every soldier.

This is no big deal, they thought. A regular adventuring party would have no way to take a break down here; their fatigue would build up, and sooner or later they’d stop giving 100 percent. But these soldiers didn’t have to worry about that. If a skilled army wanted to conquer these floors, a bunch of bugs wasn’t going to stop it—even if you counted each individual insect, the Empire still outnumbered them. They could also work in shifts during battle, always keeping themselves in perfect battle shape.

So the force gradually expanded its network of bases, smoothly proceeding along. They were given no time to relax, but in a way, that was the only real issue.

The rewards they reaped, on the other hand, were massive. This insect paradise was lined with all kinds of hidden rooms—caves hidden in trees, dark caverns, and so on. They often housed powerful monsters, but they also had treasure chests, and their contents kept the soldiers constantly smiling with glee. One of them had just found a dagger inside the last room’s chests, a pricey-looking number done up with gold and silver. It was a capable blade, too, its sheen belying its magisteel make. Weapons with magisteel cores were expensive enough, but the blade’s pure magisteel, well, that’d make any rank-and-file soldier beam.

During the briefings, these soldiers were told that any magic crystals and other items recovered were the property of the military. However, smaller items like this dagger would very likely be overlooked—all their gear would be inspected later, but considering the soldier carrying this blade had to defeat the boss guarding it, it was very likely he’d get to keep it. His comrades eyed him enviously, but at the same time, they were all expecting it to be their turn next. If it wasn’t for the chance at little side benefits like this, none of them would keep standing here, swatting giant flies the whole day.

By this time, they were also collecting quite a lot of magic crystals. Crystals of this purity were usually scarce finds, but the monsters here dropped them like they were going out of style. The soldiers were laughing all the way to the bank, as it were, and at this rate, they were likely to rake in the bonuses.

From what they heard over the grapevine, it was pretty much the same deal up and down the floors. The section crawling with undead was a real disaster, though—you couldn’t plunder anything from those guys, but they were a notch harder to kill. Meanwhile, the return on investment these bugs offered was second to none. The treasure they uncovered was more than satisfactory, at least, and everyone there was under the happy delusion that they’d be rolling in dough once they were back.

Things started going awry on day two. One soldier realized that when, before his wide-open eyes, the head of his buddy walking next to them was suddenly rolling by itself along the ground.

“Yeah, so when we get back, we’re gonna have a wild night at— Huh?”

His buddy’s head had what could only be described as a puzzled expression as his glassy eyes looked up at the headless corpse still standing above. His soundless voice stopped midway, his mouth still open as blood spurted out like a fountain, raining all over his comrades.

“Wh-whoaaa!!”

The soldier screamed. The sudden catastrophe that befell the person he had just been talking to was too much to comprehend at first. But even that soldier was lucky, because he was chosen as the next victim before his brain could comprehend anything else.

His head fell with a thud, and like the mute corpse he was next to, the man quickly expired. They died on Floor 79, a place full of flowers in dazzling bloom; one had thought of it as a safe zone until now.

“Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee… It was worth waiting a day for this. All this prey’s come right to my doorstep. Thank you so much for coming! Now it’s time to let us kill and feed off you.”

The voice was clear as day—an attractive one, booming across the entire floor. It spoke the words of a queen, for it belonged to Apito, the Insect Queen and boss of this floor. Her beautiful voice was converted into thought waves that reached every corner of the area—and to her faithful servants, they had the timbre of an order.

………

……

…

Apito led a swarm of army wasps, a group of murderous insects nearly a foot long whose super senses could catch their human prey no matter how well they hid. Their small, transparent wings functioned as fearsome, high-frequency rotor blades, letting them easily perform irregular high-speed maneuvers. They were the “silent killers” of the insect world, sneaking up on you at the speed of sound.

Excellent dynamic vision wouldn’t mean anything against army wasps. Without exceeding the intrinsic limits of the human body, it’d be impossible to so much as detect them. The extra-skill combination of Hasten Thought and Ultraspeed Reaction were the bare minimum requirements to keep track of their movements. Just one wasp was classified as an over-A disaster.

Incidentally, in the Western Nations, the sighting of even one army wasp caused the authorities to issue a state of emergency. It’d be immediately reported to the top echelons of each nation’s military, who would then form a posse of senior-level knights—including the Crusaders, if possible. It would become a large-scale cleanup operation, featuring knights cornering wasps with holy barriers and weighing them down with weakening and slowing magic spells before doing them in. Even with that strategy, at least some casualties were always a given—that’s how fearsome a monster they were. If more than one was uncovered, meanwhile, that dramatically increased the danger even more.

So how many were under the Insect Queen’s control?

………

……

…

The number of army wasps carrying out Apito’s orders easily exceeded one thousand. And so before long, the wholesale slaughter began.

Anyone who might’ve thought Yeah, I can take ’em was doomed. Even if they were A-ranked powerhouses, unless they had achieved a certain level in their fighting skill, they were little removed from a rank amateur. If you couldn’t react to an army wasp’s speed, all that awaited was certain death.

And so it took less than ten minutes before all the imperial soldiers gathered on this floor were killed.

Labyrinth Floors 81–90

Let’s be frank about it: Day one was just a little warm-up. All the surviving soldiers thought so. Their comrades were gone—all killed by monsters that had the strength of demons or ancient gods. But they weren’t the only ones ruing their fates. The same tragedy was playing out on other floors. Everyone was now locked in a desperate battle, forced to fight powerful enemies at every single floor…with no chance of victory.

Floor 81 was a paradise for magical beasts, strutting around with their powerful bodies and forming great herds. But these were still dumb brutes, and an imperial soldier could defeat one of them with ease. On average, the strength of each individual ranked a B or higher probably, and they usually appeared in groups of three to five. That had the potential to surprise an unprepared soldier, but not enough to get anyone killed.

So they found the stairs before long, quickly meeting up with the thousand-strong force thrown into Floor 82. Not a bad day’s work overall, they felt. It might take some time, but with a few days to work with, they ought to have this whole thing conquered before long. Then day two came, and the arrival of a certain new adversary changed everything.

On Floor 82, a dense jungle from end to end, was a sentient ape who spoke the humans’ language. It was called simply the White Monkey, and it controlled both the wind and the sound, calling forth mighty storms as it flew across the sky. Its beautiful white pelt shone attractively across its supple physique, and the way it ran unfettered across every inch of the battlefield was so fetching that it almost created the illusion of watching a rehearsed performance. Its unique form of combat, using a mix of martial arts and a club in its hand, was paired with a seemingly never-ending array of aerial killing techniques. Add to that the vorpal blades it shot in all directions, and the White Monkey was one of the most dangerous magical beasts in existence.

In very little time, the White Monkey had used its sorcery to bring the imperial army to the brink of destruction. Then, after an hour of this rampage, it left like the wind, shouting “I’ll be back!” as it did. The regular raids from this simian menace would begin two days later.

One after another, soldiers and their comrades fell. They had fought with every bit of the pride they held as imperial subjects, but they had all been defeated. The sniper team’s shots were blocked by the Monkey’s storms; spells that affected its strength or status were blocked by its sorcery. Spellgun-driven magic wasn’t strong enough to overcome its wind barrier. That only left close-quarters combat, and even the best the Restructured Armor Corps had to offer were just being led around by the nose.

They were being tossed about by the White Monkey like children—and then, whenever time was up, it would simply leave. The reason? Simple: It was waiting for more imperial soldiers to show up.

At first, they ferociously resented being toyed with like this. Now they just wanted this ape to go away. Now there were less than a thousand survivors, and one soldier among them wondered how much longer he had to live. He just couldn’t understand how it came to this, no matter how much he thought about it. Then he spotted a white figure. When did the gears start to go out of sync…? Before he could find the answer, a dark curtain fell over his vision.

Floor 83 featured an expansive grassland with good visibility from end to end. There were pitfalls and other bush-league traps set up, but they posed no obstacle at all. The weather was fine, the faces on the marching forces bright. But on the night of day two, the Empire suffered staggering damage.

The moon had just shifted from waxing to full, and now it framed a lofty, high-minded rabbit in the air. This was the Moon Rabbit, the master of gravity, and its attacks made no distinction between friend or foe—but here it didn’t need to worry about the former. Although its powers depended on the moon phase, the Rabbit was capable of turning heaven and earth upside down even during a new moon.

Now the imperial army was at the mercy of this crushing super-gravitational force. But it wasn’t over. Night would come again, soon enough—and in three days, a full moon, the night when the Rabbit’s power was strongest…

Floor 84 was an intricate maze of cobblestone alleyways. The soldiers walking them seemed pale.

“W-water, I need water…”

“No dice. I can’t reach our supply team. You’ll have to hold out.”

“Shit! It’s only been three days, but I’m so damn thirsty… I can’t eat without any water…”

This surgically enhanced soldier was crying about his uncontrollable thirst. It was a hard scene to believe. But it wasn’t his fault. Because the Empire was confident in its ability to create drinking water with magic, they had supplied each soldier with only enough to fill their canteen. A portable food supply, the higher-ups felt, was much more of a priority.

Now it was this army’s downfall. The air on this floor was filled with some kind of toxin, and there wasn’t enough evaporated water in the air to magically collect. This situation was only discovered on day three, when some soldiers began to fall ill. Plus, in a particularly nasty turn of events, antidote magic didn’t work on this poison. No matter how many times they tried to undo the toxin’s effect, it just kept leaking into their water supply.

They could breathe normally, at least…but before much longer, they were going to face some serious attrition. Even now they were having frontline soldiers collapsing from the pain, exhibiting high fevers and black spots on their skin.

“We got another one! He’s lost too much strength. He needs treatment…”

“Dammit, we’ve got no medics in here! Any healing magic?”

“It’s not having any effect…”

And so more and more of their comrades fell—and every imperial soldier who was there to see it wondered if they would be next.

Now tiny monsters were running around at their feet in the midst of all this. They were black-furred mice, not even two inches long, and they seemed so trivial that the soldiers paid them no mind. That was a serious mistake, for the mice were the very source of all this. In fact, they were the minions of the Black Mouse, the floor boss—the plague monarch spreading a dark, foul illness.

The soldiers had made a terrible mistake. So distracted were they by the powerful magical beasts trotting around that they totally ignored a little black mouse they could’ve crushed with one step. These servants of the Black Mouse were thus free to spread their germs with abandon.

If someone with Shinji’s restorative skills was here, maybe they could have disabled the trap placed on this floor—but sadly, no such handy doctor was present. Magical healing tended not to work very much on illness; it was meant more for physical injury, although certain other spells were better honed to deal with particular diseases. Boosting a patient’s physical strength didn’t matter much if the root of the disease wasn’t cured; injury and disease, after all, required two completely different schools of treatment. If you needed someone who could totally cure a disease, well, there were only one or two holy magic practitioners of that caliber per nation. They were rare treasures, and barring special circumstances, they’d never serve in military combat.

Death spread its tendrils across this floor as well.

Floor 85 was dominated by a royal tiger, patrolling the thick deciduous forest that was its domain. The magical beasts that roamed freely on the other floors were completely under this tiger’s thrall.

This ruler was the Thunder Tiger, a big cat that controlled lightning. While the Empire thought it had the upper hand before it showed up, this perceived advantage didn’t last long. Put rapidly on the defensive, they were forced back to their base by the stairway.

The forest belonged to the monsters, and despite being literally cornered to one edge of it, the soldiers continued their struggle…

Floor 86 was a desert occasionally dotted by oases. The sun shone brightly, the temperature rising every minute it was in the sky; when it left at night, the cold chilled to the bone. The temperature difference was so great that it sapped the strength of many soldiers before battle even began.

They assumed the climate would be their greatest enemy here—and while they weren’t wrong, they weren’t exactly right, either. The real trap here was the oxygen in the air.

The Winged Snake was here, and the domain it ruled over was the air. Controlling its composition—reducing the oxygen level to zero, for example—was like taking candy from a baby. And when the soldiers assumed the temperature difference was something they’d get over after some rest, that was all it took to ensure a peaceful passing in their sleep for every one of them…

Floor 87 was, for some reason, a vast mountain range. The tranquil views reminded many soldiers of their families back home; if they let themselves reminisce for a moment, they could bask in their happy childhoods and envision lovers they dreamed of seeing once more.

It took just under five days for them to become fully relaxed. That was partly thanks to the low monster rates around the peaks; unlike many other floors, it was difficult to maintain alertness.

And that was why they never noticed that the guards on duty had fallen asleep, never waking up. They only seemed awake thanks to a hallucination in their own minds. This was the work of the Sleeping Ram, a peace-loving soul that, with its gentle invitations, had reaped the consciousness of all the soldiers without a drop of bloodshed. The Sleeping Ram’s illusory hypnosis lured them all to sleep—a sleep they would never awaken from.

Floor 88, a forest bordering a great river, was home to a bird of raging flames.

Strangely, this fire never spread itself to the surrounding trees. It could only burn those who were hostile to it—and when it did, it went on forever, never fading.

This was the Fire Bird, the master of the flames, and it served as the floor boss here. This Fire Bird and the other avian creatures that served under it quickly burned all the invading soldiers to a crisp.

Floor 89 was a maze made of mirrors. Nothing organic played a role on this floor; it was immaculately maintained, with every mirrored surface polished to a fine sheen. All the reflections on the walls, of course, complicated the maze further for the intruders, and the mirrors themselves were unbreakable. Why? Because they were created with a secret spell from a single monster—the Mirror Dog, flitting across every reflective surface.

Running freely among the mirrors, it toyed mercilessly with the imperial army. It existed within the mirrors themselves; mirrors that bounced all magic back to the casters. This made it hard to so much as catch the Mirror Dog in action—and as it reflected itself more and more, multiplying to seemingly infinite numbers, the pitiful prey were all devoured.

At every level, vicious floor bosses were on the rampage. Each had been granted an environment best suited for their traits, allowing them to demonstrate their abilities to the fullest.

Still, the imperial army tried their hardest to resist. Sometimes, they were even able to defeat these bosses, cheers erupting across the floor whenever they did. But they came right back to life, again and again, and that truth frightened them more than anything else.

The situation on the other floors was much the same, as the rumor mill had it. The realization broke the soldiers’ hearts, as it made continuing the fight seem utterly pointless.

And as for the most desperate among them all…

The monkey, rabbit, mouse, tiger, snake, ram, bird, and dog were all mystic beasts, the Eight Legions serving Kumara—nothing more than her cherished pets. Each one was a transformation born from one of her tails, and their respective abilities were granted by Kumara herself. When all eight came together—that was when Kumara took her full form.

She was no longer a child, but one of the world’s most beautiful women: Nine-Head Kumara, guardian of Floor 90 and the master of these eight mystic beasts. And now a group of foolish, pathetic victims were coming her way. They were nothing but food for Kumara—thus the death toll within the labyrinth climbed that much higher.

Five hundred thirty thousand imperial soldiers invaded the labyrinth. Just a few days later, the number of survivors dropped to zero.