Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Epic Item

Huh.

That was my first impression after opening the box.

That was how small it was.

The bracelet lying alone inside it.

[You have obtained the Epic-grade item ‘Last Breath’!]

At least the item’s name sounded plausible.

[Last Breath / Grade: Epic / Level Requirement: 1]

This is an instant-activation item.

It unconditionally blocks one attack coming from the front of the bracelet.

After defending, a 24-hour cooldown will be set.

The bracelet’s former owner left these words behind.

Do not close your eyes. Stare straight ahead. The fact that this remains means it is not over yet.

A master always leaves one final breath.

That breath may be the end, but do not forget that it may also be a new beginning.

“Wow.”

I decided to reflect on myself.

On the me who had thought, Huh, after seeing only its small appearance.

Depending on how one looked at it, it might not be that good an item.

After all, even a very small attack would trigger its 24-hour cooldown.

But what if, true to the item’s name, it was the final attack, or an attack I only had to endure once?

This was almost the same as gaining one extra life.

“It is really small.”

Aris, who came up beside me, wrinkled her nose.

“It is small, but it is good.”

It seemed she had analyzed it with the Evil Eye.

As if she had never wrinkled her nose at all, Aris smoothed it out and her eyes sparkled.

“Wow! To think there was an item like this inside the box I crossed over and brought back!”

She emphasized that she was the one who brought it while giving me the eyes of a hunting eagle.

Even after eating that many magic stones, she was coveting something again.

She was no ordinary greedy little thing.

“I have something to ask.”

“Yes! Are you perhaps asking about my wrist size? I think that bracelet will fit me perfectly!”

“That is not it. What happens if a demon dies in the labyrinth?”

A chill spread.

She had been smiling brightly as if she had no worries in the world just moments ago.

But now, she turned cold as if that had never happened.

“As if a mere labyrinth would dare! The labyrinth can never kill a demon! That is why it only sealed me away!”

“But you still take damage.”

“That is true. If it exceeds a certain level, I will probably be reverse-summoned into subspace. After a certain amount of time passes, I will be summoned back to the place where I am originally supposed to be.”

“And the place you are supposed to be right now would be near me?”

“That is right. I belong to you, Boss.”

“Then if you do not die, why do you keep screaming like ‘Gweeegh’?”

“Subspace is incredibly dark, so I cannot see anything. It is frightening. Besides, the moment I am hit, it hurts.”

I quietly looked down at Aris.

Since she kept screaming as if she were dying, I thought she would really disappear or something.

But she was simply timid and overly dramatic.

“Well, I suppose being scared or hurt is not good.”

“Then the bracelet is mine?!”

“No, that is not it. You get reverse-summoned into subspace, but I actually die. What nonsense are you saying? Go away.”

I waved my hand with a shooing gesture and chased away the eagle-eyed Aris.

Aris turned her head and clicked her tongue.

I decided to pretend I had not heard it.

The bracelet came first right now.

‘There is no way it will fit my wrist. Will this count as equipping it too?’

I took a bandage out of the beginner first-aid kit, cut off a suitable length, twisted it, and connected it to the bracelet.

Then I hung it around my neck.

[You have equipped Last Breath!]

The message I wanted appeared.

Nice!

[The Evil Eye analyzes the effective range of Last Breath!]

After I waited for a short while, a transparent wall appeared in front of me.

It was located about five centimeters away from the tip of my nose.

It seemed it would activate if an attack entered this range.

‘I will have to be careful.’

Last Breath had no function to distinguish the strength of an attack.

In other words, it would trigger even against an attack that was not much of a threat.

I could not let it be wasted pointlessly on a flying pebble, so I had to dodge as much as possible.

Or block it before it reached the range.

“Ugh.”

After seeing my bandage necklace, Aris stepped backward.

It seemed it really looked terrible.

“I only tried this as a test. I will buy a necklace cord.”

I folded the bandage and Last Breath carefully and put them in my pocket.

Hm... Something felt uneasy.

I opened the status window and entered the personal lobby tab.

Then I read the description again.

The labyrinth allowed items from outside to be brought in and arranged.

Then what about leaving an item obtained inside the labyrinth behind?

‘It stays.’

The personal lobby was not an instance that was newly created every time.

It was a space created at the same time as Awakening, one that shared its life cycle with the player.

Still, I decided to test it just in case.

I placed one magic stone down, exited the personal lobby, then entered again.

It remained there just fine.

I took out Last Breath and carefully stored it in a corner of the personal lobby.

Then I looked back.

“If it disappears, it was you.”

“I will not take it! What do you think I am, some petty thief? I am a proud Demon of the Evil Eye!”

After receiving a clear answer, I stood up.

This was ten million times safer than taking it outside and hiding it somewhere.

“Ughhhh.”

I stretched refreshingly.

Perhaps because I had spent my whole life without doing anything called exercise, then suddenly swung a hammer, my whole body was aching here and there.

In any case, I had grown rather curious.

Judging by Last Breath’s option, Kronos must certainly have coveted it too.

I wondered how those bastards were reacting right about now.

---

Team Leader Bae Mina swept back her hair.

Another floor on the monitor had turned red.

It was the sixth underground floor of the labyrinth.

This time too, it had been destroyed, and Kronos had lost its control authority.

“Check it.”

“Yes!”

For a short while, the urgent sound of typing filled the room.

Then a team member cautiously opened his mouth.

“The tax rate is 100% for Kronos and 20% for all other players. The player name is question marks. It is the same as the first underground floor.”

“Haa... Look at this bastard.”

There was no need to look any further.

It was the same person.

“What about the purchase logs for paralysis potions?”

“We checked all of them, but there is nothing strange. They are all players registered with Ariadne.”

She could not understand it at all.

What kind of magic trick had he used?

The questions on the sixth floor changed with every entry.

Even with Ariadne, the correct-answer rate was only forty percent.

Considering that one had to pass through fifteen doors before clearing it, the probability of not making a single mistake was about 0.0001 percent.

And if one did not even have Ariadne?

The probability fell to a level where calculating it was meaningless.

‘Did he solve all of them alone?’

She shook her head with a hollow laugh.

Impossible.

Ariadne could do it because it constantly learned through big data. It was not something a human mind could do.

Then there was only one possibility left.

Just like in the early days before the regression, he had charged in headfirst with hundreds of Paralysis Removal Potions. But where and how had he obtained that many potions?

“Could he be capable of producing potions?”

Production-type classes also existed in the labyrinth.

Unlike other classes, they did not explore the labyrinth, but instead holed up in their personal lobbies and made labyrinth-exclusive potions and equipment.

However, not just anyone could use this kind of class.

Magic stones were the essential material for production.

Most production classes usually could not handle the cost of procuring those magic stones, so they could not even raise their proficiency properly.

In other words, they were classes that required money to produce meaningful results.

“Hmm.”

Bae Mina let out a low groan.

After the regression, Kronos had successfully monopolized the labyrinth with Ariadne at the forefront.

As a result, Kronos had many enemies both inside and outside the country.

Because regardless of who had owned something before the regression, Kronos had taken everything it possibly could.

“Perhaps it is not an individual.”

“Then that means...?”

“Make a list of every company, institution, or organization that has expressed even the slightest dissatisfaction with Kronos. Use every connection you can and track the flow of funds in those places.”

“Understood!”

Bae Mina laughed softly.

Kronos’s power had been so absolute that things had been boring for a while.

Now the work was beginning to flow in an interesting direction.

On top of that, it was a tremendous relief.

She had been startled because the sixth floor had been destroyed of all places, but it seemed there was no particular problem with the event...

Ding!

At the message revealed before her eyes.

“Son of a—”

A curse boiled up from the depths of her lower abdomen.

Even if she made a hundred, a thousand concessions, she could tolerate losing the sixth floor.

After all, if they somehow found him and crushed him, it would return.

But this was not tolerable.

No, this could not happen.

Absolutely not.

[The event item stored in the sixth underground floor of the labyrinth, ‘Trial of Questions and Answers,’ has been seized through abnormal access!]

[The event scheduled for two days later will be canceled!]

A heavy silence swallowed the situation room.

The team members swallowed dryly and watched Bae Mina’s expression.

Grit.

Bae Mina clenched her molars and glared at the message.

Abnormal access? What on earth was that?

Even before the regression, she had never heard of or seen such a thing.

After barely managing to breathe out, Bae Mina looked around at the team members.

“Has anyone here ever seen anything called abnormal access?”

As expected, the team members looked at one another and shook their heads.

A hollow laugh escaped her.

What on earth was this?

What had to go wrong for something like that to appear?

Ringringringring! Beepbeepbeep!

Starting with Bae Mina’s phone, every internal phone placed in the situation room began ringing.

Someone might say this.

Kronos, the company ranked first in the world by market capitalization.

Why would a company like that make such a fuss over failing to obtain a single item?

That was correct.

Normally, they would not have acted this way.

To be more precise, it would have been fine if the name of the item they had failed to obtain had been anything other than Last Breath.

This was the first time for Kronos after the regression.

The first time someone else had taken an item they had owned before the regression.

“What is the situation in the sixth underground floor’s shared lobby? No. I will go there myself.”

The situation was too urgent to simply wait.

Bae Mina immediately opened the gate leading to the labyrinth.

[You will enter the shared lobby of the sixth underground floor of the labyrinth, ‘Trial of Questions and Answers’!]

Since it was a low floor, no small number of players knew the information about Last Breath and the event.

Perhaps because of that, the lobby was packed with players two days before the event.

As expected, this place was also in a panic.

“What? The event is canceled?! Does that make sense?”

“Was it like this before the regression too?”

“Do you think it was? If people had known, no one would have gathered.”

“Damn it! I sold every magic stone I had to recruit a priest who could remove paralysis, and now it is canceled? Stop screwing with me!!”

On the sixth floor, when entering as a party, the number of doors that had to be chosen multiplied.

However, if a Cure Priest, called a noble, was with them, there was no problem.

No matter how many wrong choices they made, they could keep removing the paralysis as long as they had Mana Recovery Potions and Cooldown Reduction Potions.

That was why they had made up their minds and recruited one, but now it had become meaningless.

“T-Team Leader Bae.”

The players affiliated with Kronos who recognized Bae Mina greeted her awkwardly.

They were the ones who should originally have obtained Last Breath today.

Bae Mina waved her hand roughly and stared blankly ahead.

“Haa...”

Even when the labyrinth had been destroyed earlier, she had forced herself to blur her vision, desperately ignoring it and denying it.

But now that things had reached this point, she had no choice but to acknowledge it.

‘The future... has changed.’

From the gears that had once turned while meshing together without the slightest deviation.

An ominous dissonance had begun to sound.