Now that I had found one thing worth points, I walked on with my eyes peeled, watching the path. About halfway along, I stepped into a space where black flowers were blooming.
An ominous feeling, plain at a glance.
The flowers were growing, feeding on the blood of the people lying sprawled there.
[The Last Gasp of the Dead can be harvested.]
At the alert window that popped up, I started harvesting as I walked quickly. Every time I harvested, a loud scream rang out from the flower through the labyrinth. Unlike the eyeball, it didn't look very useful, but it seemed sellable, so I put it in my box for now. The moment I finished harvesting the last gasp and tried to stand up, my surroundings spun.
'Something wrong with my eardrums? Or is it poison?'
The dizziness made my legs shake as I tried to rise, and I sank right back to the floor. I wondered if it was just ringing in my ears, but my stomach churned too, and my consciousness was blurring. Since the Talisman of Protection, which worked against direct attacks and curses, hadn't activated, it was something of a different kind.
ZZZRRR—
I didn't even know what had gotten me, and with the flowers of the dead resonating, zzzrrr, my head ached as if it would split.
'I have to get out of here, fast.'
If I went just about 100m further, I could get out of the flower patch, so I forced my drooping eyes open and crawled along the floor. I tried to keep from losing consciousness no matter what.
FWEEE—!
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
In that instant, along with the sound of fireworks bursting, I saw something like a white meteor shower flying up toward the sky, and with a strong, flash-like light passing over my head as the last thing I saw, I lost consciousness.
***
B...... is b... al...... d
A p...... re......s... to
A...... t... é... log...... o
D... os... kor... o...... go
Ara... kl... a... hi... k... an
Like a cassette tape on fast-forward, many voices rang straight into my head through my cochleas. At the sound, I slowly opened my eyes and found myself passed out on the floor. My hands were numb as if I had been pinned by sleep paralysis, and my dress shirt was soaked through with sweat.
'Oh no. How much time has passed?'
If I had been out for a long time, I might not be able to meet up with the others. Min-seo, Daniel, and Ocheonsa wouldn't wait for me.
"Check how much time has passed."
I made an F-Grade wish with points.
When I checked the current time with the wish, I had thought I'd been out for 2 to 3 hours, maybe because my sense of time had gone strange since entering the labyrinth, but fortunately only 10 minutes had passed.
I hurriedly sprang to my feet and started down the path at a pace close to a run. I put away any thought of looking for items. Items at the entrance wouldn't be very good anyway, so rejoining the others was urgent.
[Soul extraction is possible.]
FREEZE!
At the extractor's reaction, I stopped in my tracks. No matter how urgent things were, I had to recover the soul, my whole purpose in coming in here.
When I turned toward where the alert was sounding, I saw the face of the man who had been playing the game with us until earlier. With a look of utter terror on his face, he lay dead, his mouth stuffed full of talismans.
'What happened to him?'
Despite the wretched sight, before I knew it my body was recovering the dead man's soul like a machine programmed by the Ghost Story Market. The soul was recovered into the Soul Extractor, and it glowed. Then the alert tone sounded again.
[A liver, still fresh. Extraction possible.]
I hesitated for a moment at this alert. It wasn't that it turned my stomach or anything like that; I just hated that squishy feeling with a skin-crawling passion. I wasn't confident I could pick that up with my bare hands again, so I ignored it and turned away. There would be any number of things more valuable than that turning up in here, so I didn't even think twice. And above all, I had harvested the soul, my goal.
When I quickly got out of the fork, I saw the others gathered in one spot. I wondered if they had waited for me, but the sound of Min-seo and Ocheonsa arguing made me realize they hadn't been waiting for me.
"What's going on?"
When I sidled up and asked, Ocheonsa, not caring in the least that I was late, shouted heatedly. Even as Ocheonsa shrilled and argued, Min-seo didn't lose her composure. She did, however, look fairly troubled.
"That unni took my soul!"
Taking her soul, she said.
I had no idea what she was talking about. Min-seo must have been following the rule that whoever found it first got to keep it, yet Ocheonsa wore a sour expression, as if someone had snatched one of her items.
"Like I said, a soul can't be recovered without a Soul Extractor."
"I found it, so how does it make any sense that it flies off to you instead?"
I remembered something like a meteor shower flying off just before I collapsed. That must have been the soul Ocheonsa found. It seemed it got sucked toward whichever person with an extractor was closest.
"You're still only Promising anyway, so you can't own a soul."
That was right. As long as she stayed at the Promising Investor grade, Ocheonsa couldn't own a soul.
Even with Min-seo explaining it logically enough to be understood perfectly, Ocheonsa, with her severe problem-child streak, didn't give up, and in the end a dramatic settlement was reached, with her getting 30 points from Min-seo.
"Haa. A lot of time has passed already. Let's hurry."
Min-seo, clutching her head as if the conversation with Ocheonsa had given her a headache, cut across the labyrinth at an unbelievable speed. It was hard just to keep up. Come to think of it, unlike us, Min-seo also had a personal mission in this labyrinth: breaking the time record.
"Troublesome things start appearing from here on, so take out any items that can serve as weapons."
When we set foot in the middle section, a skin-crawling sensation and a gloomy aura hung in the air, beyond comparison with the entrance. An eerie wind even brushed past my head, and I hurriedly took out my items.
"Sorry, but... I don't have anything useful for attacking."
I took them out anyway, but only garbage-tier items had been sold at the shop, so I didn't have much worth using.
"...You didn't go to the ghosts' shops?"
Min-seo made a face as if I were pathetic. It was the first time I had seen her make one so openly.
Keeping my expression boldly consistent, I shrugged as if it were nothing. I hadn't known I would be thrown into the labyrinth so suddenly, so this wasn't my fault.
"And you've brought along something annoying, too?"
"Something annoying? What do you mean?"
When I followed Min-seo's gaze and lowered my head to below my feet, I met the eyes of something in my shadow, grinning with bloodshot red eyes.
FLINCH—
I barely swallowed the scream bursting out of me and kept my composure.
I wondered when a weird thing like that had latched on to me.... When I passed out?
"Haha. The Korean market's shadows are cute."
When I looked at Daniel at his words, he gave me a fresh smile.
"It's called a Whispering Shadow. It disappears on its own once you leave the labyrinth, so shall we go for now?"
"...Uh, is it all right to carry it around with me?"
Daniel didn't answer and brushed past ahead.
I had asked something pointless. Min-seo and Daniel were both the type who would say there was no problem even if there was one, as long as their own safety wasn't at stake.
"When we pass through here, don't touch the skeletons."
Before we went down a new path in the labyrinth, Min-seo gathered everyone and gave a stern warning.
From the darkness came the rattling of bones knocking against each other. In short, there were a number of walking skeletons in there.
"If you kill or destroy one, the path changes through the influence of the Sovereign, the master of the final labyrinth and the master of this place."
"Isn't it dangerous if the path changes?"
If the labyrinth's paths changed, that meant the paths she knew would vanish, so I grew uneasy that getting out might become a problem.
"I know all the patterns."
Her face was so serious that I couldn't come right out and ask what the problem was, then, so I stayed quiet, and Daniel clapped a hand on my shoulder and stepped into the labyrinth first.
"Don't worry. The Cursed Warriors don't come at you unless you attack first."
"Yes, thank you."
"But if you're close to them, they steal your memories, so you have to keep as much distance as possible and pass quickly."
Suspicious. Going into the labyrinth second, reluctantly, I couldn't shake my unease toward Daniel. He was Experienced like me, yet he seemed to know as much as an Expert Investor, and his behavior struck me as out of place.
"How long have you been Experienced?"
I asked, sticking close behind Daniel along the way he went. Right now, walking behind him as he kept a steady distance seemed the safest.
"Me? I'd love to meet Min-seo outside sometime later...."
"I'll mention it to her...."
At Daniel's words, which didn't even hide what he was after, I finally raised the white flag. Here, information was an equivalent exchange too. I didn't know why he wanted to get close to Min-seo, but I couldn't refuse any longer.
"I'm counting on you. This year makes it 6 years since I became Experienced."
"You don't plan to rise to Expert?"
"Haha. I'd like to, but it isn't easy."
A chilling feeling.
A déjà vu that kept on as the conversation went on.
Ever since we came into the labyrinth, the sense of wrongness I felt from Daniel had been getting worse and worse. It was strange.
As far as I knew, the points needed to go from Experienced to Expert were 1000.
If he had been trading with ghosts and steadily taking part in the Colosseum, it wasn't a position he couldn't have reached in 6 years.
"Those eyes look full of questions."
"Did it show?"
Daniel's eyes curved prettily like half-moons. It looked as dazzling as an active idol, and while I stared, entranced, I tripped on the floor and staggered.
'Damn it! I'm going to hit it!'
A skeleton was passing in the direction my feet had tangled. At this rate, I was sure to fall right onto the skeleton. I was about to get the labyrinth's paths changed, all thanks to me.
GRAB!
"Careful."
By a hair's breadth, my body didn't touch the skeleton. Thanks to Daniel catching my arm, I carefully untangled my feet; my body stopped just short of the skeleton, and I pulled myself up just before my hair, mussed and damp with cold sweat, could brush it.
'Ah! Memories.'
Worried I might have my memories stolen if I stood there dazed, I sprang upright and pulled myself together.
"That was a close one."
"Thank yo...."
"Set up a meeting with Min-seo, and I'll tell you what you're curious about."
Daniel whispered it right into my ear so the group following behind couldn't hear, then brushed off my pants. He was definitely smiling with that handsome face, but facing his smile made me more nervous than a Colosseum game board. The inside of my clenched fists grew damp with sweat.
"Knock knock. Aren't you going? Mister, don't you see the line backing up behind you?"
"Ah. Yes. Going."
I had stopped for a moment, my brain numb and stifled, and from behind, Ocheonsa hurried me along in a prickly voice. The paralysis in my frontal lobe still hadn't worn off, with that unsettled feeling lingering, but I had no choice but to start walking.
But that expression on Daniel just now, I knew it. That face, that feeling, that air.
But I couldn't remember. I knew someone who smiled with a face like that and gave off a similar aura. But at this moment, as if the memory had been erased, I couldn't recall what it was.