Our day began after the blazing sun had completely disappeared beneath the horizon.
When darkness swallowed more than half the moon.
As the ominous waning crescent began to shimmer, Adventurers emerged one after another.
‘2:40 a.m….’
The Labyrinth gate opened at three in the morning, when the waning crescent had fully risen.
No matter which entrance one used, this was always the busiest time.
The last time, I had entered through a different gate and at a time much closer to dawn.
As someone who disliked crowds, I was not particularly fond of this arrangement, but there was no helping it.
I was no longer alone.
I was part of a proper team now.
“You two got here earlier than I expected. Where’s the Dwarf?”
“I didn’t see him on the way here. He’ll probably show up soon.”
After meeting Esta, who had arrived before us, the three of us waited for Beric.
Around us, other Adventurer parties began assembling one after another.
Even then, quite a few people kept sneaking glances in our direction.
Every gaze that turned our way ended up on Claire or Esta.
Apparently, even under the dim moonlight, the two of them stood out.
‘Still… why isn’t he here?’
It was already ten minutes past our agreed meeting time of three o’clock.
While the Adventurers lined up to enter the Labyrinth disappeared through the gate one group at a time, we waited for Beric off to the side.
Another ten minutes passed, and eventually everyone in line vanished through the gate.
Once the bustling crowd had disappeared and only we remained, Esta finally spoke.
“I knew this would happen. As if a Dwarf would ever keep an appointment. What are we going to do now?”
“Let’s wait a little longer. Something may have happened to Beric.”
“You want to keep waiting for a Dwarf when we have no idea when he’ll show up? I refuse. It’s a waste of time. It’s not like we desperately need him anyway.”
After saying that, Esta looked at me.
Her expression clearly told me to say something already.
In truth, no competent Adventurer showed up late to an expedition.
The situation was certainly ridiculous, but I was not particularly eager to enter with fewer people than planned either.
I settled on a compromise.
“How about we wait another thirty minutes? Like Claire said, something might have happened. But we can’t wait forever either. If he isn’t here in thirty minutes, we go in without him.”
“Yes. That sounds reasonable.”
“…Haa. Thirty minutes. Exactly thirty. If he still isn’t here after that, I’m going in even if I have to go alone.”
With that compromise settled, time quickly passed.
A few more teams entered the gate in the meantime.
Even after the full thirty minutes had passed, Beric still had not appeared.
Seriously, why the hell wasn’t he coming?
Esta’s voice turned venomous.
“I told you. It was a waste of time.”
She immediately strode toward the gate.
There was no helping it.
We would have to enter without him.
Even as we followed, I could not stop wondering what had happened.
CREAK.
The enormous Labyrinth gate opened.
We stepped into the ominous darkness beyond.
After descending all the stairs, we reached the starting point of the maze.
Only then did we discover why Beric had been late.
“Why did all of you take so long?! I thought my neck would fall off from waiting!”
Beric stood at the entrance to the maze, welcoming us.
For a moment, all three of us were too dumbfounded to speak.
Why the hell was this bastard already inside?
Esta walked straight up to him and snapped,
“…Don’t tell me you’ve been waiting here this entire time.”
“I have. Weren’t we supposed to meet here in the first place?”
“What are you talking about?! We clearly agreed to meet outside the entrance!”
“Hmm? I thought we agreed to meet here to save time.”
“We did at first, but then we immediately changed it so we wouldn’t miss each other.”
“Hmm… Did we? Now that you mention it, perhaps we did….”
Beric stroked his beard and fell into thought.
Esta pressed a hand against her forehead and sighed.
“Haa….”
It truly was absurd.
He had confused the meeting place.
At least we had managed to find one another after entering.
“My apologies. It seems I made all of you wait quite a while because of me.”
“When three people fail to show up for over an hour, didn’t you think something was strange?”
“I assumed something had happened. It happened fairly often in my previous party. One fellow got a stomachache from nerves, and another fell asleep without realizing it.”
Every one of those people had been unqualified to call themselves Adventurers.
It was not that Esta was unusually strict about punctuality.
For Adventurers who depended on the Labyrinth for their livelihood, every moment during the once-a-month opening was valuable.
The Guild itself recognized habitual lateness as valid grounds for expulsion from a party.
“Enough. Let’s move. Apologizing won’t turn back time.”
Esta drew the dagger at her waist and took the lead.
Beric merely chuckled and followed behind her.
Claire met my gaze from behind them and gave me a strained smile.
Well….
This was not exactly an encouraging start.
What I realized during this expedition was that Adventurers truly were Adventurers.
There had been five people in Claire’s group when I first met her.
None of them had actually been Adventurers—they were all Knight Trainees—but there had been enough of them, and Claire herself was there, so we had not encountered any major problems.
This time was similar.
There was no particular reason to feel endangered.
There was, however, one major difference.
Our speed of advancement was on an entirely different level.
“This way.”
Esta took the lead.
She was guiding us along the route toward the exit.
It was the fastest shortcut available.
TAP.
Something moved in the darkness beyond the reach of the torches.
Without even confirming it with her eyes, Esta threw a dagger.
WHOOOSH!
The dagger buried itself in the source of the sound with a THUD.
When we closed the distance, two Goblins came into view.
One of them had been pierced directly between the brows.
“KIEEEEK—!”
The Goblin Archer behind it shrieked and fled.
Esta paid it no attention.
She planted a foot against the dead Goblin’s neck and pulled her dagger free.
Meanwhile, Claire chased after the fleeing Goblin, while Beric moved alongside her.
Without breaking stride, the Goblin Archer twisted around and fired an arrow.
WHIZ—
THUNK!
The arrow struck Beric’s shield and fell away without leaving so much as a scratch.
Claire accelerated and rapidly closed the remaining distance.
The moment she swung her sword, the Goblin vanished into dust.
RATTLE.
The only things left where the bodies had been were the spoils of the hunt.
No one needed to stop and pick them up individually.
I followed behind the others, opening the Subspace and gathering everything inside.
After I explained the ring, everyone had already agreed that I would collect the loot and distribute it later.
Scouting, attacking, defending, and collecting flowed together seamlessly.
After a few minor trials and errors, it had already become a routine.
Esta and Beric had entered the Labyrinth numerous times before, so their smooth adjustment was understandable.
But even Claire adapted to the routine almost immediately.
Her instinct and sense for combat were exceptional to begin with.
Thanks to that, we had already passed the halfway point not long after entering.
No one seemed to need a break yet.
Even I, the weakest of us in terms of stamina, found this pace manageable compared to a month ago.
I approached Esta as she wiped the blood from her dagger.
“I couldn’t see anything back there. How did you know it was a Monster?”
She had thrown the dagger the instant she sensed something moving in the dark.
For all she knew, it could have been a person.
In response, Esta pointed at her sharply defined nose.
“I smelled it.”
“Smelled it?”
“At that distance, I can distinguish a Monster from a human.”
In other words, her sense of smell was particularly developed.
Of course, smell was probably not the only thing.
Elves were known for possessing all five senses at a level beyond humans.
“I’m jealous. That must be incredibly useful in the Labyrinth.”
“In the Labyrinth, sure. But it isn’t all good. Even the smell of blood alone can—”
Esta abruptly stopped talking and froze.
She covered her nose with one hand and frowned.
What?
Why all of a sudden?
“What’s wrong?”
“…Something smells rotten.”
“Rotten?”
At her words, I sniffed the air, but I could not smell anything.
The other two stopped and tried as well.
“Hmm. I don’t smell anything.”
“Neither do I.”
“Elf, are you sure you’re not imagining it?”
Esta’s expression twisted even further at Beric’s question.
Whether that was because of Beric or the smell, I could not tell.
“What kind of smell is it?”
“I don’t know. I can’t identify it, but… it’s the worst thing I’ve ever smelled in my life.”
The worst?
Had someone brought rotten food into the Labyrinth?
Since we could not identify the cause, we continued onward.
The farther we walked, the deeper Esta’s frown became.
By the time she was visibly struggling to breathe, the rest of us finally began smelling it as well.
‘…Fuck.’
What the hell is this smell?
It was a stench unlike anything I had ever encountered.
It felt as though my nose were going to twist itself inside out.
Claire and Beric both covered their noses and grimaced.
Esta had already stopped breathing entirely.
“Young Master Allen. What should we do?”
“Let’s keep going for now.”
We were already close to the exit.
Turning back because of some unidentified stench after coming this far would be a waste.
We would probably get used to it soon enough.
“…….”
Esta squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before nodding.
The farther we went, the worse the stench became.
Perhaps five minutes later, we reached a fork in the path.
Which direction was the smell coming from?
With nothing more than an ordinary human nose, I had no way of knowing.
I looked back at Esta, who was bent over behind us.
“Can you tell which way?”
Without answering, she raised a finger and pointed to the right.
Coincidentally, that was the route leading to the second floor.
Holding our breath, we entered the right-hand passage.
Before long, Esta could no longer endure it and stopped.
“U-UWEEEGH!!”
She braced herself against the Labyrinth wall and vomited.
Claire stood beside her and rubbed her back.
Apparently, we were almost at the source of this damned smell.
I gestured to Beric and slowly continued forward.
The two of us seemed to be the least sensitive to it.
“This is truly… enough to make a man vomit. Compared to this, even the smell of Dwarf sweat is fragrant.”
Apparently, he still had enough composure left to joke.
I did not.
I hurried forward in silence.
I wanted to tear my own nose off, but after coming this far, I needed to see what was causing it.
Any abnormality inside the Labyrinth was rarely a good sign.
At the very least, we needed to know what was happening.
Something terrible that you understood was still better than something terrible that happened without warning.
“…….”
When we finally stood before ‘it,’ neither of us could speak.
Only then did we understand the source of the stench.
And why Esta had said she had never smelled anything like it before.
“…What in the world happened here?”
I had no answer to Beric’s question.
Before us lay a mountain of corpses.
At least twenty bodies.
But the number was not the real problem.
It was their condition.
Every corpse had completely decomposed.
So badly that it was impossible even to determine their ages or sexes.
‘What the hell….’
Less than four hours had passed since we entered the Labyrinth.
But these bodies had decayed far beyond anything that could happen in that amount of time.
In the Labyrinth’s cool temperature, there was no way corpses could rot this badly in only four hours.
Someone must have brought them in from outside.
“…Damn it.”
I was certain of one thing.
I had no idea exactly what was happening.
But something ominous was underway.