I don't put much stock in "gut feelings."
If gut feelings actually worked, would casinos be full of idiots gambling away their family homes?
Every single one of them probably told themselves 'I've got a good feeling about this one' right before going broke.
A gut feeling was basically a form of confirmation bias—an excuse your brain cooked up to justify some irrational conclusion it had already jumped to out of convenience.
"Wait, are they sleeping without even sleeping bags?"
So I'll think about this rationally.
First, who are these people?
Since they came in through the opposite entrance from the one we used, they weren't tailing us.
"Looks like it. Huh... Looks like they came in here barely prepared at all."
There were five of them—slightly larger than a standard party size.
Forming a five-person team on the "first floor," in particular... meant they didn't know the first floor all that well.
Contrary to the way they were looking down their noses at us, they were pretty green themselves.
"Shouldn't we help them out? We happen to have spare sleeping bags on us, after all."
Not that they were complete first-timers, either.
Traces of past battles on their gear, spare sleeping bags in their packs...
In short, they understood at least the basic ropes of how the labyrinth worked.
"Hm... Let's do that."
And yet people like that were offering us kindness out of the goodness of their hearts.
In the labyrinth—a supernatural space where every resource was scarce to the extreme.
In this living hell where not just rookies, but even veterans could be ground into meat at any moment.
"You need sleeping bags, don't you? We have spares—would you like to use these?"
"Uh... um..."
"Don't worry about paying us. We're just giving them to you."
"For free," at that.
And completely "unprompted"!
Doesn't that make it obvious?
A purely logical conclusion presented itself.
"Everyone, get up!!"
These bastards are Raiders.
***
Inside the labyrinth, "kindness with no strings attached" was a rare thing indeed.
There were all sorts of reasons why, but since now wasn't the time to get into that, I'd skip it.
In any case, anyone helping strangers down here almost always fell into one of three categories.
One: a saintly soul looking out for others out of the boundless warmth of their heart.
The great Lord Rawson, who had blessed us with a Runestone and five potions, belonged to this category.
Two: clueless fools who didn't even know what the labyrinth was really like.
Our own party members, politely yielding loot to one another, fell into this group.
And finally, three.
"W-What is going on?!"
"They're Raiders!"
Raiders who used a friendly act to make their targets drop their guard before ambushing them at close range.
The woman who had been creeping toward us with a sleeping bag in hand before freezing in her tracks—along with the rest of that bitch's party—belonged right here.
"W-What are you talking about?"
She tried playing innocent, sure, but I had already handed down my verdict.
"Shut up and back off. Take one more step closer, and I'll treat you as enemies and respond accordingly."
"Wait..."
Putting on a wronged face won't work on me.
Do you think this is my first time seeing Raider bastards like you?
It might have been through a low-resolution monitor, sure, but I'd run into Raiders not just hundreds, but thousands of times.
"Ha... Who the hell do you think you are?"
"If you aren't Raiders, pass through quietly. That's the unspoken rule among Explorers, isn't it?"
"Has this bastard lost his mind? We felt sorry for you guys sleeping on the bare stone and tried to help out, and you repay our kindness by accusing us of being Raiders?"
"Consider that your final warning."
"You really have a death wish, don't you?"
Flaring up, one of the men leveled his weapon at us.
Just like the woman, he was acting indignant, but sadly for them, their little act went down the drain a second later.
"Kuhahaha!"
The man who looked like their leader burst out laughing.
"Ugh... I told you to hold it in a little longer."
"Sorry about that. Look at the way that guy's talking, though—it's hilarious."
Dropping the act completely, their leader cut straight to the chase.
"How did you know?"
"Filthy gutter water naturally reeks."
"Hm... Pretty sharp at reading the room, aren't you?"
Not quite.
I didn't figure you bastards out by reading the room—I deduced it through pure, airtight logic.
Having already jumped to his own conclusion, however, the leader rambled away with his own interpretation.
"Was it a gut feeling? Or did you spot the signs that we've fought people before? Ah, they say goblin blood and human blood have slightly different colors and smells—did you pick up on that...?"
"None of your business."
"True, not that it matters anyway. All that matters right now is that every last one of you is going to die here."
"You talk like killing us is a foregone conclusion."
"Isn't it?"
He snickered again as he said it.
"One look tells me you're fresh beginners who only just entered the labyrinth, yet here you are talking about 'responding' and 'warnings'... Pretty cocky, don't you think?"
"I don't think people at your level are in any position to say that."
"Sure, we haven't been Explorers for very long either. Still, who says Explorer has to be a person's first career?"
"Former criminals, then?"
It was a common story for criminals from the continent to flee into the labyrinth, where the continent's authorities couldn't easily reach them.
"Let's just say we're already plenty used to carving up people."
And NPCs with that background usually went down the Raider path, becoming the main culprits behind ruined early-game runs.
"Too bad for you. I'm plenty used to putting down bastards like you, too."
I'd overcome threats like them well over ten years ago, after all.
I had way too much experience under my belt to get killed by scrubs who'd probably only scraped together one or two Records at best.
If my skills were that rusty, I would've been stuck nowhere near clearing the game, just like all the other players.
"Oh? Got a trump card up your sleeve or something?"
Of course I do.
Raising my spear high, I shouted at the top of my lungs.
"Run for it!"
As the saying goes, you have to look at how much room you have before you stretch your legs out.
I'd talked big like I was about to wipe the floor with them, sure, but if we actually clashed head-on, our odds of winning were abysmal.
Twenty percent at best, even being generous?
Fighting them here wasn't a smart move.
And if we weren't going to fight, the only option left was to "run."
Normally, bluffing your way out was an option too, but the moment they caught us sleeping on the bare dirt without even sleeping bags, any credibility for a bluff had gone right out the window.
"Huh...? Wha— Wait for me!"
"A warrior does not run—!"
"Shut your mouth and run!!"
In any case, I made the call to bolt, and my party members—who had never once lost out by following my orders—dutifully sprinted right after me.
"Why, you little bastards!"
"You think you can get away?!"
Since they'd been standing pretty close to us from the start, our odds of outrunning them cleanly weren't all that high, either.
However, this escape plan had one real "kicker" to it.
"Pull all the levers!"
The chamber right before the cave where we'd bedded down.
It was none other than the "Elite Room."
CLACK-CLUNK! CLACK-CLUNK!
"Got you—!"
Just as the Raiders hot on our heels were about to catch up to us—
"L-Look up!"
"Kiryaaaah!!"
"What the—?!"
Armed Goblin Elites dropped straight down from the ceiling.
***
We'd had a rough time against one earlier, sure, but a Goblin Elite was actually a pretty weak monster.
It sat at the very bottom of the Level 2 lineup, and once a 1-Star Explorer got the hang of combat, they could solo one on their own, even if it took a while.
However, that only applied when you were fighting "one" of them.
"Kiryaaak!"
One of the Special Records possessed by the Goblin Elite: [Soldier's Instinct].
"Kiryak! Kiryak!"
"Kiryak! Kiryak!"
When in a "group" made up of the same race, they received a buff that boosted both their morale and their Physical stats.
Six levers pulled meant six Goblin Elites summoned at once.
Since they were obviously the same race and having three or more of them met the condition for a "group," a red aura signifying a Physical-type buff began rippling across their skin.
"Fall back!"
Right at the first-floor level I'd pegged them at, the Raiders couldn't recklessly charge into six buffed-up Goblin Elites.
The six Goblin Elites stood like a living wall splitting the chamber between them and us.
The Raiders and our party ended up retreating into the opposite passages on either side, where the Goblin Elites wouldn't aggro unless provoked.
"...So you had a trap waiting for us, huh?"
"I'm not the type to roll over and die."
"Who knows, we might run into each other again real soon. Next time, you won't get this lucky."
The Raider leader tried to sound unfazed, but the expressions on our faces as we stared across the room had completely flipped from a minute ago.
Or more accurately, just between me and the Raiders, who actually understood the situation.
Nudging my cluelessly blinking party members a step back, I called out in reply.
"I'll probably spot your corpses hanging in the city square soon enough. I'll be sure to say hello when I pass by."
Raiding offered an incredible return on investment.
You could steal several days' worth of someone else's hard-earned loot in just a few minutes.
Yet there weren't all that many Raiders inside the labyrinth, and the reason was simple.
[Anyone caught raiding shall be hunted down without fail and put to death.]
Because the labyrinth city enforced an extreme zero-tolerance policy against Raiders.
Even in the game, whenever a Raider was reported, an investigation squad made up of high-tier Explorers would be dispatched to hunt down and execute the wanted Raider.
In other words, the moment we made it back and filed a report, those bastards were dead men walking.
That was the exact reason those guys stuck on the far side of the room were wearing such sour looks.
"Awfully confident, aren't you?"
"Give me one reason I shouldn't be."
"You've still got plenty of time left down here, don't you?"
That bastard caught on fast.
Truth be told, our own position wasn't all sunshine and roses, either.
This world came down hard on Raiders, sure, but that enforcement system only kicked in after the prerequisite of "reporting the crime" was met.
Unlike the modern world where a single phone call brought the police running, this pseudo-medieval city ran on a strictly analog system.
To file a report, you had to visit the labyrinth city in person and sit down with an artist to put together composite sketches based on your testimony.
Meaning if we didn't make it out alive, we couldn't report them either.
"From the look of things, tonight is your very first night... Which means you've got at least six days left."
The catch was that once you entered the labyrinth, you had to stay inside for a minimum of seven days.
Having not even finished our first full day yet, we still had over 150 hours of mandatory stay ahead of us.
"I'll be praying we meet again. No, I'll make sure we track you down."
Shooting me a vicious glare, the Raider leader turned on his heel and vanished down the far passage with his crew.
Watching their silhouettes fade into the dark, I couldn't help clicking my tongue—"Tch."
'Picked up some annoying leeches.'
This was going to turn into a tiresome entanglement.
Somehow, I could already feel it coming.
***
Thankfully, over the several days that followed, we didn't cross paths with them once.
Statistically speaking, that made complete sense; true to its name, the "Cave Maze" on the first floor was a sprawling, tangled web of passages.
On top of that, because each cave chamber was separated as an independent room, even if two parties' routes overlapped at a certain point, missing each other by just a few minutes meant passing right by without ever knowing.
In any case, regardless of that bad feeling from the first night, we reached our destination without any major trouble.
A feat accomplished in five whole days.
Ah, we did get ambushed by a pack of Goblins along the way and had to pop one potion when the orc took a nasty hit, but everyone survived, so it worked out fine.
"We are here. Right up ahead."
"Good work."
"You did all the hard work. All I did was read the map."
"That's a vital role."
Maybe not on other floors, but in the maze-like terrain of the first floor, it really was.
Without him, we would have wasted several extra hours every day just figuring out which passages led toward our destination on the map.
"By the way, what is this place?"
"Exactly what it looks like."
On the map, our destination was marked with the symbol of a small stream.
And as we stepped out of the final cave passage, that was the exact sight that greeted us.
Trickle, trickle—
A narrow stream of running water.
The stream wasn't very long, and following the water's course revealed two other passages branching off upstream and downstream.
Aside from the running water, the chamber was practically indistinguishable from any other cave on the first floor.
"...Did we come all this way just to drink water?"
In fairness, that was its most common use.
Because leaving the labyrinth locked you out for a full week, Explorers who stayed down here for extended runs used this spot frequently to stock up on drinking water.
"As if."
If this were some legendary spring of miraculous water, maybe, but obviously it wasn't.
With a light POP—, I uncorked a potion and poured it straight into the running stream.
"W-What are you doing?!"
"Mr. Yuta! That's a potion!"
"The human is pouring our lives away!"
Now that they'd all experienced firsthand what potions could do, my party members freaked out as if I were throwing their lives down the drain.
Regardless of their fuss, however, the potion bottle in my hand emptied out to the last drop.
And a moment later—
FWOOSH—!!
A crimson radiance surged up from the flowing water.