247 – The Returner Wanderers (1)

〈25th floor〉

– Defeat the ‘King of the Maze’ and escape.

-Poison is spreading inside the 25th floor. You may not notice any major problems at first, but as time goes by, movement will become more difficult. For the general public, about an hour. Climbers die within 2 to 3 hours. Please be careful.

Immediately after returning. I relaxed and looked around carefully.

The road I am currently standing on is clearly a space surrounded by artificial stone walls. It has a narrow road about 3 meters wide and a high wall. Because there is a transparent ceiling, the sky is not visible.

Behind… It’s blocked. The front, right, and left paths remain. This road is not just a random road, but bends at an exact 90 degree angle.

“It’s a maze.”

Fitting with the previously mentioned ‘King of the Maze’, it had the shape of a clear maze. I guess it was a mirror maze on the 3rd floor, but there was a maze anyway. This space right now is so wide and high that it’s a shame to compare it to that. What’s interesting is that even though the ceiling is blocked, there is a light source. And the overall air has a green color.

It’s because of the poison in the air. I’m not sure about the light. There are no separate torches or lights to be seen.

Anyway. If this is a maze… I understand the phrase ‘escape’. Escape from a maze is never easy.

Was it when I was in middle school or high school? I once made a maze for fun while playing Minecraft multiplayer with my friends. It wasn’t a very wide maze, and the shape was just a copy of a maze copied from the internet.

This. Surprisingly, it is not easy to escape. No, it’s incredibly difficult.

The maze is easy to solve when looking down from above. Since you already know the starting point and exit point, all you have to do is ignore the blocked path and draw a continuous line.

However, when exploring the maze from a first-person perspective, the story is completely different. Not only do I not know where I am or where I can escape. As time passes, memories of where I am and how far I have become become jumbled.

Is there a technique called ‘left hand method’ for no reason? Unless your spatial perception ability has reached the level of a god, it is virtually impossible to escape a wide maze using straight attack techniques. Memorizing the route in your head? Will that work?

Still, the good news is… I only have to beat this floor once.

The moment you clear it and go to reality, there will be the answer Choi Ji-won found, and I just have to execute it. What matters is just one success. If you break it just once, this floor is over. The first clear is the beginning, the end, and everything.

“Hmm.”

General methods cannot be used. The time given to me was only 20 minutes. The method of ‘wandering down the street and breaking the maze’ is not even worth considering. Well, one day, I might get lucky and be able to clear it, but it takes too long.

The left-handed method is also excluded. The left hand method is to scan the left side of the maze, and considering the size of the maze, it would take well over 20 minutes.

So, what is the trick to clear this floor?

“If we talk about popular tricks in mazes.”

The first thing that comes to mind is how to ignore walls. A method of denying an object called a ‘wall’ by destroying it, passing through it, or holding something on it and frying it.

If this is allowed, all I have to do is immediately break down the wall behind my back. Oh, assuming we find out where the ‘King of the Maze’ is.

-Tuktuk.

When you tap a wall with the back of your hand, the sound it makes is usually not heavy. It literally feels like I’m knocking on a ‘wall’. The thickness seems enormous.

“… Still, I guess I should give it a try.”

I gathered all my magical power and struck the wall behind my back. The wall was made of stone, and thanks to the cold sword, the wall was quickly destroyed.

“… “Is it too thick?”

Even though we dug in more than 5 meters, there was no end in sight. I wanted to find something, so I broke down the walls on the left and right, and this side was roughly 3 meters thick. You can break it, but the thickness is a bit burdensome.

“Whoa, whoa… ” “

Plus, because I was using so much strength, my breathing speed was getting faster, I was consuming a lot of magical power, and the chill around my heart was slowly sending out a danger signal… It doesn’t seem like you can escape by breaking the wall.

Of course, I have no intention of stopping here. Should we just stick to the walls? There is not necessarily only a path forward, left, and right.

“Ceiling or floor.”

When I roughly looked at the floor, it was just full of rocks, but the direction I was leaning towards was towards the ceiling.

That ceiling you see over there. No matter how you look at it, it looks like something is transparent beyond.

“Let’s go.”

Breaking through the ceiling means a lot. If simply going beyond the ceiling is considered an ‘escape’, it is a huge benefit. Even if that is not the case, you can see the overall structure of the maze beyond the ceiling, so it is safe to say that you have obtained a map of the entire maze.

-Park!

I wrapped my hand around the sharply rotating magic power and stuck it into the wall. Not even soft tofu, but a wall that looks like clay.

“And now.”

Once my hand was fully engulfed and the magical power stopped spinning, my hand was firmly pinned to the wall. A kind of stunt utilizing the ‘fine magic power control’ discovered on the 21st floor. Using the same method with my feet, I quickly climbed up the wall.

Puck! Puck! Puck!

The magic attribute consumption is not normal. On the 25th floor, ‘magic attribute = survival time’, so it was true that it was quite a burden.

I was planning on going back anyway, and the speed of climbing up the wall was pretty fast, so I didn’t really care.

Understand!

“It’s done.”

Is it because I climbed the wall thoughtlessly? We’ve already reached the ceiling. I glanced down and it was roughly 10 meters? 15 meters? It’s pretty high.

“Whoa…”

Carefully take out the sword from your waist. The ceiling I was directly facing didn’t look very strong. It is safe to say that it is a kind of transparent glass material. The space is vaguely visible even beyond the ceiling. If you break this and climb up, you will be able to see clearly below.

Both legs and left arm were fixed to the wall. Gather up about half of the remaining magical energy and put it into the sword. If the ceiling breaks this time, next time it would be okay to destroy it first instead of climbing the wall.

“I’m going.”

Although the posture is not good, the magic power allows for a powerful strike even in this posture. Hold the handle tightly with your right hand. Focusing on the shoulder joint.

-Squirt!

The sword stabbed with all its might… !!!

“… Huh?”

It stopped just before reaching the ceiling. It’s not blocked, and it’s not thrown out. It just stopped.

“… “

I tried using more force, but the sword didn’t seem to want to move. Just… Just… No.

Is this the power of an archangel? It’s hard and it’s not a problem. Impossible. It’s so blocked. Like facing an impenetrable transparent wall in a game.

Yes, the trick has been prevented.

“… “You’re smart.”

I sighed and took a deep breath of green air.

[You have suffered damage.]

[It returns to the moment when you first entered the 25th floor.]

***

“This is not it.”

No matter how much I thought about it, the direction was wrong. If you continue like this, you will never be able to break.

This is a precious opportunity created through Choi Ji-won’s sacrifice. You must clear it after regressing as little as possible to save your mental and physical strength. I’m so anxious right now.

Again, let’s summon an ordinary player, Mr. A. Well, I can’t say it’s normal if you’re on the 25th floor. Let’s summon Mr. A, a very bright genius.

When Mr. A came to his senses on the 25th floor. How does this person move?

Perhaps, like me, you will try touching the wall or ceiling first. And then you give up right away. The return is so poor compared to the effort put in.

There is even a time limit because poison is spread throughout the maze. Assuming you move while taking the potion, you will have plenty of time to move for three hours… No, when I set it as four hours.

This means that it is impossible for not only me, but also the average player, to clear the maze just by going through it. In the first place, the ‘maze’ itself is a space created to confuse people.

Left numeration? If you use the left hand method, it is possible to escape. If there was no condition to find the ‘King of the Maze’.

As if simply escaping was enough, the existence of the king of the maze required a solution other than the left-handed method.

So how should Mr. A escape this maze? Is the only future just wandering through a maze and dying of poison?

It can’t be.

There is something. It is clear that there is something to guide the way. Otherwise, it is a time that can never be broken. The time of 4 hours has a hidden meaning of finding the answer and not hoping for a fluke. That’s how I interpreted it.

“Let’s move a little first. To the left.”

I first walked to find the clue. This is because you cannot collect any information simply by staying at the starting point. As I walked, I looked closely at the vines growing on the wall and the patterns on the wall.

Now that I think about it, how is the vine alive when the poison is spreading? Are these vines immune to poison? Or are plants naturally unaffected by poisonous gases? I don’t know.

How long did it take to walk like that?

“Hmm.”

After moving around for about 3 minutes, I realized one thing.

“… The road was blocked.”

The truth was that I knew nothing. Maybe it’s because I’m not a maze expert, or a huge genius, but just a regressor with a lot of time. I couldn’t find any ‘clues’ in this maze.

I succeeded in going back the way I came and returning to the starting point, but I made no progress at all. What should I do with this? At this rate, I might have to beat my head until I wake up with luck.

“This time… Front.”

Still, I can’t stay still. This time, I walked forward and observed my surroundings carefully. Likewise, nothing changes. Stone walls, vines, transparent ceilings, and…

“Huh?”

No. There is a change.

Different. The feeling of the ‘magic attribute filter’ is different.

Before, it felt like the fine sand of a white sandy beach was stuck deep in my throat, but now it feels like coarse sand that was scooped up from a playground.

It was a subtle difference that would normally be difficult to notice, but to me, as a magic expert, it was a clear difference. Now I see that the magic attribute consumption has increased slightly.

The magic power consumption of the magic filter has increased. What does this mean? Why was everything fine when I went to the left, but did my magic attribute consumption increase when I went straight?

I do not know. Honestly, I don’t know. There is nothing we can be sure of yet.

Still, I realized it intuitively.

“This is it.”

This is the path to the right answer.