Return of the Woodcutter

Aito stepped out of an ethereal portal to enter a long corridor. The walls were built with stones, medieval style. The surroundings were light by torches with blue flames emanating a cold glow. 

'So... this is the labyrinth.' 

Segolene had briefly talked to him about the 9th floor. Like in every labyrinth, the goal was to reach the exit, which was a portal to the next floor, apparently located at the center. 

'Now the question is, where is the center?' 

Gwen's knowledge was blank. It could not help him on the Top Floors. So he had to come up with a way to find the correct path to the center. 

'Well, first things first. Let's take a look at the surrounding corridors.' 

Aito dropped his ax, thinking he could call it whenever he wanted, lifted the bags he had brought with him, and headed for the closest turn.

With so many bags on his back and his bushy beard, he couldn't help himself but think he looked like Santa Claus, which in a sense was true since those soul cores were for his teammates. 

'Please be well.'

He turned left. The corridor looked exactly the same. Light with blue torches, long and gloomy. His steps echoed in the surroundings as he walked the hazardous path. There was no trap, no enemy, only a tensed silence.

'Shit, a dead-end.' 

Aito turned around and was ready to take the same road back. However, he noticed something wasn't quite right. He had previously taken a left turn, so on his way back to his original location, he should have taken right. 

'So why is it a left turn now? Something smells fishy here. Don't tell me the paths are constantly changing.' 

Taking out a few soul cores, he used them to mark his way forward by dropping them on the floor—he had more than a few to spare, anyway. 

After taking two turns, he tried to walk back. Not only did the path change, but his soul cores had disappeared. 

'Damn it. *Sigh* how am I supposed to find them when I can't even find my own way?' he frowned, his anxiety and impatience rising. 'I already don't like this place.' 

Looking up, Aito only saw darkness. Darkness was the ceiling.

The tall walls went on and on. He could see no end to them. There was no way above the labyrinth. He had to follow the normal paths. 

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Pondering his options, he decided to try something that would never work, but better than nothing. He called for his friends. 

"Sheyla!" 

"Ogoro!" 

"George!" 

His voice rebounded on the walls, going far into the corridors until they were drowned by the silence. 

No response came. 

'Damn it…, this feels like it's gonna take me an eternity to find my way out. Finding someone who also moves around in this place is close to hopeless. Any idea, Valinar?' 

[Oh.]

'Oh?' 

[Sorry, I was surprised. It's the first time you come to me for counsel without prior talk between us.] 

'Hum, yeah I guess. True. Is that a bad thing?' 

[No, on the contrary. I like it.]

'Ha, look at you falling for me. Sorry, I'm not into goddesses. Also, did you think about Belmand? Even though the poor bastard deserves infidelity, you can't just outright divorce him for a man you've met three months ago!' 

[Stop spouting nonsense or I won't tell you how to get out of here!]

Aito smirked, his anxiety and anger decreasing thanks to teasing the goddess. 'Fine, fine. Sorry. So how do I find my way out of this mess?' 

There was a short pause before the goddess answered, [I don't remember.]

…

…

…

'Useless goddess.' 

[How dare you talk to me like—] she started stepping sounds interrupted her, [there is something nearby.] 

'I know.' Aito cocked his head behind him. 

There a berserker was looking down on him like it would a prey. It roared, trying to intimidate its opponent, then charged like a raging bull. 

Aito calmly dropped the bags on his back to free one of his hands, coated his gauntlet with Durability, and waited. 

The berserker brought its fist down on the puny human. However, Aito stepped sideways at the last moment, dodging the blow, and counterattacked with a vicious uppercut. The power was such that the poor creature's feet lifted off the ground.

Aito grabbed its foot on the fly and smashed the berserker on the nearby labyrinth's wall. 

Still holding the creature's foot, he noticed that the wall was still intact. He had always managed to fissure or just create small cracks in stone. So how come this time was different? 

'Hum, something's not right about this stone.' With his goblin knowledge, he knew a real stone would have cracked with the strength he had put behind this particular blow. 'Let's check it out just in case I'm wrong.' 

The berserker lifted its head with difficulty, just in time to see its surroundings change in a flash. An immense pain seize it when Aito smashed it once more against the wall. Thinking it was not enough, he repeatedly used the berserker's body as a scientific tool to verify his hypothesis. 

BAM!

BAM!

BAM!

A puddle of purple blood with mashed berserker meat covered the stone wall that remained unaffected by the previous impacts. Aito got on his knees, removed his gauntlet, and touched the bloody floor to get a better feel. 

'Hum, I see.' 

[What do you see?] 

'An annoying notification window.'

[Not funny!]

'Haha. Fine, fine. There is something about the floor that doesn't feel right.' 

He charged up his skills on his other gauntlet, stood up, and punched a nearby wall with half his strength. 

BOOM! 

Fissures immediately appeared, forming a spider web crack around the point of impact. Intrigued, he deployed his shield ainium side. The mechanism clicked a few times, refusing to deploy correctly. 

'Tsk, the orcs did warn that could happen. Still, it's frustrating.'

He used the good old-fashioned almighty repair-all technique and smacked the shield a few times. Finally, it obeyed his command and deployed ainium side. 

Aito walked alongside the wall, brushing the structure with his shield as if looking for something. At some point, the shield reacted violently, projecting a shockwave frontward. Simultaneously, the wall vanished from thin air, revealing another corridor. 

'Illusionary walls. Correction, realistic illusionary walls.'

[So, you got an answer on how to leave this place?]

'Not really, but that's a start. I first need to confirm something about those illusions before drawing any conclusion.' 

Aito started walking around with his shield and bags, banging walls to remove the illusions. A few minutes later, he tried to walk back from where he came from, taking the exact same path where he had left a few soul cores like a trail of bread crumbs, a technique he had taken from a certain fairytale. 

As expected, an illusionary wall blocked his path. After removing it, he reached the exact same spot where he had started, then turned back, repeating the same process. 

On his way back, no illusionary walls blocked his path this time.

It seemed that once they were removed, the walls wouldn't reappear. Another important detail was that real walls were mixed in the lot. 

[What are you doing?] Valinar asked, seeing him reaching to the side.

'You know, I really hate labyrinths or anything that mess with my mind. Although my memory got somehow better thanks to the level-ups or the Body stat, it isn't perfect yet. So remembering every single path is a no, no. 

'I could, of course, mark the paths by carving walls or leaving soul cores behind, but that would be a waste of time and cores. I would have to walk back once I meet a dead end. Therefore, it won't guarantee me I'm in the right direction since the paths could lead elsewhere, except at the center. It's also worth noting that I don't know where I am precisely in the labyrinth and therefore know where the center is. Even if I stick to one direction, with no point of reference or compass, I could end up northward or southward.' 

[I don't follow.]

Loud noises of walls crumbling echoed in the surroundings as Aito explained his thoughts.

'What I mean is, taking the complex option and testing all the paths could take days even if I remove the illusions one by one. It was probably meant to take days to clear, anyway.

Once you know there are illusions, it's not that complicated to find the path. It only takes time. The walls are more resilient than normal, probably hard if not impossible to destroy for normal challengers. So, unless desperate, no one would try to destroy them since it'd take too much effort. After all, berserkers roam the labyrinth.' 

[And? Still don't get it.]

'Well, it's quite simple, really. I'm no normal challenger. I'm in a hurry, and this labyrinth pisses me off.' 

BOOM!

Soulcleaver pierced through a nearby wall and settled itself in Aito's open palm. 

'So instead of losing myself back and forth, I'll destroy everything until I find the people I'm looking for.'

[That's... brainless logic.]

'If you have a better idea, then spell it out. I'm all ears.'

[...]

'That's what I thought.'

*****

Lore: 

"Many lost themselves on the 9th floor in the past. It isn't a particularly difficult trial when one took the time to explore and understand it. In the past, it had been even easier with bravers who could remove illusions. Now, although more difficult, the only real challenge is not the berserkers, nor the patience required to find the way out, but the thing roaming the labyrinth."

Extract from, "Yggdrasil Chronicles, the Woodcutter of Iris," by Roan the Merchant.