“After you caused a scene over nothing, why didn’t you ask to go together?”

Walking between the maze walls, Gillian spoke to the empty air. Beside him, Beatrice sat like a princess in Morboin’s arms, legs crossed as she toyed with her nails.

In the long, silent corridor, there were only the two of them. Now and then, pebbles that had fallen loose from the stone wall rolled across the floor after catching on Morboin’s foot.

“Because there was a weird guy stuck to Leo.”

“Since when do you care about that?”

Beatrice’s pouting eyes slid sideways to glare at the giant.

“You dragged me away before I even had time to talk. And Andrew said not to bunch up from the start. Even the Council’s commander-level people don’t get dispatched to the same place as a pair.”

Gillian turned to look at her, his expression faintly surprised.

“Huh. Well, I’m glad he can at least get through to you.”

“Andrew’s always easy to talk to.”

“Not him. You.”

A thick platform heel flashed out from beneath the dress and kicked Gillian in the stomach. Gillian only chuckled as he brushed dust from his clothes. It did not look like it hurt at all.

A moment later, their first choice appeared ahead—three paths branching apart. The other participants must have passed through long ago; there was no sign of anyone nearby. Morboin, who had supported Beatrice like a devoted attendant, carefully set her down.

After straightening her dress, Beatrice kissed the bright red mouth of her beloved doll, then walked up to the wall. Stone fragments were gathered at her feet; it seemed participants had been unable to scratch marks into the wall, so they had left signs like this instead.

Beatrice kicked the marker apart and asked Gillian,

“So where now? I made a bet with Mirail that I can clear it in two hours.”

“How much did you bet?”

“Not money. Something else. You don’t need to know.”

“I do need to know. I’m the one who’ll be getting you through.”

“You don’t get a cut.”

“Cold.”

Gillian rummaged at his waist, unfastened a wine bottle, and popped the cork. Morboin stepped in front of Beatrice, guarding her like an escort knight.

His thick throat bobbed as he drank, gulping loudly. When a line of blood-colored liquid ran down from the corner of his mouth, Gillian finally pulled the bottle away, wiped it with the back of his hand, and sighed.

“They said the token count is twenty?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we’ll see an exit before we break through twenty walls.”

With the plan summarized, he rolled his shoulders, loosening up. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

He clenched a club-like fist and drove it into the stone wall with full force.

***

“Ow, ow....”

Waving a fist that had turned red-hot, Ero let out a pained groan. He had only meant to gauge how hard the wall was, but even his knuckles throbbed deep in the bone. Of course, the stone wall did not even have a scratch.

Wrapping his fist in his sleeve and whining under his breath, he looked up at Leonardo, who was floating in the air.

“Boss, do you see anything?”

Having reached the top of the wall, Leonardo tapped empty air with the back of his hand. The sky he had assumed was wide open was blocked by an unknown barrier. It covered the upper edge of the stone walls without a gap, making it impossible to climb up onto the maze and walk around above it, or to cross walls at will.

Of course. If that were possible, escaping the maze would be meaningless.

It looked like the organizers had taken measures to block cheap tricks.

Then can I break it?

He gathered magical power in his grip, about to test it—when a wind cut through the entire corridor the two of them were investigating. Leonardo turned his head toward where it came from. Narrowing his eyes as he stared into the distance, he dropped down to Ero’s level and landed lightly.

Tense, Ero edged behind him and asked,

“W-why is there suddenly wind?”

“It’s my magical power. I told the flame to go straight, then turn left when it hits a wall. And if it finds a place blocked by walls on all sides, it burns out and comes back.”

Ero’s eyes went wide.

“Whoa, you can do that? Then hasn’t it already gone through every escape route? But it was blocked? What about up there?”

“Up there looks open, but it’s blocked by a barrier. The sky we’re seeing might not even be the real sky. And it didn’t check the entire maze—just the main branches. I ignored the smaller paths.”

Leonardo nodded his chin toward narrow passages cut into the wall, near the top and near the bottom. Every so often, the maze had small holes in the middle of a wall that let you move sideways, or U-shaped grooves with a step in them. When Ero had gone out through one of those openings on Leonardo’s instructions, the token number had decreased by one each time he crossed over a wall. And even when he simply rounded a curved path instead of choosing a fork, the token number still decreased by one.

From those two examples, the common thread was clear: the token number did not decrease only when you faced a choice. It decreased whenever you crossed one “unit” of the maze’s stone walls.

Rubbing his lips, Leonardo fixed his gaze on the wall and asked,

“Hey. You any good at thinking?”

“Huh? If you mean quick-and-dirty schemes, I’m insanely good!”

Golden eyes rolled, plainly unconvinced. Still, a scheming brain was a brain.

“The Council values fairness. Which means they wouldn’t design rules where clearing it comes down to nothing but overwhelming raw ability. If you came into this maze alone—without me—how do you think you’d escape?”

“Uh....”

Ero tilted his head, thought with surprising seriousness, then answered.

“Honestly? I’d try to crawl up on top of the maze right away. But you said that won’t work... so at the start, I’d probably follow other participants. I’d propose an alliance, or listen for reactions from whoever turned a corner first and judge from the sound—trying to conserve my token count. No guarantee I’d make it through, though.”

That was true. Unless you could use magic well or had expensive tools, you had to clear this maze using information from your five senses, other people, and pure intuition. But statistically, the chance that all those choices would line up perfectly and lead you down the shortest path was extremely low.

There would be trial and error, and within that, frequent risk of fighting other participants and losing your token. In other words, for an ordinary person to escape within the limited opportunity of twenty, the number of turns and wall-crossings required would have to be far fewer than twenty.

Maybe this maze isn’t as complicated as it looks.

“Then where do you think the exit is? Just pick a direction.”

“The exit? Hmm... boss, did you hear what the guide said earlier?”

The guide? Leonardo immediately replayed it in his mind.

“He said no entrance is more advantageous or especially closer to the exit. If that’s true, then no matter which entrance you take, the distance is about the same. So the most likely place for an exit is—”

“The exact center of the maze?”

“Yes. That’s what I think.”

With a look that said he agreed, Leonardo ruffled Ero’s hair roughly. It was unexpectedly affectionate, enough that Ero—who had reflexively ducked, expecting to get hit—blinked in surprise. Leonardo grinned.

“You’re the second most useful piece of baggage I’ve ever met.”

“Uh... what? I-is that... good?”

“Of course it’s good. Come on. Until we hit a dead end, it’s better to confirm it ourselves. And while we’re at it, we’ll increase our token count.”

“You’re going to fight?”

“If someone picks a fight first, I’m not running.”

Leonardo lifted off slightly and flew along the left wall. Ero hurried after him, flustered. Maybe out of consideration, the speed difference was not huge. Ero’s mouth curled up into a grin as he caught up at Leonardo’s side.

“Boss, if I’m second, who’s first?”

“What do you need to know that for? And you—why did you bring that useless gun again? You can’t shoot people with it anyway.”

“Ah, about that. I brought some incredible ammunition this time. They told me that as long as it doesn’t punch through a body and kill someone, it can still be used to control competitors or overcome obstacles. When I registered my auxiliary item, I got approval for each bullet, one by one!”

Ero bragged nonstop as he ran, saying he had gathered rare magically made bullets during the time between the Division One and Division Two matches. Some erupted into fire and kicked up a gale when fired, while others scattered stinging sea squirts all over the ground to block pursuers.

It’s not even a toy.

Leonardo was unimpressed—until he heard there were paralysis rounds that could freeze a person for ten seconds, and sleep rounds that could knock someone out immediately. Then his gaze shifted.

“That’s possible?”

“Yes! Isn’t it amazing? And I even brought net rounds that work on mages! Boss, if there’s someone annoying, just say the word! I’ll nail them dead-on with this and—aaaagh!”

Bang—!

The moment they rounded two left turns, three participants sprang from an ambush and charged them. Leonardo hesitated midair, then immediately pulled back to make distance. Ero, caught completely off guard, yanked the trigger.

Just like he had described, a net shot out from the disassembled bullet and instantly smothered the three in front, pinning them so they could not move. Several heavy weights hung from the net, crushing any threatening motion, and the more the targets struggled, the tighter it cinched around them. They could only groan, cursing that these bastards had known it was coming.

At the intersections of the net, magestones had been embedded. Compared to what Leonardo had endured, it was crude beyond belief—but the memory surfaced anyway, and his face twisted.

The sensation of magestone energy crawling over the skin and sinking into the bones was something only the victim understood. It went beyond unpleasant into nauseating—an all-consuming helplessness that made it hard to move even a finger, and a suffocation that felt like foreign matter had filled your lungs.

Not knowing what was running through Leonardo’s mind, Ero—who had fallen backward from the recoil—stared at the captured trio with a stunned expression.

Then, as if he were beholding a sacred object, he inspected the gun barrel this way and that. When he turned back to Leonardo, his face and voice swelled with triumph.

“Boss, did you see that?”