The Extra is a Hero?-Chapter 255: THE GLITCH IN THE MAZE
Chapter 250: The Glitch in the Maze
The Labyrinth was angry.
That was the only way to describe it. The grey stone walls were no longer just shifting; they were sprinting. The corridors were compressing, forcing the remaining teams toward the center with the subtlety of a trash compactor.
RUMBLE.
Dust rained down from the artificial sky as the path behind us ceased to exist, replaced by a solid block of masonry.
[Arena Shrink Active: Phase 4]
[Safe Zone: Central Plaza]
[Teams Remaining: 6]
"We have to run," Seraphina yelled over the grinding noise of stone against stone. "If we stay here, we get flattened!"
Arthur looked down the long corridor toward the center. At the far end, a massive archway loomed, guarding the final arena. Through the arch, I could see something moving—something towering, made of dark, glistening metal.
[Boss Detected: Adamantite Guardian Golem]
[Level: 60 (Raid Boss)]
"The Golem blocks the finish line," Arthur shouted, his cape whipping in the wind caused by the collapsing walls. "We destroy it. That is the only path."
"No," I said, stopping in front of a nondescript section of the wall. "That’s the path the game wants you to take. And that Golem is designed to stall us for at least ten minutes. By then, the other teams will catch up, and it turns into a chaotic free-for-all."
"We can handle chaos," Arthur said, though he eyed the closing walls warily.
"I prefer certainty," I replied. I slapped the stone wall. "Varkas! Hit this. Right here."
Varkas hesitated. "The wall? It’s magically reinforced. My hammer will bounce off."
"It’s not a wall," I snapped. "It’s a texture map. Hit it!"
Trust is a funny thing. Varkas didn’t understand, but after the ambush in the jungle and Leon’s defense of him, he was desperate to be useful. He didn’t ask another question. He gripped his massive war hammer, roared, and swung with everything he had.
CLANG.
It didn’t sound like stone cracking. It sounded like metal buckling.
The "stone" flickered and dissolved, revealing a rusted, industrial steel grate behind it. A dark, square tunnel led into the darkness, smelling of grease and ozone.
Arthur blinked. "What is that?"
"Maintenance tunnel 4-B," I said, checking my HUD. "The mana conduits that power the shifting walls run underneath the floor. This is the ventilation shaft for the cooling system."
The grinding noise grew louder. The wall behind us was only ten meters away now.
"The simulation thinks this is a solid wall," I explained rapidly. "But physically, the stadium infrastructure exists. We aren’t going through the Labyrinth. We’re going under it."
Leon peered into the dark hole. "A shortcut? Cheeky. I like it."
"It’s dishonorable," Arthur muttered, though he looked at the approaching crusher wall.
"It’s tactical," I corrected. "Gold medals don’t care about honor; they care about who crosses the line first. Ladies first, Seraphina."
We scrambled into the vent just as the corridor collapsed.
CRUNCH.
The stone slammed shut inches behind my boots. We were plunged into darkness, lit only by the faint blue hum of mana pipes running along the ceiling of the cramped tunnel.
It wasn’t glamorous. We were crawling on hands and knees over steel grating. It was hot, loud, and cramped. Varkas, being the largest, was scraping his pauldrons against the sides, grunting with every pull.
"This is dignified," Arthur deadpanned from ahead of me. " The King of Knights, crawling in a sewer."
"It’s a cooling vent, not a sewer," I whispered. "Keep your voice down. The acoustic dampening down here is trash."
Above us, muffled sounds of combat erupted.
BOOM! CRASH!
"That’s the Central Plaza," Leon whispered. "Sounds like the Viper Institute made it to the Golem."
I visualized the map in my head. We were currently crawling directly underneath the Boss Room.
"Hold," I signaled.
We stopped. Through the slats in the ceiling above us, I could see flashing lights—red, gold, and purple. The Adamantite Golem was unleashing hell. I saw a massive metal foot stomp down, shaking dust onto our heads. A scream echoed—someone from the Viper team had just been sent flying.
"That thing is immune to magic," Seraphina noted, her voice trembling slightly. "Look at the mana dispersion. If we had fought that..."
"We would have won," Arthur insisted, though his voice lacked its usual bite. "But it would have taken time."
"Time we just saved," I said. "Move. The exit is twenty meters ahead."
We shimmied past the chaos. While other students were risking their lives fighting a raid boss designed to be a time-sink, we were army-crawling past their ankles.
"Here," I said, pointing to a grate above us. "This leads to the Winners’ Podium staging area."
"Are you sure?" Varkas asked.
"I calculated the geometry based on the curvature of the arena," I lied. I just knew the layout because I knew the novel. But they bought it.
"Varkas, do the honors," Arthur commanded.
Varkas braced his back against the floor and pushed up on the grate with his feet. With a groan of metal, the bolts sheared off.
[The Finish Line]
The crowd was roaring. The commentators were shouting.
"The Viper Institute is engaging the Guardian! But look at the Ironclad Academy approaching from the east! It’s going to be a photo finish once the Golem falls!"
The finish line stood alone on a raised dais behind the Golem. It was a golden archway, currently empty. The assumption was that you had to kill the Golem to walk past it.
Nobody was looking at the floor grate behind the podium.
CLANG.
The grate flew off.
Arthur Pendragon climbed out, dusted off his knees, and stood up. He reached down and pulled Seraphina up, followed by Leon and me. Varkas squeezed out last, looking like a cork popping out of a bottle.
We stood on the dais, behind the Golem, behind the fighting teams.
The crowd noise faltered.
One by one, the cheering stopped. The commentators went silent.
The Viper Institute team, currently blasting the Golem with acid magic, froze. The Golem itself seemed to pause, its AI confused by the sudden presence of entities behind its aggro range.
Arthur straightened his cape. He looked at the stunned audience, then at the camera hovering near the archway.
He didn’t smile. He just walked the five steps to the archway and broke the laser beam.
[BEEP]
[WINNER: ARCADIA ACADEMY]
[Time: 3 Hours, 14 Minutes]
[Rank: Gold]
"How..." the commentator’s voice crackled over the PA system, confused. "How did they... when did they pass the Golem?"
The hologram above the arena flashed our team portrait.
The Viper team screamed in frustration. "That’s cheating! They didn’t fight the Boss!"
Arthur turned to look at them. The Golem was turning around now, realizing the event was over.
"The objective," Arthur projected his voice with mana, making sure the entire stadium heard him, "was to finish. We finished."
He looked at me. For the first time all day, there was genuine respect in his eyes.
"Efficient," Arthur said quietly. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞
"Work smarter, not harder," I replied, adjusting my glasses.
The confetti cannons fired. The music swelled. It was awkward, it was anti-climactic, and it was absolutely perfect.
We had cheesed the biggest event of the year.
[Mission Complete: Stage 1 - The Hunt]
[Reward: Gold Medal + 5000 Academy Points]
[Hidden Objective Complete: The Path of Least Resistance]
As the crowd finally erupted into a mix of cheers and confused murmurs, I looked up at the VIP box where the Judges sat. I couldn’t see them clearly, but I knew exactly what they were doing.
They were replaying the footage. They were looking at the wall. And they were realizing that the "Extra" just broke their game.
"Stage 2 is going to be harder," Leon whispered, leaning on my shoulder. "They’re going to target us now."
"Let them," I said, watching the Golem deactivate and slump into a pile of scrap. "I know their playbook."
Interlude: The Politics of Power
Chapter 251: The Judges’ Chamber
The room was dimly lit, illuminated only by the glowing screens floating in the center of the obsidian table.
Three figures sat in the silence.
Headmaster Ironfoot of the Dwarven Technical College rewound the holographic footage for the fifth time. He zoomed in on the moment Michael Wilson tapped the wall.
"He didn’t use a detection spell," Ironfoot rumbled, his beard twitching. "No mana pulse. No sonar."
"He just... knew," said Elder Vane of the Sanctum. "He knew exactly where the infrastructure vent was. That blueprint is classified. Only the architects and the senior staff have access to the Bio-Dome schematics."
"Perhaps he is just lucky?" suggested the representative from Solaris, though he looked bitter about his team’s defeat.
"Luck is finding a coin in the street," Ironfoot growled. "Luck is not calculating the sniper delay of a Clockwork Rifle to the millisecond. Luck is not navigating a maintenance tunnel that hasn’t been opened in ten years."
Ironfoot paused the video on a close-up of Michael’s face. The boy looked bored. Detached. Like an adult playing a game with children.
"He didn’t react to the mana," Ironfoot said softly. "He reacted to the architecture. He reacted to the code of the exam."
"Who is this boy?" Vane asked. "His file says he is a C-Rank support mage. ’Generic force magic. Average stats.’"
Ironfoot leaned back, lighting a pipe. The smoke curled into the shape of a question mark.
"He is either the greatest cheater I have ever seen," the Dwarf said, "or he sees the world in a way we cannot comprehend."
He tapped the table.
"Watch him. Closely. If he steps one toe out of line in Stage 2... I want him dissected."
[The Athlete’s Village - Night]
The victory party was loud. Arthur was being interviewed by three different networks. Leon was flirting with the healers. Varkas was eating an entire roast pig.
I slipped out the back.
I needed materials. The "glitch" had worked, but it had burned through my supply of ether-dust. If I wanted to maintain my gear for the duels tomorrow, I needed to visit the Black Market again.
I pulled my hood up and merged into the shadows of the alleyway.
The streets of the artificial village were bustling, but the alleys were quiet. Too quiet.
My [Passive Detection] pinged.
Someone was following me. Not stealthily—aggressively.
I stopped and turned around.
Ten meters back, leaning against a dumpster, stood a figure with spiky red hair and a bandage over his nose.
Rion Blazeheart. The protagonist of the spin-off novel Flame of the East, and the guy I had humiliated in the prelims.
"You’re hard to find, Wilson," Rion spat, pushing off the wall. Sparks flew from his fingertips. "You think a cheap trick in the maze makes you strong?"
"It made me a Gold Medalist," I replied calmly. "Go home, Rion. You’re drunk."
"I’m not drunk," he growled, igniting a fireball in his hand. "I’m pissed off. You made me look like a joke. I want a rematch. Right here. No cameras, no judges."
I sighed. I didn’t have time for a shonen rival redemption arc right now.
"Rion," I said, checking my watch. "If you attack me here, you get disqualified. If you wait until tomorrow, you can try to beat me in the ring. Your choice."
He hesitated. The fireball wavered.
I took the opening. I didn’t cast a spell. I just stepped sideways, into the shadow of a hanging banner, and activated the [Stealth] function on my boots.
"Wait—" Rion stepped forward, the fire illuminating the alley.
But the alley was empty.
I was already three streets away, blending into a crowd of tourists.
Let him stew, I thought. Anger makes you predictable.
I had bigger problems than Rion Blazeheart. The Judges were watching now. The element of surprise was gone.
Now, I had to actually try.
(To be continued)
