The chamber branched into two corridors at the far end — one to the left, and one straight ahead.

Juli peered down the left path, then switched to the straight one. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted down each.

"HELLO?"

Nothing came back from the light. The straight one, however, echoed longer and deeper.

"The left one’s short. This one goes way further..."

Juli turned to Eli.

"Let’s go straight!"

She headed straight with her sword drawn. The corridor narrowed slightly before opening up again. The carvings on the walls grew like roots, branching and intertwining.

Juli ran her fingers along one of them.

"Hmm. These are everywhere. Think we’ll meet someone down here?"

Eli only shrugged.

"They’re probably from monsters."

She examined the carvings, bringing her face close enough to smell moss.

"Nah. They’re clearly sword marks! Delicate ones, at that."

Eli took a closer look, pretending to have know-how about swordplay. His fingers elegantly traced the intricate markings, though he hadn’t the faintest idea what they meant.

"Ah. I see it. Yeah, it definitely looks like sword marks."

Juli stared at him with dubious eyes.

"See it, my butt! You don’t have to pretend you know everything!"

"But I do know, though," Eli said, deadpan.

Juli grumbled for a second and then poked at his ribs.

"Argh! Hey!"

They ventured deeper into the labyrinth, but it was rather strange for the place to be devoid of sound. Even their footsteps were muffled by soft moss.

Unnerved by the heavy silence, Eli stopped in his tracks.

Juli noticed and halted as well.

"Elise? What’s wrong?"

Eli didn’t answer.

He remembered the labyrinth to be teeming with monsters. As a limited farming stage where players were given three chances to test their luck and see just how far they could go down. Each floor would greet them with relentless waves of monsters and a final boss, waiting at the end of the road.

Here, however, nothing had appeared other than some ragtag bunch of geckos!

Eli looked Juli in the eye and said:

"It’s weird nothing has come out yet."

"Maybe it’s because they’re all scared of the almighty Julianna!" She puffed out her chest.

Eli let out a small laugh and rubbed the back of his neck, though the unease stayed lodged in his throat.

"Yeah, maybe."

They pressed on. The passage sloped down, and the carvings grew deeper. What started as scattered grooves turned into long, swirling lines that wrapped around every column. Some of them even ran the length of the whole corridor in a single, unbroken stroke.

"Is this drawn in a single breath?" Juli mumbled to herself.

She kept her hand on the pommel and her eyes forward. Then suddenly, her steps slowed.

"Elise."

"Mm?"

"You feel that?"

He paused his steps.

The hum was louder now. Earlier, he had felt like the labyrinth was breathing. Now, he felt like it was listening on their every movement and word.

"...Yeah."

Eli touched the wall with two fingers. The stone pulsed faintly and sent warmth into his palm. It felt like the healing magic Sister Gamora had cast on him.

He pulled his hand back and rubbed his fingers together.

"This place has mana running through the walls."

Juli leaned in close to inspect the wall.

"That’s what it is? I can’t sense it at all."

In HOTA, each floor had mana-powered mechanisms that fueled both traps and monsters. The deeper you went, the denser the mana became. Players could disable them by clearing a few mini-games, opening the way to push deeper.

However, he was not in the game anymore, and there were no mini-games to save him. It might not matter on the first few floors, but later he would have to disarm the empowerment if he wanted to claim every treasure.

Eli sighed and kept walking.

A few steps later, the corridor opened up again into a small chamber. At the very center, set into a low recess in the floor, lay a single pedestal of stone.

Something rested on top of it.

Juli’s eyes lit up the moment she saw it.

"OOOH! Look! Treasure!"

She jogged towards it, every ounce of caution melting off like snow under the sun.

Eli reached out in time and caught the back of her collar.

"GAH! Hey!"

"Hold on a minute."

Juli tried to wiggle her way out.

"Don’t treat me like a dog!"

"Then don’t act like one! You saw treasure blatantly displayed and ran towards it?"

Her head held still.

"I... was gonna check it when I get close!"

"Sure you will."

Eli let go of her collar, then walked past her with a cautious mind. The chamber was small enough that he could see the whole floor at a glance. His gaze swept across every slab, every shadow, every hint of movement.

The room was suspiciously empty; eerily absent of any presence.

And that, of course, was the problem.

’A reward room is supposed to have a guardian as a mid-boss. So where is it?’

He stopped at the edge of the recess and crouched to study the pedestal.

On top of it sat a small leather-bound book about the size of his palm, with a brass clasp keeping it shut. The leather had faded with age, but the clasp itself looked almost brand new.

Eli glanced over his shoulder.

"Juli, come look at this — slowly."

Juli inched forward in the most exaggerated tiptoe he had ever seen.

"Slow enough?"

Eli rubbed his temple and huffed a small laugh.

"You’re impossible."

She crouched beside him and examined the book.

"Huh. Looks like a diary."

"You think so?"

Juli nodded.

Eli reached out a hand, then paused midway.

[Maid’s Intuition] stirred in the back of his mind, a low warning like a dog bristling at a stranger. Sweat beaded along his forehead as his fingers hovered above the book.

He gauged whether the hum would build.

It did not.

Eli slowly closed his hand around the book and lifted it, exhaling the breath he had been holding.