The Next Great Labyrinth

Jayr POV - Tortus, Gruen Desert - 2013

In these few days, we went back to the Reisen Gorge and using it as some kind of exclusive highway, we quickly run through it, and in some cases flew over some obstacles to keep moving in a straight line, to reach the other side of this continent, the Gruen Desert.

And after many days of constantly moving through those rocky monster-infested roads, what now greets our sight is a brown world.

These are the words that describe this place perfectly, the sand is brown, formed by millions of minuscule grains, the hot wind that is blowing constantly throws up the sand and dyes the air brown, and in a 360-degree radius, that is the only one color as far as my eyes can reach.

Moreover, there are numerous sand dunes, big and small, whose surfaces are always stirred by the wind, moment by moment, the surface pattern of the dune is constantly changing, as if it is some kind of living being.

The blazing sun and its unreserved heat make the temperature of the sand on the ground shoot up quickly, it easily exceeds 40 degrees celsius, and coupled with the fluttering sand, it is one of the worst kinds of environments to travel in.

However, it is only so for ordinary travelers, currently, inside such a severe environment, Eri and I are easily traveling on my Magic Powered Bike advancing casually while raising a dust storm, but of course, I also raised the roof of the bike to protect us from the wind and sand, at the same time I use some elementary Ice Magic to refresh the interior.

And though there is neither a road nor a pathway, we won't get lost thanks to my Mana Compass, but even with all these things, this isn't the most pleasant way of traveling, as Eri weakly complains, "I never thought that I would ever feel seasickness in a bike...", and indeed as there isn't any kind of road, and so the journey is quite a bumpy one, and I simply let out a sigh and say, "Sorry... I would have liked to use the Flight Form of the Tactical Arms to simply fly to our destination, but using the Mana Compass and the Motorbike already burns a lot of Mana, if I also add the cost of the Flight Form to fly, then it becomes too much and we could find ourselves in a nasty situation...".

I feel slowly Eri nod, then I ask, "Do you want to go into my dimension...? At least, this way you can rest in the Athena's Bidoof's cabin...", she thinks about it then she simply says "Un...", and so I stop and enter my S.T., then place Eri on the bed in my cabin before going once again outside to continue moving.

After watching the sand battering the window and observing the brown-colored world in silence for a while, I muttered, "This is really depressing... I never realized how boring and depressing being alone could really be... Until now, I always had someone accompanying me... my family, my sisters, grandpa, Seika, Saori, my fellow Saints... I was never truly alone... Then I came to this world and the excitement and the other champion took my attention away from the fact that for the first time in my life, I was truly alone and away from everyone that cares for me...".

Giving a quick check on the Mana Compass to see if I'm still moving in the right direction, I continue, "Then before I realize what is truly going on, the accident with Eri happens... And again, I'm not alone anymore... Eri feels that she isn't helping me enough... But her presence alone makes this adventure more fun... They say don't stick your dick in crazy... But a LEGENDARY figure's Hot/Crazy Scale explains that a person is allowed to be crazy, as long as they are equally hot...".

Ideally, you want your date to be above the diagonal line, called Vicky Mendoza Diagonal, indicating that they are hotter than they are crazy, and in Eri's case, I still consider her above the diagonal.

While thinking that, I continue to drive my bike forward until I discover something outside the window far in the distance.

Focusing my gaze on it, I see that in a big dune on my right, there are numerous worm-like monsters, sandworms to be precise, that are gathering together to hunt their prey, a small group consisting of some kind of scorpion monsters that are as big as a car, their numerous heads can be seen at the top of the dune, as they rip apart those scorpions.

Those sandworms are huge, about 20 meters on average, large-scale monsters while the largest ones were around 100 meters in length.

They lived in this Gruen Desert and would usually submerge themselves underground and attack prey in their vicinity by opening their big, fangs-filled mouths from below.

They specialized in surprise attacks due to being hard to detect and are feared by people who crossed this large desert as the gods of death.

Fortunately, the sandworms themselves aren't very perceptive, so as long as one isn't so unfortunate as to come near them by accident, they would neither notice nor aim at anyone who was far away.

Since there is no innocent life involved, I decide to ignore this and not get involved in it, but the next moment, I feel many movements under the bike and so I immediately accelerate.

And the next instant, from behind the bike, starting with a small part of its body surfacing, a gigantic figure with the same color as the desert jumps out with its mouth open, it is another gigantic sandworm, moreover, I continue to steer the bike left and right as if to draw an S on the ground at high speed, dodging the attacks from a second and third sandworm that jumped out trying to swallow me whole.

But the attack of the sandworms doesn't end here, now that they are out of the sand, these three huge sandworms, quickly come crashing down from above aiming at me, but I simply accelerate and get away from the zone of impact, then I stop the bike, and standing on the hot sands of this desert I say, "Haa... Quoting a famous lazy guy... What a drag...", then I pull out my weapon in its Gatling Arm Form and prepare for the next wave of attacks.

I feel one of the sandworms quickly rushing toward me from below, and before it could jump out of the sand, I use some simple Gravity Magic to lighten my weight and jump really high, soon after my jump, the huge head of sandworm rushes out with its mouth wide open swallowing the bike whole.

I look down at the triple-layered circular maw of the worm and pointing the Gatling at it I say, "At least I can finally try the Magic Mode of the Gatling on a live target...", then I input my mana in the weapon through the handle and chant, once again shamelessly copying a magic spell from Negima Universe, "Sagitta Magica, Series Obscuri!", and pull the trigger.

The Gatling roars and fires a shower of multiple black projectiles of pure destructive magic, that quickly blast the sandworm apart in a shower of blood, seeing that I grin and say, "Yup... It works like a charm... Not only it enhances the power of the spell, but it also lowers the consumption and needs less focus for it... But of course, the drawback is that it can only withstand basic spells, like the Sagitta Magica".

Meanwhile, under the effect of Gravity Magic, I'm still floating in the air waiting for the other two sandworms to make their appearance, and I don't have to wait for too long, as soon as the bullet-ridden sandworm falls on the sand, the other two quickly jumps out of the sand from two different directions, so I aim at one with the Gatling and chant, "Sagitta Magica, Series Glacialis", firing sharp icicle 'blades' at the target cutting it and freezing it apart, then I raise my hand toward the other one and chant my old bread and butter spell, "Rupture!", and in front of me a magic circle appears, and from it, water comes out as a high-speed cleaver that slices in half the unfortunate sandworm.

After dealing with these three sandworms, I continue floating because I notice that the sandworms on the dune from before are moving due to perceiving the sounds and impacts from the fight, then I look down at the first sandworm I killed and between its remains, I see my bike, it is undamaged, but practically covered in worm guts and blood, 'Shit, I forgot to put the bike in the Soulbound Territory! That will need some serious cleaning... What a pain...'.

Then I decide not to wait for them to come over here and directly attack, I raise my hand pointing at the sky, and start to chant, "Malleus Aquilonis!", and generate a huge mass of spherical ice above my head then I direct it toward the approaching sandworms, quickly killing them all and generating a dust storm upon impact.

The sand column that was raised is just like an eruption of a volcano, of course, a lot of sand is mixed with the crushed meat and red blood of the sandworms.

After dealing with the worms, I stop using Gravity Magic and land on the sands near the corpse of the first sandworm, then I walk close to the bike and almost gag from the awful smell, it is a mixture of rotten egg, rotten durian, and the worst smelling shit, plus all the blood and gore, so with tears in my eyes I exclaim, "Holy Athena's Tits! It is so bad that it can be used as a chemical weapon... These things are more deadly dead than alive... No this can't continue!".

And unable to endure this smell any longer, I press my acupoints and cut off my sense of smell, then I start to work on cleaning the bike, of course after getting away from the chemical weapon of mass destruction.

First, using magic I envelop the bike in a big water ball, then I start to spin the water to wash away all the dirt and gore from it, then I pull out the bike from the now dirty reddish-black and brown water ball, and freeze the ball before using Gravity Magic to make it float away from this planet, 'It is better that no other innocent soul can smell this thing... It is so bad that before I cut off my sense of smell, I was starting to see some kind of hallucination, any longer and maybe that smell would stick to my soul... it is so bad that I really do not know what is worse this smell or Hades' Curse! Maybe I'll keep some to use against some nasty characters that need to be taught a lesson...'.

After getting rid of that nightmarish chemical weapon, I again envelop the bike in a water ball, but this time I pull out a tank of vinegar and mix it with the water, then I again spin the mixture, and after two hours I was finally able to get rid of that smell from the bike and just to be safe I also had a shower in vinegar, then I restart my journey toward the location of the next Labyrinth, Gruen Great Volcano, that it is situated 800 kilometers towards the north of the Dukedom of Ankaji, it is a huge active volcano five kilometers in diameter and 3,000 meters in altitude, that resides almost at the center of the Gruen Desert.

Jayr POV - Tortus, Gruen Great Volcano - 2013

After many hours, we finally reach our target, it doesn't have a cone-like appearance similar to those of normal active volcanos, but it has a dome-like, flat top made of lava, and looking at it I think, 'It would be more appropriate to call it a gigantic hill than a mountain... However, the altitude and scale are just that much abnormal that calling it a mountain isn't wrong either...'.

Then I think back on what Miledi told me about this place, 'The Gruen Great Volcano is commonly known as one of the Seven Great Labyrinth... However, unlike Orcus Great Labyrinth, it isn't visited much by adventurers. It is because of the danger inside and how troublesome it is. In addition, unlike the Orcus Labyrinth monsters from whom the magic stones are gathered, these resources are scarce in this place… those are the basic reasons, but the foremost is actually because only a few people are capable of even reaching the entrance... And now I understand why...'.

The reason is, that the Gruen Great Volcano is wrapped by a gigantic, swirling sandstorm, the storm's scale is so huge that it completely hides the Gruen Great Volcano, and these tornados made of the sandstorm are just like a flowing wall.

Moreover, a large number of monsters, such as Sandworms, are lurking inside the sandstorm, and they would, for sure mercilessly make surprise attacks within such a place that has a limited range of view.

While I'm looking at the sandstorm surrounding the volcano, I hear Eri behind me say, "I am glad we aren't walking there... And that you built this bike with a convertible roof...", and see that like me she has gaze fixed on the sandstorms in front of us.

I turn my head and smiling, I say, "Then, let's not wait any longer and go!", and turning the handle I make the bike dash forward, charging into the gigantic sandstorm, at the same time, I use Gravity Magic on the bike to make it heavier to be sure that we aren't blown away by the strong wind.

Inside the sandstorm is a fully brown-painted world, it is too hard to see ahead as the blowing sands block my sight, so I turn on the headlight made out of Green Light stone from Orcus Labyrinth, which cut through the dim place where the sunlight can not reach and continue our advance.

Our speed is only 30 km/h, and checking on the Mana Compass I mutter, "If the information we got before was accurate, we would break through the sandstorm within five minutes...", but then I again sense some movement below us and say "Brace yourself...", and unexpectedly Eri adds, "...Winter is coming", which makes me almost steer in the wrong direction, but I soon focus and start to make a zig-zag movement to dodge three sandworms with their big mouths open that jumped out from below.

Evading the ambush, and getting away without caring about them I turn my head and look at Eri shocked by what she just did, but she that looks at me with a smile and simply says, "What? I also watch TV series... And I have seen all 3 seasons of Game of Thrones, I have to admit that I quite enjoy the series and my favorite character is Cersei... Now that I think about it... Can we go to the Game of Thrones Universe next? There are quite a few characters that I'd like to make disappears or teach a little lesson...".

But before I could reply, two more sandworms jumps out to attack from both sides of the bike, their timing is very good, and if I don't do anything the bike will be hit for sure, but it would only be blown away and not damaged by such hit, even so, I prepare to accelerate to dodge them, but Eri says, "... leave it to me".

Hearing her, I unhesitatingly keep the handlebar straight, then, the gigantic worms dash out of the brown-colored world, however, the attacks coming from the sandworms from the left and right side couldn't even touch the bike, as Eri chants "Obsidian Vortex", which is a beginner level Gravity Magic that Eri uses to create a gravitational field around a nearby target, it alters gravity's hold on the target to make them lighter or heavier.

And she used it on both the sandworms making them crash heavily on the sand, and even perish under their own increased weight, meanwhile behind us, the three sandworms from before are still following.

They have considerable speed as they advance under the ground, but I continue to ignore them as they won't be able to reach us, so I turn toward Eri and say, "Good job... That was some excellent Gravity Magic, I can see that you have worked hard on it", hearing my praise, Eri brightly smiles and says, "Un... But this is still the most I can do with it... Back to the question, what do you say? You will go around and help those helpless people and I will just make some unsightly people disappear...", to which I simply decide to reply with, "I'll think about it...", while thinking, 'I'm not really interested in that Universe... Hell, at first the only reason I watched GOT was my ex-girlfriend... But maybe once I gather everything I need to survive it could be nice to take a vacation there with everyone...'.

Afterward, we were also attacked by brown-colored, gigantic spiders, and ant-like monsters, however, all of them were crushed by Eri's gravity magic without accomplishing anything, not even halting our advance, and after a while, we finally broke through the gigantic sandstorm that had obstructed a lot of adventurers before and arrive at a rocky mountain several times bigger than Ayers Rock.

It is a silent place surrounded by the wall-like sandstorm where the blue sky could be seen up above, the eye of the storm, I look at it and say "The entrance into Gruen Great Volcano is at the top", then we continue to travel up on the slope using the bike.

While riding up the slope I notice that the exposed rocky surface is reddish red in color, and steams gushes from here and there, a clear indication of the heat that is gathered in this place.

Before long, the angle of the slope becomes too difficult for the bike to advance, so we get out to reach the top of the mountain on foot, but as soon as Eri puts her foot on the ground she simply grunts "Um… i-it's hot", meanwhile, I put the bike in my S.T. then simply nod and say "Indeed.. the heat is in a different scale compared to the heat of desert's dry weather… While I'll be fine, it would be better to quickly conquer the Labyrinth...".

So without losing any more time, we move towards the mountain top, climbing the rocky place quickly, as a result, we are able to reach the top of the mountain in less than one hour.

At the top there is a complex place buried by rocks of various sizes and forms, there are rocks with pointed surfaces and also those with slippery, smooth surfaces, It is just like an exhibition of strange objects, but what catches my attention is an exceptionally huge rocky formation, a group of strange-shaped rocks, that form an arch-shaped structure with the length of ten meters.

And without hesitation, I lead Eri toward it, and once in front of the arch, my lips twitch a little while Eri snorts and says jokingly, "It seems that you once again met with your nemesis...", indeed, under the arch, we find a huge staircase that continues on into Gruen Great Volcano, I ignore her little jab at my hate for the most sadistic of human creation and decide to try let go this senseless grudge that I have with stairs, and say, "Let's do this!", and Eri besides me summons a few skeletons to scout ahead and says, "Un!", then we together move forward and being the conquest of our 3rd Labyrinth.

Jayr POV - Tortus, Gruen Great Volcano - 2013

The inside of Gruen Great Volcano is even more unexpected than the Orcus Great Labyrinth and Reisen Great Labyrinth, but rather than the difficulty, it is the interior's structure that is unexpected.

First, magma is flowing mid-air like rivers, the streaming, scorching red magma in mid-air is just like huge, jumping dragons, which makes the challenger, in this case, us, be cautious not only about the magma on the ground but also above the magma above us.

Moreover, "Ukya!", I quickly pull Eri over as she lets out a girly scream, while a jet of magma suddenly spouts from the ground reducing in ash an Undead Puppet that was unable to dodge in time, seeing that, Eri hugs me and says, "Thank you Jayr... It was impossible for me to perceive that… This place sure is nasty...", exactly what happened a few seconds ago, the magmas abruptly spouts from all around the walls.

It is really abrupt and difficult to perceive any prior sign of it really similar to that of a booby trap, fortunately, I have my senses and the special magic Heat Perception, without it, our conquering speed would've fallen due to the need to be even more cautious of our surroundings.

Another thing that made it truly difficult is the boiling heat, this Labyrinth is naturally hot due to magma streaming all around the passage and broad space which makes us feel like being inside a sauna, or to be more accurate, above a heated frying pan, in fact as we continue walking our bodies are now totally drenched in sweat, feeling the clothes sticking to my body I comment "The heat is the most troublesome thing about this place...", which earn a nod from Eri.

While sweating, we continue to advance while evading the drops and the spouting of magma, and in a certain broad space, we find a place that has a clear indication of being mined.

The place is worn down by cuts that seemed to come from something like a pickaxe, but there is a small, faint pink-colored crystal peeping from one part of the wall, but we decide to ignore it as even if it has some value the crystal is too small and we do not care for such things so we move ahead.

While annoyed by the constant heat, we continue our descent until we reach the 8th floor, but as soon as we step on the floor, I feel a strong hot wind and see a huge blazing flame that moves quickly toward us as it advances, it draws a spiral on the orange-colored wall.

But I calmly move in front of Eri and chant "Ice Shield!", creating a shield made of ice to block the blazing flame, and soon the blaze and the shield clash against one other, raising a huge amount of steam as they nullify each other, seeing this I click my tongue and think, 'Okay using Ice Magic in this place isn't the brightest idea... it costs more and the spells are also weakened and the same probably applies to water spells... So for elements, it is better to stick with Darkness or Gravity...'.

As the steams quickly disperse, we can see the identity of our attacker, it is a bull that stands in the middle of the magma, and its whole body is also clad in magma, it has two sharp curved horns on its head, and flames are coming out of its mouth from time to time as it takes heavy breaths.

Maybe because the Magma Bull is angry that its peculiar magic, the blazing flame attack, was easily nullified by Ice magic the loud sounds of its hoof paws on the ground can be heard as it takes the usual charging stance then it attacks by firing a compressed flame from its mouth.

The laser-like, compressed attack from the Magma Bull carries several times the power of a normal flame attack, but even so, I stand calm in front of such an attack, I raise my hand and chant in greek, "Spēlaion Mikron Bary Melan!", and create a small black swirling sphere, basically a small black hole, that disperses the Magma Bull's attack in an instant, then continues toward the monster soundlessly obliterating the upper part of its body as soon as it came in contact with it.

Looking at the effect of this magic I nod, this is another spell I came up with, Spēlaion Mikron Bary Melan is an attack spell that created a small sphere that is the equivalent of a black hole, upon contact with the target, it obliterates everything in a certain small radius, and since the size is small it doesn't cost much mana, well at least not for me, it is at the level of an intermediate spell, the only downside is that it is relatively slow it is more effective as a close to mid-range surprise attack, I was lucky that the bull stood still there.