Serena and the Mysterious Labyrinth - Chapter 132

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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132. Sewage Diving (2)

Serena and her party headed toward the sewage waterfall while staying alert for hidden Labyrinth Alligators.

“Moving between floors in the labyrinth isn’t always done through stairs. There are magic circles, geysers, all sorts of things. These are displayed on magic maps not as stairs but as magic circles and geysers as they are. Of course, since it’s a magic map, you can change the symbols if they’re inconvenient to read.”

Thwip! Clank, thwip! Clank. Thwip! Clank.

A Labyrinth Alligator appeared in the middle, only to be skewered by a bolt Ying shot.

When the Labyrinth Alligator died, Ying pulled out and retrieved the bolt embedded in the monster.

Olive continued her explanation while watching with an amazed expression as the archer quickly loaded her crossbow with bare hands and easily pulled out bolts without any difficulty.

“When we first saw it, we thought the path was cut off so we didn’t examine it closely. We need to look below the waterfall.”

‘She didn’t give me a coin.’

However, since the waterfall was worth investigating, Serena decided to follow the guide’s opinion.

The poison gas trap was still deactivated. The party walked easily along the main road.

Whoooosh!

The sound of falling water grew louder and louder until the sewage waterfall appeared.

“Since it’s dangerous if you get swept away by the current~”

Olive hummed a tune while tying a rope around her waist and placing the end of the rope in Ralph and Ying’s hands.

“If I fall, pull me up right away!”

“Understood! Just trust us!”

“Be careful.”

“Yes!”

Olive entered the violently flowing sewage like that.

Perhaps because of her small build, Serena felt anxious watching her.

The guide walked surprisingly easily through the rough current as she approached the waterfall.

As she neared the end of the broken path, she grabbed the wall and looked down below.

“Can you see the lower floor?”

“No!”

‘As expected, this wasn’t the place.’

Just as Serena was about to tell Olive to come back quickly, Olive spoke to the knight and archer holding the rope.

“I’m going to go down below, so lower the rope bit by bit! If I pull three times quickly, pull me up right away!”

Olive left those words and jumped down below the waterfall.

Serena was so surprised she thought her heart would stop.

“Ahhh!”

Ralph was also startled and hastily grabbed the rope that was unraveling with a whir.

“Ugh! I almost died from my stomach bursting! Don’t grab it suddenly, let it out gently!”

Ralph was surprised and flustered, not knowing what to do.

Ying made the knight hold the rope gently and took the lead in letting out the line herself.

Somehow Ying ended up supporting the guide’s weight alone, but the archer didn’t show any signs of it being heavy or burdensome.

‘Well, I did lift her with one hand too.’

Since Olive was smaller than Serena, Ying alone would be more than enough.

Ralph also quickly calmed down and followed Ying’s lead, slowly lowering the guide.

Serena furrowed her brow.

‘This is frustrating.’

Seeing the guide jump down right before her eyes brought back bad memories, and combined with memories of being strangled, she felt unpleasant.

“Lady Serena? Are you feeling unwell somewhere?”

“The stench is making me nauseous.”

“Shall I give you a potion? Or some purified water-“

“I’m fine. Water will be enough.”

Serena cast purification magic before opening her canteen lid.

Unlike the dirty water flowing in the sewers, clean water flowed down the Princess’s esophagus and settled in her stomach, but the Princess’s insides still felt queasy.

The rope was pulled three times in short intervals.

Ralph and Ying slowly pulled the rope so Olive wouldn’t be folded in half.

The guide’s hands came up from below the broken path.

The guide couldn’t come up easily due to the falling sewage.

Ralph pulled the rope strongly.

The guide came up against the sewage like a salmon swimming upstream against a waterfall for spawning.

The guide clenched her mouth shut and hurriedly pushed through the current to climb onto dry ground.

And then she vomited.

“Blech!”

“Stay still. I’ll cast purification magic on you.”

“Water! Give me water!”

“I’ll cast water creation magic, so close your eyes.”

The result of facing the sewage head-on was devastating.

As the Princess and alchemist hastily cast magic, the guide shuddered while shaking off garbage clinging to various parts of her body.

“Disgusting! Ugh!”

“You worked hard.”

Since the guide had suffered this much, there should be a proper reward.

Olive pulled an unidentifiable clump of hair from her ear and grinned.

“There’s good news and bad news, which do you want to hear first?”

The choice was given to Serena, the party leader. Serena shrugged her shoulders.

“Tell me the good news first.”

Bad memories kept surfacing, so she wanted to suppress them with good news.

“Then the good news first! The waterfall is the right path going down!”

The guide described to the party what she had seen after going down below the waterfall.

“When I went down, I could see the lower floor. It was the same sewers.”

It was worth getting covered in sewage and all sorts of filth.

Having discovered a means to reach the lower floor, Serena put aside the mystery of why no coin was given and asked about the remaining news.

“Then what’s the bad news?”

Olive shook the rope tied around her waist.

“The rope isn’t long enough to go down to the lower floor. We’ll have to jump partway down.”

The rope they had obtained from the box and had been using quite frequently was awkwardly insufficient in length.

Fortunately, there was a deep pond below the waterfall.

She said it would be fine if they climbed down the rope and dove from the middle.

“Are we jumping from the waterfall?”

Adventurers escaping dungeons or characters being chased by enemies falling into waterfalls was a common trope.

The survival rate of protagonists who fell into waterfalls was 100 percent, and the probability of discovering opportunities was 99 percent.

The Young Knight’s eyes sparkled as he loved adventure tales and heroic stories.

“It’s just like a play or novel!”

“Though the setting in plays or novels would have been a clean, pure water waterfall, not a sewage waterfall~”

“Ugh.”

Ralph’s spirits dampened at the guide’s words.

Also, though Ralph hadn’t realized it yet, there was actually one more piece of bad news.

Serena stated that bad news outright.

“In that case, wouldn’t there be no way to come back up?”

If the rope length was insufficient, there would be no way to go from the lower floor back to the upper floor.

At the Princess’s concern, Olive wagged her index finger and clicked her tongue again.

“Ah~ Princess. You still don’t know the labyrinth well, do you?”

Olive boasted, forgetting that she looked like a sewer rat that had fallen into a cesspit.

“Going up and down like stairs only happens on lower floors. Now it’s about time for the paths going up and down to become different.”

“Indeed. It seems the paths are getting more complex as we pass the 20th floor.”

Count Randy, who had been considering creating rope through alchemy if necessary, spoke seriously.

“No wonder there was nowhere to tie a rope when I looked around. Who knew the floor transitions would be one-way only…”

Serena still hadn’t received a coin and looked at Ying with a suspicious mind.

Ying nodded as if Olive’s words were correct.

‘Since Ying says so, this must be the right path. Then do I only get the coin after finding the way up too?’

The way down, the way up. She had to discover both to receive one shop coin.

The Princess grumbled inwardly.

‘How petty.’

“I’ll go first, then Knight. Count and Princess. Zero last. Zero, you can just jump down without a rope, right?”

When the guide explained why she put the archer’s turn last, Ying nodded.

“Good! Then I’ll tell you what to watch out for when jumping into the water. Hey! If you enter the water clumsily, you’ll pass out or it’ll hurt like hell, so keep your mouth shut tight and clench your teeth. It’s best to curl your body up if possible, but if that’s difficult, stand straight when you jump so your legs enter the water first! Once you’re in the water, you won’t know up from down and get confused, right? I’ll guide you, so don’t thrash around uselessly. That’s more dangerous!”

The guide’s warnings went on endlessly.

Even Ralph, who had been listening with a smiling face at first, gradually hardened his expression.

“Is it very high?”

Olive calmly shook her head.

“No. Princess might not know, but Knight, you’ve jumped from trees around when swimming, right?”

“Yes, I have.”

“About that height?”

“If it’s that height, it’s not scary. That’s a relief.”

“I’m fine too.”

The faces of Ralph and Count Randy, which had been gradually hardening from the endless warnings, relaxed. Serena also felt relieved inwardly.

So starting with the guide, Ralph and Count Randy went down below the waterfall.

With only Serena and the Loyal Servant of Darkness remaining, she resumed the conversation they hadn’t finished earlier.

“Do you remember our previous conversation? What Darkness said to you.”

“…”

The archer said nothing. Serena clicked her tongue inwardly.

‘I should have listened to the end then.’

Sometimes there are words that become difficult to hear if you miss the timing.

She felt very regretful for missing the chance to hear important words from the already taciturn archer.

“I understand you can’t speak carelessly about the stories of the great ones who dwell in heaven. Then what about the story of an insignificant human who dwells on earth? The traitor Richard. Do you know anything more?”

“…Divine favor and protection aren’t always good things. Favor and protection that are too much to bear can ruin a person.”

Ying spoke like a priest and stared piercingly at the Princess with expressionless black eyes.

Serena waited, hoping she might say something more meaningful.

“Aren’t you going down?”

But the archer disappointed the Princess’s expectations and urged her to go down quickly.

Serena walked toward the waterfall, splashing through the dirty water.

The people who went ahead had walked easily, but for the Princess, even walking without losing her balance to the current was an ordeal.

Looking down at the bottom of the waterfall from the end of the path, the base was invisible due to thick water mist.

Knowing that all this water mist was sewage, Serena kept her mouth tightly shut and grabbed the rope.

‘Release little by little, grab, and repeat.’

Though they had tied knots in the rope at intervals for easier gripping, going down the rope without safety equipment was very frightening.

‘Oh well, whatever. If I die, I can just make safety equipment and come back.’

The Princess boldly went down below the waterfall on the rope.

The rope swayed, the waterfall spray kept splashing, and it was an ordeal in many ways, but after overworking her muscles and going down bit by bit.

‘You lied!’

Reaching the end of the rope, Serena looked at the bottom that was almost 2-3 stories down and blamed Olive.

“You lied, Olive!”

“Princess! You’re almost there! Jump!”

“Lady Serena! Close your eyes tight and jump!”

“Princess! You can do it!”

Serena had already jumped from a cliff where the bottom wasn’t visible to save Seraph.

Jumping into water from just 2-3 stories high wasn’t scary.

The truly scary thing was something else.

“That’s not ordinary sewage, is it!”

What truly made the Princess tremble with fear was the water quality of the pond where the waterfall poured.

The pond below the waterfall was closer to a water reservoir than a pond, strictly speaking.

A large reservoir prepared for summer floods or a place where water is collected for sewage treatment. Here it was the latter.

Serena had expected sewage identical to the water flowing on the 21st Layer, but the pond below the waterfall transcended that.

‘It’s thick! There are strange bubbles too!’

The water flowing on the 21st Layer was dirty but still water. But the water reservoir below the waterfall.

‘It’s not that the water is dirty, but something rotted and became water!’

Did she really have to conquer the labyrinth to this extent?

In Serena’s mind as she shuddered, the 100,000 souls trapped and suffering in the labyrinth came to mind.

‘Really! If it had been just 10,000, I would have given up!’

100,000 people vs diving into rotten water?

Obviously the latter.

Serena held back tears, took a deep breath, and jumped into the rotten water pond.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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