Serena and the Mysterious Labyrinth - Chapter 192

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

192. Beware of Traps (1)

[You have discovered stairs leading to the next floor. 1 shop coin has been awarded.]

The bookshelf tilted diagonally and floated in the air, creating a path to the upper floor.

The 1st Group assault team silently marveled at the mystical sight that could only be seen in a labyrinth.

‘Wow.’

Serena also exclaimed in admiration inwardly.

In her previous life, she had seen scenes of paths and stairs being created in fantasy movies, but this was the first time across both lives that she’d seen a bookshelf itself become stairs.

‘Usually they don’t let you step on books.’

If a bookshelf moved to create a path, it would normally make you step on top of or beside the bookshelf rather than the books, but the labyrinth had no such consideration.

It simply allowed them to step on the books that were inserted there.

‘Is it because the books’ existence isn’t certain?’

Was it because this was a library mixing everything from real books to fake books full of fabrications that didn’t exist in the world?

To let them step on books. It felt more repulsive than laying golden tiles on the floor.

Count Randy seemed to feel the same way, as his expression wasn’t good. The other party members didn’t seem to have much aversion to the book floor.

“Then let’s go up. Hey. Be careful with your footing since labyrinth books might pop out from the floor.”

The guide placed her foot on the diagonally tilted bookshelf. Right now she was stepping on the bookshelf, but once she climbed up, she would be stepping on the book spines.

‘Stepping on books is really not good.’

Perhaps because she had grown up in a Confucian culture that encouraged learning in her previous life, Serena found stepping on books quite distasteful.

‘Wait a minute. Step on books?’

A foreboding feeling made the Princess’s spine run cold. Serena quickly stopped the guide who was about to lightly climb onto the bookshelf.

“Wait.”

“Why?”

“Stepping on books—isn’t that damaging books?”

At the sharp observation, the guide looked back and forth between the books packed tightly in the bookshelf and her own foot, then immediately withdrew the foot she had placed on the bookshelf.

“You’re right? Hey? Was this luring us into a trap?”

“A path was created by meeting the conditions, and if we stepped on books without suspicion, we’d be attacked by librarians for rule violation. It was likely that kind of trap. This must have been the trap the High Priest warned us about!”

“No, if there’s such a sneaky trap, you should have told us in detail!”

“It, it was dangerous! Fortunately the Princess noticed!”

“Your Highness the Grand Princess has deep insight.”

“Princess is a genius! As expected of an educated person!”

Flattery time had returned after a long while. Serena let the party members’ meaningless praise go in one ear and out the other.

“Enough, let’s go up.”

“Hmm~ This makes the path a bit rough though.”

If they stepped on the book spines it would be an ordinary uphill path, but to go up while avoiding the book spines, they literally had to step only on the bookshelf and shelves, making it difficult to balance.

It was as easy as eating cold porridge for Olive and Ying, and also easy for the two physical-type knights, but it was a difficult course for the two intellectuals of the party.

Count Randy, who was good at rock climbing thanks to having a good master, also showed reluctance.

“I’d rather walk a tightrope than try to climb up stepping only on the bookshelf parts.”

“How about if Count spreads out that board thing he carries around on the floor? Hey?”

“I might slip and fall, or press down and damage the books underneath. It would be better for Olive to go up first and lower a rope.”

“Then let’s do that.”

The guide hopped up like a goat and reached the upper floor in an instant, then fixed a rope to the railing and threw it to the group.

“I’ll go first.”

The alchemist took a deep breath, then gripped the rope tightly and stood on the bookshelf.

He swayed briefly due to the narrow area where he could place his feet.

Count Randy simply stood sideways on the edge of the bookshelf and went up with a crab walk.

‘I can go like that too.’

When he was about halfway up, a labyrinth book stealthily took flight from the bookshelf.

It quietly slipped out from among the tightly packed books without a sound, but couldn’t escape the archer’s gaze.

Whoosh.

The labyrinth book, pierced through by a bolt, scattered paper instead of feathers as it fell.

Count Randy bowed silently to the archer and safely reached the upper floor.

Now it was Serena’s turn.

‘Whew.’

As Serena took a deep breath to prepare her body and mind, the archer climbed onto the bookshelf and extended her hand.

She seemed to want to watch from the side to help if the Princess made a mistake.

Serena took Ying’s hand and climbed onto the bookshelf. As she balanced like an acrobat on the narrow path, she suddenly remembered the narrow path of the 3rd layer.

At least this bookshelf stairway was short. Half the path on the 3rd layer had been a narrow ledge.

‘The 3rd layer path was really awful!’

Just how many times had the difficulty increased from one wrong spin of the wheel!

With Ying’s assistance, Serena safely arrived at the Labyrinth Library 2nd Floor, namely the 27th Floor of the 8th Layer of Heuji’s Labyrinth.

Serena looked around the 27th floor while waiting for the remaining party members to come up.

Unlike the 1st floor of the labyrinth library that had overwhelmed the party with an infinite sea of books, the 2nd floor looked like an ordinary library.

The reading room was separated from the bookshelves, though it wasn’t a closed-stack system. It was just a structure with separated spaces.

After waiting briefly, the two knights came up with tense faces.

When the entire party had gathered, the guide didn’t retrieve the rope and signaled the party to wait.

Olive went down using the rope.

She seemed to be checking whether they could use the rope instead of the path to move through the space that opened in the center, but unfortunately the center was blocked by an invisible wall.

Olive kicked at the air to strike the invisible wall, expressing her displeasure, then climbed back up the rope faster than a monkey.

Olive coiled up the rope she had retrieved to make it easy to carry. Ying crumpled up paper and dropped it down from beside the guide.

The paper landed in the lounge.

It blocked people but not objects.

Ralph’s eyes widened at the strange sight and he hurriedly found paper and pen to write.

-Is there a wall that only blocks people?

-It varies each time.

Olive answered lightly. She scribbled the answer carelessly, then suddenly wrote earnestly.

-Maybe when we open all the stairs, we can go back and forth with rope then?

The guide expressed her hope and gestured to the group.

-Let’s make a way up! Quickly!

Why did they need to make a way up when they had been going down continuously from the 1st floor of the labyrinth?

Serena and Ralph had grown enough not to ask such novice questions anymore.

The Princess felt sorrow at her ever-increasing labyrinth knowledge and walked toward the bookshelves.

The 27th floor had many bookshelves to investigate instead of having infinite bookshelves like the 26th floor.

Whether he had developed bad habits when looking at books, or because the title text was too small to see clearly.

The alchemist furrowed his brow and carefully examined the nearest bookshelf when the archer grabbed the count’s nape and pulled him back.

Rustle rustle. Not the books but the entire bookshelf writhed and broke away from its arrangement. The bookshelf that emerged revealed hideous teeth that had been disguised as shelves and books.

‘Mimic!’

Since it was large, there was a risk of damaging nearby books if they fought here.

The guide was trying to lure the mimic to fight in the reading room area when a black cloak fluttered in the opposite direction from the guide.

Count Alpha’s massive double-bladed axe struck the mimic hard.

Though it should have made a thunderous sound of the bookshelf splitting, by some miracle the mimic split in half and died silently.

The guide, who had been trying to lure the mimic, made her mouth round.

Ralph was about to clap but remembered he shouldn’t make noise and stopped before his gauntlets could clash together.

‘Wow! A 4-star knight!’

Count Alpha’s double-bladed axe wasn’t decoration. It was meant for splitting monsters in half!

The Imperial Knight belatedly noticed the guide’s hand signals and panicked, then hurriedly pulled out paper and pen.

-Wasn’t I supposed to kill it?

The guide grinned and waved her hand.

-It’s fine if you can kill it silently. Hey. But next time, watch carefully when I signal!

Though Serena was the party leader, due to her lack of experience, she left all combat-related decisions to Olive.

Count Alpha nodded with a serious expression on his handsome face, as if he would keep this in mind.

-Half-smashed, refreshingly good! Please take care of the other mimics too.

It wasn’t like being crushed by books or gold. Count Randy, who had nearly been bitten to death by a bookshelf, patted his chest in relief as he moved his pen.

-There are more mimics?

Since there hadn’t been many opportunities to look closely at Count Randy’s handwriting, she hadn’t known his penmanship was extraordinarily terrible.

‘What is this? Devil’s writing?’

Olive half-opened her round eyes and glared at it for a long time before barely managing to read the scrawled sentence.

-Don’t know. This bookshelf-type mimic is the first I’ve seen.

She had spent almost her entire life rolling around in labyrinths, but this was the first time she’d seen this type of mimic.

How far do the possibilities of mimics extend? The guide admired with a serious expression.

Of course, the others sighed before feeling any admiration.

-How about we find the mimics first?

-I agree with Count Hanson’s opinion.

-It won’t be easy~ You saw our friend get half-smashed. They’ll be hiding their teeth and pretending to be bookshelves, right?

Olive stopped writing and grumbled silently.

It would have been convenient if they had a compass, something along those lines.

They couldn’t go around hitting every bookshelf, and even if they hit them, the mimics would probably stay still and keep pretending to be bookshelves – so how should they find them?

While the party was putting their heads together to think, the archer suddenly stepped on the Imperial Knight’s body and climbed onto his shoulders.

Count Alpha stood straight in confusion, making it easier for Ying to maintain her balance.

Ying swept her black, dark eyes over the bookshelves, then came down from the knight’s body and extended her hand to the Princess.

The archer didn’t say anything, but Serena immediately understood what Ying wanted.

When Serena handed over the magic map, the archer pointed to several bookshelves drawn on the map.

-Mimics.

-Are you sure? How do you know?

-The titles are crude.

At the archer’s brief explanation, Count Randy brightened and tried to snap his fingers but stopped just before doing so.

Count Randy’s pen moved as if sliding across the paper. The resulting handwriting was far from smooth.

‘What’s the point of writing fast? I can’t tell what the letters are, so it takes longer to decode.’

Anyway, what the alchemist had written was:

-Aha! So that’s why the book titles were strange!

-Count, do you have any ideas?

-The books that were on the mimic. The words and sentences were strange, so I wondered what kind of book it was. I thought it was odd, but it must have been because the mimic was disguising itself.

The titles were so strange that he had thought they might be philosophy books, slang, or books about art, but that wasn’t it.

The mimic had been imitating books without thinking about meaning, just combining words, which made the titles strange.

-Hah. No matter how hard a monster without intelligence tries, it’s still just a monster. It couldn’t disguise books, which are the embodiment of knowledge.

The book-loving alchemist felt pride in a strange place and showed off.

More than anything else, Serena was surprised that Count Randy didn’t omit writing “Hah.”

She felt foolish for trying so hard to read it, thinking it might be an important word.

-Mimics are cunning, so don’t underestimate them.

Even when the guide gave a realistic warning, the count’s smile wouldn’t fade.

-Now that we’ve identified the mimics’ locations, we’ll attack them one by one.

When Count Alpha quietly picked up his axe, the guide shook her head.

-No. They all saw the Black Knight half-smash our friend, so they’re on guard and won’t be easily half-smashed.

-Then what do we do?

-Usually someone else makes a commotion so the mimic can’t notice the real attack, but that’s impossible here~

Grumble rumble. Grook.

Everyone was watching the guide’s round pupils roll around when suddenly a thunderous sound was heard.

It wasn’t actual thunder, but a sound from Ralph’s stomach.

The young knight blushed on his freckled face and clutched his stomach.

The guide chuckled.

-Let’s think while we eat.

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