Serena and the Mysterious Labyrinth - Chapter 196

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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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196. The Dead Tell No Tales

Labyrinths often feature fake corpses for interior decoration or gimmicks.

Serena had seen several on the 6th Floor.

Back then, every corpse she saw felt real, and she couldn’t understand the guide’s words that she would get used to them after seeing more.

But now. Seeing the headless corpse, Serena instinctively knew and was certain that this had been a living person.

There was no evidence, but somehow she could tell. It was close to an instinct gained from being born as a living creature.

After confirming the corpse was real, the emotion the Princess felt was relief.

She knew she shouldn’t feel this way, but she thought it was fortunate that it wasn’t her sibling’s corpse.

The emotion that came after relief was guilt.

She felt sorry for being relieved that it wasn’t her sibling before feeling sad about the dead body.

‘Who is it? It’s definitely a knight. Do I know this person? I can’t tell immediately without the head.’

Serena froze in place, unable to move her stiffened body, only her complicated mind racing. Meanwhile, her party members arrived on the 28th Floor one by one.

Ying saw the headless corpse and raised her eyebrows slightly. The archer reacted only that much and helped the alchemist climbing the book stairs behind her.

Count Randy was shocked similarly to Serena. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped as if about to shout ‘Corpse!’ but he managed to cover his mouth just in time.

Ralph, who arrived next, suppressed a groan while comparing his own armor to the corpse’s armor, touching his neck area and making a tearful expression.

Count Alpha, who stepped onto the 28th Floor last, frowned his handsome face.

The Imperial Knight looked around and quickly scribbled a question in his notebook.

-Is it safe?

Olive nodded halfheartedly while examining the headless corpse. The party gathered around the body.

‘Heuji Royal Knight’s armor.’

The corpse was clearly a Heuji Royal Knight to anyone who looked. To identify them, she needed to look elsewhere, but the Princess’s gaze kept moving to the neck.

‘Was it cut? The cross-section is too.’

The cross-section of the corpse, which seemed to have been dead for some time, was too vivid, making it feel unreal instead.

Even knowing it was a corpse, it felt like a horror movie prop.

Human warmth touched the Princess’s arm as she couldn’t take her eyes off the corpse’s neck. It was Count Randy.

‘Lady Serena.’

Count Randy called the Princess without making a sound while turning her body around. Serena didn’t turn obediently and resisted.

For a moment her body stiffened and her heart nearly stopped from the horror, which made her think she shouldn’t look away.

Olive and Count Alpha examined the corpse.

-It’s a tiger’s work. See the tooth marks on the neck? There’s a faint smell of urine left. Yo.

-Did you find anything that could identify them?

-Don’t see a wallet or anything. No bag either, but the sword is a bit unusual. Yo.

The knight’s armor made it certain they were a knight of the Heuji Royal Family, but there were no belongings to prove their identity.

Olive noticed the knight’s sword was somewhat special and gestured to Ralph.

-Sir Knight. Have you seen Royal Knight swords that look like this? Yo?

-It’s different from what I have. However, if they chose a magic sword as supplies, the sword could be different.

Olive grabbed the sword hilt to examine it more closely, then immediately let go.

-It tingles when I grab it?

The sword had anti-theft magic cast on it. If so, it was likely not royal supplies but a special bestowment, or possibly the knight’s family or personal property.

-It might be hard to look at, but the Princess should see this? Yo?

Serena barely tore her gaze from the corpse’s neck and examined the headless knight’s sword.

The fear gradually lifted from the Princess’s orange eyes, which had been paralyzed with terror and shock, and doubt took its place.

‘This is!’

-Princess, do you know whose it is? Yo?

-This is.

Her body hadn’t fully relaxed yet, so her hands trembled and her writing was messy. Serena slapped the back of her hand, calmed down, then wrote clearly.

-This is the Baker Family’s treasured sword. Only those with Baker blood can use it.

Heuji Royal Knight armor and a magic sword that only those with Baker Family blood could use.

Combining these two pieces of information led to one conclusion.

-Are you saying this person is Sir Baker?

And currently, the only person from the Baker Family who was a Royal Knight was Stollen Baker.

The one person who had made Serena and Countess Nex’s stomachs terribly sour.

The party’s eyes filled with shock at this stunning news.

-Wait a minute. Yo. Let me check a bit more.

Even Olive, who reacted indifferently to people dying, seemed surprised by the news that the corpse’s identity was Pink Fungus and rummaged through the body.

Olive found several strands of pink hair that had fallen on the carpet floor. She also examined the corpse’s skin closely and confirmed that the body hair was pink.

-Unless there are more pink-haired knights. This is the traitor knight we saw yesterday. Yo.

The alchemist, who was also examining the corpse, discovered traces that weren’t made by a tiger.

-What are these small wounds?

Olive scratched her messy hair.

-When I first saw it, labyrinth rats were eating the corpse. Yo. They ran away when they saw me, but these are traces of rats gnawing. Yo.

-Are there labyrinth rats here too?

-Not just regular labyrinth rats, but big ones. Boss rats.

Rats had been gnawing on the headless corpse.

It was truly a miserable end befitting a traitor, but Serena’s heart felt not satisfaction but rather complicated emotions.

‘We met yesterday. I was so worried about encountering Seraph. I couldn’t understand why he betrayed us.’

Making Serena’s mental anguish and worries meaningless, Pink Fungus had appeared as a corpse.

Unlike the Princess, whose head and heart were both complicated, Olive, who had frequently encountered people she’d just met as corpses rather than those she’d met yesterday, quickly regained her composure.

-If it’s the knight we saw yesterday. Did Carrot take his bag and other luggage?

-Could even a Sword Master not handle a Shadow Tiger?

-Well? Duke Oren has a peculiar personality. Since he’s not an ally, maybe he ignored the danger?

Reading Olive’s sentence, the situation naturally formed in Serena’s mind.

Pink Fungus, who had broken the library usage rules by mistake or ignorance. The terrifying powerful enemy that appeared before him.

Even a 4-star knight couldn’t face alone a powerful enemy that moved between shadows.

Richard ignored the knight’s request for help because he wasn’t an ally, and the knight, shocked by his lord’s indifference after even betraying to follow him, lost his will to fight.

The lovely pink hair disappeared into the mouth of the three-eyed beast, and the pigtailed guide panicked while gathering the knight’s belongings to follow the unfilial son.

Whatever the truth might be, it was certain that Richard hadn’t helped when Stollen Baker was in crisis.

‘After betraying us. Serves him right.’

Serena forced herself to organize her complicated feelings and looked at Stollen’s corpse coldly.

Olive moved to strip Pink Fungus’s armor. The Imperial Knight extended his hand to stop the guide.

-What are you doing?

-Taking the armor and cutting up the corpse. Yo?

Count Alpha made a disapproving expression.

-Do not desecrate the deceased.

-This is common sense in labyrinths? Yo? And isn’t this guy a traitor? Yo? Traitors are supposed to be cut up? Yo?

The young knight, who was convinced that justice truly existed in the world, intervened.

-Miss Olive. The betrayal isn’t certain. As I said, it might have been betrayal for the sake of betrayal.

-Of course that’s possible, but he’s dead, right? No one knows the truth except him, right? Then he’s just a traitor, right?

The dead tell no tales. The traitor Stollen Baker had forever lost the chance to defend himself.

It would have been better if they had crossed swords with the traitor instead.

The kind young knight seemed pained to treat as a rebel someone who had died without even exchanging a few words.

‘The seniors he met turned out to be complete traitors.’

Ralph had met two knights of the Heuji Royal Family since falling into the labyrinth, and both were traitors who met bad ends.

Understanding why Ralph was sad, Serena pressed her forehead and sighed.

While she agreed with taking Pink Fungus’s armor, even the Princess didn’t like the idea of cutting up the corpse and scattering it in the labyrinth.

-Stop that. Let’s collect this person’s corpse and return to the lobby.

Serena moved her hands busily before Olive could purse her lips with an impudent expression asking ‘why.’

-Stollen Baker is an unforgivable traitor, but considering the Baker Family’s loyalty, we cannot leave the corpse like this.

The 5-star monk Muffin was traveling with Seraph, and the 3-star mage Countess Nex was also in the lobby.

He couldn’t tell Stollen’s sister and aunt that he had left the corpse abandoned in the labyrinth.

-I’ll take the armor and recover the body to bury it in the lobby.

-What about the sword? It’s such a waste~

Olive looked regretfully at the sword that only those of Baker bloodline could wield.

Serena entrusted her magic staff to Count Randy and personally bent down to pick up the Baker family’s treasured sword from the floor.

The longsword was quite heavy. Olive’s round eyes grew even rounder with curiosity.

Serena put the treasured sword into the Count’s spatial bag and explained how she had done it.

-I don’t know about other countries, but in Heuji, magical tools that only specific family bloodlines can use can also be wielded by House Huaim. Most of such magical tools were bestowed upon vassals by Huaim’s ancestors.

The Baker family’s treasured sword was the same. At some point in the thousand-year kingdom of Heuji’s history, it was an item bestowed by the royal family upon the Baker family.

-Then if Princess decides on a new owner, that bloodline can use it? Yo?

Serena shook her head.

-I cannot do so with my status as Grand Princess. The only person capable of that is.

Crown Prince Kipan, who became Heuji’s king after Harold II’s death.

With even the Baker family’s knight betraying Seraph, would her father, who was receiving protection from royal knights, still be alive?

Serena let out a deep sigh that seemed to make the ground cave in because of her troublesome father.

***

Countess Nex’s body swayed upon witnessing her nephew’s corpse, even a headless body.

Though grief settled on the sickly middle-aged woman’s face, Countess Nex did not cry or mourn.

Having clearly seen her nephew commit treason, she trembled with anger and betrayal rather than sadness, sending him contempt.

“Pathetic fool. Lady Serena. Such a traitor isn’t even worth burying.”

“The reason Stollen Baker’s betrayal is painfully bitter to the bone is because of the loyalty the Baker family has shown us. Even now, Miss Muffin is assisting Seraph Crown Prince, and I remember that Countess Nex was willing to sacrifice herself for me. This isn’t for the traitor, but the minimum courtesy for the Baker family and the Countess.”

“Sob, such merciful grace, I will engrave it in my bones and soul and serve you.”

Only then did Countess Nex show tears.

Serena decided to bury Stollen’s body, after removing his armor and changing his clothes, next to the leader.

With this, there were now three tombs with owners. Serena was anxious about tombs continuously gaining owners.

‘Ugh. Why do the tombs keep getting owners? At this rate, won’t all the empty spots be filled?’

She had bought a set of 10 because they only sold them in bundles of 10, but seeing them fill up one by one was very ominous.

Since burying a traitor in a tomb was already excessive treatment, there was no funeral.

The Princess personally stopped Lavenda from going to pick flowers in the herb garden.

Countess Nex trembled her frail body like an aspen tree and clenched her hands that still ached from burns.

As Grey clicked his tongue like an old man with few days left while recalling the headless young man’s corpse, the corridor became noisy.

The 2nd unit attack team that had gone hunting to the 3rd layer had returned.

The 2nd unit attack team that came to the lobby with two condors—one dead and one alive—had faces bright enough to dispel the gloomy atmosphere.

“We found a mine!”

“I found it! I’m not lying!”

“Wooong!”

“Oh my, Princess, you’ve returned. It’s not a mine, but we discovered a marble quarry.”

“Why’s the atmosphere like this? Did someone die? Hahaha!”

“It’s totally like a funeral!”

“Wooong!”

Low, who was just shy but not lacking in awareness, discovered the tomb with an additional gravestone with his 0.5-person guide’s observational skills.

“Hey guys.”

“Why are you calling us, fake muscle?”

“It really is a funeral atmosphere.”

“Aah!”

The Number Siblings were flustered upon seeing the tomb Low pointed to.

Regardless of whether the lobby atmosphere was dark or not, Serena focused on a word she couldn’t overlook.

“A marble quarry, you say? Tell me in detail.”

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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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