Serena and the Mysterious Labyrinth - Chapter 32

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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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32. The Labyrinth’s Mystery (2)

Olive showed the minimum respect to the deceased. Before examining Krom’s clothes or tools, she laid the corpse straight and covered it with cloth to hide the head wound.

“Mr. Krom… How much pain you must have endured. Now rest without suffering.”

“Grandmother… I should have done better…”

Lavenda and Ralph mourned Krom, who had been a brief but broken connection. Olive waited until they raised their heads, then immediately searched Krom’s pockets and body as soon as they looked up.

“Yes! A carving knife! This is mine, and as the Countess said, these boots are for the Princess~”

Olive stripped off Krom’s coat, held it against her body, then shook it out and put it on. She also took the fingerless gloves and scarf.

Philia, who received the socks and shoes instead of Serena, brought them to her nose and complained.

“They smell. Since they’re leather, we can’t even wash them in water. What should we do? Should I burn some incense?”

“As long as there’s no athlete’s foot, it’s fine.”

Serena took off her shoes. Blisters had already burst and skin had peeled off, leaving her feet in a terrible state. If she could escape these shoes, she could endure a little smell.

Tears burst from the maid’s eyes again upon seeing her master’s foot condition.

“Sob, Lady Serena. Use a potion, please?”

“No. Applying herbs will do, so stop crying.”

“Princess has such good patience~”

Olive, thinking there was nothing more to gain from Krom, moved over to Lucas. Upon seeing Lucas’s corpse, Olive immediately grinned wickedly.

“Neither of them was killed by the Minotaur, right?”

“He was utterly wicked.”

“The knight’s armor didn’t fit quite right~”

Olive picked up the brigandine that Serena and Ralph had left on the 2nd Floor while carrying the ill-fitting parts of the plate armor.

“I can’t wear it. Zero! Do you need it?”

“No.”

“The knight has better stuff, Princess?”

Serena shook her head. It had good defense but there was an important problem.

“It’s too heavy.”

Wearing it would feel less heavy than carrying it by hand, but it would still be heavy. She needed to move around the labyrinth, and adding armor weight to her already insufficient stamina would make her tire easily and be disadvantageous in combat.

“Hmm, I’ll take it anyway. It’ll be good for someone to wear.”

“It was mine to begin with.”

“Finders keepers!”

Since there was no need to maintain courtesy or honor toward Lucas, she stripped him thoroughly. She naturally took his clothes and completely removed his socks. Olive finally put her hands on the last remaining underwear.

“A-are you taking the underwear too?”

He was someone with the character of one in a hundred thousand who insulted royalty and saw human lives as tools, but still, did they really need to strip even a corpse’s underwear? Ralph, as the only man, weakly protested.

“Isn’t this too unseemly?”

Ying and Olive aside, shouldn’t they leave the final piece when the Princess and Countess were present?

“What are you talking about? We’re beggars right now, so the more cloth the better. We’re going to cut it up anyway, and if it’s unseemly before that, we can just flip him over.”

“Flip him over…”

Olive stubbornly stripped off Lucas’s underwear and flipped the corpse over, claiming to prevent visual terrorism.

“Now then. Shall we examine the main menu!”

Having stripped the two corpses as much as possible, Olive turned her gaze to the bull monster.

“This, this.”

Olive wiggled her fingers as if her hands were itching. When she first saw the three corpses, Olive’s main target wasn’t the people but this bull monster.

“You really managed to kill it, huh?”

“Small.”

When it came time to loot the Minotaur, Ying, who had been standing guard the whole time, approached and commented.

“Small?”

The party was surprised and questioned Ying’s words about the bull monster that was well over 2 meters tall being small. Only Olive agreed with Ying’s opinion.

“Originally, Minotaurs should be 1.5 times bigger than this. Plus, this one’s naked. In labyrinths, they usually wander around carrying weapons and wearing armor. They wear custom helmets with holes for their horns.”

“After the 50th floor.”

“Right. That’s the problem.”

Olive looked at Serena with a smile spread across her face. It was the look one gives to someone who worked hard but dug in the wrong place.

‘Damn, why is she looking at me like that. Ominously.’

“It must have been damn hard to kill, so why did you kill something you didn’t need to?”

Serena’s ominous feeling became reality. Serena pressed her forehead at the shocking news. She had struggled so much against this Minotaur.

“We didn’t need to kill it?”

“Right~ This is a strong enemy. You don’t kill strong enemies, you avoid them. There are plenty of pillars, walls, corners, and it’s dark – perfect for hiding.”

Serena clenched both fists and took a deep breath. Using the emergency breathing technique she had learned from dealing with difficult customers in her past life, she controlled her blood pressure before asking about the important thing.

“What is a strong enemy?”

“Do I need to explain from there?”

Labyrinths don’t only have Floor Bosses and Stratum Bosses. Occasionally, very powerful monsters that don’t match the current stratum appear.

“This is a strong enemy. Since it’s strong, you have to avoid it or hide, and it’s actually structured to be easy to avoid!”

Olive pointed to the light orb Serena had created.

“Instead of floating such bright light up high, if you float weak light low and walk while only watching your feet, it would have been easy to avoid this guy. If you get spotted, you can hide like this.”

Olive hid behind a nearby pillar and crouched low. The pillar was thin so her body was slightly exposed, but that much was apparently fine.

“Its eyesight is poor so it can’t see shapes well and distinguishes by light intensity. They even provided darkness to make it easy to avoid, so you should have used it.”

‘Damn it.’

Irritation surged and Serena quickly resumed her breathing technique. Because it was dark, she thought of brightening it first, but didn’t think she should use the darkness.

“You couldn’t have known. Princess did her best.”

“That’s right. Lady Serena did nothing wrong!”

Ralph, thinking Serena’s displeasure was due to Krom’s death, hurriedly comforted her. Philia, since it concerned her master, intervened and added her words.

“I’m not saying you did wrong. I’m saying you must have really struggled killing a strong enemy~”

‘Right. I struggled like hell. Got a problem with that.’

Olive scratched Serena’s nerves in a different way. Whether the Princess was uncomfortable or not, she checked for useful parts to obtain Minotaur byproducts.

“First extract the horns, what else is useful~”

Olive’s hand, which had been heading toward the waist area excitedly, stopped. Olive made a tearful face and appealed to the party.

“Does anyone have a decent dagger?”

Ying silently threw a dagger. The razor-sharp blade rushed toward Olive. Olive caught the dagger flying toward her face and confronted Ying.

“Hey, Zero! Are you trying to kill someone?”

“You caught it.”

“If I hadn’t caught it, it would have been a major accident. If you have complaints, use words.”

“Can’t you catch it?”

“Of course I can catch it. But when throwing knives at people, could you give some warning?”

She wasn’t angry about the knife being thrown because she was confident in each other’s skills. It was closer to being angry about the lack of courtesy.

Olive first separated the Minotaur’s head from its body. The hide and muscle that had deflected spears when alive was sliced cleanly by a single small dagger.

The bull’s head with magnificent horns was set upright on the ground. Though it had holes from the ice spike magic, it looked splendid. Serena admired it in a slightly different way.

“The God of Magic would be pleased.”

“Princess, do you need an offering? Should I not extract the horns?”

“I’m not yet at a state to learn magic requiring such offerings, so it’s fine.”

“Then I’m extracting them. Knight, Zero, help out.”

Under Olive’s leadership, Ralph and Ying joined forces to extract the horns from the Minotaur’s head.

Ying examined the extracted horn from various angles, then picked up the spear shaft Lucas had cut in half and tied it with string to connect them. A decent club-cum-short spear was completed on the spot.

Ying swung the completed horn weapon and evaluated it.

“Crude.”

“You need to have at least that much. Give me one.”

The horns were all that was worth taking from the head. Olive moved to the Minotaur’s torso. She cut open the belly and chest to find the magic stone that should be near the heart.

“Found it!”

Olive smiled brightly as she wiped the blood from the magic stone on the Minotaur’s fur and put it in her pocket. Serena could no longer hold back and intervened.

“Wait.”

“I’m busy, why?”

“This Minotaur is a monster that Ralph and I killed together. All rights belong to us. Since your weapons seemed lacking, I said nothing about you taking the horns, but taking the magic stone too is excessive.”

‘As if I’d let someone get something for nothing.’

Getting something for nothing was Serena’s specialty. She couldn’t stand other people getting things for nothing.

“Come on. A princess with so much money getting worked up over something like this.”

“I may be rich, but Sir Ralph isn’t. Give it to Sir Ralph.”

Actually, Serena had also fallen with nothing but the clothes on her back and was broke, but since her maid was rich, it was fine. She found it endearing how her maid always carried around a pouch full of jewelry like a proper wealthy lady.

“Tch. Here, take it.”

Olive handed Ralph the intermediate magic stone she had slipped into her pouch.

“Thank you.”

“I never take things out once they go into my pouch, but I’m giving this because it seems like you and the princess both suffered terribly.”

Since she was going to give it anyway, Olive spoke cheerfully and winked, not wanting to feel bad about it. The charming older sister’s wink must have stirred his heart, as the young boy’s cheeks turned red.

They gave up on the hide since they had no one to tan it or the equipment. The heart and some organs were originally ingredients for high-grade potions, but since they couldn’t sell these outside either, they tearfully gave up.

In the end, all the party obtained from the Minotaur were its horns, magic stone, and meat. Serena watched Olive butcher the Minotaur, looking for sirloin and tenderloin, and thought seriously.

‘A cow monster that walks on two legs and uses tools. Is it okay to eat this?’

Ethically, religiously, and philosophically, this was a topic that could be debated for days and nights, for a lifetime, but the princess’s dilemma ended more simply than expected.

Squeak squeak.

Because a Labyrinth Spider appeared from where the light ended, waving its fluffy-haired legs.

Seeing the spider’s large, clear cluster of eyes, its plump round abdomen, and thick fur covering its entire body, the bipedal cow monster suddenly looked like delicious beef.

Lavenda and Philia seemed to have had similar concerns as the princess, as they looked back and forth between the spider and the Minotaur meat, then suddenly laughed.

“Alright! We’ve roughly gathered what we need, so let’s go up!”

Olive filled a bucket with Minotaur meat and stood up. Ying silently cut off Lucas’s limbs and scattered them in various places.

“Shouldn’t we check that thing since it’s right there?”

Serena pointed to the round structure in the center of the circular space—the elevator. When she had checked it right after killing Lucas, it wasn’t working, but maybe a Labyrinth Explorer would know something about it.

“That thing? It doesn’t move. It’s for strong enemies only.”

“I see.”

Then they’d need to find another way down to the lower floors. Serena nodded in understanding when Olive provided additional information.

“We found the stairs to the 3rd Floor though~”

“Didn’t you say that even on the same floor, it’s a different location from here? Would the position be the same?”

Ralph, who still didn’t fully understand the mysteries of the Labyrinth, asked.

“Sometimes trap locations change, but the stairs are similar~ We found stairs going down and stairs going up. We had a hell of a time deciding which way to go~”

When Serena took out Lavenda’s notebook and pen, Olive drew the path to the stairs.

[You have found stairs to the next floor. A Shop 1 coin has been awarded.]

Knowing the stair location, she opened only her left eye with a hopeful heart and received a coin.

‘So strong enemies don’t give coins when defeated.’

She had opened the roulette wheel by defeating the Minotaur, but didn’t receive a coin. If she didn’t get a coin after defeating the next strong enemy either, she decided not to bother with strong enemies.

‘Hard to defeat and no coins? That’s a loss.’

Anyway, she had obtained the Shop 1 coin she’d been longing for. Serena agonized over how to use this coin.

Was it right to spend 1 coin as she had originally thought? Even though there was no practical benefit?

“What? Princess, what are you doing with your eyes closed? Standing there dozing off?”

Not knowing the situation, Olive was flustered seeing Serena suddenly stop.

“Princess, surely not… again?”

“Lady Serena, do you hear something?”

“Shh. Let’s not disturb the princess.”

Those who had once tasted the miracle of the Bread Tree waited quietly. Ying, who like Olive didn’t know the situation, watched Serena with deep, dark eyes.

“Princess? Are you really sleeping?”

Unable to wait any longer, Olive waved her palm in front of Serena’s face and met orange eyes.

‘What kind of person has eyes that color.’

She hadn’t noticed from a distance, but the orange pupils seen up close didn’t look like human eyes. Perhaps because she was royalty, there was a sense of dignity.

“Princess?”

“Let’s take Krom’s body up with us.”

“Huh? Why take that? You’ll just end up watching a corpse rot.”

Olive was firmly opposed, but people’s reactions were unexpected. Ralph, who had been holding the bucket of meat, immediately set it down and hoisted Krom’s body onto his back.

“I’ll go ahead!”

“Wow! The princess must have found an answer!”

“Lady Serena is amazing as always!”

Serena went up after Ralph who had gone ahead, and Lavenda and Philia followed happily. Without a word, Ying also followed, leaving only Olive alone on the 2nd Floor.

“What? What is it? What the heck!”

She felt like she’d suddenly fallen into a strange land, but there was no time to be confused. Olive hurriedly chased after the group and witnessed an amazing sight that threw her into even greater confusion.

“The Labyrinth God has bestowed a grave!”

“That can’t be possible!”

But it was true.

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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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