Serena and the Mysterious Labyrinth - Chapter 332

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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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332. Labyrinth Prison (2)

Break down the door and escape, or wait for the party to come find them.

After much deliberation, Serena chose the latter.

“Let’s wait just one day for now. Since it seems okay to be noisy, let’s periodically make noise to signal our location.”

“Yes, I’ll do that!”

Ralph answered energetically and recommended that Serena rest. Serena didn’t want to sit near the toilet, so she sat on the straw mat.

The indefinite wait began. Ralph periodically struck the iron bars door with his shield to make loud noises.

“I never thought we’d end up imprisoned.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Are real prisons like this too? The temporary prison at the Security Force had better facilities than here.”

“I’ve never been to a prison either, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Ah, I’m sorry! You’re so knowledgeable, Princess, that I unconsciously asked a strange question!”

“No, it’s fine. Let’s both continue living without knowing about that.”

Ralph grinned at the Princess’s joke, then his face hardened.

“What’s wrong?”

“A guard is coming.”

It was natural for a prison guard to periodically patrol the cells. Still, the two didn’t let their guard down and remained alert.

Clank, clank. The sound of metal hitting metal could be heard, and soon a guard appeared. The guard didn’t pass by the cell where the two were imprisoned but stopped.

‘Battle!’

Ralph raised his shield and Serena thought of appropriate attack magic for an enemy wearing plate armor.

‘What I want is.’

She was about to launch a preemptive strike with an electric arrow to test the armor’s magical defense when the guard suddenly bent at the waist.

Was it lowering its stance to charge? Her surprise was brief.

The guard pushed something through the gap under the iron bars door, then straightened up. Then it turned around and left the front of the cell.

Clank, clank. The monster’s footsteps grew more distant. It didn’t seem like it would return.

“Is it leaving?”

While Ralph continued to stay alert, Serena lowered her stance to check what the monster had pushed into the cell.

‘Poison? A bomb? Monster eggs about to hatch?’

Serena imagined all sorts of ominous objects, but reality was quite different from her imagination.

What the guard had put in the cell were two wooden bowls containing something resembling white porridge.

Just as where they were was clearly a prison, what the guard monster had left was clearly.

“Food? Since it’s a prison, are they giving it to us so we don’t starve to death?”

“It seems so.”

Once again, seeing the same thing, Serena and Ralph’s reactions differed.

“That’s fortunate! We can rest easy even if our food runs out!”

Ralph reacted positively, saying they wouldn’t starve to death. Serena felt the opposite.

‘They’re even giving us meals? Just how long are they planning to keep us locked up?’

Serena trembled at the approaching sense of foreboding. And she reversed her earlier decision.

“Count Ralph, I’m changing the plan. Let’s escape.”

“We’re breaking out of prison!”

The young knight, who would never have reason to go to prison if he lived like this, sparkled with bright eyes.

Ralph wrapped his shield in a blanket. Serena stuffed the blanket through the bars to lay it in the corridor, reducing the noise that would occur when the door fell and hit the floor.

Though they knew the guard wouldn’t come even if they made loud noises, they had to be cautious even when crossing a stone bridge.

‘Honestly, the sound of knocking on a door is different from the sound of breaking it down.’

After somehow laying out the blanket by stretching her arms, Serena stepped back from the door. Ralph finished preparing to break down the door with his cloak wrapped around his shield.

Though naive without a hint of suspicion, his upright eyes looked directly at Serena.

Serena gripped the golden pen tightly and nodded slightly.

Crash!

Ralph struck the iron bars door. The iron bars door was destroyed as Ralph had thought and fell away from the wall.

Serena and Ralph emerged from the cell. Three eyeballs rolled quietly but conspicuously.

‘The corridor is longer than I thought. There are many cells too.’

Stone walls made of the same material as the cell walls extended in a long corridor. On both sides of the corridor were cells of similar size and form to where Serena and Ralph had been confined.

The paths turned at both ends of the corridor, making it impossible to see what was at the ends without getting close.

Serena spread out her magic map. The area she had seen was drawn on the map in more detail and accuracy than what Serena had drawn.

‘Is the corridor rectangular? Or straight?’

“Let’s go this way.”

Serena decided to first go in the direction the guard had gone. Her devious thinking went like this:

‘When the guard first came, its direction was the same as when it brought food. I didn’t see the guard return, but it came from the same direction? It must be a structure where you can patrol in a circle or patrol in one direction.’

If they went in the direction the guard came from, there was a high probability of encountering a guard returning after completing a round of patrol, or a guard following a colleague on patrol.

Ralph followed the Princess’s choice without any doubt. Not because he couldn’t think for himself, but because he trusted Serena.

Serena found this quite burdensome but tried not to show it.

Though there was nowhere to hide, the two pressed close to the wall and walked carefully.

Ralph alternately checked the cells on both sides of the corridor and said quietly.

“All the cells are empty.”

“Right. I don’t hear any other people either.”

Having to watch for likely traps while checking if there was anything in the cells.

The Princess’s one and only eye moved busily. Then Serena discovered something unusual.

“That is!”

“It’s a treasure chest!”

A magic-grade treasure chest was sitting boldly in an empty cell. It was so obviously placed that it seemed like a trap, but the suspicion was quickly resolved.

Click.

The cell door was locked. Serena recalled a characteristic of prisons that appeared in games.

‘Strangely, empty cells often had treasure chests. To get them all, you needed to enter the cell through a secret passage or needed a key.’

“Should I break it?”

Ralph showed his shield. Serena shook her head. The treasure chest wouldn’t run away, so it would be fine to retrieve it after meeting up with the party.

Stealthily. The two who moved while suppressing their presence succeeded in reaching the end of the corridor without being caught by guards.

Serena peeked her head out slightly to check beyond the corner that wasn’t visible due to the angle.

There was a thick iron door with a small hole at human face height, and a guard monster was standing watch in front of it.

There wasn’t just one guard monster, but two.

‘Two would be too much to handle.’

As Serena furrowed her brow, suddenly one of the guards left the front of the iron door with a clank-clank sound.

The guard disappeared beyond the corner.

‘Did it start patrolling? The corridor is rectangular and it goes around in a circle.’

If so, they had to defeat the guard watching the door and open it before the guard returned.

“Count Ralph. Get ready.”

“Yes.”

Ralph stealthily raised his shield, and Serena wrote a spell on magic paper.

Due to its elemental nature, the electric arrow had to be fired immediately upon completion. The electric arrow flew at the speed of light, and Ralph charged at the guard a beat later.

“Hyaaah!”

The electric arrow hit the guard. Whether its electric resistance was low, the entire armor rattled and couldn’t react to Ralph’s attack.

Ralph’s shield strike exploded against the guard’s head. Ralph’s attack didn’t end with just one blow.

Because he had to definitely cut off its breath before the monster’s companion came, the shield that was about to strike the head with the helmet removed cut through empty air.

It wasn’t that the guard had dodged Ralph’s attack. There was nothing inside the helmet.

Ralph, whose eyes widened in surprise, continued his attack. The shield carved with a lion’s head collided with the plate armor, causing the torso portion of the armor to fall down.

That’s right. The monster had no body either. The full plate armor was the monster itself.

“It’s animated armor! There should be a magic circle inside the armor. Destroy that part!”

The animated armor rattled as it tried to restore its form. As the shock from the electric arrow faded, the armor pieces began to rapidly reassemble.

Serena concentrated and examined the armor scattered on the floor.

‘Not here, not here either.’

The mana emanating from the magic circle was felt from the helmet. Serena reproached herself for checking the wrong part first and approached to examine the inside of the helmet.

Despite having no eyes, fierce light emanated from the helmet’s eye holes.

While turning the helmet this way and that to check the magic circle that should be inside, Serena accidentally made eye contact with that light.

‘If it’s undead, I’d be scared of getting bitten by teeth. But what can a helmet without even a mouth do.’

Just as Serena was about to turn the helmet to protect her precious eyes from the monster’s unnecessarily dazzling light, a loud sound suddenly burst forth.

Piiiiiiiii-!

Anyone could tell it sounded like a flute or whistle. The guard had made the sound through a hole in the helmet.

‘Damn it!’

Serena hurriedly tried to destroy the magic circle. But then a red light flashed throughout the entire prison.

“Ugh.”

Serena had no choice but to close her eyes from the blinding light. And when she opened them.

“Th, this place is!”

“It’s a cell!”

Not only Serena but Ralph was also standing inside the cell.

The barred door was firmly closed, and on the stone wall was a giant X that hadn’t been visible in the first cell.

Serena first took out her magic map to check their current location.

“Are we trapped in a different cell?”

“No. We’ve returned to the same cell whose door you broke.”

“What? But the door I broke is intact.”

“The porridge bowl is still there.”

Serena belatedly noticed the porridge bowl placed in the corner. Ralph tried to understand the situation.

“We were winning, so I don’t understand why we were moved back to the cell.”

“We mustn’t get caught.”

“What?”

Serena recalled the guard’s particularly fierce light.

“When we ambushed the guard, it was fine. But after the guard saw us, it alerted its companions that there was an escaped prisoner. Then red light flashed throughout the entire prison and we returned to the cell. Any chance to fight the guard or escape was completely cut off.”

“We can’t fight?”

“Unless we can ambush and immediately neutralize them, we must avoid combat. The disappearance of our weapons was probably a hint.”

There was a reason why only weapons disappeared while armor remained. It meant don’t fight.

‘What an unfriendly hint.’

Serena grumbled inwardly while guessing the characteristics of the 12th Layer.

The gimmick of the 12th Layer was.

‘Is this a stealth & ambush genre.’

Next, she examined the large X drawn on the wall. What the X meant was clear.

‘This means escape attempt failed. And there’s a set number of escape attempts allowed.’

If you don’t escape within the set number of attempts, it’s game over.

They don’t tell you how many attempts are possible.

‘Such difficulty. I can feel the developers’ malice.’

Since this was a labyrinth, it was a difficulty level where the Labyrinth God’s malice could be felt.

Serena could at least regress if she died. She became curious about how people who couldn’t even regress were supposed to conquer the labyrinth.

Reversing a plan and then reversing it again is the worst act that destroys both authority and trust.

But Serena had no choice but to reverse her already reversed plan again.

“We’ll have to wait for Olive to come.”

“Yes! Understood!”

Fortunately, Ralph followed the Princess’s plan without suspicion.

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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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