Something Keeps Appearing in My Subspace - Chapter 48

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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48. Arachne’s Labyrinth (2)
“Spider silk?”
“What is this?”
Without hesitation, I swung my Wind Slash not at the floor, but at the wall. The situation was identical.
No blood sprayed, no earth fragments scattered. Instead, countless spider silks lay within.
“….”
The fractured wall and floor no longer felt like stone—they felt like cloth. The texture was rigid, yet the fabric trembled beneath my touch.
Of course, the uncut portions still retained their stone-like quality, which was peculiar.
My companions stared in bewilderment at the sight. Mister tilted his head quizzically.
“Is this Labyrinth made entirely of spider silk?”
“Likely so.”
When I jumped in place, the uncut spider silks vibrated faintly—a revelation.
The source of my unease had finally been unveiled.
“A Labyrinth woven from spider silk… If we consider it, the Labyrinth itself is one vast web.”
“Yes. It’s tracking our position through the vibrations of our footsteps.”
As Lee Shin-hee nodded in understanding, Seo Min-jae tensed, his gaze sweeping forward in alert.
“Then they’ll come soon?”
I had just severed a massive section of spider silk—the vibrations would certainly have been transmitted. Though they might not come at all.
“We can’t be sure yet. They might be waiting for us to venture deeper. If this is spider silk, they could ensnare us.”
I still couldn’t predict how this Labyrinth would unfold. But one thing was certain: it was constructed from spider silk.
Then, a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
‘If I burned all this spider silk, would the Labyrinth collapse?’
But I hesitated to act on it immediately—I didn’t know what lay beneath the severed silk.
If there were cliffs dozens or hundreds of meters deep, we’d simply fall to our deaths.
Even if I protected my companions with my Subspace, I couldn’t predict how the Gate would respond. I had experienced it before, but certainty eluded me.
Worst case scenario: if the Labyrinth’s structure vanished, we might become trapped here, unable to clear the Gate.
‘Chun-bae.’
But I had Chun-bae.
Having experienced countless Gates alongside the Previous Princess and Previous-Previous Princess, Chun-bae would surely understand Gates well.
‘If the Gate collapses, what happens?’
As I explained my plan to burn it, Chun-bae offered an affirmative response.
-If the environment within the Gate collapses, it will be processed as ‘cleared’. You won’t become trapped.
‘Really?’
Now that I think about it, when I broke through the blocked path at the Labyrinth Dead End, it was processed as cleared.
But since it was merely one incident, I couldn’t easily be certain.
-Yes. Collapsing the environment itself is also an ability. However, your plan is impossible.
Impossible?
-Spider silk is vulnerable to fire, but it won’t all burn simply by igniting one end. This Labyrinth made of spider silk is quite vast.
-Unless you possessed flames larger than the Labyrinth itself, or an eternal flame, collapsing this entire Labyrinth is impossible.
It was a reasonable explanation.
In fact, the spider webs woven by spider monsters were far more durable than those of ordinary spiders.
‘Hmm. So in the end, moving forward is the answer….’
As I pondered this, something flashed through my mind.
‘What if I moved outside the Labyrinth?’
This Labyrinth was constructed from spider silk. It could be cut through with weapons imbued with mana.
In other words, it meant I could pierce through a Labyrinth made of spider silk.
I didn’t know what existed beyond the Labyrinth. But even if there were cliffs like I’d worried about, it wouldn’t matter.
It meant I could move using the Subspace as a foothold.
-That would require testing to know for certain. There could be walls. However, it’s definitely not a bad idea.
True, just as Chun-bae said, they might have simply constructed another wall of spider silk in a tunnel-like space.
There was no harm in checking. I immediately pulled out a platform from my Subspace and thrust my sword into the ceiling.
“Hye, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to see if I can move outside the Labyrinth.”
“Outside?”
“Moving inside a Labyrinth made of spider silk is dangerous, isn’t it?”
There was a chance the Labyrinth could constrict and wrap around us like a cocoon. I drove my sword deeper into the ceiling as I continued.
“And we could reach the end of the Labyrinth faster. Plus, couldn’t we also search for hidden areas that look suspicious?”
If I could move outside as I suspected, two advantages would emerge.
The first was avoiding potential threats the spider silk Labyrinth could pose.
The second was that from outside, the structure of the Labyrinth would be visible, allowing us to reach the end faster.
If I spotted any oddly-shaped spaces, I could seek them out and discover hidden areas.
‘The second advantage is more important than the first.’
In truth, at our Guild’s level, even a Labyrinth Gate wouldn’t pose major problems if it were the same level.
What mattered more was achieving the goals of saving time and exploring for hidden areas.
“Huh?”
When I’d pierced through about a meter of ceiling, an intensely dark void appeared. It was like pitch-black darkness itself.
As I cautiously peered at it, Chun-bae spoke up.
-That’s the Void.
‘The Void?’
-It’s the space that generates the interior of the Gate. If you fall into that Void, you cease to exist.
The Void. Inside Gates, there were enemies I couldn’t sense beyond a certain range—so that must have been it.
It was a newly discovered fact.
‘Is it okay to go out?’
-As long as you don’t fall downward, there’s no problem.
The moment I carefully poked my head out through the ceiling.
“Oh….”
The vast structure of the Labyrinth came into view. And I realized my hypothesis could be realized.
In other words, we could traverse the outside of this Labyrinth. It was like a wall-clipping glitch in a game, so to speak.
* * *
“This is….”
With Han Hye’s help, those who climbed above the Labyrinth’s ceiling gazed around with their mouths agape.
“It really does look like a spider’s web, doesn’t it?”
The Labyrinth, woven entirely from spider silk, revealed the structure of an enormous web when viewed from the outside.
The corridor we’d been traversing was merely a single strand of that web.
The edges of the Labyrinth connected to invisible walls shrouded in darkness, while the center descended gradually in a funnel-like formation, like an ant lion’s trap.
Beneath that center lay a dome-like structure.
It was unmistakably the end of the Labyrinth.
Everything else was intricately connected by corridors identical to the ones we’d just traversed.
“I see now why we were given four days.”
“Right? Isn’t this insane? How are we supposed to find our way there? If we’d taken a wrong turn, we’d have been trapped wandering the Labyrinth until we died.”
At Choi Chul-gi’s words, the group nodded and turned their gaze toward me. After all, I was the one who’d discovered this method.
“Wow, if you hadn’t done this, we’d have been in serious trouble.”
“Exactly. Finding out this was possible is incredible enough, but to realize it the moment we entered…”
Lee Shin-hee and Choi Chul-gi nodded in agreement. Though the damage from the spider battle might have contributed to the discovery…
…they never would have imagined breaking through the wall and passing above it.
Most would have assumed the spider silk wall was simply built inside a tunnel.
In truth, I’d only tested it out of caution. But the result was an extraordinary discovery.
“Let’s all tie ourselves together with rope first. Just in case someone falls.”
Though the space was vast, falling meant plummeting into the Void. The group bound themselves together with rope like mountaineers using a safety line.
That’s when Choi Chul-gi posed a question.
“What happens if we all use Leap like this?”
“Should we try?”
If everyone could leap together, it would be absurdly overpowered. I used Leap to jump forward one meter.
But the group didn’t move in unison. Only my body shifted; the rope binding us remained taut.
“Damn, that’s disappointing.”
“There are limits, I guess. Maybe it’ll work differently at higher levels? Let’s keep going.”
Either way, we needed to advance. As I took several steps toward the center, I traced a path through the web-like structure.
Because of the web’s layout, we had to take quite a detour.
Then, suddenly, another brilliant idea struck me.
My Subspace had physical immunity—others couldn’t pass through it. I could set it up the same way.
In other words, I could use the Subspace entrance as a platform.
“Why don’t we cut straight across instead of going around?”
When I pointed toward the Void, Lee Shin-hee’s eyes widened.
“There? Across that?”
“We can use the Subspace as a foothold.”
Whoosh—
I opened the Subspace.
Since I could create two entrances and exits in the Subspace, the strategy was to use them as platforms for the group.
“Don’t be afraid—just try stepping on it.”
“Huh? I’m not falling? Wow, that’s amazing. It feels like walking on that glass floor!”
And so the party was able to traverse the Labyrinth’s corridors using the staircase-shaped Subspace platforms. Our pace quickened steadily.
At first, everyone moved cautiously, but as we grew accustomed to the Subspace, our hesitation melted away.
“Hey, what’s that?”
Once we’d found our rhythm, Choi Chul-gi pointed to the left, having scanned our surroundings. Round objects clung to the web-like passages.
“Hidden treasures?”
“No. There are many others elsewhere.”
Han Hye had already identified them. They were too visible to qualify as truly hidden—a cursory glance revealed quite a few.
Choi Chul-gi nodded after examining the area more carefully.
“Ah, I see….”
“One of them might be hidden, but given how many there are, they look more like spaces where spiders hide. We’d have to open them to know for sure. But there are just too many.”
“True. We can’t possibly search through all of them.”
Searching for hidden treasures in the Labyrinth was only feasible if the area was a reasonable size.
With so much potential for dead ends, we couldn’t possibly comb through this entire massive spider web Labyrinth.
“Let’s just head to the center.”
In the end, we abandoned the search for hidden treasures and made for the center of the spider web. Since it lay slightly below us, I created Subspace entrances as stairs to descend.
We were outside the Labyrinth proper, so we moved without any threat. The moment we arrived at the center—
[You have reached the end of the Labyrinth, Arachne’s Chamber.]
[Elapsed time: 54 minutes 32 seconds. This is an impossible Achievement.]
.
.
.
[You have gained experience points.]
[Your level has increased.]
[All party members have been granted the skill ‘Swift Movement (C-Rank)’.]
The entire party was stunned by the notifications that appeared before our eyes. We’d acquired a C-Rank skill simply for arriving quickly?
“W-wait, this didn’t just appear for me, right?”
“It appeared for me too.”
“Wow, what is this….”
Everyone was too dumbfounded to speak. Regardless of rank, Swift Movement was considered an exceptional skill.
While it consumed considerable mana, it allowed one to move and think rapidly for short bursts.
It was vital for frontline fighters, but equally important for rear-guard members who cast spells and healing incantations.
Han Hye was equally bewildered. I hadn’t expected such a reward.
“But thinking about it, it seems like we deserve it, doesn’t it?”
It was then that Seo Min-jae spoke up.
“It’s only because of Han Hye that we could come this way. Look at the distance we covered on the way down. There’s absolutely no way we’d reach here in an hour following the Labyrinth’s normal path.”
The party looked upward and saw the massive spider web structure. It was indeed a layout we could never have traversed in an hour.
“I should buy everyone a meal.”
At Choi Chul-gi’s words, Han Hye let out a hollow laugh.
“A meal? Come on. A C-Rank Swift Movement skill—you think a meal covers that?”
“Well, it doesn’t, but….”
I laughed at Chul-gi’s sullen expression.
“Since you resolved the Guild House matter, Shin-hee, I’ll count that as passing.”
At my jest, Lee Shin-hee giggled, while Chul-gi and Min-jae began deliberating seriously.
“What could I possibly do for you….”
“Well, I… my cousin’s help?”
“Right. Okay, Min-jae passes too. Seung-yeon saved me once before.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Chul-gi raised his hand in protest.
“What about me?”
“You’ve helped me plenty, but didn’t you say last time that I’d already repaid you beyond that?”
“Hmph.”
Thinking the teasing had gone far enough, I waved my hand.
“That’s enough. Let’s go inside. The fact that we haven’t exited yet suggests there’s something in there.”
“Could it be Arachne?”
“Probably. Let’s prepare for combat.”
That’s when it happened.
Boom—!
A tremendous reverberation echoed from deep within the Labyrinth’s end. It was powerful enough for those of us outside to feel it.
“What, what is that?”
“I’ll open it immediately.”
I hastily drew my Wind Slash and drove it into the wall. The webbing was somewhat tougher since we were deeper inside, but it presented no real difficulty to cut through.
And so, the space that opened revealed a situation entirely beyond our expectations.
“What, what is that thing?”
A woman clad in silver armor was engaged in combat with what appeared to be Arachne—a creature with a spider’s lower body and a woman’s upper body—along with several spiders.
“…!”
“…?”
However, both they and the spiders had halted their battle upon witnessing our sudden intrusion, their expressions bewildered.
Then Chun-bae spoke up.
-Han Hye, I sense divinity.
…Divinity?

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