In the original plot, reaching this exact chamber was meant to be a desperate, tearful, heavily traumatizing struggle. Hajime Nagumo was supposed to fight for his life, covered in his own blood, driven half-mad by the horrors of the abyss just to reach this sealed door.
But for Suzuki?
Suzuki was currently Level 145. He possessed biological immortality, supersonic reflexes, and the quiet, deeply satisfied mood of a man enjoying a highly productive solo vacation, entirely free from managing the massive liabilities of Kouki and Hiyama. His meeting with the entity locked behind the vault door was vastly different.
Suzuki smoothly pushed the heavy vault doors open and stepped into the dimly lit chamber. He stopped near the massive monolithic crystal in the center of the room.
Pinned to the cold stone by massive, glowing divine stakes was a young woman. She was incredibly frail, starving, and trapped in an agonizing, centuries-old time-out.
Suzuki stood at the base of the monolith, completely silent. He didn't blush at her torn clothes. He didn't gasp dramatically. He just stared at the glowing stakes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
I really just walked right into Nagumo's main heroine, didn't I?
Despite how breathtakingly beautiful the young vampire was, Suzuki felt absolutely no romantic or lustful pull. Her situation was simply too brutal and pitiful. To be trapped in the dark for three hundred years, unable to move, unable to eat, and unable to die due to her vampiric immortality... it was a level of psychological agony Suzuki couldn't even calculate.
Sensing the shift in the room's air, the girl slowly, weakly opened her crimson eyes. She was fully expecting to see another labyrinth monster coming to mock her, or perhaps just another hallucination born from centuries of isolation.
Instead, she saw a human man.
He had his hands casually tucked into his pockets. He was wearing a pristine, incredibly elegant bespoke suit, looking as if he had just stepped out of a high-society Tokyo gala rather than the most toxic, hostile abyss in Tortus.
Her mind struggled to process the anomaly, but the primal instinct to live overrode her confusion. She looked down at him and weakly, desperately begged.
"P-Please... save me... Please... I beg you..."
Suzuki knew the plot perfectly well. He knew she was innocent. But he had absolutely no intention of instantly playing the "Hero" and rushing to cut her down. He wasn't Kouki. If a mysterious, immortal creature was magically sealed at the bottom of a labyrinth, a rational man had to show a basic level of wariness.
There were only two reasons you seal someone under a mountain. One: they were betrayed by their own people. Two: they were an apocalyptic threat.
"Before I release you, I need to ask you a question," Suzuki stated, his voice flat and calm, echoing softly in the massive chamber.
"...What?" she wheezed.
"Did you commit a massive crime? Mass murder, eating innocent citizens, or burning down cities? Are you actually a threat to humanity?"
"..."
She stared at him in a complete daze for a second, absolutely stunned that her potential savior was giving her a job interview. Then, a wave of desperation hit her.
"No!" she cried, her voice cracking painfully from three centuries of disuse. "I didn't do anything! They were just scared of me! My uncle... he betrayed me! He stole my throne and locked me down here in the dark!"
"I see."
Suzuki stared directly into her crimson eyes for a full three seconds. His heavily optimized [Manager] AI instantly analyzed her micro-expressions, her erratic heartbeat, and her trembling breath. She was telling the absolute truth.
"Wait there for a second," Suzuki instructed smoothly.
He walked directly up to the monolith. He didn't even attempt to physically pull the divine stakes out—they were magically locked. Instead, he simply placed his hands on the solid stone surrounding the metal.
Using the highly versatile [Transmutation] skill he had acquired from his massive repertoire of stolen classes, he fundamentally altered the molecular density of the bedrock itself. The solid stone holding the stakes instantly turned into soft, crumbling sand.
With a few quiet clinks, the massive, unbreakable divine stakes simply slipped out and fell to the floor.
The girl pitched forward, entirely devoid of physical strength after three hundred years of starvation. Suzuki caught her casually with one arm, easily supporting her feather-light weight against his chest.
She looked up at him, her crimson eyes trembling violently with a mix of absolute awe and profound confusion. For three hundred years, everyone had called her a monster. Everyone had feared her.
"Why...?" she whispered, her small hands weakly clutching the fabric of his suit. "You don't even know me. Why did you believe me so easily?"
Suzuki looked down at her, his expression entirely calm and strictly professional.
"Because I'm strong enough," he answered simply. "If you are telling the truth, I just gained a competent follower. If you are lying and try to stab me in the back later... I'll just kill you. There is absolutely zero risk for me either way."
"....."
Before the vampire princess could even process the sheer, breathtaking arrogance of that statement, the entire cavern violently shook.
DING!
CRACK!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The chamber's ultimate security system had been triggered by the broken seal.
The massive ceiling cracked open, and a Gigantic Labyrinth Guardian dropped heavily to the floor. It was a massive, heavily armored Nightmare Scorpion, easily the size of a modern dump truck, oozing highly corrosive, smoking acid from its stinger. It locked its glowing eyes onto Suzuki and let out a deafening, metallic screech that rattled the ancient walls.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEE—!
The vampire girl shrank back in absolute terror, burying her face into Suzuki's chest. Even in her prime, a Guardian beast of that size would require massive magical artillery and a full squad of elite mages to put down.
Yet, Suzuki didn't even let go of her. He simply sighed, looking deeply annoyed by the loud noise interrupting his conversation.
"Don't move," he told her calmly, gently shifting her weight to his left arm. "This will take two seconds."
He turned toward the charging, multi-ton Scorpion. He didn't take a wide combat stance. He didn't draw a massive, glowing weapon. He just took a single, perfectly casual step forward.
Engaging his stolen [Synapse Acceleration], Suzuki crossed the hundred-foot gap in a fraction of a microsecond. In the eyes of the vampire girl, the man simply blurred out of existence.
As the massive Scorpion aggressively thrust its armor-crushing pincers forward, Suzuki utilized his Pencak Silat footwork to simply step slightly off the beast's centerline. He smoothly drew his dagger and casually flicked his wrist.
SLASH!
CLINK-SKRIIIII!
If Suzuki just possessed a standard Assassin Job, his physical dagger would have merely scratched the beast's dense armor. But he also possessed the ultimate [Swordmaster] class.
Unlike the Assassin's focus on concealment, the Swordmaster class fundamentally altered the lethality of his strikes, allowing him to cut through virtually anything. Empowered by the stolen [Invisible Gale Talons], a massive, compressed blade of wind—sharp enough to literally sever the space it occupied—effortlessly passed entirely through the Scorpion's heavy armor.
Click.
Suzuki didn't even wait to see the result. He had already turned his back on the beast, casually sliding his dagger back into his pocket as he walked toward the terrified girl.
A second later, the massive Nightmare Scorpion neatly split perfectly down the middle. The two halves of its gigantic body slowly slid apart and crashed heavily to the stone floor in a massive fountain of corrosive blue blood.
BOOOOOOOOOOMMM!
The vampire girl's crimson eyes widened to the size of saucers, her small lips parting in absolute, stunned disbelief.
Suzuki stopped in front of her. His bespoke suit was still completely pristine, the magical auto-cleaning fabric instantly rejecting any dust or blood. He reached into his [Absolute Storage] and pulled out a clean, modern canteen of high-grade filtered water, offering it to her.
"Drink some water. We're going to break out of this basement soon," Suzuki said, completely ignoring the massive, bleeding carcass behind him. "Can you walk, or do I need to carry you?"
The vampire princess was left in an absolute daze. She wasn't just looking at a savior. She was looking at a complete, logic-defying anomaly.
This man had just casually dismantled a divine seal, caught her in his arms, and executed the ultimate Labyrinth Guardian like he was swatting a mildly annoying mosquito on a Sunday stroll.
Yet, without a doubt, as she looked up at his calm, handsome face, he gave her the exact, overwhelming sense of absolute peace that she had longed for over the past three hundred years.