We gracefully landed in the water. Well, it was about as graceful as the splash of a rock flung by a lil jit, but at least no one broke any bones as we splashed down on the water. I hadn't swam since my previous life so I was just a little bit worried about drowning...
Luckily, Raya pointed out a ledge close enough to swim to before that became a serious issue. She ended up beating me there so she helped pull me out when I eventually made it to the ledge.
I took a second to catch my breath as I gazed up at her figure. Though I had started to catch up a bit, she was still significantly taller than me. There was at least a five inch difference between us. The only word that came to mind when thinking about his fact was–
Adam: [Unnatural.]
Raya: [Huh? What'd you say?]
Adam: [Uh… I meant that this structure is unnatural. We must be in labyrinth city proper.]
Indeed, this was the true labyrinth city. The one above where all the people lived was just a fake that was built on top.
All of the walls and floors were made of identically large stone bricks, the houses simply had holes where there should have been doors and windows, and the only sources of light were the mysterious glow from the underground lake behind us and the streetlights placed sporadically in the streets that would occasionally flicker. Overall, you could call the vibe to be rather gloomy.
It seemed that the luminous moss didn't grow on stone brick, so it was overall darker than the upper levels once we went deep enough into the city, where the glow of the lake wasn't visible. I couldn't help but wonder how the streetlights were being powered, considering electricity hadn't been invented in this world yet.
Raya: [You're right, clearly we've ended up much deeper than we originally planned for. Luckily we packed a map of the labyrinth city, we just have to find out where we are based on the surrounding landmarks and navigate our way back up.]
Raya placed her backpack on the ground before rummaging through her belongings and eventually pulling out the map. She handed it to me while she reorganized her belongings.
I pulled out my magic compass and compared our surroundings to what was shown on the map. Sadly, the only landmark was the lake besides us, which bordered the labyrinth city for several miles. But if we followed the "coast" in either direction we would probably eventually figure out where we were and then we could find the shortest path back up.
Adam: [Okay! Let's go this way.]
I randomly decided we should head north, which Raya seemed fine with.
Even after walking for a long while, we had yet to encounter a single monster. Where we would normally run into a stray monster every 10 to 20 minutes on the upper levels, we had yet to find one even after walking for over an hour. It was for this reason that when I heard a strange chattering sound, I was more relieved than worried about what was going to kill us.
I looked behind me in the direction it was coming from but only saw Raya. Except for some reason Raya was looking more blue than usual and was hugging her shoulders.
Adam: [Raya! Are you okay!? What's going on?]
Raya: [I– I think that for the first time I'm j-jealous of your idiotic magic. We were drenched in water and it's f-freezing here, so how are you completely fine?]
I looked down at myself for a moment then realized what she was talking about. I had turned on pain nullification back when we were fighting the rabbits and forgotten to turn it off. Because of that, after getting soaked in water and walking around for a while in the shockingly cold labyrinth Raya and I were dangerously close to getting hypothermia.
But why hadn't she said anything earlier?
- - - - - - -
Raya and I shared a blanket as we huddled around a campfire. We had decided to set up camp in one of the empty houses and changed into some spare clothes while our normal gear was drying. Because the labyrinth didn't come with wood, we had brought some Treant wood with us. It was a special type of wood that burned twice as strong as normal wood and lasted ten times as long. Luckily, our backpacks had been waterproof so it wasn't hard too start the fire.
We sat in silence and just watched the flames dance for a little while. It would be romantic but--
No, actually, I think this is romantic. This would have been a better time to ask her to by my girlfriend.
Sigh.
As usual, I couldn't help but dwell upon my past mistakes during times of silence.
Should I have done more? I'm her boyfriend and she almost just froze to death while I was standing next to her. I didn't even offer her my coat (not that I have a coat but it's the thought that counts).
I'm so stupid. I'm so stupid.
Stupid stupid stupid. STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPIDSTUPIDSTUPIDSTUPIDSTUPID–
Raya: [Hey, are you alright? We should probably figure out a game plan for getting out of here.]
I took a deep breath and calmed down before answering Raya.
Adam: [I don't see what's wrong with just continuing what we were doing a moment ago. Until we find one of the landmarks listed on this map we should keep walking north. It might take longer but wandering around in a labyrinth without knowing where you're going is more dangerous than doing something like fighting a wyvern head on.]
It wasn't like I'd ever fought a wyvern myself though, so maybe not. I was just regurgitating what Veronica had told us before we entered the Labyrinth.
Raya: [I know but something strange is going on here. We should have run into something by now. Skeleton knights, zombie wolves, rolling beetles, horned wanderers and plenty of other monsters are said to be commonplace on this level but we haven't run into a single one.]
She looked at me with those big green eyes of hers. At this distance, I could smell her—
Stop and focus on the matter at hand, Adam!
I looked away as I thought about what could be causing this phenomena, but it wasn't like anything I'd experienced before.
Adam: […I don't know. But what should we do then? Do you have any other ideas?]
Raya shook her head subtly and let the silence take hold once more. After a little while, Raya leaned her shoulder on mine. Eventually, I was lulled to sleep by the crackling of the flames and the warmth of the girl next to me.
- - - - - - -
The only way to tell the time was by how long it took for us to get hungry. We walked in silence and took breaks every now and then but the scenery around us never changed.
I looked up and stared at the dark ceiling of the cave for a minute. I felt that I could barely make out some buildings placed up there. I wasn't exactly surprised that there were gravity defying buildings in this gravity labyrinth, but earlier when I had looked up I hadn't see anything but darkness.
Was the ceiling slowly getting closer to us?
Because I had been looking up, I didn't immediately notice the giant serpent that jumped out of the water towards me. It didn't make a single sound as it burst through the surface of the water.
Raya saw it and shouted to me immediately.
Because of that, I managed to not die instantly. The monster managed to bite my arm with its razor sharp teeth, piercing through it with an inescapable grip and shattering all of my bones.
It lifted its head to pull me back into the water. Just before I was submerged, I severed my arm at my shoulder with my hand and leapt off the sea serpent's nose.
I landed back on the ground with a roll, instantly standing back up and sprinting back to Raya's side
Adam: [RUN!]
Raya followed me as we bolted down the dark street. Once the serpent swallowed its snack, it began charging after the rest of its dinner.
We ran as fast as we could but it was quickly catching up.
Right before it could chomp down on us, Raya activated her Electric Scales and tackled me into an empty building with a burst of speed. The serpent looked into the building with it's gigantic yellow eye before raising its head and smashing the building.
But we were already out of the building by then. We continued to weave between buildings, doing as much as we could to get as far away from the serpent as possible. All I could see was Raya's hand in mine as she pulled me forward. No doubt, losing a large amount of blood very quickly without blood manipulation active was very dangerous. My head felt light and my body felt numb, but I put my augmentation into my legs to keep running and only used blood manipulation to stop myself from bleeding out.
Eventually we got far enough away that the serpent gave up and returned to the water.
Adam: [hah... so I guess we solved the mystery of why there were no monsters near the water...]
Though barely standing I cracked an unfunny joke and turned to see Raya's reaction. Sadly she had taken a fighting stance against several headless suits of armor, so I never got to see her reaction.
Raya: [I'll handle these guys! You just focus on not dying for now Adam!]
Aw shit, we're not even close to being out of this mess.