Labrynth rested her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed intently on the holographic projection floating in mid-air, as if watching an enthralling play.
In the projected scene, the rogue stood frozen like a rigid statue, staring blankly at the eerie, white three-way intersection before him.
He had been standing there, dazed, for a full five minutes.
"Not giving up yet? It would be so boring if the prey broke down so quickly," (￣▽￣)
Labrynth lazily swung her pale legs, a sweet smile playing on her lips.
Inside the maze passage, the rogue's heavy breathing echoed nonstop in the deathly silent, white space.
"Calm down, I must stay calm. I cannot die here!"
The rogue shook his head, growling to himself in a hoarse voice, trying to dispel the growing panic in his heart.
He clenched the Poison-Tempered Dagger in his hand so tightly that the veins on the back of his hand bulged like earthworms.
As a seasoned Silver-Grade rogue, he refused to let himself fall into some ancient ruins that relied on cheap tricks.
"Every maze must have its own logic. Any man-made structure can't possibly be flawless."
The rogue took a deep breath, his eyes turning fierce once more, convinced that the bizarre change earlier was just an advanced form of visual deception.
"Earlier, I must have been moving too fast to notice the slight incline of the floor or the rotating mechanism!"
He made a firm judgment based on his experience, thinking that trying to trap him with such tricks was nothing but a pipe dream.
The rogue turned around and decisively walked up to the wall of the white passage on the right. Raising the sharp steel dagger in his hand, he drove the blade infused with Battle Aura hard into the stone wall.
Sparks flew as the wall proved far harder than he had imagined.
But gritting his teeth, the rogue painstakingly carved back and forth on the smooth surface, accompanied by a grating screech.
A conspicuous, deep cross-shaped mark was forcibly etched into the wall on the right, level with his line of sight.
"With this mark, no matter how you twist and turn, there's no way I'll get lost!"
Satisfied, the rogue ran his fingers over the cross-shaped groove, then cautiously stepped into the passage.
In the cozy bedroom, Labrynth watched the rogue's series of professional actions, a sly glint flashing in her pure white eyes.
"Leaving marks in a living labyrinth that can change its form at will? What an adorable yet foolish move."
She couldn't help but let out a pleasant, light laugh, casually raising a slender finger to gently swipe across the holographic perspective map.
"Then let me show you what it truly means to have no pattern at all."
Following Labrynth's command, the deep magical circuits within the maze instantly activated. A vast, invisible psychic power, like the hand of God, began silently altering the structure of the passage ahead.
Time passed minute by minute.
The rogue cautiously felt his way forward through the white passage, surrounded by that metallic, gleaming white from all sides.
There were no decorations, no seams, not even a speck of dust to be seen.
This extreme purity and sense of confinement were maddeningly eating away at his patience.
"Damn it, how long is this passage? Why isn't there even a single fork in the road!"
The rogue cursed irritably, his footsteps growing heavier, his clothes long soaked through with cold sweat.
With every breath, he could smell the scent of panic emanating from himself, making him feel increasingly suffocated.
"Something's wrong, very wrong. Even the highest-level dungeon labyrinth couldn't possibly have a straight path this long!"
Just as he was nearing the peak of his suffocation, a distinct corner appeared on the wall ahead.
"A turn, an exit at last!"
The rogue's dull eyes instantly erupted with frenzied hope, like a traveler who had thirsted for three days and nights in the desert finally spotting an oasis.
He rushed madly toward that corner.
"I knew it! This shoddy mechanism could never trap me!"
He excitedly rounded the bend, ready to unleash a torrent of mockery.
However, the moment his gaze took in the scene ahead, the words in his throat were cruelly severed as if by an invisible blade.
His entire body froze rigidly in place, his legs trembling uncontrollably.
Ahead was indeed a new passage, but what caught his eye was not the end of the passage.
It was overhead—right in the center of the perfectly flat, white ceiling, a full three meters above the ground—where a conspicuous cross mark was etched.
That mark emitted a faint green residue of poison. Its depth, the angle of the engraving, even the slight chipping at the edges...
It was identical in every way to the mark he had personally carved on the right wall half an hour ago!
"No, this can't be, can't be!"
The Poison-Tempered Dagger in the rogue's hand clattered onto the flat, white floor tiles. Despairingly, he tilted his head back, staring fixedly at the cross mark on the ceiling, his eyes now bloodshot and ferocious.
"I've been walking forward on level ground the whole time! I never went through any flips or climbs! Why is this mark on the ceiling?!"
He clutched his hair in despair, his once firm materialist worldview completely crumbling at this moment.
Space here was being kneaded at will; direction had lost all meaning.
"Who? Who the hell is playing with me? Show yourself!"
Losing control of all his emotions, the rogue, like a mad dog driven into a corner, screamed and shouted into the empty passage.
His voice was laced with extreme fear and despair.
[Absorbed Silver-Grade rogue's Panic Emotion: Emotion Points +50.]
A pleasant system notification sounded in Labrynth's mind.
"Quite a nice income." (✿◡‿◡)
Labrynth watched the numbers pulsating on her interface panel, licking her soft lips with satisfaction.
She knew the prey's mental defenses had been shattered. Now was the time for the final emotional harvest.
Vast psychic power surged forth like a raging tide from between her eyebrows, madly pouring into the microscopic perspective map.
Labrynth closed her eyes, taking over every single white stone slab of this three-dimensional labyrinth.
"The game should reach its climax now, little mouse."
Labrynth's ethereal and soft voice, carrying boundless malice, echoed within the passage through eerie magical resonance.
"Who are you? Where are you? What kind of monster are you?!"
The rogue was startled by the sudden, eerie sound, trembling violently. He looked around in panic but could not find the source of the voice at all.
The soft, sweet voice seemed to whisper right beside his ear, sending shivers down his spine.
"Let me out! I don't want the treasure anymore! Just let me go!"
The rogue didn't dare look at the eerie cross-shaped mark on the ceiling again. Panicked, he snatched up the dagger from the floor, chose a passage at random, and fled in a frantic, desperate sprint.
"Run. Run as hard as you can. But where do you think you can go?"
Labrynth's laughter echoed clearly through the passageway.
In the bedroom, Labrynth watched the panicked red dot fleeing on the holographic projection and decisively pressed a button on the interface panel.
[Consumed 20 Emotion Points. Regional Structure Reorganization activated.]
A low, rumbling mechanical roar suddenly erupted in the previously silent, pure-white passage.
The rogue, still running wildly, had his eyes widened in terror as he realized the broad passage ahead—once a full three meters wide—was now shaking.
Then, the thick, pure-white stone walls on either side of the passage began to press inward like two monstrous hydraulic presses, crushing toward the center without warning.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
The rogue screamed in despair, feeling like a tiny ant caught between grinding millstones.
The walls closed in at an alarming speed, the screeching friction threatening to pierce his eardrums. In just a few seconds, the once-spacious passage was squeezed to less than a meter wide.
"I can't die here! I cannot die here!"
"Just reach there! If I can just reach there!"
A fierce will to survive unleashed a terrifying burst of potential within him. He desperately channeled the last of his Battle Aura, pushing his speed to the absolute limit.
In the fleeting moment before the walls slammed shut—
The rogue threw himself forward in a desperate, low slide, his body pressed against the cold floor. He barely slipped through the narrow gap left between the two walls.
A heavy, dull thud echoed behind him as the two solid, stone walls crashed together.
Seamlessly merged, not even the faintest sliver of light could pass through.
"Hah! I survived! You monster, you couldn't kill me!"
The rogue struggled to his feet, covered in cold sweat, and let out a hysterical, wild laugh.
He was trying to mask the overwhelming terror in his heart.
But his laughter lasted less than two seconds.
"Oh, really? How about this?" Labrynth's sweet, mischievous voice rang out once more.
A crisp click of a mechanism triggered without warning beneath the rogue's feet.
The wild grin on his face froze. Before he could even react, the smooth floor tile beneath him tilted downward at a sharp, exaggerated angle.
A sudden, intense feeling of weightlessness washed over him. With a piercing shriek, he slid down the tilting tile as if on a rollercoaster.
Out of control, he slid into a dark, vertical shaft. The wind howled past his ears, and the smooth, pure-white walls of the shaft offered no handhold to grab onto.
"Help! Somebody help!"
The rogue flailed his arms and legs in desperation as he plummeted downward.
Just as he was about to plunge into the dark, bottomless abyss, he bit his tongue hard, forcing himself to stay calm.
"Stop!"
He frantically channeled the last trace of Battle Aura in his body into the Poison-Tempered Dagger in his hand.
Afterward, he violently stabbed the dagger into the smooth wall of the well beside him.
A piercing screech of metal grinding against stone echoed sharply in the shaft, sparks flashing in the darkness.
After carving a long crack into the wall with great difficulty, the dagger finally wedged firmly into a hidden gap between stone slabs.
The rogue's body jerked to a sudden halt mid-air, the immense momentum nearly tearing his arm off brutally.
He managed to hang on, clinging desperately to the dagger like a gecko, suspended in mid-air with a terrifying abyss beneath his feet.
"I'm not dead, I'm still alive!"
The rogue gasped heavily, sweat dripping densely from his chin into the darkness below.
With great effort, he raised his head, gazing at the faint light seeping from the distant entrance of the shaft above.
Mad desperation to survive reignited in his eyes.
"Whoever you are, you won't kill me! Once I get out alive, I'll return with an army and raze this place to the ground!"
He roared arrogantly and despairingly upward, trying to lift his other hand to grip the dagger, preparing to climb up with immense difficulty.
In the cozy bedroom, Labrynth watched the projection of the rogue hanging stubbornly in mid-air like a resilient cockroach, her eyes showing no emotion.
"The part for threats is over now."
Inside the shaft.
Just as the rogue had barely managed to grip the dagger's hilt, he suddenly felt a terrifying surge of Mana fluctuation in the air above him.
Startled, he looked up and, under the faint light, saw with horror that the originally white walls at the top of the shaft seemed to come alive.
Amidst the sound of stone reconstructing, hundreds of pure white Inverted Spikes, each two meters long, instantly sprouted.
The spikes crisscrossed like a terrifying animal trap, sealing off all escape routes above.
"No, no!!!"
The rogue howled in despair, his voice as shrill as a demon's.
His only hope was cruelly shattered before his eyes.
He knew that if he dared to climb upward, those spikes would easily pierce him through like a sieve.
Hanging in mid-air, the strength in his arms was rapidly fading, his muscles cramping painfully.
Despair coiled around his heart like a cold, venomous snake.
In the end, the rogue let out a helpless, broken laugh of agony and released his tight grip on the dagger.
With a piercing scream, his body plummeted like a broken, tattered kite, straight down into the dark depths of the shaft.
A dull thud echoed through the spacious bottom of the shaft as the rogue crashed heavily onto the hard, pure white floor tiles.
The terrifying impact instantly shattered the bones in his legs, and his internal organs felt as if they had been displaced, sending waves of excruciating, tearing pain through him.
He wretchedly spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of his organs, his whole body convulsing in agony like a pile of mud.
It hurts. My legs are broken.
A strong survival instinct kept him from simply passing out.
With great difficulty, he used his blood-soaked hands to push against the ground, trying to struggle to his feet to look around.
He lifted his head in agony, his vision gradually clearing, but the sight before him utterly shattered the last shred of sanity remaining in his mind.
This was a spacious, white room.
Inside this room—a lavish wooden bed, an exquisite round table, neatly arranged wooden chairs, and bookshelves—all the furniture, everything that should have been placed on the floor, was now eerily suspended upside down from the ceiling.
And he himself was sprawled on a bare, flat "ceiling," the intense sense of spatial dislocation causing the rogue's brain to short-circuit instantly.
He felt a terrifying gravitational pull dragging him downward, as if at any moment he would uncontrollably plummet toward the "ground" above his head.
"What is this place? What on earth is going on? Why is everything upside down!"
The rogue clutched his head in despair, rolling on the ground in agony, snot and tears mixing messily with blood, smearing across his face.
"I'm going mad, I'm insane! This labyrinth is alive… it's a devil!"
The rogue abandoned all resistance, wailing and pleading like a helpless infant to the empty, inverted room.
"Spare me, please spare me! I'll give you my Storage Ring, I'll sell you my soul!"
"I don't want to stay in this damned place anymore! Please, just kill me!"
Pure despair, like a violent storm, surged wildly within this inverted room.
Deep inside the labyrinth, in the bedroom.
[Absorbed intense Despair Emotion from Silver-Grade rogue: Emotion Points increased by 300.]
[Absorbed Complete Breakdown Emotion from Silver-Grade rogue. Emotion Points increased by 500.]
A flurry of system notifications flooded Labrynth's mind, her eyes fixed intently on the balance number in the upper right corner of the interface panel.
Nine thousand five hundred.
Nine thousand eight hundred.
Nine thousand nine hundred ninety.
[Emotion Points: 10,240 points.]
The number on the panel surpassed the ten-thousand mark, glowing with a dazzling golden light.
"Hahahaha!"
Labrynth looked at the over ten thousand Emotion Points and excitedly sat up from the large bed, vigorously rubbing the lace pillow in her hands.
Her delicate, doll-like face couldn't help but break into a delighted smile.
"Ten thousand points… finally saved up enough!"
☆: .｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:☆
She took a deep, savoring breath, as if even the air was filled with the wonderful scent of emotions.
...
If you want to support, please consider Patreon, and read advanced chapters! Your support keeps this series going! [Patreon.com/RedZTL]