Chapter 277
A solid wall perfectly separated Prezen and Alexandra from the rest of the escorts, as if calculated in advance.
Team Leader Hank shouted.
“Young Lady!”
Prezen wasn’t the issue. Even Alexandra’s safety was at risk.
Click-
The sound of Team Leader Hank aiming his usual high-firepower tech rifle, which was close to a heavy weapon, and pulling the trigger, rang out.
He was trying to break through by destroying the wall with force without the slightest hesitation! As I hurriedly stepped back, a powerful impact rang out.
Baaaaang-!
Did the wall break? Based on the negative reaction of Team Leader Hank spitting out curses, it didn’t seem like it.
At that moment, an ominous red light enveloped the dark area, and a noise like a siren blared.
I could see the projectile fired by Team Leader Hank trapped in the sticky mucous membrane inside the translucent crystal wall, sparking before dying down.
Ruuuumble-!
Along with a tremendous roar, the dizzying sensation of falling that I had experienced just a few hours ago overwhelmed my entire body. My body floated up and fell once again.
If my senses weren’t wrong, the floor had dropped much lower than before. It also felt like it was slightly tilted.
[Not a chance! What you have fallen into is the Mirror Castle Trap. If I were you, I wouldn’t think of smashing it ignorantly with force. You might end up being discharged and falling all the way down to The Deep where the bottom can’t even be seen. Even if your goal is to escape outside the Mirror Castle, isn’t that too radical a method?
You should have listened to the words of this master Thief Zodiac… Tsk, tsk, tsk. Anyway, work hard down there. This master thief has achieved his goal, so I will be taking my leave. I’ve prepared a small 'gift' just in case you get bored, so there should be no problem for you to enjoy yourselves. Farewell!]
The detestable distorted voice faded away. Team Leader Hank shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Young Lady! Young Lady! Are you there?”
A deathly silence fell. As terrible imaginations flashed through my mind, I forced myself to feign calmness and spoke.
“It seems the barrier has a soundproofing effect. We can’t hear the young lady’s voice, nor anyone else’s at all. The young lady will be safe. Let’s move quickly and find her.”
“Right, your words are correct. Let’s go at once.”
Team Leader Hank and I hurried along, shining a light into the dark field of vision.
If this was the trap the Meredith Family had installed to protect the escape pod, it was truly a wicked trap without a doubt.
The walls on all sides that popped out of nowhere and trapped us were just like that. At first, I thought they were made of crystal due to their translucent texture.
But they weren’t. It was a fundamentally different material.
In a narrow passage, I felt it when I lost my footing and my hand lightly brushed against the wall.
“We shouldn’t move too hastily with this.”
Even though it only touched a tiny bit, my skin peeled red and blisters formed. A burning sensation could be felt on the back of my hand.
Acid? Ultra-high temperature? The inside of the unknown jelly-like protoplasm ominously undulated.
What if my body collided head-on with that? Just imagining it was terrible.
Not only was the material sinister, but the structure and form were as well.
The walls stretching up to touch the ceiling blocked the passages everywhere, forcing us to take a much longer, roundabout way even to reach nearby places. It was shaped like a dense labyrinth.
The Meredith Family had really created a trap that was a bitch to get through.
Team Leader Hank was one thing, but my patience also reached its limit after facing blocked walls several times.
There was no time or leeway to utilize the rule that you can definitely pass through any labyrinth if you just keep walking along one wall.
“I need your help. You can figure out this maze structure, right? Could you possibly get rid of it?”
[It is impossible.]
I clicked my tongue at the System Assistant’s answer. But I hadn’t expected much in the first place. This labyrinth trap was also ultimately the asset of another Family.
As long as the System Assistant was bound by the AI Regulations, it was plain as day that it couldn’t intervene.
And even if it could intervene…
I didn’t think it would have much effect.
I remembered how the System Assistant hadn’t noticed the dozens of dolls at all when we were escaping from the employee passageway.
At the time, I brushed it off thinking it was a simple malfunction, but thinking about it now, it wasn’t.
Artificial intelligence was an entity no different from a demon or a god, at least on the Net.
The Tenant in my head was such an artificial intelligence.
The System Assistant doesn’t make mistakes. If something went wrong, it wasn’t a mistake, but something else intervened.
In the Net of this Closed-off Mirror Castle, there was only one entity capable of doing that. It was an AI of equal rank.
This was the Prototype limited Artificial Intelligence, Prezen.
My intuition told me that the activation of this trap was also something master Thief Zodiac had done through that artificial intelligence. Therefore, we couldn’t rely on the power of artificial intelligence to clear the trap.
I didn’t think the System Assistant, in its pitiful state of parasitizing the microchip in my head, could win a showdown against the masterpiece of the Enatomia Corporation.
[Such thoughts are rude.]
Look at that. It couldn’t deny it and was only complaining. The incident in the employee passageway aside, there was a huge difference in weight class to begin with.
However, the computational ability unique to artificial intelligence could still be utilized. The fact that it could grasp the entire structure of the labyrinth through the Net was also a big advantage.
‘Then at least tell me the shortest path heading to Alexandra. Right now! It’s urgent.’
[…Understood. Test Subject, I will guide you to the person you call Alexandra.]
With this, I could put aside my worries about getting lost. All that was left was to run with all my might!
“Just follow me. I think I roughly know the way!”
Because every moment was urgent, Team Leader Hank didn’t ask nosy questions either.
Receiving guidance from the Assistant in my head, we were able to advance through the labyrinth at an incomparably faster speed than before.
The strange thing was that we definitely hadn’t been that far away from Alexandra, but as we were guided by the System Assistant, we found ourselves going deeper and deeper until we reached the center of the labyrinth.
It was unlikely that the System Assistant was wrong, so Alexandra must have wandered through the labyrinth and ended up here.
‘Or perhaps she was moved not by her own will, but by someone else’s…’
Either way, we were getting closer and closer to Alexandra. When I relayed that fact, Team Leader Hank shouted through clenched teeth.
“You go first! I’ll follow behind!”
His speed was lagging far behind mine.
In terms of physical strength consumption, we were either similar, or Team Leader Hank had much more energy left, but the problem was physical damage.
Even though his lower half was a prosthetic body, Team Leader Hank, with one foot cut off, couldn’t follow nimbly due to his impaired mobility.
That was why he was giving the cool-headed instruction for me to take the lead and assess the situation.
I didn’t refuse and quickly dashed forward. There were moments of crisis in between where I slipped and almost crashed into the wall, but fortunately, I was able to catch my balance and keep moving forward.
Perhaps I had gotten close enough that even the soundproofing was useless, as a loud noise could be heard. A brawl of punches where someone was fighting fiercely… and a terrified scream!
“Kyaaaaaah!”
As soon as I recognized it was a woman’s voice, I made an underground rapid entry.
“Young Lady Alexandra!”
The space I jumped into through the gap between the walls while shouting was a small vacant lot. It was as if they had prepared a vacant lot saying, ‘If you’re going to fight, fight here.’
And the scenery inside… was not at all what I had expected.
It was true that Alexandra was there.
However, she was not in a dangerous situation…Rather, it would be more accurate to say she was the “danger”.
At her feet, a bodyguard of the Sedouforne Family lay collapsed, beaten up with blood flowing from his mouth.
There was another bodyguard, but he also looked to be in bad shape.
There was a mark left on his face from being stomped by a heel, and as he staggered while clutching his head, it seemed he had been hit in the jaw and suffered a concussion.
The fresh blood dripping from Alexandra’s clenched fist made it as plain as day who the culprit was.
I let out a sigh of relief.
You know, there’s a saying like that.
It’s better for your own to be the one dishing out the pain than receiving it. It was a similar feeling.
I had been extremely worried that the opposite result would have unfolded, but it seemed I had underestimated Alexandra.
As I caught my breath from running, I shone the light, and looked around, inside the area, there were only five people.
Alexandra and I, the two Sedouforne escorts who were beaten by Alexandra, and Matilda Sedouforne, who was screaming in terror.
Just looking at the personnel composition, I could roughly guess what had happened.
Matilda Sedouforne must have been lucky enough not to be separated from her two escorts and to travel together with them.
Then she ran right into Alexandra, and although they had formed a temporary cooperative relationship, that grudge wasn’t going anywhere, so as soon as she saw her, she must have screamed at the top of her lungs to her escorts, “Catch that bitch and bring her to me!”
However, as you can see, the result was unexpected; far from catching and bringing Alexandra, the Sedouforne Bodyguards were instead soundly beaten.
It was a good thing for me, but I was also slightly puzzled.
“Were the levels of the Sedouforne Bodyguards this terrible?”