It is my Destiny to be the Savior of the Protagonist

Knight instinctively invoked protection. Axel released him and threw the empty elixir bottle away.

“…Was I contaminated?”

“That’s right.”

“Shit.”

Axel held out his duffel bag to the sitting knight.

“Wait here.”

“What?”

“I will do the mission by myself.”

“How can you do this mission alone?

“It’s more comfortable to do it alone.”

The knight, who was about to retort, shut his mouth. After he looked at Axel, who evoked fear and went on bloody rampages, he had no choice but to understand that he was truly more comfortable being alone.

“I can’t wait long.”

“You’re on your own. It doesn’t matter if you go back.”

“It’s hard for a kid to bluff after giving away all his food and drinking water.”

“My share is separate.”

“Hmm?”

Axel silently rolled up his sleeve and showed off his metal bracelet. Knight’s complexion changed as he checked the surface of the bracelet. All inventory items were shaped like a monster’s mouth. You just opened the mouth to put things in or take them out.

“Is that an inventory?”

“That’s right.”

“Did the master also give you that? Crazy! Really, really crazy. Selling that one, you could spend your whole life playing and eating luxuriously.”

Axel left the muttering knight, turning around and heading for the entrance of the labyrinth. All he held was a map. He fought several battles along the way. There were so many monsters that he was sick of it. Fortunately, the closed labyrinth was not far away. Outwardly, it was shaped like a grotesquely twisted tower.

‘They said the core was underground.’

At first glance, it looked as if the core would be present on the top floor, but it was actually located deep underground. It was said that in the beginning, the subjugation party didn’t know that, so all of them failed while trying to climb the tower. He entered the labyrinth carefully. After the subjugation, the labyrinth was like a bleak ruin. He made his way down through dried bloodstains and piles of crumbled stones. 

The stench of corpses was everywhere. Axel strengthened the spiritual protection wrapped around his body. 

‘I thought there would be monsters.’

Unlike the outside, the inside of the labyrinth was quiet. Only traces of fierce battles remained. The traps were all broken, so there was nothing in his way. He quickly reached the lowest level. It was a wide cavity. There, the corpse of a monster so gigantic that it made the cavity seem narrow was in the process of rotting.

Axel carefully examined the monster. It had a body that looked like a lump of mud and had several appendages that looked like insect legs. Some of the legs were probably cut off by the subjugation party, with only traces remaining, but it seemed that there were eight legs originally. The hideous parts resembling wings were blackened, as if burned by fire or lightning. Where the eyes would have been, were open cavities. The subjugation party must have dug them out to see if there was a way to use them. The intestines also seemed to be taken or rotted away, leaving the abdominal cavity empty as well.

‘It’s an unknown monster.’

Even though they were going through a long crusade, there were more unknown monsters than known monsters in the world. At the level of the bosses guarding the labyrinth cores, it was rare to know the monsters.

‘It’s certain that it’s dead.’

He jumped over the wings that stretched out like burnt branches and approached the center. The core of a labyrinth usually looked like a large egg half-embedded in the floor. If you broke through the extremely hard shell, you would find a puddle of contaminated water inside. If the labyrinth was alive, contamination would spread from the pool with monsters popping out. The pool itself served as a gateway to the demon realm. If the core was destroyed, broken into all these opaque crystal-like shards surrounding him, the gateway would close and the polluted water would slowly dry up. That was the way to close a labyrinth. This mission was to gather and take the eggshell-like core fragments. It was a material that was hard and never deformed due to contamination, so it was a useful material in many ways. Because the core was so large, the subjugation party was unable to take it all and left most of the shards behind. He just had to grab the leftover fragments and he would be done.

Axel opened his inventory and carefully picking up the large fragments, put them in. Then he suddenly felt strange.

‘Why didn’t the puddle dry up?’

The crystal core was obviously broken, but the floor was still shallowly covered with a pool of contaminated water. It’s been quite a while since the subjugation, so it should have already dried up. The foreboding was not good. He finished packing up the loose fragments and headed for the main entrance. As he approached, the walls softened like jelly and began to fill in all the gaping openings.

GRR.

Axel hurriedly threw his sword, but it was too late. In an instant, the entrance disappeared and the walls returned to a smooth, solid state. His thrown sword was buried in the wall. He grabbed it and pulled, but it didn’t even budge.

‘Damn it.’

He had never seen this happen, but he had learned of it. Among the traps in a labyrinth, there was sometimes a creature that would draw prey inside and then remove the door, imprisoning it in this way. And by and large, with such traps…

‘It’s a monster that grows endlessly the more food it eats.’

He turned pale and looked behind him. Contaminated water that had been shallowly pooled on the floor, slowly began to rise. The dark red liquid clumped together unpleasantly and formed the shape of a worm as large as the corpse of that other dead monster. The moment Axel saw the worm’s size, he realized why the monster’s corpse was hollowed out. The subjugation party didn’t harvest it, this guy ate it.

‘Contamination worm!’

It was an enormous crouching monster that looked as if contaminated water had pooled together without end. When the worm was small, it was weaker than the lowest level monster, literally at the level of an insect. However, the more it ate, the more it grew and full-grown contamination worms were classified as top-notch monsters. A worm that stood tall enough to reach the ceiling moved its dozens of antennae here and there to smell the air. Axel abandoned his sword stuck in the wall and quickly hid by the monster corpse. The contamination worm lay down and crawled forward slowly. It seemed to be looking for the prey caught in its trap.

‘My compatibility is the worst.’

He was short of breath. From its mushy appearance, that guy wouldn’t burn well. The entrance was blocked, so there was no way to escape. What should he do? Axel crawled in the opposite direction of the worm’s movement and entered the empty eye socket of the monster’s corpse. Getting caught was just a matter of time. He rummaged through his chest pocket and pulled out Adrian’s letter. As always, there would be a hint in this. Axel hurriedly opened the envelope. It contained a single thin card with a very short sentence, only one line, written neatly.

-‘Don’t come back alive.’

He opened his eyes wide.

“He sent me here to die.”

“You’ll have to get hit in the back of the head in order to come to your senses.”

The words that Knight had mumbled rang in his ears. Axel shook his head and turned the card over. But there was nothing. He read it again but he hadn’t read it wrong. It was the familiar handwriting of Adrian Black.

To die here. He crumpled the card in his hand.

Hissing was heard nearby. It was the breathing of the worm. Axel was about to throw away the crumpled card, but hesitated before putting it back into his pocket. Then, he looked at the contamination worm with an expressionless face, like that of a beast. No matter what Adrian had done for him so far, he had no intention of dying just because he had told him to die.

* ♦ ♦ ♦ *

Ariadne took off her hood and checked her hat. Her prominent hair was carefully braided and pinned up by Lucy and hidden under a hat. Even so, her hair was curly and so long and full that it made her very uneasy.

“Miss?”

Veronica called her name in a small, puzzled manner. She shook her head.

“Never mind. How long has it been since Axel entered?”

“Hmm… It’s been about two hours now.”

“Ok, thanks.”

Ariadne pulled her hood down over her hat and turned to Veronica.

“Do I look like a man?”

“If you go, you should be able to pull it off.”

“And the voice?”

“Well, yes, that drug works great.”

“That’s alright then.”

She came here as Adrian Black. At the top of the tower, barely visible from below, she had spread out her little territory, and she had been hiding here for a couple of days. Thanks to the territory she created with the help of the elemental Evergreen, the top of the tower looked like a small garden. Veronica was sitting on a blanket, leaning leisurely against a tree on the green lawn. 

She asked as she rummaged through the lunch basket. 

“Hmm… would you like something, my lady?”

“It’s fine.”

“There are many delicious things.”

“Eat Nica.”

“Eating alone… it’s tasteless.”

[Alert. It is my estimation, based on the original story, that there will be at least 4 more hours until the ‘protagonist’ deals with the worm. It is recommended to take a break and eat.]

‘Pi, will he be overwhelmed?’

Like in the original work, I pushed the main character into a place where he had to survive while trapped, and only wrote words that were equivalent to curses in the letter.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to go inside and observe?’

[Warning. 95% chance of being caught by the main character.]

‘I mean, I’m anxious. What if he makes a mistake? He’s still young.’

[Axel Valentine is an adult.]

‘He’s only a spirit knight and that scares me!’

[Originally, a spirit knight only contracts with one elemental. And Aria has already prepared in case of the main character’s failure.]

‘What if my plan doesn’t work properly?’

[Pi judges that Aria is overprotective.]