What should you do when you're stranded?
Naturally, you should stay put and wait for rescue.

However, Ziel thought it unlikely that things would go so smoothly. He had fallen a significant distance. How many years would it take to be rescued? He couldn’t even begin to guess.

Thus, Ziel decided to escape the labyrinth on his own.

"...Huh? Am I going downhill right now?"

Despite being hopelessly bad with directions.

Ziel glanced around nervously. But even after looking, there wasn’t much to actually see—or rather, there was. Technically, his eyes were taking things in, but he couldn’t make any sense of them.

Was that a wall?
Yeah, probably a wall.

That was the level of clarity Ziel had for perceiving his surroundings.

To add to his troubles, walls provided a vague sense of distance due to their oppressive presence, but when it came to the ground? That was a different story. He couldn’t even tell if there were steps or bumps ahead by looking down. As a result, Ziel kept tripping over tiny holes or bumps scattered along the supposedly flat path, all while forcing himself to move forward.

It was, frankly, exhausting.

He strongly wished he could just flatten everything in the vicinity.

But after stumbling, tripping, and crawling his way forward, Ziel eventually managed to reach a passageway connecting the labyrinth’s floors.
“Yes! I made it! Now it’s all uphill from here!” he thought, walking confidently.

And then he said it—just moments ago.
"Huh? Am I going downhill right now?"

The passages connecting the labyrinth floors were rarely structured as staircases. Occasionally, some parts naturally took on such a shape, but this labyrinth wasn’t one of them.

It had a gentle, sloping design. Ziel was sure that when he started walking, the slope had been upward.

But now?

“…Wait, wait, wait. This isn’t right. Am I going the right way?”

It felt like he was going downhill.

No, it really felt like he was going downhill.

About five minutes after he started walking, Ziel noticed that his steps felt lighter. That was when he began suspecting something was off. And yet, he continued walking for another twenty minutes.

He assumed it was just uneven terrain. He was certain there’d be an upward slope again eventually.

But no matter how far he walked, he kept going downhill.

Fearing he might be heading straight into the abyss, Ziel finally came to a stop.

He crossed his arms and thought.

Should he continue? Or turn back?

In other words, was it better to retrace his steps?

Here’s a fun fact about people with no sense of direction: they’re said to fall into two broad categories.

Type One: the relentlessly overconfident. These individuals are so absurdly oblivious that they charge ahead without a second thought, blazing through wrong paths at breakneck speed toward destinations completely unrelated to their goal.

Type Two: the hopelessly uncertain. Overwhelmed by the possibility that they might be lost, they second-guess themselves at every turn, even on correct paths. This constant wavering leads them astray.

“…I’ve figured it out!”

Ziel was well aware of these two types.

And he thought to himself: "I’m probably the second type." Why? Because he had a habit of overthinking. During his apprenticeship, he constantly questioned his mentor, always raising doubts. His mentor had started mockingly interjecting with, “Welcome to the logic shop! Ding-ding!” every time he opened his mouth.

Yes, he was definitely the second type.

If he gave in to uncertainty here, he’d only get more lost!

In other words, the correct choice was to boldly press forward through this passage—it was the only way out!

“Heh… Is that all you’ve got, highest-difficulty labyrinth…?”

With a triumphant grin, Ziel took his next confident step forward.

Incidentally, the passage led to a lower floor. Ziel had, in grand fashion, turned his back on the exit.

Also, he was actually the first type.

Regardless of his self-assessment.

And for good measure, the click beneath his foot was the sound of a trap activating. A torrent of water came rushing into the passage with an ear-splitting roar.

He heard the sound in time to realize what was happening.

“Huh?”

Which way should he run?
Before the thought even reached his lips—splash.

“Gaaah! Blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub!”

Swept away at incredible speed, Ziel was carried along by the water. Naturally, water flows downward, and so, deeper into the labyrinth he went.

But he didn’t notice. There was no time to notice. His feet never touched the ground. There was no air to breathe as the water filled the entire towering ceiling of the passage.

He was like an insect caught in a whirlpool.

Powerless, he was carried further and further—until finally, he was spat out of the water with a wet splat.

"—!"

Killing intent.

Clang! He deflected it with the sheath of his sword.

The impact made his hand throb. Through his blurry vision, something moved. He couldn’t rely on the hazy shapes he saw. Instead, Ziel read the distance through sound, wind, and the tactile feedback from the deflection. He leapt backward with all his might.

Even then, something massive whizzed past his forehead, scattering bits of his hair across his face.

“So that’s how this trap works, huh—!”

Ziel nodded to himself.

The torrent of water wasn’t meant to kill him directly. No, it was designed to forcibly transport him.

To where?

To the lair of the beast before him.

A beast so strong it didn’t need such elaborate mechanisms for weaker prey.

“Take this!” Ziel evaded again.

He could feel it—the beast was powerful.

Though he couldn’t see it clearly, its strength rivaled that of the floor master he’d fought in the aerial battle of the Third Layer. The ferocity of its attacks confirmed as much.

And the situation was far worse this time.

“I can’t see a damn thing!”

Clang! His sheath rang out again.

This time, he hadn’t parried on purpose. He’d tried to evade but misjudged the distance. The beast was closer than he’d thought.

He couldn’t grasp its structure.

Unlike humans, beasts often had complex forms.

A water-dwelling beast might be a giant crab, but there was no way to be sure. And beasts weren’t just copies of animals—they were more like distorted imitations. The vague silhouette wasn’t enough to identify it.

He couldn’t even see the joints to guess its weak points.

For that matter, he couldn’t fully grasp the state of the ground beneath his feet either—

Wait.

“…Got it!” This time, he dodged.

It was the sound.

The water.

The torrent that had brought him here now covered the ground in a shallow pool.

When the beast moved, the sound of the water revealed its position.

Even faint visual cues, combined with his reflexes, allowed him to predict the timing of its attacks.

“Heh—!”

Twice, thrice—Ziel evaded the beast’s blows.

It was monstrously strong. A single hit could reduce an ordinary adventurer to unrecognizable chunks, Ziel knew. Had his internal power—his ki—remained undeveloped before he learned to slay dragons, even he wouldn’t have survived the first strike.

A fearsome foe.

But evading endlessly in this treacherous labyrinth was equally futile.

Thus—

“In the end, I’m always so predictable—!”

He drew his sword.

“Secret Sword—!”

Ziel assumed his stance.

The sound of water echoed.

The beast stepped forward—its right leg sinking deeply into the water. That meant its attack would come from the right.

The wind from its strike rushed toward Ziel.

For the few fleeting moments it would take to reach him—

“—〈Moonlit Dream〉”

He dashed forward.

The blade’s arc was smooth and precise.

Ziel slipped past the beast’s attack, gliding through its torso.

The splash of his landing came first. Momentum carried him sliding over the water until he tripped on a bump, tumbling into the muddy pool.

But eventually, Ziel came to a stop, kneeling.

And he muttered:

“…Got it.”

Like mist erupting into the air, black smoke spewed from the silhouette before him. The beast’s magic dissipated as its internal energy unraveled.

Even Ziel’s bare eyes could make out the phenomenon clearly enough to confirm the kill.

Finally, he let out a sigh, heavy and soul-draining.

“…I’ll just pretend this was a trial or something…”