**The Great Labyrinth Proliferation**
Centuries ago, a sudden proliferation of abyssal caverns, terrorizing caves that birthed monsters deep from the earth, erupted across the world. These were the root cause of all that invaded people’s living spaces, destroying and collapsing them, fundamentally altering their way of life.
And now, they have become the cornerstone of society as resource mining sites. While their origins and conditions vary, they are fundamentally categorized by scale into small, medium, and large.
However, there are seven exceptions in this world that do not fit these classifications. Seven labyrinths, divided according to the seven sins of humanity.
Vanity, Wrath, Envy, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Lust.
And this is the labyrinth named Greed.
Yet, despite its name of “Great Sin,” the labyrinth’s interior is surprisingly orthodox. It is a subterranean, layered labyrinth, similar to the many smaller labyrinths that appeared after the great proliferation, with a remarkably simple structure that does not even feature the occasional terrain changes found in larger labyrinths. While its appearance further changes in the middle and lower layers, the labyrinth itself undergoes no particularly special transformations in the lower layers.
Its formation is no different from a normal labyrinth.
So, what distinguishes it from a normal labyrinth?
“Here they come, here they come! Front!”
“Ul-sama, they’re coming from behind too!”
It is the “concentration” of monsters.
*GYAGYAGYAGYA!!!!*
A few minutes after Ul and Shizuku stepped into the Great Sin Labyrinth, they encountered Gremlins. Gremlins are the least threatening type of monster, and Ul had defeated them when his equipment was much weaker in a small labyrinth.
And ten of them appeared.
“That’s a lot!”
*GYA!?*
Ul shouted, thrusting his spear. It pierced the belly of a Gremlin that had honestly charged forward, and then killed another behind it. Two at once. As expected, Gremlins themselves are brittle and weak.
But there are still eight left.
*GYAAAAAAA!!!!*
Monsters with bodies like ugly children leaped from behind their dead comrades. They extended sharp claws and bared fangs dripping with saliva. To be bitten and torn apart would undoubtedly mean death.
Merely increasing their numbers explosively increased their threat. That, too, was a characteristic of Gremlins.
“Be careful!”
*GAA!?*
To counter them, they had no choice but to fight with numbers as well. Shizuku, standing beside Ul, swung her magician’s staff and brought it down. She smashed the head of a Gremlin. It was a somewhat physical use of a magician’s staff, but it was reassuring that she wasn’t a magician content to stay in the back.
Ul quickly pulled his spear from the Gremlin and immediately swung it in a sweeping motion. He caught two more. One escaped, but the other was slammed against the wall. A cracking sound, like bones breaking, was heard. Brittle.
Six left. A Gremlin that had unfortunately tripped in the previous sweep rolled towards Ul. Ul mercilessly kicked it, snapping its neck. Five left.
As expected, Gremlins are brittle and weak. Even a clumsy attack ended their lives with surprising ease. However, no matter how one-sided the fight, it was not enough for Ul and the others to defeat them all due to their sheer numbers.
*GYAAAAAA!!!*
“K-kkkuggh!!”
The remaining Gremlins that they couldn’t defeat lunged at Ul. They opened their mouths wide, attempting to bite his arms. His leather armor blocked them, but the sharp fangs and claws dug into his flesh, and blood spurted out. Ul saw two or three more lunging towards him.
If he continued to take their attacks, he would be tortured to death.
That fear was accurate. Gremlins, the lowest rank among the thirteen monster classifications, were not creatures to be underestimated, even if individually unimpressive, their danger escalated dramatically when they swarmed.
The fact that he could act without fear or panic in the face of such a threat was largely due to his “familiarity” gained from the numerous desperate situations he had fallen into as a social弱者.
“Let’s r-run!”
“Yes!”
His instincts told him he couldn’t stay there, and he moved quickly. He created distance from the lunging Gremlins, turned his back on them, and ran.
When fighting Gremlins, many people tend to stand their ground and engage them head-on, due to their inherent fragility and weakness. But if you stop moving, you become easy prey. You get surrounded and die.
Running, looking back, the distance between him and the Gremlins grew. Gremlins were slow.
“Shizuku!”
“Sing, fire! Vanquish our enemies! — Fireball!”
Shizuku’s chant echoed in the labyrinth, and a fireball larger than a human head appeared before her and shot forward.
*GYAAAAAAA!?*
The remaining Gremlins were instantly incinerated by the exploding fireball. Unlike the Great Fang Boars, they couldn’t withstand it. Despite various restrictions such as incantation times and limited uses, magic was undeniably powerful.
*Go…*
The remaining five Gremlins were all burned to ashes, writhed slightly, and then became motionless. Their bodies began to ooze and melt, disappearing into the labyrinth floor as if being absorbed. After them, magic stones fell.
“…That was close.”
Ul wiped the sweat from his brow and let out a deep sigh.
When Ul and Shizuku first entered the labyrinth, very few monsters had appeared. So, as they proceeded through the passage, a Gremlin or two would emerge. After defeating them, they would stop appearing, so they went deeper and deeper. Then, after advancing a certain distance, they were suddenly surrounded by ten Gremlins, leading to the current situation.
It was as sudden as if they had been lured in. In fact, they might have been lured in. Into this Great Sin Labyrinth.
“Use ten as a benchmark.”
He now understood the meaning of that advice. If you were greedy and tried to delve deeper into this labyrinth, you would die. If you greedily pushed further in, you would be consumed. The number ten was a perfect benchmark to realize that this was such a place.
“…Of course, those punks would be wiped out.”
Ul and Shizuku, even while helping each other and forming a party, had found themselves in such a dire situation. Those punks provoked by Guren had probably rushed deeper into the labyrinth, trying to defeat monsters in competition. Naturally, they would have faced even fiercer onslaughts than Ul and his companions.
Inevitably, it would result in a pile of corpses. Just as Guren intended. What a cruel affair.
“Ul-sama, are you alright?”
Shizuku, who had unleashed her magic and looked even more exhausted than Ul, approached him. “Ah,” Ul said, raising his hand and turning towards her—
“—Huh?”
*GAAA!!*
He was shocked by a new Gremlin that had spawned behind her.
“Get down!”
“—!”
The Gremlin, extending its ugly, sharp claws towards Shizuku’s neck, was instantly reacted to by Ul. He was able to thrust his spear because, having witnessed the threat of this Great Sin Labyrinth firsthand, he hadn’t let his guard down even after the fight. In other words, he was scared. And it turned out to be the right choice.
*GOE…*
The thrusting spear grazed Shizuku’s head, pierced the Gremlin’s throat, and killed it. The Gremlin turned into a magic stone, but Ul was stunned before he could pick it up.
“…Seriously, they’ve already respawned?”
“…Thank you, Ul-sama.”
The rate at which monsters appear in a labyrinth varies depending on its size. Sometimes, they appear only a few times a day. But this was less than a minute after ten had appeared all at once. So, would this continue? At this rate?
No, Ul wasn’t so naively optimistic as to believe that.
“Shizuku, let’s get out of here quickly.”
“What about the magic stones?”
“I don’t—… I do.”
Suppressing the urge to escape as quickly as possible, Ul changed his words.
Apparently, you could stay overnight at the Training Hall, but meals weren’t provided. Humans die without food. Ul was penniless. If he fled without picking up magic stones, he would die either way. He had to pick up as many magic stones as possible.
“Since we ran, the dropped magic stones are further down this passage where we were just now.”
“…Damn it!!”
Ul sprinted back towards the path they had just been on.
***
**Great Sin Labyrinth Greed, Labyrinth Entrance, The Maw of Desire**
“Ah, it’s so gloomy.”
Guren, the master of the Training Hall, appeared leisurely. Most people paid him no mind, but some of the adventurers gathered in the hall visibly paled at his appearance. Guren ignored them and proceeded towards the entrance of the Great Sin Labyrinth Greed, towards the scene where his students lay piled up like garbage.
The trainees who had been defeated and were receiving treatment looked at Guren, but they seemed to have lost the energy to curse him. They merely hung their heads in silence. Guren scoffed.
“What a lack of spirit. If you still had the strength to curse, there’d be some hope.”
“Don’t say whatever you want. You muscle-for-brains.”
A woman clad in a cloak spoke up. She was an adventurer who had entered the labyrinth with the trainees. Among the injured, she was the sole unharmed returnee, and she had been hired by Guren for this expedition.
“Oh, good work, Calme.”
“It’s quite convenient to be able to make a grand entrance, isn’t it, Guren?”
Saying this, she removed the cloak from her head. Her sharp gaze was striking. On top of her head, two pointed ears stood erect, the ears of a Beastkin. This in itself was not particularly unusual. The problem was that her finger was adorned with a beautifully shining silver ring.
“…The ring.”
One of the trainees murmured. Unlike the plain white rings of the trainees, her adventurer’s ring, a genuine one, gleamed in the sunlight. “Silver” was the mark of a first-class adventurer.
Originally, she shouldn’t have been tasked with guarding trainees, but her party had just returned from the labyrinth’s middle layer, meaning they were in their rest period. Guren had (forcibly) requested the job. As a result, she had drawn the short straw.
“By the way, Calme hunted the most, so the prize is hers.”
“I don’t want it.”
Even after discovering that the initial exchange was a deception, no one remaining had the energy to complain.
“Is that everyone…?”
“No, two more… Ah, here they come.”
As Guren said this, two more figures emerged from the labyrinth entrance.
“…The sunlight is blinding.”
“…It’s dazzling.”
Ul and Shizuku, the last pair from the Great Sin Labyrinth Greed, returned to safety, albeit barely.
They were both out of breath and slumped over the moment they stepped outside, but at least they had returned on their own two feet. They were injured, but not to the point of requiring immediate treatment. Most importantly, they had recovered the magic stones from the monsters they had defeated. Magic stones were seen spilling from the burlap sack they clutched. They hadn’t simply encountered monsters and fled. They had actually made a “profit.”
For their first exploration of a Great Sin Labyrinth, it was “a not bad outcome.” Guren smiled with satisfaction and turned back to the pile of adventurer wannabes.
“So, with that, the first exploration is over… Hmm, alright, Calme, say something.”
“I told you not to push this on me.”
“Come on. You’re getting paid by the Guild, right? This is part of your job too.”
Grumbling that it wasn’t worth it, the woman called Calme looked up, seemingly resigned, and glared at the battered group she had brought with her.
“You should understand now. Labyrinth exploration, especially Great Sin Labyrinth exploration, is by no means easy.”
Her sharp voice deeply penetrated the minds of the exhausted Ul and the others.
“The ferocity of the monsters, their high appearance rate, the disorienting and isolating nature of the labyrinth’s design – it’s on a completely different level from small and medium-sized labyrinths. Countless adventurers, overconfident from navigating these challenges, have died thinking this place was the same.”
Those who had reason to feel convicted flinched, but they had no words to retort and lowered their heads. Whether aware of this or not, Calme mercilessly continued.
“If you know your own strength and value caution and cooperation, even children can explore. Those who failed this time and were saved by me should understand that you were less than children.”
It was clear to everyone that “children” referred to Ul and the others, who had just emerged from the labyrinth. A few gazes turned towards Ul and Shizuku, but they seemed too exhausted to pay it any mind.
“And for those who, this time, managed to explore relatively competently…”
After a moment of thought, she flicked her silver ring with her fingernail.
“You may have already noticed, but I had no intention of giving you real rings from this Training Hall from the start. Once you grasp the basics, leave this Training Hall as soon as possible and gain experience in the field.”
She then pointed decisively at Guren, who was casually leaning with his arms crossed.
“This man’s skill is undeniable, but his teaching ability is catastrophic. Learn what you can from him quickly and then cut your losses.”
Having said what she needed to say, Calme departed briskly, as if her job was done. Guren, who had been spoken to rather freely, simply shrugged without denying any of her words.
“Alright, I’m heading back. When we get back, it’s 20 laps around the ground. Gotta get that magic flowing.”
“If you have the motivation, of course,” he added as an afterthought. Without another word, he returned to the Training Hall with light steps. The group, less than adventurers, left behind looked at each other, then slumped into dejection.
