Raya: [I'll handle these guys! You just focus on not dying for now, Adam!]
It didn't immediately register to me what Raya was saying.
I Augmented my body to increase red blood cell generation, fixing my anemia.
Raya kept her back to me as she fount against the headless knights, occasionally turning to check how I was doing. I, keeling on the ground, could only watch as the woman I was supposed to protect kept me away from danger. Or, more accurately, she kept the danger away from me. Like I was just a burden. Like I was something fragile. Like I was something both needing and deserving protection.
"Just focus on not dying for now"? Is what she told me.
Do you think I'm living because I'm too scared to die?
What, exactly, do you think of me, Raya?
I didn't need to regenerate my arm. It would use up more than half of my mana and take several minutes to complete. Instead, I focused, sprouting a tendril of blood from where my arm was severed. In one motion, I stood up and leaped into the air.
Forming a large mallet at the end of the tendril, I slammed down and crushed four knights at once. Naturally, I couldn't stop my momentum midair so I came down in the middle of the horde. As I fell, several of the knights slashed at me but I twisted my body so that they missed anything that was important.
Adam: –Rivers of Blood
Crouching down I released two autonomous blood streams that shredded the surrounding knights. One of them managed to pierce through my thigh with a spear, impaling it on the ground. I punched it as hard as I could without hesitation.
Snapping the spear and pulling it out of my leg, I turned to the remaining suits of armor.
Adam: [I am your shield, Raya. Use me until I'm beaten and broken. Then, you can discard me.]
I threw the broken spear in my hand at a nearby suit of armor, embedding it into the metal chestplate. When I kicked the imbedded spear, the armor broke into pieces. The rivers of blood swimming around me were enough to clean up the rest of the knights.
The suit of armor that I'd punched earlier had flown into the nearby streetlamp, causing it to collapse onto the floor. The broken light began blinking on and off slowly, causing us to be completely enveloped in darkness at times.
Raya: [And what will that pride of yours get you? We're a team. If you were strong enough that you didn't need me then you wouldn't have lost that arm of yours!]
As Raya walked towards me, the blinking light gave one last sputter and then died.
I couldn't see her, but her footsteps were undeniably drawing closer to me. She sparked some electricity in her hand, but it dissipated into the darkness. After a few tries she managed to hold it stably in her hand.
As she walked closer to me the electricity became bright enough to illuminate a small area around us.
Raya: [Just… calm down,] she said, giving me a weak smile. [I'm not going anywhere.]
- - - - - - -
Adam: [I miss the sun.]
Raya: [Didn't you say that I was "bright enough to replace the sun" just ten minutes ago?]
Adam: [Did I really? Maybe I should become a poet.]
Raya: [heh…. It's your world class education speaking. Feel free to thank me.]
Adam: [ahah…What are you talking about? I'm just a homeless orphan. What you see is pure natural talent.]
After beating up the ghost knights, we took a few minutes to rest and regrow our arms, then began wandering the labyrinth again. Since we didn't know if the sea serpent was still there, we decided to walk through the empty city streets. However, it was plain to see that we weren't making much progress.
Luckily, Raya seemed to have developed the same broken humor as me.
Adam: [Look! We found it!]
Raya: [Adam, you've done it again! You might be the best damn navigator west of the Namur Ocean!]
The two of us were looking at what must have been our hundredth dead end.
We decided to take a break.
Raya: [May I take a look at the map?]
Adam: [Knock yourself out.]
Sadly, the map was more useless than we had hoped for. The labyrinth city was so big that it was impossible to draw all of the twisting streets, not that anyone would ever try to look down every single one. The map mainly depicted the paths from the main entrances to the exits to the lower floors. There were also some landmarks around them that were listed. Earlier, we had passed by a clock tower but it wasn't the clocktower that was mentioned as one of the landmarks on the map. In other words, we were far from anywhere drawn on the map.
I leaned back on the stone floor and looked up at the sky in resignation.
Well, we did have one last hope.
Adam: [Have you noticed that the ceiling has been slowly getting closer to us?]
Raya: [Yeah, we've been walking towards it for a while now… Plus, you already mentioned it to me a couple hours ago.]
Adam: [Right… I don't remember anyone ever mentioning a portion of Labyrinth City Proper being upside down.]
Raya: [Me neither. Hold on... what if we're the ones that are upside down?]
Raya flopped onto her back as she said that and stared at the ceiling pensively, as if gaining new understanding as to the workings of the world.
Adam: [Woah... that's sooo deep. I guess it really is all about perspective in the end.]
Raya: [Yeah. Like, I wonder what happens at the place where the top city and bottom city touch?]
Adam: [Hmmm... Well, there's only one way to find out…]
And after a few more hours of walking, we did actually finally found out.
The answer is… a shit-ton of monsters!
One billion points if you guessed it!
Raya: [Wow, that really is a shit-ton of monsters.]
Truly, there was no other way to compare it to anything else from this world.
Luckily, I came from another world.
It was like looking at an overpacked concert of the world's most famous musician except that half of the fans were literally on the ceiling. Each monster in the sea of beasts screamed loud enough that we could hear them even as we watched them from miles away.
Maybe this is part of the reason we were seeing so few monsters throughout the labyrinth.
Raya: [What is the point of them acting this way? It looks like they are surrounding that thing over there.]
Adam: [Yeah, it's hard to tell from this distance, but... maybe it's some kind of elevator,] I said, pointing my hand towards the colossal pipe stretching from the floor to the ceiling. [That might be able to take up back up. If so, they must be guarding it or something.]
We were watching from a vantage point a mile away on top of a relatively tall building. Since the elevator was massive, we were able to make out quite a few details. For one, the gold-plated door was way larger than any ordinary door, easily dwarfing the monsters hanging around it. Though I had earlier called it a pipe, the actual elevator shaft was made of dull concrete but wherever there were cracks there would be a bright purple glow coming out. Overall, it appeared that the designer had a poor aesthetic sense. Perhaps they didn't care to show this area to anyone else.
What was interesting was that elevators weren't common in this world, but somehow this ancient labyrinth had them. It was the same for the electricity powering the lampposts throughout the underground city. Somehow modern Artenia had failed to popularize such things.
The only other time we had seen an elevator was when we visited Count Telantra for the first time, though we'd been blindfolded back then.
I wouldn't be surprised if Raya had seen other elevators before though, she is the granddaughter of a Duke after all.
Adam: [Anyways, the way I see it, there are two problems here. Firstly, we have to get to the elevator which is clearly heavily guarded. Secondly, we have to figure out how to operate the elevator. It's possible that we just hit a button and it'll take us back to the upper levels, but it could just as easily require some sort of key.]
Raya: [hmmm,] said Raya thoughtfully, her brows furrowing and her lips pursing. God it's so fucking cute when she does that. [I think that if the elevator were designed so that it would be impossible to operate without a key then there would be no need for this many monsters to be guarding it. But it's still definitely possible… You wouldn't happen to have a method in which we could sneak past 100,000 monsters?]
Adam: [hm? Who said anything about sneaking past them?]