Chapter 17
I noticed the intruders before Ultima did.
That alone should have told me how dangerous they were.
A slow ripple went through the outermost floors of my labyrinth, not the ordinary thrum of adventurers blundering into traps, but a clean, disciplined pressure cutting through my map like a knife. Too coordinated. Too calm. Too many combat signatures moving in a tight, practiced formation.
Not guild trash.
Not tourists.
Heroes.
“Master,” Ultima said at once, her voice sharp enough to slice through my irritation. “A foreign hero party has entered the first floor. Their equipment and skill output are far above standard regional adventurers.”
“Great,” I muttered, already pulling up the map. “Because I was really hoping for a peaceful day of not being invaded.”
The group moved like they had done this a hundred times. No one rushed. No one lagged. They advanced in a diamond formation, two frontliners, two support casters behind them, one scout constantly probing ahead, and a fifth person in the rear with the kind of presence that made my core itch.
A party leader.
A real one.
Their first clash with my outer defense line lasted less than a minute.
My goblins charged from a side corridor, shrieking and swinging rusted blades. The heroes cut through them without breaking formation. One of the frontliners used a heavy shield-bash that sent two goblins flying into the wall. Another drew a thin line of silver light across the floor and severed the legs of a charging croc man before it could reach him.
Too clean.
Too precise.
Then they hit my first trap corridor.
A ceiling net dropped.
One of them saw it in time and shouted a warning before the others could step beneath it. Their scout sliced the cord before the net fully fell, and the whole device collapsed into a useless heap. A tripwire snapped next. A spear launcher fired from the opposite wall. They ducked, the rear caster muttered a counterspell, and the bolt dissolved in a burst of white sparks.
The tactician part of Ultima was screaming in my head.
“Too organized, too efficient, too—”
“Yes, I can see that,” I snapped.
The PT manager part of her immediately started whining that we should have had more higher-grade monsters in the outer hall.
The monster manager demanded permission to deploy the croc-men early.
Ultima, to her credit, stopped panicking as she pushed through the wave of personalities panicking.
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“Master, their light resistance is high. They are likely using enchanted gear from a foreign church-state or knight order. Their formation suggests repeated live-fire training against dungeon environments.”
“Thank you,” I said through gritted mental teeth. “That’s exactly the kind of sentence that makes me feel worse.”
They pushed deeper.
I threw everything I could at them.
Slimes from the left. Goblins from the right. Arrow traps from above. A collapsing bridge over a pit. A room full of false treasure chests. A corridor with rotating floor spikes that should have separated them.
Should have.
Instead, they kept moving.
Not unharmed—no, I got blood. One of the rear casters got clipped by an arrow and hissed in pain. The scout’s shoulder was badly bruised after a goblin spear grazed him. But every time I thought I’d finally cracked their line, they sealed the gap and kept advancing.
Then they reached the croc-man den.
My first serious wall.
The swamp corridor had been a nightmare for everyone else. The floor was uneven, the water was shallow enough to hide movement, and the walls had narrow gaps where the croc-men could strike from below and either side. In theory, it should have shredded any party that didn’t know exactly what they were doing.
In theory.
The heroes stepped into the corridor and immediately split again, using the limited visibility to their advantage. The scout marked ambush points. The shield-bearer anchored the formation. The two casters used layered light and wind spells to force the croc-men out of the water.
My monsters still hit hard.
One hero nearly lost an arm. Another was slammed into the wall by a tail strike and only stayed alive because their leader flicked a healing charm onto them without even turning his head.
They were that diciplined.
I started to understand, with growing dread, that I wasn’t dealing with ordinary heroes.
I was dealing with a team that had already cleared dungeons like mine.
And maybe worse.
One of them laughed after killing a hobgoblin captain.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was easy.
That hit me harder than I expected.
By the time they reached the central chamber of the first floor, I had burned more PT than I liked admitting. I was still stable, still functioning, but for the first time in a long time I felt something very close to strain.
The party paused just outside the boss room.
Then the leader looked straight ahead, as if he knew exactly where Makkura waited.
“I smell dragon,” he said.
My chest—or what passed for it—tightened.
“Don’t like him,” I muttered.
Ultima made a thoughtful sound. “He appears to be a holy-type hero with very strong anti-monster specialization.”
“Fantastic. The exact sort of person I didn’t want here.”
The doors opened.
Makkura descended like living judgment.
The heroes barely blinked.
He struck first, blue flame exploding across the arena in a sweeping arc. One frontliner took the full hit and staggered back smoking, but did not fall. The others moved as one, closing the distance in a perfect pattern. The scout circled wide. The rear caster drew a containment sigil. The leader stepped directly into Makkura’s attack range and raised his blade.
“By the light of the high temple,” he said, “I condemn you.”
That should have sounded ridiculous.
It didn’t.
Makkura lunged anyway.
The heroes split.
The shield-bearer intercepted the bite. The leader drove his sword through the gap under Makkura’s jaw. The rear caster unleashed a binding seal that snapped around the wyvern’s forelimbs in a burst of pale chains. Makkura roared, twisted, and slammed his tail down hard enough to crack the arena floor.
The heroes didn’t panic.
They adapted.
Within moments, they were circling him with the calm efficiency of executioners.
I watched in horror as Makkura took a deep wound across his chest. His blue flame sputtered, then reignited, but they were already exploiting the opening. They pushed, pressed, and never once gave him room to recover.
This was not a battle.
It was a controlled dismantling.
“Master,” Ultima said carefully, “they may clear him without losing a member.”
I stared at the arena.
“No,” I said faintly. “That’s not supposed to happen.”
But it did.
Makkura fought like a king at the end of the world, and they cut him down like he was an obstacle on the road.
When he finally collapsed, the whole floor shuddered.
I felt the kill notification go through.
No triumph.
No relief.
Just a cold, ugly dread as the heroes turned toward the transfer circle leading deeper into my labyrinth.
Into the Red-Hot Hell.
And I knew, very suddenly, that I was no longer hosting challengers.
I was being hunted.