Tomatoes. Carrots. Onions. Potatoes. Garlic. A single parsley leaf. Bell peppers. Cucumbers. Eggplants.
In the hour since the dungeon opened, these were the varieties of vegetables discovered by the Transmigrated and characters within.
"Did someone go grocery shopping?"
"Are they using these to mark their starting point?"
Eventually, speculation arose that it was a ploy to confuse the competition. However, exactly nine people had entered this second dungeon, including both the Transmigrated and the original characters. They all knew each other's faces perfectly well; there was no one frivolous enough among them to play pranks with vegetables.
Only one person inside this dungeon could truly understand the meaning behind these vegetables.
Belsus took a deep breath and couldn't exhale.
"……."
He didn't know what he should say to himself, nor what he was supposed to feel. For some inexplicable reason, his body began to tremble violently.
The rotting, festering vegetables he had last seen were nowhere to be found. The plump bell pepper, grown firm and bursting with sunlight, was just as fresh as before, practically radiating a sense of blessing.
Without realizing it, Belsus picked up the vegetable.
In that instant, he was seized by the illusion of something squirming against his fingertips. Or perhaps, the vegetable itself had actually moved.
The vegetable in his grasp began to alter rapidly, the change visible to the naked eye. As if time had suddenly accelerated, skipping several days in a mere flash, the life drained out of it.
Even as he stared blankly in shock, the decay worsened. It soon dissolved into a grotesque sludge, looking like a vegetable that had been rotting for fifty years, and oozed through his fingers.
‘…Ugh.’
Even without him applying any pressure, the mushy vegetable collapsed into itself. A foul-smelling juice trailed down the back of his hand, seeping into his sleeve.
Though it stained his clothes and guaranteed he would reek of decay, he couldn't bring himself to throw away what had once been a part of Heean.
He took a bite of the hideously rotten bell pepper, which looked as ghastly as torn skin exposing bare bone.
It tasted just as horrific as it looked. His current palate violently rejected the flavor.
In the past, he had eaten things like this often. Afraid of being a nuisance to the patrons if he entered a restaurant, he would scavenge through trash cans, eating whatever others had thrown away. Since he was young back then, it often made him sick, but that was still better than starving.
Now that I'm stronger, it won't make me sick.
Gagging, he forced himself to swallow it down. Even as his tongue and taste buds went numb, he couldn't stop. His eyes began to sting.
Gritting his teeth, Belsus sank to his knees. Amidst the desperate, throbbing ache radiating from his chest, he felt it would be easier to just let his knees shatter.
‘Not yet.
I haven't caught Persephone yet. I haven't broken my curse.
I've committed an unforgivable sin against you; what right do I have to ever face you again?’
He had to find that man, break the curse, and earn a massive sum to pay back his past boarding fees and compensate for the damage he caused. Only then could he return.
Slowly rising to his feet, Belsus turned his back. He chose to walk in the direction where the vegetables would no longer appear, the path that wouldn't shake his resolve.
---
Right at that moment, while wandering the labyrinth, the Paladin happened to spot someone.
The owner of the vegetables.
Caught red-handed attempting to drop a vegetable onto the floor, the figure bore the full brunt of the Paladin’s shocked gaze. He immediately claimed he was simply dropping them at regular intervals to mark the maze.
"I'm just a powerless farmer."
The unfamiliar young man staggered helplessly as the Paladin shook him. He wasn't feigning weakness; this physical body genuinely possessed no internal energy or mana. He looked no different from an ordinary game NPC.
However, since he was inside a dungeon, he had to be a Hunter.
'This dungeon is strictly restricted to the Transmigrated and playable characters.'
The Paladin’s mind spun with confusion. He stared intensely into the young man's face, desperate to glean any scrap of information.
Slightly tanned skin, accentuated by a white tunic shirt. Unremarkable, yet clean and neat facial features. In every way, he looked exactly like the dependable young man you'd find in any rural village.
The two had been heading in the same direction, but the Paladin had caught up to him with a faster stride.
Trailing slightly behind, the Paladin refused to put any distance between them. Even if the young man had demanded he leave, the Paladin wouldn't have listened.
Since he was a Hunter, he had to possess supernatural abilities. There was no way he entered this place without a purpose.
Who exactly is he? Why is someone like this here?
"This place isn't a maze; it's a labyrinth," the Paladin suddenly spoke up, attempting to draw the young man's attention.
The young man glanced back at him.
"What's the difference?"
"I've been walking for quite a while, yet no matter how far I go, there hasn't been a single fork in the road. It's just one continuous path."
"And that makes it a labyrinth?"
"A maze has branching paths, but a labyrinth consists of a single route. A maze is designed to make you lose your way, whereas a labyrinth is designed to make reaching your destination an arduous, time-consuming journey."
After a brief pause, the young man nodded.
"I see."
The Paladin suspected the young man already knew this but was deliberately playing dumb.
Their footsteps echoed in unison a few more times, perfectly matched in both stride and speed, before the young man tossed a question back.
"Are we heading toward the exit right now, or toward the core?"
They had all been dropped randomly into the middle of the labyrinth. In other words, the moment they opened their eyes, they were forced to choose between going one way or the other.
If it had been a traditional maze, that initial choice might have been less stressful, knowing there would be plenty of other diverging paths later.
But in a single-path labyrinth, choosing the wrong direction meant walking in vain indefinitely.
If they were heading toward the exit, they could kiss their chances of fighting the boss monster at the core goodbye. because surely, some of the other Hunters would have chosen the path leading inward.
No matter how closely one inspected the surroundings, there was no way to tell. There was no breeze, and even if you lit a match, the flame would simply flicker straight up.
"Well, it's amusing at least," the young man muttered lightly, casually breaking the silence.
Unable to shake his mounting suspicion, the Paladin abruptly stopped in his tracks, shattering the fragile peace that had settled between them.
"What was your class?"
The young man’s response was neither too delayed nor too hurried, a perfection that made it all the more suspicious. He replied with impeccable timing, tone, and inflection.
"I told you, I'm a farmer."
The Paladin’s brow furrowed tightly like crumpled paper. An unsettling silence descended.
The young man, Heean, quietly began to rack his brain.
The question just now was the equivalent of asking what his 'Class' was. A combat class from the game, like an Archer or a Puppeteer.
It seemed the Paladin had sensed that the young man standing before him was one of the Transmigrated.
It made sense; this was a System Dungeon where only the Transmigrated or the nine original characters could enter. But there shouldn't have been enough clues to immediately deduce that he was a Transmigrated. Was it purely intuition?
'Could there possibly be another Transmigrated here, one without a name or an established identity?'
He had no way of knowing the true identity of this young man who had so defenselessly exposed his back to him.
A chill swept over the Paladin's entire body. Yet, he didn't tremble. Crossing his right arm over his waist, he rested his hand on the hilt of his sword on his left hip.
In that exact moment.
The Paladin’s gaze suddenly flickered forward. A second later, the young man also froze.
Several presences could be felt approaching from up ahead, accompanied by faint voices. At this rate, they were on a direct collision course with a group.
‘Damn it...’
Right then and there, Heean opened a portal to his subspace and vanished, completely ignoring the Paladin’s wide-eyed, bewildered stare.
Rather than risking his subspace being discovered by multiple people at once, he chose to expose it only to the Paladin. It was a swift, tactical decision.
"Oh, it's the Paladin."
"Were you heading this way too?"
The Thief, Puppeteer, and Fighter came into view. Offering casual greetings, they made to walk right past him.
"……Hello."
The Paladin watched as the three of them brushed past him, walking further away. They didn't seem to harbor any doubts about the direction they were heading.
Making his choice, the Paladin turned around and joined their group.
Among them was the Puppeteer. If they combined their puppets with the Clairvoyance ability... the Puppeteer was the most capable person of finding the correct path in this labyrinth.
Although he hadn't seen any puppets coming down his route, he assumed he simply hadn't caught up to them because he had been walking too fast.
Resuming his trek through the labyrinth, the Paladin pondered where the young man could have vanished to.
If the original inhabitants of this game world had seen him disappear just now, they would have assumed it was some kind of teleportation magic. But the Paladin was one of the Transmigrated. He had played through the game's storylines until he was utterly sick of them.
It was the exact visual effect that occurred whenever the Doctor utilized a subspace. A graphic effect where the light seemed to warp and dissolve.
This was his first time seeing it rendered in tangible reality right before his very eyes.
‘He used a subspace.’
A hidden Transmigrated. A farmer. A subspace. The Paladin carefully filed these vague fragments of information away in his mind.
A short while later, Heean reappeared in the exact same spot. Since he had waited a sufficient amount of time before exiting, the corridor was completely empty.
‘That voice earlier belonged to the Puppeteer, didn't it….’
So he had been walking in the wrong direction all along?
Without an ounce of lingering regret, Heean immediately spun around. He began following the direction the Paladin’s group had taken.
However, to avoid detection, he deliberately kept a safe, set distance behind them.
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