Maze of Trazayuya, DesuMachi Planet…
The Maze had a total of two hundred floors, divided into sets of ten and connected by twenty spiral staircases. The first staircase stood directly before him, and along its ascent were eight doors, each leading to a different level.
A monument at the base bore the words FIRST GRAND STAIRCASE. The atrium around it was vast, branches stretching from the walls as if the tree itself had claimed the structure. From those branches hung lantern-like lights and clusters of fruit.
What unsettled him was that a single branch carried oranges, pears, and even melons all at once.
"…That's not natural."
It felt like something out of a science fiction lab, genetic tampering taken too far.
Monsters waited within each chamber connected to the staircase. The higher the floor, the stronger the enemies became. That certainly reinforced the claim on the entrance sign that this was a "training facility."
'If I'd come here under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have been a bad place for the kids to train.' Hachiman thought.
He pulled up the enemy data in the Maze to decide his plan on how to proceed. Most of the mobs consisted of flying ants ranging from level five to eight, while skeletons were around levels one to three. The slightly tougher opponents were level eighteen bone golems and level fifteen wood golems.
There were also slime-type creatures and homunculi scattered around, but at level five, they barely counted as threats.
Since Hachiman had no intention of clearing every enemy on every floor, he searched for the shortest route to the master room.
He kicked apart any skeletons that wandered into his path and casually threw the stray bones at the flying ants that buzzed toward him, knocking them out of the air. One of the "skeletons" he destroyed dropped a noticeably large magic core.
"Hm?"
He picked it up. It felt heavier than it should have. After checking the combat log, he realized the creature hadn't been a skeleton at all—it had been a bone golem. The level difference was six, yet it hadn't felt any tougher than the other small fry.
"Talk about false advertising."
With the enemies' resistances being laughably weak, he advanced through the traps almost too smoothly—until the path abruptly ended in front of him.
"According to the map, there should be a path here, though?"
He rechecked the map. No mistake. It showed a corridor continuing forward.
After observing the walls for a while, he understood. The Maze was shifting its internal structure over time. The faint grinding sounds he had been hearing were the joints rearranging themselves.
"Tsk. What a uselessly amazing gimmick. Even modern science would struggle to reproduce something like this."
He clicked his tongue, half annoyed, half impressed.
After some time navigating the ever-changing passages, he finally reached the top of the grand staircase. The door to the 11th floor was adorned with nine small holes. According to the black stone tablet beside it, the door could be opened using jewels called "Key Orbs," obtainable only by defeating the boss monsters on each floor.
'Although Zen denied it earlier, this really does feel like an RPG,' Hachiman thought dryly.
If someone attempted to open the door without the required jewels, a "gatekeeper" would appear and challenge them to battle.
Defeating the gatekeeper would also unlock the entrance, so Hachiman decided to deal with it right away. When he struck the knocker, a magic circle flared to life on the landing before the door, and a fully armored knight materialized within it.
The display above its head identified it as a Living Armor. At level 20, it was technically stronger than the other monsters on this floor—but from Hachiman's perspective, the difference was negligible.
The knight raised a hatchet and brought it down in a heavy arc. Hachiman stepped aside with minimal effort and delivered a casual front kick toward its chest. Deciding at the last second that kicking steel with his toes was a bad idea, he twisted his waist and drove his heel forward instead.
"Geh… I might've overdone it."
He had intended to finish it in one blow, but the armor proved far more brittle than expected. His foot punched straight through the breastplate and out the other side.
The sudden lack of resistance nearly sent him stumbling. Acting on reflex, Hachiman stored the collapsing body in his Storage before he could lose his balance.
"…Phew. That was sloppy."
He cleared his throat, pretending that no one had seen that, and stepped through the door, which had already swung open as if welcoming him onward.
On the other side stood another grand staircase leading upward. Hachiman couldn't help thinking the layout looked like it had been copied straight out of a video game.
"…A game?"
Just as he was about to break into a run, he stopped himself.
'Maybe it's just me, but this dungeon feels even more obviously game‑like than the one under Seiryuu City.' He narrowed his eyes. 'It's like whoever built this had console RPGs burned into their brain. If that's the case…'
He opened his map and filtered it to show only monsters on this floor.
"…There."
One marker stood out—a creature whose level was absurdly high for the 10th floor.
Hachiman pushed open a hidden section of the wall and stepped into a narrow hallway formed entirely of ivy. The vines ran along the passage like tangled plumbing, guiding him forward.
At the end of the corridor, the vines converged into a massive cocoon nearly sixty feet across. Whatever he was looking for rested at its center.
'If I beat this thing, there should be a shortcut to the upper levels.' He folded his arms briefly in thought. 'Anyone who likes old-school dungeon crawlers would absolutely hide a gimmick like that here.'
As an experienced gamer, Hachiman knew the pattern. A powerful guardian stationed off the main route—too strong for beginners, but a reward for players skilled enough to take the risk.
"Don't hide," he called out calmly. "Come on out."
In response, a section of ivy slowly peeled apart, and a soft green light spilled out from within.
Hachiman waited for the powerful guardian to reveal itself.
"Oh, c'mon—don't bother me. I don't have much magic right now, y'know. We can fight some other time."
"I'm sorry, but I can't do that."
"Ughh! I'm telling Traya about this. I'm not gonna go easy on you!"
What emerged from the cocoon was not a towering beast or armored knight—but a green‑skinned little girl who looked no older than five or six. Her emerald hair, more than twice the length of her body, trailed across the floor behind her like a living cape.
'…This is the boss?' Hachiman blinked, genuinely bewildered.
According to the display above her head, she was a level 30 Dryad. Her actual age had so many digits that he gave up halfway through counting. Whatever she looked like, she was far older than she appeared.
The Dryad looked lethargic at first, rubbing her eyes as if she'd just woken up. But the moment she focused on Hachiman, her eyes sparkled brightly, and she suddenly leaped at him.
He sensed no hostility, so he simply caught her mid‑air.
"Are you a human? You should be mine!"
"…Come again?"
The words were so abrupt and confidently delivered that Hachiman's response came out far dumber than he intended.
'Why did she ask if I was human?' he wondered. 'Can she see something strange about my status? Or she saw my level, which is nothing but a bunch of question marks?'
Hachiman tilted his head, trying to process what was happening.
"I'm hungry. Gimme food!"
"…You really are a kid."
Hachiman took out some rations of food and bread from his Storage and handed it to her.
"I don't need your dumb human food. Gimme magic!"
His brows lifted slightly. "Magic?"
He asked her to explain, but her answer did nothing to calm him.
"It'll only hurt for a second," she said brightly. "Then it'll start to feel good."
"…That's the least reassuring sentence I've heard all week."
Under his flat stare, the dryad huffed and clarified that she simply fed on magical energy. Just like casting a spell, his MP would decrease and gradually recover over time.
No permanent damage. No curses. No contracts.
Given the absurd amount of MP he had, it wasn't a risky trade.
"C'mon, please?" she leaned closer.
"All right. How does it work?"
"Like this."
The little girl placed her hands on his cheeks.
He assumed she would draw the energy out through contact. Instead, before he could react, she pulled his face down and pressed her lips against his.
His eyes widened.
And then she deepened it.
For a full ten minutes, she drained his magic at her own pace, completely unbothered by his stiff, stunned silence.
When she finally pulled away, she looked refreshed.
Hachiman stood there motionless.
The warmth that had once returned to his eyes after meeting the crew and building a family… faded.
He looked exactly like he had before. Eyes that look like a dead fish.
"Phew, I'm stuffed!"
Her cheeks were pink with satisfaction as she proudly puffed out her flat chest.
'…I'm going to pretend none of this happened. Yeah. Let's just file it under "bitten by a dog" and move on.'
Hachiman clung to that thought like a lifeline.
"As thanks, I'll open the corridor for you! You wanna use it, right?"
"Yes, please do," he replied in a tone drier than the dungeon walls.
'Thank goodness. If I turned out to be wrong about the shortcut after all that, I might've actually collapsed.'
The dryad had only taken around three hundred MP. He'd recover that in a few minutes.
The emotional damage, however, was operating on a different scale entirely.
Without another word, he stepped into the corridor she opened.
[Title Acquired: Dryad's Victim]
Hachiman froze.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
He nearly slammed his forehead into the ground.
'That is a title I absolutely did not consent to earning.'
If rejecting system notifications were an option, he would have done it on the spot out of pure protest.
—---
The next room resembled a laboratory.
The door bore the label: TRAZAYUYA'S AREA.
Judging by its condition, it hadn't been used in a very long time. A musty smell lingered in the air. Unlike the rest of the Maze, the floors and walls here weren't stone; they were made from a hardened, resin-like material.
The space was surprisingly complete. There was a dining area, a bedroom, and even a bathroom. A thin layer of dust coated everything.
"…Zen definitely never came here," Hachiman muttered.
The library section was crammed with books and handwritten notes. He had no idea how many decades had passed since anyone last touched them, but time had not been kind. Aside from a handful of sturdier magic tomes, most looked as if they would fall apart the moment they were opened.
Since physically handling them was risky, Hachiman stored the entire collection in his system's Storage instead. Reading them through the system would preserve their contents and, more importantly, allow him to search through them efficiently.
He knew this wasn't the ideal moment to sit down and study, but he skimmed through the material anyway, searching for anything related to disabling the forced teleportation function.
As expected from the area's name, the creator of the Maze was someone called Trazayuya. From the notes, it was clear that Trazayuya was an elf, likely from the same clan as Mia and Tosaratoya. That also explained why the dryad had mentioned "Traya" earlier.
All the books were written in Elvish. If not for the language translation granted by the blessing of Trailblaze, he wouldn't have been able to read a single page.
The ink had faded in places, some lines nearly swallowed by time, but he could still piece together the meaning by skimming carefully.
Trazayuya had modeled this "Maze" after a dungeon, intending to create a controlled environment where elves could train without risking their lives.
The notes detailed his repeated failures—and a concern for his race that bordered on excessive caution.
[We elves have a fragile grasp on life. Compared to other races, we fare poorly in desperate circumstances. Many of our youth have perished in labyrinths. This Maze must include measures that allow elves to escape safely when their lives are in danger.]
"…Overprotective doesn't even begin to cover it," Hachiman muttered.
He continued reading and learned that the facility used a "Maze Core" instead of a "Labyrinth Core." It couldn't evolve or expand on its own like a true labyrinth, but it could absorb magic from the surrounding land to maintain and purify itself.
Then he came across a sentence that made him pause.
[…And so, I have completed a facility capable of implanting a core into an existing creature, thereby creating artificial monsters.]
"…Were monsters originally ordinary living things?"
A faint chill crept down his spine.
Thinking back, most of the monsters he had fought were enlarged or twisted versions of normal animals.
"…No. I've seen animated skeletons and undead, too. I can't simplify it like that."
He exhaled slowly and shook his head before continuing to read.
Trazayuya had created three prototype facilities: one for cultivating monsters, one for producing work golems, and one for manufacturing servant puppets to attend to him hand and foot.
The last facility, however, had been built in cooperation with the neighboring gray ratmen and abandoned just before completion.
According to the documents, the monsters within the Maze sustained themselves on the sap and fruit produced by the giant tree that formed its body. There was no need for them to hunt, which explained why none of the creatures ever ventured outside.
And yet… after the Maze was completed, no elves ever came to use it.
At the end of his memoir, Trazayuya wrote:
[After a hundred years, still nobody has deigned to forget my failures. My long life is nearing its end. I will seal away the Maze until my brethren require it in the future. I believe that one day, elves will return to their rightful place as leaders of the world. —Trazayuya Bolenan]
"…A century of waiting, and no one came," Hachiman muttered quietly.
Since his family name was Bolenan, he must have belonged to the same clan as Mia and the store manager, Yusaratoya.
"So that's why Zen needed Mia," Hachiman concluded. He flipped a page thoughtfully. "Still… I'm a little impressed he managed to figure out how to lift the seal without reading any of this."
He had gained a significant amount of background information, but not the one thing he actually needed. There was still no method mentioned for disabling the forced teleportation.
His eyes paused on a phrase scribbled in the margins.
"'Explosions are romance!' …Seriously?"
He stared at the note for a long second.
"…No one would be stupid enough to install a self-destruct mechanism in a so‑called safe training facility. Right?"
"It doesn't look like I can reach the upper floors from here," Hachiman muttered, rubbing his temples. With a sigh, he turned back toward the dryad.
"Oh? Welcome back," she chimed lazily.
"Yeah. Thanks."
She was sprawled across her ivy bed, rolling onto her stomach and dangling her arms over the edge.
"That was fast. Did you wanna smooch some more?"
"…No. I'll pass." He kept his expression perfectly flat. "I just need to get to the upper floors. Is there a portal or something?"
The dryad rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling as if this were all terribly inconvenient. Then she lazily pointed toward a corner of the room.
"Right there."
Hachiman followed her finger. A small flower bed sat at the center of a neat ring of mushrooms.
"Just stand in the middle of the fairy ring."
"Convenient."
He stepped into the circle without further comment.
"What floor do you wanna go to?"
"If possible, I'd like to reach the master of the Maze."
The dryad immediately shook her head, still upside down from where she lay.
"Oh, no, no. I can't do that."
A vein almost surfaced on Hachiman's forehead.
"Then send me as high as you can."
"That'd be the 100th floor. Guardian Knight's Area." She yawned. "The guardian there is strong. So, you know… don't die."
"Sure. Not a problem."
She shrugged like an old woman who'd already seen this play out a hundred times.
"Well, don't say I didn't warn you."
She finally lifted a hand and began chanting.
"Okay, here goes. ■■■ ■■—Activate. Target: Floor 100, Guardian Knight's Area."
The fairy ring responded at once. Soft green spores rose from the mushrooms and began to swirl around him. Within seconds, they spun into a tight vortex, forming a glowing cylinder of light.
When the light faded, Hachiman had arrived at the 100th floor.
—---
'It's a little cruel to drop someone straight into a boss room, though,' Hachiman thought, his cheek twitching faintly.
Before him sat a massive iron golem, completely motionless. Beside it, three identical women—each resembling the one who had distracted him from Zen earlier—were seated around a round table, carefully stacking wooden blocks into a pyramid.
Startled by his sudden arrival, the woman who had been placing the final block knocked the entire structure over. The pieces clattered across the floor. She froze, staring at the mess in visible shock.
For a second, Hachiman almost apologized.
Instead, he cleared his throat.
"Just a moment, I do declare."
One of the women raised a hand in front of him in a polite yet oddly theatrical gesture. Hachiman blinked at her.
She had long, straight hair and the composed air of an honors student—but her archaic way of speaking completely ruined the impression.
He considered walking past them.
Unfortunately, the only staircase in the room led back down.
'So the only way forward is to clear the floor properly,' he concluded grumpily.
His grip on the holy sword tightened unconsciously. If the blade had feelings, it would have been on the verge of tears.
'I never minded following rules in video games… but being forced to play by them in real life makes me want to blow a hole in the ceiling and make my own shortcut.'
But Hachiman knew it would be pointless to antagonize them, get teleported again, and be forced to start from scratch. So he swallowed his irritation and waited for them to finish their preparations.
Each of the three women fastened a belt around her short, simple dress, securing a rapier at her hip. The hilts were carved with an elegant rose motif. They slipped on gauntlets and greaves with practiced efficiency—yet, for some reason, left their chests and heads completely unguarded.
'No helmets. No breastplates.' He raised a brow. 'Why leave the most important parts exposed?'
While he pondered that, two of them carried the table into a corner of the hall, neatly clearing the space. The third approached the iron golem and began activating it.
Their status displays hovered above their heads: level 7 homunculi. "Nature"-type skills. All three possessed "Magic Manipulation." And they shared the same title—Zen's Puppet.
Oddly enough, though each carried an identical rapier, only one had the "One-Handed Sword" skill. The other two specialized in "Polearm" and "Spear."
"Matching outfits, different builds," Hachiman muttered. "That's efficient, I guess."
With a low mechanical rumble, the iron golem powered on and rose to its feet. It towered over ten feet tall, its metal body studded with uneven rivets that gave it a clunky, almost prewar industrial look.
Once everything was in place, the apparent leader stepped forward. She drew her rapier in one smooth motion and pointed it directly at Hachiman.
She cleared her throat with an oddly cute little sound.
"I am impressed that you made it this far, Sir Labyrinth Explorer."
Her tone was painfully monotone.
"I'm just a traveler."
"A... traveler?!"
The three women blinked in unison and exchanged uncertain glances.
They leaned toward one another and whispered silently for several seconds, as if recalculating a script that hadn't prepared for this response. Finally, they straightened and faced him again.
"…Labyrinth Explorer! We are impressed, I do admit."
"So you're just going to overwrite what I said and stick with Labyrinth Explorer, huh?!" Hachiman shot back, disbelief written plainly across his face.
The leader ignored him completely.
"You have earned the right to do battle with the guardian, I do declare. If you can defeat the guardian, you shall be permitted to proceed, I do acknowledge. The victor shall receive a reward from our master, I do promise."
'It's less monotone now… but somehow worse,' Hachiman thought flatly. 'This really does feel like I'm watching an elementary school play.'
Without reacting to his stare, the woman continued her perfectly rehearsed delivery.
"Now you must fight. Iron Golem, there is no need to hold back."
She lowered her blade and gave him a faintly satisfied look, as if she had just completed her lines flawlessly.
The smugness tugged at his patience.
"…Fine. Let's just get this over with."
His voice was so flat it nearly matched their own.
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