Astartes of the Bear School

Chapter 1800 1772. Isu Labyrinth
In the middle of the disc is an abstract head-turning pattern, and on the sides are two circles of incomprehensible characters.

"Now," after handing the disc to Lan En, the little boy looked at the witcher hopefully, "what should we do?"

"This will open the maze." Lan En put away the disc and turned his attention to Aldous. "Then, I will deal with the Minotaur."

"And then... then you'll save my father, right?"

In response to this question, Lan En, who had been speaking clearly and fluently just now, pursed his lips.

The bald old man has not even responded directly to Aldous's doubts and persistence, and has not told him what is going on with his father.

After pondering for a moment and considering his words, Lan En squatted down and looked directly at the other person.

"We can't confirm your father's situation, Aldous." Lan En looked earnestly, "But if your father is still alive in that maze... yes, I will save him."

"Of course!" Lan raised his voice again before Aldous cheered, "Only if you don't act rashly and sneak in to distract me."

“No, no, no! Of course I can’t!” The little boy nodded repeatedly, “You’re the best! Mercenary! Let’s go and try to see if this key works!”

Although it was the first time they met, it was generally difficult to have any bad feelings towards Lan En unless there was something wrong with the person.

After all, the face is here, and Lan En himself has a good personality.

Even though only ruins remain of the palace of Knossos, it is still divided into five or six floors, but each floor has collapsed.

With Aldous leading the way, they made their way down the stairs.

Walking around the marble columns, you can see the Greek murals on the walls that have begun to fade and become mottled.

"I've heard a legend that a few years ago in Athens, two mercenaries slaughtered the Minotaur and placed the body in the Parthenon." Aldous kept talking on the way down.

"But I say that's pure deception! The Minotaur is right here! In Messara! Not in Athens! I'm a good liar myself, so I can tell when someone is lying!"

"Those mercenaries are different from you. They are the best at boasting."

Mr. Lan, who was the person involved in Athens at the time, nodded in agreement with Aldous's evaluation.

"really."

The so-called 'Minotaur' that he and Kassandra killed in Athens was also made from Isu artifacts, but it was just a crude splicing by a fanatic with no knowledge of biology.

And now, this Minotaur will be something directly produced by the Isu artifact, and it is also the origin of the Minotaur legend in this world.

The two are not the same concept at all.

We walked four or five more floors underground before we officially reached our destination.

This palace has nearly ten floors in total, from top to bottom.

When we got to the end, we found that the ground at the bottom of the palace had collapsed and was in a complete mess.

But after the collapse, the uniqueness of the unchanging things in the deepest part of the underground became more prominent.

Completely different from the surrounding ancient Greek-style buildings, a simple and rationally beautiful building built with blue and gray stones appears before our eyes.

It was a circular gate that lay flat and opened into the ground.

Aldous lit a few braziers here. Apparently he always came here to be close to his father.

Perhaps the ancient King Minos built his palace here because he found this ancient building and regarded it as the will of the gods.

It's not just about building palaces.

Two ten-meter-tall Minotaur statues wearing Greek armor and holding axes stood on both sides of the circular gate.

This was obviously built by King Milos for this gate.

Thinking of this, Lan En even found it interesting.

King Milos was a figure from hundreds of years ago in the ancient Greek world, but to himself, he was a figure from thousands of years ago.

And now, he was standing in the building he built, about to enter a place he believed contained the will of the gods.

The intersection of history and time is very interesting at this time.

There was a stone tablet in front of the circular gate. Lan En stepped forward and inserted the disc into the gap.

With the sound of stones rubbing against each other, the gate opened, revealing a deeper space below.

Lan En walked forward and saw a pool of water just below the gate.

He turned to look at Aldous, and after the two nodded to each other, the demon hunter jumped down cleanly.

Although he did not have the Isu gene's ability to ignore the damage caused by falling, the height of twenty or thirty meters and the water pool provided a buffer, so there was no risk for Lan.

"thump!"

The witcher fell into the water and sank straight to the bottom under his huge weight, and then his strong legs found a foothold.

With a splash, the water surged and Lan En jumped directly to the edge of the pool.

The space below the gate is filled with the architectural style of the Isu civilization.

Between the blue and gray building materials, there are horizontal and vertical circuit board-like patterns, and these patterns are formed by some kind of luminous crystals embedded in the wall.

The texture of these crystals is similar to that of the broken spear in Cassandra's hand when it was in effect.

Lan En walked deeper and deeper, and the deeper he went, the more serious the collapse of the Isu civilization's buildings became.

But there is no doubt that this is indeed a maze. "Moo!"

A ferocious roar that did not come from any known animal in this world echoed repeatedly among the overlapping and winding blue-gray walls.

In the maze, the only light source is the warm orange light emitted by the crystal lines embedded in the walls.

The roar seemed particularly terrifying in this deep and dark environment. If one wanted to use torches for illumination, the flickering flames would probably make the atmosphere even more severe.

No wonder the Greeks who came down to explore were frightened out of their wits.

"It's stuck~"

Lan En's face was calm, and he kicked a piece of jawbone on the ground with his toes.

In low-light vision, this brightness is enough for him.

The jawbone rolled on the ground and finally joined a pile of scattered bones.

These are human remains.

Some of them had their bodies crushed, others were torn into pieces... It was obvious that these were pure bestial acts.

This Isu ruins was not opened for the first time. Nikios and his expedition team opened it more than two years ago. And hundreds of years before that, King Milos must have sent many people and waves to explore what the "will of the gods" was all about.

So the human bones here are everywhere and are severely weathered.

"Is this... Theseus' golden thread?" Lan En's fingers wrapped in gauntlets lightly brushed across the wall.

The traces left by the mythical Greek heroes still guide the route in the maze hundreds of years later.

However, Lan En did not intend to follow the guidance of Theseus' golden thread and directly pass through the maze.

The roar of an unknown person could not stir up any waves in his spirit. The maze that ordinary people could not even remember the way back was even more meaningless to his memory.

Anyway, this Minotaur should have been here for tens of thousands of years, and there is no time limit. Lan En is quite interested in such a large area of ​​Isu ruins.

He wanted to see if there were any things in there that the Isu people had left behind when their civilization collapsed and perished.

I deliberately chose the direction that Theseus' golden thread did not point to, and sure enough, I reaped the rewards.

Those were storage boxes located in two broken areas of the maze, basically on the edge of a cliff. God knows how deep the collapsed underground cave is.

If it weren't for the diffuse scanning capability of Eagle Vision, Lan might have to spend twice as much time to find it.

The Isu people's storage boxes have a distinct technological flavor and are made of blue and gray, just like their buildings.

Lan En took out four metal ingots and some miscellaneous ordinary ores and gems from it.

These four metal ingots are obviously the products of technological processing and are some kind of alloy.

Given the Isu's technological level, Lan believed that these alloys either had outstanding performance or special uses.

It shouldn't be ordinary.

He put the metal ingot into the alchemical leather bag.

There are quite a few human corpses nearby. They must be the unlucky ancient people who wanted to explore the maze but failed to get out alive.

Fortunately, these two storage boxes are located in an area with broken terrain, otherwise they might have been taken away by King Milos or subsequent explorers.

After walking around and scanning with Eagle Vision, Lan En followed the guidance of Theseus' golden thread and went straight into the core of the maze.

Near the end, he unsurprisingly found some relatively fresh bodies.

Based on the differences in the clothes these people were wearing, Lan found the body of Nikios, the leader of the team.

He was lying on his back with severe fractures and a huge open wound on his abdomen with his internal organs dislodged.

Lan En's experience allowed him to judge the situation at the time from the appearance of the corpse.

"A bull horn nail pierced his stomach, and then his head was thrown and his body was thrown into the air. After hitting the wall several times, he landed here."

"The size of the horns... the corresponding body size... No, I don't know if the size of this thing is proportional to the horns."

During his calm and rational analysis, Lan En did not forget to take a ring from Nikios's dried body.

In fact, both he and the bald old man knew that Nikios was basically dead, but since there was a chance, they should at least keep some thoughts for the orphan Aldous.

Calmness and compassion are not contradictory in Lan En.

After doing all this, Theseus' golden thread was about to come to an end.

Lan En crossed a collapsed ground section that was five or six meters wide and stood in the center of the maze, which was where the Minotaur was located in mythology.

The surroundings were still dark, with only the crystal lines on the wall emitting a faint glow.

After landing lightly, Lan En tilted his head towards the darkness in the distance, as if he was looking at something.

"It seems that," the demon hunter stated calmly, "Theseus in the story should also be a person holding a magic weapon and with a high concentration of Isu genes."

Otherwise, it would be difficult for a normal human to fight against such a guy in a one-on-one fight.

Lan En's words had just fallen.

"call!"

A stone the size of a person came whistling straight out of the darkness!
(End of this chapter)