Is it wrong to try to meet someone in a dungeon?

"...!?"

"Well done, monsters. Welcome!"

A man wearing goggles emerged from the depths of the hall.

Reed, who was running, stopped in his tracks. Gross, who was destroying the cage, turned his head, and all the "heretics" turned their eyes to him.

They finally confronted the brutal hunters.

"So you're the poacher who traffics our fellow countrymen...!?"

"Oh—, you even know that? Yes, that's right, I'm the one who kidnapped your companions to sell for money. And I even gave them a good beating so they wouldn't embarrass themselves in front of the enthusiasts (customers)."

"you……!!"

Dix, the burly man wielding the terrifying red gun, smiled and readily accepted the fierce killing intent emanating from Reed, Guross, and the others.

"By the way, it's not me, it's us."

Starting with this statement, other hunters began to appear one after another.

From behind Dix, from the left and right walls, and from below the stone steps Reed and the others climbed up.

Rhett and Fly were taken aback at the rear of the "heretics'" column; lurking in the darkness, various races of demi-humans launched a pincer attack... no, an encirclement.

Along with the damaged and fallen black cage, the "heretics" were surrounded.

"...!"

"It's obvious at a glance that you outnumber us, but... can you protect so many precious bundles?"

Dix was right; the monsters that were freed were extremely weak.

The healthy "heretics" supporting them, having to protect their fellow citizens, were unable to fight with their full strength. The reason the enemy lured Reed and the others into this hall, and did not attack them as soon as they entered, was to shackle them with the label of "wounded fellow citizens," thus restricting their movements.

Mocking at by the cunning man, Reed and Goros gritted their teeth.

"—Mr. Reed!"

"What...Little Bell!?"

At this moment, Bell, who had rushed up the stone steps, and Fels arrived at the hall.

Reed turned around in utter astonishment, and the other "heretics," led by Guross, reacted in the same way. As for the hunters, their reaction was even more intense.

"That kid from back then...!? What are you doing here?!"

"Stop arguing now, Guros!"

Seeing Bell chasing after them, Guross immediately showed his disgust, but Reed beside him reached out to stop him.

The lizardman raised his head, his eyes darting about, meeting the gaze of deep red eyes.

Why, how could you, please don't do this—these earnest words disappeared with her gaze.

"Hey... Gran, explain yourself! The location has been discovered, and they've even hacked into the interior! Did you even close the 'door'?"

"I...I'm involved! I didn't lie to you, Dix!? I definitely closed the door properly after I let the monsters in...!"

Hearing Dix's cold and ruthless voice, the bald, burly man broke out in a cold sweat and desperately tried to defend himself.

Gran, who was holding his position behind the "heretics" with his accomplices, was facing Bell and Fels, looking down at the spherical refined metal (ingot) in his hand.

“That’s…!”

Bell blurted out, and Fels also took out a magical artifact of the same design.

Upon seeing this item, the hunters began to murmur, "How could a 'key' be...!?"

"Oh, is that so... Really, which idiot let someone steal it? I knew they shouldn't have given it away so easily."

Seeing that Bell and the others also had the same magical artifacts, Dix understood what had happened. He cursed as he tapped his shoulder with the butt of his crimson spear.

Unwilling to be caught in the crossfire, Big Man (Gran) and the others began to move to the side to join the opposing group, while Bell and Fils also ran to the side of "Heretics".

"Lord Bell..."

"People on the surface... are you two here to help us?"

"...!"

The half-human, half-bird sat on the floor, supported by a red soft hat.

Her body was covered in heartbreaking bruises and sprains. Although the chain was broken, the bird's lower body was still entangled in an excessively large leg loop. The sight evoked a nauseating sense of disorientation.

Fei'er looked up at him with a weak gaze, leaving Bell speechless.

(Where's Winnie!?)

At the same time, this scene overlapped with the dragon girl's former face, causing Bell to look up and try to find her, but in the hall where humans and monsters (monsters) mingled, he could not find her.

"I didn't expect there to be such a large space..."

Beside the anxious Bell, Fels cautiously surveyed their surroundings and groaned as he spoke.

He shook his hoodie and shouted to Dix, who was some distance away:

"【The Savage】, Dix Perdix... are you the mastermind behind this?"

"And who are you, a magician? You're dressed rather strangely... [Rookie] too, I'm really curious what your connection is to these monsters, huh?"

As the hunters and the "heretics" glared at each other, their shoes scraping against the ground, creating an atmosphere of impending conflict, Fels and Dix continued to shout at each other.

"I'll get straight to the point. This is Daedalus's legacy, isn't it?"

"Haha! Looks like I couldn't hide it from you. I think you guessed right."

"...When did you start using this place? No, how did you even know this place existed?"

"What do you mean 'don't know'? This thing was forced upon our descendants by our ancestors. As their descendant, no one can object to what I do with it, right?"

After hearing what Dix said...

Not only Fels, but even Bell stopped moving.

"Ancestors...descendants...!?"

"You say you're from the Daedalus family!?"

The boy and the magician's voices trembled with confusion and wavering. Ignoring the astonished looks on the faces of the "heretics" eavesdropping nearby, Dix wore a self-deprecating sneer.

"I'm not bragging. Otherwise—I'll show you the evidence."

After saying that, he pulled up his goggles.

"————"

A sharp-looking man's face and a pair of red eyes appeared behind the goggles.

There is also a "D" shaped mark etched between the two eyes, on the left eye.

"This is proof of Daedalus's bloodline. Anyone who inherits even a drop of that bastard's blood will be born with this eye."

"This is a blood curse," he said.

The man presented the evidence to everyone.

The authenticity is unclear. There isn't enough information to make a judgment. But—Bell held his breath and looked at Fels's hand.

Spherical magical items engraved with the same mark.

What's embedded in the refined metal (ingot) isn't an eye-like object, it's actually—

"The 'door' here reacts to the eyeballs of the family (us). That's how it was designed. In order to allow descendants to move freely, only descendants can carry out the 'work'... Now we are using this property to dig out the eyeballs from the corpses and use them as 'keys'."

Dix spoke the name to the frozen Fels and the others.

"This is the 'artificial labyrinth Knossos'—a 'work' that our ancestors (Daedalus) left to their descendants to complete, a work of utter idiocy."

"An artificial labyrinth (Knossos)?"

Hermes asked in return.

"Yes," Ikelos replied with a smile, calling it a reward.

"It's written like this in the journal..."

"Hey, that notebook you mentioned, it wouldn't happen to be...?"

"That's right, it's the 'Daedalus Manuscript'."

On the tower's top platform, cheap clothes in black fluttered in the wind, and Ikelos's voice drifted away with the wind.

"Daedalus... Dix's ancestor seemed to have gone mad after seeing the dungeon. He wanted to create a 'work' that surpassed that labyrinth himself... How incredibly stupid, right? Heh heh! There used to be plenty of silly kids like that, but lately it's all just a bunch of arrogant brats."

The gods found it amusing as they recounted a man's regrets and desires recorded in his journal.

"Well, of course, one person couldn't finish it. Whether he could even finish it is another matter. Anyway, Daedalus realized that his life was coming to an end, so he left the journal along with the half-finished labyrinth to his descendants."

"..."

"And they even thoughtfully included 'design blueprints.' And their descendants have followed their ancestors' instructions, continuing to build the maze to this day."

After a brief pause, Hermes asked again:

"Ikelos, if what you say is true... those descendants of Daedalus..."

"That's right, Hermes. The Daedalus family has spent countless years on the man-made labyrinth (Knossos)—"

"--millennium."

Dix put his goggles back on and said.

"Our ancestors secretly spent so much time making this thing without telling the guild."

Upon hearing the meaning behind these words spoken after so many years, not only Bell and Fels, but even the "heretics" began to doubt their own ears.

"How is this possible! It's been going on quietly for so many years without anyone knowing...!?"

"Otherwise, how do you explain this labyrinth you're in now, magician? Do you think this 'work' covering the underground city could be built so large overnight?"

The underground city has a cone-shaped structure.

The further down you go, the larger the floor area becomes.

In contrast, the man-made labyrinth (Knossos) is concave.

Bell compared his knowledge with Dix's earlier statement and understood.

In the past, Daedalus was designed to overlap with the conical underground city, forming a cylinder. It was like a man-made labyrinth of floors surrounding the various levels of the underground labyrinth.

The underground sewers that Fells mentioned throughout the city, as well as the secret underground passages that Bell discovered, were all part of his "works" created based on carefully calculated sketches.

Upon seeing the unimaginable full extent of the man-made labyrinth (Knossos), Bell turned pale.

"My father, whose appearance I don't even know, along with my grandfather (an old man) and other ancestors, personally expanded the territory of the man-made labyrinth (Knossos) to the 'middle layer'."

About a thousand years passed after the death of Daedalus the Extraordinary.

A thousand years of time, coupled with the madness created by obsessive blood ties, is the true face of this man-made labyrinth.

Bell was overwhelmed by a hallucination, as if the delusions of the strange man (Daedalus) had transformed into countless hands that crawled up from his feet.

"Conversely... even after a thousand years, one can only reach the 'middle level'."

This is only about 30% of the "design drawings".

Dix said dismissively, spitting.

"...I never imagined that the Ikeros Familia would be suspected of having ties to the dark factions, with such a background..."

Fels murmured, sensing something, and the man in goggles smirked.

"I don't know when the descendants of our ancestor (Daedalus) began associating with what you call 'villains.' But at least since I was born in this dark, damp labyrinth, I've had close ties with the so-called dark factions—"

"—Everything was for the sake of completing the labyrinth..."

Ikelos recounts.

"Time, labor, and most importantly, it's too expensive. Daedalus's 'work'..."

The hardest metal (Orichalco), plus the super-hardest metal (Durcanite).

Other materials such as stone are also needed.

Unlike underground labyrinths (dungeons), which possess regenerative capabilities, the man-made labyrinth (Knossos)—the "work" desired by the first Daedalus—must be indestructible. This is because the goal of the extraordinary beings was to create a "supreme masterpiece" that surpassed even the underground labyrinths (dungeons).

Naturally, gathering building materials for the man-made labyrinth (Knossos) became a major challenge.