Exploring the Ox Section

After that, I cultivated for a while. Daylight was just beginning to dim when Jue Zhu rounded the side of the Exit Tower with Quan close behind him. Quan looked embarrassed, which was a very different look for him almost to the point of being disturbing. "I'm sure you or the others will drag it out of me sooner or later," he began once he sat by the fire with me, "I actually never got the map data for my section. I happened to go in the opposite direction from the closest dead end from where I started, and though I cleared a bunch of rooms, I never found that one. Although, I did find and beat what you guys are calling the Zodiac Room there already. After that though, I just kept getting turned around over and over."

I managed to restrain myself to a smirk. "Sounds like you've been having a really interesting time. If you don't mind me asking, which animal was it?"

"Horse. The Ascended Beast I fought was a really weird one, too."

"Ha! I think that clinches it!" I went on to explain what the rest of us had learned about the labyrinth so far. "So, going by how the Zodiac Rooms have been arranged, it's looking like the order of when the original cultivators finished, clockwise, with the 6th place--snake--at the bottom like on a clock. That'd make the section straight on from here the 12--pig. Then the 1 is to its right, then the 2, which should hold the Ox Room, to the right of that.

Once Shokoya and Jong get back, I say we all start exploring that section. Between all 5 of us mapping a section of the maze, we ought to find the map data or the Zodiac Room, at least one of the two pretty quickly."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," said Jue Zhu, "Jong contacted me not long ago saying he beat his Zodiac Room, the Rabbit. Said he'll be along once he's dealt with looting."

"Must have been a pretty big rabbit," said Quan, which successfully drew out a chuckle from me.

"Shokoya hasn't entered his yet, though. I'm sure it won't be too much longer."

Jue Zhu didn't feel like cultivating, so he brought out, and I had to laugh that he'd taken one along, a Xiangqi board. He even had an attachment to turn it into Sanyouqi. Guess he was less okay with isolation boredom than I'd thought. "Dude, doesn't that take up inventory space?"

"Yeah, but it's about to be worth it."

Shokoya contacted Jue Zhu to say he was starting on his Zodiac Room, the Goat Room, before we were midway into the first game. "We probably won't have time for more than two or three games, then," I said, grinning when he relayed the news.

"Heh, aren't we a collection of badasses," said Quan, "something tells me they're going to make it harder on the next students to reach this place."

"That's right, we are the first to take challenges in this area. Yeah, with how it's going so far, they might have some rebalancing to do for next time. Probably the staff guy has been reporting on how well we're doing."

"Or he will once he reports back to the Academy. It's not like there's many ways to communicate with the outside—it's a pocket dimension, right?"

I nodded at Jue Zhu in acknowledgement of the point. "I'd be shocked if he wasn't taking notes."

It was well into dusk when Kunlun Jong approached the Exit Tower. Not long before that, Jue Zhu had let us know Shokoya had finished with the Goat Room's boss. Probably it had been about a couple hours—not for the first or last time, I lamented the lack of a system clock that meant I couldn't say better than probably. By then, we were in our fourth game. Jue Zhu had won each time, but I'd avoided being the first to be mated in every game except the first, when I'd still been getting used to the rules. At the time Shokoya joined us too, I'd managed to stalemate Quan before Jue Zhu could—from a few of the moves he'd made, I thought Quan might have helped that outcome along this time, so Jue Zhu called it my win since I'd gotten a good edge in material from that.

"So we're finally all together," said Shokoya, "and we know our next move. I vote we wait until dawn to investigate the next sections."

"Makes sense," said Jong, "I can't even see the entrances from here right now. Let's just cultivate. I'm sure it won't be long before we'll be spending days on end cultivating, we ought to get used to it even if it is slow."

So we did. As we were starting, I thought I heard Jue Zhu mumble, "days on end…" which made me wince. The guy really was less prepared for the more lonesome aspects of being a cultivator than the rest of us. He did seem in better spirits when dawn broke, though. We set out together until we entered the second "entry corridor" to the right of due north, then we split up to check all the rooms we could. I had bad luck, not even finding a single Scarab Room while Shokoya, Jong, and Quan all did. This streak even lasted long enough for both Jue Zhu and me for both of us to meet up with each other. "On the bright side, I think the Zodiac Room is near," he said as we continued on.

"Yeah, between the 5 of us we've mapped over half of this section. This next T junction coming up should be at the far end of the section."

We looked to the left, and saw that going that way quickly became a U bend. To the right, the maze continued long enough for two more possible branches to the right to be visible. We checked around the U bend, and it rounded into the longest dead-end corridor I'd yet seen in the labyrinth. "Oh there had better be more than just a supply room at the end of this."

We were a third of the way along when Shokoya called in to say he'd found the map data. "I told him to go ahead and head back to the Exit Tower, and I told Jong and Quan to as well. I still want to check this dead end so I let them know about that, and that you're with me. You can come to or not. Bet you 10,000 Credits it's the Zodiac Room at the end here."

I grinned. "I'm not taking that, I think you're right. I wouldn't mind seeing it before heading back to the Exit Tower."