Point of Interest

The screams of a couple more people died down somewhere in the distance in the maze as Nato and I continued making our way through.

When that first Window came up and explained how the first task had changed, we were both completely shocked. I had asked if Nato had heard about a Crimson Tower Quest being modified in such a way and he replied that he had never heard of any Quest being modified at all, which sent me down a small anxiety spiral.

He held out his hand to get me to stop as we approached another intersection and he carefully peeked down one path before checking down another. It was the routine we had to stick with to assure that we didn't accidentally run into another Churchgoer group or the monster. We mostly wanted to avoid the monster.

"Do you know where you're going?" I hissed at the adventurer.

"Don't you trust me?" He hissed back.

I remembered a flash of the memory back in the forest camp as I looked at the great sword clipped onto his back. I gritted my teeth.

"It just feels like we've been wandering around aimlessly," I avoided directly answering his question.

He growled in frustration, "take a look at your map."

"The map was disabled," I mumbled as I swiped up my map and realised that a sizeable portion around the dot that represented me had been filled in. It even showed the wall that I was currently hugging as I waited for the all-clear from Nato.

The space started to rumble and shake. The clear signs that the walls were about to be moved around. It was over in a few seconds and when I looked back at the map, it had been updated, complete with the new wall positions.

"Wait, when did the map start working?" I asked him.

"Around the time there were fifteen people left in the maze," Nato said as he motioned for me to follow him.

"Why didn't you say anything?" I asked.

"I didn't sign up to be your babysitter. An adventurer has to stay on his toes if he wants to stay alive." The man said.

We approached another intersection and Nato paused to check for any of the Churchgoers or the monster. I looked back at the map while waiting and realised that he had led us in a way that meant we were uncovering a significant part of the area.

"We're not wandering," I mumbled under my breath, "you're uncovering the map to make sure that we've uncovered every place the key isn't at."

"I've been an adventurer for a long time, I ain't that stupid to wander." Nato hissed back and started to cross the intersection.

I kept my mouth shut as we continued to proceed with Nato's procedure for a while. Suddenly, a Window popped up and informed us that there were eleven Users left in the task. The monster had claimed a few more people.

I feebly attempted to ignore the overbearing possibility that the other members of the party had succumbed to that horrible fate, though I couldn't stop myself from worrying about Kat, who could have been spawned into the area right next to her original captors for all we know.

"Going off the pattern," Nato huffed as he took a swig of water at an intersection, "we might get more information soon once one more person dies. That seems to be what Paradigm is doing."

Almost as if it was going off on a cue, a Window informing us that there were now ten people left popped up in front of us.

"That was quick," Nato said morbidly.

[WARNING!

A NUMBER OF USERS HAVE FAILED THE FIRST TASK.

10/26 USERS REMAIN.

NOTE: THE KEY 'S GENERAL LOCATION IS NOW REVEALED AS A POINT OF INTEREST IN USERS' MAPS.

NOTE: THE BEAST NOW HAS THE ABILITY TO HONE IN ON THE LOCATION OF THE NEAREST USERS. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DEFEAT IT. YOU WILL FAIL.]

Sure enough, when I looked at the map, it showed that a new POI radius had appeared somewhere near the middle of the area. From the slow rate of Nato's method of uncovering the map, it would still take us quite a bit of time to get to the area, but it was doable. As long as we didn't run into the Churchgoers or the beast.

Though the fact that every User now knows the general area of the key means that the chance of encounters has increased dramatically.

"Well, now we know which direction to go to," Nato grumbled.

It took us longer than anticipated to make our way across since we didn't want to deviate too much from our straight-line path towards the area shown on the map meant that we had to wait multiple times for the walls to place themselves in favourable positions for us.

Like the Solo Dungeon, there were no indications of how much time we had been stuck in the ever-changing maze, though if I had to guess, it would probably be less than a day because even though I was getting more and more tired, we didn't have to settle down and sleep. More because we couldn't afford to sleep because of how the maze was changing, no spot had been ground that didn't have the possibility of becoming occupied or turned into a wall.

The constant stop-and-go method that Nato and I were currently stuck in was starting to affect us. The warm sensation that swirled in my arm started to grow, slowly but surely as I became more tired.

The time in between the walls changing seemed to have grown shorter so we couldn't even rest up for that long before we had to shuffle along to a new spot away from what would inevitably turn into a wall. The walls' positioning was also rarely favourable for us to make our way towards the highlighted area on the map, and it was hard to ignore the feeling that it felt like the System was against us.

It was slow...slow and almost barely steady work to get as close as we got to the POI area before after what felt like hours of relative silence, we heard another group of people near us.

We froze when distant-sounding voices started to echo around us to try and figure out if they belonged to members of our party. Sadly, the voices weren't Saizo's, Kat's or Mobito's.

As the voices got louder and closer, I recognised them to be Mirou's and Yamato's, the two Churchgoers that were close to Head Pastor Maru.

"It's coming this way!" the voice that sounded like Mirou's called out.

"We need to break its line of sight!" Yamato informed.

Luckily, Nato and I were positioned in the middle of a long hallway and it didn't seem like the voices were coming from behind us or in front of us. It sounded like there was a parallel hallway on the other side of one of the walls and that was the pathway that the two Churchgoers were currently on.

Both Nato and I stayed deathly silent as we heard their grunts and running footsteps echo. We could almost guess as to their exact position even though we couldn't see through the wall, it was so loud.

Before long, their footsteps faded away but we couldn't relax because we heard a deathly harrowing roar. It wasn't like anything I had ever heard before and it shook me to the core. Loud, thundering, and heavy footsteps then grew in volume as what I could only assume as the beast started to chase down the same parallel pathway as the two Churchgoers had a few moments ago.

It took nearly all I had to force my feet to move in a shuffle after the monster's footsteps had disappeared into the distance and I glanced at Nato, who seemed to also be frozen in fear. I could see he held the hilt of his great sword so tightly that the leathery skin on his knuckles had turned almost translucent white.

When he started to move again, he cursed under his breath and said in the quietest voice I've ever heard, "we need to get to the exit as soon as possible."

I nodded as the adrenaline from the situation had eradicated all sense of fatigue in me and the swirling warmth in my arm had disappeared. Somewhere deep inside I instinctively knew that all of the power-ups that I received since I got the Left Arm is incomparable to what it takes to take on the monster, and as much as I wanted revenge for my parents' deaths, I still needed Nato alive at this very moment.

We slowly continued down the path that we were on and kept an ear out just in case the two Churchgoers and the monster somehow found their way back near us, but it was all tense silence for the whole time we walked.

This high-tension part of the journey kept going till I checked the map and noticed that we had finally reached the boundary of the general area where the key was approximately located at. Surprisingly, no more Users died since the last Window came up, so it seemed like the wiliest and strongest Users were left.

I just hoped that the party members were among the ten Users and that Kat was also with them.

Halfway into crossing a big intersection, the walls decided to shift on us and we had to almost lunge into a pathway before two slabs of concrete smashed together to create a makeshift wall.

I had fallen down on the ground and Nato held out his hand to help me onto my feet.

"How's your stamina going?" he huffed.

I looked at my Status Window and grimaced at how low it was. He noticed my reaction and claimed that he was the same, but that we had to keep going.

We were now in the POI area indicated on the map, so Nato chose one of the two possible directions to go towards and I followed him.

I don't know exactly why, it could have been the extended time I had been tense since we heard the monster close by and the fatigue that both Nato and I had accumulated, but things became a blur. I don't remember exactly the route that we took, but after a while, we found ourselves in a circular clearing, which made me get back into focus as when I checked the map, the highlighted POI area didn't update.

From the size of the clearing, and guesswork to how long it took us to travel to the highlighted area, I guessed that the clearing was about half the size of the highlighted area on the map. It was bigger than the clearing that I had to fight the Goblin Alpha in.

Both Nato and I were cautious as we entered the clearing and noticed that when the walls shifted, there was a definite circumference that the walls would not cross over and seemingly overcome by fatigue, Nato dropped to his knees when he came to that realisation.

I was going to say something along the lines that we still had to keep an eye on the Churchgoers and the monster, but I was too tired. As I was about to lower myself down to the ground myself, I heard a child scream. It was Kat's voice and the adrenaline rushed through my body again and gave me a burst of energy as I started to sprint towards the direction of the scream.

I heard Nato yell after me, but I ignored him. All my focus went on finding Kat and rescuing her. The scream was fearful and echoed loudly through the vast space, so I knew she could be quite far still, but my head went to the worst-case scenarios and I felt desperate as I had to save her.

About five hundred metres in front of me, from a newly formed path that led to the clearing, out came Head Pastor Maru and a random Churchgoer that had stayed with her, and Kat being dragged behind them against her will.

"Kat—!" I screamed but my breath was slammed out of my lungs and I flew through the air. Before tears blurred my vision, I could see the terrified faces of all three of them and before I blacked out from the lack of air, I saw from the corner of my eye that I had just been rammed by the monster.