Raizer stepped into the oppressive humidity of the Dungeon's first floor, drawing his combat knife in a single, fluid motion. He felt the weight of the dungeon. The musty scent of ground and death oozing from everywhere.
The first thing he did was expand his senses. Normally, human senses were out of control, acting as per our subconscious will. But 'Absolute Control' allowed Raizer to take the reins. He expanded his senses whilst evading a sensory overload.
With heightened senses, he could 'see' everything. The dark couldn't hinder his sight, the cold drip of water against the damp ground was amplified, the cool air pressed against his skin. He felt 'alive' and in control.
Shaking off the sensory high, he moved forward.
"Gawblins~" he muttered under his breath, his eyes scanning the pulsating, vein-like walls of the Labyrinth.
[Host? You really need to stop saying that.]
"What? You've never seen Gawblin Slayer? It's a classic," Raizer retorted, dropping into a low, predatory crouch.
He moved forward, and despite the awkward, deep-knee position, his body felt strangely comfortable. Once again, it was 'Absolute Control' at work. Normally, the human brain acts as a limiter, preventing muscles from tearing themselves apart and making movement a series of approximations. But for Raizer, the lag between "intent" and "action" had vanished. If he imagined his center of gravity shifting by a millimeter, his muscles adjusted instantly with surgical precision.
- Krrk!
His body moved along with his mind, snapping towards the source of the sound.
There, a dog-faced monster jumped out of the wall.
'A kobold?'
The monster snarled, its eyes clouded with the ancestral hatred the Dungeon bred into its children. It raised a crude, jagged club, ready to paint the floor with accountant-flavored brains.
"Hu~"
Raizer exhaled, a thin trail of vapor leaving his lips.
He didn't just jump; he exploded. The Kobold swung its club in a desperate horizontal arc, but Raizer wasn't there.
- Slice! Thud!
Using Absolute Control, he had tilted his torso at an angle that would have snapped a normal man's spine, sliding underneath the weapon's reach.
As he passed, Raizer's knife sang. He didn't just 'cut' the monster; he targeted the precise insertion point of the Achilles tendon and the brachial plexus under the arm. Blood spurted in rhythmic jets. The Kobold let out a choked yelp, its arm going limp as the club clattered to the floor.
Raizer didn't overextend. He planted his lead foot, used the momentum of his slide to pirouette on a single toe, and brought the knife around in a devastating arc.
- Squelch! Spurt!
The blade buried itself in the Kobold's throat, severing the windpipe and carotid artery. Raizer felt the vibration of the steel grating against the vertebrae, a sensation that should have made him nauseous. Instead, his mind remained cold, calculating the next move before the body even hit the ground. The Kobold dissolved into black ash, leaving behind a small, violet crystal.
"That felt... efficient," Raizer noted, spinning the knife back into a reverse grip.
[5 out of 10, host! You should have simply thrown the knife at the head and ended it. Retrieving your weapons can cost you but in one-on-one situations, it's better to end the battle from a range!]
Raizer agreed. Especially since he wasn't used to killing. He should have tried to throw it from a distance.
'But I can't be a coward. I came here for strength after all.'
He looked at the dark corridor with his gaze, noticing the walls move. The Labyrinth was alive and it was hunting him now. The walls began to ripple and groan, the Labyrinth was "birthing" a response. One by one, four... six... ten Kobolds clawed their way out of the masonry, surrounding him in the narrow corridor.
"Round 2."
Raizer gripped his knife and crouched down, rushing into the swarm of incoming monsters.
- Shh! Bang! Thud!
He didn't run like an athlete; he moved like a glitch in reality. He side-stepped the first Kobold's overhead strike by a hair's breadth—literally feeling the wind of the club brush his ear. Without looking, he snapped a back-kick into the monster's knee.
As the monster buckled, Raizer grabbed its head, using the creature as a meat shield to catch the club of a second attacker.
- Crr-ack!
The shield-Kobold's skull collapsed inward.
Raizer didn't waste the opportunity. He launched his knife. The blade spiraled through the air, driven by a wrist flick of perfected torque, and buried itself deep in the eye socket of a third Kobold.
He was now unarmed, but far from defenseless. As a fourth monster lunged with a rusted dagger, he jumped up and backflipped in the air, drawing another knife from his back as he dodged the dagger that was aimed at his back.
He descended like a falling guillotine, the momentum of his body weight driving the blade straight through the Kobold's crown. The kobold vanished into dust, freeing his weapon.
- Clang!
He hit the ground, immediately parrying a rusted sword. The impact vibrated up his arm, but Absolute Control allowed him to redistribute the force through his skeletal structure, neutralizing the shock. He twisted his hips, delivered a mule-kick that sent the attacker flying into a wall, and retreated into a corner.
With his back protected, Raizer's eyes turned glacial. The remaining horde rushed him in a frantic, uncoordinated swarm.
It was a slaughter.
Raizer became a blur of steel. When a Kobold tried a high-reach overhead strike, Raizer's foot moved faster than the eye could follow, snapping upward to kick the hilt of the monster's own sword.
- Clang!
The sword flew upward, hit the ceiling, and bounced back down point-first, impaling a different Kobold through the snout. Raizer didn't even watch it happen; he was already busy disemboweling the unarmed one.
As he tore the knife free, he flicked the gore off the blade and into the eyes of the next two attackers. They blinked, their instincts forcing them to flinch. That split second was their death sentence. Raizer slid between them, his blades dancing in twin arcs that opened their throats with surgical symmetry.
- Fsshhh!
Blood sprang forth from the dying kobolds, their bodies disappearing into black mist and returning to the dungeon. But something stopped the mist, instead it was all drawn into the adventurer's body. For the moment, Raizer ignored this phenomenon as there were monster present before him.
Raizer glanced at the remaining kobolds. These monsters had no concept of death. Dying in the dungeon would only lead to rebirth under the labyrinth's care.
But now, death had become a concept. Had these monsters been aware, they wouldn't have rushed in so fearlessly.
Raizer swung his blade in a smooth pattern, swiping it horizontally.
Winged Blade
- Slice!
A crescent of shimmering wind and compressed mana tore from the edge of the steel. It wasn't a physical projectile so much as a localized distortion of air. The remaining three Kobolds, still mid-charge, were sheared in half. The "Blade" only traveled about three meters before the mana dissipated, but the result was absolute. Three more clouds of mist were promptly devoured by Raizer's body.
As he exhaled, the wall behind him wriggled. An "ambush" Kobold emerged, teeth bared for a silent strike.
- Stab!
Without turning his head, Raizer drove his knife backward, over his shoulder. The blade sank into the monster's temple, pinning it to the wall until it dissolved.
[That was something else, host!]
"Forget that," Raizer picked up the knife he had thrown at the start of the fight and checked its condition before continuing, "Why did the dead monster mist flow into me?"
[The mist didn't flow into you, host. It flew into me!]
"You?"
[Even systems need energy to survive, host. As the ever-versatile 'King-Maker' system, I can adapt to and absorb all kinds of energy. This mist is only another form of energy.]
"Scary~"
Raizer whistled, wondering if souls were also another form of energy. Then, would he be able to kill that snake from Naruto?
[By the way, what was that move you pulled back there, host? 'Winged Blade', was it?]
"Ah~ That was magic."
[Magic?]
If the system had a face, it would twitching in disbelief. How had an ordinary human suddenly awakened magic?
"Honestly, it's still a thing I'm working on. Since the 'Absolute Control' skill gives me control over my body, I wondered if it gave me control over my mana too. Hence, I imagined it."
Raizer paused, thinking back on it.
"I thought about what I wanted to do. I wanted to control the mana within me to shoot a sharp blade. Apparently, that works."
- SP: 160/172 {Regen: 0.172/min}
- MP: 320/360 {Regen: 0.22/min}
That single strike drained almost 40 MP from his reserve while his stamina had fallen by 10. Fortunately, 'Absolute Control' made sure to minimize the stamina drained during the battle. He had grown slightly too. His physique went up by 0.02 points after a single battle.
[What if the magic didn't work?]
"Then, I would have had to do it the good, old way."
Even if magic didn't work, Raizen could kill the monsters with his knife. After killing the monsters, Raizer began collecting and dumping their monster crystals into his inventory.
He needed these to pay for his bills.
Raizer methodically swept the floor, tossing monster crystals and an unusual amount of loot into his inventory. He hadn't lived in Orario long enough to realize how bizarre this was. In the standard rules of the Labyrinth, "Drop Items" were rare—accidents where the Dungeon failed to reclaim a piece of a monster's corpse before it dissolved.
But here, it was a fire sale. Every other Kobold left behind a jagged tooth, a tuft of reinforced fur, or a crude blade. Since the King-Maker System was intercepting the "death-mist" and preventing the Dungeon from recycling the souls of the fallen, the Labyrinth had lost its grip on the physical remains as well.
"Man, I wonder how much this all sells for," Raizer mused, weighing a Kobold fang in his palm. "If the exchange rate to US Dollars is good, I might be able to pay off that Stark Industries margin call by next Tuesday."
[Your greed is unbecoming of a King, Host! King doesn't fret over pocket change!]
"Yeah, yeah. King also doesn't have a $350,000 mortgage in Hell's Kitchen," Raizer retorted, cracking his neck. His adrenaline had plateaued, but his mind remained sharp, fueled by the 'Absolute Control' over his heightened senses.
He paused, his gaze narrowing as he looked at the pulsing walls. An accountant's mind is built on logic and systems. He converted this world into a process to understand it better. And a random thought popped in his mind.
If the Labyrinth relies on a closed loop—birth, death, absorption, rebirth—what happens when a "virus" breaks the loop? What happens when the 'virus' absorbs the things it wasn't meant to?
If I'm the virus, what does the body do?
- Tremble!
The answer came in the form of a localized earthquake. The Great Labyrinth didn't just tremble; it convulsed. It had recognized the presence of a lethal pathogen within its stone veins. A foreign entity was stealing its energy, and the Labyrinth moved with the singular, primordial intent to purge the infection.
"Fck!"
[Language, Host! A King uses sophisticated insults!]
"I'll work on my vocabulary when I'm not being digested!" Raizer snapped.
The walls didn't just ripple—they tore open. It was a violent, accelerated "birthing" process. Goblins, Lizardmen, and Kobolds began to materialize from the stone like a fever dream.
Far below, in the deeper strata, monsters from the 2nd to the 15th floors, creatures that should never be seen near the surface, froze. They turned their heads toward the first floor, driven by a collective, divine command to hunt.
"Yeah... Fck!"
Winged Blade (x2)
- Fshh! Shhhhh!
Raizer didn't wait for them to finish spawning. He blurred into motion, knives in both hands. With the surgical precision of Absolute Control, he unleashed twin crescents of pressurized mana.
The mana blades caught the monsters while they were still half-merged with the walls. They were shredded—literally cleaved into two. One half remained stuck in the stone, while the other slumped to the floor in a shower of gore.
Suddenly, a blue screen flickered into existence, pulsing with an angry, red border.
[Hidden Quest: Survive!]
[Description: 'Something' has incurred the wrath of the labyrinth! You, who dared to break the norm, be prepared to face the consequences! BUT! Change is the inevitable law of this world! Devour the dungeon before it devours it!]
[Condition: Escape to the surface!]
[Reward: Scaling based on total 'energy' absorbed.]
[Congratulations, Host! It seems you have triggered a Hidden Quest! I knew your potential was legendary!] the System chimed, sounding entirely too proud of itself.
"Me? I triggered it?" Raizer hissed, side-stepping a Goblin's spear and plunging his knife into its throat. "You're the one eating the scenery, you parasitic bastard!"
The System didn't argue. As the newly killed monsters turned to dust, the black mist was violently vacuumed into Raizer's chest. The Dungeon, sensing its life force being stolen yet again, shrieked in a way that only stone can. More monsters began sprouting—faster, larger, and angrier.
"Damn you, system!"
Raizer didn't stay to fight the hoard. He bolted. He wasn't running like a terrified man; he was dashing with the calculated burst of a professional athlete. Every muscle fiber was firing at 100% efficiency, his feet barely touching the ground as he navigated the shifting corridors.
His goal was simple: The stairs. The exit. Freedom.
Unfortunately, the Labyrinth was no longer a passive maze. It was a predator. Ahead of him, the exit path began to seal, and the corridor was suddenly choked with a wall of muscle and teeth. Every monster the first floor could conceive was now standing between Raizer Haze and his escape.