MDPS 10

 Chapter 10

The Labyrinth (1)

It had been two days since I summoned Caligo.
A lot had happened in that time.

First off, the conditions for the Apocalypse Summoning Scroll had been updated.

[Points Remaining Until Next Inheritance]
▶ 0 / 2,000 pt

You can obtain Sacrifice Points by offering lower-grade summoning scrolls as tribute.

• Advanced: 2 pt

• Rare: 5 pt

• Heroic: 25 pt

• Legendary: 200 pt

• Mythic: 1,000 pt

The “Common” grade points had been removed, and the point values for Advanced and Rare had been reduced.
On top of that, the required points had been raised to 2,000.

The most cost-effective method was to buy Heroic scrolls—but I’d need 80 of them. Even at the lowest price of 2 million won each, that was 160 million won in total.
Eight times more than the 20 million it had taken before.

I couldn’t even imagine how much the next stage would cost.

Still, once I start climbing the Tower in earnest, I should be able to earn money…

Come on—me, the former unofficial rank #1, not being able to get just 80 scrolls?
With Caligo now in my possession, I could finally start moving seriously.
I’d already quit my job and told my family about my Awakening as an Adventurer.
Now was the time to charge forward without looking back.

Another change—through repeatedly clearing the Rune Dungeon, I’d leveled Caligo up to match Hertia.

【Death’s Liberator Caligo】
Attribute: Dark
Level: 10
Grade: Apocalypse
Class Type: Priest

[Stats]

• ATK: 7

• DEF: 13

• HP: 53

• SPD: 20

• Crit Rate: 15%

• Crit Damage: 15

• Effect Accuracy: 0

• Effect Resistance: 0

[Unique Skill]
1st Skill — “Caligo’s Law of Exchange”
Description: Caligo swaps buffs on enemies into enhanced debuffs, and debuffs on allies into enhanced buffs, according to a law of exchange he discovered. This skill always hits.

This guy was just as infamous as Hertia.
If your team was riddled with debuffs, he could turn the entire situation on its head.
At the same time, he could turn enemy buffs into nasty debuffs—a vicious debuffer.
And when his 2nd and 3rd skills are unlocked later, he could even dish out serious damage.

Naturally, he had great synergy with Hertia.
Plus, he was classified as a Priest—a role that tended to have sturdy bodies in Legend Seven.
That meant he could tank enemy attacks while buffing allies and debuffing enemies—a huge advantage.

And if Hertia followed up with her AoE 2nd skill after Caligo’s exchange?

Need I say more? Total annihilation.

That made me want to gear him up as soon as possible.

Alright. I know exactly where I’m farming next.

I decided my next target would be the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth, like the Attribute Rune Dungeon, was one of the few dungeons without a clear-time ranking.

The main reward? Fully completed equipment!

While crafted equipment from materials had higher potential, Labyrinth gear was great for quickly filling out a set with minimal grind.

This time, however, I wasn’t after equipment so much as something else.

Artifacts. I need to give Hertia and Caligo artifacts.

In Legend Seven, an item loadout had eight slots: six for basic equipment, one for exclusive gear, and the last for an artifact.

Basic equipment handled a summon’s base stats.
The other two slots were special.

• Exclusive Gear: Enhances or alters a summon’s unique skills.

• Artifact: Grants new abilities that patch up missing mechanics. Think of it as oiling a squeaky gear.

Exclusive gear was out of reach for now—getting that was basically endgame.

But I can at least have the rest ready before the update a month from now.

My current goal was to build a force capable of facing the Elf Legion.

Gear is the first step toward that.

The next day, I stood in Bundang Central Park, across from the Bundang District Office.

This was where the Labyrinth was located.
But… there was practically no one around.

The few people I did see were all high-level adventurers running Heroic-grade or higher Labyrinths.

Compared to the Rune Dungeon, the difference was night and day.

I guess the Labyrinth really is a dead feature in reality, just like in the game.

And I could understand why.
Back in the game days, the Labyrinth was considered a “failed piece of content”—an awkward dungeon with little appeal.

Even low-grade Labyrinths weren’t easy.
They were riddled with traps and had long, complex mazes.

For newbies, the gear rewards weren’t enough to make their summons dramatically stronger.
Veterans preferred custom-crafted gear from the Workshop Tower over Labyrinth’s lower-ceiling equipment.

It was, quite literally, a chicken rib—too much trouble to bother with.

But right now, this place is perfect for me.

In the past, I’d squeezed Legend Seven dry.
Not because of any grand reason—just because, as a student, spending money was out of the question, so I chased every possible reward instead.

I ran the Labyrinth endlessly to clear achievements.

The result?

I can read the entrance patterns well enough to guess the route.

Which meant that, for me, the Labyrinth was a quick, easy, and rewarding dungeon, even at low levels.

Alright, which grade should I pick…

The Normal-grade boss was probably a Goblin Chief—the same as in the tutorial, but tougher.

But with both Hertia and Caligo, there was no need to bother with Normal.

Advanced-grade isn’t really worth it either.

If I was thinking about future equipment, I should go for something higher.

In the end, I decided on the Rare-grade Labyrinth.

Artifacts only drop from Rare-grade and above, after all.

《Entering “Berserker’s Labyrinth” (Rare).》

Meanwhile — Record Tower.

Team Leader Lee Jung-yul was still obsessed with tracking down the adventurer who had broken the tutorial record.

“Taegyun, still nothing today?”
“No, no new dungeon records have been set.”
“…Alright. Keep checking.”

She was frustrated.

By her original plan, she thought they would have pinpointed the rookie by now.
But as time passed, more new adventurers appeared, making it harder and harder to identify him.

In one month, a new episode would launch.
All previous major updates had meant one thing—increased difficulty.

And this wasn’t just any update—it was a Main Episode update.
That meant a sudden spike in difficulty and a very real chance of large-scale dungeon breaks.

If Korea, still reeling from the shock of the first dungeon break, suffered another one… the fragile peace they had would shatter.

That’s why they had to find this “super rookie” first.

Don’t tell me he went into a Rune Dungeon…

No, that would be insane.
Someone who just cleared the tutorial going into a Rune Dungeon?
A 99%—no, 100%—chance of dying.

…He’s not actually dead, right?

What if he wasn’t a genius rookie at all, but just some idiot who got lucky with a good summon?
What if he overestimated himself, dove headfirst into a high-level dungeon, and died?

As the suspicion gained plausibility, Lee Jung-yul’s frustration grew.

That’s when Park Taegyun made an unexpected suggestion.

“What if that rookie is… filthy rich?”
“…What?”
“Think about it. Even with a great summon from Awakening rewards, clearing the tutorial in 34 seconds is insane.”
“…That’s true.”
“So maybe he was loaded from the start, slapped top-grade gear on a strong summon, and just breezed through. With that kind of money, he wouldn’t even need to farm places like Growth Forest.”
“…Go on.”
“Me? I’d run the tutorial once for the experience, then sell everything and live comfortably.”
“…Get back to work.”

If not for that ending, the idea might have been perfect.

Still, the “rich rookie” theory made sense.

The guy’s usually clueless, but sometimes he’s weirdly sharp.

If this was true, the rookie was probably “shopping” right now—buying summons and gear with cash instead of grinding low-tier dungeons.
After the shopping spree, he would…

…head straight for the Tower. The prestige of being a top-tier conqueror is something even billionaires can’t easily buy.

If that was the case, they needed to keep their eyes on the Tower.
And if he was connected to Korea’s business elite, that would be a big advantage in negotiations—offering domestic perks would be easier than competing with foreign guilds for cash.

Not that I’d personally be handling that—it’d be the guildmaster’s headache, not mine.

They still weren’t sure, but at least the possibilities were expanding… or maybe that just meant more headaches.

Lee Jung-yul sighed and leaned back in her chair.
As a sharp pang of pain flared in her temples, the phone rang.

Brrr—
“-Ah, yes, uh, Yes, Korea Adventurer Association here.”

She glanced over.
The international department staff member was speaking stiff, awkward English, looking like they were on the verge of tears.
They were probably getting grilled hard.

From conversations with Guildmaster Jeon Myeong-il, she knew that lately, major adventurer nations had been putting heavy pressure on them.
It was because of the upcoming episode—they wanted early access to information, and foreign interference had already begun.

Ignoring such demands could mean losing foreign cooperation in Tower raids.

Trading in human lives… lunatics.

But that was reality.
Without outside help, Korea’s adventurer force was too weak to prevent dungeon breaks.

While she was mulling over these thoughts, Park Taegyun interrupted.

“But, Team Leader… isn’t there something more urgent right now?”
“Oh—right! Damn it, that too!”

The most urgent matter was preparing for the minor patch coming soon.

These “taste-test updates” came right before major ones, often changing systems or dungeon layouts drastically—and causing the most accidents during raids.

The Main Episode update would be her first, but based on past cases, she was expecting a minor patch any moment now.

“It’s about time, isn’t it? Usually they hit within a week of the announcement.”
“That’s how it’s been most of the time, yeah…”

That’s when it happened.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

The Record Tower’s alarm blared—a signal that a pre-patch announcement had arrived.
The massive electronic board lit up.

《Before the Episode 8 update, a preliminary patch will be applied.》
《Target: “The Labyrinth.”》
《Upon entering the Labyrinth, there will be a chance for Nightmare Mode to activate.》
《In Nightmare Mode, difficulty increases and the maze changes in real-time.》

The staff groaned.

“That’s the top-end difficulty mode! Even veterans avoided it, and now they’re applying it to every Labyrinth?!”
“Come on! People who couldn’t make much money risked their lives farming here!”
“This is basically telling them to die!”

The system ignored their complaints and continued.

《If the Labyrinth is not cleared within a set period after the patch, a dungeon break may occur.》
《Clearing a Nightmare Mode Labyrinth will grant huge rewards.》
《Patch version 2.45.12B will be applied in 20 seconds.》
《See the details page for more information.》

Raise the difficulty and threaten a dungeon break if it isn’t cleared?
That was just malicious.

The staff slumped back, overheated with frustration.
But as team leader, Lee Jung-yul acted immediately.

“Alright! No time to waste! The patch hits in 20 seconds—notify all adventurers right now! And especially—no one enters the Labyrinth until we have strategy intel!”

At the same time, she thought to herself:

At least it’s fine if our rookie is rich. He won’t get caught up in a Labyrinth disaster.

After all, billionaires could just order tailor-made gear from head to toe—why bother with a place like the Labyrinth?

《Nightmare Mode activated.》
《Labyrinth difficulty increased.》
《Nightmare Mode Labyrinth will change its layout in real-time.》

…What kind of bullsht is this now?*