Man, that sounded nice. Sure, she needed high productivity and a sound business strategy, but all she had to do was gather stuff. But it made sense that someone had to do it; if all the labyrinths lost money, things probably wouldn’t work out. Someone had to balance the budget.
“Your labyrinth is the typical kind where you’ve got to lure in intruders, right? It’s totally impossible to do twenty years’ worth in six months there, at least with the usual steady approach.”
“I agree. So we won’t do the usual steady approach.”
I wasn’t going to find some cheat code that would turn my labyrinth into a hangout spot, obviously. But if we used the normal approach, we were bound to fail. We had to do something drastic.
“So, the thing my labyrinth gets evaluated on specifically is luring invaders and repelling them...”
I tried to think back to some fantasy games I’d played and how people thought about labyrinths there.
“Karumi, do you get the most points off of attracting intruders and repelling them?”
“Definitely, but it’s not all about the score. As long as the labyrinth is in excellent shape, you can pass with only minimal results.”
Karumi navigated a few more menus, eventually landing at a page filled with numbers.
“Let’s see. You could pass the evaluation if you got at least one hundred and eighty intruders, and if your traps repelled about thirty percent of those.”
I was horrified at those numbers, but they really wouldn’t be that bad spread over twenty years. Less than ten intruders a year, right? I could have managed that. This all meant I would be turning this idyllic ravine into a death trap, but unfortunately—or fortunately, I suppose, given the circumstances—that actually sounded entertaining to me.
So we were changing genres. I would be going from a survival game to a PvP labyrinth management sim. Nice.
“All right then, it seems like we have our work cut out for us. We need to lure in some intruders, and then we need to kick ‘’em right back out.”
There was one final option, of course. Bribery. But that one could fail pretty spectacularly, so I didn’t want to rely on it except as a last resort.
“Mhm. And how do you think you’re gonna get that many humans out here? Heck, how are you gonna get anybody to come to a labyrinth in the middle of nowhere like this? People only care about the ones at locations of conflict between humans and Daemons.”
Well, that hit a sore spot. The last time humans had invaded this area, they ignored the labyrinth completely and went straight for Milt. Maybe the answer really was to start aggressively raising livestock and farming fish.
“Here’s the thing. The labyrinth’s purpose is to attract people, but nobody says it has to be humans. It counts if Daemons try to break in as well. And though repelling intruders is required, and killing intruders gets us points, nobody says we have to kill people to pass the evaluation, right? You with me so far?”
“Sure, but you can’t seriously be thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“I think I am. I’ll lure in Daemons instead. We’ve only got six months, so let’s split it down the middle. I’ll spend three months building the labyrinth up as much as I can. Then, for the remaining three months, I’ll lure in every hunter in Daemon territory with the promise of prizes, if they can make it through the whole dungeon. I’ll rack up the points by repelling my makeshift intruders.”
In human territory, that sort of people called themselves “adventurers,” but in Daemon territory they preferred the term “hunter.” Anything like a labyrinth was typically under the Great Dark Lord’s jurisdiction. Sometimes dungeons formed naturally, but those were few and far between. Adventurers didn’t get a lot of opportunities to hone their skills. They were a sort of jack of all trades. They’d travel to distant lands and return with valuables and animals, or do detective work like investigating and settling disputes in cities. However, their main goal was to exterminate monsters. Monsters were common everywhere, and some of them were quite dangerous. Since hunting down monsters was their main purpose, the adventurers in Daemon territory came to be known as hunters.
“That might actually work. You’re right about the intruders clause not restricting you to humans, too. Whaddaya say, Karumi?”
“If you can pull it off, it will satisfy the evaluation criteria. As long as you satisfy the conditions, it’s completely up to you, as the labyrinth manager, how you do it. If all your intruders happen to be Daemons, then that’s fine too.”
Karumi double-checked the conditions on her window and gave us the green light.
“You’re gonna need a prize, though, and a good one. The hunters are busy professionals. You’re not gonna get them traveling all the way out here for a trinket, and you’re not gonna pull a fast one on them; those guys are sharp. Maybe because they’re so poor.”
I wondered idly if Suzu had been through a bad experience with hunters.
“I’ll use this.”
I opened up the lizard leather belt one of the villagers had made for me, took out a potion, and showed it to Suzu.
“A diamond flask? So what? Sure hope the juice you’ve got in there tastes real good, or you’re shit outta luck.”
“This is a Grade 6 vitality potion. Hunters are constantly putting themselves in harm’s way, so I imagine a lot of them would love to have something like this handy, just in case the worst happens.”
“Whoa, whoa, hold the phone. Grade 6?! No freaking way! I mean, I don’t want one or anything, but you could make a killing selling that thing!”