Chapter 15

Interlude 3 Holding a broad longsword in its right hand, the minotaur left the boss room of the one hundredth floor for the first time in a while. It was quickly attacked by a basilisk. Basilisks were giant snakes that slithered through the corridors at high speeds. They had diamond-shaped heads so heavy and tough that they were reminiscent of giants’ hammers. Something that looked like the comb of a rooster or the dorsal fin of a fish extended from their heads and halfway down their bodies. Their mouths were comically large and packed with razor-sharp teeth strong enough to shatter stone. The most fearsome part of the basilisk was its tongue. It could extend and branch as fast as lightning. It could also reach enemies from very far away. One touch of the tongue would turn the victim to stone. Being turned to stone in a labyrinth meant you were as good as dead. Basilisks could also secrete a slimy bodily fluid. That fluid was a deadly poison that caused rapid decline of all bodily functions and relentlessly sapped the life of its victim. The one hundredth floor of the Sazardon Labyrinth was made up of hallways connected in concentric circles, with many stone rooms strewn about. The staircase connecting to the upper floors was in the center, and the boss room was located in the hallway farthest from that point. The farther you progressed into the floor, the more basilisks you would find slithering around. If you tried to avoid the basilisks by entering a stone room, however, in most cases you would encounter an even more dangerous monster. For that reason, long ago when humans first reached this floor, they reported that it was hell itself. The minotaur cut off the tongue of the attacking basilisk and activated its Analysis skill, as well as a skill that gave it status-ailment resistance and kicked the basilisk’s head up into the air. The basilisk lunged at the minotaur’s side as it rose from the ground. The minotaur quickly found the basilisk’s heart using its Analysis skill. For some reason, the basilisk’s heart was not near its head but nearer the middle of its body. The minotaur thrust its sword into the serpent’s underbelly and sliced open its heart. The monster’s hide was incredibly tough, but its underbelly was soft. By the time it landed, it was already dead. Its giant body soon disappeared, leaving behind a breastplate. It was made with basilisk scales, which gave it high defense and also resistance to status ailments. Basilisks dropped excellent armor. Wearing a full set would increase the user’s magic and physical defense and also reflect attacks inflicting status ailments at double the strength. It was an item the minotaur no longer had any interest in, so it left the breastplate behind and continued walking. After it encountered one more basilisk and killed it, the minotaur stepped into a stone room. There was a hydra inside. Hydras were magical beasts that were designated disaster-level threats when they appeared in the world of humans. They had bodies as large as elephants and bore nine heads and a single tail. They were covered in extremely hard scales, and each of their heads breathed deadly poison gas as they twisted and turned around one another. The biggest reason hydras were such a nuisance to fight was because of their regenerative ability. Even if you managed to cut off a leg, a head, or any part of a hydra’s body, it would grow back in the blink of an eye. Any injuries healed instantly as well. In order to kill a hydra, you had to first halt its regeneration, and the only way to do that was to cut off the heads responsible for it. Two of the nine heads held the key to regeneration. Their location differed every time. By severing both nearly simultaneously, the hydra’s regenerative ability would be dramatically diminished. In the outside world, there was a particular strategy that was considered the most logical way to fight one. First, you would use magic to both hinder its movement and locate the two heads responsible for regeneration and sever them together. You would then cut off the remaining heads and, using something like a ballista or a battering ram, continue to attack it until its life force depleted. Hydras had the highest resistance to magic attacks out of all known monsters, and they had an astonishingly high level of vitality. Consequently, it was difficult to kill them any other way. In other words, whether a human had any chance against a hydra depended on how well they could restrict its movement. It was a difficult thing to manage with any method other than magic. Chains and ropes would be severed by the jagged scales, and even if hundreds of people were to try to move hydra all at once, they wouldn’t stand a chance against its weight and strength. The method of trapping it by having it fall into a hole had been tried before, but that always ended in failure. The reason for that was because hydras had astounding leaping ability. No one understood how they were able to jump so high with their heavy legs. There were some who suggested it may have been a sort of flight. After jumping, hydras landed with force enough to demolish a small fortress. As if able to sense something about the puny invader standing in front of it, the hydra jumped. It landed where the minotaur was standing. If a human coming to this floor for the first time had encountered this hydra, they would have been extremely nervous about the sheer difficulty of the fight ahead. However, all the minotaur was thinking as it faced this tenacious, multiheaded enemy for the first time in a while was how quickly it could defeat it. The minotaur then engaged the hydra utilizing a method that humans had never thought of.