Chapter 169

The price varies by desire. Shady as hell, but I understood it immediately. The whole point of this maze was to make you face your desire in the first place.

“Yeah, I get it.”

“......”

“Then tell me what you paid as the price. I’ll listen and decide.”

For the first time, Ahn Jinha—who’d been answering obediently until now—clamped his mouth shut.

“Can’t answer?”

I’d thought this would go smoothly since he’d spilled without a beating, but apparently he could still tell what he should and shouldn’t say.

His gaze slid past me to the tent entrance.

'Someone coming?'

I straightened in the chair, leaned back, and nodded slowly.

'It’s obvious anyway. You paid with a person, right?'

In the end, someone dies. No reason to waste time pressing that. I moved on to the next question fast.

“Then something else.”

“......”

“Are the others out there right now looking for that ‘god’?”

“...Yeah.”

As expected, the answer came quickly. I calmly followed up with a few more necessary questions.

“Is there a reason you don’t move around at night?”

“We do. If Cheongmin says so.”

“Trying to recruit other people?”

“That’s... the main goal.”

He paused, like he was weighing his words, then added slowly,

“...But we don’t go around much.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s dangerous at night. And if it keeps repeating, there’s a chance you go mad.”

“Go mad?”

If it was dangerous due to outside factors, fine. But what about moving at night would make you lose your mind?

I was honestly curious.

“What does ‘go mad’ mean? Are you saying if you roam at night, you lose your mind?”

He looked like he didn’t know where to start.

“It’s the maze’s trait. You must’ve just gotten in—you don’t know, do you.”

“The maze’s trait?”

“Yeah.”

He gave the short answer, then finally started explaining.

“This maze... grants wishes. Not just raising your level. But it doesn’t grant just any wish you ask for—it grants your true wish.”

“Speak so I can understand it.”

“The wish you think in your head and the wish you actually want can be surprisingly far apart. You even lie to yourself. But here, you can’t help but be honest to yourself.”

So reading what you want meant something like that?

I nodded to show I was following and waited for him to continue.

“...And time flows vaguely in this maze. There aren’t in-between times like morning or afternoon or dawn—there’s only day and night.”

“I know. I’ve experienced it.”

“And... those ‘desires’ usually swell at night. It’s your first day, so you probably haven’t felt it yet, but you’ll get it as time passes. If you move around the maze at night, your desire gets constantly prodded. If you have comrades... or if you only move occasionally, I heard it’s a little better.”

“Hm.”

So the more nights repeat, the more you become a slave to desire with your instincts awakened? And if that repeats, the current of wanting your desire gets so strong your reason falls behind?

Ahn Jinha slowly nodded and added,

“Right. Usually then... desire rushes to the front so extremely that a person gets buried in it or goes completely mad. If it takes a self-destructive form, that’s a bit better, but if it turns aggressive... things get complicated.”

“For example?”

“Wiping out everyone who feels like a threat.”

“Is that actually doable?”

I understood that humans reduced to instinct are dangerous. Actually carrying it out is another question.

Even if you want to kill everyone, whether you can kill everyone is a different story entirely.

But he answered evenly,

“...I told you—it’s a maze that grants wishes. If you happen to meet the ‘god,’ that’s the end. Still, most people just go crazy alone and that’s it.”

“......”

“You must’ve seen it.”

As he said it, he tapped his own jaw with a finger.

“The kid whose tooth you pulled.”

“Ah.”

So he’d wandered the maze at night and lost his mind? Unfortunate, in its way.

I briefly traced the maze’s traits in my head and asked,

“Was he originally a teammate? I mean, before he snapped.”

“......”

I’d expected a sure answer this time, but he said nothing.

“Well... yeah.”

When he finally spoke, it was the queasy kind of admission that left a bad taste.

I let my gaze drop and skimmed him, then tilted my head.

“Odd reaction. So he wasn’t a teammate—you’d been carrying him as a spare life from the start?”

“That’s not it, he was a teammate. He was, but he lost his mind and it was hard to deal with him. What if he exposed our location?”

“To who? Another unhinged person like you mentioned?”

“Anyone. People, monsters—if our position gets exposed, it’s just... risky.”

Hm? That was odd.

I cut him off and asked,

“There are monsters here?”

“Why wouldn’t there be. They roam the maze. That’s why this place is relatively safe.”

“I haven’t seen a single one.”

“That’s...”

He scrubbed his jaw with his hand and tossed another vague glance outside. I turned his chin back so he couldn’t look away and pressed him.

“Talk.”

“Maybe someone’s desire was to make the roaming monsters disappear.”

“Whose?”

“I don’t know. But it’s not like they’re completely gone—I’ve heard people have seen them here and there. So until we figure it out, everyone’s laying low.”

At that, I let go of his chin.

That was more than enough to understand how this maze ran.

A “god” grants a wish called desire. The price can be up to your life, and if you’re unlucky, the side effect is you go insane. As long as you don’t run into them at night, the benefits are decent enough that you form groups and wander around looking for the god. The escape method is something everyone knows “in theory”...

I stared at him a moment, then asked,

“What did you do before you came in here? Mess with machines for a living?”

“As a hobby.”

“And even now, you don’t plan to leave the maze and live properly?”

“...I’ll leave. After a little longer.”

Useless. I considered trying to coax him more, then dropped it fast. He just wasn’t obvious about it, but the fact he’d come in here at all was proof his head wasn’t screwed on right.

'His tech’s a bit of a waste, but not irreplaceable.'

If he’s staying, let him.

I put his personal matters aside and slowly replayed what he’d said.

'Yeah. I need to meet the ‘god’ these bastards are talking about before I go.'

That felt like the real reason Jin Haedo had thrown me # Nоvеlight # in here. Not to hear a route and slip out without touching anything.

I was about to set that plan when the tent flap suddenly rattled.

No need to turn to check who made a loud entrance.

Name: Gi Cheongmin

Age: 26

Rank: E

Title: —

Main Skills: Body Reinforcement (E), Vigilance (E)

Growth Limit: E

Right—if I heard new people had shown up where I was, I’d come straight over too.

I turned my head slowly and faced him.

A man with a long, split scar running from his forehead to his lip was frowning at the scene. Without the scar, he probably wouldn’t look that rough, but he was deliberately twisting his expression, so the mood wasn’t gentle.

“Who told you to bring them here?”

His irritated voice cut the air.

Ahn Jinha, crumpled on the cot, lifted his head to look at Gi Cheongmin and answered,

“They said they had to check their teammate’s face. I didn’t know they’d barge in like this.”

He was speaking in a casual tone, but the sound of it reeked of excuses. Cheongmin didn’t press; he turned his head a little and locked eyes with me.

He looked me over and tossed a line at Ahn Jinha.

“Come out and talk.”

“Okay.”

Only then did Ahn Jinha slide off the cot and shuffle out after him.

After a short while, the tent opened again and Gi Cheongmin came back in.

Seemed he’d wrapped the talk up; his expression had eased, if only slightly.

“Are you joining?”

He threw the question out of nowhere, then perched on the cot right in front of my chair and glanced at Ryu Taejun.

“You said you came to find him.”

“Yeah. Who told you to take someone like that?”

I asked it blandly, and he let out a faint, amused snort.

'Brazen bastard.'

It was honestly interesting enough that I stared. He folded his arms and tossed his own line back.

“We had our reasons. When someone new comes in, we always make the first move.”

“How do you know someone new came in?”

Did the maze announce every entry? He answered matter-of-factly,

“The warning tone is a little different on a day when someone new enters. I mean the warning tone before it switches to night.”

“Tells you all kinds of things, huh.”

He eyed me with a strange look, then lifted his chin. In a flat voice, he said,

“Don’t think about joining.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll teach you how to escape.”