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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 17
Chapter Title: Total Annihilation (2)
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And then she opened her eyes.
She was still Serena. Serena Parkling Hwaim. The bright eighteen-year-old princess of the Kingdom of Hwaji.
She wasn't alive, but her consciousness was perfectly clear. She remembered every emotion she'd harbored right up to the moment of death. This wasn't reincarnation either. Serena had no body at all right now.
'Am I a ghost right now?'
Perhaps because she'd shed her flesh, the dark labyrinth stretched out clearly into the distance.
Lavenda, Ralph, and Chrome had all been stabbed and crushed to death by the Minotaur. If they'd heeded Serena's warning, at least one of them might have survived. What a shame.
'No. What good would surviving alone do? Better to die alongside everyone else.'
What was the point of being left alone in an isolated labyrinth with dwindling supplies? Dying like that might have been for the best.
That's what the reincarnator thought.
Serena drifted upward, piercing through the ceiling of the second floor and ascending to the first. They'd said you couldn't dig through the ground or ceiling in the labyrinth to move between levels, but that apparently didn't apply to souls.
The first floor wasn't the end. She floated lightly upward and upward, finally emerging onto the surface she'd so desperately wanted to reach. Bright sunlight—not the labyrinth's eerie glow—bathed the ground and Serena alike.
Serena squinted. It wasn't that the sunlight was blinding after days without it, or that it damaged her spiritual form or anything like that.
No, she was frowning at something utterly bizarre she'd never seen in either of her lives.
'What the hell is that?'
Serena had expected that escaping the labyrinth would reveal Hwajichen swallowed by a massive earthquake, turned into a disaster zone. Collapsed castles and cities, people wailing in agony. A scene straight out of hell. Countless souls like hers, turned into ghosts.
But the Hwajichen she saw as a ghost had no toppled buildings, no screaming crowds, no strewn corpses, no cracked earth.
Something existed that Serena hadn't anticipated—something probably no one could have.
A colossal tower loomed before Serena. Pitch-black, as if absorbing all light, it speared endlessly toward the heavens.
How many stories was it? Even among the skyscrapers she'd seen in her previous life, none rose higher. Serena craned her neck, but she couldn't see the top.
As she floated higher and higher, the tower pierced the clouds and kept climbing. Was a space elevator from the movies even this tall?
But even a space elevator had an end. This tower didn't seem to.
As if humans weren't permitted to glimpse its peak.
'No way... is this the labyrinth?'
Serena glanced down at the dizzying depths below.
'Has Hwajichen been devoured by the labyrinth?'
The thought that this was some deathbed hallucination didn't cross her mind. Hwajichen had been swallowed whole by the labyrinth, and atop it stood this grotesque tower—the labyrinth itself.
Then what had become of the people who'd lived there? Serena recalled Lavenda's words, which she'd dismissed as nonsense.
'Were all the people swallowed up too? That's got to be around a hundred thousand. The whole capital? Castles, temples, everything?'
If so, why hadn't she encountered them in the labyrinth? Or were a hundred thousand people still wandering lost somewhere inside?
Only to die there, just like her and her companions?
Ugh.
Serena shuddered. Even knowing she'd reincarnate after death, dying was terrifying.
Especially when a hundred thousand people had been wiped out in an instant.
Good people, bad people, old, young, layabouts, great figures—everyone had perished equally. Without warning, a hundred thousand lives snuffed out in a heartbeat.
'That's scary.'
The more she thought about it, the more horrifying and chilling it became.
'I hope you all reincarnate somewhere great. Thanks for the taxes. I didn't make it to twenty, but thanks to you, I lived well.'
Most of those hundred thousand dead were Hwaji's citizens. Grateful, ignorant folk who'd adored her simply because she was royalty.
Serena prayed for the hundred thousand souls to find paradise. Reincarnation was luck-based, so she hoped they'd all draw the best lots. That's when—
Wooooong.
A chilling sound emanated from the tower. Even without a body, goosebumps prickled across her. In her soul state, her form trembled faintly, scattering and reforming repeatedly.
'What is that?'
Wooooooong—.
Another eerie, spine-tingling noise poured from the tower. It was a wail. The reason for the strange sounds became clear soon enough.
"No way... are all those people?"
The black, grotesque tower brimmed with human souls. Unlike Serena, they weren't free—they were trapped inside, wracked by agony and despair, weeping and cursing endlessly.
Their collective lament shook the tower, the vibrations spreading outward as sound.
"This can't be. Can they not get out? Is there no door or anything?"
"Those swallowed by the labyrinth can never leave it. Nor can those who die within."
"Who's there!"
A robed figure stood beside her, as if it had been there from the start.
The hood was pulled so low his face was invisible. Age unknown. Gender unknown. Human? Debatable.
One thing was clear: the eyes peering from the robe were a deep crimson.
Serena tried to sort through her jumbled thoughts, wondering what on earth was happening.
"You mean... even in death, they can't escape the labyrinth?"
She'd met this figure in a dream before dying. If this wasn't a hallucination or some bullshit dream, then it was a being that transcended human dreams and death.
"Yes. Even in death, they can't escape the labyrinth. Eternally."
"But I did."
"You're not a soul of this world, so you're a special exception."
The figure already knew she'd reincarnated from another world.
"Reincarnation isn't supposed to involve traveling between worlds, is it?"
"Some do, some don't. You failed to reincarnate properly—you're more like a lost child. Since our paths have crossed, I'll guide you to where you belong."
A golden path unfurled beneath Serena's feet. It was dazzling, alluring.
Follow that radiant, ecstatic path, and what waited at the end? The Emerald City?
No.
At the end of the golden path waited rest. The peace every person, every living being yearned for. She felt it almost certainly.
This life hadn't truly been hers after all. That was where she belonged.
Serena stepped toward the golden path, entranced.
Lady Serena!
A familiar voice halted her.
Wooooong.
The tower—the labyrinth—the souls trapped within wailed again. Amid them, Serena sought that familiar voice.
Waaah, Lady Serena! Where are you? I'm so scared! Lady Serena! Honey!
The desperate cry of a handmaiden searching for her beloved charge.
Once she discerned one, others became clearer too.
Richard, you traitor!
Always angry, always sad. Her brother's voice, seething with rage.
Not just close ones—recent acquaintances too.
I must be crazy! Why come to Hwaji and die like this? I want to go to Vieta! If I'm dying in a labyrinth, make it Vieta's!
The masseuse who'd come to Hwaji chasing big dreams, only to suffer and die.
Noooo! How hard did I earn that money! I can't die without spending it! No!
Chrome, the eldest, who'd gotten no respect as such and suffered the most.
Mom! Dad! Sister-in-law! You're all not here, right? No kids either? Just me? Right?
Ralph, who'd only wanted to prank his brother for underestimating quadruplet childcare.
His relieved voice at no family soon turned to horrific screams.
Why! Why am I the only one here!
The souls trapped in the labyrinth wailed like vengeful spirits. Serena couldn't bear it.
"This is too much! Those people are innocent. Do they have to stay trapped forever?"
One or two, she could write off as bad luck.
But a hundred thousand? Serena couldn't ignore that. A hundred thousand citizens who'd fed her without complaint simply because she was princess.
A hundred thousand souls, denied reincarnation, imprisoned in the labyrinth. It was too pitiful.
"Can't you help them?"
"I can't. Then it wouldn't be a labyrinth. It's a grave matter for me."
"But..."
"Do you want to help them?"
"......Yes."
Serena hated work, especially sticking her neck out for others.
But ignoring them with some childish excuse felt wrong when so many were trapped. Leaving them behind would haunt her even at the golden path's end.
"A hundred thousand is too many. I can't handle it or ignore it. Is there no way to help?"
"I'd like to, but I can't offer aid without compensation."
The robe parted, revealing a pale white hand.
"What will you do, child? Will you offer a sacrifice?"
Contracts weren't to be made lightly. But in her spiritual state, Serena intuitively knew: this wasn't a contract or trade—it was unilateral grace. The sacrifice was mere pretext for the boon.
She'd also contacted similar beings while learning magic. If this robed figure was what she suspected...
Then it should be fine.
Serena nodded, and the robed one smiled.
Old yet young. Scheming yet innocent. A being of death and birth intertwined asked her,
"Left or right—which do you prefer?"
"Pardon?"
"No time. Decide quickly."
Urged again, Serena blurted,
"Left."
It meant nothing. Like always taking left paths in dungeon crawlers, or starting kimbap from the left end. Arbitrary.
Hearing her choice, the robed one nodded and extended a hand toward Serena's left eye.
"Kyaaak!"
The figure's finger plunged into her eye. Mercilessly gouging and probing, it extracted its prize.
Serena clutched her ravaged left socket, screaming. Ignoring her pain, the robed one beamed.
The orange iris clutched in the white hand was bloodied, darkening to a crimson hue.
"I accept the sacrifice."
Serena placed her hand on the statue to feel its texture when Philia spoke up.
"There's someone over there!"
"Quiet."
Serena clamped Philia's mouth and ducked behind the statue. Then she realized this couldn't be happening.
'What the...'
Serena opened her eyes. Closed them. Opened. Closed.
Stunned, she looked around. She'd clearly died, yet here she was, alive.
She'd died on the labyrinth's second floor, but this was the first.
The day before yesterday, when they'd fallen into the labyrinth. Hiding behind the ugly statue, observing the others. That exact moment.
As she scanned in shock, Serena noticed the difference from her memory. Her vision felt off. Narrow, constricted.
Had she daydreamed a long, long dream?
To clear her head, she rubbed her eyes and felt an odd, familiar sensation over her left eye socket. Fingering it, she confirmed its shape and position.
An eyepatch.
Serena slowly removed it. Her left eye saw nothing.
The princess had become a cyclops.
Staggering in shock, she steadied herself on the statue.
"Are you okay?"
"Who's there! Reveal yourself!"
"It's Capital Guard uniform! Ask for help!"
Philia lit up and dragged Serena out. This time, Serena couldn't stop her in time. As she was pulled into view, her one good eye fell on the statue.
An ugly statue, carved ineptly from solid stone by some unskilled mason. The only hint it was meant to be human: two eyes painted crimson.
The statue winked at Serena.
