The 27th Rio — At the End of the Death-Return Labyrinth, Whose Dream Do You See? - The Cage Learns

The air in the underground waterway clung to the skin, damp and heavy. Rio descended the stairs to the third layer—the "Labyrinth of Lamentations"—and wiped the cold droplets seeping from the wall with the back of his hand. The stone floor beneath his feet was slick. A faint slope stretched on into the darkness. Drip. Drip. Only the sound of water falling from the ceiling echoed with an eerie, mechanical regularity. Beside him, Shion exhaled a white breath. "...It's cold, Rio-san." "Yeah." Rio answered curtly and opened the predecessor's diary. In the margins of the tattered page, a hastily scrawled map marked the first trap of the third layer. *Proceed along the left wall. Watch the floor seams. Simple pitfall.* A safe path one of the predecessors had found at the cost of their life. Rio lifted his gaze and focused on the seams in the stone floor. Sure enough—if they moved along the left wall, they could avoid that trap. But. Rio stopped. "...Testing." "Huh?" Before Shion could turn around, Rio stepped away from the left wall and deliberately pressed his foot onto a floor seam. *Click.* A sound. But the floor ahead showed no sign of collapsing. Instead— The left wall split open with a roar. Iron stakes, embedded within, shot out with the speed of spears. Their aim was precise—Rio's left side. A mechanism designed to skewer anyone who hugged the left wall, wary of a pitfall. "—!" His engraved memories launched his body. He leaped right. Twisting, he kicked off the stone floor. An iron stake tore through the fabric on his back and buried itself deep in the wall. A moment later, stone fragments pattered down. Shion drew her short sword and rushed over. "Rio-san! That was—" "The trap changed." Still on one knee, Rio looked up at the countless iron stakes now sprouting from the wall. No rust. Proof that the Labyrinth itself had remade this trap. "The diary said this was a simple pitfall. That hugging the left wall was safe. But now, the left wall is death." His fingertip traced the page. The predecessor's writing seemed to blur before his eyes. "The predecessor's information... can't be trusted." The moment he spoke those words, a cold knot tightened in the pit of his stomach. It had been his only compass. He had believed the deaths of twenty-six people would guide him. But now, the needle of that compass was beginning to go haywire. Shion gently placed a hand on Rio's shoulder. "But if you hadn't checked, Rio-san... we would have been killed by those stakes." "...Yeah." Rio stood and closed the diary. From now on, he had no choice but to advance while doubting the records. They moved through the darkness along the waterway. Groundwater rose to their ankles, the cold seeping into their bones with every step. Moss on the walls glowed a pale blue, barely illuminating their feet. The flow of water made a low, moaning sound in the distance. —Mixed with the water, another sound. A faint noise, something paddling. Rio drew his short sword. Shion readied her blade at the same moment. Their breathing shifted instantly into a combat rhythm. "It's coming." The water's surface exploded. What leaped out was a corpse demon. But it was different from the ones they'd seen on the first and second layers. Its entire body was drenched, its blue-black skin eerily smooth. An aquatic type—the diary had noted them. Rio's body moved on its own. His engraved memories calculated the position of the corpse demon's head—its pale blue core. A spot he had aimed for hundreds of times in past battles. He had never once failed. He swung his short sword. The tip aimed for the corpse demon's temple. —Missed. By a few centimeters. The core's position was shifted further toward the side of its head than usual. The blade slid across its hard outer skin, ending up only shallowly tearing its shoulder. "Wha—" The corpse demon's hooked claws slashed across Rio's right flank. A dull sound of tearing flesh. His clothes ripped, blood spurting out. Before the pain, heat raced through his entire body. He doubled over, his knees buckling. "Rio-san!" Shion immediately slashed in from the corpse demon's flank. Her short sword split the creature's head without hesitation. A short, shrieking death cry. The corpse demon crumbled into particles of light, leaving only a splash of water behind. Pressing his right side, Rio leaned against the wall. Blood overflowed endlessly through the gaps in his fingers. Warm. His own blood. "I'll treat that right now—" "...I missed." Rio stared down at his trembling hand. "My... engraved memories. Missed the core." His first failure. In this Labyrinth, the first time he had ever missed an attack. That fact pierced his chest heavier than the pain of the wound. It wasn't just individual variation. The core's position had shifted because the Labyrinth had intentionally—learned his attack patterns and taken countermeasures. Shion supported Rio's body and moved him to a hollow in the stone wall beside the waterway. The damp air stung his wound. "Don't move. I'll stop the bleeding now." Shion tore her own cloak and wrapped the cloth around Rio's flank. Her movements were efficient. The motions of someone accustomed to battlefield first aid. The cloth steadily dyed red with blood. Enduring the pain, Rio opened the diary. He turned the pages. Trap locations. Corpse demon core placements. Passage structures. He desperately reread all the information his predecessors had recorded at the cost of their lives. And then, he realized. There were subtle discrepancies between the records and the current Labyrinth. The types of traps had changed. The weak points of the corpse demons had moved. There were even places where the branching paths themselves differed from the records. "...So that's it." "Rio-san?" "The Labyrinth is absorbing our behavioral patterns." Rio's voice was so low and flat it surprised even himself. "With every death-return, the Labyrinth gets smarter. When we avoid a trap, the Labyrinth changes it. When we aim for a corpse demon's core, the Labyrinth shifts its position. The strategies our predecessors left behind... are poison now." His hand, turning the pages, stopped. The twenty-seventh generation. Over a hundred deaths. All of it had been fodder to evolve the Labyrinth. The more they survived, the further the exit receded. The further they advanced, the more ingenious the traps became, the stronger the enemies grew. Perhaps reaching the exit was an eternal impossibility. "...In other words, this is a cage." They were prey, locked inside to make the cage itself smarter. Shion finished tying the bandage. But she didn't move away from Rio's side. As if checking the depth of the wound, she kept her hand there, her gaze downcast. "...Rio-san." Her blue-gray eyes had deepened with a heavy gray. The color of anxiety. "I... seeing you get hurt, Rio-san... it scares me so much." Her words faltered. The remnants of Shodai Rio's memories might be aching inside her. Seeing Rio wounded, someone within her was screaming. Rio didn't answer. He just watched her profile. Something more than worry for him flickered in her expression. A shadow of unspoken anxiety—a feeling that her own existence might hold some meaning in this situation. She was still wavering, caught between an obsessive need not to be a burden to Rio and a desperate longing to stay by his side. He didn't ask. Now was not the time. A wordless silence fell between them. Only the sound of groundwater flowing through the channel echoed on, ceaselessly. In the distance, the groans of corpse demons reverberated. The Labyrinth was still breathing. Rio closed the blood-soaked diary. "The diary isn't a correct strategy guide. From now on, it's not a reference. It's material for hypotheses." "Hypotheses...?" "We read the pattern of the Labyrinth's changes. How the traps change, how the corpse demons evolve. If we don't understand that, we can't go any further." However. Rio looked down at his wound. Deep. The bleeding had stopped, but he couldn't put strength into his right side. In this state, were they supposed to aim for the fourth layer—the "Mirror-Image Hall"? The diary had almost no descriptions of anything beyond the third layer. The further they went, the more the information ran out. The wounds increased. The Labyrinth grew smarter. A triple pressure silently loomed before them. Leaning against the wall, Rio closed his eyes. The deaths of his predecessors had been fodder for this Labyrinth. Now, he too was about to be made a part of it. Seeking the exit, dying, losing memories, turning into a corpse demon—that was how his predecessors had ended up here, too. "Rio-san." Shion's voice echoed softly in the darkness. "I will absolutely... never leave you alone." The end of her sentence trembled faintly. Her blue-gray eyes now shone with a painful, vivid blue. Rio opened his eyes and looked back at her. "...I see." A short reply. But in that single word, all of Rio's emotions were contained. In the darkness of the waterway, the two of them sat on, huddled close. The Labyrinth silently looked down upon them. Deep within its walls, the next trap and the next corpse demon were already beginning to change their forms—a fact the two of them did not yet know.

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Episode 4

Name: The 27th Rio — At the End of the Death-Return Labyrinth, Whose Dream Do You See?
Author: Novelia

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