Kapitel 58: Becoming the Hunter

Emile and Blood aimlessly walked through the maze of hotel hallways. They occasionally met groups of Wooden Puppets, but they were merely practice for Blood's new fighting style.

For the fourth time today, Blood held the head of a Wooden Puppet in his crystal hand. Power surged through his behemoth arm, the meer size of it exceeded the boy wielding it.

He popped the wooden head like a cherry tomato then indifferently continued moving forward in search of the wretched woman. And then, out of the subtle breeze that oddly flowed through the hallways, a manic laugh appeared.

Blood's head shot in the direction of the laughter, but before he blindlessly chased after it more laughter appeared from all around. Emile and Blood stood back to back.

They spun around, waiting for the woman to appear. Then, simultaneously, four identical old women poked out from the end of each hall.

As one, they turned together and stared down at the two boys.

"Don't you get it—" their four voices resonated in unison, "the labyrinth and I are one in the same! I can't die for as long as the labyrinth stands!"

Blood couldn't entertain the guardians delusion any longer. He pushed his ginormous palm into the ground, cracking and dismembering it, and propelled himself at one of the women.

A ring of bone shards appeared around the woman, then plummeted down the hall towards Blood. He held his crystal arm forward, his palm flattened and molded into a shield that blocked all the incoming projectiles.

Then, like before, Blood ripped the guardian apart.

***

For days Blood and Emile razed through the hotel-like maze. Surprisingly, fighting the Wooden Puppets has become incredibly easy.

Emile wasn't able to tell before, but they each follow a pretty distinct pattern. Once Emile figured this out, he memorized the attack patterns of all the Wooden Puppets. Since then, Emile has been obliterating groups of them with only the aid of Blood's dagger.

Meanwhile, Blood hunted solo. There were times where Emile could hear the destruction Blood was causing on other sides of the walls. Honestly, Emile didn't know why Blood was so out of it.

Yes, he's always liked to fight and he takes pride in the slaughter, but this level of aggression is uncommon for the teenager. So with that, Emile and Blood spent the entirety of their waking hours hunting through the endless array of hallways that encased them.

For one thing, the labyrinth was an excellent opportunity to train. Not only did Emile memorize the Wooden Puppets attack patterns to avoid them, he's also been practicing them—well, with the dagger that is.

But also, after the guardian boasted about her being immortal as long as the labyrinth stood, Emile thought about it. And from what Emile understood, the labyrinth is not an infinite source of essence, it was made by someone after all.

So when a labyrinth is made it is probably made with a varying pool of essence, something like a grade. Low-level labyrinths would require a thousand essence and high-level labyrinths would require an investment of hundreds of thousands, at least that's what Emile thought.

Luckily, he was right. When the Graves found this labyrinth they found it via a gift, yes, but a scanning and information specialized gift. That scan revealed that the labyrinth was a low-level labyrinth and that manifests itself via its estimated number of inhabitants and their ranking.

With all that being said, Emile believed that if he and Blood, along with their uninvited pursuers, eliminated enough creatures then the labyrinth's supply of essence would become exhausted and the guardian would become effectively mortal.

So that's what they did. From the moment they woke up to the instant they closed their eyes, the two boys hunted.

And today was no different. Currently, Emile walked down one of the hallways. He held Blood's dagger in his hand and playfully spun it around his palm, a trick he's been working on recently.

Around his neck hung the Nimbus Charm. The mesmerizing gemstone still sat in its center and continued to breath strikes of lightning every once in a while.

The Nimbus Charm didn't need to be worn at all times, it had no passive effect, but a charm with such a speed focused enhancement relied on its activation being perfect. That meant Emile needed to be able to activate the charm at a moment's notice, something he couldn't do while waiting for the charm to be constructed from essence.

The sound of jumbled footsteps echoed around the upcoming corner. Emile firmly gripped the dagger and lowered his posture.

He approached the edge of the hall and waited for his prey to carelessly pass by. And they did.

A man in his early thirties abruptly passed by Emile like he was being shoved ahead. While he looked back, an infected smile lay helplessly on his face, he looked into Emile's eyes.

For a single moment, recognition flashed across the eyes of the older man. But then, a dagger pierced through his neck, completely rupturing his windpipe and he collapsed to the floor.

"Jamie!" Another man's voice screamed as he descended to take care of the gurgling idiot.

At the same time, a few more men turned the corner of the hall and faced Emile.

"Chief!" One of them yelled, "We found him!"

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