The Labyrinth was what gamers and game developers referred to as an Instance Dungeon. It would change its shape for each new party that registered and descended. When Merrick registered for the Dungeon, the system generated a five-floor maze for him to clear. No one would see that exact maze again, not even Merrick.
Since there were only five floors, there were only so many possible combinations of rooms and monsters. It was just different enough to keep the Adventurers guessing but just similar enough to lure them into a false sense of security. The more players that registered for an Instance, the more difficult the Dungeon. There was a potential for more loot by partying up, but then Merrick would have to worry about his party members as well as splitting the loot.
With only a day to prepare, Merrick did not have the time to find a party worth joining or find a way to make sure he would get the loot he needed. Instead, he delved into the Labyrinth alone. It was not unheard of and he was not the only Adventurer that was able to do it. All it required was a flexible Class and Merrick had found the Mage to be one of the more flexible.
If he had been open to using consumable items as he cleared the Labyrinth it would have taken half as much time and he would have been able to complete another Dungeon Clear. However the goal of the delve was to gather resources, not spend them to ensure points on the Labyrinth Leaderboard. When he arrived at the Labyrinth, Merrick could not help but check the records. When he first arrived in Als Atbor, he knew none of the names on the Labyrinth Leaderboard, now he knew most of them.
The top of the Leaderboard was reserved for a special record: The Labyrinth's First Clear. It was attributed to Modesto Miso, the Leader of a Faction that shared his name. Merrick had met Modesto with Thom at the Registrar once. If Thom could be described as a penitent, patient Faction Leader, Modesto was something out of the old movie Mad Max. It did not surprise Merrick in the slightest to learn that he had been the first to clear the Labyrinth.
After the First Clear record was the current fastest run through the Labyrinth, which Merrick held out of a point of pride. He cleared it in just under twenty minutes. He had used more consumable items he'd like to admit, took advantage of the arcane nature of one of the labyrinth floors, and was able to jump from the second floor directly to the boss room on the final floor.
After the Fastest Clear record was the Top Ten. Each monster kill gained points based on the type of monster and the skill of the kill. Every second spent in the Labyrinth, every bit of damage, and every misstep detracted points from the overall value. It inspired Adventurers to go after all manner of tactics.
Modesto went for pure carnage in what other Adventurers started to call the Mad Max method which showed how little they understood the movie outside of the aesthetic. Merrick landed on the leaderboard and stayed there in the same way he held the Fastest Clear. He used items to increase speed, decrease mistakes, and avoid combat as much as possible to get to the end without having too many points detracted from him. Lastly there were Adventurers like Thom who lived in between Merrick and Modesto's strategy. Thom took the battles that came his way but did not seek out combat. He hurried but only in a cautious way.
In their own ways, they were good at what they did and it seemed like they would always be in a constant struggle for second place. They swapped the second, third, and fourth places like they were a communal resource. No one had seen the Adventurer that held the number one spot. All that was known was the Adventurer's Name, Class, and Points attributed because that was what the number one spot on the Top Ten Record listed: Rath, Wizard, All.
People like Kobalk claimed cheating but Merrick knew there had to be more to it than that. Whoever Rath was, they were good at what they did, but what Merrick really wanted to know was what the "All" in the points column meant. How was it possible to get "All" of the points unless they instantaneously killed every monster on each of the floors including the boss monsters without taking a single step or letting a second pass. Either way, Rath had been at the top of the Top Ten since Merrick arrived in Als Atbor.
Despite the fact that Thom had warned Merrick about the difficulty of the Labyrinth's difficulty increasing, the Instance Dungeon proved to be as easy to clear as always. There were five floors, as always, and they all went down like a breakfast smoothie. Merrick registered just before noon, in-game, and reached the final room of the Labyrinth by sunset.
It was a far cry from his Fastest Clear, but he had managed to pull together enough loot from the random chests and the monsters that he fought to feasibly prepare for the upcoming Faction War. The boss monster in the final room, however, truly fascinated him because it was something that he had not seen in a while.
Each of the floors had a theme in the Labyrinth and they changed with each new Instance. For Merrick, the first floor had been a sort of underground jungle. He fought brush goblins and feral wolves. The second floor had been a mausoleum where he encountered ghosts and skeletons. The third floor was a pitch-black cave where he was ambushed by scorpions and spiders. The fourth was a bandit stronghold. They were all detailed and intricate. Most of Merrick time was spent finding the way from floor to floor, not actually dealing with the supposed problems of each floor.
The fifth floor, by contrast, was surprisingly simple. He delved from the fourth floor to the fifth floor to find himself already in the final room facing the boss monster. If it was not for the system notification telling him that this was the boss, Merrick would have assumed he was in for hell on the fifth floor. The first and only monster on the fifth floor was a Pure Fire Elemental.
Merrick had seen one before, but it had been locked within a prison made of crystal. This one was completely unchained and unwilling to conversate. Merrick was subjected to waves of fire, smaller Fire Elementals were summoned to make his job harder, and the heat was nearly unbearable underneath all of his gear.
It was the first time that Merrick had nearly wished for Spell Stealer. The relic dagger would have made it easier to deal with the ancient being made entirely of energy. Instead, Merrick had to settle for a slow battle. He used Crudle for defense and fired off bolts of lightning and blasts of water to try and crack the core at the center of the Pure Fire Elemental.
As the battle dragged on, Merrick eventually gained the advantage. As a Mage, he could draw on the energy around him and did not have to struggle much as the battlefield was covered in residual spell energy. The Pure Fire Elemental, on the other hand, was forced to draw energy into the battlefield through its core that tied it to a much more scorched plane.
Before the core cracked fully, the Pure Fire Elemental retreated through the core back to its home plane. The basketball-sized core, covered in cracks, fell to the scorched ground and rolled to Merrick's feet. A system notification announced his victory:
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Instance Dungeon Clear
Please collect the final reward 'Cracked Pure Elemental Core' and exit the Instance Dungeon.
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