When Alex, Dim Dim, and Latifa regained their senses, they found themselves in a spacious room with an obsidian floor.
However, when they looked up, they saw something, and Latifa’s eyes widened in shock.
The interior of the Chrono Maze looked the same as it did in the game. It was an impossible labyrinth of ticking gears, floating platforms, stairs that seemed to go in every direction, countless doors, and shimmering transparent corridors that looped back on themselves once a wrong turn was taken.
Time hung heavy in the air, like the moment before a clock struck midnight.
A low humming filled the space, accompanied by the slow, rhythmic tick... tock... tick... tock that echoed in all directions.
Latifa looked at her surroundings, and quickly understood why this dungeon was forbidden to students.
"T-This place is indeed dangerous," Latifa stuttered. "I already understand why someone can get lost in this place. That shining gate at the top—is that the exit of the dungeon?"
"Yes," Alex replied. "In order to leave this place, you must reach that location."
"But how can you get there?" Latifa inquired. "Just a single mistake, and I feel like you’ll be trapped here for the rest of your life."
"You’re not wrong," Alex said. "This dungeon has a passive effect that disorients anyone who’s unfamiliar with it. The transparent walls might look like they’re standing still, but they shift positions every few minutes."
As if to prove his words right, the shimmering corridors rearranged themselves, creating new paths and dead ends. Latifa shuddered.
Fortunately, she was an astral projection of herself, so she could return to her original body if the need ever arose.
Latifa tensed, but Alex didn’t even flinch.
He simply looked at the eight doors, which would bring him to a set location within the maze that would serve as his starting point.
"Dim Dim, can you sense Lucius?" Alex asked as he scanned the surroundings, hoping to catch a glimpse of the young man whom they had come to rescue.
"Dim!" Dim Dim pointed.
The two teenagers both looked in the direction it was pointing at and saw flashes of light in the distance.
Lucius was a mage, so those flashes of light meant that he was using his magic to fight against something.
Knowing that the time was tight, Alex took out another one of his artifacts, which was none other than the Mimic Lantern.
This lantern could detect if a treasure chest was a mimic or not.
However, Alex had paid extra gold to add some enchantments to it.
Currently, his Mimic Lantern had three other abilities.
Firstly, it allowed him to see invisible things within a five-meter radius.
Secondly, the lantern was to be able to detect traps within the range of its light.
Last but not least was a tracking ability. The lantern had been enchanted to reveal the most recent footprints or traces on the ground.
The moment the Mimic Lantern’s light shone on them, they would glow in a bioluminescent light.
As soon as the lantern was lit, a set of footprints appeared, leading to the door that had the number six.
"...Number six it is," Alex muttered.
Without wasting time, he turned toward the sixth door and approached it confidently. The glowing footprints continued to pulse faintly under the light of the Mimic Lantern, guiding them to the path Lucius had taken.
Latifa followed behind, her eyes still darting left and right to make sure nothing snuck up on them.
Dim Dim, comfortably settled on Alex’s head, tilted its head curiously, eyes locked on the shifting gears above.
The door opened on its own as they neared it, groaning like an ancient machine awakening from slumber.
The corridor beyond was dim and narrow, its walls shifting in hue from steel gray to soft violet.
The corridors only looked transparent on the outside, but if you were inside one, you would quickly realise you couldn’t look through the walls to see the outside.
Gears embedded into the walls rotated slowly, and strange whispers drifted in and out, like echoes from the future... or the past.
"Run... before time eats you..."
"You should’ve turned left..."
Latifa’s ears twitched. "What was that?"
"Echoes of those who wandered into this place in the past," Alex replied calmly. "This place remembers everyone who has entered. Every wrong move and every final scream stays in the maze forever.
"These voices can drive people crazy. If someone fails to overcome the voices, they would become a part of the dungeon, just like those before them. This is also the reason why entering the Chrono Maze is forbidden, and only the Headmaster can navigate through it without problems."
Latifa shivered. "How did this even pass dungeon safety regulations?"
Alex smirked without humor. "It didn’t. That’s why it was sealed."
What Alex didn’t say was that Frieden Academy was purposely built to contain the Chrono Maze.
While some dungeon cities prospered because many adventurers would dive regularly to bring out useful materials from within, the Chrono Maze had been deemed too dangerous for normal adventurers to explore.
This was why it was confined within the academy grounds, preventing anyone from the City of Harmonia to wander in carelessly.
Alex and Latifa continued down the winding path, guided by the ever-glowing footprints that twisted and looped in ways no normal person could have followed without assistance.
"Hey, won’t you get lost if you keep following that trail?" Latifa asked after twenty minutes had passed.
"It doesn’t matter," Alex answered. "Our priority is to find Lucius first. We can worry about finding the right path after we secure him."
Just then, they came into a large hall with three paths that led to three different directions.
But since they were following Lucius’ trail, it was a no-brainer that they had to choose the path at the center.
Suddenly, Dim Dim tensed up.
"Dim Dim!" The Dim Sum God pointed at the right path, warning Alex that something was coming.
The young man immediately slowed down.
"Hold this," Alex said as he handed the Mimic Lantern to Latifa, so he could take out Everguard and his sword.
Alex then faced the path that led to the right and adopted a defensive stance.
The sound of an eerie mechanical skittering echoed against the walls. From the darkness, a creature crawled out. To Alex’s surprise, it wasn’t walking on the floor but on the ceiling. When it saw Alex and Latifa, it paused briefly, allowing its body to hang like a spider’s.
Its eyes were blank, glowing with distorted numbers. Its body was thin and hunched, like a broken marionette wearing pieces of antique armor welded to its bones.
"Bites with the hunger of a rewinded beast."
Monster Grade: Uncommon
Attribute: Metal / Beast
Species: Clockwork Canine
"Gearmaw Pup," Alex murmured. "I missed seeing this thing."
Latifa didn’t know how to feel after she vaguely heard Alex’s words.
A two-meter long mechanical spider that skittered about, as if waiting for the right moment to strike, did not seem like something anyone in the right mind would miss. In fact, Latifa would be glad if she never saw such a thing again.
Suddenly, it screeched and launched itself from the ceiling.
Alex already knew the Gearmaw Pup’s attack pattern, so he expertly dodged to his right before using his shield to bash its head, creating a clanging sound that echoed inside the dungeon.
The thing he liked about the Chrono Maze was that the monsters didn’t drop Monster Cores.
They instead dropped Magic Crystals, which would allow someone to use magic even if they weren’t innately gifted.
’Time to get rich.’ Alex looked at the Gearmaw Pup as if it was made of gold coins that were just waiting for him to pick up from the ground.