It was as Bruce had said . The staircases didn’t lead down one path .

  After climbing a dozen meters upwards, the staircase split into two paths .

  The first path splits into three paths . The second path split into two paths .

  The Connectors split up into parties as they headed down the various paths .

  There was a chance that their enemies were using a divide and conquer strategy . There was a chance that the parties were walking into a trap . However, they didn’t have the time to worry about such a thing .

  The only thing they could do was to be a bit more vigilant of their surroundings .

  Thankfully, there were no traps . However, Sungyoon realized in time that he would have preferred traps to what he was facing right now . He ground his teeth .

  “Uh?”


  Tim, who had been walking in the front, sounded flustered .

  Sungyoon’s face crumpled .

  ‘Again?’


  It was as he had expected . They had run across another party . It was the party that took one of the other paths .

  The warriors were wearing helmets, so he couldn’t see their expressions . However, he could see the expression on the faces of the magicians since they wore cloth over their heads .

  They all looked taken aback .

  “K . . . Knight’s party? Why are you coming down from above?”


  The warrior in the front asked the question .

  “We’ve been climbing up our staircase . ”


  Sungyoon replied .

  “What? That can’t be! We were climbing our staircase too!”


  “In truth, you guys aren’t the first ones we’ve encountered so far . ”


  Sungyoon brought his hand up to the back of his head to scratch it . He did it out of habit .

  However, he had to lower his hand when his gauntlet clashed against his helmet .

  “We’ve encountered another party before we arrived here, and we had the exact same conversation . From our perspective, we were climbing up the staircase, but it looked as if they were descending the stairs . ”


  “Like right now?”


  “Yes . Like right now . ”


  The warrior tilted his head . He had an idea what was going on .

  “Shit! The tower’s labyrinth is playing with us!”


  The warrior clicked his tongue . However, Sungyoon shook his head from side to side . He told the warrior a more horrible truth .

  “If the tower is just a labyrinth, there is no way we’ll get confused as to whether we are climbing or descending the tower . I believe space is distorted within this place . ”


  “Are you talking about the phenomena that sometimes show up in the Great Labyrinth?”


  “Yes . I think it is something similar . ”


  The warrior let out a sigh . He probably let out a round of curses within his heart .

  Sungyoon had done the same thing . He had inwardly cussed when he found out the truth .

  “It can’t be helped . Did you mark the path that you traveled through?”


  “I did . ”


  Sungyoon took out a specially made pen .

  “We also marked our path . In the next crossroads, let us take the path that we didn’t take before . ”


  “Understood . ”


  The two parties walked past each other .

  “This is causing a headache for an entirely different reason than we had expected . ”


  Tim checked the time as he spoke . In the beginning, they had moved in silence, but they had encountered unexpected difficulties .

  “It can’t be helped . We can only do our job right now . ”


  Sungyoon kept calm as he spoke to Tim .

  However, his face had turned stiff to a frightening degree within his helmet .

  ***

  Three hours passed, and everyone returned to the original spot . No one looked happy .

  “Did you guys come back after getting lost in the twisted staircase?”


  “Yes . ”


  Russell became disappointed at Sungyoon’s answer .

  “What about you, Sir Russell?”


  “It was the same . It wasn’t just our party . It was the same for everyone . ”


  The gathered Connectors had branched out in small groups to explore the tower . Everyone came back grumbling .

  “We held out hope that you experienced something different from us . ”


  “I’m sorry for letting your expectations down . ”


  “You don’t have to apologize . Everyone here failed too including me . ”


  Russell patted Sungyoon’s shoulder once . Then he walked towards where all the Connectors were gathered .

  “Thankfully, everyone made it back!”


  It was the only good news . When Russell spoke loudly, the Connectors focus their attention on Russell .

  “Did you draw a map?”


  “We made a rough one . ”


  Someone handed a piece of paper towards Russell . It was a map of the tower made by piecing together everyone’s information .

  It was very rough, but it was better than nothing .

  “Alright! Everyone copy it!”


  Each party sent out a representative to copy the map . Grace stepped forward for Sungyoon’s party .

  If no one in the party was good at drawing, members from other parties drew for them .

  “Are you all done drawing it?”


  “We did . ”


  Each representative waved the piece of paper in the air .

  Russell clapped once to get everyone’s attention once again .

  “This damn tower is playing with us, but we cannot retreat! We have to find the ‘something’ that can save earth! I have no idea what that ‘something’ is, but we have to find it at all cost!”


  He was making an extremely unreasonable demand, but no one refuted his words .

  Earth was facing an existential threat, so they had to put their hope into something unreasonable .

  “I want you to comb the tower! Don’t miss any spot that gives off a weird vibe! Since we are in a distorted space, the tower is much bigger inside than expected . We can’t go by how large it is from the outside . Still, we have to do this! Be prepared to draw every inch of this tower!”


  All the Connectors nodded their heads when Russell spoke .

  ***

  ‘It seems someone walked past this place already . ’


  Sungyoon thought to himself as he looked at the clear mark pointing towards one of the forked paths .

  Grace drew in another pathway on her map .

  ‘This is getting way too complex . ’


  Sungyoon shook his head from side to side when he looked at the map in Grace’s hand .

  Grace was drawing the inner structure of a tower, so it looked very different from a normal map .

  However, he understood what he was seeing . Grace was a talented drawer, so the map was very detailed .

  ‘The parties with no one good at drawing will have a terrible time . ’


  Grace put her map away .

  Sungyoon’s party started to move once again . They decided to go down one of the paths not drawn on the map .

  When they turned a sharp corner, something appeared in front of them . Sungyoon and Tim reflexively swung their weapons .

  ‘Sir Russell!’


  The two men desperately aborted their swing . Russell had also swung his sword towards Sungyoon and Tim . He quickly retracted his sword .

  “It is you guys . ”


  Russell lowered his sword .

  “You surprised me . ”


  Tim placed a hand over his heart . Russell let out a light laughter .

  “We feel the same way, Ross . ”


  His gaze headed towards Grace .

  When he checked she was ok, he asked Sungyoon a question .

  “Did you find anything out of the ordinary?”


  “No . We found nothing . What about you, sir Russell?”


  “It was the same for us . The only things we saw were stairs and stone walls . ”


  Russell knocked on the wall .

  “Let’s copy each other’s map .

  When Grace heard Sungyoon’s words, she took a step forward . A member of sir Russell’s party stepped forward too .

  The two of them looked at each other’s maps, then they started to fill in the empty spots on the map .

  “You filled in a lot . ”


  Russell spoke as he glanced at the map that was starting to become fleshed out .

  “We ran into other parties occasionally, and we exchanged information . Moreover, we’ve been doing this for a while . ”


  “It is our biggest problem right now . ”


  Worry entered into Russell’s voice .

  “We have no idea how long our troops outside could hold out . ”


  “Has it been around a day since we entered the tower?”


  Sungyoon looked at his watch .

  “Correct . We brought a lot of the elite Connectors, and Connectors are a sturdy bunch . They won’t break from fighting for a day . However, the casualties must be mounting . ”


  Currently, the Connectors were desperately fighting against the monsters .

  “I copied it all . ”


  Grace returned with the newly revised map . Sungyoon nodded his head as he looked at Russell .

  “Let’s start moving once again . We have no time to waste . ”


  “We should . ”


  Russell agreed with him .

  “Be careful . ”


  “You too, sir Russell . ”


  The two parties walked past each other, and they forged ahead once again .

  “Do you think the map is close to being finished?”


  Sungyoon asked the question to Grace .

  “We’ve checked most of the paths . There aren’t many paths that we haven’t explored yet . ”


  It meant that their task was close to being finished . However, Grace, Sungyoon, Tim, and Emily didn’t look thrilled about that prospect .

  “Still, we have no idea if the unexplored paths diverge further . ”


  It was as Tim had lamented . The unexplored paths diverged further into numerous paths .

  However, this worry paled in front of their other worry .

  “What if we don’t find anything out of the ordinary after we search all the paths?”


  No one replied to Emily’s words . They were slowly mapping out the entire tower, and their biggest worry was finding nothing .

  “Let’s worry about that after we search all the tunnels . ”


  Sungyoon tried to soothe his party members . Sungyoon and his party members pressed down on their worries as they started walking once again .

  “You are probably right, Mr . Sungyoon . We should worry after we . . . !”


  Tim stopped speaking . He came to a halt as he looked at his surroundings . Sungyoon and the others came to a stop too .

  “.……what the hell is this?”


  Tim’s words expressed what everyone was feeling .

  Sungyoon slowly looked around his surroundings .

  “.……it seems we found the ‘something’ that we’ve been searching for . ”


  The stone walls surrounding the staircase were nowhere to be seen . Only darkness could be seen . Sungyoon spoke in a low voice .

  It wasn’t as if they couldn’t see, because it was dark . Connectors could see their surroundings using magical energy, and there was plenty of magical energy in their surroundings .

  In fact, the magical energy in this place was very dense .

  It was like being in a Great Labyrinth . Their vision hadn’t been blocked .

  “There is nothing here . ”


  Emily’s voice rang out through the space . Tim carefully waved his hand towards his side . His arm moved through the space without disturbing anything .

  It was a space with nothing except the staircase, which Sungyoon’s party was standing on .

  “L . . . let’s head back for now . Sir Russell said we should return if we found something out of the ordinary . ”


  Emily expressed her opinion, but Grace disagreed with her .

  “I want to, but we have no way of doing that . ”


  “No way of doing what?”


  Instead of saying anything, Grace pointed backward .

  Emily’s eyes widened when she looked backward .

  “The staircase . . . is gone?”


  It was as if the staircase had been built up to this point . The stairs came to an abrupt stop behind them . There was only absolute darkness behind them .

  “Huh? What the hell? We came here using the stairs!”


  “Please stay calm . ”


  Sungyoon pacified Tim, who was flustered .

  “This is probably the distortion of space within the tower that has been troubling us up until now . ”


  “What should we do?”


  Grace asked for Sungyoon’s opinion .

  Sungyoon stood at the edge of the severed staircase, and he looked downwards .

  “I’m guessing it’ll be a bad idea to jump off here . ”


  Tim, Emily, and Grace nodded at the same time .

  “Since we can’t go back, we have only one remaining option . ”


  Sungyoon looked up the staircase . The others followed his gaze upwards .

  Unlike the dead-end staircase behind them, the stairs continued upwards . Moreover, they could see light emanating from an exit .

  “Let’s go . It seems we have no choice . ”


  Sungyoon and his party members started climbing up the staircase .