CHAPTER 937: CHAPTER 723: THE GREATEST VARIABLE

The sound of flames burning echoed clearly within the artificially constructed stone maze, vibrating the air and the eardrums of those who entered here.

Compared to the true underground city, this man-made labyrinth ultimately has some differences.

The underground city is alive, a fact known to all.

It will nurture monsters, allowing them to emerge from the walls, and consciously create various abnormal situations, deliberately targeting adventurers who venture into its core, making them distinctly feel the malice and hostility of the underground city towards them.

The man-made labyrinth, Knossos, is different.

Here, one cannot sense any characteristics that an underground city should have.

Here, one cannot feel any of the liveliness an underground city should possess.

Everything here is filled with a sense of inanimateness, eerie, silent, and dim, filling the inside of the labyrinth with a heavy pressure and a sense of enclosure.

There are also monster statues visible everywhere, and the walls are carved with intricate reliefs of plants, with blue magic stone lamps embedded in the walls, providing a faint light source, telling those entering here that this is ultimately an artificial structure, not a natural secret place like the underground city.

The only similarity to the underground city is the complex terrain and maze-like road structure.

The entrance is connected by a one-way path, but at the end of the path, there are many branches, which lead to more branches, extending like tree roots into the ground, finally forming a genuine labyrinth that confuses the intruders’ sense of direction.

Moreover, everything here, like the outside, is composed of Mountain Copper, hardened steel, and exclusion stones.

The hardest metal doors are located in various directions and passages.

There are ultra-hard metal walls inside the walls, although not as thick as the outside walls, but they are also integrated with exclusion stones, which can weaken the power of magic.

The mere outer hardest metal doors and ultra-hard metal walls already shocked the members of the Loki Familia, and the fact that these things were everywhere here genuinely left the adventurers of the Loki Familia completely dumbfounded.

Therefore, leading the large group into the labyrinth, Finn, standing by Reiger, came to a conclusion.

"...This cannot be something that was built overnight. Even if the other party has money and no lack of resources, it would be impossible to create such a daunting underground maze in just a few years or decades."

The history of this place’s existence must be at least several hundred years old.

The people who built this could not have done it alone; it required generations of successors, throughout hundreds of years, to accomplish such a great endeavor.

This is the man-made labyrinth, Knossos, a clandestine underground city developed under the noses of the guild and all major guilds, hidden beneath Olarie for hundreds of years, yet never seeing the light of day.

"I think I might understand where the second entrance to the underground city is."

Loki softly spoke these words, her divine eyes wide open, seeing through everything.

Reiger glanced at Loki.

She was right.

The man-made labyrinth Knossos is the second underground city and indeed the second entrance to the true underground city.

Its scale is immense, located directly beneath Olarie, excavated alongside the underground city, eventually digging numerous passages that directly connect to various levels of the underground city, allowing for communication between the levels.

Daedalus designed this man-made labyrinth in order to create a second underground city, so like the underground city, this man-made labyrinth extends downward, one level after another.

Hundreds of years have allowed Daedalus and his descendants to expand this place to more than a dozen levels underground, each level equivalent to the underground city.

The first level here is the first level of the underground city.

The tenth level here is the tenth level of the underground city.

Both are at the same depth, interconnected, with multiple exits and entrances.

The enemies lurking here avoided the eyes of the guild and major city guilds in this way, freely entering and exiting the underground city, bringing out monsters from there without restraint.

The monsters brought out include not only the colorful ones but also those nurtured by the underground city.

The members of the dark faction hidden here profit by selling these monsters to people outside the city, sometimes hunting on their own to obtain necessary supplies, such as flame stones from the deeper levels, thus becoming self-sufficient, capable of surviving without leaving this man-made labyrinth, even having the capacity to continue expanding this labyrinth.

To this end, the people here also cooperate in secret with many factions, engaging in mutually beneficial relationships.

Therefore, the Loki Familia is about to face not only remnants of the dark faction, the minions of city destroyers, and the tendrils of the Polluted Immortal Spirit but also potentially the guilds collaborating with them.

Finn and Loki, thus, preliminarily grasp these pieces of information, one through analysis and the other through divine intuition, and share them with the team members.

While the team members felt shocked by this, Finn licked his thumb and, after some pondering, gave instructions.

"The enemies are far more challenging than we imagined, and this is their stronghold, a truly colossal base. We know nothing about this place, and we don’t know what awaits us ahead."