CHAPTER 53: OWN SKILL

When we arrived back, Luna was awake. She and Kiki were holding hands. Considering their situation, both their faces lit up when they caught sight of their homeroom teacher. For the most part, she was a good teacher, and most of the students liked her.

When everything settled down, we began discussing ways to escape this labyrinth floor. That’s when we were hit with the terrible news from Ms. Cole.

"This floor is especially hard to escape," she said. "The exit only appears once every couple of days, and it is nearly impossible to predict where it will pop up."

This made our situation even more grim. The hydra I saw prowling around was a B-ranked beast, and the Blood Moths were C-ranked. There was a huge difference in strength between a C-ranked and a B-ranked creature.

Even if all of us fought it together, it would be impossible for us to win. The best we could do was avoid it while we searched for the exit.

Losing Natasha was worse than I thought. If she were here, she could use her system to create a place for us to stay, at least temporarily.

With that thing prowling around, sleeping out in the open was a bad idea.

"Luna," I called out to her, which slightly startled her. "Use one of your curses to keep track of the hydra. That way, we can know how to stay out of its path."

"That’s a good idea," Ms. Cole said. "We should stay as far away from that thing as possible."

Luna agreed and summoned one of her curses; it was the same bug-type curse she had used on me while we were on the second floor. It fluttered in the air for a while, its wings creating a buzz before it flew off in another direction.

"There’s a hut nearby where we can stay," Ms. Cole said out of nowhere, surprising all of us.

"A hut?" Kiki asked in disbelief.

"Yes, these same labyrinths pop up every year. The school has created special places that students can use in case of situations where you end up spending days in the same location. This labyrinth is B-ranked; you should have never been inside it in the first place."

"How far away is this hut?" I asked. Ms. Cole was injured; she had a wound on her stomach that she was trying desperately to hide from the others. Luna and Kiki weren’t in the best shape either after their fight with the Blood Moths.

"It shouldn’t be far from here—maybe a fifteen-minute walk," she responded.

Having all agreed, we decided to follow Ms. Cole’s lead toward this supposed hut. Ms. Cole taught us how to properly navigate the marshland so we wouldn’t accidentally sink to the bottom of it.

The bottom half of our clothes was covered in mud and who knows what else. Kiki visibly cringed at all the filth covering her.

To make matters even more jarring, it seemed the hydra was uncomfortably close to us. Luna informed us that at the pace it was moving, it would catch up to us in a matter of minutes.

"I’ll go lead it away." I suggested.

Ms. Cole looked like she wanted to object, but I didn’t give her the chance before I was gone.

There were too many variables in this place. Like food, for example. If we stayed here too long, we would starve to death. Dungeons and labyrinths have no natural food sources. The only living things here were the monsters, and on this floor in particular—a hydra.

From what I knew about hydras, they have seven heads, and the only way to kill them is to chop off all their heads at the same time; otherwise, they would grow back. I didn’t need to kill it; I only needed one head so that we wouldn’t starve to death.

Making my way through the trees, I finally spotted it. Luna was right; it was close to us. The ominous thing about this creature was that it made no noise. It didn’t even create a ripple on the surface of the water as it swam through—it was like it was phasing through it untouched.

The murky water made it a bit hard to spot, but it was definitely there. Every once in a while, it lifted one of its heads out of the water and slithered it out as if licking the air before submerging again.

I remembered hearing somewhere that snakes smell with their tongues which led me to conclude that it was tracking us by scent.

Immediately as I thought that, I noticed the slightest change in its movement.

THRASH!!

One of its heads shot out of the water like a spear. It was as if it had phased through time and appeared in front of me in an instant. I had the eyes to see the attack but not the speed to match it.

The only reason I managed to dodge it was that I moved out of the way before it struck. I had actually prepared to decapitate it, but my body clammed up when I saw its imposing figure and incredible speed.

Every fiber of my being was screaming at me not to go near this creature. My mind kept flashing back to when I got outsmarted by the Thalassian Wraith. It stood to reason that this creature also possessed intelligence.

Ms. Cole said that the same labyrinths appeared every year. Maybe the creatures in the labyrinths were adapting—they were learning from the humans they fought before.

They weren’t the dumb creatures I was used to fighting, and I would be dead if I kept thinking that way. I could level up my weapons and body as much as I wanted, but the only thing I couldn’t level was my skill.

I needed to think. I needed to figure out a way to beat this thing with my current skills. What did I have that could grant me an edge in this battle? Nothing—

[DING!]

[YOUR CREATOR HAS GRANTED YOU THE SKILL: APPRAISAL]

[Description: Allows the user to see the stats of any material or element just by looking.]