Chapter 91: Divine Maze (1)
There was no maze.
Kai looked at what the Divine Maze actually contained, and it was a city. White buildings in perfect rows, white streets running at exact right angles, white plazas placed at every intersection.
Unlike on the outside, everything was correctly placed. The bakery had the highest foot traffic. The supply stores were clustered near the residential sections. The open spaces were placed at the intervals that minimized crowding.
There was not a single thing out of place.
It looked like Mythal but was wrong in every way that mattered.
Mythal had always been a city where things ended up where they ended up. A bakery next to a weapons shop because of a lease that fell through. A bookstore on a corner where a bookstore made no economic sense because the owner liked the afternoon light. The Divine Maze had taken all of that and corrected it. The correction felt like a city with everything human removed from it.
He thought about the restaurant he had taken Mina and Leo to last week. The one that was still standing at the corner where it had been for thirty years, because the owner’s father had opened it there, and the owner had never seen a reason to move it somewhere more logical.
In the Divine Maze, that restaurant would have been replaced by something correctly positioned. The foot traffic data would have determined a better location, and the building would have ended up there. The afternoon light that came through the window at the specific angle that made the place feel like itself would have been corrected into something more efficient.
He didn’t just think the city was wrong, he disliked it.
Kai took three steps into the first street. But he felt his distortion stir and pulled him towards the left.
"This is the first time it’s guiding me without being in danger... Or am I already in danger?" Kai muttered before he left.
The building at the end of the street he had been about to take collapsed inward quietly. The building folded, windows shifted, and walls moved. Ten seconds later, a different building stood there. But there was no debris falling or sound echoing. Instead, everything just instantly reorganized.
Kai looked at where the building had been. "So not everything is perfect here."
And then he continued moving. Following the pull of the distortion that led him from being hit by two buildings that slid over together, or from falling down a street that vanished and reappeared four seconds later.
Until finally, on the streets, the first monsters appeared.
They were humanoid, which was the first thing he registered. They looked like people in white armor, except for the faces, which had no features at all.
[Divine Construct.]
[Level 49.]
[Divine Construct.]
[Level 50.]
The three constructs walked toward him at an unhurried pace. Their white armor caught the pale light of the false sky, each step synchronized, boots clicking against the cobblestones in an irregular rhythm that felt deliberate.
One of them rushed towards him.
The construct’s second arm crossed through the exact space his evasive step carried him into, the follow-up arriving before the first strike had even finished.
Kai’s eyes narrowed.
It was predicting him.
He dropped low as the crossing strike sliced through empty air above his head. A knee immediately rose to meet him. Three predictions chained together made it obvious to him now. The construct was not attacking his body.
It was aiming for where he would be in the future.
Kai twisted.
Even then, he was two inches too slow. The knee crashed into his shoulder, but he didn’t feel any pain from it. A second later, a white light glowed, making Kai’s eyes widen. The white light erupted across the Spectral Warden Armor.
The impact detonated like a cannon.
The street vanished from below him while the sky spun. His body crossed half the block before smashing into a distant wall hard enough to crack stone.
Fragments scattered around him while Dust rolled through the street.
For a brief moment, everything became painfully bright.
Kai sat among the rubble and laughed. "Now that’s interesting."
Everything was very bright for about two seconds. Rings of light pulsed in his vision, fading slowly as his senses reasserted themselves.
He stood up with a sigh and saw the Divine Constructs walking towards him. No hesitation or celebration could be seen, only the will to execute him.
Kai tapped into the Flame Swordsman.
[Class Emulation: Flame Swordsman – Partial.]
The Fractured Blade’s edges shimmered.
Kai moved first as the street exploded beneath his feet. A shockwave echoed out as he surpassed the speed of sound, and far beyond his previously shown speed. The construct’s predictive pattern had calculated his previous speed but not this.
By the time the first one realized Kai had reached it, the Fractured Blade had already punched through its chest.
For a split second, the construct froze.
Then a wave of scorching fire erupted outward, and the explosion burst out of the construct completely. Its white armor melted before scattering over the place, and the construct vanished inside a storm of burning debris.
Kai stepped through the flames.
But the second construct had already closed in on him without fear and blasted out with its fist towards his face.
[Class Emulation: Earth Mage - Partial.]
Stone erupted beneath it.
Massive spikes burst from the street. The construct reacted instantly, twisting away from the first spike, but then the second spike caught it. And then another row of spikes rushed towards the construct from behind.
The entire street became a trap.
The construct avoided all three.
Kai was already inside the guard as he swung Null Fang. The black blade crossed its neck, and the second construct’s head fell down onto the ground.
The white helmet struck the cobblestones and rolled across the street. The body collapsed a second later.
Two down.
The third Divine Construct was observing Kai. It didn’t move forward, but its face was flashing between black and white light. Kai could almost see it processing.
It was learning.
It had been wrong once, and it didn’t want to be wrong again.
’Is this how it originally predicted my movement?’
The construct’s face stopped flashing before it rushed toward him. He watched as it ran around him in circles, moving faster than before and blasting out with its fist. Each strike produced a ball of light that rushed through the air to smash into him.
But Kai ducked, side-stepped, and deflected the balls, watching as they exploded on the side. As Kai took a step towards it, the Divine Construct leapt onto the wall before it began running towards them and blasting out with its fist.
"Even my Earth Mage has been accounted for?" Kai muttered. "But it doesn’t matter."
Kai switched twice in a second.
[Class Emulation: Thread Caster. Partial.]
Threads from the Fractured Blade shot out and wrapped the construct’s lead hand mid-approach. He yanked the arm sideways and dragged the construct’s shoulder forward through the air towards him.
[Class Emulation: Pulse Fist - Partial.]
Kai fist drove forward, and the ripple detonated through the air between them, hitting the construct’s chest before physical contact. The construct folded as its feet left the ground. Its body crashed into the street hard enough to shatter stone.
Before it could rise, the Fractured Blade descended.
White armor split apart, and the construct stopped moving.
Silence returned.
For exactly one second, and then the street trembled.
Kai looked up.
To see four Divine Constructs rushing over with ripples of white light flowed across their armor.
Information transfer.
He quickly realized they had received combat data. Which means they knew about his movement and classes that he used in the previous three.
Kai could feel their predictions forming alongside.
And then he switched classes three times before they reached him.
[Class Emulation: Spirit Archer – Partial.]
[Class Emulation: Blood Tyrant – Partial.]
[Class Emulation: Guard – Partial.]
The constructs hesitated. It had been prepared for a flaming swordsman, but then its signal picked up a terrifying archer. As it tried to scan, another signal appeared, which was a berserker tyrant covered in blood. And before it could scan that one, another signal appeared, which was a defender.
The constructs couldn’t keep up.
Kai switched again.
[Class Emulation: Flame Swordsman – Partial.]
The nearest construct raised its guard.
Wrong response.
The second construct was prepared for ranged attacks.
Wrong response.
The third adjusted for Blood Tyrant aggression.
Wrong response.
The fourth attempted to compensate for all possibilities simultaneously, but it was too slow. Kai became a blur as the Fractured Blade carved through the first construct’s defense, and they exploded from the inside. And then he thrust his sword into the second one’s head before the flames rushed out and melted its armor.
The third construct turned toward the blast, but Null Fang split it in half, and then a kick sent its body towards the fourth, who tried to rush him. The fourth caught the third split body before the earth erupted.
Stone pillars launched the construct into the air, and before it landed, Spirit Archer activated. A bow was summoned from his inventory before an arrow of condensed energy was launched and pierced straight through its core.
And then it crashed down onto the floor.
Kai stood in the white street with the four constructs down around him and let his breathing settle. No crowd, no drones, or livestream was around to watch him switch between so many classes. For the first time since the System arrived, Kai didn’t have to hide. He was completely alone, and the class emulation had run full and open for the first time since the system went live.
For the first time since the System appeared, Kai didn’t have to hide. He could finally use everything. It felt like setting something down that he had been carrying for a very long time.
He kept walking.
...
The constructs came in larger groups the deeper Kai pushed into the white city. It was four together before it quickly became six, and then another six whose movements were subtly different from the last.
The dungeon was growing.
Every construct he destroyed became information for the next wave. Every weapon he revealed, every emulation he used, every habit he displayed was being fed forward into the system. The city was studying him.
Five constructs stepped around the corner ahead, and they immediately spread across the width of the street.
Kai slowed and nodded at the perfect formation. Each construct occupied a position that covered the weakness of the others. Their spacing left no obvious gap or obvious blind spot.
Instead of rushing him, they stopped, and then all five raised their hands.
White palms turned outward.
Light erupted.
A sphere expanded from the center of the formation and washed across the street. The wave struck the walls, the ground, and the buildings, and the wave of light swept past them. The ground.
And then it reflected.
Thousands of overlapping waves rebounded through the city and converged toward a single location.
Kai’s location.
His eyes narrowed. "Oh."
He moved, but the attack came too fast; he couldn’t dodge it in time. Six converging impacts struck him simultaneously.
The force was not overwhelming individually, but together it became something else entirely. An ear-splitting explosion rang out as the street vanished beneath his feet. His body was launched backward as he blasted through some buildings. Stone exploded beneath him as he crashed into the ground, rolled twice, and slid across the white cobblestones before forcing himself upright.
The Fractured Blade was already in his hand.
The constructs had not advanced, but instead they had repositioned.
Kai glanced at the shattered street before his gaze shifted back to the formation. The constructs were adjusting and getting ready to attack where he landed.
"I see."
The attack wasn’t meant to hurt him. It was meant to move him. They were doing this by using his own evasive instincts against him. Most people would have been terrified.
Kai wasn’t.
His eyes only narrowed as he gripped the Fraction Blade harder.
"I’ve fought worse."
The first construct launched forward, and Kai met it head-on.
[Class Emulation: Blood Tyrant – Partial.]
Power surged through his body as the construct’s blade crashed against the Fractured Blade. But Kai did not counterattack, and the second construct arrived, leading to another clash.
He clashed with the first and second constructs multiple times while red energy began to gather beneath his skin. Each collision increased the pressure building inside him, and he felt the Blood Tyrant cheering him on.
The constructs adjusted immediately as if they recognized the growing power. But it was too late as he felt his distortion tugging the optimal point to strike. Kai rushed into the formation and released everything.
The explosion erupted from the center of the formation. A wave of crimson energy blasted outward. The two constructs in the middle were thrown off their feet and smashed into the pieces from the blast.
But more importantly, the formation shattered, and that was all Kai needed.
[Class Emulation: Earth Mage – Partial.]
The street erupted as massive stone columns exploded upward beneath the remaining constructs.
The remaining three were launched into the air, and Kai rushed towards each of them with Null Fang. He slashed the first one in half before bisecting the second one by its waist and then hurling Null Fang through the last one’s head.
All three of them fell to the ground, defeated and done for.
[Recalculation Initiated.] [Distortion Applied.]
[Drop Quality: Optimized.]
[Amplification Complete.]
Silence returned to the white city. Kai lowered his blade before grabbing the drops again and walking forward. Behind him, shattered constructs littered the street. Ahead of him, deeper within the city, more enemies were already learning.
Kai almost felt sorry for them.
The distortion kept pointing. Left at an intersection where straight would have taken him toward a cluster of six constructs. Right at a street that dead-ended before a building, a shift opened a passage. He followed it every time, and every time the dungeon’s prepared path was the wrong one.
He did not know how the distortion was doing this, but it always led him on the correct path. It saved him when the dungeon was collapsing when he was with Sera, it saved him when he got ambushed, and it saved him in Hollow Sky.
The distortion had saved his life more times than he could count.
He still had no idea what it was.
The white city opened into a plaza.
It was larger than any of the plazas he had walked through on the way in, the surrounding buildings arranged at a greater distance from the center than the city’s usual geometry allowed. At the center of the plaza stood a tree.
White, like everything else. Not a single leaf was out of place.
Its branches spread in perfect symmetry, each one extending the exact same length as the opposite branch, the canopy forming a shape that was mathematically precise and looked nothing like any tree that had grown from actual ground.
The roots were visible where they broke the white stone of the plaza, running outward in straight lines at exact right angles, the root system organized with the same logic as the streets.
Kai stopped at the plaza’s edge.
The white city around the plaza was completely still. The buildings at the plaza’s perimeter began to move.
