---
Takumi did not wake suddenly.
He rose—with measured breath, slow movements, and complete silence. His sleep had lasted only two hours, yet it was enough. The fire had burned low. The scrolls around him were still perfectly aligned.
He liked that.
Until he turned his head.
The dungeon had changed again.
---
Where once had been a clean arch leading deeper into the stone ruins, now stood a spiraling doorway of mismatched tiles, bending at slight, imperceptible angles. The torches along the corridor walls flickered erratically—no longer synced in rhythm.
Takumi's eye twitched.
He heard Lisette stirring nearby, yawning loudly.
"Morning?" she said, rubbing her eyes. "Or is it dungeon-o'clock again?"
He didn't answer.
He was already walking toward the hallway.
She glanced up.
"Oh. Oh no. Not the spiral corridor again."
---
The Maze had a name among scholars and adventurers: The Fracture Labyrinth. A trap sector within the dungeon rumored to be alive—constantly reordering its halls, doors, traps, and walls. No one had ever mapped it fully. Most who entered either went mad or starved.
Takumi didn't care about stories.
He stepped inside.
Lisette groaned and jogged after him, stuffing half-folded parchment into her satchel.
---
> [New Zone Discovered: Fracture Labyrinth]
Warning: High-Aberration Magic Detected. Pathfinding Impossible.
System Note: Symmetry Cannot Be Guaranteed.
> Mental Load +7%
---
They took ten steps.
Then the corridor reshaped behind them.
The floor rotated.
The ceiling rippled.
A doorway vanished.
Lisette yelped. "It's already started!"
Takumi ignored her. He turned, observing the angles.
"The hallway rotated eleven degrees," he murmured. "Clockwise. Not enough to disorient… yet."
Lisette frowned. "You're tracking the angle changes?"
"I have to. If I lose the pattern, I'll—"
> Mental Load +2%
He stopped.
She noticed his jaw tense.
"Takumi," she said carefully, "maybe we should turn back—"
"No. I'm stabilizing the path. One pattern at a time."
---
They pressed forward.
It was like walking through a shifting dream. Walls restructured mid-step. Rooms turned inside out. Once, a door swallowed itself in silence. Another time, a hallway looped until the torches hung upside-down.
Takumi cataloged everything.
Each rotation.
Each deviation in stone width.
Each inconsistent flame height.
Every movement he took was calculated to match the previous room's center of mass.
Lisette, by contrast, stumbled and swore her way forward, unable to match his rigid pace.
After the fifth turn, she fell to her knees.
"Okay—okay, I can't. I'm gonna puke. The walls are breathing."
"They're not," he said flatly. "It's spatial reordering based on visual persistence. The air warps light here."
She glared up at him, pale-faced. "Yeah, well, your explanation makes me want to puke more."
---
Then came the first trap.
A corridor floor that collapsed into spinning blades below—unseen until you took the fourth step.
Lisette would have fallen.
But Takumi grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back with enough force to nearly dislocate her shoulder.
They hit the wall together.
She gasped.
His fingers were trembling.
Not from adrenaline.
From the misalignment in the trap's design.
There were seven blades. Not six. Not eight. Seven. Unevenly spaced.
> [Mental Load +11%]
He was sweating now.
Lisette placed a hand on his chest. "Hey. Hey. Breathe."
"No. I need to fix it."
"You can't fix spinning death blades—!"
"I can. I just need a distraction."
---
Lisette stared.
Then grinned weakly.
"You are the dumbest genius I've ever met."
She raised her hand, muttered a sigil—wrong, tilted, but deliberate—and fired a flame bolt into the far wall, shattering part of the ceiling.
The dungeon shuddered in response.
The blades slowed—barely.
It was enough.
Takumi leapt forward with inhuman speed.
In four precise motions, he dislodged the mechanism's outer housing, twisted the support rail, and kicked two blades into alignment with the central axis.
The rest collapsed like dominoes.
The trap deactivated.
---
> [Trap Disarmed: +EXP Boost]
[Mental Load reduced by 5%]
[Skill Upgraded: Kinetic Correction → Kinetic Mastery Lv. 1]
---
Lisette stared at him from the far ledge.
"Please tell me that wasn't something you learned."
He exhaled slowly, adjusting his collar. "It was intuitive."
"You're terrifying."
"Thank you."
---
They reached a central node chamber soon after—a hexagonal hall with glowing crystals at each corner. The lights were pulsing—unsynced, of course.
In the center stood a black mirror. Obsidian. Polished.
No reflection.
Lisette froze. "That's… that's not supposed to be here."
Takumi stepped forward.
The mirror shimmered.
A shape took form inside it—tall, distorted. Humanoid. But broken.
Like a version of himself… fragmented.
---
> [Aberration Detected: Fragment of the Selfless Mind]
Classification: Chaosborn
Danger Level: Unknown
Warning: Entity mimics user mental state. Prepare for unstable engagement.
---
Takumi's heart skipped.
The creature was him—or something wearing him.
But it walked with unbalanced steps.
It dragged its left arm.
Its face was cracked across the center, asymmetrical.
Its eyes blinked out of sync.
Takumi's breath stilled.
Lisette whispered, "You okay?"
"No," he said.
"Can you fight it?"
His fists clenched.
"I have to."
---
🔹 End of Chapter 6