What started as a secretive operation known only to a few higher-ups who wanted to get their grubby hands on potential treasure had now become the talk of everyone—from the city to the entire country. Beggars whispered about it in the streets, and royalty discussed it in their gilded halls.
It had been two months since the secretive exploration began. By the end of the third week, a few survivors had returned, beaten and bloodied. These were the cowards who'd used their fellow pioneer explorers and adventurers as bait, leaving them to die inside the labyrinth while they destroyed the only entrance that had been discovered.
They didn't tell the full truth, of course. Only that it had been a doomed expedition from the start. The story they produced was fabricated bullshit, not the whole truth. But since they had significant power and influence, their lies became accepted truth, and the real truth became dismissed as lies.
Why had they done such a thing? Simple: greed and envy toward the other group. They figured that if they couldn't claim the entire treasure of the labyrinth, they might as well kill those who could. The person responsible for this scheme was connected to the Vaselix royal bloodline—people who could use mana in ways that old human variants couldn't. This bloodline had become the ruling family that spread their genetic gifts throughout the continent.
The Vaselix possessed what was called a "mana heart"—an evolved organ that allowed them to channel the magical energy that saturated the world. While less than 5% of the current human population of this continent could access mana, every member of the Vaselix bloodline was born with this ability. Their mana hearts were powerful, refined through generations of selective breeding and magical enhancement.
Most humans were stuck with what scholars called "mana sensitivity"—they could feel magical energy but couldn't manipulate it. A rare few developed "mana cores," crude approximations of what the other races possessed naturally. But the Vaselix had true mana hearts, making them essentially a different species from regular humans.
This magical superiority had allowed them to dominate politics, military affairs, and commerce across the continent. Anyone with even a trace of Vaselix blood was automatically elevated in society, while those without magical ability were treated as lesser beings.
Now, as for why Benny—that unfortunate bastard—had gotten caught up in this scheme: one of those same fucking cowards had a personal grudge against him. That little piece of shit had attended the guard entrance exam alongside Benny and hadn't been selected by the captain of Tiamerith, despite performing well.
He called himself Burdagol the Strong, though he looked far from strong. He was a jealous little brat from a minor Vaselix offshoot—able to use mana, but so diluted it was practically worthless. His family had some prestige, and his father had once been a guardsman in Tiamerith. Burdagol thought he could offer his services to the city and receive the same praise his father had earned in his youth.
But circumstances had favored Benny that day. The captain had seen something in the cowardly guard candidate that he'd missed in the mana-blessed noble brat.
Burdagol's mana abilities were pathetic—he could barely light a candle or sense magical auras within arm's reach. His mana heart was so weak it might as well have been decorative. But his family connections were enough to get him into the expedition, where his resentment festered into something murderous.
These fuckers who trampled on others would find out soon enough that not only had some survivors lived through their betrayal and were still fighting for their lives, but Benny himself would eventually destroy the lies they'd spread. Their precious status and magical bloodlines wouldn't shield them from the reckoning that was coming.
The irony was that this doomed expedition—designed by petty nobles to claim treasure and eliminate rivals—had been orchestrated by forces none of them understood. The labyrinth itself had been created for Benny's sake, though how this had come to be was known only to the World System.
While the Vaselix descendants played their political games with their inherited magical advantages, a powerless guard was evolving into something they couldn't comprehend. Something that would make their carefully hoarded bloodline privileges look like parlor tricks.
But for now, they sat in their comfortable positions, spinning lies about heroic sacrifice and unavoidable tragedy, never suspecting that one of their victims was not only alive but growing stronger in ways that defied everything they thought they knew about power.