THE STRONGEST NEXULYTE

"Hehe, of course, I know it was you. I was just, you know…" Glen chuckled nervously while trying to find words to explain but was unable to make up a meaningful excuse.

" Get lost," Ivan glared at him before looking elsewhere.

" Come on, you can't blame him. This is the dreamscape; anything can happen," Ralph said to Ivan.

Ivan knew this as well but couldn't help feeling slightly annoyed; he didn't hold it against Glen for long, though; he wasn't such a petty person after all.

After dropping the matter, they returned their focus to the wall.

"So this thing is like a sort of illusion? A trap?" Karin mumbled as she walked toward a random side of the wall, expecting to pass through it as well.

BAM!

She walked into a solid blood wall and hit her face on it.

"Ouch! This one isn't a fake " she shouted in a low voice and turned to the boys while rubbing her forehead.

'We can tell as much already' Ivan and the others thought inwardly without voicing it out.

"It seems like only the part where the blood corals disappear into are illusionary walls," Ivan said since he was the one who had discovered this aspect of the walls; it strange that only the crossed sections were like this.

They began to carefully study the cross-sections and even moved back to the previous cross-sections that they had been to before; their speculations were finally complete after studying the walls of each cross-section carefully.

The colors of the blood walls where the blood corals disappeared in each of the crossed sections were lighter than the color of the usual blood corridors or the solid part of the walls, all of them were illusions!

After finding out this secret, the group started going through the walls whenever they reached a crossed section instead of moving along the clear path ahead; they would appear in other crossed sections immediately after passing the illusionary blood wall.

Without them realizing it, several minutes had passed and they had gone through tens of crossed sections.

After a long time of going through the walls, they finally came out from the maze of crossed sections.

This was after passing through a crossed section without any blood corals to tell them which wall was fake, they had to manually find it themselves.

The space that they found themselves after coming out was an extremely large opening, it was so large that one would never have guessed that such an open space could be found inside a labyrinth.

The space was as wide as a football court, and in the middle of it was a straight, long corridor that cut through the middle of this space, multiple crossed sections made from blood walls linked like a network to this corridor with blood corals acting like threads that held the illusionary walls and the real walls together.

It was like a labyrinth inside a labyrinth!

"Umm, I think we should worry about the crossed sections later; we've got company!" Karin said with a shaky voice.

Ivan and the others turned around to see why the girl sounded frightened; they soon found out why after turning around.

The ground in this large space was starting to rise and mini graves before bursting open silently and from each grave, a monster that looked like a mixture of a human and a scorpion would crawl out.

These creatures had bodies of scorpions, heads of scorpions, and even stingers as well. Their resemblance to humans, however, was their arms and legs, which were like those of a bulky bodybuilder.

They stood on both legs and cracked their knuckles like humans who were preparing to fight while their scorpion heads looked at the five of them; their bodies were covered in sturdy-looking red shells, and their tails let out red smoke occasionally.

"What are those?" Glen's voice sounded; these creatures didn't look as scary as some of the monsters that they had encountered since they came to the dreamscape. If anything, they looked weird instead for having human limbs.

"I have no idea, just prepared to fight," Ralph said seriously, his two undead standing on both sides of him.

The numbers of these scorpions were slowly increasing and they soon reached a hundred, covering half of this space and leaving a little free space and the network of crossed sections as the only escape route for the five; that was if they were planning to escape.

One of the Scorpions that was closest to the five suddenly dashed toward them with speed, its target was Karin.

Startled, Karin didn't think before carelessly swinging her mallet at it; she forgot to control the force of the swing, causing it to look like a casual wave of her mallet.

Surprisingly, immediately the mallet touched the body of the scorpion.

BAM!

It smashed into the body of the scorpion, cracking its shell before sending it flying away like a kite with a broken string.

Karin "..."

Eh? It was so weak?

Everyone thought. They watched as the monster was sent flying into the distance before smashing into another one of its kind, the two of them shattered into a bloody mess of shells, limbs, and blood.

It turned out that the bodies of these creatures were quite deceiving, and they were actually very weak.

"Goodness, they might be as weak or even weaker than the one-eyed monster!" Glen exclaimed as a look of relief appeared on his face.

It didn't matter if their numbers were much, it would just be like cutting grass.

'Sob, I've not had such an easy fight in a long time, all the monsters I came across in the dreamscape were bullies. Huhu' Glen clenched his fists and wept silently, letting out invisible tears.

"What is a one-eyed monster?" Karin looked at Glen before turning to ask Ralph.

Ralph explained that it was a weak monster found on level one of the training room of the Tower center that they came from.

"Oh, I see. Then it must be the same as the silver worm from our tower; it's very soft and slow; it can only attack dead creatures," Karin recalled.

"Talk later, let's deal with these things first," Ivan said to the two while staring at the approaching scorpions.

But just before they could swing into action, a loud rumbling sound shook the entire labyrinth; they looked up and saw the red mist above the labyrinth turning.

Their expressions changed.

"The labyrinth, it's shifting already?!" Glen exclaimed in shock.

Without them realizing it, an hour had passed?!

Before any of them could react, the ground below them suddenly split and blood walls burst out from the ground all around them while some parts withdrew.

The entire place was collapsing!

"Stay together!" Ralph noticed something and called out, his voice filled with panic but it was too late.

A tall blood wall suddenly appeared in front of him, and the ground below him collapsed; he was unable to see or hear from Ivan and the others.

He wasn't the only one, everyone found themselves enclosed by blood walls before getting relocated as everywhere seemed to be reshuffling.

They had been separated!