Sleep is for the Weak

Branwen's stats

Scarlet felt terrible. 

Somehow, the sense that she had regressed in her attempts to overcome her chronic psychosis made the entire incident feel even worse than usual for her. She had come close to giving up and flying straight home to her mother.

Even the Labyrinth couldn’t raise her spirits, as she walked towards the fortress-like structure over its entrance with her head down. She twitched every time someone came within ten feet of her and the noise from everyone’s chatter was deafening.

(You’re going to be alright.) Branwen said from her perch on Scarlet’s shoulder.

Scarlet nodded and scratched the bird underneath her beak, but otherwise did not reply. She just followed a few feet behind Charles, as the rest of the boy’s formed a perimeter around her in order to stop people from getting too close.

This worked well enough, but caused them to gather a lot of attention, which made Scarlet feel even more uncomfortable. 

There were around 300 people gathered in that entry hall for the Labyrinth, their school uniforms replaced with whatever form of armor and weapons they used for fighting. Scarlet and her group were no exceptions to this, each wearing magic armor that Scarlet had created. Though since it looked more like modern military armor rather than the medieval armor everyone else had, it gathered a lot of attention.

Thirty layers of tightly packed enchanted threads, made by Maria and Spindle, meant that the vests could take a pretty serious hit, and were all equipped with wards against different mana attributes to protect from monsters which had magical attacks. All together, they should be able to handle the attack of anything under level 100 pretty easily.

...With the exception of Scarlet’s set, which while looking much like the others was more keyed towards mana regeneration than real defense. But she has skill which could boost her defense to be higher than the others.

So they had a lot of eyes on them when they reached where Prince Isaka and Lloyd were waiting for them. 

Isaka was in lighter armor, made to be easy to move in, and had his twin blades and the crossbow that Scarlet had given him, while Lloyd was wearing heavier steel armor, with a tower shield and longsword on his back. 

Isaka’s two attendants were also there, the older boys both seemed to be more heavily armored than their master. One of them, a trapper Class of some kind, had a belt full of different items, as well as a satchel that rattled with metal objects whenever he moved.

“I hope we haven’t kept you waiting.” Charles said as his group walked up.

“It’s fine. I just arrived early.” Isaka replied. His voice carried a slight tiredness to it and he had light shadows under his eyes. “I’m afraid that I wasn’t able to max out my Class Skill last night. So I will still have to rely heavily on you.”

“It’s fine. We weren’t planning to go deep on our first day anyways.” Charles replied.

With Chad in classes and most of them still training their Class Skills, they decided to take it easy on the first day and prioritize something other than leveling, gathering the unique materials that could only be found inside of the Labyrinth.

While Scarlet had been able to buy a lot of things, for exorbitant prices, there were materials that simply never reached the market because of how rare they were. And with those materials, she could create magic items that could better convert arcane mana into holy mana, increasing the mana regeneration of the rest of her party from 6 mana per second to maybe as high as 12, under optimum conditions.

As Isaka and Charles talked, Lloyd turned towards Scarlet and bowed deeply, drawing the eyes of the other boys. “I’m sorry for yesterday. I crossed a line I shouldn’t have and caused you a lot of trouble. I hope that you can forgive me.”

“...It’s fine.” Scarlet said, not feeling like Lloyd had anything to apologize for. The problem hadn’t been with his behavior. It had been with Scarlet herself. With her weak will. “I’m sorry I freaked and tried to stab you in the throat.”

“...What?” Isaka said in confusion. His eyes went to Charles, looking for an explanation.

“Bran has PTSD and had a rather violent episode.” Charles said quietly.

“Ah…” Isaka said with a nod of understanding.

PTSD was common among noblemen, who spent around 30 years in total fighting powerful monsters that ventured into the Kingdom from the Wildlands or in the Labyrinth, before retiring to a government position somewhere. From the time they entered the military academy at the age of 10, the kid gloves came off, and deaths became more frequent. 5% of students were expected to die before graduating from the Academy.

It wasn’t considered rare to see someone be completely torn limb from limb right in front of you, eaten alive by a monster that you are completely helpless against, at least once during those years of service, which naturally resulted in some pretty heavy mental trauma.

So their society was very used to dealing with people with PTSD, and was very patient and accepting of it. 

“Will it be alright to venture into the Labyrinth today? If they need a while to recover, we can do other training.” Isaka asked.

“No. Moving about will be good for them, and we don’t plan on going deep. Everything should be fine.” Charles replied with a shake of the head. “We are ready to move out whenever you are, Your Highness.”

“...Alright then. Let us go at once.”

---

 

The moment that their feet first touched the stairway going down into the dungeon, Scarlet’s skin started to tingle.

The mana in the air was so much thicker than elsewhere, and her mana regeneration, which had been capped at 60 mana per second due to the limits of the mana surrounding her, shot up to 150, pushing up against the limits of her [Arcane Mana Resistance].

While they only walked down about twenty stairs, they found themselves coming out of an opening in a cave wall, into a cavern the size of a small castle. The polished sandstone-like walls were glistening with moisture, the liquid glowing ever so slightly with the intense mana in order to light the chamber, and the sounds of the sea echoed from within several of the tunnels that connected to the room.

“Looks like the mana here is a lot thicker.” Charles said, checking his own equipment, finding the output increasing. 

“That’s natural. The Labyrinths exist beyond normal worldly logic. So naturally there is more mana.” Isaka said, happy with the sudden change, as they walked out past the soldiers positioned to guard the gateway between the Labyrinth and the outside world. 

“True.” Charles said before checking on Scarlet. “Are you going to be alright?”

“It’s fine. I made sure to train myself to withstand the max output of my equipment. Though I wasn’t expecting the Labyrinth to reach it.” Scarlet said, the amount of mana shocking her out of her daze, as well as the ambient sounds of the Labyrinth.

It really was absurd how much mana there was. So much that her high Tier 6 equipment was able to reach saturation. She remembered how Joshua’s equipment could drain 1000 units of unprocessed mana per second from its surroundings. It had seemed ridiculous, when nowhere in the world would have enough mana in the air to supply such an amount, but it seemed like a dungeon really could supply that much mana.

“If we train down here, then we can train even faster.” Scarlet said.

Charles liked the idea. It was novel, since you would need either a non-arcane mana regeneration item of higher than Tier 6 or [Arcane Mana Resistance] in order to make use of the extra mana in the air.

“We’ll look into setting up a camp down here in the future. But for today, let’s practice navigating in the Labyrinth a bit. We will follow your lead.” Charles said, inviting Scarlet to come forward.

“Right. Ready partner?” Scarlet asked Branwen.

“Do you even have to ask?” Branwen said cheekily before jumping off of Scarlet’s shoulder, her form changing from solid to more spiritual as she prepared for a Spirit Merge.

The boy’s watched as the pair merged together, a quartet of wings appearing from Scarlet’s back, made red by the same enchantments that disguised Branwen’s normal colors. Then, a burst of mana came from Scarlet, rushing off in several directions.

“What is sh… he doing?” Lloyd asked, his tongue slipping a bit in shock by the sudden burst of what to him would be a significant chunk of his daily mana supply. 

The slip didn’t go unnoticed by either Charles or Isaka.

“It’s Bran’s Bond Skill. He can use it to scout ahead and see exactly what is there.” Charles explained.

“A useful skill. How accurate is it?” Isaka asked.

“There aren’t many monsters close to our locations. Not surprising considering the number of students that come through here. The nearest group that is worth anything is a giant crabs nest about two miles in that direction.” Scarlet said, pointing towards one of the tunnels before turning to point down another. “But if we go down that tunnel over there, we can get to a mithril deposit. Seems to contain around 1500 pounds or so, as well as some normal silver, but is fifty feet into solid rock. Might be a pain to get to.”

“Very accurate.” Charles replied to Isaka’s question before addressing the information they had just been given. Scarlet’s scouting abilities were almost unmatched, specially after finding out that she could cast [Identification Magic] through her [True Sight], letting her know exactly what it is she had found. “If the monsters here are too thin we can move further away from the entrance or head to the next floor. There is no rush to collect the mithril, since it doesn’t sound like people are going to be stumbling across it. Unless you have an immediate need for it.”

“I’ve got a… small amount of it recently. So I shouldn’t have any need for it yet. I’d like to use it eventually, but I will need to get my [Blacksmithing] skill up first.” Scarlet replied. “Nico, can you tell me which tunnel we need to go down to be moving towards the next floor?” 

“It’s that one over there.” Nico said, pointing towards one of the many tunnels.

Scarlet used her [True Sight] again, looking a good distance in that direction for anything she might have missed with her earlier quick scan. “...About three miles out, there is a spider colony. It looks large enough to be worth a fair amount of experience. Their venom sacks might also be useful for something.”

“Lead the way.” Charles said, having heard enough.

---

The world inside of the Labyrinth was confusing.

The word ‘Labyrinth’ was a good way to describe it, as space bent in on itself and if you went into it without a plan, you could easily get lost in its maze of tunnels.

The first level alone was as large as the entire capital city and the surrounding farmlands, stretching on for miles and miles.

At one point, while looking ahead, Scarlet thought she spotted the magic signal of an abnormally strong monster, but when she took a closer look, she discovered that she had gone through a loop, and was looking back at herself.

...That was embarrassing.

Because of how space bent within the Labyrinth, the maps of the place were all sort of abstract, and difficult to read, making Scarlet glad that Nico and Sidney both had years of experience with it under their belts.

But it seemed like that was going to be the only threat to them at these higher levels. 

Charles could only describe the feeling he got when he cleanly split a level 65 Salamander in two with a single swing of his oversized sword as… disappointment.

This monster wasn’t too different from the Timber Wood Geckos which had once required him and his friends to pound on them for several minutes just to kill one of them. Now they were… insignificant. Something to be dispatched with a single well placed blow.

The difference between a Strength stat of 500 and one of 12,000, as well as a magic sword.

And this was one of the stronger encounters on the 2nd level.

The desire to go deeper burned inside of his soul. But that was not for that day. Today was for gaining resources and knowledge they needed to make a proper plan.

“Nico, Andy, skin the monsters. Sidney and I will lock down the area. Bran, do what you have to do to get to that Ocean’s Heart ore.” Charles said, giving out post battle orders.

Sticking around a kill was never a smart idea, since the smell of blood and the noise of battle could attract more enemies. If you found that you had to, it was best to set up traps for any unwelcome guests. 

Not important at this level, but best to keep with best practices.

“Right.” “Got it.” “Sure thing.” “Muh muh hmr.” 

While the boys gave their confirmation, Scarlet was unable to speak properly around a mouthful of chicken jerky.

“Again?” Charles said in disbelief.

Scarlet swallowed before angrily replying. “Shut up. The increased mana generation comes with an increased energy cost. Arcane mana is a lot harder to refine than life and holy mana you know.”

Where the mana they gained from their equipment was basically already processed into a form that could be used, Scarlet’s body really had to work to make arcane mana safe and usable.

“Hold on. You aren’t actually refining all that mana inside of your body are you?” Lloyd said in disbelief at Scarlet’s statement. 

“That’s right, and it takes a lot of energy, so I have to eat.” Scarlet said before taking another big bite.

“I thought your mana generation was abnormal but… that is…” Isaka couldn’t even find words. “I’ve heard about [Arcane Mana Resistance] before, but did you really do something as painful as that?”

That was usually people’s reaction when they found out about her [Arcane Mana Resistance], though Scarlet didn’t feel like it was that big of a deal.

Yeah, it hurt, but the pain was only really temporary. It didn’t bother her that much.

Then again, even before she got [Pain Resistance] and before even her reincarnation, she didn’t mind pain as much as the next person. It’s not like she was some kind of pervert who loved the feeling of being in pain, she just didn’t really mind it.

Once, when she was still just 9 and had a bad toothache, she was convinced she had a cavity and was terrified of going to the dentist and having someone touching her while she was forced to lie in a chair half sedated. 

She was so terrified of the idea, that she had reached into her own mouth and ripped the tooth out with her own hands. Just stuck her nail into her bleeding gums and pulled until she tore the tooth out, along with most of its root.

That had provoked some very stimulating conversations with her therapist.

It wasn’t that uncommon for people dealing with serious psychosis to not fully internalize the avoidance instincts that pain was supposed to provoke. So while Scarlet could feel the pain, some part of her probably understood that it was bad and that it should be avoided, that part was just white noise when compared to the sea of heightened activity that was her normal mental state.

Scarlet ignored their talk as she finished her quick meal and got to work casting the spell which would unearth the small chunk of Ocean’s Heart ore that was hidden within the walls of the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth’s walls were harder than normal earth, charged with mana, so a considerable amount of power had to go into digging the stone up. 

While she had ample mana to do so, she would be casting earth moving magic for the next half hour in order to dig the ten feet necessary to uncover the small chunk of rock. In comparison, if used in the outside world, she could have personally dug herself a hole that was a hundred feet deep in the same amount of time, and most of that effort would have gone into trying to find somewhere to put all the displaced dirt.

It was while she was digging that Lloyd dropped the question on them. “Prince Isaka does know who Scarlet really is, right?” Lloyd asked Charles, causing many people to freeze up. “I’m only guessing because of how much respect he showed for her. It only makes sense if he knows that Bran is the Lady Scarlet.”

“...So, you figured it out then.” Isaka said, sounding annoyed and suspicious.

“Less figured it out, and more of Charles let it slip whenever he was trying to call out to her when she was having a panic attack.” Lloyd admitted. “I’ll admit her behavior had seemed odd from the start, but I wouldn’t have ever guessed her identity. She is… different from the Holy Woman the rumors make her out to be.”

“Like you’re one to talk!” Scarlet interrupted her spellcasting in order to shout angrily back, as Charles gave her an apologetic look. 

In truth, the only thing most nobles knew for sure about Scarlet Tailor was that she was a commoner girl, the apprentice of Archbishop Joshua, that she had a Sacred-type Bond, that she gave off an extraordinary amount of magical power and had an extremely high level of [Holy Magic]. It was widely accepted as fact that Joshua was grooming her to become the next Queen, so rumors about the elegance and grace of the red haired beauty were natural.

To compare those rumors to this black haired boy who was shoving fistfuls of chicken jerky into his mouth was… hard. Even with the abnormal amount of mana she was still giving off.

“While some might realize that she is a girl, I don’t think any would guess her real identity due to the way she acts. Alexander certainly wouldn’t have been so rude if he had guessed the truth.” Lloyd said.

Most already accepted that she was supposed to be the next Queen, just like they had for the Oracle before her, so it was natural that those vying for the throne would attempt to add her to their harems in order to cement their claims.

“Yes. I’m afraid she doesn’t know how to control her womanly emotions.” Nico said with a tired nod.

...If Scarlet wasn’t busy digging up this priceless rock, she would so kick their asses.

“I’m not trying to imply that I don’t think she belongs here. I’m just saying that there doesn’t seem to be a need to pretend she is a guy when it is just us around.” Lloyd said.

“...You have a point.” Isaka said with a sigh. He didn’t like Lloyd knowing Scarlet’s real identity, but at least now they won’t have to worry about his discovering it. “How long will it take Scarlet to unearth the materials?”

“About an hour!” Branwen called back for Scarlet.

“...I suppose I will work on my Class Skills then.” Isaka said, deciding to just train while he waited.

That rock had better be worth it.