The Exiled First-born of the Noble House. Rising to the Top With the Worthless Skill [Null Poison]

Maze

After passing through the wide area that opened up after the stairs, we entered an area with narrow pathways spread around like a maze.
And around these narrow pathways were a bunch of small houses packed around haphazardly with no sense of order.

I imagine the competitors used to live in these narrow rooms, and would then head to the arena to put their lives on the line.

As we continued to proceed down the path, the sizes of the rooms began to slowly increase, and by the end of it, each individual house seemed almost double the size of the ones at the start.

I guess just like the adventurers now, achievements in the arena probably led to an increase in the ranks of the competitors and would get access to better rooms as a result.

Not just the rooms itself, even the grade of the food given to them would get increased in quality from what I’ve heard.

Considering that………it means, the undead people we fought back then were probably the lowest rank warriors at the arena.

Which means, the strength of the enemies we’ll face will also increase the further we head inside, and the end lay Klaus and his party.

It’s almost funny how it feels like a traditional dungeon but, I didn’t want to waste my stamina needlessly so I was planning to avoid as much fighting as possible.

Thankfully, I had the full map of [Foro Neem] to quickly navigate through this maze like area.

I can use [mana sense] to detect undeads and avoid any battles that weren’t unavoidable from now on.

“Oi Chris! We’re heading right again? It all looks the same here so are you sure we aren’t going around in circles?”

“We are most certainly progressing forward so don’t worry.
Also, don’t break my concentration.
We don’t know when we might get attacked by enemies.”

About 30mins had passed since the battle in the previous area.

To avoid most of the undeads that had been deployed here, we were zigzagging through the maze-like paths when Ralf made that complaint.

It was indeed a dreary sight all around us that showed no signs of changing but, I could tell that the rooms were getting bigger and bigger so I knew for sure that we were surely making progress.

Anyway, I really wanted to keep my concentration up as we may run into enemies at any point——

Just as my thoughts reached till there, Snow who was walking at the forefront suddenly stopped in its tracks.

“Snow, what happened!? Is something up ahead? Hey Chris, did you sense something as well?”

“No, my skills aren’t showing any reaction yet.
But…….Snow’s senses are never wrong so something must be coming up for sure.”

“Let’s drop our pace a bit more and proceed carefully.
We can’t have them sense us first either.”

“Agreed.
The moment I detect something as well, I’ll tell you guys.”

Snow didn’t show any major reaction to any of the undeads we had run into until now so whatever was lying in wait ahead was something entirely different from those.

With both [Life Presence Sense] and [Mana Sense] active, I slowly continued to proceed until I get a reaction and……..after a while, finally I too sensed the thing that Snow had already detected.

Until now, I had only been getting mana readings from the undeads but this time, I detected proper life presences as well.

Which means, it wasn’t undeads, but real alive human beings instead.

“Stop, both of you.
I can finally sense whoever’s waiting for us up ahead as well.”

“More undeads? Or is it finally Elphas himself!?”

“I don’t if it’s Elphas specifically or not but, it’s certainly an actual human being.
Not just undeads.”

“is that true? How many are there?”

“From what I can sense, about 6 of them.
Though there might be other humans with weaker life presences there as well.”

I can’t sense any non-combatants since they had weaker presences.

Especially with the case with Pablo, I was careful to not just depend on my [Life Presence Sense] alone to confirm any concrete info.

“6 of them, meaning is it Klaus, Elphas, Drake………plus the Cardinal and his subordinates maybe?”

“I can’t say for certain but, none of them exceptionally strong life presences.
So I doubt it’s Klaus but, we can only know for sure when we see them with our own eyes.”

“What’s the plan then? Should we stick to the formation we used when fighting the undeads?”

“If Klaus and his party are there, I take Klaus, Esta fights Elphas, and Ralf takes on Drake.
If they aren’t there, me and Ralf are going to play the tanks, Snow will be our main attacker, and Esta, you’ll support Snow.”

“Ooh, using Snow as the main attacker now!? I mean, yeah it’s assault back there really was incredible so it makes sense!”

While I do agree with what he said, there’s also the fact that I’d like to preserve as much stamina as possible for us three until the main battle.

With a quick plan set, we began heading down the pathways towards the presences we had sensed.

The closer it got, the wider the roads began to get——and the place these 6 presences were waiting seemed to be like a cafeteria, an eating area of sorts.

A bunch of worn-out chairs were arranged in lines, and you could see what must have been a kitchen back in the day.

And also……in the centre of this cafeteria stood 4 men as if waiting to block our path.