After they enter the hole, they find themselves on a terrace, overlooking what is most likely their next test, a maze. The maze was 4 meters wide, as for it's length, most of it was covered by a fog of snow.
"Woah, just looking at it is making my head spin."
"Hmm...Most of the maze is covered by fog and it'll be a pain to memorize it. It could take who knows how long to clear this, unless you had thissssssss." She twirls around the compass. "I am seriously loving this thing."
Meld was wondering something else. "Shouldn't Freid have gone through the same thing we did, including this?" The mention of Freid had caused Hinata's harem feel disgusted just thinking about him.
"Oh yeah, that guy is such a prick, I keep forgetting he actually had enough skills to complete two labyrinths." Hinata admitted.
Regardless, they head down the staircase that was already and enter the maze. And it wasn't long until...it got really annoying.
"Ugh...This is such a pain." Ryutaro whined.
"We haven't been walking for that long." Akira informed.
"It's not that." Shizuku speaks up. "Ryutaro just really hates puzzles."
"Anytime he tries to solve any, he just gets mad and breaks it." Kaori chimed in, causing everyone but Ryutaro to laugh.
"Ugh, can't we just punch our way through?" The musclehead groaned.
"I'm pretty sure the labyrinth would've taken measures for that." Meld replied.
Ryutaro limps down, but then he realized something. "Oh, I know! We don't have to walk all the way there, we can just use these boots Hinata gave us."
After hearing him say that, everyone tried to stop him, but Ryutaro was to fast and he had already jumped high and stayed on the air. "Hey guys, come on up. Huh?" Just as he noticed something, Ryutaro instantly disappeared .
"What the- Where'd he go?!" They all turn their heads trying to find the monk, until Hinata spots him. "There he is."
Everyone turns to where she was pointing and screams in horror when they see that Ryutaro was encased in a ice prism on the ceiling.
"Ok, everyone calm down." Meld spoke up, trying to control the situation. "I think i can see his face moving, so we can assume he's still alive in there."
Shizuku composed herself. "Ok...so we need a way to get him down from there, but if we go up there, we'll get frozen too. Any ideas, Hinata?"
They all look at the Synergist, who simply breathes out. "Shame." And walks away.
"Hinata?! Oh no, she doesn't care about him!"
"Wait! Please come back!"
"Bite me." The synergist kept walking
"Oh no, now there's a bunch of ice spikes near Ryutaro!"
"AAAAAHHHHH!"
Hinata paid no mind to the chaos she was walking away from.
After the remaining party members free Ryutaro, and he got a ten minute glare of disappointment from Hinata, they continued forward.
The only other obstacle they ran into were ogres made of ice that came out of the walls, they were quickly handles by the others.
"Is it just me or were these things weak as hell?"
"It doesn't look like they're regenerating."
"Maybe their only strength was the fact they nearly ambushed us."
"Or maybe you guys are just that strong." Kaori chimed in in the discussion. "You guys are so strong and sharp that it felt easy. I mean, if we didn't have the compass, imagine getting constantly ambushed while being lost. Isn't that right guys?"
She turns to her friends, who all nod in agreement, except Kouki. He still thought back, when the ogre first ambushed them, it had extended it's arm out to strike him.
And he had no idea, until Hinata screamed and shot it. He can't help but get frustrated at the fact that-
"Ok, lets keep moving." Meld called out.
The finally reached the end of the maze after a really long walk. They arrive at two large doors, they had a drawing of beautiful roses and vines.
The party should've been excited to finally be out of the maze, but there was one problem.
"Are those keyholes?" There were three holes on the doors. No matter how much they all pushed or how long Hinata tried using Transmute, the door wouldn't move.
"Talk about a backfire." Using the compass had actually worked against them. "The keys must be somewhere in the maze."
Everyone groans at the thought of having to go through the giant maze again.
"I don't think there are any monsters here. Let's rest before we go look for them." Meld suggested, seeing the low morale. "What do you think, Hinata?"
The girl nods. "Yeah, sure." She then uses her treasure trove to summon a small rectangular block shaped cabin.
They all look in awe. "Woah, Hinata, did you make that?"
"I made it in case I wanted to go camping, or for going into hiding." She whispered that last part. "Anyway, go ahead. I already made a kotatsu when I knew we were coming here. Shu, can you make some chow?"
The rabbit boy gives a thumbs up. "You got it." They all excitedly rush into the cabin and feel absolute bliss as they had gotten away from the cold.
Inside, they were enjoying siting around the large kotatsu and enjoying the smell of the hotpot that Shu had made.
"Okayyyy, here you go." Shu places the pot on the center of the Kotatsu and everyone starts digging in.
They all made moans of delight, as they can bask in the heat of the kotatsu and the taste of the hotpot.
"So gooddddd!" Suzu squealed as she took another bite.
"This is the best. Who knew we'd ever enjoy something like this in a labyrinth?" Kaori said.
"I know how you feel." Meld spoke up. "It kinda takes me back to Orcus."
Tio tilted his head. "Really? Didn't master kept saying of how much that place scarred you?"
"I-I wasn't scarred!" Meld denied while flustered. "And I meant after we cleared it, and were in Oscar's hideout."
"That was a delightful four months." Akira mused. "After a hard day of training, we got to enjoy a relaxing hot bath and a extravagant dinner."
"Extravagant? Which one of you were cooking?"
"I did ." Hinata raised her hand.
Everyone but Akira and Meld fell into silence while looking at her.
"What?"
They all looked at Akira and Meld with looks of disbelief, asking the question. "Is she for real?" With their eyes.
"Uh, it's true, back in the hideout, Hinata did all the cooking, everyday. We helped from time to time, but only a little." Meld answered.
"Those were the days." Akira smiled as he revels in the memories. "It felt as if we were a married couple, I come home to eat the delicious food my wife made."
The rest of Hinata's harem was filled with jealousy, while everyone else had a hard time imagining Hinata as a typical housewive.
"Would you shut up? The only reason I took the cooking gig was because you two were useless in the kitchen." Meld's dishes were all made by the royal chefs, the same goes for Akira before he got sealed.
'Actually...' Hinata thought back to the time she met Akira for the first time. 'The door here and the door to Akira's crystal had a similar mechanic, neither Meld's strength nor my Transmute could open it. Is it possible...'
"It's not fair!" Hinata snaps back to reality after hearing Shu talk. "After I joined, she dumped all the cooking to me, I want to eat her cooking too!" Shu whined as Tio and Seiji furiously nod in agreement.
"Bite me." Hinata spat. After the hotpot started getting empty, they get back yo their previous issue.
"Well, I guess now we have to get ready to go through the maze again."
"Actually no." Hinata rebutted Meld. "While we were eating, I already had an idea to find the keys, come on." She invites them to go outside. Once there, she brings out her rocket launcher and a gate key.
"Uh, Hinata..."
She uses her gate key to open a spatial gate, and everyone gasps as they what was through it. They can see a glowing key on a pedestal, but what was more notable was the giant ice ogre that was several times bigger than the others they faced.
"Take this sucka!" Hinata aims and fires her rocket launcher, the rocket lands right on the ogre's face. Hinata makes a dash to the portal, snatches the key and runs back through the portal. But not before reloading her launcher and blasting the ogre again, finishing it off. A while manically laughing the whole time.
After she closed the gate, she casually said. "Got one." While her party had their jaws dropped.
Once they all got their jaws back up, the barrage of questions came. Hinata was quick to silence them by simply pulling out her gun and saying. "Do you want to keep asking or do you want to shut the fuck up and let me answer?"
Once they all calmed down, Hinata begin explaining, while they were all trying to thaw out Ryutaro, she had decided to check if the same penalty applies to her drones, and luckily it didn't.
Then while they were eating, Hinata had sent out three drones to look for the three keys, each drone had an anchor, so when it found the keys, she can just use a gate key and make a portal to go in and grab the key.
"And that's about it. Now, all we have to do get the other two keys."
Despite their initial shock, the others are impressed by her quick and clever thinking, they were also glad of the amount time they saved. Though it seems not everyone shares the sentiment.
"Hold on a second!" Kouki raised his voice. "Is this really ok?"
Hinata raised an eyebrow. "What are talking about now?"
"W-Well, aren't you suppose to battle with labyrinth guardians head on?"
"Huh? Where did that assumption come from? All I see is that we need keys to open the door, what does that have to do with fighting monsters head on?"
"I-Isn't that how it's suppose to go?"
"Suppose? Dude, this is a labyrinth, not a cooking recipe. Sure, sometimes we have to defeat monsters to proceed, but it's not always like that, if we had to fight the ogres, then there shouldn't be any keyholes, and even if we did, I just beat one either way." Hinata was starting to get annoyed by Kouki's attitude, but it seems the hero still has more.
"B-But isn't it cheating just to open portals and just snatching the key?"
"What's cheating about using ancient magic that you earned? It might be harder, if we had challenged this labyrinth earlier, but we didn't. We cleared all the other labyrinth first, because the liberators never specified any sort of order!" Hinata retirted. "And where do you get off lecturing me, when you haven't cleared labyrinth yourself?
That final comment made the hero finally back down, Kouki's friends look at him with concern.
Nonetheless, they proceeded with Hinata's plan.
After obtaining the three keys, they opened the large door, and what they saw were...them, multiple thems actually.
"Oh, it's a bunch of mirrors." After seeing their reflections, they realize that the next room was completely filled with mirrors.
"Ooh, it's like one of those mirror houses in amusement parks." Kaori pointed out.
"True, but this definitely won't be amusing." Just like before, Hinata took the lead, navigating through the hall of mirrors with the compass. As they walked, they haven't encountered much of anything, until...
"Huh?" Kouki stopped in his tracks.
"What is it Kouki?" Shizuku and the others turned to him.
"I...thought I heard something."
"I didn't hear anything. Shu?" Hinata turns to the rabbit.
Shu focuses his hearing for a while then shakes his head. "Nope didn't hear a thing."
"Maybe you just imagined it?" Shizuku reasoned.
"M-Maybe.."
Although the others dismissed it, Hinata was suspicious.
They kept moving, but it didn't take long until it happened again. "Ah! This time I heard it again, I swear!" He pulls out his sword. "Dammit, where are you?!"
Despite his desperate plea, everyone still looked at him with doubt, none of them heard anything. And unexpectedly...
"I believe him." Hinata of all people stepped up.
"REALLY!?" Everyone asked, even Kouki himself.
"He's telling the truth and I don't think he's going nuts, that would be too good to be true." Hinata sighed.
'Ah, there it is...' Everyone collectively thought.
"What did the voice say, Kouki?" Meld asked.
"It said, "Are you really ok with this?""
Hinata cupped her chin. "Hm, it could be a form of telepathy, that's why only he can hear it. Let's keep moving, everyone keep an eye on him and speak up if you start hearing things."
The group proceeds, eveyone follows Hinata's orders and keeps observing Kouki, who seemed to still be tormented by the voices. But soon, he wasn't alone...
"Kya!" Shizuku yelped as she reached for her head.
"Shizuku!" Kaori rushes to her side. "Did you.."
The swordmaster nodded. "Yeah, I heard something too."
"What was it?"
"It said, "How long are you planning to deceive yourself?""
"What could that me-"
"Kyah!"
"Gah!"
"Suzu! Ryutaro!" You guys too?!"
Now, all four of them had started hearing voices.
For Shizuku. "Still lying to yourself?"
For Ryutaro. "You must've realized it by now."
For Suzu. "Can you really keep believeing that?"
Safe to say that none of those made any sense...to the others at least. But there was something else, Kouki and Ryutaro claims they heard a guy's voice, while Shizuku and Suzu claim that they heard a girl's voice.
The one thing that they had in common was the fact that they all feel like they recognize the voice, but can't put their fingers on it.
Even though they were all bothered by the voices, they still continued moving. And pretty soon, Hinata's party experienced the same thing...
For Akira. 'It'll happen again.'
For Shu. 'It's all your fault.'
For Tio. 'They will despise you.'
For Seiji. 'Can you still act like this?'
For Kaori. 'You didn't forget, did you?'
For Meld. 'You know it, don't you?'
And finally for Hinata. 'Are you sure about this?'
After hearing the voice, Hinata smiles. "So that's it."
"Hinata?"
"I know who the voices belong to." Everyone gasped. "It's us. We're hearing our own voices."
After she said that, they were all shocked to realize it was true.
"And what they're saying to us, well...you guys already know right?" Everyone gulps, they know where she's going with this. "They're all hinting at some personal issue we all have, the darkest and deepest thoughts that we keep. It looks like that's the theme of this labyrinth...that's probably the reason you all look like a bunch of sad saps right now."
While her party's mood got even lower than they already were, Hinata still seemed to be her usual self, she did just insult all of them.
"Hinata...you seem okay, are you not affected by your dark thought?" Akira inquired.
"Hm...nope, I'm cool." Hinata shrugged.
"How could that be?!" Kouki spoke up, sounding frantic. "These are the thoughts we can't ignore, how can you be unaffected?"
"What's your deal? You need only three words to deal with something like this."
"Three words?"
"Yup, SUCK IT UP!" They all jumped back at Hinata's scream. "This is a damn labyrinth, not a therapy session!"
"Nagumo, you can't just-"
"Shut it! It's not even a big deal, just admit y'all have issues with something, and then get over it. Acting like this, ain't gonna help with anything."
Despite her harsh tone, she actually made a point, to some of them at least.
"You're right Hinata." Meld stepped up, a smile visible on his face. "Denying and ignoring it won't get us anywhere, it's better if we accept it and do our best to resolve it."
When Meld put it that way, they all started to accept Hinata's reasoning. And they start to gain some their vigor back.
It was a happy occasion, but one person wasn't smiling, in fact, the feelings that bothered him grew even stronger.
It had been nearly a day since they entered the labyrinth. Even with Meld and Hinata's encouragement, the group, mostly the hero's party were still bothered by the voices.
The labyrinth was unforgiving as always, even after putting them in that state, it still attacked them using traps ogres. They managed to hold their own even with with their affected feelings.
Except for maybe...
"Dammit!" Kouki cursed as he saw Meld kill the ice ogre that was giving him trouble. It's been like this alot, Kouki's movements were getting sloppier and sloppier, he was losing against weak enemies like the ogres.
Meld and Kouki's party kept worrying about him, but he refuses to open up. As he punched the wall out of frustration, he noticed something terrifying.
"Aaahhh!" He falls back while pulling out her sword.
"Kouki?!" Shizuku runs to his side, but she was confused as to why he was pointing his sword at one of the mirrors.
"M-My reflection...it was smiling, but I wasn't." He frantically explained.
But Shizuku can only see the reflection of herself and a frightened Kouki. "Kouki, are you sure?"
"You don't believe me?!" He asked a state of panic. Shizuku couldn't understand what he was going through, she just wanted him to double check.
"Maybe it was just labyrinth?" Hinata stepped in, breaking the tension. "Maybe the labyrinth is just playing more tricks on you."
"Y-Yeah you might be right." Shizuku agreed.
"You believed her right away..." Kouki whispered under his breath.
They moved on, eventually they stumbled upon a large circular room, they see a large door, twice the size of the last one.
The door had a mural drawn on it, the dooron the left had a terrifying drawing of what seems corpses that bleeding out of their eyes and mouth, emerging from a pool of a blood that was also on fire.
The right had a completely different vibe. It had the a sun on the top corner, and below it was all manner of living things, such as humans, animals, and nature.
"Hm...I don't see keyholes or anything. But that could mean that we have to fight something." Hinata guessed.
"Um...After we beat it, we can finally get out of the maze, right?" Shizuku hopefully asked, her party shared her sentiment, already so tired of the whispers in their heads.
"Perhaps. Everyone, move with caution."
They slowly enter the room, where the noticed that it was very bright in there. Hinata looks up while shading her eyes. "Is that a sun? Just like the one in Orcus."
"Hinata, look!" The starts to be filled with mist of snow shimmering with ice crystals. The crystals starts to absorbs the sunlight and grow bigger, becoming shards. The shards started glowing bright before firing a beam at them.
"Huh?!" Meld, Akira, Kaori, and Suzu each made their own barrier, the three layers of barrier was enough to block the incoming lasers.
"This is just like Hinata's lasers."
"No, it's actually more powerful than mine." The lasers were currently bouncing off the shards and walls, nearly covering every inch of the room, while Hinata's satellite laser broke after the first blast.
The lasers starting making damages to the barrier and Seiji had to fix it with the restoration magic, Transient Infinity. To make things worse, mist was still filling up the room, soon it'll be as foggy as Verbergen.
And if that wasn't bad enough...
Multiple large ice chunks suddenly fell from above, creating large craters on the ground. The chunks then started to change it's shape, it took the form of large ice golems carrying a halberd and a shield.
"Figures." Not wasting any time, Hinata quickly fires her gun. But the golem's shields had managed to block it. "Hm, not bad, but let's see how you handle this, everyone?"
Without even giving the order, everyone but the ones keeping the barrier was ready to fire at the golems. Shu had his grenade launcher, Shizuku is gonna use the move Sonic Slice to fire blasts of wind, and Ryutaro is gonna fire mana shockwaves. Seiji, Tio, and Kouki readied their own spells and they opened fire.
However...
"What the-" Hinata couldn't finish talking as she was too busy dodging the attacks coming from Kouki, Shizuku, and Ryutaro that was aimed right at her. Although their missed her, it clashed with Shu's grenades and Tio's flame.
And that wasn't the only problem.
"NO!" Meld had grabbed Seiji's arm and pulled it up when he saw that he was aiming the disintegration at Akira.
"Seiji?!"
"Guys?! What are you doing?" Suzu asked, she couldn't believe that her friends just tried to attack Hinata.
"What the fuck?!" Hinata aimed her gun to her three panicking classmates.
"W-Wait! I wasn't aiming at you, for reals! You gotta believe me!"
"M-Me too, Nagumo, I would never do something like that."
"Nagumo, I swear I wasn't trying to slice you!"
Hinata irritably lowered her gun. "Ugh, as much I want to shoot you guys, I can tell you're telling the truth. But why did you three target me and Seiji targeted Akira?"
Speaking of Seiji, he was also profusely apologizing to Akira, who seemed skeptical whether he meant it or not. "When I was about to fire, I suddenly heard that voice from before."
"But how come Hinata, Tio, and Shu didn't target anyone?" Akira and everyone wondered.
"Perhaps..." Tio spoke up. "The labyrinth is imprinting commands to your subconscious." He looks at the four that were affected. "You each targeted someone that you had even the smallest negative feelings at, a.k.a these two." He referred to Hinata and Akira.
The four of them were shocked, struggling to accept that fact as Tio continued.
"So that explains Amanogawa and Seji, but Yaegashi and Sakagami...hehe." Hinata giggled. "Actually, that makes sense too."
'Should you really be laughing at that?' Everyone thought concerned.
"Hold on, doesn't that mean we should've been affected too?" Akira pointed out.
"Actually, it might have to do with the fact that you already openly hate them and the rest of us harbor them no ill will whatsoever."
"Hm...whatever. For the meantime, let's focus on those pests." Hinata fires at the golems, with some careful aiming, her bullets got past the shields and hit the golem.
But her bullets couldn't reach the mana crystal inside it, the part of the ice that was destroyed started to repair itself. "So that's how you wanna play? Then eat this!" She swaps her guns out for her missile launcher, and fires a bunch of missiles at the golem.
Although it did destroy them, Hinata quickly frowns when she saw the golems rebuild themselves. "Oh, come on!"
"Wait, Hinata look!" Meld pointed out. "There's one less of them."
"Huh?" Hinata starts to count the number of golems. "8, 9, 10, plus the one I got, that makes eleven. Eleven of them, eleven of us... that's it! I think we're each supposed to take one."
"Then I'll get the next one!" Kouki readied his sword.
"Wai-" Everyone tried to shout but Kouki already fired a Celestial Flash...at Hinata, who easily dodged and simply said. "Seriously?"
"You idiot!" Kaori comes from behind and smacks the back of Kouki's head. "Did you forget what happened last time?"
"I...s-sorry." The hero quietly said.
"We don't have tim- Oh great, the mist is getting in." As Hinata said, the mist that had been slowly covering them had fully surrounded them, and it instantly filled in the barrier.
Everyone immediately lost sight of each other completely, even though they were next to each other. Hinata tries to move around while dodging the lasers, she can hear the others yelling for each other, as she walked, she eventually found something.
"Huh? The door?" Hinata suddenly found herself in front of the large door they saw before, the area near her was actually clear of any mist. "Is it because I already killed a golem?"
"Hinata!" Hinata turns around sees Meld running out of the mist, he explains that after they were covered by the mist, he found himself in a small area with one golem, he easily destroyed it, and suddenly he found himself here.
"So I was right."
"What about the rest?"
Thinking quick, Hinata had sent out multiple drones and used to compass to navigate through the mist just as Akira came in. "Shu, Tio, Kaori, and Taniguchi are doing fine, but the ones that got affected earlier are on the defensive."
"They don't know what to do, they're afraid they'll just end up aiming at you two again."
"Then how about this! HEY EVERYONE!" Hinata shouted at the mist. "HERE'S THE PLAN, FIND OUT WHERE YOUR ATTACKS GO AND THEN MAKE SURE YOUR GOLEM IS IN THE LINE OF FIRE!'
"What?!" Shizuku shouted her concerns. "But Hinata, if we do that-"
"Just do it! It's not like your attacks are gonna do more than it did before!" She turns to Akira. "You ready?"
The vampire flips his hair while smirking. "Seiji couldn't hurt me if he was actually trying."
And so they initiated the plan. When Hinata saw the incoming attacks, instead of just dodging or blocking it, she had used her gate key to redirect the attacks back at the golems.
Eventually, the rest of her party joined, along with Kaori. And after some time. "Kaori get ready to heal, Yaegashi's coming."
"Shizuku, is she ok?"
"She's walking, but the golem landed a hit, and one of the lasers got her arm."
"Oh no!" Kaori gasped.
Said swordmaster walks our of the mist, using her sword like a makeshift crutch. Kaori ran up and started healing her right away. "Are you ok?"
"Hey now don't worry, it's not a serious injury."
"You're bleeding."
"Seriously, I'm fine." Shizuku tried assuring.
"Shizuku...you're doing it again." After healing her, Kaori gently grabs Shizuku's hand. "You're putting others above you. It's ok for you to be selfish sometimes, your needs are important to me too you know."
Shizuku stares at Kaori and starts blushing. "Kaori...I-"
"Sorry to interrupt, but.." Hinata pulls tye two girls away and activates her gate key, opening at two spatial gates, one accepted a very large blast, and then it came out the other.
"That was...Divine Wrath."
"Amanogawa's getting desperate."
They all can sorta make out a bright light coming from the mist.
"That light...it's Limit Break."
"That's how he used Divine Wrath so fast. As for the other two, Taniguchi trapped her golem in a barrier and is melting it with fire, and Sakagami...is in a fist fight with his." Kaori and Shizuku facepalms after hearing that. "If this goes on...they'll eventually finish, get ready to do some more healing, especially for Sakagami."
"Yeah yeah..." Kaori sighed.
After some more waiting, Kouki came in, using his to sword help him walk like Shizuku, followed by Suzu, and finally a very injured Ryutaro, who got another lecture from Shizuku.
Once they were all there, both the mist and the sun had disappeared, along with the ice shards. Instead of opening, the massive door had actually turned into a portal.
While Seiji was healing them, Kouki turns to Hinata. "Nagumo...I'm sorry...about attacking you." He said between breaths.
"Just forget about it, it's not like it even did much anyway."
"You're right... I used Divine Wrath, but it did nothing."
Seiji finished healing everyone, and Meld asked if they wanted to continue, and Kouki answered nearly instantly, much to his party's concern. The others agreed with, and now look at the portal, and enter it.
When the blinding light was gone, Hinata found herself alone in another ice corridor. "Figures." She knew it was odd that the door would become a portal unlike the others.
She continues on through the narrow corridor eventually entering a very large room, in the center was a tall tree, it's branches are spread out on the ceiling.
She walks closer to the tree and sees a perfect reflection of her despite the tree's shape. She inspects it for a while before she takes out-
"You're not suppose to break it." Hinata jumps back when she saw the strangest thing, she saw and heard her reflection talk when she herself didn't say a thing.
She then watches as the reflection starts changing in color, her snow white hair is now black, her red eyes are now gold, her clothes became white, even her skin color became black. Her reflection then stepped out of the tree.
"What's up...me?" Hinata's reflection greeted, as Hinata stood there in shock.