A possibility struck Alex when he took in all the variables surrounding the situation.

“Come,” he said, quickly walking back out of the dead end.

Pearl wasn’t sure what was going on, so he simply followed Alex. Alex walked back those two turns and stopped, not moving any further.

“What’s wrong?” Pearl asked.

“I don’t know,” Alex answered. “But I’m going to find out. Hopefully.” He just had to wait. The time he waited for now was the same time he was sure it had taken between him leaving the fountain and the two women getting there.

Once he waited for that amount, he ran back.

Pearl followed him, clueless as to what was happening. They took the two left turns and arrived back where the Fountain had been, where it hadn’t been last time.

When they arrived, they were both flabbergasted to see that where there had been a fountain before and then nothing, now there was a massive tree there.

“What is going on?” Pearl asked, so very confused.

“You can sense it, can’t you?” Alex asked.

“Sense what?” Pearl asked. “The tree?”

“No. The Teleportation aura.”

Pearl took a moment and nodded. He could indeed sense it, but he had assumed that it had been the same teleportation aura that the girls had left behind. “The maze is teleporting around what’s in it. Sometimes we get into dead ends, sometimes into opportunities,” Alex said. “And sometimes… into trouble.”

“Those two women,” Pearl said, understanding what Alex was saying.

“They must have been attacked when they came here.”

“By people? Or…”

Alex gave that question some thought. “Go back 2 turns and wait there for a while and come back,” he told Pearl. “I want to check if people can teleport too.”

“What? What if we’re separated?” Pearl asked. “You can sense me,” Alex said. “And I can sense you. We can find each other easily. If we are separated, leave the maze and wait by the gate.”

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Pearl thought for a moment and nodded before leaving.

Alex looked back at the new thing that had arrived where the fountain had been. The tree here was large, full of reddish leaves as though it was autumn, and gave a smell akin to rust.

“Rustblade tree,” Alex said with a hint of surprise. The leaves of this tree were a popular ingredient in many pills that improved one’s strength. It was also especially good in a pill called the Blood Iron pill, which was something Immortals ate after losing too much blood. Alex was in the middle of plucking the leaves when Pearl arrived. “You aren’t gone!” Pearl said, and the tree is still here.

Alex turned around. “So I was correct,” he said. “People couldn’t have attacked those women. People wouldn’t be teleported here. So it must have been something else.”

“What else could it be?” Pearl asked.

“A formation? Puppet? Or even just some Intent. Could be anything. Who knows what is kept in the maze,” Alex said, stepping back from the tree after taking as many leaves as he had wanted to.

He looked at the leaves he had gathered, quite surprised by their quality. They were some of the best leaves he could have gotten from anywhere.

“Wait, so if something attacked them, how come we didn’t see what it was?” Pearl asked. “Did the entire thing teleport again when those women were gone?”

“I believe so,” Alex said. “Maybe there is a trigger built into this place. If people go out of this place through any method, the place teleports away.”

“Nothing happened while I was gone though,” Pearl said. “So it won’t count if people are still inside?” freeωebnovēl.c૦m

“Most likely,” Alex said. “We can confirm it ourselves right now. Let’s go and come back.”

Alex walked back while keeping an eye on the tree. He took the turn and looked back. The tree was still there.

He went a little further into the turn and came back, and this time the tree was gone. In its place was another dead end.

“Woah! It changed!” Pearl said excitedly. “We were right.”

Alex couldn’t help but smile seeing Pearl’s own excitement. Pearl wanted to do it again, so they did. This time, there was no change at all.

“Huh? Nothing appeared. Did we do something wrong?” Pearl asked.

“Or there are too many dead ends that keep changing,” Alex said.

“Ah, that makes sense. Brother, isn’t this amazing though? We don’t even have to go around the maze at all. We can just stay here and keep going back and forth until something good comes through.”

“I’m… not so sure that is possible,” Alex said. “For one, the actual good places might not even be within the list of things that teleport around. Even if it is, you cannot forget that anything with people within it won’t teleport. So if the good places have been found, they might be occupied. We won’t get to them by just doing this over and over.”

“Oh… right,” Pearl said. “So we have to leave?”

“Not right away,” Alex said. “We can see what else comes here for now.”

Pearl shouted in delight and the two began going back and forth. The dead end changed to a small flower garden, then a dead end, then a statue of no value, then a dead end, then a dead end, and a dead end.

“It’s not changing,” Alex said with a frown. “There must be a mechanism stopping us from exploiting the teleportation mechanism.”

“Looks like it,” Pearl said. “So we will have to leave now, right?”

Alex sighed and nodded. “I guess we will be leaving now.”

Pearl and Alex walked away from the dead end, making their way back to the last turn they had made and had another choice. They took the other pathway and continued.

They kept walking around for a while, searching for anything significant when they finally came across another place that was similar to the first one. What Alex found here was a mound of dirt, that was no doubt an ant hill of some sort.

He checked out what the ants were and left after realizing that they were simple insects that could be trained to fight Immortals, but that would take just too long for him to do so.

Alex and Pearl did the same back and forth in this section, trying to see what they could change it to, but they were stuck at a dead end again.

They left that place as well.

They walked around for half a day before they found a section that had something. He had been walking along with Pearl and had arrived there just as the men there were doing the back and forth to get the place to change.

When all 5 of them were there at the same time, they saw what had arrived in the place there. Stuck in a stone mound were two bronze-colored sabers, standing slanted as they made a cross.

Alex’s eyes went wide in surprise. “Wait, are those—”

“The twin sabers!” the other 3 men shouted at the same time, surprised that they were the ones to find it.

“That’s mine!” one of the men shouted.

“No, I’m taking it,” another one shouted.

Before Alex could say anything, they were all staring at each other, ready to fight.