Chapter 2130 - 2130. Tunnels
The Cursed Labyrinth's teleporting force led Noah and the others into a narrow environment that forced him to tinker with the laws of space inside the dark world. He could only see rocky brownish walls when the environment in his vision stabilized, and a single turtle was enough to fill the available space that they encircled.
Noah's understanding of space allowed the pack and his companions to fit inside the condensed dark world, but the exploration of the area remained a problem. June and the others couldn't move freely inside his technique even if he stretched the space-time array differently depending on who occupied a specific spot. Also, the upper tier turtle didn't hesitate to voice complaints.
"What are these constraints?" The upper tier turtle hissed. "How can I help if I can't cross this short area quickly?"
"You can't help," Noah responded as he tried to ignore the hisses echoing throughout his dark world. "You won't even fit inside this tunnel. How do you plan on following us?"
"I will expand the tunnel," The leader proudly announced.
"Don't you remember the talk about destroying the floors?" Noah asked. "Do you really want to risk starving for more years?"
"Surviving these restrains only makes me hungrier!" The upper tier turtle declared.
Noah sighed in front of that statement. His understanding of space fused with his dark world created an almost perfect environment. It would be hard to tell the difference from the outside world due to how seamlessly he had stretched the space-time array.
However, the leader was a magical beast in the upper tier. Its very body opposed that foreign force since it applied adverse effects on its ability to move freely.
"I have a solution, but you won't like it," Noah eventually offered.
The turtles tested Noah's suggestion, but their complaints immediately reached his mind. He had absorbed them inside the space created by his black crystal, the same area he used as a storage device. The place was very similar to the separate reality, so the creatures didn't suffer from his suppression, but they didn't like to be inside Noah.
Snore, Night, Duanlong, Shafu, and the Demonic Sword did everything in their power to convince the turtle that their current location was the best solution to their problems. However, the upper tier leader was too stubborn and prideful to accept its new situation.
Noah didn't have other options, so he sent waves of dark matter toward the pack to appease their hunger. The horned turtles didn't even try to hold back, which ended up weighing on Noah's ethereal world, but he preferred that over having to hear their relentless complaints.
After the turtles were dealt with, Noah retrieved the dark world and let his companions roam freely through the area. They were inside a narrow tunnel that seemed to stretch endlessly, but branches eventually appeared as the group moved forward.
The layout of the fifth floor was rather messy. The direction of each tunnel seemed to have a deeper meaning, but Noah and the others couldn't uncover anything from their short exploration.
The tunnels were empty, and the laws inside their rocky fabric didn't carry anything specific. Still, that was a hint that the four cultivators and Noah didn't miss. Only formations and similar structures could have those incomplete true meanings.
The dark world helped Noah and the others keep track of their path, which eventually brought worries. The Labyrinth's floors didn't have fixed sizes, but they had never been too big. Still, the tunnels stretched in multiple directions, and they often forced the group to return on paths already crossed numerous times.
The experts' speed and the tunnel's emptiness allowed the group to move quickly, so the structure's size failed to scare them away. Still, it soon became clear that the fifth floor was bigger than the previous, and other problems also appeared as the exploration continued.
Pillars made of a metallic material unfolded on the group's path from time to time. Noah and the others exchanged ideas whenever they found them, but the lack of clear clues always left them unable to reach proper conclusions.
Noah initially used the pillars to make his map of the tunnels more accurate, but he soon realized that they didn't work in his favor. The exploration often forced the group to go back on their tracks, but that put them in front of a different layout at times.
It took the group a while to understand that only the pillars remained still, and reaching them even triggered the changes in the layout. The tunnels moved whenever Noah and the others approached one of the metallic structures, and those transformations spread in every direction. They tested that aspect multiple times in the hope of finding a pattern, but the floor didn't have anything similar.
The theory behind the fifth floor was relatively simple. Tunnels seemed to fill the whole area, and pillars stood in fixed spots among that array of rocky passages.
Finding a pillar changed the layout of the entire floor, making the creation of an accurate map pointless. Noah still kept track of his path through the dark world, but his focus moved from the tunnels to his current position since the former were unreliable. Of course, he made sure to mark the location of each pillar since they were the only fixed structures in the area.
Noah eventually felt the need to break everything and see what remained intact after his destruction. The pillars were upper tier items, while the tunnels had fabric at various levels. All the rocks were still in the divine ranks, but they couldn't block an eventual attack launched by the group.
June and Gabrielle prevented Noah from moving to violent approaches, and Fiery Mountain soon joined them in that request. The three experts had started to make some sense out of the various tunnels after crossing them for a long time. They had begun to see a pattern in a structure that did its best to modify its layout.
"The pillars must be the cores of a formation," June explained when Noah questioned her about the matter. "They are obviously unusual as core since they don't carry or spread energy useful for the array. Still, their general behavior belongs to that category."
"What about the tunnels?" Noah asked.
"They must be the lines of the formation," June guessed.
"How can a formation remain active after modifying its structure so many times?" Noah continued.
"That's the peculiarity of this formation, at least in theory," June declared. "There are actually two formations in place, and the pillars are enough to keep the first always active. Look."
June took the small crystal of dark matter hovering above Noah and put it between them. Noah enlarged the structure to make the map inside it more visible, and June created a copy with her sparks.
"We know that getting close to the pillars causes a change in the layout, right?" June stated. "Yet, the combinations aren't infinite. We have seen some tunnels repeating themselves even after forcing the layout to transform a few times."
Noah understood what June wanted to say. Similar ideas had appeared inside his mind after witnessing a repetition in the tunnel's layout. There could be a winning combination, but his lack of knowledge in the field would still force him to test every possible version until he found a solution.
June was different, and the same went for Gabrielle. Fiery Mountain eventually saw herself overwhelmed by the task's difficulty, but her two companions continued the exploration and tried to make some sense out of that chaotic environment.
As for Pellio, he spent most of the time on a floating mat right behind Noah. The expert poured tea non-stop, and he seemed to have no intention to help with the exploration.