Extra's Revenge: Reincarnated As A Slave-Chapter 156: Into the Abyss (Part 1)

The boundary between charted and uncharted territory was marked by ancient wards carved into the stone. These were warnings left by Nephilim explorers who’d ventured this far and wisely retreated.

Rey crossed it without hesitation.

The change was immediate and profound.

Where the explored regions of the Labyrinth felt like ruins—ancient but comprehensible, hostile but navigable—the uncharted depths possessed a different quality entirely.

The air itself felt wrong.

It was odd

Not only was it saturated with Chaos Energy, but it seemed actively malevolent, as though the atmosphere resented his presence and sought to expel him.

Rey’s enhanced perception detected patterns in the ambient mystical energy that suggested intentionality rather than random distribution.

’It’s like the Labyrinth is alive,’ Rey thought, forcing himself to continue despite every instinct screaming warnings. ’Not sentient exactly, but... aware. Reactive.’

The architecture transformed as he descended.

The elegant construction of the upper levels gave way to passages that defied Euclidean geometry—corridors that twisted at impossible angles, chambers whose dimensions shifted depending on viewing perspective, stairways that descended while simultaneously ascending.

Rey navigated carefully, using his enhanced perception to map the inconsistencies and maintain spatial awareness despite the environment’s attempts at disorientation.

Then he encountered the first anomaly.

A Chaos Dweller, but this one looked strange.

Its form was the expected shifting mass of corrupted energy, but embedded throughout its body were fragments of something else—organic matter that had been partially absorbed into the creature’s chaotic structure.

Rey’s perception identified human tissue, bone fragments, what might have been organs suspended in the Dweller’s form like specimens in amber.

"What in the world...?"

The creature moved toward him with jerky, unnatural motions, and Rey heard sounds emerging from it—not the formless noise typical of Chaos Dwellers, but something approaching speech. Distorted words in a language he didn’t recognize, but carrying emotional weight that suggested pleading or warning.

Rey destroyed it with a Spirit Art technique, flames consuming the hybrid abomination.

As it dissolved, the organic fragments separated from the Chaos Energy and fell to the ground—definitely human remains, corrupted beyond any possibility of identification but still recognizably mortal in origin.

’The Labyrinth consumed people,’ Rey realized with cold horror. ’Not just killed them, but incorporated them into its Chaos Dwellers. Those warnings in the ancient texts weren’t metaphorical.’

So this was why the Nephlim stopped exploration all those years ago.

’Still... I can handle this much.’

Since Rey was already stronger than everyone in the Sanctuary, having learned of their ways, he didn’t feel threatened by their own limitations.

In fact, he felt the urgency creeping deeper into him.

Thus, he continued descending, encountering more of the hybrid creatures.

Some barely resembled their human origins, others retained enough features to suggest they’d been people relatively recently—within the past century rather than the distant past.

Had Nephilim explorers been absorbed into the Labyrinth’s ecosystem? Or had surface dwellers attempted the crossing and met this fate?

Rey couldn’t know, and the uncertainty was somehow worse than confirmation would have been.

The passages widened into a massive chamber, and Rey’s enhanced perception detected movement throughout—dozens of signatures, some recognizable as Chaos Dwellers, others completely alien.

He activated an illumination Artifact, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

The chamber was a garden of horrors.

Mutated vegetation grew in impossible patterns—plants that had adapted to complete darkness and concentrated Chaos Energy, their forms twisted into configurations that hurt to observe.

Some appeared to be moving with deliberate intent, roots shifting across the floor like serpents, branches reaching toward any source of warmth or mystical energy.

And among the vegetation, things that had once been people.

Completely absorbed into the Labyrinth’s ecosystem, their bodies transformed beyond humanity but not granted the mercy of true death. They existed in states between life and corruption, consciousness trapped in forms that should not be capable of sustaining thought.

One of them noticed Rey, and it tried to speak.

The words were incomprehensible, the vocal apparatus too corrupted to form coherent sounds, but the desperation was unmistakable.

"This is... too much."

Even though Rey had become a heartless monster in this world, even he had limits.

Seeing such needless suffering... It irked him.

To him, such things need not be gratuitous.

He was not averse to pain and destruction, but they had to serve some higher purpose.

Pain for the sake of it was repulsive.

"Haa..."

Rey ended the poor creature’s suffering with a Chaos Art technique, using Entropy to accelerate its decay into final dissolution.

It was the only mercy he could offer.

He moved through the chamber quickly, refusing to engage with the other corrupted beings unless they actively threatened him.

The weight of their trapped existence was suffocating, and Rey couldn’t afford the emotional toll of acknowledging every victim.

Beyond the horror garden, the passages descended into regions where reality itself became unreliable.

Gravity shifted without warning—Rey walked on walls as easily as floors, the concept of "down" becoming arbitrary and changeable.

Temporal distortions created zones where time flowed at different rates, allowing Rey to observe his own movements from moments ago or seconds in the future overlapping with the present.

Mystical disasters erupted spontaneously—reality tears that released concentrated Chaos Energy in devastating bursts, spatial collapses that threatened to crush anything caught in their radius, temporal reversals that could trap unwary explorers in endless loops.

Rey navigated through all of it using a combination of enhanced perception, careful Ether management, and systematic application of his mastered Techniques.

"Spirit Art, Construction Technique, Sequence #3: Worldframe Rewrite!" allowed him to alter the structural logic of terrain, creating stable paths through regions where normal physics had failed.

"Chaos Art, Corruption Technique, Sequence #2: Natural Collapse!" deliberately intensified environmental instabilities in ways that made them predictable and therefore avoidable, containing dangerous phenomena within controlled zones.

In the past, he wouldn’t have been able to casually use these Techniques.

Even now, they were luxuries he could only throw around a few times before becoming more frugal with their uses.

However—

’I’ve definitely exceeded my capacity by over a hundredfold.’ Rey smiled in acknowledgment.

Hours passed in the distorted environment, though Rey’s temporal sense was too disrupted to measure accurately.

He continued descending, driven by determination that refused to acknowledge the mounting evidence that this venture was suicidal.

And throughout it all, the Labyrinth fought him.

Chaos Dwellers emerged from passages that hadn’t existed moments before, attacking with coordination that suggested external direction.

Environmental hazards appeared precisely where Rey intended to travel, as though the Labyrinth anticipated his movements. Even the air seemed to resist his breathing, making each inhale a conscious effort.

But Rey persisted.

The distortion around was enough to interfere with Low Sequence Techniques, so he had to solely rely on Mid Sequence and High Sequence ones.

If he didn’t have access to them, or if his Ether Capacity was insufficient, he would be in very serious trouble.

There was also the advantage he had with the recovery of his Ether.

It was no secret that High Sequence Techniques consumed a great deal of energy. Thus, if he could not recover that energy as quickly as he was expending it, or at least relatively quickly, he would eventually run out of energy and be in serious trouble.

However, Rey had prepared for all these things.

Not only did he have an Artifact that boosted his recovery, but he even brought a few Elixirs with him in case of emergencies.

Although he was taking a big risk by descending this far, it wasn’t a blind one.

"Spirit Art, Convergence Technique, Sequence #2: Elemental Singularity!" collapsed multiple elements into unified force, creating attacks that the Labyrinth’s defenses couldn’t adequately counter.

"Chaos Art, Reversal Technique, Sequence #2: Absolute Reversal!" inverted the Labyrinth’s hostile environmental effects, turning its own defenses against it.

He fought his way through swarms of hybrid Chaos Dwellers, destroyed mutated vegetation that tried to consume him, survived mystical disasters that would have killed ordinary practitioners instantly.

The treasures began appearing as he penetrated deeper into the uncharted regions.

Ancient Artifacts were scattered throughout the Labyrinth of Darkness. Rey already knew this since the Nephilim had told him this secret.

However, they had long explored all the areas that Rey previously had access to, which meant he could not find any new treasures.

All the Artifacts he currently had were a result of trades he performed, or through expert forging them for him.

But now...

Rey found chambers that might have been vaults or temples in the civilization that once thrived here.

Within them were items of incredible craftsmanship and power, preserved by the same Chaos Energy that made the environment so hostile.

Rey collected what he could carry—Grade 8 and 9 Artifacts that would have been priceless on the surface, mystical materials that existed nowhere else, even fragments of knowledge inscribed on imperishable surfaces.

While he wasn’t here for treasure, he had to admit their value.

After leaving the treasure trove, he decided to go a step further into the abyss.

That was when he encountered them.

Three Tier 6 Chaos Dwellers, positioned in a chamber that showed signs of deliberate construction rather than natural formation.

They weren’t randomly wandering—they were guarding something, their rudimentary consciousness directed toward a specific purpose.

Rey assessed the situation with cold calculation.

’What are they protecting?’

He was curious.

’Should I do this...?’ He silently wondered.

Taking on three Tier 6 specimens simultaneously would have been impossible to defeat when he first entered the Labyrinth. Even a few months ago, it would have required multiple High Sequence Techniques and significant risk.

But what about now?

Now it was an opportunity.

’I haven’t faced three at once. I can test my strength this way!’