"For the love of…. Everything… Can we take a break?" Cris was gasping for air. They were already climbing this set of stairs for a few hours.

"Sure… I could use a break," Hera collapsed on the steps, laying down while looking up. Even if she was exhausted, the view here was amazing. She could see so many stars. Even Mars was a bright shining dot in the sky today. Hera could've sworn that she had never seen the red planet so closely. Then again, she was a few kilometers up a mountain. Or maybe that wasn't even Mars and just a random picture that the MAZE decided to use for the sky in this place. Was that how rooms worked? Maybe everything was fake, and she was just dreaming about her entire life. Maybe Earth was fake, and the MAZE was reality. Maybe the universe didn't exist, or it was just a marble in a game of cosmic entities impossibly big, "I think I'm going crazy," she sighed after a long pause realizing that her mind was going too far.

"Same, I could've sworn that I saw an ice cream truck up there," Alex started giggling.

"Help! Someone Help!" Amanda started to yell, "I'm falling. Help!"

Hera jumped up with all her remaining strength to help the mage, but Amanda was laying on the stairs, clutching at the steps.

"Please help!" Amanda cried.

Hera walked over and grabbed her hand, "Everything is OK. You're not falling."

"No, I am! I am!" Amanda's eyes were glued to the bottom of the stairs several kilometers under them."

Hera pulled her tablet and double-checked a timer she had set up before pulling a small vial of clear liquid from her bag, "You're not. This is just a trick. Drink this."

"If I let go, I'll fall!"

"Here," Hera put the vial in Amanda's mouth and helped her drink the antidote.

This room was weird. It was another place without any roaming monsters, but if you tried to climb the massive 10-kilometer long staircase, you would start getting some odd visions, and you would start having random thoughts. Luckily, the people who lived here already knew about that and developed an antidote that would brush off the effects for some time. This didn't mean they could just keep drinking the potions as they climbed. After having the effect cleansed, subsequent potions would have almost no effect for the next hour. Because of that, everyone was doing their best to withstand the effects of the area, turning to the antidote when the situation started to become dire. Among everyone in the group, Amanda was the one who was having the most trouble resisting the effects. She never invested much in endurance, and her condensed mana seemed to be a detriment for now.

When they were still in the city, Hera asked around about the effects, and it seemed like the odd magic would resonate with their mana, and the more mana someone had, the worse it would be for them. Even high level explorers would have problems going through this staircase, unless they had some sort of resistance skill. However, Hera's reinforced mana made it harder for anything that would try to attack her own mana in any way. Amanda, on the other hand, didn't have that protection. This is why she was struggling so much. She drank the potion every hour on the dot, and the last few minutes were rough. Everyone else wasn't doing that bad, they would only get some odd thoughts, and after the second hour, they would start to have some minor hallucinations.

"Are you guys OK? We still have a lot of potions. There is no need to be stingy. Drink up," Hera commanded the rest who accepted the suggestion.

Hera had yet to drink a single vial of the antidote even after four hours of climbing. If this was a regular staircase, they should already have arrived in the next room, but those visions and mind tricks made them walk much slower to avoid any mistakes. This also created another problem. Since they were moving slowly, it put more strain on their legs, and everyone felt their calves burning. It didn't matter if you were level 1 or level 100, four hours of climbing stairs would tire anyone.

"How much more do we have?" Tim was sitting on the steps by Amanda, making sure she felt safe again. Even if she had just taken the antidote, he didn't want to risk leaving her alone.

"Alex and I still have 10 rooms to go, but you guys can stay in the next one. We got lucky with that caravan. If it wasn't for them, we would have split off a while ago," Hera replied.

"No. I mean here. Like how long until the doorway?"

"Ah. Two, three more kilometers? We are almost there," Hera gave him a weak smile.

"You and I have very different definitions of 'almost there,'" Cris sighed.

"I'm trying here, OK. Most of the path is already behind us," Hera rolled her eyes only to realize that it was a mistake. She started feeling dizzy with the entire world spinning around her. Understanding that it was better to get rid of this feeling than to risk having everyone in the party affected, Hera drank her first antidote. It tasted sour and somewhat fishy, like a mix of sour candy and tuna. Despite the taste, the effects were almost instant, and her dizziness went away even faster than it appeared.

"Finally stopped showing off?" Alex asked.

"It's called resource management, thank you very much," Hera smiled.

"You're still just a show-off. Also, I want ice cream," Alex looked down.

"Are you still seeing the truck?" Tim asked.

"No, but you know when a song is stuck in your head? Yeah, I keep hearing the melody that they play. Not actually hearing, but you get what I mean."

"I'll pay for a round of ice cream when we get out of here," Hera chuckled.

"Please do. It's been a while since we got something good to eat. Especially meat. I miss meat," Amanda recovered enough to join the conversation.

"Yeah, I didn't think about that when I set up the route. But who would've guessed that in the last three rooms that we passed by, there would be no meat whatsoever? I mean, c'mon. Rock monsters, plant monsters, then came the slimes. I really hate those things," Hera shivered, remembering the feeling of having a slime trying to climb up her leg.

"It's been two days, stop being such a drama queen," Cris rolled her eyes as she got up, "I'm good now. Let's keep going. That way, Amanda can get out of here."

"Yeah, I just want to leave already. Sorry guys, but we might need to take a big detour when we go back," Amanda replied. While they were climbing, Hera created a route for them to return without passing by this room again. If she had realized that Amanda would be in this bad shape, she would have changed the path, but now, any changes would add at least a week for her trip.

Hera suggested that Amanda and the others stay here or go back to a different room, but they wanted to see their next destination. It was a very unique room, and the setup was something that almost everyone who heard about it felt compelled to go see for themselves.

"OK, let's keep going. I set up the alarm again so we know when you can take another antidote. If we keep going at this pace, we should get there in a bit over one hour," Hera explained before they all started to walk up the steps once more.

Their trip so far was mostly uneventful. Most of the time, they were just walking from doorway to doorway and stopping to run a dungeon here and there. Even if it wasn't something that regular, they still managed to gather over 100 thousand gold just for the first-time rewards. Amanda also got a piece of equipment that could lessen the effects of cold and heat on herself, which helped a lot when she was using her spells. Unfortunately, that was the only interesting item they got. The rest were just some random consumables, mana stones, or materials that they ended up selling to the guild for some cash.

As they kept climbing the stairs, the effects of the room slowly started to return during the next hour. Hera glanced at the group, feeling bad for making them struggle so much. In fact, Amanda and her friends shouldn't even be here. Hera's plan was to split up with them about 10 rooms ago because they would be crossing a room on the 9th layer, where the weakest monster was level 23. However, thanks to a caravan that would deliver some supplies, the risk of having lower-level explorers crossing a hostile room was more negligible. It took some convincing, but Hera eventually caved and agreed to travel with them for a longer time. However, the path would consist only of rooms on the 9th or 10th layer after this room.

Forty minutes after Amanda took the potion, she started hallucinating again. It began small, but after another five minutes, it became so bad that they had to stop just to keep her steady in the steps. The staircase wasn't that big of an incline, but if someone started to tumble down and couldn't stop, it was very likely that they would end up dead since it would be a 9-kilometer tall fall. If they were very lucky, maybe they could walk away with just severe injuries, but that wasn't a theory that anyone wanted to test. At least there was no chance of falling to the sides. The staircase was completely surrounded by invisible walls, and the temperature was comfortable, even if, in theory, this should be higher than Mount Everest.

Hera pulled some thread from Yarnball and tied around Amanda, then around herself and Alex since the two had the highest strength stat in the group. That way, if something happened with the mage, they could make sure she wasn't going to fall. Ideally, she wanted to tie everyone together, but Yarnball couldn't make that much thread. Just linking the three of them already required the three women to be very close together.

Another hour and a half went by, with the effects Amanda was suffering becoming increasingly troubling. At one point, in the minutes she spent before taking the antidote, the mage couldn't stop screaming in terror. Finally, they arrived at the doorway to the next room. Cris almost shoved Amanda through the door, even if it wouldn't work. The mage was the first to cross over, then Cris, Tim, Alex, and Hera were the last ones since she was handling the effects of the room without much of an issue. She glanced up at the doorway and looked at the emblem on top of it. It was the moon with something floating around it. Despite everything she read about this room and the pictures she saw, it still felt unreal. Whatever the MAZE did, it seemed to even be influenced by society. After all, there was no way it would know to make something like this. This room should be something that only existed in movies. If not, could the MAZE and the system see the future? Was everything written down in a script somewhere? Was free will even a thing? What was the point of doing anything if, in the end, it was all set in stone?

Hera shook her head, trying to push away the thoughts, understanding that this was just the effect of the staircase messing with her mind one more time. She glanced back, looking at the village that was the size of a coin from this height. Then, she changed the focus to the stairs and the room itself. This place was nasty. Even if it didn't have any monsters, it was something ridiculous. Why would the MAZE create a place that preyed on their fears and doubts like that? It even put thoughts that she never had inside her mind. Could the MAZE have some twisted intention or even enjoy making this kind of thing?

When Hera realized that she was spiraling again, she pulled one of the potions and downed it in a single gulp. She wasn't going to let this room win. Turning back to the doorway, she touched it as a notification appeared in front of her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Would you like to be transported to

Moon Station - 7th Layer

[Yes] [No]

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She pressed yes and felt that warm sensation once again as she crossed to the new room.