A young man lay on the ground, unconscious. Blood soaked the side of his head, staining his black hair.
His eyelids twitched—then slowly opened.
But only darkness greeted him.
"Ugh..."
Groaning, he sat up and clutched the side of his head. Pain shot through his body as he regained his senses.
"Where... am I?"
His vision, still fuzzy and unaccustomed to the pitch black, didn't provide answers.
Cold stone pressed against his body.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to force them to adjust and blinked until the darkness gave way. Two walls. A winding path ahead and behind him.
"A cave?"
Why would he be in a cave?
The walls were jagged and natural. There were no torches or flames. It was completely untouched by humans.
"Then how did I get here?"
He tried to recall his memories.
"Augh!"
A sharp pain exploded through his head. Gripping his skull, he hunched over, trying to get rid of the pain.
Then—as if triggered by the agony—memories came flooding back.
"That's right. I remember."
***
It started three months ago. The day his entire high school class was summoned to another world. All thirty of them.
Panic erupted. Students pinched cheeks, slapped arms, hoping to wake up. Confusion and fear filled the air.
Then a girl, no older than they were, appeared. Golden hair shimmered under the strange light as she raised her hand—and flames burst forth from her palm.
She introduced herself as Seph Artoria, princess of the Artoria Kingdom, and also the one responsible for the summoning.
She explained that her world was losing a war against demons. In a desperate move, she had performed an ancient summoning ritual, calling forth heroes from another world at the cost of them being unable to return until their purpose was fulfilled.
At first, no one believed her.
But as the weeks passed, they had no choice but to.
Those who chose to fight were trained. The others helped however they could, hoping to quicken their return.
They began exploring the Ancient Labyrinth in hopes of growing stronger, conquering its floors one by one. In time, some even awakened supernatural powers — their Classes.
This made them even stronger. And after three months, the class had finally reach floor ten, which also happened to be the first boss level.
***
"But what happened after?"
He strained to remember. But the pain returned, and his thoughts faded before they could even form.
He could recall the summoning, the training, the Labyrinth. But anything before that—the names of classmates, his past life—was gone.
Eventually, he gave up. The answers wouldn't come now.
Gritting his teeth, he stood. A dull ache attacked his feet instantly.
Shaking his legs, he tried to ignore. For now he had to move.
"But which way?"
Climbing the walls was impossible — they rose far above and offered no handholds. That left only two choices: left or right.
In the end, he chose left. Not for any reason other than that he had to decide.
He trudged down the path as his body slowly woke up and his thoughts started to piece together fragments.
Another memory surfaced, it was of him falling.
It wasn't much—but he could guess what had happened. That would explain the blood, the headache, the memory loss. He must've fallen from the tenth floor.
But surviving a fall from that height? It seemed impossible.
Then again, this was another world.
More time passed as he continue to walk, trying to recall anything.
Then, ne more memory came. A girl yelling a name. Rin.
That must've been his. She probably shouted it when he fell.
He went over it all again, sorting the facts. He had been with the group entering the tenth floor. Something went wrong during the boss fight. He fell. Now he was here.
If he'd only dropped a few floors, he could still be close. Maybe on floor twenty at most. That gave him hope.
But that hope didn't last.
To move back up, he'd need to defeat the boss of the tenth floor. The problem? He was on the wrong side of the gate. The only way back was if his party defeated the boss first.
Maybe they already had. But even then, he'd need to climb back up—and he had no idea which direction to go.
Worse, if he had passed another boss floor while falling, he'd have to wait for them to reach that one, too. At their current pace, that could take another three months.
Time he didn't have.
Honestly, he would've preferred falling even deeper. At least there might've been unclaimed resources.
Right now, Rin had two options. One was to wait for his party members to make their way towards him—if they hadn't also fallen. He could survive from eating monster's flesh and blood. Although he had never heard of anyone doing that, it was probably possible.
The second option was to continue walking. If the way he chose lead up the labyrinth, he wouldn't have to wait as long for the party to find him. If it lead down, Rin would be able to escape by reaching the last floor—however far down that would be. In that case it could take years before finally reaching it, and that was if he was lucky.
Still, Rin thought the second one was the better choice. There was no way to tell if the rest of his classmates had died or fell with him, and there also wasn't a guarantee that they would continue to conquer the labyrinth. They only did it for training after all.
If they way he was currently going resulted in him going up floors, he could check whether the boss was defeated. If he was going down, that just meant he would have to fight strong monsters.
So he made the choice. Instead of leaving his life in the hands of other people, Rin would try to survive on his own.