The third quest help was exactly like the other two. A wide-open room with three platforms and a pillar in the middle. Nathan stepped onto one and shut his eyes when the system window appeared in front of him. When nothing happened, he opened his eyes again.

  [Game Show of Destiny] – Locked

  Prerequisites:

  Key – X

  Representatives – X

  Please retrieve the key of unnecessary bullshit at the following coordinates in order to trigger the final quest.

  Please gather a representative from each race.

  Nathan felt his soul reenter his chest. He could've dropped to his knees and started crying.

  "Nathan, what does it say?" Chad said.

  "It says that I need a key. Specifically, a key of unnecessary bullshit. It won't trigger the quest otherwise."

  Chad's eyebrows raised. "Which means that if you delay as much as possible—"

  Nathan nodded up and down. He stared off into the distance where he assumed that the key was located. "It's time for me to do my specialty."

  "What's that?"

  "Doing absolutely nothing at all."

  Chad tilted his head. "That's definitely an option." He shrugged. "But I guess it's the best we've got."

  Nathan looked at the window next to Chad. "By the way, you are muted, right?"

  Chad scoffed. "Of course. I wouldn't forget about something so important."

  Nathan squinted his eyes. "When you say that, that actually makes me believe you less. Can you double-check?"

  Chad turned and scoffed. He looked at his window, then his eyebrows shot up into his forehead. "Oh—oh no!"

  Nathan's heart fell in his chest. "What?"

  "The chat thinks that we're discussing cannibalism methods?"

  "…That's oddly specific."

  "And completely out of nowhere!"

  Nathan slowly nodded. "Right. So I'm gonna go…check out that thing."

  Chad shot him a thumbs-up.

  Nathan was pretty sure he'd been here before. That dust stain looked really familiar.

  "These coordinates aren't particularly helpful," Emi muttered.

  "I feel like we've been walking in circles for hours," Chad groaned.

  Bjorn scoffed. "Cease your complaining."

  Mara didn't bother to speak and just fiddled with the hammer of her revolver.

  Sure, the coordinates told the exact location where Nathan was supposed to go to, but they didn't tell him how to get there. And in somewhere like the Sixth Circle, a maze of yellow brick hallways…

  But then again, that actually worked out perfectly!

  Yhe more time he spent walking, the more plausible it was that he was unable to find it. The more plausible it was that he was unable to find it, the longer he would be able to delay. He was so confident in this that he'd invited Chad to follow him and continue streaming, demonstrating to the world that Nathan was trying his hardest.

  There were a few questions from chat about why Nathan was so friendly with the leaders of the other races so as to go traveling together, but Nathan had successfully deflected by claiming that they were just working together temporarily to get the third key.

  It was the perfect plan, with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

  And then Nathan came across a door.

  It was completely uninteresting, except for the fact that it looked like it could've been his bedroom door back home. Also, it was in the middle of the Sixth Circle. That was kind of weird.

  Please don't tell me that this is the door to the key.

  Nathan reached out his hand and touched the doorknob.

  [Warning!]

  Entering this door will trigger a mini-dungeon run. Once begun, there's no exiting.

  Failure means death.

  Nathan glanced back at the rest of the group. "If we head in, we're going to be in for a while. Is everybody stocked up with supplies?"

  Everybody else stared at him like he was an idiot. Nathan supposed it was kind of a stupid question. At this point, everybody was experienced enough to know to carry weeks’ worth of food and water and ammunition.

  Nathan looked back at the door and pulled it open. There was a swirling void, pulling on his shirt and causing it to flutter forward.

  "That seems completely safe," Nathan said.

  Nathan took a step forward and felt himself fall into the portal.

  When Nathan's eyes opened, he was greeted by the side of the system window.

  [The Hallways of Unnecessary Bullshit]

  Efficiency bonus: -200%.

  Narrative pacing debuff: severe.

  Nathan grinned to himself. He didn't know what a narrative debuff was, but he was pretty sure it would only help his plan.

  Even as he thought that, he couldn't help a slight twinge in his stomach. Somehow, he felt this was going to suck a lot more than he thought it would.

  A groan came from behind him. "I will never, ever get used to that."

  Chad lifted himself off the ground and rubbed the sweat off his forehead. Mara was already standing, her head swiveling around like some sort of radar.

  "I don't get it, this looks exactly the same as before!"

  Bjorn grunted. "You're right. It's almost exactly the same."

  Nathan frowned at what they were saying. Couldn't they smell it? The air was—

  "It's completely different," Emi said. "What are you guys talking about?"

  Chad shrugged. "I don't know about you, but this looks like the exact same hallway that we came from."

  As an experiment, Nathan opened up a dimensional rift in front of him. He pulled out his fishing pole and tossed the hook in. He immediately felt a bite. He reeled back in his line to see—

  A brick.

  He blinked.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  [Brick] – F rank.

  It's a brick. I mean, what were you expecting?

  Nathan frowned and threw another line into another rift. Like before, he received yet another brick.

  [Brick] – F rank.

  He'd never gotten such a low-ranking product from his fishing.

  "Did you guys get that message that I did?" Nathan asked.

  "You mean the system window that popped up?" Chad nodded. "The one that was talking all about a -200% efficiency bonus?"

  Mara slid into the conversation. "Don't forget the narrative pacing debuff."

  "What does that even mean?" Emi said. "Narrative pacing debuff—it sounds like some sort of disease."

  "It sounds like my life," Nathan muttered.

  "What was that?"

  "Nothing." Nathan shook his head. "Let's just try moving. Stick your hand to the right side. We've been in mazes before. This shouldn't be a problem for us."

  The group walked forward, made a turn, then continued straight. Nathan frowned sharply.

  Something felt off.

  "Let me try something."

  Nathan pulled out his harpoon.

  Blessed Harpoon of the Shifting Tides (C-rank)

  Weapon Type: Harpoon

  Rank: C

  Enchantment Slots: 3

  Weight: Light

  Forged from the bones of a deep-sea leviathan and imbued with ancient aquatic magic, this harpoon is the perfect tool for any adventurous soul who doesn’t mind getting a little wet.

  In addition to the above, it's been personally blessed by the goddess of the sea, Thalassa. Pretty sick, yeah?

  Nathan had an amazing weapon. One that had been personally blessed by the goddess of the sea, as the description said. Such a weapon was worthy of the utmost dignity. Such a weapon would probably be considered a holy relic under the right circumstances.

  Nathan used it to make a thumbs-up scratch mark in the wall. After that, he put the harpoon back into his inventory.

  "That should do the trick," he said.

  Mara clapped her hands together. "I get it! You want to see if we're going around in circles!"

  "Yup," Nathan said. "Try to go straight now."

  The group moved together for a full minute, never once going backward. Based off the direction they were going, there was no way that they could ever run back into Nathan's hastily scratched-out thumbs-up.

  And then they saw the exact same mark, and Nathan slapped his hand into his face.

  "Great, another one of these," he muttered.

  "Wait, we've done this three times!" Chad shouted. "Remember, with the First Circle dungeon, then with that labyrinth in the third circle, and then again in the Fifth Circle!"

  "Is the system just running out of ideas?" Emi asked.

  "Considering that it's currently dead, I don't think there's anybody at the wheel. In this case, I think it's our fault, guys." Nathan shrugged. "Besides, is it such a terrible thing to have to deal with the same sort of problem? I'd rather have this than a brand new death trap with a decent chance of turning us into filet."

  "When it's put like that, I guess this isn't so bad. But still, this is ridiculous."

  "Emi?" Nathan said. "Is there some kind of core at the center of this that we can follow and destroy?"

  Emi shut her eyes and the seconds ticked away. Finally, she opened them and shook her head.

  "No, there's nothing. As far as I can tell, there's no magic or energy involved."

  At that, Nathan's mind ground to a hard stop.

  Every other time that there’d been one of these ridiculous challenges, there was some kind of magical gimmick at the heart of it. Either that, or the plants were alive, but that was still kind of magical if you thought about it.

  But Emi was saying that there was no magic?

  That meant that the mechanism underlying this particular challenge was completely different than the ones before.

  Nathan's eyes shot wide.

  "It's a closed loop—like with a wormhole or something," he said. "Nothing's flowing because it's already set."

  "That's a pretty big leap, don't you think?" Chad asked.

  "What is a wormhole?" Bjorn said.

  Nathan's hands spread out and he paced back and forth. "Basically it's a hole in space. It's how all of those portals function. You use magic or a skill to open up a hole in space, but you don't need to maintain it. After it's connected, it stays like that until an outside interference comes along. I think we're standing in the middle of a complex series of wormholes that all loop into each other."

  Emi hummed and looked up at the ceiling. "Assuming this is true, how does that help us?"

  Nathan opened his mouth, then shut it.

  "If we had that system girl or the scientist girl from the top ten," Chad said, "this would be a lot easier."

  Nathan shook his head. "But we don't, so we're just going to have to make do."

  Nathan ran his hand along the wall. The whole place was structured like the Sixth Circle, but like he'd suspected, there was something fundamentally different about this location. Then again, he should have figured that out as soon as he entered and got that system warning saying there was no turning back.

  Under different circumstances, Nathan would probably be frustrated at his current situation. But this was exactly what he was hoping for—delaying time. The longer he spent trapped in this maze, the more time there was for humanity to slowly trickle into the soulbound towns.

  Of course, he still had to be putting in some sort of effort. He couldn't look like he wasn't trying.

  He reared back his fist and punched it into the wall. The brick crumbled apart, revealing the same bedrock layer that marked previous destructive attempts on the normal Sixth Circle.

  "And that's probably going to be pretty much impossible to break through," he said. He raised his voice and glanced back at the rest of the group. "Any ideas?"

  "We could give up and just sit here," Chad said.

  "Any other ideas?"

  "We could sit here and then give up!" Mara said.

  "Yeah, I'm vetoing that."

  Bjorn raised a hand.

  Nathan pointed at him. "Did the green guy with the big teeth have any thoughts?"

  Bjorn frowned. "I'm going to ignore the racial stereotyping leveled against me—"

  "But you're literally green and you have big teeth."

  "—and continue with my thought." He coughed into his hand. "You mentioned that portals can be interfered with. So why not attempt that?"

  Nathan didn't say anything at first. Internally, he felt his heart sink.

  Dammit, Bjorn! Don't you remember the plan? We're not supposed to actually do anything useful!

  On the outside, Nathan's expression was as calm as ever. He found his attention being drawn to Chad's Dither stream. He nodded slowly.

  "That seems like a plausible idea," he said. "Does anybody have any thoughts on how that might be achieved?"

  Emi raised her hand in the air, her eyes shining as bright as the sun. Nathan's teeth slammed together inside his mouth.

  "Emi? You know that you don't have to force it—"

  "I would bet if we can find the exact point where the space loops in on itself, we'd be able to punch a hole directly through the thin seam connecting it!"

  She shot a smug grin at Bjorn. Bjorn himself looked vaguely confused at her before he nodded.

  "It sounds like a plan," he said.

  Nathan was now cussing up a storm inside his head. He was desperately hoping that the two of them were wrong and that they were about to meet with failure.

  "Right!" He put his hands on his hips and twisted his lips into a pained imitation of a smile. "That sounds like a plan."

  Emi's smug grin turned into a softer, normal smile. "I'm glad I could help, Nathan—"

  "—but you know, before we try that, why don't we enjoy a quick meal!"

  Everybody looked at Nathan like he was the crazy one.

  Did every single one of the people he brought forget that they were trying to buy time?

  Because it sure as hell looked like it to him!

  He let out a strained laugh. "Oh, come on now. We've all been working so hard."

  "We've been walking for 30 minutes," Bjorn said.

  "Time is relative?"

  "I don't think that's quite how that theory was meant to be interpreted," Chad said.

  Nathan was about to scream at them to remember the whole reason they were here, except for the fact that there was currently a stream on, and it would be incredibly suspicious if Chad muted it, Nathan started yelling, and then everybody suddenly agreed to what he'd said.

  He slowly nodded up and down. "You're so right. Let's do this."

  Emi grinned widely. "That's the spirit. Let's get going!"

  Emi led the way, stepping forward several steps, then stopping and sniffing the air. She repeated this nearly a dozen times before she stopped for much longer than before. She gave a firm nod.

  "This is the place."

  Nathan looked to the left and right. He didn't see anything particularly unusual about this location, but he trusted Emi's instincts.

  Which was part of why he was feeling the urge to strangle someone at the current moment.

  She paced to the left and right. "Now, Nathan, you and me need to place down our soulbound towns. The ‘wormholes’ that are created by that action should be enough to destabilize the exterior 'wormhole' we're currently in."

  She put emphasis on the word wormhole with a tone that indicated that she had no idea what it was.

  Nathan's mouth was dry. He stepped up to Emi’s side and held out his hand.

  "Oh no," he said. "It looks like I'm having trouble summoning my soulbound town portal for some reason. Darn. Better luck next time."

  Emi held out her hand and shook it around. A small frown curled on her face.

  "Yeah, I see what you mean. It's like we're being prevented from accessing our soulbound towns," she said.

  Wait, I was accidentally telling the truth? Sweet.

  Nathan opened his mouth to suggest that they take a break, but he suspected that he would look and sound incredibly strange given how much he had been blatantly attempting to slow down their progress.

  Instead, he just vaguely nodded in Emi's direction and looked around in a circle like he was trying to think of something to do. It was an ancient skill that he'd perfected from years of group projects back in school.

  Emi stared and concentrated on a point in front of her. It looked like she was trying to drill a hole through the reality they were in using nothing but sheer determination.

  Nathan kept up his painted-on smile while internally he was sweating bullets.

  Please don't work, please don't work, please don't work—

  A flicker in the air.

  The air sliced open, and there was a sound like his ears popping after he'd been in an airplane and had touched down on the ground. The air around them shimmered and glass cracked in the distance.

  As soon as the glass cracked, the hallways ahead warped and shifted into one singular hallway, with none of the branching points that had been there earlier.

  Emi smiled and looked back at Nathan. "It worked!"

  Nathan tried his best to smile back at Emi, though it looked more like somebody was holding him hostage.

  "Yeah," he said. "It worked. Yay."

  He turned back in the direction of the straight hallway.

  "It seems like there's only one way to go," he said.

  Bjorn pointed backwards. "There are actually two."

  Chad glanced over where Bjorn was pointing and raised an eyebrow. "Actually, you might want to turn and look at what you're actually pointing at."

  Bjorn did so, and as soon as he did, his nostrils flared and he frowned.

  Nathan, curious what was causing that expression, turned his own head to look at the problem.

  He was greeted by a dead end.

  The area behind him had been sealed. The message was clear—there was only one path forward.

  "This dungeon has a sense of humor," Nathan muttered to himself. He raised his voice so that he could speak to the rest of the group. "All right, let's get going."

  He turned forward. No going back.