Chapter 15: Tzeentch's Labyrinth

After a bout of dizziness, Sinuoli found himself appearing in a strange corridor; the corridor seemed to be made of crystal, yet it constantly shifted through various colors.

Listening to the ubiquitous cackling laughter in his ears, he knew from the memories of his past life that the place he was in was most likely the Crystal Labyrinth, the dwelling of the most dangerous and terrifying of the Chaos Four Gods, Tzeentch.

This labyrinth was truly terrifying:

Its own illusory passages were enough to obstruct any intruder not controlled by the most powerful of thoughts and imagination. Its shimmering corridors did not merely reflect light; they reflected hope, pain, beautiful dreams, and nightmares. The Crystal Labyrinth did not just reflect; it distorted and splintered the intruder's goals and aspirations, transforming them into madness and despair.

Controlled by the unconscious schemes of Tzeentch, the Crystal Labyrinth constantly moved and reorganized; every winding path, turn, and dead end was a momentary whim of the Lord of Fate. Those lost within the labyrinth would remain lost forever, their thoughts wavering in the repetition of their own failures, their dreams shattered along with them.

However, the labyrinth around Sinuoli did not seem as powerful as the legends suggested. Sinuoli not only had an understanding of the nature of this labyrinth, but he also possessed the dialectical materialist ideology brought from his past life; the scenes flashing before his eyes like a revolving lantern and the endless whispers in his ears could cause him interference, but they could not shake the foundation of his thoughts.

Sinuoli quickly calmed down. After a simple analysis, he confirmed that this was not the true Crystal Labyrinth in the depths of the Warp, but a projection within his own consciousness. With the power of the Great Vortex yet to fade, even the Chaos Four Gods could never have snatched him directly from a secret chamber protected by layers of Rune Magic into the Chaos realm!

If their power had truly reached such a point, Sinuoli felt he might as well give up struggling and surrender to Chaos; that way, at least he could eat a hot meal of excrement.

Sinuoli knew of the Great Vortex. In the game from his past life, there was a map centered around it. It was designed by the great High Elf mage, the "Dragon Tamer" Caledor, and completed with the help of the Slann Mage-Priests.

During the first Chaos invasion, because Daemons could be reborn in the Warp after being killed, the armies of Chaos were nearly endless.

To solve this problem, Caledor decided to build the Great Vortex to suck away the Winds of Magic upon which the Daemons relied to manifest in the Zhu Wu-zhi Wei-mian, and then channel them back into the Warp through the Chaos Portals located at the poles of the world.

Caledor sacrificed his precious life to complete the Great Vortex, and the Great Vortex lived up to expectations, protecting the Mortal World for the thousands of years that followed.

Due to the lack of the Winds of Magic as a medium, it was difficult for the Chaos Gods to directly interfere with the Mortal World, and the power required to deploy a Chaos Demon Army increased significantly. Even so, the Daemons that manifested in the Mortal World would have their power greatly weakened due to the lack of the Winds of Magic.

Without the help of the Great Vortex, mortals could hardly resist high-level Daemons of the Greater Daemon rank. It was precisely because it was difficult to deploy a Chaos Demon Army, and because the power would be weakened if deployed, that the Chaos Gods chose to spread their faith and erode and corrupt the natives of this world to serve as their minions.

After thinking this through, Sinuoli looked at the labyrinth before him with a cold sneer, and suddenly, a sense of dark humor welled up in his heart.

Mimicking a certain great being from his past life whose followers were everywhere, he took seven steps in each of the four directions, pointed one hand to the sky and the other to the ground, and shouted, "In heaven and on earth, I alone am the honored one; from this day forth, the cycle of life and death is ended."

The labyrinth before him shattered at the sound, but Sinuoli found that he had not returned to the real world, but had appeared before the gate of a strange castle.

"It is Tzeentch, after all; it certainly wouldn't be that simple!" he muttered to himself while sizing up the castle.

Pink and blue flames from the heart of the fortress twisted and erupted from the interlocking spires and towers. These existed for only a heartbeat, then flickered and vanished, replaced by an even more insane structure.

Gates, windows, and doorways leading inside yawned open like hungry maws, only to suddenly close the next moment, blocking all entrances.

Understanding that all of this was an illusion, Sinuoli was not frightened. He walked straight through the burning Tzeentchian Warpfire and, with a smile on his face, strode into a twisted gate.

Entering the interior of the castle, Sinuoli felt the magic of the Warp; the concepts of material space and time did not exist here. A person might wander for weeks in a room the size of a thimble, or traverse in a single step a distance that would take hours to walk.

Gravity alternated and shifted, sometimes disappearing entirely. Every ray of light in the spectrum, combined with the unknown shadows of the universe, leaped and advanced alternately along the walls.

To a mortal, this shifting fortress was a completely unacceptable existence. Because they clung to their physical solutions, people were driven to madness. But relying on the quantum mechanics courses he had studied in his past life, although he could not fully understand it, Sinuoli successfully accepted these grotesqueries.

As he walked deeper into the castle, Sinuoli observed the wonders along the way that could never be seen in the Zhu Wu-zhi Wei-mian.

For a moment, Sinuoli felt as if he had returned to the first time he sat on an airplane in his past life; watching the buildings on the ground getting smaller and smaller, feeling the ear discomfort caused by the pressure change during the climb, and the magnificence of the sunset shining on the clouds—all of it made him feel a sense of novelty.

Passing through several gates, Sinuoli finally saw a huge figure sitting cross-legged in front of a well glowing with a ghostly light.

The appearance of this figure constantly changed before Sinuoli; at times it was a colorful Daemon with a bird's beak and wings, and at times it was a blue giant with a head growing on its chest and two snakes circling behind its back.

Seemingly to let the visitor witness its great power, It waited for a while before raising its head from the well in front of it.

"Heh, Changer of Ways, you have arrived sooner than I foresaw! Are you so impatient to throw yourself under the command of the great Lord of Change?"

After a silent stare, It spoke first: "Ho ho, a Dwarf this time; it seems those feeble native gods of your world have finally learned to be a bit smarter."

Dwarfs were the third race created by the Old Ones after they arrived in this world. They first created the Lizardmen—who therefore called themselves the Eldest Children of the Old Ones—as assistants to reshape the world.

Next, the Old Ones created the Elves, giving them long lives and a talent for using magic. However, because the Chaos Gods could interfere with the world through the Winds of Magic, the Elves were easily susceptible to corruption; intelligent and fickle, they soon formed factions and fell into civil war under the interference of Chaos.

To solve this flaw, the Old Ones then created the Dwarfs.

They stripped the Dwarfs of their ability to cast spells while giving them high magic resistance, and also endowed them with a stubborn, conservative, loyal, and honor-bound personality. These traits made the Dwarfs less susceptible to Hunthundufu, but also caused them to be rigid and slow to develop.