There was a mighty roar.
The death cry of a monster in the darkness reverberated loud enough to split eardrums. Then came the sound of fresh meat being torn and ravaged, followed by cries of pain that were just as quickly cut off.
Cries, then silence. Cries, then silence.
Amid the unsettlingly frequent monsters’ screams, all that was left was the countless bluish-purple crystals shedding their soft light in the darkness.
A slender set of fingers reached out to pluck one such crystal from the clumps of ash, and a pair of jaws closed around it with a crunch.
“What are you doing?” demanded a sudden voice in the darkness.
It had an eerie, disquieting tone, as though multiple voices had been layered on top of one another—at times male, at other times female. The woman it was directed at turned with a flick of her bloodred hair.
“Exactly what it looks like I’m doing: eating,” Levis responded coldly, her green eyes turning toward the visitor.
They were occupying an unknown room in the Dungeon, with naught but a single passage offering them entrance. The phosphorescent light emanating from the walls was anemic at best, and everything was masked in boundless shadow.
A sea of ash coated the ground beneath their feet.
Monsters’ carcasses. A multitude of them. The remains of unlucky beasts, magic stones stolen from their bodies and their bones turned to mountains of ash, piled on top of one another. They’d been captured, then slaughtered, and their executioner was currently grasping one of the bluish-purple crystals before nonchalantly popping it into her mouth.
Crunch, crunch, crunch. The sound was dreadfully unappetizing as she ground the stone between her teeth.
The monsters’ cores had become her meal.
Her visitor—a mysterious hooded figure in a bluish-purple robe and strangely patterned mask—lashed out in irritation at the spectacle.
“The Sword Princess and her friends have already begun their descent. Why have you not done anything?”
“You know as well as anyone that this body consumes dreadful amounts of energy,” Levis replied languidly to her companion’s criticism.
“…”
She turned her back on the visitor, slender limbs and ample chest on display beneath tattered battle clothes that appeared to have been stolen off the corpse of a dead adventurer.
The masked figure gazed in silence at the collection of dragons impaled atop greatswords from their backs to their stomachs, littering the environs like test specimens. They writhed in agony, unable to escape the deeply buried blades.
Levis thrust a hand into the bodies of the monsters still in captivity, ignoring their screams and freeing them of their magic stones as blood gushed from their wounds.
“I was gravely injured thanks to Aria and her friends. I need to rest,” she finally added, implying that fighting against Aiz now would only lead to defeat. “I consumed a great deal of energy up on the twenty-fourth floor. These monsters will help me recover my strength.” As a human-monster hybrid and an enhanced species, she had the ability to consume other monsters’ magic stones.
The callous creature-woman returned to her meal of bluish-purple crystals.
“Do what you will. But if problems should arise…”
“They’re strong, those brats. They’ll make it to the fifty-ninth floor where that awaits, mark my words…even if we have to bring Aria’s corpse there ourselves.”
The masked figure’s tongue hissed in response. “You intend to defy Enyo?”
Levis spun around, her eyes narrowed. “Use me all you want, I don’t care. But in return, I shall do as I please.”
“You…!”
“Do let Enyo know, as well, would you? That I may need to act on my own from time to time.” She turned her back on the hooded figure and made her way toward the center of the room. “We’re done here. Leave me.”
Drip, drip. Droplets of blood landed at the hooded figure’s feet as though punctuating Levis’s words.
The heads of viola flowers writhed atop the ceiling, monsters ensnared in their countless tentacles.
Vines squeezed around one of the pitiful offerings, oozing blood, before dropping it at Levis’s feet with a dull thud. Then she began to feast, both on the monsters caught in her violas and the dragons impaled atop her weapons.
The masked figure turned away from the ghastly meal, bluish-purple robe trembling in disgust as the screams began anew.
From the midst of the camp and its many tents enshrouded in the dim phosphorescence of the Dungeon’s walls, the lid of an elven pocket watch, emblazoned with a leaf and tree, closed with a snap.
The eyes of a great many adventurers went to their weapons.
Swords, wands, double-bladed edges, scimitars, silver boots, staves, axes, spears.
As the Trickster flag smiled comically over the headquarters of the camp once more, a certain prum captain opened his mouth.
“We leave…now!” The quiet order issued from between his lips, and soon Loki Familia’s elite party, led by Finn, was off, leaving the camp.
Accompanied by the shouts of their comrades and High Smiths who would stay to guard the base, they made their way down the flat rock face and toward the great forest of ash.
Their party totaled thirteen—seven fighters, five supporters, and one smith.
Bete and Tiona would form the front line while Aiz, Tione, and Finn would cover the middle.
Behind them in the rear guard were Riveria and Gareth. Despite a few alterations to the lineup, it was still Loki Familia’s first-tiers’ golden formation. Two supporters had been added to every line, carrying extra weapons and items. Tsubaki, who’d be looking after everyone’s weapons, was positioned along the midline with Finn.
The whole lot of them, including supporters loaded down with giant backpacks that contained oversize weapons and shields, made their way to the giant opening in the Dungeon’s western wall.
“How come I have to be with Bete, huh?” Tiona grumbled, giant Durandal sword atop her shoulder and supporters nervously silent next to her.
“Ah, shut it, ya stupid Amazon,” Bete snapped with his own disgruntled frown, not even looking at her. With Frosvirt on his feet, new twin Durandal blades—Dual Roland—strapped to his waist, and over ten magic daggers filling both leg holsters, he was equipped from head to toe.
“Geez, you guys are sure a lively bunch at all hours, aren’t ya!” Tsubaki laughed at the two bickering attackers as she placed her hand on the hilt of her tachi.
“I’m afraid it’s not our best side…” Finn wryly responded from next to her.
“Lefiya, your breathing is awfully shallow. Loosen up a bit, all right?”
“R-right, Lady Riveria!” Lefiya responded, doing as the high elf next to her in the rear guard instructed.
On the outside, Riveria appeared every bit the calm, composed high elf she normally was, but the glint in her single opened, jade-colored eye seemed to remind Lefiya not to forget her “unshakable tree.”
“Sure, you don’t need to be actin’ like those clowns at the front, but you do still need to be ready as a primed cannon, so to speak. As a magic user, ye’ve gotta have nerves o’ steel. To be ready for action when the time comes. You, too, Raul!” Gareth added with a stroke of his beard from behind the two elves, his loud voice directed toward Raul’s slinking back on the midline.
“M-me?!”
They truly never changed, all of them. Among the usual banter of their fellow first-tiers, the long-haired Amazon and the golden-haired, golden-eyed swordswoman occupying the party’s midline turned back toward Lefiya. Tione shot her a wink without breaking step, and even Aiz flashed her a small smile.
Lefiya responded instinctively with her own smile and a happy nod, readjusting the cylindrical pack on her back and devoting herself to the party’s progress. The magic stone atop her staff emitted a soft pale-blue light.
“That’s enough idle chatter. Focus on preparing for the battle ahead,” Finn instructed as the group emerged from the ashen forest in front of the large opening.
The passageway connecting the fiftieth and fifty-first floors slanted sharply just inside the gaping hole in the western wall. Staring down what could almost be described as a cliff face, they could already make out the shapes of monsters in the darkness below.
Everyone quietly readied their weapons. Then Finn gave the order, long spear in his hand.
“—Bete. Tiona. You’re up.”
And they were off.
The ferocious duo of werewolf and Amazon went speeding down the slope.
The rest soon followed, and with that, their attack on the unexplored depths had begun.
In the blink of an eye, Bete’s silver boots and Tiona’s greatsword took care of the monsters that had spawned just outside the safety point.
“We’ll continue down the main route as planned! Don’t let any of those new species get close!”
The Dungeon’s layout took a turn for the unusual between the fifty-first and fifty-seventh floors—in the so-called deep levels. The flat planes that made up the ceilings and walls were drawn in a deep graphite color, stretching out between rooms in an intricate series of halls and passages.
It wasn’t the architecture itself that differed so greatly from the upper levels at the start of their journey, it was the sheer scale of it all. The floors down here were in a league all their own, spreading out in front of the racing party as they heeded Finn’s every command.
They couldn’t afford to fight unnecessary battles or waste items.
They sped through the Dungeon with nothing but the unknown, the fifty-ninth floor, in their sights.
“They’re coming from the passage up ahead.”
“Front line, keep moving! Aiz, Tione, they’re yours!”
“Roger that!”
Aiz’s honed swordswoman’s intuition had already anticipated the monsters spawning up ahead as Finn called out.
Just as Aiz had predicted, a fissure formed on both sides of the passage as the front line passed by, bursting open to reveal a swarm of black rhinos. Not wasting a moment, Tione’s twin Kukri knives and Aiz’s Desperate made quick work of the spawned rhinoceros monsters.
“There’s a few strays back here, gents!” Gareth shouted from the back of the group as he dismantled the incoming monsters with his ax.
The Dungeon roared around them. Monsters came at them from all sides in an effort to hinder their progress.
From the side, from intersections, from the ceiling, from the walls.
Encounter after encounter. The menace of the Dungeon’s depths. The rate at which the black rhinos and deformis spiders attacked them from every angle was incomparable to anything they’d had to face on the upper levels.
Again and again they came, but the party of adventurers refused to back down.
“Grrrraaaaaaaaaaaarrrgghhhh!!”
Bete flung himself at the monsters blocking his path, his flying kick melding seamlessly into a whirling mass of flashing boots that sent the surrounding monsters sailing. The feral wolf Vanargand mowed them down one after another, paying no heed to the carcasses piling around him.
With relentless speed, he went from one monster to the next, hitting and running, hitting and running. His kicks flailed wildly and carved the way forward for the rest of the party, leaving decimated monsters in his wake.
“M-Mister Bete is even worse than usual…” mumbled his fellow frontline supporter with a shudder as blood sprayed and corpses practically rained down from the sky.
Just as the gulp left his lips, a raging Amazon flew by, her own sword swinging wildly. “Stop acting like you own the place, Bete!!”
“Heh. He’s even more impressive in real life!—Oh! Lucky!” Tsubaki watched the scene unfolding along the front line as she deftly took care of an incoming black rhino with her tachi, then grabbed the black rhino horn it dropped. The smith tossed it into her backpack with a smile of delight.
There was a flash as she whipped her tachi from its scabbard with a speed and artistry that made the draw a technique all on its own.
It was so fast not even Raul, running alongside her, could see the movement of the blade.
“Miss Tsubaki, how are you so strong when you’re just a smith…?!” He groaned.
“Come now! A craftsman has to test her work, don’t she? Gotta see how many monsters that weapon of yours’ll cut through and make sure it’ll cut and cut and cut all the way to the innermost depths! Getting stronger just happened along the way.”
“That’s only mildly terrifying,” Raul replied in horror to the natural-born smith’s explanation.
Tsubaki, however, had nothing but drop items on her mind and darted in and out among her surrounding supporters at will, only aware enough to the point that she wouldn’t impede the group’s progress.
“Lefiya, don’t cast your spells at random—you’ll only draw the attention of those new species. Leave the fighting to Aiz and the others for now. Wait until the new species finally arrive, then unleash your magic!” Riveria advised Lefiya as the two of them ran side by side along the rear guard, surrounded by their fellow party members.
“U-understood!”
Keeping the aspiring magic user under her close supervision, Riveria turned her ever-watchful jade-colored eyes toward their surroundings. The two magic users would act as the party’s firepower, but for now they could only have faith in their companions and wait until the time was right.
“Narfi! My Urga!”
“Coming up!”
Tiona tossed her large Durandal sword behind her without even turning around. The Level 4 supporter girl accompanying her on the front line responded by passing her the double-bladed Urga.
Wielding the massive adamantine sword in her hand, she stared down the impenetrable wall of monsters in front of her and then charged.
She screamed past Bete, taking out a good twenty monsters in a single thrust.
“Leeeeeeeeeet’s do this!!”
Using her entire body, she used every drop of strength in her bones to perform a massive circular swipe.
She became a spinning top, bisecting every monster in the passage with her mighty double-edge blade.
Cries of agony filled the room as a whirlpool of blood rose up around the Amazon. From the newly cleared path, she could already make out the raucous noise of more monsters on the move.
“—Here they come! The new species!”
The wide hall quickly filled with yellow-green blobs.
Their skin was a ravishing swath of colors, their bodies like wide, flat arms, resembling stingrays. And their fleshy legs, multitudes of them lining their either side, sent them careening forward like battle tanks on the move. On top of all that, within those bodies was corrosive acid capable of melting anything and everything.
They’d finally encountered them. The caterpillar monsters Loki Familia had prepared for the most.
“Change formation! Tiona, pull back!” Finn shouted through the din. His orders were immediately carried out.
No sooner had the words left Finn’s mouth than Aiz was leaping forward, switching places seamlessly with the retreating Tiona.
“Awaken, Tempest!” she called out with a lunge, activating her Airiel and running shoulder to shoulder with Bete.
“Aiz, send some my way!”
“—Winds!”
At Bete’s request, she focused the power of her wind into his metal boots.
The werewolf, his Frosvirt now wrapped in Aiz’s current, grabbed the twin swords from his waist.
Armed with Durandal blades and protected by the wind, the two of them launched themselves at the massive swarm of caterpillars.
“Gwwwwwwwwuuuuuuoooooooooooooohhhhh!”
A thunderous scream shook the walls.
Corrosive acid shot from the caterpillars’ mouths, only to be deflected by the armor of wind as Aiz and Bete dashed forward. Durandal weapons sliced the monsters’ bodies into countless pieces.
They didn’t allow the acid to reach their companions in the back, either. Nothing the caterpillars tried worked—whether shooting everything they had straight at the incoming adventurers or exploding in bursts of sprinkling acid. Bete’s lightning-fast legs took out caterpillar after caterpillar as Aiz’s equally quick sword strikes split their large bodies in half. Their Durandal weapons held strong, showing no signs of breakage.
Loki Familia would not be brought down by this new species. Not after all the measures they’d taken. Not with their coordination and teamwork. They mowed through the caterpillar monsters with their tremendously effective armor of wind, delivering wave after wave of killing blows.
They brought the enemy’s attack to a screeching halt.
“Fading light, freezing land. Blow with the power of the third harsh winter—my name is Alf.”
“Everyone, evacuate!”
From behind the combatants, Riveria finished her Concurrent Casting in the blink of an eye.
At Finn’s cry, the front and midlines scattered, forming what could only be described as a living gun muzzle.
And forming the body of the gun was a jade-colored magic circle.
From the silvery white staff there—from the first-tier magic user’s weapon Magna Alf—surged a brilliant flash of snow.
“Wynn Fimbulvetr!!”
Three snowy tendrils shrieked through the passageway.
Every monster caught in the bluish-white blast froze instantly. Aiz and Bete watched the long, straight passageway in front of them transform into a glacial world of blue from their places of refuge within one of the side tunnels.
The frozen caterpillars and other monsters caught in the blast became a gallery of ice sculptures.
“Damn, that was intense! If only we could produce that kind of magic from a magic sword, yeah?” Tsubaki remarked as she gazed out over the ice-hardened Dungeon floor. She rubbed her arms with a shiver. “Wow, it’s cold.”
“The day that happens is the day I lose my job,” replied Riveria with a little smirk.
Once Aiz and Bete had rejoined the others, the whole party took off down the pass, shattering the petrified monster statues just in case as they ran.
No new monsters could spawn from the ice-and frost-covered walls, either, so the group made their way along the main route quickly, continuing down the stairs to the lower levels.
“There’ll be no replenishing from here on out,” Finn said as he turned back toward the rest of the party making their way down the wide, long staircase leading to the fifty-second floor, implying that if any of them had any items to use, they needed to do so now. As none of the adventurers had taken any damage, however, none of them moved.
They stood there quietly, offering him nothing but shared looks of tension.
Tsubaki, on the other hand, the only one not of Loki Familia, glanced dubiously at her anxious companions.
“Let’s go.”
With the short command from Finn, they continued down the stairs.
The Dungeon walls of the fifty-second floor boasted the same graphite color as the walls of the floor above, and the party sped past them at an even faster pace.
“Avoid combat wherever possible! Simply repelling the monsters is fine!” Finn never stopped giving instructions.
The relentless encounter rate from the floor above had yet to change, but they continued their dash all the same.
“Ooh, lookit that drop item!”
Tsubaki brought down a monster with her tachi in mid-run, her eyes sparkling at the tantalizing prize that fell from its carcass. Raul, however, would have none of it.
“No stopping!” he called out and grabbed her wrist as she attempted to break from formation.
“Nnguh!” the smith grunted as the item on the floor stayed right where it dropped. “But whyyyyy?! S’not like I’ve ever been down this deep before. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“We’re going to be sniped,” Raul replied, cold sweat working its way down the sides of his face.
“Sniped?” Tsubaki threw a wandering eye at the changing Dungeon landscape around them as they continued their dash.
Glowing phosphorescence. Countless tunnels. Plenty of monsters attempting to get close to them. But at least with her quick glance she couldn’t make out any suspicious characters waiting to pick them off.
Just as she was about to question what Raul could possibly mean, she noticed it.
It wasn’t just Raul. All the supporters looked scared to death as they struggled to keep up with the first-tiers.
Their faces were pale, and almost tangible panic was building just beneath their skin.
“Keep up the pace!” Gareth shouted from the very back, urging them on.
No one said a word. They didn’t even breathe. The only sounds were their thundering footsteps constantly plowing forward and the roars of monsters they warded off one after another. A very strange, very disconcerting unease had settled over the party.
Again and again the explosions continued, blazing-hot winds and flaming fragments driving them back as Finn gave command after command in rapid succession.
Finally, the dragon’s roars became all too distinct. The next series of explosions shook not only their current floor but no doubt every surrounding floor, as well.
The floor opened up; large sheets of rock crashed down to the floors below. A massive crimson fireball lit up the adventurers’ vision, bursting through the ground to perforate the ceiling overhead.
“So that’s what y’all were talkin’ about…!!” Tsubaki exclaimed, a smile overtaking her face as though she finally understood.
Lefiya, on the other hand, currently running for her life a short distance away, was so pale it seemed as though the color had been drained from her face.
This…This is…
She’d heard about it. She’d even prepared herself for it.
But seeing it right in front of her, right here, right now, she couldn’t stop shaking.
Her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest as the rest of the rearguard party scrambled about her in mass confusion. Even first-tier adventurers could do nothing but run for their lives from the roar of this abominable beast. As the raging tide of blazing heat continued and continued, she felt a scream of panic build up inside her throat—until her blue eyes saw it.
“Raul, get outta the way!” Gareth called out from the back, already having noticed it as well.
“Huh?!” Raul cried out, but it was too late. As the bundle of thick thread shot out from one of the tunnels in the side wall, he didn’t have time to react.
Lefiya quickly extended a hand as the spectacle unfolded in front of her.
“Mister Raul!”
Right behind him, she shoved him out of the way, backpack and all.
He stumbled forward and the incoming thread wrapped around Lefiya’s arm instead.
It had her. With an almost audible yank, she was snatched away from the group.
“Lefiya!” Tione screamed as the massive thread of the deformis spider dragged her toward its hole.
Lefiya’s face distorted in panic as the giant spider monster reeled her in, its jaws open wide—only to burst into flames.
One of the many explosions causing the floor to swell had erupted beneath it, disintegrating the spider in the blast.
“?”
Lefiya was left suspended in the air.
Then she plunged toward the gaping hole in the floor below as waves of smoldering heat assaulted her body. After a moment of weightlessness, she fell headfirst, as if the thread from the blazing spider was pulling her into the mouth of that endless abyss.
It was then that she saw it.
Deep. It was so deep. Too deep.
The hole created by that giant fireball had punched through floor after floor after floor, creating one long vertical descent into oblivion.
And as she fell, she saw the bottom—from which red dragons gazed up at her, smoke hissing from between their countless fangs.
Her azure eyes trembled. Her body began to shake. A very real, guttural terror overtook her entire sense of being.
It was true. All of it.
The volley of explosions assaulting the party again and again and again—were coming from far below them.
They were being targeted by enemies some hundreds of meders beneath their feet.
They…really…
The ominous roars had been a harbinger of the dragon artillery to come.
The enormous flares, capable of blasting through countless layers of thick rock, had been picking off the expedition.
Monsters even more powerful than those inhabiting their current depth were attacking them.
Monsters that ignored the ability levels required to reach each floor.
That ignored the very floors themselves.
Urrghh…
As the dragons eyed her from far, far below, the voice of her companion floated through her mind.
—“Everything you thought you knew about the Dungeon is rendered completely moot.”
—“Descending into the fifty-second floor is like descending into hell itself.”
Lefiya finally understood what Riveria and Raul had been talking about.
Compared to the Irregulars of the upper levels, this one was in a class all its own. An unbelievable phenomenon.
It was of a different scope.
A different scale.
An entirely different level of peril.
Was this even the Dungeon anymore?
It wasn’t possible!
This was beyond ridiculous—it was insane!
They’d truly descended into hell!!
“Guuuuwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!”
Lefiya’s face morphed into an expression of pure despair as the mighty dragon roars shook the air around her.
In the midst of the nightmarish scene, her body hurtled down toward those monstrous dragons.
The impossibly long, impossibly wide tunnel created by the countless flares trembled.
—In the past, it had been Zeus Familia that had ruled over Orario from on high.
It was they who held the record for farthest floor reached. It was they who’d nicknamed this area of the Dungeon “The Dragon’s Urn.”
It was so named because of the valgang dragons inhabiting the fifty-eighth floor, the bottom of the “urn.”
They were monstrous red dragons boasting heights of some ten meders when standing on their hind legs.
She fell toward those dragons now. They awaited her as she sliced through the air, her bangs whipping back and forth as she plunged in a free fall down that massive hole.
Other monsters caught in the blast fell, too, tumbling around her as she froze in fear.
I’ve seen this before. In a dream…
A terrifying dream where she’d fallen from a great height.
Only now, in reality, there was something even more horrifying awaiting her than the hard surface of the ground.
She couldn’t move. Not even a single finger. She was overcome with a primeval fear as one of the valgang dragons below opened its massive jaws.
Its maw was like a gun barrel, only it wasn’t bullets loaded in its magazine but a blazing red ball of flame that dyed the dragon’s mouth a brilliant crimson as it aimed directly overhead.
It was going to destroy them all in one giant flare—every one of the falling monsters, and Lefiya with them.
“ “LEFIYA!!” ”
“?!”
In that instant.
She heard her name breaking into the impossibly long stretch of frozen seconds.
Looking up, she saw them practically throw themselves over the side of the hole.
“You’re not slowin’ us down, you big, ignorant blockhead!”
Tiona, Tione, Bete.
They launched themselves off the side of the tunnel walls, speeding down toward her.
The sight of the first-tiers racing to save her made her eyes fill up with tears, warping her vision.
“Veil Breath!!” The translucent, ringing name of Riveria’s spell came from the fifty-second floor less than a second later.
The four of them, Lefiya and her three rescuers, were quickly surrounded in warm green gowns of light—Riveria’s protection spell that would safeguard them against all incoming attacks.
Armed with the blessings of Orario’s strongest magic user, Tiona, Tione, and Bete raced down the wall to make it to Lefiya’s side.
“? Aaaaahhh!!”
In that same instant, however, the mighty red dragon released its flame.
The massive fireball, boasting a diameter of over five meders, launched from the dragon’s mouth and bathed Lefiya and the others in a fierce vermilion hue. Tiona leaped from the wall, giant silver sword at the ready.
“Ya bastaaaaaaard!!”
In a swipe that utilized her entire body, she gripped her Durandal sword in both hands and aimed it at the incoming fireball.
The explosion that followed was astronomical.
The two forces had offset each other.
In a crushing blast, the inferno came to a screeching halt in front of Lefiya’s eyes.
“Miss Tiona—?!” Lefiya began to scream, but before she could even finish, the Amazon appeared from within the brilliant flash.
“Yeeoouch!” was her only reaction; otherwise she was completely unharmed and wreathed in embers. Lefiya’s eyes widened in surprise. The logic-shattering berserker was as lively as ever even as steam rose from her skin.
With Riveria’s Veil Breath canceling the majority of the fireball’s damage, she’d pulled through without a single scratch. Her Durandal weapon, too, was unharmed. The silver glint of its surface was no less brilliant than before.
“Tione! Bete! There’s a wyvern coming!” Tiona cried out, sensing movement from not only the valgang dragons down on the fifty-eighth floor but on the fifty-sixth floor, too.
Dragons began flying out of the tunnels lining the hole like ants crawling out of their nest, mighty wings flapping.
These ill wyverns, bluish-purple dragons boasting heights of some three meders with their tails included, only further emphasized the Dragon Urn’s name. As the great red dragons on the fifty-eighth floor bombarded the adventurers with fireballs, these flying creatures took advantage of the resulting tunnels to launch their own direct attack.
Dragons poured out from the fifty-sixth and fifty-seventh floors one after another, and Tiona and Bete took off running.
“Tione, protect that numbskull!”
With a speed that seemed to ignore the fact that he was falling, Bete kicked off from one of the large stone sheets and shot upward like an arrow to bring his twin blades down on one of the wyverns.
He drove both swords into the monster’s eye sockets and then kicked off its body as it let out a scream of agony. He sprang from one dragon to the next with jarring blows that sent them spinning into their nearby brethren.
He used the momentum from his jump to land on the wall, dodging the wyverns’ rapid salvo of fireballs before leaping back for another attack.
Tiona, equally undaunted, launched her own attack and sliced an incoming wyvern’s wings from its body.
The falling wyvern bodies acted as a shield that protected them from the second wave of explosive fireballs from the valgang dragons down below.
“W-wuaah…?!”
Tremendous explosions. Plummeting monsters. The painfully loud cries of howling dragons.
The out-of-this-world spectacle taking place before her made Lefiya shake so hard she couldn’t stop.
“Breathe, girl!” screamed Tione, currently falling alongside her.
“!”
“Don’t be afraid! We’ll protect you!”
The halberd-wielding Amazon and her intense look caused a flutter in Lefiya’s chest.
She thought back to the night before and the time they’d shared in her tent. Now surrounded by Riveria’s green armor of protection and touched by the indomitable mettle of the first-tiers refusing to allow this predicament to play out, she let out a grunt to banish the fear from her body.
Nodding in Tione’s direction, she tightened her grip on her staff.
She stared down into that infernal abyss at the monstrous red dragons lying in wait, her hair whipping wildly in the wind.
“Aiz, don’t!!”
—Meanwhile, back on the fifty-second floor…
Finn commanded Aiz to hold back as she prepared to follow Tione and the others into the great hole.
“If Raul and the others fall in there, we’ll never be able to protect them all! You’ll stay with us as we continue along the main route to the fifty-eighth floor!”
“…!”
Her lips curved into a tormented frown, her feet still poised on the edge of the hole, but she did as she was told.
Even if Lefiya and the others did land somewhere midway down the tunnel, there was no guarantee they’d be able to find them in the complex labyrinth of the Dungeon. If they could all just make it to the fifty-eighth floor, which comprised nothing but a single grand hall, they’d be able to reconvene without troubling themselves. Tiona and the others knew this, too. Or, at least, they should.
In addition, the tremendous strength Aiz could employ against the caterpillar monsters would greatly hasten the party’s descent. It was essential that she remain with the main party if they had hopes of making it to the fifty-eighth floor quickly.
“Gareth! I’m leaving Bete and the others to you!”
“Roger that!”
Already armed with his standard battle-ax and grabbing his Durandal ax from one of the supporters, Gareth took off after Lefiya and the others in Aiz’s stead.
Finn quickly set forth reorganizing the rest of the party, not even waiting for Gareth to leap into the hole before ushering them onward.
“It…It’s all my fault…” Raul fretted, unable to shake off his own failure and the horrifying turn of events it had caused.
“No need to fret. Save that for when you receive your punishment later. For now, though, focus, yes?”
The thought of Riveria’s punishment sucked the color right out of Raul’s face, leaving him no room for self-reproach. Even the remaining three supporters could do nothing but send him looks of pity.
With Aiz now in the front line, the party sped its way through the passageways of the fifty-second floor.
“Ha-ha-ha! Looks like I’m stuck in a crazy place again!” Tsubaki hacked away at an incoming monster with her tachi, ever-present smile plastered on her face.
One party had become two.
The two parties followed two separate routes, racing their ways to the fifty-eighth floor.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login