by Fujino Omori
The last thing Hestia knew about Ouranos was that he spent his days beneath Guild Headquarters, offering constant “prayers” to the Dungeon.
These prayers—powered by his immense divine authority—kept the Dungeon in check. It was his will that prevented hordes of monsters from reaching the surface and plunging the world back into the original state from the Ancient Times. That was how it was explained.
Given Ouranos’s presence here, Hestia reasoned that she must be in the Chamber of Prayers beneath Guild Headquarters.
The two deities observed each other with the same shade of blue eyes, directly under Orario’s governing facilities.
“This ends my role here, Ouranos.”
“You have done well, Fels.”
Behind Hestia came the sound of fabric shifting.
Then the person called Fels started to take his leave.
“Well then, I shall excuse myself. I’ll be late if I don’t set off soon.”
With those words, Fels returned to the hidden door.
“Please make yourself at home, Goddess Hestia.”
Fels said a final good-bye before disappearing into the darkness.
Hestia watched until the figure vanished, and then she returned her attention to the god before her.
“I have a lot of questions, Ouranos. Mind if I get some answers first?”
“I’ll allow it.”
Hestia had known Ouranos was the one who ordered the mission the moment she saw the hieroglyph message on the document.
While she didn’t know how it would happen, she had had a feeling that the two of them would meet face-to-face at some point.
“Was this mission only your idea?”
“It was indeed. No Guild employees have been informed.”
“Are Bell and the others safe?”
“They’re in the Dungeon. There are no guarantees.”
Hestia’s first order of business was to ensure her followers were safe. She frowned at the god dodging her question, but her shoulders relaxed.
I can still let him have it after I find out everything he has to say, she promised herself before she reined herself in.
“Such an elaborate scheme…What’s with the roundabout process?”
“It was necessary to take expedited measures to ensure our meeting remains absolutely secret. I was prepared for you and your followers to be wary.”
Most likely, Ouranos didn’t want anyone else to know that he had summoned Hestia to the Chamber of Prayers. This forceful method was probably chosen as the least risky course of action.
Hestia felt that they were being tested at the same time.
Ouranos knew from early on that Hestia and her familia were harboring Wiene.
Everything that had transpired up to today, including the mission, happened under his watchful gaze.
He saw their decisions, their reactions.
It was all to determine whether or not she was worthy of an audience with the deity.
“Am I correct in assuming that you’ve called me here because of the vouivre girl—because of Wiene?”
Hestia changed her course of questioning.
The large, wizened god looked down at her from atop his altar.
“Just what is she? Do you know something, Ouranos?”
“……”
“What is happening in the Dungeon right now? What are you hiding?”
Ouranos remained silent as Hestia piled on more questions.
Her voice reverberated around the dark chamber. Before her last words faded, Hestia asked the most important question yet.
“What is your will?”
Crackle! Sparks burst from one of the torches.
Ouranos slowly opened his mouth, his majestic form illuminated on all sides by the flames.
Eyes as blue as the midday sky locked onto Hestia.
“I shall inform you, Hestia, of our secret…”
The clash of swords echoed through the labyrinth.
Slashes and their answering counterstrokes. A cutting edge stopped in mid-swing, met by a blade and a burst of red sparks.
A shield immediately blocked the subsequent reprisal. The warrior wielding the weapons felt the impact. Waves of pain shot through its arm, and it let out a bloodcurdling roar through its pulsating throat.
The deep, beastly roar filled the passageway and shook the battle party to the core.
The Dungeon, twentieth floor.
Bell’s party had made good progress, pressing even deeper into this floor they were seeing for the first time.
Not much different from the nineteenth, this level of the Colossal Tree Labyrinth was overflowing with plant life. Its walls covered in tree bark, the twentieth floor was a green maze that dazzled adventurers who traveled through its halls. Their faces were illuminated by the steady, dreamlike blue glow emanating from the moss-covered walls.
Lilly guided the party through the halls using her map. The monsters they encountered were similar to the ones upstairs, with mad beetles and dark fungi, among others. Mikoto’s Skill, Yatano Black Crow, kept them safe from ambushes, while Bell and Welf knew how to deal with them on the front lines. The group’s efficiency had improved, making their journey much safer and faster than before.
However, a new enemy had appeared.
It was currently crossing blades with Bell and Welf.
“RUOOOHH!!”
“OO! OOOOOGH!”
The lizard warrior howled as it charged the party on two powerful legs.
A blade’s flash catching their eye, the two young men blocked it at the same time.
“These things are pretty damn good!”
Welf growled to himself, not taking his eyes away from the red-scaled monsters called lizardmen.
Standing upright and wielding weapons in both arms, the two monsters attacked much like adventurers would. About 170 celch tall, they could look Welf in the eyes. Bell had fought against many creatures in the Dungeon, but this was the first time he felt as though he was engaging other adventurers in battle.
Mainly because these two monsters attacked with swords.
Their clawed fingers were wrapped around sword hilts and shield grips.
“Flowers as nature weapons…?”
The two lizardmen were carrying “landforms”—naturally occurring weapons that the Dungeon supplied.
These metallic flowers grew straight from the Dungeon walls. Removing the stem from the flower resulted in a round shield measuring fifty celch in diameter. What’s more, each of the petals could be individually plucked from the flower, becoming daggers as wide as swords and worthy of the nickname “cutters.”
The nature weapons they had encountered up to this point included tree-stump clubs and stone tomahawks, but this was the first piece of equipment that provided monsters with the offensive and defensive support equivalent to an adventurer’s sword and shield. Welf parried a cutter away from his body as a lizardman blocked Bell’s knife with its round shield.
“SHAAAAAAAAA!!”
The two adventurers were forced to simultaneously deal with the tenacious lizardman assault and the ranged attacks of a gun libellula mob coming from behind. The monsters used powerful side sweeps, quick downward slashes, and sudden forward thrusts to overwhelm them. The blows shattered the floor beneath them, and the two humans’ limbs trembled under the strain of receiving the attacks.
Their technique might have relied mostly on power, but it was unmistakably swordsmanship.
“Monsters with sword skills…Well, guess what?!”
Welf yelled back at his unusually skilled foes.
The tables turned as soon as Mikoto and Lilly finished wiping out the gun libellulas with a slew of arrows.
Welf blocked the lizardman’s following strike and, with a well-timed twist of his blade, sent the creature’s flower-petal dagger flying. He exploited the second it took for the disarmed lizardman to regain its balance, raising his greatsword high into the air.
Surprised realizati
on passed over the monster’s face as it lifted its shield up to defend. Welf smirked at the useless gesture.
He then used every muscle in his body to bring down an overarching slash that cut straight through the shield and plunged into the monster’s body.
“GEH—!”
Welf’s sword tore right through its magic stone. The lizardman crumbled into ash before the halves of its shield hit the ground.
As the remaining lizardman reacted to seeing its companion slain, Bell kicked off the ground with the speed of a rabbit.
“GAH!”
A crimson arc carved straight through the creature’s midsection as the boy slid by, holding Ushiwakamaru-Nishiki in a backhand grip.
The blade tore red scales off its body as it bit deep into its flesh.
The creature staggered for a moment with a massive gash in its torso before loudly collapsing to the ground behind Bell.
“That was a real surprise at first, but they’re really rough around the edges. Those weren’t techniques.”
“Bear in mind that if monsters like that appear in greater numbers…the way forward will become much more arduous.”
Welf returned his greatsword to his shoulder, scoffing at the fallen monsters like a seasoned veteran, while Mikoto exchanged an empty arrow quiver for her katana. Lilly and the supporters quickly set to work, collecting magic stones from the battlefield.
“I wonder if any of them live long enough to learn how to do more than just swing.”
“While Lilly can’t guarantee there aren’t…it wouldn’t make sense, Mr. Welf. Once it was identified, the Guild would immediately issue a bounty for such a monster and send exterminators to eliminate it.”
Bell listened to his allies’ conversation and thought about the look of insatiable bloodlust in the lizardmen’s eyes. The battle over, he led his party deeper into the Dungeon.
“Lilly…how far do we have to go?”
“According to the map, our destination is close. Please turn right up ahead.”
They had diverted from the main route quite a while ago.
Lilly’s eyes never left the red circle over a room close to a pantry in the back corner of this floor, their mission’s destination, as she spoke.
Every party member could sense their anxiety increasing with every step.
Backpacks over their shoulders, Lilly and Haruhime desperately tried to hide their exhaustion and keep their nerves under control.
Even Welf, who always lightened the mood with a few jokes, was unusually quiet.
Mikoto’s Mind was little more than fumes after triggering her Skill so many times. She took out a Dual Potion, drank the whole thing, and silently wiped her mouth.
Bell led the group at the front, holding idle thoughts at bay while keeping his eyes and ears wide open. He glanced back over his shoulder.
Wiene looked up, her trembling amber eyes meeting his almost as if on cue. They seemed to exchange thoughts and feelings in that long moment.
The inside of the girl’s hood was glowing red with the light of the red jewel in her forehead.
The party encountered several more groups of monsters after that.
The path required them to climb over a series of thick, matted tree roots, up a hill, and through a thicket of lush plant life.
Until finally…
“We’re here…”
They had arrived at their mission’s destination.
The room was a long rectangle about ten meders wide, and the ceiling was just as tall. Tree bark covered the walls and canopy, just like every room they had passed by on the way, and it was all carpeted with Lamp Moss.
Green grass and an assortment of small white rings came together to form a flower bed growing out of the floor like a patchwork garden.
However, they were not what the party noticed first.
“Quartz…”
Maybe because the pantry was nearby, but the deep-green quartz that resembled emeralds stuck out from the floor, walls, and ceiling in every direction. The verdant light of the rock formations reminded Bell of the quest that he and Lilly once undertook at Nahza’s request. For others like Haruhime, this was their first time seeing quartz in every size and shape like this with their own eyes. The sight took their breath away. The largest cluster was situated at the other end of the room, directly facing the party—and covering the wall almost like a miniature iceberg.
Other rooms located close to pantries had the same manner of quartz formations.
“I’m glad to hear this is it, but…”
“There’s nothing to see and no one here…”
The group came to a stop at the entryway, Welf scanning the chamber as Mikoto frowned.
There were no monsters waiting to greet them, let alone a party of people. Everyone agreed that the quartz was beautiful, but nothing special enough to designate this room as their mission’s destination.
Bell and his party stood in the room’s only entrance.
Of course, a way to go even deeper into the Dungeon from that spot didn’t appear to exist.
“Lady Lilly, are you certain our location is accurate…?”
“I am absolutely sure. This…has to be correct.”
Lilly again examined her map, along with the one provided with the mission document, as an uneasy Haruhime asked for confirmation.
Bell paused in front of the tranquil room, the moss’s blue light mixing with the quartz’s green in front of his eyes. He set foot inside.
The room was brighter than the path they had taken thanks to the quartz. The party followed Bell, staying in a tight cluster in case a monster came out of the Dungeon walls. They also kept their eyes open for a clue as to why their mission had brought them here.
But it was all for naught.
“There really is…nothing…”
“Dammit, Guild, what did you want us to do?”
At a loss for an explanation, they returned to the entrance.
Welf voiced the frustration everyone was feeling and massaged his neck. Haruhime’s Level Boost was nearing its time limit, so the motes of light hovering over his body were vanishing as they spoke.
The fatigue they had been hiding, the exhaustion from relentlessly pressing forward through the Dungeon, had reached a breaking point and weighed heavily on everyone’s shoulders. Meanwhile, the white flowers at their feet gently swayed back and forth.
—Now that I think about it, the ones watching us…
Bell raised his head from his spot in the middle of the party.
All the gazes he had sensed after they entered Babel Tower, which had only increased once they arrived on the nineteenth floor, had vanished.
There was no mistake. Whoever had been observing them was gone.
Bell racked his brain, trying to figure out what it could mean, when—
“”
Twitch.
Wiene’s pointed ears twitched again.
“I hear…”
“Huh?” Everyone’s attention suddenly focused on Wiene.
She looked over her shoulder to the opposite side of the room. Her gaze fell on the wall of quartz on the other end.
No way…The party was in denial as they watched the vouivre girl focus on sounds only she could hear. But once they tried…
“”
…they could hear it, too.
It was a song none of them had ever heard before. Growing louder, the reverberations rang in their ears.
Every eye went wide as the adventurers tried to find words.
“A song in the labyrinth…”
The tone was pure and steady, forming a melody that conjured images of the ocean under a calm night sky. Lilly whispered to herself, having heard about this somewhere before.
“Is it…calling?”
Wiene’s eyes opened fully as her gaze raced along the quartz iceberg, trying to locate where the song was coming from.
The others had figured it out, too. The sound waves were coming from even deeper in the Dungeon, f
rom behind the cluster of quartz crystals.
No one said a word as they climbed to their feet and drifted to the wall as if the melody were magnetic.
They came to a stop in front of the gorgeous quartz formation.
It looked like one solid piece at first glance…but then they found a dim spot among the crystals.
The song had grown so loud that now even the quartz vibrated ever so slightly in time with each note. Exchanging glances, everyone nodded.
Welf stepped forward, took aim with his sword—and brought it down in one swift motion.
Crash! The quartz broke into pieces, shattering like glass to reveal an alcove in the wall.
“…Well, how were we supposed to find that?”
Welf groaned, whispering at the opening.
The Dungeon always healed itself, repairing the damage it sustained during battles, but quartz grew back abnormally fast. In fact, the process was already under way. The party quickly strode through the opening as new crystals formed before their eyes.
Shards of broken quartz littered the path under their feet as they watched the entrance seal itself behind them.
“…Let’s go.”
The song was gone, as though it had served its purpose.
Peering down the slope into the depths of the tree, Bell urged his allies forward.
Tension held them in its grip once again as the party formed a line and pressed onward.
“Could this place be…?”
Lilly’s quiet voice trembled in through the dim, bark-covered passageway.
While everyone knew exactly what she was trying to say, no one spoke. Breathing as quietly as possible, the party was so on edge that they became drenched in sweat.
The path was narrow, but there didn’t seem to be a danger of monsters bursting from the walls. There was no Lamp Moss on any surface. Small quartz crystals dotting the passage provided just enough light for the adventurers to see one another and their immediate surroundings.
Bell led the way. Wiene, directly behind him, reached out to take his hand.
The boy didn’t say anything as he felt her thin fingers wrap around his, giving them only a tight squeeze.
Having accepted the portable magic-stone lamp from Lilly in one hand, Bell pointed forward with the other as the group continued their descent.
“…A spring.”
