by Fujino Omori
Ilta bit her lip, letting a complicated blend of emotions peek out on her face. Shakti was silent for a moment as she referred to getting revenge for Hashana, who had been brutally murdered in Rivira on the eighteenth floor.
“Don’t be angry, Ilta! Stay cool! Yeah, just like me, Ganesha!”
“Shut it, Ganesha!”
“You’re so annoying, Ganesha.”
The god wearing an elephant mask made his appearance, striking a weird pose. Not shrinking back from his followers’ curt responses, Ganesha straightened his spine and took on a different vibe.
“We don’t have to be avengers. We’ll continue to be the shield protecting the masses. Hashana would not have wanted us to lose our path because of him.”
Shakti’s and Ilta’s eyes widened slightly in understanding. They nodded back in response to their patron god. Turning around, they looked toward the opening in a wall that led underground.
The entrance to the hidden demons’ den.
The man-made labyrinth, Knossos.
“Hey, Amid! You’re joining this operation, too?!” Tiona called out in surprise, which traveled down the stone passage, echoing.
While Ganesha Familia was on guard aboveground, Loki Familia and the other groups assigned to take part in the invasion were underground in a passage that connected to a door to Knossos. While adventurers were jostling around, Tiona and Tione went to meet the beautiful girl with long platinum hair.
“Yes, at the request of Captain Finn. Aaaand I wanted to take part myself. But before that…allow me to apologize for delaying the start of the operation because of our medicine production.”
“Do you hear yourself? I mean, even the captain said if it wasn’t for you guys preparing the anti-curse medicine, the success rate of this operation would plummet.”
“Yeah! Yeah! ’Cause we wouldn’t even be able to heal a single wound! That would make charging in a total repeat !”
“You mean total defeat , dumbass.”
Amid cracked a teeny smile at the exchange between Tiona and Tione. This girl, known as the city’s greatest healer, was not in her usual familia uniform or the normal battle clothes that she wore when going into the Dungeon with the sisters.
Instead, she donned white robes. They were reserved for instances when she was heading into a serious battle against the likes of a floor boss—and when she was going not as a normal healer but as Dea Saint. As the other Loki Familia members were captivated by the sight of the holy woman in her sacred garments, Tiona and Tione responded like always: “It’s been a while since she’s broken out that look” and “It feels weird because you’re in a different outfit.”
Amid smiled again, seeing her friends behaving as if nothing had changed.
“I take it you’re coming with us, Amid?”
“Yes. I discussed with Captain Finn if I could join the northeast squad.”
Nodding to Tiona, Amid looked out at the unit formed of people from several familias. The invasion force was not all gathered in one place by any means. They were divided up before the multiple doors to Knossos.
“Bete Loga!”
“Why. The. Hell. Are. You. Here. You Amazon brat?!”
In front of the southeast entrance to Knossos. As a few healers from Dian Cecht Familia were joining the group, Bete let out an angry roar directed at the young Amazon Lena Tully, who had appeared before him.
“I found out from Aisha! I was all like, hmm, I wonder what Loki Familia is up to!”
She was wearing particularly revealing clothes, showing plenty of her bronze skin without any reservations. Combined with her cutesy gestures, everything about her was over-the-top. The young Amazon wasn’t fully mature yet.
She spoke excitedly, her eyes as wide as saucers. “I threw a big tantrum and said I’d tell everyone about all the stuff she was doing behind the scenes for Hermes Familia if she didn’t let me know! And Aisha even said, ‘Just do whatever you want!’ Wow, love is an amazing thing!”
“Love?! You’re just being a whiny, selfish brat!”
“Enough of that! Do you need me to resupply you with my love? I bet your body’s all worked up waiting for the operation to start. Why don’t you relax by embracing my youthful body?!”
Blam! His iron fist rained down immediately, crashing hard on her forehead. A thunderous thud rang out as his fist made contact with her skull as she continued to make no sense.
Lena fell backward and rolled around screaming “Ghnaaaaaaaaaargh?!” as she clutched her forehead with both hands.
The members of other familias who heard the conversation started to whisper, but they let out stifled squeals and averted their gazes when they saw Vanargand’s bloodshot eyes glaring at them. The members of Loki Familia had become so numbed to their interactions that they paid it no mind. Their stance was that nothing bad would happen to them as long as they weren’t directly involved in it.
Lena staggered to her feet as tears welled in her eyes, but she continued to smile, not discouraged in the least. “And plus, Aisha went along with Hestia Familia on their expedition! And she told me to not get involved in this at all!”
“Then don’t do it, dumbass…”
“But it didn’t feel right to stay behind!” Lena blabbed, refusing to listen to him, which made Bete look genuinely stumped.
Lena leaned in. “Bete Loga! Let me come, too…!”
“Stop trying to go the extra mile when no one asked you to,” Bete responded, yanking on her head in an instant.
“Guohhh?!”
Bete was radiating murder. “You’re not coming,” he announced with a serious face.
“Gh—…”
“You’re in the minor leagues.”
“…”
“Got it?”
“…Yes,” Lena conceded meekly, nodding as she squashed her normal upbeat energy.
As a weak person, she understood exactly what he meant. She was the one who had once caught Bete in a terrible predicament beneath that gray sky that pelted rain, and Lena drew back miserably with frustration and sadness etched across her face.
“…Stay with Ganesha Familia aboveground. Okay?”
With that, he turned his back on her, shoving her away without regard for her feelings. Lena nodded as a kind smile made its way to her lips, looking at him, cold and volatile, from behind.
“…Bete Loga, make sure you come back. I’ll be waiting for you.”
And then she clung to his back, hugging him tightly.
Closing her eyes, she relished his warmth spreading across her cheek—though he elbowed her, jabbing her with a vicious blow and sending her flying with a squeal.
“Hey, that Amazon keeps yapping on about Aisha…Do you think she’s caught on to the shady stuff our familia’s doing, Asfi?”
“It’s not any worse than your big mouth, Lulune. Meaning it’ll just be an even bigger headache for me. Don’t you worry…”
Hermes Familia ’s group watched Bete and Lena’s boisterous back-and-forth from afar.
As the chienthrope girl tapped her shoulder, Asfi readjusted her glasses, attempting to hide the mounting fatigue around her eyes, blue hair billowing. The war tiger Falgar, the prum Merrill, and all the other members of their familia looked at her with gazes filled with pity.
“I know we formed an alliance and all, which means we don’t have a choice but to join the first attack…That said, it’s a real bummer. Disabling the traps is one thing, but telling us to map this stupidly huge dungeon, too? Like isn’t this place crazy dangerous?” Lulune complained despondently.
“All we have to do is follow Loki Familia and stealthily investigate the paths they clear: nothing more, nothing less. It’s a simple task. Relax. Your shoulders are tense,” Asfi responded with a sigh as she adjusted her mind-set.
The right arm of Hermes understood the importance of this preliminary skirmish. So while she hid it behind the facade of the sage leader, she was also bracing herself.
“Besides…we’ve got po
werful reinforcements.”
Glancing aside, she spotted a masked adventurer wearing a deep hood behind her—a single elf who was standing there quietly.
“Lefiya!”
“Miss Filvis!” Lefiya called out toward Filvis, who was darting in her direction through the squad lining up in front of the southwest entrance. “You’re in this squad, too?”
“Yes, since I’m Lord Dionysus’s guard. It’s wonderful that you ended up being here, too—”
Just as they were ready to bask in their good luck, someone else broke in, cutting off Filvis. “Lord Dionysus’s guard, huh? Look at you, pretending to be his right-hand woman. All you did was gain his sympathy and monopolize his affection by playing the victim of the misfortune on the twenty-seventh floor.”
“Aura…”
As with the two of them, it was another elf with venom practically dripping from every word. She had sweeping white locks that were tied up, the exact opposite of Filvis’s black hair. Her eyes were a deep purple, and she might have been a year or two older than the pair.
Cloaking her body were her battle clothes, black and red, as she held a long staff that marked her as a magic user. It was an unconventional one, seemingly based on the flower known as the queen of the night. It was almost possible to see her fussy nature, a quality she shared with other elves. Put another way, she seemed to have a high-strung sort of hostility.
Aura Moriel. Dionysus Familia ’s second-in-command. A Level 2. Alias: Krater. She had joined the familia at the same time as Filvis, and they should have been the two most senior members in their group. At least, that was what Lefiya remembered from when she’d looked up the members of Dionysus Familia back when their familias had first formed an alliance.
“I thought you were taking him away and moving around in secret. Come to find you’ve managed to get the whole familia wrapped up in it…Are you going to kill us this time, Banshee?”
“…!” Lefiya recoiled at the nickname.
This was referring to Filvis, because every party that she had joined ever since the Twenty-Seventh-Floor Nightmare had been entirely wiped out, leaving her as the sole survivor. Lefiya knew she was still despised internally as the elf who killed her party, despite being the leader of Dionysus Familia .
“…I’m sorry, Aura,” Filvis responded under her critical gaze and offered nothing else.
On the day of the incident six years back, Aura had apparently been left off the party. Filvis must have felt obliged to her for slinking back to the familia, alive, after letting the then-leader and all the senior members perish. And Aura almost certainly did blame her—to the point that their differences couldn’t be settled even six years later.
It was further complicated by the fact that Aura adored Dionysus just as much as Filvis loved him—Filvis, who had the seat next to Dionysus under her control and who had been appointed the current leader of the familia. Aura couldn’t even hide the contempt toward her in her voice.
It wasn’t hard to imagine why Filvis distanced herself from the familia, given her feelings and everything else.
As Filvis looked down, Lefiya was starting to object.
“…But just this once, we’ll set aside the pointless antagonism.”
“What?”
Both Lefiya and Filvis were shocked. Despite her obvious reluctance, Aura was clear in her declaration.
“I understand the situation. And Lord Dionysus even said it himself. This is for the sake of our comrades who were killed…There is no reason to slight fellow familia members on pointless pretexts.”
“Aura…”
“Let’s try our best to not get in Loki Familia ’s way. And you: Make sure you perform your duty—and not just cling to your kin.”
On that snide note, Aura spun on her heel and made it clear that they would provide their support. Lefiya was thrilled for Filvis—that she’d been acknowledged by her own familia for all that she’d accomplished.
“I’m happy for you, Miss Filvis.” Lefiya smiled.
“…Yes.” Filvis grinned back—a mix of gratitude to her fellow elf who had approached her after those long years and sadness at making Aura forgive her.
“Are they gonna be okay? Your kids?”
“Filvis has a wall up between her and the rest of the members. But it looks like, at least this once, they’ve settled their differences. Aura is a wise girl. She won’t bring her personal feelings to an operation that bears the fate of the city.”
Watching their exchange from afar, Loki expressed some doubt, but Dionysus just brushed back his hair with flair. His words had the faint ring of a god bragging about his precious followers. Loki stuck out her tongue at his pretentious air.
“If ye ask me, I’d be more inclined to wonder if having you two along will really be okay…”
“Sorry, Gareth! But there’ll definitely be a point where we’re gonna have to be here! Guaranteed!…Probably! Make sure you do a good job protectin’ us!”
Gareth had butted into their conversation. The dwarf had been given command of the southwestern squad, fully equipped with a helmet and heavy armor, narrowing his eyes as he peeled the annoyingly warm arms of his patron goddess off his shoulders.
Both Loki and Dionysus were joining the fray for this first strike. They had judged that a god’s power would be necessary in order to corner Thanatos, who was leading the Evils’ Remnants, and Enyo, who was suspected of being the mastermind behind it all.
“My apologies, Elgarm. Feel free to use my familia members to your heart’s content. Of course, the same goes for me. As I said, my familia is united again, just this once.” Dionysus’s eyes sharpened. “In order to avenge my followers.”
His eyes normally never showed any emotions, but they revealed his divine will, clear and intense. As Gareth responded with silence, Loki stood next to him and looked into the god’s eyes. She fished something out of her pocket and tossed it to him.
“Just in case…take that.”
She’d thrown a single crystal to Dionysus. Unlike a natural one, this one had a mysterious light shimmering inside it. Loki was holding another one in her own hand.
“…Thank you, Loki.”
After his eyes widened in realization, he grinned at the goddess who was looking at him with a surly look on her face.
“—Everyone, stand to.”
Finn kept it short as he announced the start of the operation.
Before Knossos’s northeast entrance, the familia members standing around the prum holding his long spear adopted tense looks and fighting spirits. Finn did not give a speech to raise morale as he had before the expedition. It was unnecessary. His sharp gaze was all it took. He looked down at his hand. It held a small crystal, just like the ones in Loki’s and Dionysus’s palms.
Upon checking that the magic item was giving off a light, he raised his head to face the tightly shut orichalcum gate and roared: “Commence the operation!”
The familia member at the head of the group raised the key, opening the gate.
With a battle cry, the adventurers charged into Knossos.
“It’s time.”
As the adventurers’ shouts resounded from the magic item—the oculus—and thundering footsteps rang out, Fels looked up.
The Dungeon’s eighteenth floor. “Night” had fallen in the Under Resort.
The crystals clinging to the ceiling like chrysanthemums were silent. Unlike during the day, the entire floor was totally shrouded in darkness, where the shadows of monsters writhed around.
The armed Xenos had gathered at the floor’s eastern edge in front of the entrance to Knossos. They were receiving information from Fels’s oculus. Gareth and the leaders of the other squads had them, too, to collectively respond when the signal began. Closing the gap between the Dungeon and the surface, the allied forces of humans and monsters began their assault from all directions.
The armored lizardman’s claws ripped into the ground; the gargoyle spread his stony wings; the siren mirror
ed his movements.
Fels gave the command.
“Let’s put an end to this chain of battles—Go! ”
The monsters howled as they loped into the demons’ lair.
“Garuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!” belted the wild werewolf, exterminating anything blocking his path.
A swarm of vargs, vividly colored monsters in the shape of water spiders, literally exploded from the impact of his fierce kicks.
“Don’t get shaken off by Bete! Push forward!”
Led by Anakity, Loki Familia hurried down the path while Bete scattered the wall of monsters with the strength of his charge. Letting Bete be the wedge that forced open the way through the large passage, the lovely catgirl cut down the monsters flowing out of the side paths as she sprinted past them. And if any happened to get past the two of them, there was a stream of Level-3 adventurers behind them ready to slaughter any survivors. The relentless thud of combat boots continued, leaving corpses of monsters that were nothing more than sacks of blood, vibrant magic stones beyond count, and swirling dunes of ash in their wake.
Knossos’s first floor. The southeast.
The instant the door opened, the squad storming the labyrinth charged in at full speed, loosing the opening shot of the battle. They swept away the remnants of the Evils who were lying in wait, breaking through in one fell swoop—as if their pent-up hatred and rage exploded out as they rushed into Knossos.
The familia members had been told the details of the operation by Finn: an assault but, more importantly, a reconnaissance in force. Even if the second attack would be the real deal, once they set foot in the enemy base, there was no reason for them not to run wild. In addition to mapping as much of the vast dungeon as possible, they were striking at major facilities of their enemies.
There were two priorities that overrode everything else: The first was discovering the demi-spirit. And the second was securing the enemy’s ringleaders. In this case, that meant Barca, who they expected to have inherited the blueprints to Knossos, and Thanatos, the patron god of the remnants of the Evils.
