by Fujino Omori
Lilly was stingy when it came to money, but she was a prum who cared about her friends. Welf was a coolheaded metalsmith who not only took charge of their weapons but also took the lead in protecting the party. Ouka, Chigusa, and Mikoto were people she could respect for their strong sense of duty, characteristic of people from the Far East. Haruhime was kind and, in a way, similar to Cassandra herself; they had become close friends. Aisha she felt more awkward around, but she could still trust her as a steadfast older-sister figure.
And then there was Bell…who was special to her in so many ways.
“Miss Cassandra…Are you all right?”
Cassandra was aware that as he grew stronger and changed, she was gradually starting to see him differently. She was on the verge of tears knowing that even at this very moment, he was worrying about her.
There was no way she could abandon them now.
It’s too late…
She looked around at Daphne and the others with a tired gaze. Last of all, her eyes rested on the white-haired boy.
“…I’m sorry I acted so selfishly…I’m going with you.”
With that, the party—its enthusiasm temporarily dampened—regained its fighting spirit, albeit tinged with lingering suspicion. After a final check to make sure everything was ready, they headed out of town to meet up with the other adventurers in the hunting party.
As Cassandra joined the file, she privately reaffirmed her grim determination. She would save the party from the worst of fates as it marched toward ruin.
The rebellion of the unheeded prophetess had begun.
She alone would oppose the impeding ruin.
Nearly three hours had passed since the decision was made to form a hunting party and pursue Gale Wind. The adventurers had finished their preparations and were about to depart the eighteenth floor.
About half the party was made up of residents of Rivira and the remainder of adventurers who happened to be passing through at the time. Few had joined out of a sense of justice; the majority were hot-blooded fame seekers hoping to make a name for themselves by bringing down Gale Wind, the elf with a bounty on her head.
“If the information we have is accurate, Gale Wind is Level Four! And not just any Level Four, a top-class one! Rabbit Foot, Antianeira, I’m counting on you for this one, since you’re the same level as she is. With you two, we should definitely be able to get this rebel under control,” Bors said, bursting with confidence. They were gathered by the Central Tree, which led to the nineteenth floor.
Given his attitude, Hestia Familia was practically being forced to participate in the hunting party.
“Uh…yeah,” Bell answered, breaking out in a sweat.
“Trust Bors to leave the work up to someone else,” Lilly muttered, narrowing her eyes.
In reality, though, the situation was to their advantage. If they wanted to reach Lyu before anyone else, it would be easiest to obtain information from a position within the party’s inner circle.
Luvis, Dormul, and the other members of Modi Familia and Magni Familia would stay behind in Rivira. They’d been in the lower levels far longer than Hestia Familia, and the extent of their exhaustion from prolonged torment at the hands of the enhanced moss huge was far greater than that of Bell and his companions. That went for their mental as well as their physical state. Staying behind was the natural decision.
Of course, it wouldn’t have been surprising if Dormul’s party of Magni Familia dwarfs had insisted on coming, given they’d boasted that “a little excursion like this is nothing for us.”
But searching for and capturing anyone—not just Gale Wind—in the sprawling Dungeon was a tall order indeed. And compared to the floors of the upper levels, those below the nineteenth floor were truly enormous. The fact that parties sent on quests for missing adventurers typically failed to find even a single trace, let alone their actual remains, only showed how difficult any search would be. And this time, neither the goal nor the destination of the missing individual was known. The hunting expedition was expected to last quite a few days. Copious amounts of food had been taken from the town’s stocks and packed for the large party.
“Keep your eyes peeled for any sign of the fugitive! If you meet with other adventurers, ask them for information! Animal people, this is your chance to show off those noses you’re so proud of!”
Bors had ordered the party to search each floor as thoroughly as possible and, when they were done, to post sentries at the passageways that connected one floor to the next. So long as they occupied the lone route leading to the upper floors, their prey was sure to fall into their net eventually. And so the hunting party set forth, leaving behind a guard ample enough that even a Level 4 adventurer could not easily defeat it, and headed toward the lower levels with many second-tier adventurers.
“So after we search every corner of each floor, we post guards at the entrances and exits…Sounds to me like the standard formula for searching this insanely huge Dungeon,” Aisha said.
The group had made it to the Colossal Tree Labyrinth on the twenty-first floor. As the adventurers rested in a large room, she, Lilly, and Ouka were chatting and checking their weapons and items.
“It’s the kind of strategy that relies completely on manpower. I wonder if Bors is wrong in choosing it,” Lilly said.
“In other words, you think the head of Rogue Town might just be grandstanding,” Ouka replied.
The party led by Hestia Familia was sitting together in a field of flowers near the center of the room, where it would be harder for monsters to catch them by surprise.
“Even if the method itself isn’t bad, do you really think we’re going to find Gale Wind by moving around in such a big group? Usually in searches, people split up into smaller groups…I’m betting that before we have a chance to slip away, this big pack is going to disintegrate.”
The more adventurers in a party, the more frequent their encounters with monsters. Acquaintances might help one another, but predictably, the proudly confident upper-class adventurers had so far been fighting independently, without much care for cooperation. The members of the party were constantly cursing and yelling at one another, and even the supporters could be seen pulling spare weapons from their packs to sell in exchange for magic stones and drop items.
Twirling her baton-like dagger, Daphne watched from a distance as several adventurers fought over the spring water bubbling from another corner of the room. She sighed.
“Well, if that makes things easier for us, there’s no harm in it. Still…I wonder how deep that tavern elf has burrowed,” Welf said.
“So far, we haven’t seen the slightest trace of Lady Lyu…” Mikoto answered.
“She seems to have been chasing someone…And given that she’s Level Four, she’ll have no problem delving into the lower levels…” Chigusa added.
Already, half a day had passed since the hunting party set out. Lilly checked the broken watch around her neck.
“For future reference, let’s not take on any search quests. They just don’t make financial sense,” she murmured, shrugging her narrow shoulders. Haruhime and Bell smiled wryly.
“…”
Of the group, only Cassandra had a strained expression on her face. She was lost in thought, failing completely to take advantage of the precious rest time to relax.
That dream represents the worst possible outcome…If the prophecy comes true, then this party is done for. In order to avoid that, I have to decipher this oracle…!
She was turning the words of her dream over and over in her mind, trying to guess what they might mean.
In the past, when people hadn’t listened to her prophecies, she had either given up or just kept muttering about the inevitable future. Now she was desperately searching for a way out.
“A great calamity”…“catastrophe incarnate”…“a mother’s lament shall call forth disaster”…I’m guessing that calamity, catastrophe incarnate, and disaster are supposed to be synonyms…
/> Most of the time, the first part of Cassandra’s prophetic dreams gave an outline of the future. And inevitably, that future was something inevitable that Cassandra could not interfere with.
I’m sure “mother” must refer to the Dungeon. The Dungeon is the mother of monsters, as they say in Orario. If that’s the case, then considering the phrase “newborn cry”…the disaster the mother will call forth must be a monster or monsters that will be spawned.
Cassandra hugged her chest tightly through her battle clothes.
The bloodshed will begin when despair lets out its newborn cry. “Countless wails of the sacrificed,” “the road of viscera,” “the azure current shall run red with blood”…Going by my past prophetic dreams, these vivid words almost certainly hint at death…but is it us adventurers chasing after “the fairy fated to guide all to ruin” who will die?
In other words, did the prophecy mean that the Dungeon would spawn one or more powerful monsters that would claim many victims? That interpretation was probably the most accurate. Up to this point, the reasoning was straightforward.
But what will the powerful monsters be like? Will something even worse than that enhanced moss huge appear in the Dungeon? Something strong enough to kill us all—even Aisha, who’s second-tier?
“The squirrel shall bloom into flowers of flesh”…In her dream, Lilly had died with her guts spilled everywhere.
“The fox shall be swiftly torn asunder”…Haruhime had been drowning in a sea of blood, torn to pieces.
“The hammer shall be shattered”…Welf had lost his arms and legs, a cruel vision.
“The lives of the foreign warriors shall be as playthings”…The bodies of Mikoto, Chigusa, and Ouka had been piled atop one another.
“The bloodied temptress shall abscond with a keepsake of the fox, but shall be mourned upon her defilement by countless fangs and claws”…Aisha, carrying the body of the renart, had lagged with exhaustion before eventually getting swarmed and then devoured by hordes of monsters.
“Urgh…?!”
As the words and images of each line of the prophecy rose before her mind’s eye, Cassandra hurriedly pressed a hand to her mouth.
Although the images were hazy, like those of a daydream, the visions of her companions being cruelly murdered were nevertheless overwhelmingly gruesome and horrifying. She still could not shake off the shock of seeing them.
Least of all…
Daphne!
“A friend shall impart sorrow.” In her dream, a blood-drenched, hollow-eyed Daphne drew her last breath before Cassandra’s eyes.
Cassandra felt the tears coming, but she desperately held them back. That wasn’t reality. She needed to fight now to ensure that this tragedy did not befall Daphne and the others.
Calm down; calm down!
She had no time to cry or despair. She scolded herself angrily.
As long as you’re sitting around dreaming, Aisha and everyone else are going to be slaughtered. But what monster could do something like that?…A floor boss?
Regaining control of her emotions, Cassandra surveyed the large room once again. It was full of well-armed upper-class adventurers. At a glance, she guessed there must be around seventy of them. The only monster she could imagine massacring a group like this was a Monster Rex.
“…Uh, Miss Lilly? Do you think the floor boss, um…is going to spawn soon?”
“You mean the Amphisbaena? Don’t underestimate me, Miss Cassandra! I went to the Guild and researched when it appears specifically to make sure we wouldn’t bump into it on this expedition. One was most recently taken down just about two weeks ago, so we still have another two weeks before it appears again!”
“R-right…” Cassandra said, lowering her head in embarrassment as Lilly scolded her angrily; after all, fighting a floor boss on one’s first expedition was no joke.
“The Amphisbaena is a lower-level floor boss, right? I’m sure I heard that it appears on the twenty-seventh floor,” Welf said.
“Lady Aisha, did you ever fight one when you were with Ishtar Familia?” Mikoto asked.
“Yeah. They’re stronger than Goliath for sure. The Guild rates them at Level Six because they live in the water, but their raw ability is closer to a Five. If we encountered one with this many upper-class adventurers in our group, we’d be able to take it down,” she answered.
As Cassandra listened in on their conversation, she found herself worrying once again.
So Aisha’s already fought a lower-level Monster Rex…If what she says is true, then a Monster Rex definitely wouldn’t be able to cause the kind of massacre I saw in my dream…
With this thought, she grew less and less sure of what the coming calamity would be. Her head began to ache.
Are there going to be multiple monsters? A huge monster party or something like that…?
It was possible. Still, she felt that wasn’t quite right.
After thinking for a long while, she shook her head. She wasn’t getting anywhere trying to figure out what the exact nature of the calamity would be. Resigning herself to the fact that further guessing would be futile, she moved on to thinking about another verse of the prophecy.
The only warning in this dream was in the line about the “reviving sun”…But what does “the sun” mean…?
Sometimes, Cassandra’s dreams contained warnings about how to avoid the prophecy. Usually, they were abstract or allegorical and therefore hard to interpret. As a result, Cassandra typically was unable to avoid mishap.
What is the sun a symbol or allegory for? Maybe Apollo? Will something connected with him save “thyself”—me—when I get shut up in the “coffin”? Or is the sun a reference to time? Will something happen during the daytime? But time in the Dungeon is different from time on the surface…Argh! This is going nowhere!
She banged her head with her fist, then sank into depression. Haruhime and Chigusa drew back in surprise. Meanwhile, Daphne—who had known Cassandra long enough to grow used to her moods—seemed fed up.
“Gather the fragments, consecrate the flame, beseech the sun’s light”…It seems like this line is connected to the one about the “sun,” but I don’t know how it connects to what comes before or after…
Cassandra tightened the hand resting on her knee into a fist.
I have a feeling I know where the massacre is going to take place…If we can just avoid winding up there at the appointed time, we should be able to avoid the “banquet of calamity”…
Cassandra breathed in the distinctive scent released by the Dungeon flowers as she mulled over this conclusion, thinking of what she could do.
“Uh, Miss Cassandra?”
She hadn’t even noticed that the white-haired boy was kneeling in front of her, peering into her face.
“Oh! Ack! Mr. Bell!”
Bell smiled wryly at her as she squealed in surprise. He hesitated for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.
“Um…If something is worrying you, please tell me.”
“Huh?”
“I know we’re from different familias, but we’re in this party together, and…Well, if there’s anything I can do, I’d like to help. I mean, it doesn’t have to be me; it could be Miss Daphne or Miss Haruhime…”
He handed her a cool water bottle. It seemed he’d braved the quarrelling adventurers to draw fresh water from the spring. He’d noticed Cassandra’s troubled face and wanted to do something for her.
Most likely, he had noticed she was disturbed by the prophetic dream even before they left Rivira.
Cassandra blinked in surprise and blushed.
He’s really…changed…
Not long ago, he’d blushed all the time and gotten into a fluster whenever something happened. Just like Cassandra herself.
During the expedition, Mikoto had taught her a proverb from the Far East, using Bell as an example: “If you haven’t seen a man for three days, watch closely when you meet.” It really was true—his skills seemed to grow day by day. He�
��d become a true leader for the party.
Of course, he still wasn’t what she’d call “dignified,” but whenever he noticed something was wrong, he thought about what he could do to help, then acted on it. That was true with the moss huge, when she’d been unsure what to do as a healer about the parasitic vines plaguing the party. He’d sat beside her and held her hand, encouraging her.
It seemed she could still feel the warmth of his grip.
When she thought about the fact that he was younger than her on top of it all, she wanted to cry.
“Thank…you…” she said softly, taking the bottle and bringing it to her lips for a noisy gulp.
He scratched his cheek and smiled shyly.
Cassandra didn’t know what had happened to make him change so much. But she felt like she could drown in his kindness.
“Uh, um…”
She had just opened her mouth to say something, still unsure what that something would be, when an uproar arose over by the door to the room.
“Bors! It’s a herd of mammoth fools!” an adventurer shouted.
Although the size of the creatures varied by individual, all measured between six and seven meders at the withers and were imposing even at a distance. Their gently curving, upturned tusks were as long as spears, and their fur was as red as blood.
Mammoth fools were a rare instance of a monster in the Colossal Tree Labyrinth whose danger came simply from brute strength; most others had special abilities like irregular attacks or hard insect-like carapaces. The mammoths were also the largest of the ordinary middle-level monsters.
“A bunch of large-category guys, eh? Get ready for a fight, you lot! Rabbit Foot, you too!”
Called out by name by the ax-wielding Bors, Bell hopped to like a veritable rabbit. By the time Cassandra let out a sigh, he was already far away, leading the charge toward the herd of monsters.
“…”
Aisha and Ouka rushed to join the battle against the four mammoth fools, whom they seemed to view as a mere hassle, and Chigusa ran off to support them. Cassandra gazed sadly at Bell as he fought.
He’d received a broadsword from Bors and was slicing the beasts around their legs, bringing them to the ground with a deafening crash. As he wielded his magical flames, the courageous boy looked to Cassandra just like a fairy-tale hero.
