by Fujino Omori
“Yaaah!”
“Ergh?”
In that window of distraction, Lyu bravely flies toward the enemy’s chest.
Anticipating the monster’s every move, she dodges each of its defensive strikes within a hairbreadth, channeling the force of her charges into her wooden sword. Scales fly every which way, and the beast’s skin grows ragged. The ground vibrates as if she’s pounding it with a massive iron hammer, producing a cracking sound that slides past my eardrums.
Meanwhile, I slip Hakugen from my left hand back into its sheath and extend my now-empty hand toward my left leg. Very quietly, I extract several items from my reinforced leg holster and inspect them.
There’s a high potion, a magic potion, an antidote, and two vials of Tiger Cub Elixir High Dual Potion.
I don’t skimp on the amount I use.
Then I harden my resolve and begin sounding the chime.
Argonaut.
Pure-white particles of light gather around my left hand as I begin the Concurrent Charge.
It would take at least two minutes of charging to take down a large-category monster this big. But my job right now is not to annihilate it. It’s to support Lyu!
“Shit! Burrow, lambton!”
The catman, seeing that the monster is suffering under Lyu’s attacks, cracks his whip.
It’s the command I was expecting.
I instantly thrust out my left hand. I’ve been charging for twenty seconds.
Aiming for the enemy’s head, which is attempting to burrow into the ground as fast as it can, I let out a shout.
“Firebolt!”
A huge bolt of electrical fire surrounded by white particles of light splits the ground between the crystal floor and the lambton.
“Ooooooooooooooooooooooo?!”
Thrown backward by the explosion, the serpent writhes on the ground.
Taking advantage of the moment when the beast—having failed in its attempt to burrow—is twisting in agony, Lyu ups the speed of her attacks.
“Whoa?!”
Front, left diagonal, side, diagonal again.
Both the catman and I are gaping at Lyu as she lunges and swerves, unleashing a rapid-fire series of attacks. Her speed increases with each thrust, and now she’s moving so fast she practically leaves an afterimage.
If I could see her from above, I’m sure her lunges and retreats would form a five-pointed star enclosing the monster at its center.
The unbroken string of fierce blows from her wooden sword lift our opponent’s enormous body off the ground.
There’s no mistaking it—as the speed of her attacks increases, so does their ferocity.
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
Her sword glows with the blue-green light of her skill.
Finally, she lands a decisive blow slantwise across its breast, throwing its giant form against the wall.
“?!”
My eyes are popping out of my head, and the catman’s are filled with horror, as if he’s watching the return of his worst nightmare.
Did she really just blow away the body of an ultra-high-class monster?
The revolting head and neck, which had been shrieking in agony and convulsing, fall to the ground. Crumbling crystals bury the massive body.
Whether it’s dead or just unconscious, I’m too dumbfounded even to cheer Gale Wind’s incredible show of skill in knocking out an extreme large-category monster with just her weapon.
I’m guessing the catman—who’s rooted to the ground—must be feeling the same way.
“Jura, you’re all that’s left…It’s over.”
Lyu brandishes her sword, crosses the now-still room, and walks up to the catman. Coming to my senses, I follow. Quickly refueling with High Dual Potion, I stand by her side facing Jura.
His companions are gone now, and so is the monster he tamed.
He’s too traumatized to raise a sword against Lyu.
As she said, this is the end.
His one remaining hand shaking, he drops his eyes before Lyu’s piercing gaze.
And then, his hair hiding his eyes—he slowly smiles.
“Frontline forces, stand firm! Just one more!”
Aisha’s voice rang through the room.
Welf and Ouka clenched their teeth, held their shields at a slant, and managed to throw the monster off its line of attack. Their whole bodies were strained and blood spurted from their wounds, but their arms and legs, swathed in the light of the Level Boost, showed no sign of giving out. The shields made of hard white valmars, too, stood up to the task. Right away, Cassandra showered them with restorative magic.
The lambton roared in confusion in the face of this defensive wall, which managed to hold the line through raw courage and simple, precise skill no matter how desperately the beast threw itself against them.
Arrows and other sharp weapons pierced the gaping maw even as it howled.
On the top of the mouth were eighteen holes, nine on the left and nine on the right. By now, they were marked with wounds from arrowheads, throwing knives, and Aisha’s great podao.
These pits gave wormwells an extraordinary ability to sense heat. It was these pits, in fact, that enabled the monsters to accurately locate adventurers even when underground. Because these organs also allowed them to distinguish between humans and monsters by reacting to magic stones and to detect with great sensitivity the use of magic and magic blades, they were able to escape underground as necessary, thus making them extremely hard to combat. Even now, the wormwell was repeatedly burrowing underground, foiling the attempts by Lilly and the others to use their magic blades. Unless Swift-Strike Magic was used, it would likely be difficult to land a blow on the beast.
For all those reasons, Aisha aimed first for the pits on its head.
While Welf and Ouka were literally laying their lives on the line to hold back the enemy’s attacks and distract it, Aisha worked with Mikoto and the others in the center guard to destroy the pits.
The dead-end room Lilly had led them to was indeed a field of crystals, with crystal columns sprouting throughout it like groves of trees. There was no such thing as an obstacle for the lambton, which could burrow through Dungeon floors and walls, but the large crystal formations certainly slowed its movements. Mikoto, Chigusa, Lilly, and Daphne rained down their blows onto the impaired monster.
Again and again it fled underground, slowly turning much of the room into a flat plain. Just one pit remained intact on top of its head.
“Eeyaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
“Now, Lady Chigusa!” Mikoto—her quiver already empty—shouted as Ouka and Welf pushed the monster off course.
Chigusa, who was hiding in one of the remaining groves of crystal columns, aimed her taut bow and arrow at the serpent. Only her left eye peeped out from behind her bangs.
Like Mikoto, Chigusa had trained with Takemikazuchi and was an all-around fighter. She was timid and perhaps not well suited to the role of adventurer, but there was one skill in which she surpassed Mikoto: archery.
“Dead-on and deadly—”
Whispering the war god’s charm, Chigusa released her bowstring and her concentration simultaneously.
Kokutoba, the arrow Welf had forged for her with his top-class smith’s skills, whined through the air and landed square on the lambton’s last intact pit.
“?!”
“Yesss!” Aisha cheered, pivoting from defense to offense.
For a lambton, losing the pits on its head was equivalent to being blinded. This was Aisha’s strategy, meant to play on both the party’s superior numbers and the favorable topography. It all rested on her faith in the highly precise shooting ability of the center guard.
The lambton could no longer even burrow underground. As the front line pressed back the
thrashing, writhing monster, the Amazon completed her Concurrent Chant, leaped backward, and threw her podao against the ground.
“Hell Kaios!”
The magic, with the full force of Aisha’s energy behind it, was released.
The slicing wave imbued with powerful mental force transformed into a four-meder-long guillotine and rushed forward. Unleashed next to the monster’s side, the deadly weapon landed directly on the scarlet collar, then kept moving forward.
The lambton perished, unable even to let out a death cry as the blade sliced off its head, magic item and all.
“Yeah!!”
“We beat a deep-level monster!”
“Ouka and I on the front line are pretty beat up…but we did it.”
“Ouka! Are you okay?”
“We got some drop items, too!”
“I can’t believe how greedy you are, Lilliluka…”
Welf pumped his fist at the splendid defeat of the deep-level monster, and Mikoto grinned as she wiped the blood from her face.
Welf and Ouka were the most beaten-up of the group, having stood throughout as a wall against the lambton’s attacks, and their shields were thoroughly battered as well. As Chigusa brought them potions, Lilly cheerfully collected the wormwell’s sharp fangs and cranial shell, along with its extremely pure magic stones. Only Daphne looked bored.
Meanwhile, Aisha squinted, as if she was quite proud to have lived up to her reputation, and smiled with relief.
“Lady Cassandra, I threw off my backpack with all my items in it, so would you mind working your recovery magic on everyone? I’m sorry to be so useless…” Haruhime said, ashamed, as she turned to the party’s lone healer for help.
“Miss…Cassandra?”
The girl stood rooted in place, as if she hadn’t heard a thing.
Was this…the calamity?
She looked out at the members of her party, bubbling with excitement over their victory, and at the monster’s corpse, which was already mostly turned to ash.
This is all?
At one point, Cassandra believed that the deep-level monster was the calamity her prophetic dream had warned of, but that belief had been turned upside down.
It wasn’t menacing enough.
It wasn’t terrifying enough.
It didn’t provoke enough despair.
It ended too quickly.
It just didn’t seem worthy of the term catastrophe.
“This isn’t it,” she murmured, deciding within herself that this wasn’t the actualization of her dream.
To the contrary, if her dream had been no more than this, how relieved she would have been.
But the scenes she had seen in her dream had been far crueler and more ominous. There had been no hope of being saved.
This was not the calamity…!
No. True despair still lay ahead of them.
“Heh-heh-heh…Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”
Laughter spills out of the catman as if his mouth is broken, his armless shoulder jerking up and down. His body is folded over like he’s having a fit, and his tail—which is broken off halfway down—dances behind him.
Lyu and I both stare as Jura, who should be cowering in a corner, puts on this ridiculous display.
“You think it’s over? You’re wrong. This is just the beginning!!”
He roars with laughter, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.
“Do you want to know why I chose this spot for the ‘ceremony,’ Leon?”
“What are you talking about…?!”
“The Water Capital is linked across this zone! The whole area connected by the Great Falls is like one floor! Damage in one place is shared everywhere! That’s what the Dungeon thinks, at least!”
Lyu jumps as if she’s just been struck by lightning.
Damage? Shared? The Dungeon…thinks?
I seem to be the only one who doesn’t get what’s going on. The catman’s vulgar laugh echoes across the room.
“It doesn’t matter if the explosion is on the twenty-fifth floor or the twenty-seventh…To the Dungeon, it’s as if the wounds were on the same floor!”
Lyu’s expression transforms.
“I even used the magic you released!”
“No way…?!”
“Did you think things would still be okay with this level of damage?”
He grins, and a second later—
Bang!
The ceiling of the room we’re in shakes.
“You were chasing me so desperately—but I’m just a decoy!”
Fragments of crystal rain down on us.
There seems to have been an explosion on one of the higher floors, as if to carry on the series of explosions that occurred on this floor.
The twenty-fifth floor is screaming.
“Stop…” Lyu says, looking up at the ceiling as I stand here astonished. “Stop!!”
For the first time, her voice has lost its calm.
She’s screaming in panic.
The catman ignores her.
“—Do it, Turk!” he shouts.
“Huff…puff…huff…!!”
As the werewolf ran through the Dungeon, he tore off his companions’ backpacks and scattered the bright-red balls within them onto the passageway floors.
Ignoring the monsters chasing after them, the small band of men kept on running and scattering more red balls.
“O-o-okay, here we go…I’m gonna light them now!”
Having dropped all the balls, they dove for shelter and drew their magic blades.
The objects they were looking at were Inferno Stones. Collected as drop items from flame rocks, a type of deep-level monster, they had strong fire-starting power and explosiveness even when used as is.
“Fire!”
Crouching in a twenty-fifth-floor passageway crowded with monsters, Turk and his companions aimed for the red balls and brought down their magic blades.
The flames that shot from their ends spread, and the Inferno Stones glowed.
A moment later, a massive explosion rocked the Dungeon.
“—Ahh!”
The monsters that had been following Turk’s band of men were swallowed up in the ball of flames.
It didn’t stop there, however.
The Inferno Stones they had scattered haphazardly down the passageways lit up like a fuse, exploding and spreading the flames farther and farther, destroying one passage after the next.
Burning monsters and melted crystal columns alike were swept away in the whirlwind of destruction.
“?!”
“What’s happening?!”
The shock waves had reached the spot on the same floor where Aisha, Welf, and the rest of their party were standing.
Meanwhile, two floors below, adventurers looked up as the thundering explosions reached them.
“B-Bors?!”
“What is this? What’s going on?!”
Above them, crystal walls were blown away, floors burst open, ceilings collapsed, and waterways overflowed their banks in chaos.
One section of the multilayered twenty-fifth floor collapsed entirely, having lost its supports.
“The ground is collapsing…!!”
“Run! Run!!”
Welf and the rest of his party fled desperately to avoid being sucked down with the collapsing structure.
In the huge cavern, the Great Falls spit out a mass of crystal debris and monster corpses, swelling and roaring like a tidal wave.
The scream of the Dungeon was unending.
The explosions continue.
As the lights blink and the crystals in the room vibrate and jump up and down from the shocks, the catman stands in front of us laughing.
“I knew you’d chase after me like a madwoman! That’s why I’m the decoy! The plan was that once I almost finished destroying the twenty-seventh floor, Turk would take over on the twenty-fifth!”
He’s shouting joyfully as crystals fall from the ceiling around him.
/> “While you were chasing me so frantically, my underlings were setting off the bombs on the other floor. So how does it feel to be set up, eh?”
A chill runs down my spine as the catman roars with laughter again despite what’s going on around him. I can’t keep up with his logic.
Bombs?
Destroy the twenty-fifth floor?
What are these guys trying to do?
“You didn’t pay attention when I threw out those bombs a little while ago, did you? You were careless, weren’t you? Isn’t that right, Leon? Ha-ha-ha-ha! Caught you, didn’t I?”
The next instant, Lyu—who had been staring up at the ceiling in a daze—glares and flies at the catman.
“JURAAAAA!”
She grabs the shirt at his chest and pulls him onto the ground.
“Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you?!” she shouts.
Her fist trembles, as if she’s trying to hold back her emotions.
The catman keeps on smiling despite the blow he’s received and doesn’t answer her question. Instead, he continues screaming at her.
“Did you think I was just lazing around in these five years since you ruined my life?! No, I was busy researching! Where was the best place to call forth despair? How could I do it?!”
“Huh?”
“The whole time, I was thinking about how I could crush that pretty face of yours!”
“—Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”
The distraught Lyu pulls out her dagger and brings it down toward the catman.
But I stop her.
“It’s no good, Miss Lyu!”
“Let me go! Let me go!”
All her strength is directed toward pulling out of my full nelson.
The catman slowly stands up, giggling through his teeth.
What is happening?
We were supposed to have him backed into a corner, but now we’re the ones who are trapped!
As that thought crosses my mind—
“?!”
The strongest explosion yet rocks us like some kind of grand finale. And then—
The Dungeon wails.
“—”
It’s not the cracking sound the Dungeon makes when a monster is being born.
It’s not the quaking that comes before an irregularity occurs.
It is literally a wail.
