A few minutes passed by after he caught up to Lyra and Mr. Merchant. They set foot on the final world of the Sky God Dungeon.
Contrary to Arnold's thoughts, the 100th floor wasn't a world on the brink of destruction with calamities running around destroying cities.
Rather, it looked peaceful? They were in an open plain so the portal was visible even to the residents of this world. Not far from them was a town where people were coming and going.
"This world looks… normal?" Arnold looked at Lyra who also seemed shocked at what she was seeing. Well, he couldn't see her face since she was wearing the stone mask but he noticed her sudden silence.
"…Let's head into that town for a bit." Lyra walked ahead of Arnold and the merchant.
"Why? Didn't you say we're only here to find your activation gate?" he jogged up to her, the merchant followed silently while looking around. It seems he was also surprised at what he was seeing.
What happened in this place for it to look this peaceful?
"There's just something on my mind that I have to clear up by asking the locals. I might find the answer as to where the high walls have gone."
"High walls…?" he suddenly remembered what those were and what they were keeping out, "There aren't any walls near here… But this could also mean the walls aren't on this continent but rather another region—"
"I've been in this world before, boy." Lyra said while still walking, "I've seen the magic walls from this very spot twenty years ago. I was even the one to witness their creation. Are these people out of their minds for taking down the walls…? Ignoring whichever method they used to strike down the walls, I need to know why this world hasn't been reduced to ashes already."
"Do you know what it was keeping out? I mean, do you know their origins?"
"…." She was silent for a while before answering Arnold's question, "…I've encountered them during the great war, yes. You could say I saw them up close, more so than anyone else from your world."
'What does she mean by that? Did she fight them during the war as well?'
Just as he finished his thought, the three of them reached the front row of the line forming outside the city gate. The people were about to complain but went immediately silent when they saw who was leading the trio.
'Looks like the people living in this world know about the disciples.' They focused their attention on the undead but didn't give that much of a reaction, probably mistaking that Mr. Merchant is just a summon.
Rather, their gazes shifted to Arnold.
"That girl… her lower half is practically naked…"
"I can see her shorts digging into her ass—Wait, what's that bulge from the side?"
"Do you think she's a whore? Only brothel wenches wear clothes like that."
Arnold quickly zipped up the coat he was wearing and awkwardly shifted it down to cover his butt.
He glared at the merchant who was now trying to sell his products to the people.
"—A disciple? Ah, excuse me, ma'am. Is something wrong?" after seeing Lyra stomp up to him, the gate guard addressed Lyra.
"Can you tell me why the protective magic walls were taken down?" she immediately got to questioning him.
"Eh, well, from what I heard the monsters were killed. A small stuffed version of one of them is on display in front of the adventurer guild."
"They were… killed? There were literally thousands of them…"
"I don't really know the full details and who cares anyway? We're finally free to explore the whole world and don't have to go to bed at night hoping those things don't break down the walls and kill us all. I'd try the adventurer or information guilds if I were you. They know more about the whole situation than us common folk. Some adventurers took part in the extermination but after the big fight, some of them were given a significant reward for their participation while others had their ranks increased. These adventurers will be harder to find since they're either doing S-class quests in other nations or are on retirement on some island."
"..Information guild it is then. Are you two coming along or will you wait for me?" Lyra moved past the knight. Her gaze shifted between Mr. Merchant and Arnold.
"I will be waiting for the two of you outside the gate, kukuku. I've found many souls in need of my services who are more than happy to pay me since gold is not a requirement to peruse my goods." Even though he was rubbing his hands together with an ominous cackle, the adventurer-looking folk still gathered around him in a crowd.
Hearing you don't need to pay with gold should already make you suspicious about the person selling you stuff…
"I'll come along." Arnold followed after Lyra. The people outside the gate were all too preoccupied with surrounding the merchant to get back in line.
◊◊
Arnold and Lyra walked for about ten minutes through the town. He was surprised she could navigate this place despite the fact that it had been twenty years since she came here.
If she has this good of a memory then surely, she'd be able to tell him more about the war? The merchant was pretty tight-lipped about who he was and what he was doing during the war so trying to get anything out of him would be difficult.
Looking at the people around them, he noticed that there wasn't a single frown on anyone's faces. Rather, they all smiled as if they heard their country had won a war.
Even the empire didn't look this lively in the commoner districts.
Lyra glanced at Arnold, "You're walking very awkwardly."
"It's these damn boots." He replied with an annoyed tone, "Why do they have heels…"
"It's going to be quite a while until you get your body back so you need to get used to living like a girl for now."
"Don't you think I already know that…"
He could already imagine the hundreds of confessions from guys flying his way once he's back at the academy. They probably won't even care who he is since most of them would fuck anything.
Lyra's voice came from beside him again.
"We're here. Let's head inside and hear what happened to the walls." Without waiting for an answer, Lyra headed inside.
"Sure…" Arnold followed after her, also eager to know what happened for the final world of the dungeon to be this peaceful.
**
"Good morning!" all the receptionists greeted the two of them with graceful bows when they entered. It appears they're the only ones here today. Well, it's still morning.
'Do receptionists normally greet customers this way? Even though I'm an A-rank adventurer, none of them at the guild went out of their way to stop what they were doing to greet me with such vigor.'
Arnold couldn't imagine putting on a fake smile and greeting every single person that walks through this door. Well, he was thinking about unimportant things so it's best to hear what Lyra says.
Hmm, looking at their faces… Their smiles didn't look fake at all.
"Oh, a disciple is here!" a man draped in fancy robes came down the stairs and nearly jumped when he saw Lyra's robes, "Apologies for not being the one to receive you. I'm the guild master of this branch."
"It's fine." Lyra brushed him off.
"Please tell us if there is something you need. We have access to a wide array of information that will surely help even a disciple of our Lord!" he said with a sincere grin.
Lyra silently walked up to one of the tables and sat down. The guild master followed suit, awaiting her reply.
Lyra chanted something, afterwards a magic circle appeared and spat out a dark purple rock. It was big enough to fit in one's palm.
"Do you know what this is?"
"Hoh, it's been so long since I've laid my eyes upon this again." The man gently held the rock in his hands as if it was the most precious thing.
"That's the material that the walls are made from, right?" Arnold asked Lyra.
"Yes."
If skilled enough in creation magic, a magician can create a brick—like what you'd find on construction sites—using the same mineral to build a gigantic wall that hardens itself the more bricks of the same mineral it's connected to. An ordinary human could break one brick but when facing a wall that matches their height, they'd need to be a level 100 to punch through it. That's how powerful this mineral becomes when stacked as if you're building a brick house.
"What happened to the walls?"
"You must be referring to the walls that kept our people safe for two centuries…" the man put the rock down, "To be honest, I don't know what happened to the walls. They just collapsed one day ten years ago. The people were in quite a frenzy when the wall began breaking down. Mass migrations were organized and thousands of carriages were lined up outside every major city or nation. Unexpectedly, what greeted us wasn't a horde of monsters but a silent wasteland beyond the broken walls. We wanted to investigate—I was a young lad at the time who was very curious so I went to check as well. We found a lone woman atop a pile of those gigantic monsters, her sword radiating a powerful white light that pierced the clouds."
"One person killed them all…? No one else was around?"
"Yes, but after we carried the lass to this town to heal her injuries, to rest and sleep, archangels descended from the sky. They used some kind of fancy magic to make most of the torn-down wall and the monsters corpses vanish."
"….."
Arnold looked at Lyra, noticing her silence. Her eyes were completely still but partly widened.
She probably had the same thought as him—the gods are probably trying to revive and possibly control these monstrosities.
This is purely conjecture and something he would do in their position since the state of the divine realm isn't exactly stable—and hadn't been stable for quite a while. Ladiath probably wouldn't like that they're trying to pin his future army against him.
Should Arnold tell him once he goes to meet him? It probably won't change his plan so there's likely no need to do that… Or maybe he had already figured out their intentions just like Arnold.
"Is that woman still around this land?"
"I think so. We only know that she's from some kind of minor divine tree somewhere in our world but I have no idea where it is. She wouldn't give us more information before her departure from this town."
'Minor divine tree…?'
"What's the tree's official name?" Arnold tried to get more information about the tree since only the World Tree is ever referred to as a divine tree. There's none like it, not even miniature versions that come from its seeds.
"Ah, I don't know, young miss…" he scratched his head apologetically, "But something strange has been happening to the sky at night ever since we heard rumors of her being sighted in other settlements. Instead of only seeing the stars at night, a golden light comes from north of here. It's some kind of pillar of light that's the source of it all but none of us have dared to go near it."
"North of here… That's in the direction of the gate." Lyra said from beside him, "The source of that light might lead us to the one that killed all the Offspring…"
"Why are you so interested in this person…?" Arnold couldn't help but ask.
"I've heard rumors of a powerful female knight roaming through the dungeon recently. She goes around saving people and exterminating every monster she sees. No monster zone was left in tact in the areas that she's been in from what I've been told. All they could tell me was that they saw a towering woman with long red hair, red like the blood-soaked bandage held over a gaping wound." Her widened slightly, "What if it's her… The… er… nsort…"
'Huh?'
Lyra's voice was suddenly drowned out by an overbearing pressure of killing intent that clogged up Arnold's ears. He couldn't move, instead he trembled like a cornered mouse.
Lyra noticed this and called out to him but her voice sounded like it was coming from outside water while his head was submerged in it.
The sound of bird cries resounded in his head, followed by his loud beating heart.
Then it all vanished.
"Evil's nature never changes, no matter which body it inhabits in an effort to become a shadow beneath one's feet." A woman's voice came from right above—no, behind him.
"!?"
Startled by the killing intent that was breathing right down his neck, Arnold attempted to jump to the side but was pulled back by an overwhelming strength from someone much taller than himself. Before he knew it, he crashed through the front entrance, flying into the main road outside. He crashed into a carriage that was passing by, startling the horses before it tumbled over.
He sluggishly stood up. Being thrown through a brick building didn't feel like anything but he still found it hard to balance himself after taking the full assault of that killing intent.
A tall 7ft giant stepped out of the guild building while the people were running away screaming.
The giant appeared to be a woman judging from the bottom half of her face and the fact that her bare feet and fingers were slender and delicate compared to her imposing body. He couldn't see her eyes since it was covered up in a knight's helm but he could see her silky long red hair that was reminiscent of white hair dipped in a pool of blood.
She was dressed in a long white robe that covered most of her body up but Arnold could still see her milky legs in the opening of her robe.
A strong scent of sweat and flowers reached his nose, mixing into an intoxicating feminine scent. He recognized this kind of scent—as if a warrior had spent days fighting without rest or a bath. It stings the nose but gives one a powerful presence. At that moment, Arnold could tell from looking at this woman that she was a being of incomprehensible power.
"Stop where you are." Lyra pointed her hand at the woman just as she was about to approach Arnold, "You turned your back on a magician capable of chantless magic. It doesn't matter how fast you are because I'll have a magic circle ready the moment I see your muscles twitch—" the woman suddenly appeared behind Lyra and swung her arm.
"Ugh!?"
A blue barrier appeared around Lyra the moment the punch was inches away from her face but the force from the punch sent her flying out of the shop. Arnold quickly caught her in mid-air.
The woman didn't teleport in those few seconds. Arnold was able to see her move through the opening in the wall and appear directly behind Lyra with incredible speed.
Whoever this woman is, she's almost as fast as his [Speed of Sound] skill at 5% its full power.
"Are you okay?" he looked down at Lyra who was glaring at the woman.
"My whole body is aching from the shockwave of that punch…" Lyra sluggishly stood up with difficultly.
The woman stepped outside the guild building again and silently took off her long white robe, letting it flutter away in the wind. Her body was draped in a purple dress that barely covered her modesty, resembling a party dress one would wear to banquets, which would be used to seduce nobles and make connections, albeit torn and slightly discolored. There was one gauntlet on her right arm.
She gently lowered herself to the ground.
Arnold pulled up the woman's status to confirm who she was.
· Guinevere - The Valiant
· Rank: World Boss
· Level 100
· Race: Demigod
· Title(s): Hero's Consort, High Valkyrie, Avowed, Evil's Executioner