"Bors, this is bad!"
"I've never heard the Dungeon make this noise before! Let's get outta here!"
The adventurers had gathered together again after being scattered by their encounter
with Gale Wind, and they were now chasing her and Bell in a group.
They were determined to kill the legendary fugitive with their own hands. She had
managed to get away after the surprise attack, but they were sure that with a group
this big, they would be able to take her down.
Things were changing quickly, however.
There had been the tremendous explosions on the twenty-fifth floor, and now the
wails that were unquestionably coming from the Dungeon. Everyone guessed that the
high-frequency sounds, so loud they could not stand to leave their ears uncovered,
signaled an irregularity.
The upper-class adventurers knew something unprecedented was about to happen,
and without exception they petitioned the head of Rivira to evacuate the party from
the floor.
"Hey, Bors! Bors!"
"…Wait."
"Huh?"
They stopped moving as Bors thrust his palm toward them.
He removed his other hand from the side of his giant eye-patch-adorned head and
muttered.
"The sound… has stopped."
The mermaid wrapped her arms around her body.
Ugh… I hate this sound…!
She was deep underwater, surrounded by bluish darkness.
She had dived down to escape the horrible cry of her mother, the Dungeon, trying to
hide in the water. Her body curled like a fetus, she desperately pressed her hands
against the fins that served as her ears.
I'm scared, scared, scared…!
It had happened before, just once.
It had been five years ago, she was sure.
She had heard her mother's lament coming from far deeper in the Dungeon. Of course,
that time it had nothing to do with Mari, who could not leave the Water Capital, but
still, she had been frightened.
Something bad had been born that time, too. She didn't know much, but she knew that.
She understood.
Mari pressed her hands to her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.
She had escaped to the depths of the water in an attempt to separate herself from the
terrifying reality. But behind her shut eyelids, she saw her friends and her family—the
Xenos.
The Xenos, and an image of the back of the boy she had met so recently in the Dungeon.
That boy, who was as important to her as her own family, was here.
He was already among her most prized treasures.
Bell…!
She pushed away her fear and forced her eyes open.
Her tears spilling into the water and her tail beating against it, the mermaid swam
toward the surface where the light filtered in.
"That was close…" Lilly muttered, ignoring the bead of sweat that was dripping down
her chin.
Before her eyes was a collapsed crystal floor. Far below, she could see the raging
waterway.
Her party had barely managed to escape disaster thus far as they ran through the
crumbling twenty-fifth floor, explosions ringing out all around them and destroying
anything resembling a road.
They didn't know how extensive the damage was, but they knew it was bad. In any
case, it was no time to be fighting monsters, who were in the same situation as they
were.
The water paradise had become a ruined capital, and some routes were now
impassable. Lilly feared that until the Dungeon finished repairing itself, they would
not be able to make it back to the passageway that led to the twenty-fourth floor.
"I'm worried about these explosions, but…!"
"That insanely high-pitched noise just a minute ago… Was that from the twentyseventh floor?!"
"If that was an irregularity, then Sir Bell…?!"
Aisha, Welf, and Mikoto were equally distraught.
"Cassandra! Cassandra! Pull yourself together!"
"Lady Cassandra?"
But the healer was more upset than any of them.
She was collapsed on the floor, unresponsive to Daphne, who was kneeling by her side
and shaking her shoulder, or Haruhime, who was frantically calling her name.
The strength had drained from her legs, and she gripped her head in both hands. Her
face was white. Her blood had drained away to the point that her companions
wondered whether it was possible for a person to sink that deeply into despair.
It was strange.
Lilly couldn't understand what had happened.
Ouka and Welf felt the same as they looked on, holding their breath nervously.
Their ability to think was dulled in the midst of the chaos.
Lilly could barely make out what Cassandra was saying.
"…n… un…"
She was shrieking something over and over.
"Run…!"
As the sound of shattering crystal rocks rang out, it silently appeared from within the
fissure.
Spawned from the wall of the cavern, it fell into the plunge pool with a tremendous
splash.
Its newborn cry was an unpleasantly warm sigh.
As the crashing sound of the Great Falls beat against its skin, the white mist veiled its
silhouette.
It neither howled nor roared a battle cry but instead swished its long tail and moved
its two legs, sending ripples across the water's surface.
Deep in its eye socket, a sinister crimson light glinted.
At the edge of the plunge pool as broad as a lake, it bent its joints, and its knees creaked.
The next instant, it disappeared.
It had burst from the water's surface and into the floor's internal maze.
"Hey, shouldn't we try to meet up with Bors?"
"Idiot. We save our own skins first!"
The small band of adventurers was on the twenty-seventh floor, but they had been
unable to meet up with Bors's main party. Instead, the four-man party comprised of
humans and animal people had hurriedly turned back up the road they came down.
They had lost their nerve in the face of the Dungeon's irregularity.
For a bunch of hooligans who made their living by exploring the Dungeon, it was the
obvious course of action.
But things didn't go as they expected.
"…? What's that noise…?"
Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!
A strange sound was coming from behind them.
It sounded like something was jumping up and down. The adventurers stopped and
looked over their shoulders.
The noise was quickly approaching them.
A shadow flickered in the depths of the passage.
"Huh?"
"Something's com—"
Pop!
There was a rather pleasant sound, and then the adventurer's head burst open, so that
he could not finish his sentence.
Even when his final moment came, he did not know what had happened.
He had become a silent lump of flesh, with fountains of blood spurting from him as his
knees sank to the ground.
It happened four times.
They were annihilated.
It ignored the fresh blood dripping from its claws and trampled on the adventurers'
corpses.
As its massive shadow fell over the maze, the monster reversed course.
It was headed toward its next prey.
"A… Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!"
A scream echoed through the Dungeon.
It was the wail of a weeping lancer.
His small party had been demolished by a sudden attack.
The elven sorcerer had been killed first. She had been determined to purge her
shameful fellow elf Gale Wind from their race, and her pridefulness verged on
bragging, making her an unpleasant woman to be around. Still, although she was not
docile, she was thoughtful in her strange way, and he had thought her something of a
good woman. She was the first to fall victim to the claws. Her body was ripped in half
at the waist. Her guts spilled out and blood dripped from her vacant eyes. She had died
in a way no proud elf would willingly allow. And so the man had lost control of himself
and thrust his sword forward. But it met only air. Everything before him went black,
and his head split open.
When he fell, his hand brushed the cheek of the elf who cried tears of blood.
"What is this thing? I don't know… What are youuuuuuuu?!"
The fifth adventurer, a half elf and the last one left standing, pulled out his magic blade.
There was an explosion followed by flames.
When the smoke cleared, it had disappeared, leaving the burned corpse of the fifth
adventurer sprawled in the passage.
The shadow ran and danced, and then the next one did, and the next.
The Dungeon filled with screams.
Screams of agony were joined by fountains of blood.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!"
Faster and faster, so fast it was unbelievable, the corpses multiplied.
It had a merciless sense of where the adventurers were, and it snuffed out their lives
one by one.
Its slashing claws tore apart whatever they came in contact with. Its biting fangs
chewed through flesh and armor alike. Its thrashing tail knocked blood from the
mouths of adventurers.
There was nothing the fifty-some adventurers on the twenty-seventh floor could do.
They were simply slaughtered.
"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!"
All who saw it cried out.
"What is that huge thi—?!"
All who saw it trembled with fear.
"The t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t t-t-t-t-teeth are…"
All who saw it were destroyed and devoured.
Their screams echoed.
Their weapons shattered.
They tried to run, but they could not.
"Bors, save us!! Sav—Aaah!!"
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!"
The banquet was unending.
There were many "wails" as the "road of viscera" was built within the crystal maze.
The "azure current" now "ran red with blood."
As the corpses of the adventurers multiplied one by one, the monsters—the "grotesque
horde"—rejoiced.
They drank the blood of the humans that stained the waterways as if it were fresh dew,
and they greedily devoured the bodies the water carried to them as if they were the
finest meat.
Some adventurers bloomed into "flowers of flesh."
Some were "swiftly torn asunder."
Some were "shattered."
The dignity of some became as "playthings."
Those who tried in desperation to escape were knocked down by other monsters, who
swarmed around them and tore them apart with "countless fangs and claws," and they
were "mourned" all the more miserably.
Those who died and left their comrades behind "imparted sorrow." But those who
mourned them soon followed the same path.
The Water Capital had transformed into the stage for a massacre.
"Oh my…!"
"This is…"
When they saw it, Chigusa trembled in fear and Ouka was stunned.
They were in the cavern on the twenty-fifth floor.
Lilly and the rest of the party stood on the cliff at the mouth of the waterfall, near the
passage leading to the twenty-sixth floor, and looked down on the scene as the falling
water thundered in their ears. They had just emerged into the cavern.
The Great Falls ran red. A faint, fleeting red.
The cascade, which was directly connected to the waterways within the maze, was
spitting out a river of blood produced by the monsters' feast. The emerald-blue of the
plunge pool on the twenty-seventh floor was but a faint memory.
Bobbing in the water far below, so distant they looked to Lilly and the others like black
specks, were the dismembered legs and arms of the half-devoured corpses. The pitiful
fragments of weapons and adventurers floated and sank at the lowest level of the
water paradise.
The "depths of hell" overflowed with corpses, returning all to the "mother," the Dungeon.
"No way… Is that all… blood…?"
Welf could not conceal the shaking in his voice.
"It's insane; how many adventurers…? Not everyone who went to the twenty-seventh
floor…?"
Mikoto's voice, too, faded away as she contemplated the possibility.
"Please stop joking around!! Mr. Bell is still alive! Mr. Bell is…!" Lilly said in a panic.
Haruhime, even more panicked than Lilly, had gone completely white.
"Ah, aaah…!!"
Even Aisha was in a daze.
"…What the hell is happening?"
The second-tier adventurer shifted her gaze from the bloodred plunge pool to the
fissure opposite it.
For a moment, she forgot to breathe as she imagined what had been spawned from
that all-too-deep crevice.
"…Let's go to the twenty-seventh floor! I don't know what's happening, but we have to
save Mr. Bell!" Lilly shouted. Far above her, standing on the cliff by the passage leading
to the twenty-fourth floor, another group of adventurers was screaming.
The tunnel leading to the inside of the twenty-sixth floor was on the southeastern side
of the cavern where Lilly and the others stood now. For Hestia Familia, the floors below
were an unknown world, but all nodded back at Lilly. Neither Welf nor Mikoto nor
Haruhime hesitated for even an instant.
Lilly was about to take off running through the cavern with the others in tow when
Cassandra, who had been silent up to that point, grabbed her hand.
"!! Miss Cassandra! This isn't the time to play arou—"
She broke off mid-word when she looked up at the face of the girl grasping her small
hand in both of her own.
"Cassan… dra…?" Daphne said, standing as still as Lilly.
Welf and the others had stopped as well and were staring silently at Cassandra.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry; I'm sorry; I'm sorry…!"
She was sobbing, but she would not let go of Lilly's hand.
Her face was filled with despair. She hung her head as tears overflowed from her eyes.
She was apologizing to those who were not there.
"I'm sorry; I'm sorry…!!"
She was apologizing to the countless adventurers she had given up on because they
would not believe her.
And also to the boy she had allowed to go to the place of disaster.
She could not stop apologizing.
This was the "banquet of calamity."
The Dungeon said nothing. It merely accepted the blood that flew onto its walls, as if
this was the proper course of events. The crystals that had sparkled blue before were
stained with blood now, transforming the fantastical scene that had struck Bell's party
with wonder into a picture of hell.
The Dungeon knew how their journey would end.
No one would return alive.
The crystals on the ceiling have dimmed now, like magic-stone lanterns about to run
out of energy, because of the explosions on the twenty-fifth floor. As the room grows
ever darker, sounds reach our ears.
"This is…?!"
The chaotic howls of monsters.
The sound of something shaking the Dungeon.
And mixed in with it all, distant but distinctly human screams.
The sounds intertwine in a strange, unsettling melody.
What are these sounds?
What are these screams?!
As I support Lyu's body, I cannot prevent myself from screaming at the man in front of
us.
"What did you do?!"
"It's a ceremony, you see!"
He smiles with deep joy.
"A ceremony to wake me from my nightmare!"
"Nightmare…?"
His sunken eyes shine glassily, as if he's gone mad.
It's hopeless. I have no idea what he's talking about.
What spurs on my panic is the fact that this guy standing in front of us grinning is in
just as bad a situation as we are. He's dripping sweat as monsters keep howling and
the Dungeon shakes, and he looks like his teeth are about to start chattering.
As if he, too, is heading toward the jaws of death—.
But what worries me even more than that is the way Lyu—who's always been so calm
and cool—is acting right now.
"Jura…!"
She steps away from my arms and tries to calm her ragged breath. But her small frame
will not obey her will. As if she is battling a fear on the verge of overflowing or, more
likely, because she cannot escape the chains of trauma that bind her, she continues to
shake violently.
She wraps her arms tightly around her chest and glares piercingly at the catman. Far
from shrinking, however, he seems to find the situation enjoyable.
"So you still haven't figured it out, eh, Rabbit Foot, even though Leon is so upset she's
practically dying?" He jeers at me. "I've called it here to the twenty-seventh floor!"
"Stop!!"
He ignores Lyu's plea and merely shouts again. His next words leave me speechless.
"I've summoned the beast that butchered Astrea Familia!"
"!!"
Ouranos rose from his throne.
"Ouranos, what's wrong?"
He was in the Chamber of Prayers beneath the Guild, a stone room reminiscent of a
temple. Four torches set on the altar of the underground room threw off a red glow.
Standing in the center of the shadowy space, the god widened his blue eyes.
Even via the oculus, Fels sensed the gravity of a situation that prompted the aged deity
to rise from his chair. Under ordinary circumstances, he scarcely moved.
For Ouranos, time stood still. He spoke gravely.
"That thing has come out…"
"Thing? What are you referring to? What are you saying, Ouranos?"
Fels's voice rose in panic in response to the god's strange behavior.
Ouranos gazed through narrowed eyes toward the underground world spread
beneath his feet as he spoke into the crystal ball.
"The monster that decimated Astrea Familia five years ago…"
"…?!"
Ouranos continued to speak solemnly to the dumbstruck Fels.
"The calamity has begun again…"
"Five years ago, my familia, Rudra Familia, was in a feud with Astrea Familia, you see!
I don't know who was in the right or whatever, but they were getting in the way of us
Evils and we couldn't stand it! So we decided to trap them in the Dungeon!"
Bell gaped in shock as Jura's words echoed through the room on the twenty-seventh
floor.
A signal throbbed in the back of his mind.
What he was hearing now was linked to the story Lyu had told him on the eighteenth
floor.
"Just like today, we collected a whole lot of fire bombs! We thought we'd lure Leon and
her familia down there and bury them alive! But those tough bastards didn't die. We
actually ended up on the defensive!"
Fear and anger rose in Jura's eyes as he recalled that day. Suddenly, though, his
emotions seemed to cool, and an unsettling smile curled his lips.
"But then… something happened that we hadn't expected."
Lyu's face distorted, and Jura flinched.
"Unexpected…?" Bell asked, sweat dripping down his face.
The catman went pale, but all the same, he continued to grin.
"A monster spawned from the Dungeon, you see."
"When excessive damage occurs, it provokes a self-protective instinct… The Dungeon's
lament was so terrible even my prayers could not reach it."
Ouranos spoke sorrowfully as he listened to the continuing voice of the Dungeon.
On that day five years ago, Rudra Familia had recklessly brought masses of Inferno
Stones into the Dungeon, causing huge explosions to erupt on one of the floors.
The damage had been so extensive the term maze no longer held any meaning.
And then the Dungeon had sent out its warning signal.
"If they had simply damaged the structure of the maze, nothing much would have
happened. The Dungeon would have repaired itself and regenerated. It has such great
power that the children call it an 'infinite resource'…"
"But if destructive behavior is so great, so excessive… that the regeneration cannot
keep pace…"
"Yes… The Dungeon chooses not regeneration but elimination of the source of the
damage."
It was quite simple, really, if one thought of the Dungeon as a living creature.
When a foreign organism attacks a human internally, the immune system acts to kill
the invading pathogen. This is the natural self-defensive instinct of all living creatures.
The same holds true for the Dungeon.
As the adventurers say, "The Dungeon is alive."
When the womb of all monsters is attacked too fiercely, the living underground maze
activates its defensive instincts and spawns a being that serves as its immune
response.
This being that kills foreign organisms—in this case, invading adventurers—can be
thought of as the Dungeon's apostle. And it shakes off even the will of Ouranos, whose
role is to hold the Dungeon in check.
"Are you saying that the same level of damage that occurred five years ago has happened
once again?" Fels asked.
"That seems to be the case…"
The being the Dungeon spawned five years ago was an Irregular.
Ouranos had not anticipated it, meaning neither had Astrea Familia or Rudra Familia;
it was a truly unknown monster.
Loki Familia had never seen it, nor had Freya Familia, nor had either of the two largest
familias at the time, those of Zeus and Hera. Which is to say, in the thousand years
since the deities had descended to the mortal plane, the phenomenon had been
observed only once.
Only Ouranos, who prayed to the Dungeon for mercy, had noticed it.
And only the victims of this nameless monster had ever laid eyes upon it.
"Except for me, everyone was killed! That shitty woman from Astrea Familia and me!"
As Bell listened to the full story that Lyu had kept from him, everything but shock
drained from his mind.
Beside him, Lyu's face was filled with pain.
"For the past five years, I've been looking into what happened! I investigated all the
details of what caused it and how I could summon that monster again! I didn't ask any
of the Evils' Remnants—I did it all myself!"
Bell could not believe his ears as he listened to Jura's overheated explanation. His head
still swimming with astonishment and his lips trembling, he finally spoke.
"Why? Why did you want to summon that thing again…?"
"So I could train it, obviously!!" Jura snapped back instantly. "Even though I was pissing
and shitting myself that time, as a tamer I couldn't take my eyes off it. Leon, did it look
like a monster to you? Not to me! To me, it was more beautiful than a goddess!!"
Lyu returned Jura's glance with an indecipherable gaze.
For the first time, the catman's voice was trembling.
A monster lover.
The phrase rose to Bell's mind.
"Its presence was overwhelming, killing everything, destroying everything! I wanted
it; I wanted it all for myself!!"
Perhaps because he was a tamer, his eyes glittered like a child's, and his voice throbbed
with a perverse joy.
At the time, even though the overwhelming awe and fear had made his whole body
tremble, he had earnestly longed to possess the monster. Jura had, in a sense, deified
and worshipped the horrible creature.
In other words, the one-armed tamer had been enraptured by the beast whose
overwhelming power gave rise to such tragedy.
Lyu glared angrily at Jura as he revealed his deepest motivations.
"Idiot! That monster is different! It's not like that! It's not something that can be
tamed!"
"Not by ordinary methods! But I have this!!"
Jura pulled out an expandable collar. By resonating with the whip, the magic item
fashioned by the Evils could tame even monsters from the deep levels.
"And with it here, I'm not afraid of anything!! I cannot be threatened!"
"…?!"
"Not even by you, Leon!"
Jura pointed at Lyu with his remaining hand, his loathing burning high.
"Until now, there hasn't been a single night when you didn't haunt my dreams! Yes,
they were nightmares! But when I summon that monster… Yes! I will overcome the
nightmare of that day!"
As Bell listened to the furious stream of words, the meaning of nightmare and
overcome were clear to him. Lyu was the embodiment of Jura's trauma, and he planned
to use her personal trauma to humiliate and erase her.
There was no room for sympathy toward this man.
All the same, Bell could see that he, too, was another individual tormented by the past.
"It's mine! I'll never give it up!" he howled, looking toward the ceiling.
Five years of investigation and research had led Jura to two conclusions.
First, no matter how much damage was inflicted on the upper levels, the Dungeon
would not let out its "wail," or even so much as a warning. This was because the zone
near the surface was heavily affected by the will of Ouranos. Therefore, he determined,
the monster could not be summoned to that area.
His second conclusion had to do with the conditions needed for the nameless monster
to appear. The damage to the floors had to be so severe, the Dungeon could not keep
up with repairs. If that level of damage was inflicted, the monster would be spawned
on the same floor. The monster could not be summoned without taking certain
measures. By comparing the number of Inferno Stones his familia used five years ago
and the data on damage to the Dungeon against hundreds of locations on maps, Jura
had determined that approximately 20 percent of a given floor had to be destroyed. In
other words, the very structure of the Dungeon had to be undermined.
Jura had tamed and then sacrificed a large number of monsters during his five years
of experiments in destruction. Based on the minute reactions of the Dungeon, he had
finally concluded that the Dungeon viewed the entire Water Capital as a single floor.
"No one knew of this Dungeon taboo. If we had issued some sort of regulation, we
would have ended up revealing that something was there… So we had no choice but
to keep quiet and suppress the truth," Ouranos said.
The assumption was that under ordinary circumstances, no one would be able to
cause large-scale damage to the sprawling floors of the middle levels or below. Who,
after all, would risk their own life to do such a thing?
Astrea Familia, which had witnessed the monster, had been wiped out, and Rudra
Familia had been exterminated to the last man by Gale Wind.
Lyu was the only one left who knew the truth about what had happened, and Ouranos
had not thought that she—having experienced tragedy so directly—would ever test
the limits of the taboo.
In other words, it should never have spawned again.
That would have been true, if Gale Wind had not failed to kill Jura.
"I revealed everything to the Xenos. They sensed the Irregular five years ago and were
terrified of it. I sought their help in ensuring such a thing would never happen again.
But…"
"Right now, Lido and the other Xenos are participating in the invasion of Knossos…!"
Fels groaned, the blinking crystals illuminating the mage's face through the oculus.
Ouranos nodded gravely.
"Yes. There is no way to respond swiftly to the situation."
"And it's happening in the middle—no, the lower levels… Just where the expedition
headed… It can't be! Hestia Familia is down there?"
"Taming a monster…? A monster so horrible it wiped out Lyu's whole familia… And you
called it to this floor?"
Bell could not piece together all the information that had been thrown at him so
quickly.
It's no use! I can't keep up.
As the sound of his own heart pounded unpleasantly in his ears, Bell frantically tried
to understand.
So the monster that Jura intentionally called here by destroying the floors is Lyu's true
enemy…
That nightmare was never supposed to return.
But now it was rampaging through this floor, exterminating what it viewed as a virus.
In other words—
"—Bors?!"
Having finally figured out what was going on, Bell turned toward the entrance of the
room and the maze beyond, where he could still hear monsters howling as if in
celebration.
The faces of the adventurers in Bors's party rose before his mind's eye, and he was
about to take off running in their direction when Lyu grabbed his arm.
"Miss Lyu?!"
"No…!"
Her delicate elf's hand was as white as snow.
"You must not go! If you try to fight that thing…!"
For the first time, Bell saw a look of pleading fill her face. Her normally resolute blue
eyes wavered with despair. It was as if she was crying without any tears—as if she was
looking through him and pleading with some phantom of the past not to go forward.
Bell was torn over what to do. He said nothing.
"That's right, Leon! You can't let it go, can you?! You fought that monster yourself, and
you know even better than I do how terrifying it is!"
Once again, Jura cackled.
"Not to mention…"
Bell gasped at the catman's next words.
"…the fact that you don't want to butcher more of your friends with your own hands!"
Lyu's face seemed to crack.
"Oh yes, that's what you did!"
"Shut up."
"To save your precious self!"
"Shut up!"
"By sacrificing your friends, you were finally able to drive off the monster!"
"Shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!!"
The catman laughed.
Bell stood rooted to the ground.
Lyu threw her head back and howled.
The three of them were trapped in the chaos of their entangled emotions.
Just at that instant, a roar thundered through the Dungeon.
For a moment, after the hair-raising roar died down, the entire floor was silent.
Bell couldn't breathe. Lyu stood frozen. Jura shuddered.
Both the carefully cultivated senses of the three adventurers and their most basic
animal instincts were screaming warning signals.
The tremor of horror lasted for only a second.
The floor quaked in unison, and when the momentary hush was shattered, a mad rush
of men and women flooded into the room where Bell stood.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!"
The pack of adventurers arrived with Bors at the head.
It was the hunting party that both Bell and Lyu knew so well.
Only now, its size had clearly shrunk.
Those who remained were spattered with copious amounts of blood—and it was not
their own.
Bell gaped at them.
"Mr. Bor—"
His scream died mid-word.
A pair of bloodred eyes floated faintly in the darkness beyond the entrance to the
room. Icy claws gripped his heart.
…There it is.
An instant later, the shadow disappeared into the darkness.
"—"
Bell heard the sound of crystal being crushed underfoot, and then a flash of movement
grazed past Bors and his party as they tried to flee. It continued on without stopping,
whizzing at a slant over Bell's head.
He didn't even have a chance to react.
By the time he whipped his head around, one member of Bors's party was missing.
Gripped by terror, still not understanding what had happened, he scanned the room
behind him.
Nothing was there.
"Aa… Aaaa…"
It was above him.
Like a giant spider, it clung there gripping the joint between the wall and the ceiling.
The ill-fated missing adventurer was clenched between its jaws.
"—"
The form illuminated by the light of the crystals was huge and thin.
It had two arms and two legs. The long, thin arms were bizarrely out of proportion
with the body. The legs, too, were long and thin but bent backward at the joints. Oddly,
the bony, nearly fleshless form was covered in a shell that at first glance looked like a
coat of armor. It glinted with a strange dark-purplish-blue light. From the base of its
back extended a hard four-meder-long tail.
Its bumpy head was identical to a beast's skull, except for the crimson light that
glowed within the two empty eye sockets. The color was deeper and far more
malicious than that of Bell's rubellite eyes.
If Bell had to describe the monster's overall appearance, he would have called it a
"dinosaur fossil wearing armor."
Even among the innumerable monsters inhabiting the Dungeon, it was clearly an
Irregular.
"—"
Its body, suspended upside down as it gripped the crystal wall with the claws of its
feet and stared down at Bell and the other adventurers, measured three meders long.
There was no question this was a large-category monster.
Its most conspicuous feature was its fang-like claws. Extending from the ends of its
bony six-fingered hands, the disproportionately long claws glittered deep purple. At
the sight of them, Lyu sank into despair and Jura smiled twitchily.
The monster that inflicted such tragedy five years ago had appeared once again before
the two adventurers, and now for the first time, Bell was seeing it, too.
Its crimson eyes scrutinized the remaining adventurers.
"H-help m—"
Crunch.
Before the eyes of the stunned Bell, the monster bit through the adventurer it held
between its teeth, as if doing so was the most ordinary thing in the world.
Here was the prime culprit behind Astrea Familia's suffering.
At the time, people had said it would only be a matter of time before the young female
adventurers who made up the familia attained first-tier status. But this one monster
had decimated them, erasing their future in a matter of minutes.
Two had been Level Three. Eight had been Level Four.
This nameless monster had wiped out all ten of these second-tier adventurers.
Although the Guild's records made no mention of the beast, Ouranos had bestowed a
name upon it.
Juggernaut.
The destroyer.
The adventurer's head quietly fell from between the monster's fangs and split open on
the ground.
Bors and the others went pale as they watched. Bell's mind went blank.
The monster moved again.
"—"
Its knees bent backward, extended—and once again it vanished.
"—?!"
It moved with unbelievable speed.
The wind it threw off was so strong it blew back the adventurers' hair.
Bell dodged the streak of purple just in the nick of time.
A second later, someone screamed.
"Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!"
An animal person had been torn into several pieces.
The claws, moving so fast they left behind a deep-purple arc, had murdered him.
It had taken only a single swipe.
The massacre continued unabated.
The beast pulverized a pair of dwarves with its long flail-like tail. They collapsed,
vomiting blood. Then it brought down its hand onto an elf, crushing her into the
ground. Still gripped within its hand, she fell prey to the fang-like claws. Her arms and
legs dropped away from her body, now no more than a mangled lump of meat.
It devoured a human from the head down.
Within a window of time so brief that Bell's mind could not keep up, a chain of five
deaths had taken place.
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
Half-crazy with fear and anger, the three adventurers in the front guard rushed
forward, swinging their greatsword, mace, and battle-ax.
The instant before the weapons landed on their target, the monster crouched nimbly
on its backward-bent legs, crushing the crystal floor beneath it, and leaped to the side.
The three weapons met nothing but air. The Juggernaut landed beside a huge cluster
of crystals, sending up a spray of debris.
It dashed forward again, and the upper bodies of the three adventurers flew into the
air.
The purple-blue form did not stop.
Springing from one crystal column to the next, it began its mad dance of death.
"Aaaaaah!!"
Each time it passed, fresh blood spewed from adventurers and shredded armor flew
toward the ceiling. Like a spider weaving its web, the monster surrounded Bors and
his party with intersecting flashes of purple. Caught in this web, the prey vomited
blood, lost limbs, and fell to the ground one after the next.
The calamity Cassandra had foreseen in her dream was made real.
What allowed the monster to carry out this slaughter that not even a floor boss could
have managed was its ability to move at super-high speed. Normally, large-category
monsters could not move this fast.
Using the insane power of its legs, it sped like a missile from one corner of the fiftymeder-wide room to the other, efficiently wiping out the virus—that is, the
adventurers. It ricocheted off the floor, ceiling, and walls in a continuous series of
leaps, swiftly and cruelly massacring the large group of adventurers who had gathered
in that chamber of death. They didn't even have time to understand what was
happening.
As she watched her nightmare rise to life once again, Lyu's voice caught in her throat.
Even Jura, who was the originator of all the horror, found his legs shaking beneath him.
Bell stared in disbelief.
Adventurers collapsed.
Brave warriors were torn to pieces along with their shields.
Cowards were pierced through as they tried to flee.
The wavering chants of sorcerers turned to requiems as they were murdered.
The rampage wasn't even a battle.
The spectacle of so many deaths in such a brief period of time defied the limits of
emotion. As Bell watched the merciless slaughter unfold, he felt neither terror nor
despair; instead, it was as if he had been cut loose from all feelings.
"—!!"
Suddenly, he exploded.
With eyes wide open and a wordless roar on his lips, he leaped into the midst of the
massacre.
"Mr. Cranell?!"
Perhaps it was fortunate that Bell had not ventured out into the maze and witnessed
the deaths of the other adventurers. After all, just the deaths inside the room had been
enough to make him lose his cool entirely.
Ignoring Lyu's shout, he accelerated.
"Uaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!"
The savage claws and fangs bore down on the adventurers who not long before had
made up Bell's party—the animal-person siblings, the powerful Amazon, and the ax-
wielding Bors.
You think I'll let you get away with that?!
Channeling his raging emotions into a roar, Bell scooped up a greatsword that had
been dropped by its original owner and charged toward the speeding purple blur.
"!!"
The sword resonated with a low bovine clang.
Purplish-blue fragments scattered onto the ground.
The light within the Juggernaut's eye sockets focused in on the boy. It had suffered a
direct blow to the side, which forced it to abort its attack. Bell's rubellite eyes had
perfectly tracked the high-speed movements of its huge body and responded with an
equally accelerated sword blow, which the monster had blocked with one of its long,
bony forearms.
"Rabbit Foot?!"
Drenched in blood and sobbing, Bors and his three companions cried out in joy as the
Juggernaut stopped in its tracks. For the first time, the unstoppable torrent of violence
was momentarily stalled.
Bell's gaze met the glow of the monster's eye sockets.
In those brief few seconds, he sensed the unfathomable depth of his enemy's skill, and
he shuddered.
For its part, the monster recognized the creature in front of it as a menace, and it
automatically shifted its priorities so that Bell was now at the top.
Each saw only the other.
The fight to the death between adventurer and monster began.
"Aaaaaa!!"
"!!"
The boy swung his greatsword, and the monster swiped its left forearm.
The whining metal sent fragments of the enemy's armored shell flying into the air. Bell
staggered from the Juggernaut's brute strength, yet even as he dripped sweat at the
thought of its overwhelming force, he had discovered a point of attack.
Its defenses are weak!
His opponent's shell had cracked under a single blow, and a faint fissure had run down
its thin arm.
An instant of battle was enough for Bell to understand. To the extent that the monster's
strength and speed had evolved far beyond ordinary limits, its endurance in the face
of attack had declined.
Whoever struck first would win!
Having reached this simple, clear conclusion regarding the conditions for victory, Bell
spurred his body to even more energetic movement.
"Yah!"
Using the energy from the foot he planted on the ground, he abruptly twisted his upper
body to deliver a fierce spinning blow with the greatsword.
The arc of the black scarf around his neck mirrored that of the silver blade.
"—"
In response, the Juggernaut's reverse joints creaked, and it sprang forward.
"Huh?!"
The blow Bell had delivered with all his strength met thin air, and for a moment his
enemy vanished from view. He looked up as he heard it land above him.
The Juggernaut was suspended upside down from the ceiling.
No way!
Could it really have leaped twenty meders upward in a single bound?
Nope, no way.
There's no way something like this can exist.
On the one hand, it was an insane large-category monster strong enough to kill an
upper-class adventurer with a single blow, but on the other, it had the unparalleled
speed and agility to easily dodge its opponent's attacks.
Everything Bell thought he knew about monsters was being turned upside down. Still,
the knowledge and experience he'd gained so far gave him parallels to work with.
This thing is like a floor boss that moves faster than an iguaçu!
You've gotta be kidding me. What is this? I can't win. It's impossible. I've gotta get out of
here.
Bell pushed away the thoughts blaring inside his head, rejecting what both logic and
instinct told him.
There's no way I could escape anyway.
He pushed down the fear and unease surging inside him with a ferocious determination
to fight, gritting his teeth with an iron will.
"!"
The Juggernaut exhaled a hot breath, fixed its glowing orbs on Bell, and launched itself
off the ceiling with a powerful kick.
"Whoa!"
Bell dodged by a hairbreadth the massive arrow of destruction that came hurtling
toward him.
The shock waves followed fast and furious. Adventurers who had been standing
rooted to the spot were blown backward as the ground burst open to form a crater.
Crystal fragments bombarded Bell like scattershot.
The greatsword—which he had pulled aside just a moment too late—was halfdemolished.
"What the…?!"
Bell skidded across the ground, tossed aside the greatsword, and thrust out his left
hand.
No matter how fast the enemy was, Bell figured it would be no match for the speed of
his electrifying flames now that he'd leveled up. He'd use his Swift-Strike Magic to
break through the monster's vulnerable defenses.
"It won't work!!"
Lyu's all-out scream came just as Bell opened his own mouth.
"Firebolt!"
Electrical fire spouted from his fist.
The instant before the scarlet lightning bolt exploded into its target, however, the
purplish-blue shell encasing the silent Juggernaut pulsed with light.
Instantly, electrifying flames exploded into Bell's own body.
"Owww—!"
He stumbled backward, not grasping what had happened.
Smoke billowed from his breastplate.
A power and heat so strong they took his breath away told him his own magic had
struck his chest. The sparks danced uselessly before him.
It rebounded—?
As flames he had never expected to experience burned his body, he stared at the being
standing in the distance.
Even now, the ominous beast's armored shell was glowing.
Light rippled out from the spot on its stomach where Bell had expected the electrical
fire to make contact, but there wasn't the faintest trace of a wound.
"—"
The blank incomprehension in Bell's mind lasted only an instant, but the Juggernaut
seized that moment.
Crushing the ground underfoot, it launched its body forward at top speed.
"Whoaaa!!"
As the monster bore down with its right arm raised above its head, Bell switched into
defensive mode just a second too late.
The long, glittering claws swept through the air.
Bell whipped the Hestia Knife from its hilt with his right hand.
The knife's purple arc mirrored that of the monster's claws as Bell tried to block the
blow.
"No—"
Just as he made contact, Bell heard someone behind him whisper.
It was the despairing whisper of an elf, like a bird that had lost its wings.
Then came a blow so powerful the whole world quaked before Bell's eyes.
The next moment, he felt a lightness in his right shoulder.
"—?"
Something was spinning through the air.
It was as vibrant as a songbird, spraying specks of liquid that looked like blood.
It was sheathed in a gauntlet.
It was gripping a black knife.
It was Bell's right arm.
"Aa—"
He had lost one of his arms.
His right one, sliced off at the elbow.
It took a second for the reality to hit him.
The next instant, what remained of his arm flared like it was on fire.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!"
A scream ripped from his throat.
As if to restart the temporarily frozen flow of time, a fountain of blood spurted from
the exposed flesh of his right elbow.
The pain was so intense he thought his nerve endings were going to burn out. His eyes
were bloodshot to their very core.
The arm drew a parabola through the air before landing—still clutching the knife—in
the waterway.
"Mr. Cranell!"
He could hear Lyu screaming his name.
But it wasn't a cry of grief—it was a warning.
The enormous shadow covering Bell flickered.
He looked up in surprise and saw the silhouette of the monster with the claws of its
left hand raised like a guillotine above his head.
The fear that flooded his body at the sight of those claws that had ripped off his arm,
protector and all, was enough to make him cry. Nevertheless, he raised his gauntletclad left arm to block the blow. Its dual adamantite flashed.
An instant later, the gauntlet met the claws, and it was destroyed.
"—"
That armor was supposed to be unrivaled.