CHAPTER 5 OBSESSION MANIFEST
“…” Barca, the descendant of the master architect Daedalus and the effective sovereign of Knossos, held his tongue.
…It’s too fast.
He was speaking of the rate at which the enemy was advancing, the number of floors that the adventurers had swept through.
It’d already been half a day since the allied familias had begun their operation—or maybe it would be more accurate to say it had been only half a day.
With Loki Familia leading the way, the adventurers raged forward as though a roaring fire, blazing through the labyrinth as they cleared floors. The fastest squad, the one with animal people, was already on the eighth , and every other group had made it to the seventh.
In all honesty, it was unimaginable. He might have been able to believe their feat if this had been in the Dungeon—explored to death and thoroughly mapped. But they were in Knossos, an unknown area to Loki Familia . And yet.
When Levis approached the Sword Princess’s party…all the other groups suddenly started moving differently. Even the monsters on the lowest floors.
There was no way for Barca to know that this was thanks to the magic items provided by Fels. The power to precisely convey information between distant locations was an enormous help for strategic purposes. For Braver to read the subtle changes on the battlefields and give precise orders to each squad in real time was a blow more powerful than any multitude of weapons. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the oculi were the final key to clearing Knossos.
The scenes playing out on the watery screen attested to the extent of the threat posed by these items.
They had lost count of the plants that had been destroyed. The production of new monsters could no longer keep up. The violas were being exterminated by teams of adventurers, and the vargs were being annihilated by the vanguards’ unrestrained charges. The remnants of the Evils were putting up a fight, but they could not hold out, causing a series of meaningless suicide bombs to go off everywhere.
Using all the information that they gleaned from the two excursions into Knossos before to their full extent, huh…?
Loki Familia was using everything in their arsenal of knowledge as a foundation for their attacks: from the first battle where they withdrew after sustaining casualties and the second attack where they managed to take Barca and the others by surprise. All of it.
While the tempestuous battle of first-tier adventurers had unfolded, the other familia members had made note of the routes taken, which set the course for this assault by illuminating the demons’ lair.
They’d managed to weaponize their rage at the loss of their comrades and their knowledge as adventurers, and they were looking to crush Knossos.
“I guess the thousand-year history of my ancestors can be overcome…”
He was being shown the difference between the Dungeon, which defied even the gods’ calculations, and Knossos, which was created by mortal hands.
Built by humans, it would inevitably produce some sort of regularity, some sort of order. The stone paving, the routes, the position of the doors—all had a definite intention behind them. And if the creator was a person and not a god, it could not be perfect. Barca felt like he had a small taste of the anguish that Daedalus had felt while pursuing the perfect chaos.
Loki Familia had closed in on that pattern during their previous two encounters with the labyrinth, boldly adapting to it while building up countermeasures.
Why should those who challenged the depths of the Dungeon, which exceeded fifty floors, find an eighteen-floor man-made area difficult?
Barca shuddered as the scenes reflected on the screen continued to disappear, a measure of the speed with which Loki Familia was advancing, destroying all the observational eyes as they went. In a detached way, he idly wondered if this was how rulers felt right before their castles fell.
“They’re pressing onto the eighth floor now!”
“What do we do?! What do we do now?!”
“At this rate, there’s no choice but for the leaders to go…!”
“…” Barca was silent in thought as he glanced around the labyrinth master’s room at the leaders yowling like rabid animals.
The prided stronghold of the Evils was being cleared out. There were those among the lawless villains who already recognized what was happening, starting to try to escape the labyrinth. It was still too early to draw a conclusion, but at this rate, if they did not play the ace up their sleeve and release the spirits, Knossos would fall.
Barca’s goal was not to join the God of Death’s believers in their fate. He would do whatever it took for the sake of his dearest wish. In which case, he was left with a certain option—
“Barca, dear.”
All of a sudden, Thanatos snaked his arm around Barca’s shoulders. He had silently walked up behind him at some point.
“Are you thinking of selling information on Knossos and siding with Loki Familia ?”
“…”
“Would you betray us…for the sake of protecting Knossos?” A smile loomed on the face beside him. The slender arm wrapped around his shoulders was serpentine.
The god had seen through Barca’s inner plan.
Barca wanted to finally fulfill Daedalus’s greatest wish: the completion of Knossos. If he could accomplish that, then there was no need for him to fixate on the Evils. He had been one of Thanatos’s followers until now, but that was only because it had been convenient for the purposes of expanding Knossos. Barca had no loyalty. All he had was an ancestral delusion that had been passed down for a thousand years.
It was to the point that he was willing to surrender and hand over their desired information if Loki Familia , who was allied behind the scenes with the Guild, was trying to eradicate all those who were looking to destroy the city.
“But you see, even if you sold us out, while it would let you live…I can’t imagine the Guild…that Ouranos…would allow any further expansion of Knossos. No way.”
“…”
“Because any area connecting to the Dungeon would be an obstacle to the peace in the city,” Thanatos continued, etching his dark warning into Barca’s heart, as if conferring on him a god’s divine revelation.
And his words found their mark.
Even if Knossos avoided destruction, no further construction would take place.
If there was another slipup, as with the Xenos incident, the monsters would be able to advance aboveground, and there was no way the Guild would allow any area connecting to the Dungeon to exist.
Barca glanced at the god who made no effort to look at him. The God of Death, androgynous and degenerate, continued to smile—in either scorn or affection for a foolish child. Thanatos slowly turned away from the scenes displayed on the screen to meet Barca’s gaze.
“Your desire can only be realized on our side. You knew that.”
“…”
“And besides, you aren’t an elf. Seeing Knossos to its completion will be impossible for you. You said so yourself. Or could it be that greed is rearing its ugly head?”
“…”
“If it can’t be accomplished by your hand, then…let’s try to remove as many hinderances for the sake of the next generation. By doing whatever it takes .”
There was a long silence. The words whispered in Barca’s ear were the simple truth.
“…Yes, I know.”
In the reflection of the god’s eyes, Barca saw himself nodding back expressionlessly. As Thanatos pushed Barca to throw in his lot with them, his eyes arched like a taut bow before he unwound the arm snaked around Barca’s shoulders, allowing him to walk out of the room.
“Baaaaarca. Is there anything you need help with?”
“Nothing. If I’m not here, you won’t be able to control the doors. I leave the commands to you,” Barca responded emotionlessly to the mirthful voice calling out behind him. His gait took on the quality of a wandering soul, causing the frantic familia members to stop and fearfully yield the way to him.
Barca had entirely understood Thanatos’s divine will and recognized what was being asked of him. And if Barca, who held the sovereign power over Knossos, was going to leave the labyrinth master’s room, where they operated the doors, then it could be for no other purpose than to stop the invaders—no matter the means or what it took .
“…”
He walked down a dark hall. His footsteps echoed in the ears of the man with the vacant expression. The inky blackness of the labyrinth ravished his thoughts, exposing his internal hesitation like never before.
—Barca Perdix had no memory of ever being attached to something.
In other words, though the years took their toll on his body, he was no different than an infant.
He had never gone aboveground. He had never been exposed to the light of the sun. He did not have normal morals or relations with gods or other people. He knew nothing of love or friendship, ideals or logic.
That was why he lacked emotions and always projected a blank expression.
That was the reason why he was not cognizant of morals, even now that he was aware of them intellectually.
Because of that, Barca could not totally grasp the boundary between self-awareness and the lack of it. Not that he needed that distinction to begin with. In fact, in order to fulfill Daedalus’s thousand-year delusion to complete Knossos, this excess functionality was something that needed to be stripped away.
Why…am I replaying the moment I became who I am now…?
It was a scene that Barca could see in a dreamish, illusionary state. The memory of his origin always began with the sound of water.
The water roared, breaking. Barca had been born into this world in the dark labyrinth, bloody body coming out from the womb of the person he called his mother.
With his first wail, the new life was thrust before an open book: Daedalus’s Notebook. The blueprints to Knossos were inscribed in it.
“? ”
The baby ceased his sobs, frozen in place with his left eye snapped open wide.
Even though it could not fully observe its surroundings, this eye, inscribed with the symbol D , could see that notebook.
“Burn it into that eye! From now on, you will inherit Daedalus’s wish! You shall become the next Perdix!”
Perdix. The next manifestation of their ancestor.
The elderly man with the title of Father had wept tears of blood from his veiny eyes, spittle flying from his black-stained teeth, bellowing. His face was etched with obsession as he shouted those words at the living being who hadn’t yet been given the name Barca. While the woman suffered, the father gazed at the child with eyes of hatred and emptiness.
Of course, Barca was not troubled by it.
Barca had been cursed moments after his birth. His destiny had been swindled from him by that damn notebook. By the fate of his lineage, an innocent infant had turned into a prisoner of Daedalus in the first minute of his life.
There’s no mistake—not now or in the future.
From that point on, he had continued as a prisoner in service of the labyrinth: chipping away at the stone face even as his nails tore off. Continuing to expand the labyrinth until he was on the brink of starving to death. Capturing women and forcibly breeding with them.
When those of his family who could not bear the destiny carried by the descendants of Daedalus killed themselves, he carved out their eyes to create new keys.
He was inorganic, beastly, without even the minimal requirement that made a human being. And Barca devoted all his activity to Knossos. In the course of that, exchanging a pledge with a god to receive a Blessing was a natural result.
“—You have a monster in your heart, Barca.
“—A monster: cruel, unsightly, and pure.”
When he became a follower of the God of Death, Thanatos had said that of him.
Barca thought nothing of it.
Out of necessity, he’d developed the ability Enigma. Out of necessity, he’d become a hexer, forged those repulsive cursed weapons, mass-produced them. Out of necessity, he’d slaughtered people and monsters.
All for the sake of Daedalus’s desperate wish.
And yet…I keep replaying the past…replaying Dix’s face.
Dix Perdix had been born later from the same womb as Barca, shown the notebook after establishing his own self, and suffered. Barca could not fathom his anguish. Obviously. He had not been equipped with the functions of sympathy or conjecture. But he viewed Dix as a menace for despising Knossos and hindering the completion of their greatest wish from time to time. How he loathed this obstacle.
Dix must have felt similarly toward Barca, who had become nothing more than a function for the purpose of expanding the labyrinth. The only reason they did not try to kill each other was for a mutual benefit. Ironically, that was their one and only fraternal feeling.
What’s this sensation?…Well, no matter.
Barca had no faith—no free will. He did not even have the capacity to wonder whether he was a puppet controlled by his blood and a notebook. There was his compulsive obsession, and that was it.
“…”
His sickly white skin was illuminated by the blue light from the magic-stone lamps set in the wall. Wandering down the passage like a lost soul, he approached a hidden room of his own creation, gripping a black notebook in his hand.
Daedalus’s Notebook.
He had retrieved the blueprint to Knossos without any strong emotions after Dix had been ruthlessly killed. After silently examining it, he pushed another item in a bag into his belt and hurried to where he was heading.
He arrived at a circular room, narrower than the labyrinth master’s room but of a substantial size. The ceiling was high and expansive like an auditorium. There were four entrances. As with the labyrinth master’s room, there was a pedestal in the center, which contained a large crimson orb that only descendants of Daedalus could operate.
“Dix…For it to come down to this. For me to rely on your resentment,” Barca muttered, murmuring the name of the deceased.
Before his eyes was a maneuvering mechanism. It was the same one that controlled the orichalcum doors, but this one would release the support pillars of the designated floor. The result was a total cave-in. After understanding Thanatos’s divine will, Barca was going to use it to collapse an entire floor to crush Loki Familia .
It was obviously not a functionality that was recorded in Daedalus’s Notebook, for none other than Dix had created that mechanism. His brother from a different father who had resented the notebook, cursed his fate, hated Knossos itself—the man whom Barca did not consider family. As his final rebellion against their ancestor, he had left this behind.
Dix longed to be freed from his cursed blood and dreamed of destroying Knossos itself to achieve his goal.
Barca stood before the destruction mechanism as those meaningless thoughts crossed his mind.
He palmed the notebook in his hands. Thumbing through the pages, he arrived at the operation instructions that Dix had scribbled in the margins.
Barca turned the crimson orb to the left a half spin and then two full rotations to the right. Finally, he pressed it, silently imagining the destruction. He dictated the collapse to happen on the eighth floor—the area that Loki Familia ’s allied forces were advancing through. With this, he would be able to eradicate the invaders.
“…”
After pressing the orb disinterestedly, Barca hesitated for a moment.
Even if it was just a single floor on a delusion passed down for a thousand years, its collapse would cause major damage to Knossos. If he did it, the labyrinth’s completion would recede beyond his life span, ensuring he would never be able to see through his ancestor’s wish.
Though he knew that he would never see the fruition of that obsession, there was a tiny bit of ego that had clung to that distant possibility.
This was the one and only emotion of the man who had never seen the light of day, who was a degenerate, who was sickly white, who did not have the ability to be excited by his emotions. This was his desire and wish. He was conflicted by that lingering attachment.
Ironically, that almost-human ego drew the fateful line between success and failure.
Wrenching open his lips, he started to chant, “Destructi—
“? Gh?!”
Shling! A sharp sound rang out in the room, which should have been empty. A beat too late, he heeded the warnings of his sixth sense and bent backward.
A moment later, something cut through the wind, whizzing through the air, drawing a line across Barca’s neck. Blood sprayed.
“Guh…?!”
Somehow managing to barely dodge it, Barca kicked the ground, trying to retreat in his wobbly state. Daedalus’s Notebook slipped from his hand to the ground. Barca could pick up a voice as his blood spurted out, staining his body and the floor.
“—Missed, huh?”
Before his wide crimson eyes, the base of the pedestal started to shimmer. A beautiful woman appeared from thin air, holding a black helmet in her left hand, speaking in a dignified voice.
“…Perseus?!”
A billowing white cloak. Aqua hair paired with silver glasses. Occupying the space before him was the human Asfi Al Andromeda.
“Barca Perdix, if I’m not mistaken. And according to Ikelos, the half brother of Dix Perdix, a descendant of Daedalus…and one of the leaders of the Evils, who killed our comrades.”
With a flick, the bloody shortsword in Asfi’s right hand whistled through the air. At that signal, several other adventurers materialized from the empty space behind her.
“…Hermes Familia .”
A chienthrope thief, a prum mage, a war tiger vanguard. All told, a group of ten people appeared, causing an unusual disturbance in Barca’s empty heart. Pressing his hand against his bleeding neck, he felt his parched tongue get caught in place as he tried to say, “Impossible.”
“Could you possibly have…a magic item to become invisible?”
Every one of them was holding the same black helmet. From the fact that they appeared by taking off the helmet, he could deduce that they must have been magic items of Perseus’s design. They had become invisible, silently encroaching in an attempt to slit Barca’s throat.
“But how did you get here…? You shouldn’t have been able to find this room without anything short of a miracle, even if you searched the floors high and low…”
He’d managed to process the fact that they’d suddenly appeared before him, but he couldn’t help asking this question.
This room was one of the Evils’ most important locations in Knossos, along with the labyrinth master’s room. Naturally, it was in one of the most complex and deep areas of the labyrinth. It was not a location that could be found by haphazardly stumbling upon it.
“Simple. We caught a person and asked,” Asfi offered matter-of-factly, unlike Barca’s confused blubbering.
Behind her, the war tiger adventurer tossed a captured person down: one of Thanatos’s robed followers. Pulling back the hood revealed a face that Barca recognized. He was someone who served as a commander among the Evils’ Remnants, frequently moving around in areas proximal to Thanatos.
“He was prepared to blow himself up, but…when someone invisibly approaches from behind, it leaves no time to execute.”
“…!”
“After that, we used an item to have him answer our questions truthfully.”
Tossed callously on the ground was a short needle almost resembling an assassin’s blade. It must have been another one of Perseus’s magic items. They had interrogated him, just like they said, finding out the bases and important locations in Knossos—and securing the location of Thanatos and Barca.
The eyes of the leader lying on the floor were cloudy, rolled back, and twitching.
“…All to find Thanatos and me…?”
“And this notebook, too.”
“!”
“To capture the central figures in the organization and steal the blueprints to Knossos. With those in hand, Finn Deimne’s original plan for a short, decisive battle can be brought to action.”
Bending down, Asfi plucked Daedalus’s Notebook from the floor. Because Finn had found out about its existence from Ikelos during the battle on Daedalus Street, he had prioritized getting their hands on the blueprint that spelled out the construction of Knossos. With it, it would eliminate the need to waste any more time mapping the place. It was an imperative of similar value to capturing the critical figures Thanatos and Barca. That notebook was key—the shortcut to success.
“We of Hermes Familia were charged with two tasks: to search for clues as to the identity of Enyo…and to concurrently find this notebook.”
It wouldn’t be wrong to claim that Loki Familia ’s advance was for the purpose of acquiring that notebook. The left eye inscribed with a D opened wide as Barca was struck by a premonition that traveled through his body almost like a shiver.
“You mean…from the very start…?”
“Yes, everything has gone exactly according to Braver’s plan.” Passing the notebook over to the thief, Asfi confirmed his suspicions. “You could say that all the encroaching advances until now acted as our cover to prevent you from noticing our detached force.”
Barca’s thoughts ran wild as he tried to grasp the situation upon hearing that shocking reality.
Finn had used not just his own squad but all his forces as a diversion. The overabundance of recruited mappers, the invasion by five separate squads, the human-wave tactics—all their efforts to clear Knossos were for the sake of deceiving Barca’s side. While they were focused on the advance tearing through the labyrinth, Hermes Familia had used the magic item Hades Head to become invisible and move around in secret—allowing them to capture the man on the floor and gather information about the key locations in Knossos.
“This large-scale operation was a trap…? Impossible…”
No one would have believed that Loki Familia ’s entire forces were being used as a diversion. In truth, the Evils’ side had their hands full trying to grind the adventurers’ advances to a halt. No one noticed that Hermes Familia had suddenly disappeared somewhere along the way—not even Barca, who had been tirelessly observing the battle from the labyrinth master’s room.
This was when Barca had a realization.
Finn hadn’t been directing the others to blind all the labyrinth’s eyes to keep Barca and the others from watching their every move. It had been in preparation for stopping them from noticing the abrupt disappearance of Hermes Familia .
Dionysus Familia bolstered numbers, Loki Familia offered battle teams, and Hermes Familia had a detached force specializing in investigative and secret operations. Finn Deimne had devised a plan that happened to bring together all three of the familias in an alliance to outwit the Evils.
“Not without roadblocks. I mean, our handy helper went off somewhere, and it was super hard to find one of the leaders who knew the path. It took suuuuch a long time…”
“Silence, Lulune…Well, I guess it was fortuitous that you happened to be here with the notebook, but that was simply chance.”
Asfi shrugged as the chienthrope thief flipped through the notebook, running her eyes over the pages with an ungodly speed. Behind her, the other members of the familia destroyed the pedestal and destruction device installed on it. Barca was unable to stop them, barely able to open his mouth, pleading for an answer to the final question that gnawed at him.
“What about the key…? Including the single group of monsters, Loki Familia has five different squads in operation. Even if you were able to get Ishtar’s key, there should only have been five…” he pressed, trying to deny the reality staring him in the face.
There were the keys taken from Ikelos Familia and stolen by Loki Familia during the Xenos incident and the one that Ishtar had in her possession before she was sent back. Meaning the Knossos forces had lost only five keys.
But by the movements of Finn’s battle forces, there should have been no way for Asfi’s group to move freely about the inside of Knossos.
Asfi pushed up her silver glasses before speaking to the bloodstained heir of Daedalus.
“I created it.”
“? ”
Her voice echoed through the room.
Time stood still. He did not actually comprehend the meaning of the words at first.
“It’s not like we were kicking our feet back during the ten days before the operation. Braver had me examine one of the real keys, and we investigated how the orichalcum gates worked with it…and then created a new one .”
She held up a metallic orb made out of mythril. There was a red orb in the center with a mesh of red lines that had the appearance of a spiderweb engraved in it instead of the D symbol.
“With petals from blood-licorice plants, crimson crystals, the compound eye of a deformis spider, and the tears of a moris…it was possible to replicate your family’s eye with items from the Dungeon.”
Based on the information that her patron god had gotten from Ikelos, Asfi knew that the eyes of Daedalus’s descendants were used to make the keys, which allowed her to create a magic item with the same properties as the Daedalus Orb. Of course, Perseus wasn’t omnipotent. And it would have been impossible to create this key from scratch without hints.
But it was a different story if she could directly examine a key that Loki Familia had stolen and painstakingly pore over it.
The cursed blood of Daedalus’s descendants—the eye inscribed with a D —radiated a special kind of magic that activated the gates to open and close. Upon noticing that, Asfi analyzed the frequency of its magic after significant trial and error and then combined various ingredients from the Dungeon to imitate it. Pouring in all her knowledge, skill, and Enigma ability, she had managed to re-create a key to Knossos.
“With only ten days, one was my limit, but…that is sufficient.”
The woman called a peerless item maker lived up to her reputation. Barca was finally at a loss for words.
“I don’t believe I’m particularly prideful, but…I guess I got inspired when shown an irregular magic item. As an item maker myself, I didn’t want to lose.”
Asfi cast a sidelong glance at the oculus in Lulune’s hand. The very existence of this magic item that made advanced communication possible inside the Dungeon across different floors—and the existence of its creator, Fels—had provoked Perseus’s professional pride.
The being that had once been Barca Perdix had already completed its transformation. Its right arm was enlarged, its left arm an elongated tentacle, and its legs had morphed into a sluglike tail. Its head looked like a collection of insect eggs. While every other part of it had morphed, inducing a visceral disgust, its left eye, inscribed with the letter D , remained unchanged and blazed without the light of intelligence. Its cloudy white body had pitch-black veins pulsing all over it, creating a gnarly contrast. It was over five meders tall, on the same scale as a large monster.
That was the result of offering his own body to the crystal orb fetus. If it was to be given a name, it would have to be simple: the Barca Monster. He had chased after that desperate dream too long, going to the point of discarding all human form. It was the manifestation of Daedalus’s obsession.
“Ew! Disgusting! Groooooss! I don’t even want to touch it with Urga!”
“Don’t be stupid! What are you going to do—punch it with your fist?!”
“I don’t want to do that, either!”
Tiona readied her Urga and Tione held out her twin Zolas, not losing sight of their goal even as they shouted back and forth. They were paying the utmost caution when faced with an unknown enemy unlike any they’d fought before.
Just when it seemed that the Barca Monster was finally standing still, it suddenly started moving without any notice.
“Incoming!” Asfi warned, just as it unleashed an attack with its left arm.
The white tentacle covered with black veins swung down from above, crashing into the center of the room, causing the two familias to rush to either side. Lulune had been exchanging reports using the oculi throughout all of it and lost her cool as she scrambled. The vanguards rushed in as the room started to quake.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! ” erupted a baritone howl as the Barca Monster swung its enlarged right arm at them.
The limb was shaped like a gourd, but the force behind it was brutal. It sent a spiderweb of cracks to break through the ground, shattering the stone flooring and causing even those who boasted high dexterity to stumble. It used that opportunity to start flailing its left tentacle at random, pushing them back away from it.
“Guh…?!”
“Falgar! Thane! Leave the vanguard to Loki Familia ! We’ll focus on supporting them with Merrill!”
As the war tiger and elf were repelled, Asfi took out three Burst Oils and threw them. Three crimson explosions flared. The damage was minor, but it created an opening. With the help of the other familia, Tione and Tiona closed in through the smoke of the explosion, hounding it like wild animals.
“Its movements are sluggish! Tiona, knock it back !”
“Got it!”
Taking notice that the fused legs of the enemy weren’t agile, Tiona took the lead. As she closed in, she swung Urga up, attempting to slice into its right arm.
“—Gh?!”
An audible thud echoed through the room. The full force of her charge had been stopped. The herculean strength pressing back against her caused Tiona’s eyes to snap open in surprise, but she was all smiles again.
“Gareth iiiiiiis…even stronger…than thiiiiiis…!”
With a sharp pivot of her waist, she knocked it away, serving it as ordered. Tione immediately cut in as the Barca Monster stumbled back, wobbling off-balance as its giant right arm went whizzing past its head.
“Rot in hell!”
The sisters’ teamwork would secure them an instantaneous win.
“!!”
But feeling an ache in his thumb, Finn was the first to react. “Tione and Tiona, get away!”
““?!””
They doubted their ears when they heard his order, but they obeyed him immediately as a rule. And a split second after they beat a hasty retreat, the black veins stretched around the monster’s body bulged with an audible creak.
“? ”
All the adventurers in the room, those who had crossed through a multitude of situations with their lives on the line, felt a shiver go down their spines. In the next instant, its veins burst, unleashing an immense shower of blood.
“Whaaaaaat?!”
“Gah?!”
Tiona and Tione were the closest to it and swung their weapons, evading it as first-tier adventurers, but the others in the vanguard fell prey to the attack.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh?!” shrieked those in the perimeter who’d been pelted by the black rain.
Their skin turned a revolting jet the instant they made contact with the droplets, and as blood spurted out of their eyes, noses, and mouths, they writhed in agony. Regardless of whether they were members of Loki Familia or Hermes Familia , they collapsed to the ground and rolled around in pain. Moans of broken spirits permeated the room.
It had all happened in the blink of an eye, leaving everyone rigid with shock.
“Poison?! No…it can’t be…A curse?!”
Asfi’s eyes opened wide in disbelief at this indescribable scene. Even those with Status abilities that resisted afflictions suffered the same symptoms. It was indiscriminate. The Loki Familia members were taken aback, then started using the anti-curse medicine on those who were afflicted.
“Gaaaaaaaargh…?!”
“I-it isn’t working?! The anti-curse medicine won’t break them free?!”
They kept coughing up blood, cries piercing through the ears of everyone in the room. Tiona, Tione, and Finn were motionless. Amid, standing by at the back, caught her breath.
It was an extremely powerful curse. The blood splattered the floor, giving off a black smoke. Filling the room with its toxic miasma, the Barca Monster started spraying its black blood again.
The attack gave rise to a chain of screams from the vanguard.
Its unnatural convulsions continued as the adventurers dragged the comrades at death’s door away from the black rain. But the spray from the enemy was not something they could easily avoid while holding those who were immobile. Its ceaseless pelts caused many more people to collapse. The perimeter around the monster crumbled in an instant.
“Dia Frater!” Amid activated her magic with a high-speed chant.
A pure white light poured down on those who had collapsed, granting them protection. The bloody adventurers coughed as their convulsions died down. While their wounds healed, they looked as though they’d suddenly woken up from a bad dream.
“A-Amid’s magic can heal it!”
“But that means…!”
In contrast to the relief in Tiona’s voice, Tione sounded uneasy.
Its curse could be healed only by the city’s greatest healer. In other words, it was effectively a one-hit kill. If Amid had not been there, they would not have been able to maintain their battle lines. Losing her would guarantee defeat.
“Protect Amid!” Finn issued an immediate order.
The frontline tanks responded with all their strength, creating a series of walls to cover the healer from Dian Cecht Familia . What was to come was hell on earth.
“Uh…Waaaaaaaaah?!”
The scattershot of the curse sowed suffering in all directions. Regardless of vanguard or rear guard, its range could reach as far as the walls in any direction. Those who were slow to evade were inflicted with an otherworldly level of pain. The mages trying to cast spells faced a particularly tragic end. They could not move immediately because they were chanting, leading to them becoming drenched in the revolting curse.
“Gaaaaaaaaaah?!”
“Merrill!” screamed the war tiger, covering Hermes Familia ’s prum mage in the midst of preparing a barrage with a large shield.
“The recovery isn’t fast enough…! Captain Finn, my healing power can’t keep up !”
For the first time, Amid looked anxious as she held her staff and cast her magic.
If anyone could have seen the battle from the outside, they would not have believed their eyes. A monster and holy woman—the boundary between light and dark, cursing and healing—were ruthlessly butting heads with a miasmic damnation and a storm of white radiance. Their two domains clashed for supremacy, splitting the battlefield in two.
Those healed by Amid were soon being eaten away at by the curse again. The party members were in a state of confusion at the world of half destruction that ruled over the battlefield as an unending loop of regeneration and devastation continued. If even one thing went wrong, the adventurers’ formation would collapse entirely in the blink of an eye.
“Barca Perdix…! Did he know this would happen when he stabbed himself?!” Asfi groaned as she protected her skin with her white mantle.
There was a reason why he had stabbed himself with the cursed weapons with such tenacity: to have the crystal orb fetus parasitize a body that had stored up curses, giving rise to a monster with an ability that it should have had no way of developing.
Namely, a monster that could weaponize curses.
Asfi’s face tightened at that horrifying concept.
In the midst of the adventurers scrambling to escape, Lulune was balancing the notebook and a handful of oculi as she yelled out, “A-Asfi?! At this rate, shouldn’t we get some other—?”
“—Absolutely not!” Finn snapped, cutting off her desperate plea.
Lulune and Hermes Familia , plus Amid and the healers and the rest of Loki Familia , were all shocked by his bark as he spun his spear like a windmill to protect his comrades.
“If Amid is the only one who can heal this, it won’t matter if we bring more squads into the fight! All it will do is increase the casualties!”
“—…?!”
It would be meaningless to call for backup. As Lulune and several others despaired, Finn continued, “What was the goal of this operation?! Don’t forget! We cannot fail to capture their ringleaders! We can’t allow all our forces to be concentrated in one place!”
“!!”
“Gareth’s squad is closing in on Thanatos! Meaning we—alone—must defeat this enemy!”
His pronouncement was resonant and unwavering as he spoke strategically rather than tactically. His voice was enough to help them recover their morale, even though they were between a rock and a hard place.
Calculating that the enemy’s attack was letting up for a second, Finn held his golden Fortia Spear in one hand, raising aloft the weapon whose very name was the embodiment of courage.
“Let’s charge!”
It wasn’t a call for them to advance on their own, but he’d added that they would all rush forward. Meaning Finn himself would be joining the front lines. It was a bombastic exhortation as he set aside his role as commander and stood at the very front, showing them the way to clear a path.
“Take up your shields! Forget about evasion! Show your courage and stop its attacks head-on! This is when you prove yourself as an adventurer!”
Finn had been defeated by this curse once. He had been unable to recover after an assault by none other than Levis. But this was not about trying to redeem himself, not about restoring his honor, not about earning vindication. What he displayed was only his bravery.
As Finn sprinted without holding a shield, he cut into the Barca Monster. He lurched himself into the rain, not shrinking back from the curse that had almost gotten him once before. He displayed his small, powerful, reliable back to the adventurers who were desperately recoiling in the face of the curse.
“G-get up! Get uuuuuup!”
“Follow the captaiiiiiiiiiiiiin!”
And the familia members answered his call. His inspiration lit a fire in them, allowing their morale to overcome their fear. Hoisting their shields high, they chased after the prum, reminded that no matter how great the enemy, squaring off against a powerful foe and following the bravery embodied by their small hero was what it meant to be part of Loki Familia .
Tiona and Tione raised a battle cry as they led familia members charging in from other directions. Leaving behind the confounded members of Hermes Familia , they displayed the pride of the most powerful familia in Orario.
We must break this curse , the adventurers roared.
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