CHAPTER 6 AND THEN THE GOD SMILED
“Elfie, hurry up!”
“I’m sorry, Miss Aliciaaaaa!”
Alicia looked back as Lefiya’s roommate, Elfie, desperately tried to keep up as they rushed through the passages.
On the ninth floor of Knossos.
Their group had originally been part of Finn’s squad but had split off into a smaller group. After the transmission from Hermes Familia , Finn had given the order to his squad to branch off, following the footsteps of the other groups. Elfie was racing around the labyrinth with the group under Alicia’s command, working to set up a perimeter around the floor. Their group was composed of six people. With the mage Elfie in the mix and led by the Level-4 Alicia, they had enough firepower to move around the floor by themselves. Now that the enemy’s strength had been whittled down, that was more than adequate force to make a splash.
Thanks to Lulune’s report, they knew that Barca was currently on the battlefront, meaning they no longer needed to fear the enemy opening or closing doors remotely. And with guidance from the thief who had the labyrinth’s blueprints, they did not have to worry about losing their way.
They were working hard to finish off the last pockets of enemy resistance.
“? ?”
Elfie had been desperately sprinting, in real danger of being left behind by the speedy vanguards, when—Shrick . Elfie heard metal scraping against stone.
“What was that…?”
It was the sort of noise that could never happen naturally in the stone-paved labyrinth. But it was trivial enough that she did not even think to shout a warning about a possible trap.
They were in one segment of the passage.
Elfie instinctively stopped in her tracks and glanced around. What caught her eye was the wall diagonally behind her, where there was a small crack in the labyrinth walls, which were supposed to have been constructed from adamantite. That was where the sound was coming from. It was faint, but it kept repeating, low enough that it was drowned out by the ambient sounds of fighting in the distance if she did not listen carefully.
A self-admitted bundle of curiosity, Elfie forgot all about her current situation and approached the crack, drawn to it. Suspicious, or perhaps disturbed, she gulped as she peeked inside.
Peering into the deep, dark void through the crack, she saw what looked like an empty cavern. In that darkness, something was writhing, and in time with its movements, a clanking sound rang out, as though chains were being tugged.
Elfie held her breath. She squinted, as if doubting her sight, focusing—
All of a sudden, a bloodshot eye appeared in front of her.
“—Eraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah?!” she screamed oddly, leaping back.
The shadow in the darkness rammed into the cracked wall with a thud , seeming to notice her presence. Elfie landed spectacularly on her butt after hopping back in surprise.
“Wh-wh-what was that?! Was that a monster?!”
From her position on the ground, Elfie gripped her chest and readied her rod before her. The eye floated in space, peering out of the crack, while its owner moaned hoarsely in a way that the gods jokingly discussed how zombies were purported to groan. It scraped against the wall as if attempting to break free.
“Elfie, what are you doing?!”
“Miss Aliciaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?! Th-there’s something inside this wall!”
“What are you talking about?! We have to deal with the monsters! We’re going to get surrounded!”
Elfie’s eyes clouded over as Alicia yelled back at her from farther down the passage. Looking ahead, she saw that they were already in the middle of a fight—the monsters were approaching from the same direction that their squad had taken to get there.
“The terrain is bad! We’re changing locations and counterattacking! Get a move on and join us!”
“U-understood!” Elfie stood up in a rush, reluctantly leaving behind the crack in the wall.
She trailed after Alicia to the others waiting for her. The eye floating in darkness stared, fixated on her back, as if trying to follow her.
“Prepare yourselves! Incoming!” Riveria shouted as soon as she set foot into the open space.
Loki Familia had spread out in the room on the twelfth floor. A group of heavily armed troops, Level 3 and higher, had been deployed in advance to confront the powerful prey they had lured out. After they had broken into Knossos, they had found an area that fit their requirements, and Riveria had left a dedicated counterattack force there.
The mages readied their staffs, tensing and starting to chant their spells in unison as Aiz in the rear guard leaped into the room. Not a moment later, the figure of a woman with bloodred hair skidded into the space.
“You really ran around, Aria.”
“…—!”
Levis’s gaze pierced into Aiz, who stopped in the center of the room and turned around. The strongest creature was holding a cursed longsword, looking pessimistic as always. Her gaze was trained only on Aiz, flashing Riveria alone a cursory glance, but she did not look once at the rest of the people spread around the room.
“L-Lady Riveria…!”
“Do not be rash. Aiz and I will hold her back to start,” she replied to the elves as they became visibly distraught after spotting the creature, urging them to control themselves.
To deal with Levis, their plan was to place Aiz at the front with Riveria’s support while the rest of the squad bombarded her. Riveria kept her eyes fixed on Levis as she shrank the magic circle to a radius of five meders, down from the full range that she needed to keep a lookout for the creature’s approach. If the creature and the vanguard ever clashed, her Rea Laevateinn ’s flames could erupt at a moment’s notice.
A wall of warriors with great shields stood in front of the mages who had completed their casts. They all fixed Levis with determined glares, cold sweat forming on their brows. The room took on a charged atmosphere—as if an ammunition dump ready to explode at a moment’s notice.
“…?”
Aiz was facing off against Levis, and she furrowed her brow dubiously. Levis stood before her, looking at Aiz with a blank expression. All she was doing was observing her.
She isn’t attacking…?
She did not even ready her sword. Not only that, Aiz could not sense a threatening aura. The forces behind Aiz were mystified as she faced the creature who was just standing there. Even Riveria was split between being on guard and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
“…—?”
Aiz had fought the Warlord to prepare for this moment. She had approached this operation ready to reach a conclusion in her battle with Levis. But their current situation was too unexpected. She did not know what to do. If Levis attacked, she was determined to respond. She was resolved to fight to the end. However, she herself was not able to attack.
Once the battle started, it was clear there would be casualties. If the opponent was going to spend her time doing nothing, then that was the best possible result. For the purposes of Finn seizing control of Knossos and for their own purposes, a stalemate was the ideal scenario.
This was beyond their wildest imagination, but this was also extraordinarily convenient. It should have been exactly what they wanted. But Aiz could not swallow the intense unease she felt, standing face-to-face with the creature who was her archenemy without crossing swords.
“…”
Levis allowed time to pass as she silently watched Aiz, perplexed, as she maintained her stance.
“Cynthia! Halberd!”
“G-got it!” shouted the mage supporter in response to Tione, tearing a large weapon off her backpack.
She handed over the Durandal special, Roland Halberd. Switching to the longer weapon, Tione sliced into the Barca Monster.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The ax made its landing in its swollen right arm, sending blood gushing out. Tsk ing as she dodged the spray of black blood, Tione used her pole weapon’s reach to attack and evade at range. With Tione’s and Finn’s repeated attacks leading the way, the rest of Loki Familia resolutely lunged in one after the other with spears and glaives.
“Surround it! Surround it!”
“Mages! Don’t stop casting your spells!”
“Don’t worry about scorching all of it! Just fall back!”
The hall on the ninth floor had transformed into a grueling battlefield where the fighting was thick with shields to deal with the cursed black rain. Other than Tiona, all the adventurers had switched to pole or ranged shooting weapons, including bows and arrows. The monster was using its hardened right arm to ward them off and knocking away magic with its cursed left tentacle, but the attacks never ceased. Hermes Familia might have had less combat power to offer, but they contributed superb support on both offense and defense.
“That even Loki Familia would struggle to bring it down…!” Asfi squinted as she looked at the monster that would not fall, withstanding the attacks.
Their enemy was specialized for defense. In exchange for agility, its giant slug of a body was as unmovable as a thousand-year-old tree towering over its surroundings. It endured the adventurers’ attacks, throwing countermeasures with its deformed arms. The rain of blood prevented all from getting close, and even when they managed to slip through, they could not land a critical hit from the off-balance stances that they needed to get through the pelts. Even Tiona’s Urga could not sever any of its limbs.
The parasitic crystal orb fetus—the blackened sphere that was the enemy’s core—sat exposed in the center of its chest, protected by a hardened substance like a budding flower that prevented them from killing it with one blow.
On top of all that, the enemy had the pesky ability of regeneration. The blood vessels all over its body continually burst and re-formed in a speed that surpassed the damage, causing even Loki Familia ’s adventurers to groan. Tiona, Tione, and Finn all judged that it had a potential even greater than the female form they had fought on the eighteenth floor.
They were in a fortress formation with high defensive capabilities to endure enemy attacks while using its curse to consign to oblivion all who faced it. Even as they shuddered at the monster that would have annihilated them in an instant, they didn’t have a means of recovery as they continued to work together and courageously chip away at the enemy’s stamina.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
But there were many casualties. If a single drop of the scattered blood touched someone’s skin, a bloodcurdling shriek broke through the fray. Frontline fighters fell, unable to block the rain of blood with their shields. And even those who evaded the cursed droplets started to hemorrhage blood as they kept breathing in its damned miasma. The curse, the unconditional murderous intent, afflicted everyone standing in the room.
If not for the healing white light pushing back against it, it would not even be a fight. When people collapsed, Amid engaged her recovery magic.
“The man who became the monster’s host…He was the creator of that repulsive curse…!”
Watching the battlefield from the back, Amid was sure of it. The one reduced to a monster was the same hexer who had created the cursed weapons, the originator of that abominable damnation. She realized that the curse’s power was enhanced, as if resonating with Barca Perdix’s Status—with his Enigma ability.
In order to complete Knossos, Barca had needed to develop several abilities. All for the sake of that, he had leveled up three times. Harboring an obsession that no normal person could begin to understand, his body was the ideal host for the fetus of the crystal orb, which feasted on it—or overdosed. In fact, it was compatible enough to trigger this bizarre evolution, giving birth to a monster that specialized in killing with curses, something that should never have been possible.
Amid, who wielded the same Enigma ability herself, recognized what was happening. “A tremendous obsession with this labyrinth…Is that the true nature of your curse?”
One of the reasons that Amid had wanted to take part in this operation was because she had learned of the origin of Knossos, of the descendant of Daedalus Barca Perdix: the source of the curse.
She had wondered if perhaps he had been cursed by his lineage—a victim—and if that unbroken bloodline was the origin of the curse. Now that he had become a monster, his body trapped in the web of black veins seemed to prove it.
“—Then we must break the chains of that curse,” Amid spoke resolutely as she held her staff. “Marta, Bernadette. Take over the recovery in my stead. Please support the battle lines.”
““Y-yes!””
The two healers from Dian Cecht Familia who had been waiting behind her joined in for the first time that day. Not because Dea Saint was no longer able to fully maintain the battlefield herself. But because she devoted herself to breaking the chains of the curse rather than healing.
“Healing droplets, tears of light, eternal sanctuary. Compose a medicinal hymn—three hundred, sixty, and five. The melody of the healer’s almanac saves all things.”
Her clear voice composed a high-speed cast. It was the same spell, but the adventurers recognized that it had more force behind it this time. The Barca Monster seemed to have a premonition and cast a mist of black blood toward Amid.
“Falgar!”
“Haaaaaaaah!”
With the war tiger in the middle, the others blocked it with their shields. With Finn at the front lines and Asfi commanding the middle and back lines, they did not allow any breaks in either their attacks or defense of Amid.
“Come, destruction of evil. The burial of wounds, interment of disease. Curses be gone in the light of vitality.”
The Barca Monster divided the battlefield with its tentacle, smashing into the shields, but Falgar gritted his teeth, determined not to create an empty space in their defense.
“In the name of all that is holy—I heal you.”
Amid responded to their desperate struggle.
“Dia Frater! ” she chanted, unleashing her complete healing magic, the pure white illumination of holy power, toward…the Barca Monster.
“What?!”
“Amid?! What are you thinking trying to heal a monster?!”
Tiona and Tione yelped, vocalizing what everyone on the battlefield was thinking. Upon witnessing the unprecedented act of healing a monster, anyone would have doubted the real motives of this holy woman. In the midst of all that, Finn and Asfi had a different reaction, eyes wide in surprise when they understood exactly what Amid was trying to do.
“? Gh?!”
The Barca Monster started suffering. Bathed in the holy light with the potential to heal all—person or monster—it started writhing with an accelerated fervor, twisting its body in pain. As steam rose from its body, the black color in its veins gradually dissipated . When Tione gazed in wonder with her comrades, her doubts began to melt away.
“She’s dispelling the curse!” Asfi yelled.
“Huh? What? Huh?” Lulune looked back and forth in confusion.
“Dea Saint is dispelling the curse! She isn’t healing the monster’s body! She aimed only at the curse!”
Amid’s Dia Frater was the greatest healing spell, capable of healing wounds, restoring stamina, clearing poison, and dispelling curses. It was an extremely useful capability that could be split into three different effects: recovery, poison eradication, and curse removal. It could heal those sobbing over their wounds and extract poison from those suffering its consequences. At her discretion, she could selectively choose to use only one or two of the possible effects of her spell.
It was mainly an ability to limit using up her Mind unnecessarily, but this time, she poured everything into dispelling the curse—into removing the curse that had accumulated in the Barca Monster.
“A healer rendering a monster powerless, huh? Will wonders never cease…!” Finn murmured with a shudder as the flood of holy light dissipated.
Instead of using it on her allies, she had hit the enemy with her magic to clear the curse. That act had surprised everyone, but none could look away from what ensued.
“Be gone, malevolent curse. As a healer…I cannot allow such a thing to exist,” Amid said, illuminated by her magic light.
The white magic circle expanded beneath the Barca Monster’s feet. While it was to eliminate the curse, the magic power shot up as though a cannon blast assaulting the monster. The torrent of purifying light became a pillar enclosing it.
“Now that you’ve become who you are, I cannot heal you.”
“? Gh?!”
“It would be arrogant to apologize and profane to grieve you. Now that I’ve given up on saving you, I’m nothing more than a hypocrite—but at least allow me to kill that curse.”
The destruction of the curse. The salvation of his spirit. Freeing him from his damned bonds.
Amid spoke as she looked at the monster, clenching in her left hand the magic wand that aided the efficacy of her magic and thrusting out her right palm. Her platinum hair blew back from the shock waves brought on by the light.
The Barca Monster flailed both arms as if being assaulted by the most excruciating pain, burned by the holy light. The thick veins running across its body burbled and swelled, as if boiling, the black curse fading moment by moment. The very reason it had been reduced to that form was gradually disappearing.
“? Ooooooooooooooooooh!”
As if screaming at her not to screw with it, the Barca Monster rampaged. Almost as though the creature was resisting, it unleashed the full strength of its curse at Amid.
“? ?!”
It was beyond rain. The surging wave of miasmic energy took on the life of a vengeful spirit that consumed Amid. All the adventurers in its path, all those who had formed a wall to protect her, were washed away by the wave of blood. Even the holy robes protecting her body were starting to burn and turn a festering black.
“Amid!”
A clash of white and black. A battle between holy light and curse with which adventurers could not interfere. Blood seeped out from the corner of her mouth.
Her outstretched hand in all its youthful vitality withered like an old woman’s. The cries of Tiona, Tione, and the other adventurers grew distant. Amid was consumed by a swirl of pain unlike any she had ever experienced, but she still refused to stop her magic.
“Dae…da—…lus—…!”
“—Gh!”
As if repeating the curse, its D -inscribed eye became bloodshot and burned with the remnants of its will. Seeing that, the holy woman’s eyes flashed radiantly.
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Amid let out a triumphant roar.
The brilliant magic light gathered into a giant pillar of pure white, blasting away the miasma. White particles of light scattered around the room as the pitch-black stain enshrouding the Barca Monster finally disappeared. As if it had lost the armor protecting its body.
““Gh!”” As Amid started to collapse, the two Amazons dashed forward faster than anyone else.
They lunged above the monster’s head, determined not to let their friend’s efforts go to waste as they swung their massive weapons.
“Uraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
“Here I goooooooooooooooooooooo!”
Tione’s halberd and Tiona’s Urga came crashing down. Their twin attacks severed its arms. Losing its balance, the giant body began to pitch forward.
“—Hah!”
And finally, Finn sprinted head-on. His golden Fortia Spear at the ready, he thrust it toward the monster with tremendous force and speed.
“!!”
But just as the golden spear’s tip was about to pierce the monster’s head, he stopped short.
“Captain?!” Tione shouted, bewildered that he had stopped right before delivering the final blow. She was about to ask why he had wasted the golden opportunity.
“—It’s dead.”
“Huh?”
“It’s already over,” Finn murmured as he gradually lowered his spear.
Tiona and the others stopped moving. Even those suffering from the curse and struggling to breathe looked up at the monster in the center of the room. The Barca Monster’s head hung, the light gone from its eyes. The crystal orb fetus attached to its chest gave off smoke, and there were no signs of any life.
“At the same time as the curse was dispelled…?” Lulune whispered in a daze.
“…I don’t know, but…the power of the curse has vanished…” Asfi responded in a quiet voice.
The people who had fallen to the floor coughing up blood started to rise—horribly battered, but the unhealable curse had disappeared from the air.
“Meaning…Amid beat the monster…?”
“…Idiot. That’s not what…this is…”
Tiona’s and Tione’s voices rang hollow as the last act played out on the battlefield. It was unknown whether Amid’s devotion had saved that one soul—whether Dea Saint’s prayers had freed a single man from his thousand-year curse. Or whether he despised the girl for doing it. Regardless, the D in the monster’s red eye had vanished.
“…”
Amid was kneeling on the floor, supported by the other two healers, her eyes shut as if grieving. Finally, she clasped her hands and offered up a silent prayer.
An unbefitting silence filled the room after the conclusion of the battle.
“…All right, prepare for the next move. Use all remaining items needed to heal Amid. We’re re-forming with all those still able to fight. Hurry,” urged Finn in a calm voice, directing them onward, not allowing them to immerse themselves in any lingering emotions.
They collectively raised their heads and started to move.
“We’re splitting up! Don’t let Thanatos escape! There’s a high probability that a god by the name of Enyo will be present, too. Don’t let any suspicious people get away!” Gareth boomed.
The location was the ninth floor of Knossos, an area far removed from where Finn and his group were fighting.
The great dwarf warrior looked out over the combined party of Loki Familia and Dionysus Familia members as he rattled off his commands.
“With their god present, this area shouldn’t have as many monsters roaming around! Even if there are some, they won’t be any bigger than the water spider ones! Those from Dionysus Familia should be able to handle them as long as you work in groups! Split up into as many teams as possible! We’re going over every last bit with a fine-tooth comb!” he belted out.
With Lulune’s directions, they had reached the major enemy base nearest the labyrinth master’s room. Along with the main squad with the gods in tow, Gareth himself headed directly for the room, while the other teams searched the surrounding areas, to catch both Thanatos and whoever the mysterious Enyo ended up being. It was also Loki’s divine will.
“That good?” Gareth asked with a glance.
“Perfecto!” The goddess with crimson hair flashed him an OK sign.
With a cheery attitude, Loki licked her lips as she strained her divine majesty. From there on, they could run into a god at any point.
“Squads! Make sure you have at least one dwarf with you! I’d expect them to have a secret path out for when their stronghold was about to fall! Don’t miss any hidden passages!”
““Aye!”” The dwarves in both familias called back in response. Gareth nodded and finally turned to the elven mage for her orders.
“Lefiya, keep watch on the surroundings. Aiz might have lured out the red-haired creature, but the other masked one still hasn’t shown up. If anything happens, report to me immediately.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
He passed an oculus to Lefiya, who could use the same method as Riveria to search the surroundings for threats—by spreading Rea Laevateinn ’s magic circle. It was an incredibly important role. Lefiya was nervous to take on the same responsibilities as one of the core members of the familia but accepted the oculus with determination and a sense of duty. She was ready to live up to that trust.
Gareth grinned as the members of both familias formed into parties.
“All right, let’s go!”
The adventurers dashed off in all directions. The operation was at last reaching the final stages. They scattered into the surrounding areas to complete the task of taking down Knossos.
“? ”
Amid all that, Dionysus paused at the entrance to a passage instead of moving with the main squad that contained Gareth and Loki.
It was a corridor shrouded in darkness, hidden in the shadows where the magical light of the wall-mounted lamps could not reach—a straight path becoming one with the void, unnoticed by the adventurers. There was no light ahead, and the darkness stretched out into the depths of the passageway even when Dionysus raised his handheld magic-stone lantern.
Somewhere in the depths of that darkness, something was quivering.
“…”
As if enticing Dionysus in…or ridiculing him.
His head ached. Dionysus swore he could smell the sweet scent of wine when he’d take it to his lips.
His heart thumped loudly—once. There was no longer anyone around him.
Looking to the side, he saw Loki and the others disappearing down the passage leading to the labyrinth master’s room. When his gaze shifted back, he let his eyes fixate on the darkness before him. He realized his eyes flared in anger.
Holding one hand to his chest, he gripped the shortsword hidden away in his cloak. Taking the hilt designed in the shape of a grapevine, he drew the blade as if rousing himself to battle and took a step into the dark corridor.
“…Let’s go, Filvis.”
“Yes, Lord Dionysus.”
He didn’t bother looking back as his follower’s response called out from behind him, as Dionysus quietly, seriously, resolutely started to proceed down the passage.
“…Why’d you go and die on me, Barca?”
Thanatos looked up. He was sitting on the pedestal, legs crossed, as he leaned back and supported himself with his hands.
One of his followers had stopped responding. It might have been one of the far-off, nameless soldiers whom he had promised a future beyond death. But he suspected that the soul that had left his side had been that of the man possessed by obsession. Aside from his fixation, Barca had been selfless and without desire—so pitiful, so ridiculous, so precious. Even among Thanatos’s followers, he was a child who had particularly sparked his interest.
When Thanatos had taken the title of wicked god, taken part in the activities of the Evils, taken an unexpected pit stop at Knossos, Barca had already been there, already a prisoner of Daedalus in every sense of the term. He had been as pure and as cruel as a child, his soul more twisted than anyone’s spirit, more than any soul Thanatos had ever seen before.
That was why the God of Death had loved Barca. To some extent, it could be said that he had been simply enjoying himself, but Thanatos had loved Barca in his own philosophical way.
His thoughts drifted to the heavens above, beyond the labyrinth where he was sealed away, with a minimal amount of sentimentality.
“…I thought everyone other than Loki Familia was just along for the ride, but…Dionysus’s and Hermes’s guys really got me.”
There was no one left in the labyrinth master’s room save Thanatos. They had all gone out to engage Loki Familia in battle. Even knowing they were no match, they were trying to buy time for their patron god to escape.
With his followers, he had made a contract that would be fulfilled with the destruction of Orario. So even if they were defeated here—as long as Thanatos could escape, as long as they gave him another opportunity to succeed—their dreams could be realized. That must have been what they believed.
“A decade or two is nothing to a god…but I really don’t want to do all this again. Yeah, time flies, but it takes so much effort. It was trouble just getting this far…really…”
As the room fell silent again, Thanatos sighed heavily. Swinging his legs, he stood up from the pedestal. From that distance, he could make out the approaching footsteps of adventurers as he walked in the opposite direction, taking a different path to head into the darkness. He arrived at a location even deeper than the labyrinth master’s room.
It was a wide room hosting a set of round pillars, as though the home of Thanatos Familia had nowhere to go aboveground.
The room was barely lit by small torches set into the pillars. On the back wall that was designated as an altar, there was an emblem with a heart made of iron and bronze and a black wing that resembled the God of Death’s scythe.
In front of that altar, and at the bottom of the stairs, stood the person he was looking for, gazing up at the familia’s emblem.
“Ein, my dear.”
“…”
A masked person. A mysterious figure in the underground forces, called Ein by Levis and the others. As Thanatos stopped close to the silhouette and called out, the masked being wrapped in a purple-hooded robe gradually turned around.
“Loki Familia got us. All my children have been defeated. There isn’t anything left to do.”
“…”
“Unleash the demi-spirits.” That was all he said to the creature called a follower of the corrupted spirit.
There was no longer any way of stopping Loki Familia . They were already in check. The only possible way of turning things around was by using the multiple demi-spirits hidden away in Knossos.
Originally, the demi-spirits were intended to be the key to destroying Orario by summoning them aboveground. But given the gravity of the current situation, there was no use whining about that.
“I refuse.” Giving an unexpected response to Thanatos’s request, the masked silhouette bluntly rejected him.
“You refuse…?”
“The spirits have their own roles. They cannot be moved from their positions.”
“Are you serious? Look at the situation. This isn’t the time to be whistling past the graveyard.”
“It would go against Enyo’s divine will.”
Thanatos exhaled sharply as the voice somewhere between a man’s and a woman’s responded matter-of-factly.
He did not display irritation—but exasperation. “Even if you are Enyo’s puppet, there has to be a limit, right? What kind of farce would it be for the secret weapon to stay a secret to the end and never see the light of day?”
“…”
“Are you trying to say Enyo is a naked king on his throne?” he asked, a disparaging smile on his lips.
“You are the fool ,” the masked being announced, cutting him off with the same cold, disinterested tone as before.
“? ”
“No, you are a fool, too.”
Backed by darkness, the figure’s hooded robe quivered ominously as the silhouette continued. Thanatos froze in place.
“A message from Enyo—‘This is the end. Thank you for your cooperation.’”
“…What…?”
“I will complete the plan for the destruction of Orario. I shall open the path leading to the underworld. And in order to achieve that—”
“Become my sacrificial lamb, God of Death.”
The chilling message rang through the dark room.
Thanatos could not move. He could not form a sentence. There was no shock, or agitation, or confusion. He did not even have time to feel humiliated from being looked down upon by a mortal. Because he was a god, he understood in an instant the true meaning of the masked figure’s words—the divine will of the mastermind hidden within the message.
“…Everything is as Enyo wills ,” the silhouette finished before slipping into the darkness.
Stillness closed in around Thanatos, an earsplitting silence gripping the god who was left behind.
Tick. He swore he heard the needle of a distant clock move.
“Gah…hah…”
Thanatos doubled over, letting out a sharp breath. And before he knew it, he couldn’t control his emotions anymore as they exploded out of him.
“—Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! ”
His laughter broke the silence.
It kept going and going, as ceaseless as a broken music box, and his wild laughter echoed in the room as the shock rocked his body.
“Quit playing around! That’s, like, when a god flaunting their omnipotence gets slapped in the face with shame !—Using me? Gimme a break!”
He cackled and guffawed—spilling out rage and self-derision as the one who understood what was happening in the labyrinth sooner than anyone else. A booming laugh containing his hatred, resignation, every last intense feeling.
“Come on. Don’t give me that. Framing a nice guy like me?—Enyo, you piece of shit.”
And at the end of it all, the loser crudely wiped the smile from his face, replacing it with a howling rage.
“—You’re Thanatos, I take it?” called out a voice from behind him as he contained his laughter.
When he turned around, he was faced with a goddess with vermilion hair accompanied by a powerful dwarven warrior and some of her other followers. The patron gods of opposing factions stood before each other as though they had been intended to meet, as though they had been drawn together by a third party’s design.
“We finally tracked you down, Thanatos.”
“…Yes, I’ve been cornered, Loki.”
Thanatos sneered as he murmured, “I can’t go on like this” in a voice that Loki couldn’t quite catch.
“Pick up the pace! Re-form the squad! There are still areas that need a key! We’re setting up to attack again!” Finn fired off his orders.
He gathered the members of Loki Familia who had taken the least damage in the fight with the Barca Monster in order to move to their next target.
“If you’ve run out of items and other supplies, gather up and go back to replenish them. Hermes Familia set up a resupply route using the line of retreat that Aki secured with the others!”
The encirclement of the ninth floor was complete. Bete, Anakity, and Raul had pounced into action, securing the three different entrances to the Dungeon. According to the reports from the oculi, almost all the enemy forces had been wiped out already. The critical stairways had been secured with the help of Dionysus Familia .
Now that the Evils’ resistance had been almost entirely pacified, Finn secretly raised a single crystal to his mouth. “How are things down there?”
“There were no problems on the eighteenth floor, Braver. As you said, I found the area where monsters were held. It’s been cleared out according to plans. We’ve made it up to the thirteenth floor while destroying anyone in our path.”
Fels was on the other end. Even though Finn had told the familia about the pact with the monsters, contacting this sage out in the open would just provoke those who still had hard feelings, which was why Finn quietly confirmed the situation and shared what was happening above.
“I had our group split up into two earlier, but the surroundings are entirely under control. There are no signs of Remnants or ambushes here. It’s safe to assume we’ve severed any escape to the lower floors. What should we do? Continue on and try to confirm the demi-spirit’s location ourselves?”
“Yes, please…Sorry, I’m going to break off now. If anything happens, contact me.”
Upon noticing someone approaching, Finn ended the transmission with Fels.
“Captain Finn…I’m sorry for causing trouble.”
“Amid, are you okay?”
“Yes, I can move now.” Amid had walked over on her own two feet.
She had been bathed in a potent curse, but once she finally dispelled it, she had been able to restore herself.
But peering into her face, Finn knew what he had to order: “Amid, take the other healers and leave Knossos. Pull back out to the Dungeon.”
“But—”
“We won’t run into that strong of a curse again. Each squad has the anti-curse medicine to deal with anything we might encounter.”
“…Understood.”
She had won a grueling battle, but considering her body had been eaten away by a serious curse, he recommended that she retreat a bit early. Amid did not try to fight it, staying in her lane. Even though she had recovered, the healer recognized from an objective point of view that she would simply become a burden without her Mind and stamina at peak condition.
Amid was to go back with the group heading out to resupply. Until they were ready to depart, she spoke with Finn.
“Do you think there will be resistance from the enemy from here?”
“They can’t turn things around through normal means for sure. To have a chance, they would have to unleash the demi-spirit to go on a rampage. But if they do that, it’s our victory. We can simply pull back for now and prepare ourselves to finish it in the second attack.”
All according to plan. If the enemy played their trump card, they would just follow their prepared plan. Finn had never expected to wipe out all their underground forces in the first attack. The goal of this first strike had always been to round up the Evils and get a firm grasp of Knossos’s layout. The latter was basically complete now that they had Daedalus’s Notebook, so if the stretch goal of dealing with the demi-spirit was pushed to the second operation, it wouldn’t be a problem.
There was no need to get greedy now. Finn had no intention of stirring up trouble before the second attack.
From their conversation, Amid looked as though she understood. They had managed to basically achieve all they had set out to do with the first attack. There was no longer any way of changing that fact.
…That’s how it should be…
But while he was speaking with Amid, he could not ignore the unease lurking in the back of his mind.
The enemy still hasn’t made a move, even though it’s come down to this. What’s going on? Loki and Gareth are already closing in on Thanatos. At this rate, the Evils will be destroyed.
The enemy was responding too slowly. Even if they were to use the demi-spirit, it would be meaningless at this stage, now that Loki Familia had finished sealing off the floor. With escape routes secured, their alliance could either retreat or push onward at any point. Finn had planned for the possibility of the demi-spirit running wild and had put together various ways of countering, but all that effort had been wasted.
Maybe the enemy had not been able to deal with the speed of their advance—
Would it be fine for him to take this optimistic standpoint?
Then…internal turmoil? Maybe the underground forces and the creatures betrayed the Evils…But there’s no reason to abandon them. To discard your own fighting force…
He combed through his mind, seeking out reasonable possibilities, but he could not find an obvious answer.
All that’s left from their fighting force is Levis. Is there some way they could use her to turn things around? No, that just isn’t realistic. And even if that wasn’t what they were after, it would just be a tactical victory. The overall strategic trend is clearly in our favor.
None of it fit. They were all losing moves. All foolish plans.
Braver could not predict what the enemy was plotting. All the possibilities in his mind would be blunders, and yet he could not entirely discard them for one simple reason.
…My thumb…
Glancing down at his right hand, he maintained his silence. His right thumb was aching, an omen of something to come. Nothing intense, but it had been a continuous gnawing for a while now.
“…Amid, pull back the battle lines. Gather all those who have been wounded and bring them closer to the escape routes.”
“Pull back? Are you sure?”
“Don’t break the perimeter. Maintain it just enough so that the enemy can’t escape. Gareth’s squad is searching out the ringleaders, and we obviously can’t pull them back, but…we should set up a line as a precaution for dealing with the demi-spirit, too. Tell everyone from Hermes , Dionysus , and Dian Cecht Familias .”
“Understood,” Amid said as she bowed and left. Watching silently, Finn licked his thumb. He was unable to think of a plan that could resolve the mysterious unease lurking in his chest. He just could not picture the person moving the pieces on the other side of the board.
…Either way, pulling back our own forces at this stage is impossible.
They were in a position where they had no choice but to attack.
No choice but to push on to the end.
“…Tiona, Tione. Gather the best of all those who can still fight. We’re going to attack with that group alone.”
“Yes, sir! Leave it to us!”
“Collect the most hyped! Got it!”
Handing the Amazonian sisters their orders, Finn made his own preparations. He put together a squad with sufficient fighting strength to deal with any trap that might be lurking up ahead. Leading the familia members who had been gathered in an instant, Finn dashed off to the labyrinth master’s room, where Gareth had headed with his squad.
Loki faced off with Thanatos.
With his long locks of deep-purple hair and androgynous features, he could pass for either a man or a woman. But more than anything, he gave off a uniquely degenerate vibe as the God of Death.
Standing there with no followers remaining, Thanatos smiled cynically at the situation.
“This is the first time we’ve met.”
“Guess so. We didn’t have any ties in the heavens, and I was always cooped up inside, managing the flow of souls.”
“Well, this is a weird thing to say at our first meeting, but…this is the end, Thanatos.”
“Yes, it’s game over.” He met Loki’s sharpened gaze with a flippant smile.
While Gareth watched the gods’ exchange in silence with the rest of the members of Loki Familia , Loki was getting suspicious. He’s too calm.
Something was off about Thanatos. He was taking it too well. They had cornered him with ease, so she’d readied herself, assuming there was a hidden trick up his sleeve, but resignation seeped out of his every word. As if he had already abandoned the chessboard.
I can’t put it into words, really, but…Yeah, it’s like there’s no reaction.
“Were you the one going by the name Enyo?” Loki questioned while carefully trying to conceal her doubts. But Thanatos just smiled and shrugged.
“Did you not ask dear Lefiya? I’m not Enyo at all.”
“…”
“…Concealed from sight with a voice never heard. A god who may or may not even exist…An entity who may or may not even be a god. That isn’t me…Speaking of, that enigmatic douche really pulled one over on me.”
“…What?”
His smile took on a hint that he was mocking himself or maybe facing despair. Loki opened one of her eyes in surprise.
“Yeah, Enyo got me. Hook, line, and sinker. I wondered if they were playing some kind of game when they wouldn’t even appear before me, but…it was all so I wouldn’t notice. It’s obvious, really. You can’t get anywhere trying to probe someone’s intentions if you never once meet them. Because we couldn’t even begin to outwit each other as gods .”
Couldn’t outwit each other?
—Wait…“Got” him?
As Loki’s thoughts ground to a halt, trying to process what he had said, Thanatos continued, “Enyo never thought of this place as a fortress. It was an altar. For a sacrifice.”
Her body temperature dropped. A chill shot up her spine at the hint of a possibility that neither Finn nor she had been able to predict.
Her heart pounded. Hard.
An altar? A sacrifice? Where? Who? Here? Us?
In the back of her mind, a series of scraping noises rang out, chipping away at her feeling of discomfort—and giving way to a bright, flashing red warning of impending doom.
“Looks like we were all outwitted here, Loki.”
Her eyes snapped open wide. The oculus in Gareth’s hands suddenly let out a loud blare.
“Mr. Gareth! The masked being…! It’s controlling…monsters…too, and man—…! The squad i—…falling back…!”
“Lefiya?! Lefiya! What’s going on?! I can barely hear you!”
Her transmission cut between bloodcurdling screams, the violent clangor of battle, and the fiendish howls of monsters.
Loki did not take her eyes off Thanatos as she listened to it. Her thoughts were whizzing around her head at full speed. Imagining the board where they had commenced their fame, she scrutinized thousands, tens of thousands of moves in an instant. They had intended to put the enemy in check, but were they being manipulated by someone else? The board had been clearly pointing to their victory.
So who had stabbed their sword down from outside the board?
As if empathizing—or sympathizing—with Loki’s internal revelation, a hint of compassion seeped into Thanatos’s smile.
“Loki, were you by yourself when you came here? Didn’t you have an important friend with you?”
“!”
His question made Loki finally realize that Dionysus was missing. After looking around in shock, she whipped out her oculus.
“Hey, Dionysus?! Where are you?!”
“Hey, Dionysus?! Where are you?! ” rang the goddess’s voice.
Dionysus brought the shining crystal to his mouth. “In one of the diverging passages…I apologize for moving by myself without consulting you. Please forgive me. I…am going to exact my revenge.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
He tightened his grip on his shortsword as he spoke. In the jet-black passage, he relied on the faint flickering from the oculus for light, but he proceeded deeper without any fear.
“They’re here. Up ahead. The mastermind behind it all…The accursed god who killed my children.”
He was sure of it—of the fact that his enemy was almost before him.
His features were colored by rage. Knocking away the silence that coiled around him, he cut through the darkness with the light of his blade and kept moving.
Forward. He continued, as if sidling up to them, making sure not to lose sight of his target.
“…—?! Wait! Just wait, Dionysus! ” she wailed, desperately trying to stop him in an uncharacteristically shaken voice from the crystal.
But Dionysus could not be stopped. He tailed the darkness beckoning him onward, as if driven by the flames of his wrath.
“Come back! It’s seriously bad! I know something—something is about to happen! You can’t be by yourself!”
The light from the crystal flashed brighter, as if strobing with the god’s intuition. Loki’s pleas rang hollowly in the open space. This place was filled with darkness—a somber, impenetrable black. And inside stood Dionysus’s enemy.
“It’s not a problem. I have Filvis,” he said, fixing his gaze on the darkness ahead. “Right, Filvis?”
“Yes, Lord Dionysus.”
Hearing the voice from behind him, he nodded.
“…Wait. Wait! Dionysus?!”
Checking his grip on his sword, Dionysus was about to launch out, hounding down the shadows—
“Just who were you talking to just now?!”
Her shout finally caused him to stop in his tracks.
“Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!”
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaagh?!”
Voices cracked. Roars exchanged. A swarm of monsters with flailing tentacles and hideous jaws snapping routed the adventurers.
“Loose your arrows, fairy archers! Pierce, arrow of accuracy!? Arcs Ray!” Lefiya tried to fire back, but it was just a single drop in the bucket. Obviously.
After all, the masked being had descended on them with a giant flock of violas without any warning.
“Go.”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH?!”
An earsplitting wail, ripping apart her vocal cords. A lamentation, nothing like a requiem. A shriek, unleashing unformed magic power even though she hadn’t chanted anything.
Anakity and the others were forced to cover their ears.
The masked figure did not stir in the slightest. Instead, the arm that hit the ground sent ripples across the surface of pooling blood.
And as if responding to her grief—or rather, in sync with the god’s return , the altar was activated.
“Laaaaaaa? … ” echoed twistedly beautiful singing voices.
Despite their corrupted forms, the spirits exchanged a chorus that trembled as if they were receiving a divine edict. The six voices overlapped in harmony.
The demi-spirits that had been placed around Knossos were connected along the perimeter of the giant pillar of light—causing their bodies to swell disgustingly.
A hideous noise burbled as green flesh poured out of their colossal bodies as though wombs giving birth.
In the next moment, the green flesh started to erode its surroundings at a dreadful speed.
“H-hey! What’s that?!”
“Is that…a monster?!”
The first to spot it were the adventurers from Dionysus Familia who had taken up positions at the stairs leading down to the tenth floor.
The grotesque mass of flesh seeped up out of the stairs as a tremor shook the labyrinth.
“Hah—Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh?!”
Those who drew their swords and those who turned to run faced the same end, as it was all futile.
From the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the rushing stream of flesh filled every nook and cranny, swallowing up adventurers. Gulping them down and turning them into nourishment—absorbing and hunting. It was overrunning everything. To the fleeing adventurers, it was the jaw of a man-eating monster that cackled in delight as it consumed more people.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah?!”
The surviving soldiers from the Evils’ Remnants were consumed without ever knowing what was happening.
The same scene unfolded all around the labyrinth.
Once one was swallowed by the wave of flesh, there was no hope of escape.
A male animal person and the elf girl he’d been attempting to help, who’d tripped over her feet, were ground up together. A human boy sacrificing his comrades to try to get away was gobbled up by the wall of green flesh closing in from the front. The green mass pervaded the passages at an abnormal rate, a torrential flood in an enclosed space, drowning out the death throes of adventurers and cries of monsters as it turned the enormous labyrinth into a fleshy casket in the blink of an eye.
Diverging paths, stairs, pits—there were no exceptions to where it filled.
“Retreeeat! Retreeeeeeeeeeeeeat!”
All the adventurers sprinted away as fast as they could, accompanied by pandemonium. Casting aside their weapons and shields, abandoning their positions, they lost their minds as the green flesh closed in from the sides, thrusting themselves into whatever paths remained to escape.
“B-Beeeeeeete?!”
“Get outside!” bellowed the werewolf from the middle of the squad of animal people.
“Hurry! To the Dungeon!” shouted the holy woman who had abandoned her composure.
“Fels?!”
“Retreat! To the gate! Quickly!”
“—Gh!”
“Wh—?! Wait! Rei!”
Even the heretical monsters beat a retreat at full speed.
“Th-this is…the same stuff that we saw at the pantry on the twenty-fourth floor…?!”
“Lulune! Ruuuuun!”
Hermes Familia had seen something similar at the pantry on the twenty-fourth floor. It was the plant that the creature Olivas Act had spoken about.
The main difference was that this was more violent, overwhelming, and merciless than that plant. It was squeezing the life out of every single living thing in its range.
It started re-forming Knossos from the tenth floor, completely ravishing Daedalus’s thousand-year obsession.
Barca Perdix had been fortunate. Even though he had not been able to see his delusion through to its completion, at the very least, he had managed to die without seeing it end in this manner.
“Run! All of you, run!”
The green mass was closing in on Aiz and the rest on the twelfth floor. Riveria had shouted as the surging wave of green erupted from the various passages connecting to the room. She shoved the backs of the screaming familia members away from it. As they rushed into the one remaining open passage, Aiz flashed a glance at the red-haired woman with a trembling gaze.
“You knew it would end up like this from the start…didn’t you?!”
Levis had only stared at them the entire time, never once attempting to cross blades with them in the end.
She scoffed disinterestedly. The onrushing wave of flesh approached her from all sides, but the moment it got within a certain distance of her, its movement slowed. It avoided her, forming a gap of space, as if to avoid hurting its own kind.
“It would be inconvenient for these clones to absorb you for food…They’re disposable, after all,” Levis coolly announced as Aiz gazed in wonder. “I was told it didn’t matter if you were dead or alive, but it wouldn’t be satisfactory to bring you back all withered up. Hurry up and scram, Aria.”
“…?!”
“I’ll finish this next time.”
With that, Levis melted into the green flesh.
“Aiz, what are you doing?!”
“…Gh!”
Riveria’s yell came at her from behind.
Unleashing her wind to full, Aiz darted away from the oncoming wall of flesh.
The adventurers scrambled—dashing away from a nightmare from which they would never again wake.
They leaped out of the gates connecting to the ninth floor of the Dungeon that they had secured. With Finn’s instructions—or rather, with his intuition—they had pulled back their battle lines, allowing many adventurers to escape by the skin of their teeth.
However, there was one exception: Dionysus Familia . With their Falna sealed, they had lost their superhuman abilities, rendering them unable to avoid the green flesh’s unrestrained approach. In a deadly predicament that even upper-class adventurers struggled to get through, it was logical that those who had become normal people would not make it out.
“Aaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah?! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh?!”
“No! Lefiya?!”
In the main passage, Anakity desperately stopped Lefiya, weeping hard, as she stretched out her hand toward the tragic arm on the floor.
Wrapping her arm around the girl losing herself in an unending torrent of tears, Anakity darted her eyes around when she saw the green flesh finally approaching them.
The first victims were, of course, Dionysus Familia . Their screams of despair rang out as they were taken in by the maelstrom of flesh.
“Help! Loki Familiaaaaaaaaa ?!”
The exit was right there. It wasn’t far to get into the Dungeon.
The masked being wasn’t attacking, only observing them quietly, letting them go, as if savoring this moment.
And yet, and yet, and yet, saving everyone was impossible.
If they tried to carry the people from Dionysus Familia , who had effectively become dead weight, Anakity and all the familia members behind her would—
“—Gh!” Faced with that decision, Anakity abandoned them.
As she bit her lip, heartbroken, she deafened her ears to the voices begging to be saved, turning her back on their outstretched hands. Lifting Lefiya, she sprinted.
It wasn’t just her, either.
In many places, people were forced to abandon the comrades next to them, shedding untold tears, apologizing over and over.
“Wait! Waiiiiiii—?!”
“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo?!”
It was a chain reaction of cries.
“It can’t b—…Everyone…Filvis…Lord Dionysuuuuuus?!”
Their second-in-command, Aura, was devoured by the green flesh.
The fates of all those who had borne the name Dionysus were no different.
And that included even the dismembered arm that had been left behind.
“The return of a god was the switch to activate the altar…It didn’t matter who blasted off.”
In a room where round columns soared high, Thanatos had mumbled aloud as Loki and the others were knocked around by the tremors of Knossos, trying to process the current situation.
“A switch?! A god’s return?! What are you talking about?!” Loki yelled.
“The demi-spirits are already at work. You can try to escape, but that won’t do anything, Loki. Even if you have no clue what’s happening…you can at least realize that it’d be futile, right?” Thanatos smiled dully.
Unable to say anything in response, she gritted her teeth.
“Loki!!” thundered out the prum.
“Finn?!” Loki’s eyes were wide as she swung around.
The party of Loki Familia ’s elites had set out for the labyrinth master’s room to save their patron god and had made it all the way to this place.
“A gross meat thing is closing in!!”
“If we don’t hurry, there won’t be any way out!!”
Tiona and Tione were more uneasy than they had ever been before.
The low rumbles of the labyrinth never ceased.
The others, including Gareth, were totally lost, but they could immediately piece together that something big was happening. As if responding to their confusion, it burst into the room with force.
“C-Captain?! Incoming!!” someone shouted as the green flesh pushed through the passage.
“Close the door!!” Finn roared.
That was enough for the others to immediately understand everything.
Loki was stupefied by the shock. The familia member with the Daedalus Orb held it out, lowering the orichalcum gate. The door slammed shut, halting the invasion of the flesh by a hairbreadth. Of the five passages leading into the room, four doors crashed down with a BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
“What a shame, Braver. One of the entrances to this room doesn’t have a door.”
“? Gh!”
The green flesh rushed into the room from the remaining entrance as Thanatos mercilessly handed down their death sentence.
The prum’s blue eyes went unfocused; the familia members paled; the first-tier adventurers realized their end was upon them. The flesh expanded out as if a malignant tumor, filling the pillar room within seconds and pressing into Loki Familia .
“I-is it swallowing up weapons, too?!”
“Our magic blades don’t do anything!”
The desperate resistance of familia members was meaningless. Even as lightning and explosions overlapped, the green flesh did not slow its advance in the slightest. They retreated bit by bit until they were finally forced back onto the altar where Thanatos stood.
As they heaved ragged breaths, sweat pouring from their brows, despair was evident on everyone’s faces. The heart made of iron and bronze and the emblem with the black wing, the symbol of the God of Death, hung over them, as if proclaiming their impending doom.
“—If Loki gets bounced out of the mortal world here, Orario will be destroyed without too much trouble.”
That was when Thanatos shut his eyes and started his monologue.
“…?”
“If I leave the destruction of the city to Enyo, the mortal realm will be restored to its former chaos. The souls returning to the heavens will heighten, and my desires will come true, too,” he spoke eloquently.
His calm voice sounded out of place in their current situation. It was almost like he was delivering an oracle. As he turned away from the altar, everyone bore their eyes into his back.
Was it a verse offered in tribute to the adventurers before they met a tragic fate? A proclamation of victory?
It did not sound like either to Loki. It was as if—
“—This shit isn’t funny.”
Sure enough, when Thanatos opened his eyes, there was a smoldering rage burning in them.
“Even I’ve got some pride, Enyo. I hate getting manipulated and cast aside.”
“Thanatos…?”
“All that’s left is…retaliation.” At that, the God of Death broke into a smile. “A little payback for doing this to the dream of my dear Barca.”
Loki caught her breath. At the end of it all, she had gotten a glimpse of Thanatos’s love for his followers.
In the next moment, Thanatos drew a shortsword. As Finn and the others looked on in horror, he grinned and plunged it into his own chest.
“Wha—?!”
With a cough, blood started to ooze out of his mouth. The blade was thrust deep into his chest. While they speechlessly watched, the fatally wounded body of a god activated his Arcanum that was forbidden to him in the mortal realm, as if rejecting death.
“—Go, Loki. A present from me.”
Her eyes opened wide. In the end, as he was surrounded by light particles and his figure blurred by the light that he emanated, Thanatos raised a single hand, pointing to the sky.
BOOM!
A second return pillar pierced the ceiling and rushed out of Knossos.
The force created a cascade moving in reverse up toward the heavens. As if shriveling back from a god’s divine authority, the green flesh’s encroachment slowed while the white light illuminated the shocked faces of the adventurers.
And then, because the giant pillar of light had burst through the labyrinth to the sky, it had opened a route to get back aboveground .
“—Escape through that hole! Noooooooooooow!” Loki shouted as she confirmed the big hole in the ceiling from the fading pillar.
The first-tier adventurers started moving, perhaps even before she had said anything. It was a reflex to escape the threat of total annihilation. Without thinking, Tiona, Tione, and Gareth instinctively grabbed the familia members with the lowest Statuses. Accelerating fast enough to shatter the stones as they kicked off, they leaped up into the hole filled with snowy particles of light.
“Loki!!”
“—!”
As the other adventurers dropped their gear and followed the trio, Finn yanked Loki and charged above. In the next instant, the invasion of the green flesh started anew, as if intent on not letting them escape.
“Jump! Jump! Juuuuump!”
The adventurers gave no thought to appearances, screaming as they kept leaping, like a bolt of lightning zigzagging between floors, going up through the openings, pushing farther and farther upward. They were all desperately aiming for the light above their heads, for the starry twilight, for an escape from the lair of demons.
“Gah…!”
The air was electric, and the atmospheric pressure tugged at his skin.
Finn’s shoulder creaked as it held Loki, on the verge of dislocating. But he did not have any thought to spare to protest or cry out in pain. There was no point in groaning.
As he looked down, he could see the repulsive green flesh hounding them, an eruption bursting before his eyes.
It would end if they got caught in it. It would all have been for naught.
“Finn!”
“Hurry!!”
Tiona and Gareth were at the head of the escape, calling back to Finn, who was bringing up the rear. While the other familia members desperately tried to put distance between themselves and the onrushing flesh, the prum supporting Loki managed to find another reserve somewhere in his small frame and accelerated again as he leaped.
And they finally closed in on the surface, right as he was crossing over to the second floor of Knossos.
“Oooooooooooooooooooh—!”
The howl of a monster thundered from his side.
“? ”
In the second-floor passage, a single viola had managed to escape the pillar of light. Right as Finn and Loki were passing through, almost as if it was a trap that had been set for them, the monster opened its mouth to take a bite out of them.
“? ”
As Loki tensed, Finn arrived at a decision faster than light, executing his next actions immediately. He heaved his patron goddess into the air above his head with his right hand, leaving her to Tione above him in one second. And in the next, he used the Fortia Spear in his left hand to disembowel the approaching viola.
As time stood still for everyone else, those two seconds were fateful for Finn. The green flesh closing in from behind roared as the pitiful prum sank into its inescapable range.
“? ”
To deal with the attack, his upward momentum had slowed slightly. With his body weightless in the air for a split second, there was no possible movement that he could make to overcome it.
Gareth’s eyes widened as their gazes met.
Tiona looked aghast as she exchanged glances with him.
Loki’s gaze pierced through his as she tried to scream something.
Tione locked eyes with him as a chill ran up her spine.
And in the end, the ache in his thumb stopped entirely, as if finally giving up on everything.
“Captaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain!!” shrieked Tione.
Paying her grief no mind, the green flesh closed in.
The blue eyes of the prum filled with regret as he looked up, and all too quickly, it started to swallow him.
“ ? I won’t let you.”
In the last moment, a pair of golden wings swooped in and snatched his body from the clutches of the green flesh.
“Huh?” Tione whispered as Finn’s eyes opened wide.
Loki and the other adventurers were all stunned.
A single Xenos had appeared.
The winged monster had accelerated from the room at the bottom through the tiny gap between the erupting flesh and the wall, saving Finn from a certain death.
Casting off Fels’s restraint, Rei the siren had used her echolocation to search for survivors and, upon reaching the room with the altar, rushed to the adventurers. Whizzing through the air to avoid the green flesh’s menace, her talons gripped firmly into Finn’s arm.
“We’re getting out of this!”
It was an explosive speed, something that only a being with wings could achieve. Tione and the others gazed in wonder as the siren burst past them in an instant with Finn in tow—and then put in every last bit of energy and leaped.
To the end of the tunnel, hurtling out aboveground.
“—Gh!!”
They passed through the gaping hole and up into the night sky. The half-human, half-bird silhouette flapping her golden wings floated together with the silhouette of a prum, the full moon shining behind them.
“? !!”
The green flesh flooded out of the hole with a thunderous clamor as though a monster’s roar. The crater opened up by Thanatos’s return to the heavens was completely closed off, filled with its unsightly meat. As Tione and the others landed in the Labyrinth District, they frantically scurried away from the geyser of green mass burbling out of the hole.
“…It…stopped…”
The repulsive mass spread out to a radius of about ten meders before coming to a halt. As if perfectly sealing a lid over the altar.
“…”
With his arm gripped by the siren’s talons, Finn squinted as he looked down from the sky. It was his first time observing the city from a bird’s-eye view, but the scene before him was a bitter one.
Finally, he turned his gaze above his head and opened his mouth.
“…My thanks.”
“…It was nothing.”
The human and monster exchanged words of gratitude. However, even that could do nothing more than resound hollowly across the night sky.
On that day, the first attack of the Knossos assault operation succeeded—and failed .
They had achieved their goal of crushing the Evils. And Thanatos, the patron god of the Evils, had been sent back, too. But the cost had been the destruction of Dionysus Familia .
The alliance of familias had retreated—no, they had been routed. Far too many lives had been lost to call it a fair trade.
The den of demons cleared by adventurers had turned into the stronghold of a new devil.
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