Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka Gaiden – Sword Oratoria - Volume 4 - Chapter 2.4

 
“We’re changing formation! Aiz, you’re on the front line!” Finn ordered almost immediately after Gareth dropped down the hole to save Lefiya. 
The two groups now separated, Finn and the others in the main party began making their way through the fifty-second floor, taking out swarms of monsters along the way. 
“Raul, you and the others stay on the midline and provide assistance to Aiz! Riveria, you’re now in the rear guard!” 
“R-roger!” 
“Understood.” 
Finn flourished his Durandal spear as he sprinted alongside them, backing up Aiz on point and attacking everything beyond the reach of her sword. Quickly ordering the emergency change in formation from his spot on the midline, he used his cultivated leadership to propel the party continuously forward. Despite the situation developing around them, the powerful voice of their leader helped assuage the unrest and low morale enveloping the party, guiding the adventurers along the path. 
Knowing all too well that following his instructions was the surest way of staying alive, Raul and the others made the change without fuss. 
“I apologize, Tsubaki, but could I borrow your strength?” Finn asked, his eyes fixed straight ahead. 
“No problem, boss!” Tsubaki nodded in response. She slid her tachi from its scabbard in a flash, bisecting a nearby monster and joining Finn in supporting Aiz from the midline. 
Aiz led the way with Raul and the other three supporters directly behind her. Finn and Tsubaki guarded the group on its sides while Riveria protected them from the rear. 
The supporters now forming the center of the party, they upped their pace to race down the tunnels of the fifty-second floor even faster than before. 
“Whatever you do, don’t stop!” 
Still dodging the incoming fireballs from below, they took out only the monsters directly impeding their way forward. 
They couldn’t leave anything to chance when it came to beasts that could attack without regard to floors. The flares of those valgang dragons would take care of any monsters they failed to kill. 
Getting to the fifty-eighth floor was their top priority, and every move was to that end. 
The depths of the Dungeon were vaster than the entire city of Orario. As map data unfolded within his head, Finn tossed out order after order, leading them through the complex maze via the shortest route possible as they continued to dodge salvos from the dragons beneath their feet. Meanwhile, Raul and the other supporters had free hands, so they gathered around the one supporter toting the large-scale weapons and used daggers and spears to provide continuous support to the front line. 
Riveria’s Veil Breath enveloped the entire party. Just as it had with Lefiya and the others, the full-body protection magic glowed along the surfaces of their bodies, warding off critical attacks from their surrounding enemies time and time again. 
“WUUUUAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!” 
An array of atrocious monsters blocked their path. 
Venom scorpions, thunder snakes, silver worms—the threat of these monsters was so clearly different from that of the previous floors, it was as though they’d passed some kind of invisible line of demarcation. Together with the fireballs of the dragons some multiple floors below, the sheer number of these powerful beasts was what had kept Aiz and Loki Familia from progressing farther into the Dungeon’s depths…until today. 
“Finn! Nine of them!” 
“We’ll break through here! Aiz, they’re yours!” 
Following Finn’s carefully calculated shortest route, Aiz shot forward. 
The roars of the incoming monsters blasting her from all sides, she responded with a scream of her own. 
“Awaken, Tempest!!” she shouted, activating her Airiel before swinging her sword into the mass. 
It slipped past the oncoming needles of poison, past the electrifying sparks of lightning attacks. In the blink of an eye, she’d mowed down all nine enemies. 
The flash of her sword morphed into an undulating wave of air, and their bodies exploded upon impact, scattering into the wind. Her armor of wind, now coupled with the green light of Riveria’s Veil Breath, screamed as she shot forward. 
“Aiz’s level-up is really saving our skins,” Finn muttered, watching as the Sword Princess plowed her way through the wall of monsters, then proceeded to annihilate every other obstacle in one relentless wave after another. 
“I’ve seen her do some foolish things, so the matter is rather complicated,” Riveria replied as she thought back to Aiz’s defeat of the floor boss Udaeus. 
Aiz’s Level 6 abilities, coupled with the output of her strengthened Airiel, gave her an uncanny strength when it came to breaking through enemies. She plowed through the cumbersome venom scorpions and thunder snakes in a manner resembling Gareth’s. Wrapped in winds and bearing the bulk of the front line all by herself, Aiz carved her way through the passageway, leaving piles of monster carcasses behind her. 
“Are…are we even necessary at this point…?” Raul mused as he and the other supporters gazed at the sight with a shudder. 
“Raul, ready a magic potion!” Finn barked, prohibiting them from turning into mere spectators. 
“R-right!” 
The rate they were exhausting themselves wasn’t even comparable to the previous floors. If Aiz continued mowing down monsters at her current speed, her power would be gone in a flash. Sensing the condition of their sole vanguard fighter, Finn ordered for replenishment. Raul responded by quickly fishing through his bag for the item in question. 
“Narfi, Alicia, Cruz! Your magic swords!” 
“Roger!” the three responded in unison. 
“The moment Aiz pulls back to recover, attack!” Finn commanded while taking out more monsters with his spear. 
The three other supporters—human, elf, and beastman—readied their equipped magic swords. Following Finn’s command, they flourished said swords the moment Aiz, covered in sweat, retreated to the midline. 
The instant, chant-less bursts of magic exploded across the path in front of them, wiping out any monsters there. 
Aiz grabbed the magic potion from Raul mid-run, finishing it off quickly before returning to the front line. The blazing fires from the magic swords had swallowed up the monsters during her brief respite. 
“Those attacks from below have stopped. Y’think Gareth and the others…?” Tsubaki murmured as they continued along tirelessly, with Aiz at the helm. And it was true: the quakes, shudders, and shocks had stopped. 
“Most likely. We should take advantage of the opportunity and make haste.” Finn nodded in response. 
It would seem Gareth’s group had fallen all the way to the fifty-eighth floor and already mopped up—or at least drawn the attention of—the valgang dragons deep beneath their feet. 
In their place, however, wyverns were starting to emerge from the deep vertical tunnel made by the dragons’ blasts and closing in on the party. The winged dragons came and went as they pleased via the neck of the Dragon’s Urn. 
Despite the continuous attacks from above as they moved between tunnels and rooms, Aiz’s wind and Finn’s commands helped the party fend off the dragons until, finally, they found the staircase leading to the floor below. 
In a flash, they descended to the next floor. 
“The fifty-third floor…!” Raul let out a breath of air that could have been excitement or could have been fear, still haggard from their inordinate speed. 
Next to him, Finn narrowed his green eyes, studying the perimeter. 
“I don’t see any of those new species…?” 
Apparently, the magic from Aiz’s Airiel wasn’t enough to draw the magic-sensing caterpillar monsters out of hiding. 
Finn gave his thumb a little lick as the party dashed their way through the temporarily encounter-free—and unsettlingly quiet—Dungeon floor. 
“Who’s going to join us, then, I wonder.” A small smile rose to his lips as the throbbing of his thumb foreshadowed the coming Irregular. 
Almost as if on cue, a swarm of caterpillar monsters appeared to block their path. 
“Th-there they are!” Raul cried out. 
“No, wait. There’s something…” Riveria’s face turned grim as she eyed the scene in front of them. 
From among the deluge of caterpillars filling up the wide passageway, an especially large one appeared, bearing a figure in a bluish-purple hooded robe. 
“The guy from the twenty-fourth floor…!” Aiz’s memory flashed at the sight of the figure shrouded completely in cloth and its mask decorated in strange, ominous designs. 
A conspirator of that creature Levis, no doubt, who’d appeared during their earlier fight and absconded with the crystal orb. 
“Is that a…person?” asked Tsubaki, her right eye narrowing in suspicion at the eerie figure standing, unshakable, atop one of the monsters. 
With boots on its feet and silver gloves on its hands, it seemed every bit a human. 
It raised its right hand at the incoming party. 
In sync with the movement, the herd of caterpillars arranged themselves into line after line, adjusting the heights of their heads into low, medium, and high, almost like a flight of stairs. 
“Kill them.” 
The entire herd opened their mouths, releasing a simultaneous flood of corrosive acid. 
“Nghh!” 
“Alter course! Find a cave and run!!” Finn called out the second the tsunamic wave of acid came toward them. The rest of the party responded equally as fast, diving into the nearest hollow they could find. 
Behind Riveria, the last to evacuate, the passageway filling up with corrosive acid looked like veins flooded with thick, dirty mud. In a mere moment, the walls, the ceiling, everything began melting upon contact with the monsters’ fluid. An acerbic hisssssss joined the resulting plumes of smoke and strange, nostril-stinging aroma. 
“A…A mass acid attack…?!” Raul groaned, his face tight. 
To think those monsters could be manipulated to pull off a massive concentrated attack. Not even Aiz’s wind would be able to absorb all that. 
The faces of the supporters paled as they watched the indefensible attack wash through the passageway, melting away the very Dungeon itself. 
“Everyone, on your feet. They’re coming!” 
Raul and the others leaped up at the sound of the multitude of legs scrambling toward them through the corroded tunnel. At Finn’s command, they dashed toward the front of their small cave, Aiz at the lead. 
“Controlling those new species as if they were soldiers…Could our hooded friend be the same as that woman?” Finn muttered under his breath as he shot forward, spear in hand. 
“…!” The words made Aiz’s brow tremble. 
That woman could only mean Levis. If this being was the same as Levis, that would make it another creature. 
Her heart cried at the thought that Levis might have a partner also able to control the vibrantly colored monsters. 
“Strange place for whoever he or she is to turn up, though,” Finn continued. 
“Then what the hell is this person?” 
“Simply put, a tamer,” Riveria responded, not bothering to mince her words. 
“You gotta be shittin’ me! They can control monsters like these?!” Tsubaki replied in shock. 
Raul and the other supporters couldn’t contain their own gulps of surprise at the thought of someone able to control such a giant army of monsters from the depths. No sooner had the short hitches of air left their throats, however, than said army of caterpillars reappeared from the direction of their route. 
“Hit the dirt!” 
The sound of the massive acid attack swallowed up the supporters’ screams. Aiz and the others were forced to change course once again as the spectacle from before repeated itself all over again. 
“A-again?!” 
“They’re coming from that direction, too?!” 
—Raul and the other supporters screamed as the caterpillar monsters closed in on them from all sides. The hissing noise of the acid shooting from their mouths, the smell of decay, and the anguished screams of other monsters caught in the attack echoed around them as Finn gave order after order, leading the party through the fifty-third floor at an incredible speed. 
“Don’t let them escape, my virgas.” 
The hooded figure continued doggedly behind them together with its army of caterpillars, now joined by a swarm of violas. 
“We’re being herded…!” Riveria grimaced, taking note of the way their every path kept getting blocked by monsters. 
“To think we’d end up having to deal with strategizing monsters,” Finn added with a nod. 
The army of caterpillars and their hooded ringleader were most certainly shepherding the party, and the net encircling them seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller as they stopped the party’s advance again and again. It was almost as if they were being driven into a corner, and the thought that this could all be a part of that creature’s plan brought cold drops of sweat to the foreheads of the entire party. 
…The question now is, what is that thing looking for? Aiz, perhaps? Finn thought, throwing a glance behind him as anxiety settled over the group. 
He saw the hooded figure giving orders from atop one of the large rushing caterpillars. He could feel the focus of the being’s gaze, despite the mask that seemed to block its vision. 
Could it be it was targeting the golden-haired, golden-eyed swordswoman hidden in shadow at the front of their desperately racing group? 
Was it attempting to take her alive, the same as Levis and her friends? 
Or did it simply regard Loki Familia as an enemy and wish to annihilate them? 
For a brief moment, their gazes met—Finn’s and the hooded figure’s—and the prum’s eyes narrowed. 
“Finn, we’re being cornered!” Riveria cried out upon realizing their enemy’s intentions herself. 
“…” Finn laid out the map of the fifty-third floor in his mind. The moment he determined their current position and its nearby locations, he raised his head. “Aiz! Turn left!” 
Aiz darted into one of the countless byroads and tunnels splitting off from their current path, leading the party down a long, straight tunnel. 
Halfway through their reroute, however, Finn called out again. 
“We’ll ambush them! About-face!” 
Raul and the others were taken aback at the sudden order but did as they were told all the same—they had faith in their leader. 
Bearing with him, they forced themselves to a screeching halt and then turned on their heels. The moment Aiz and Riveria found themselves in their new, reversed positions, the hooded figure appeared with its army of monster soldiers along the way they’d come. 
Aiz strengthened her Airiel at the sight of the overwhelming swarm of monsters. 
“I need three shields lined up now!” their captain cried, to which his party members quickly complied. 
The supporters other than Raul peeled off the large shields attached to their backpacks, bringing them together in front of the incoming monster army to form a gapless three-man barrier. 
“Aiz!!” Finn shouted again, not wasting a single instant. 
Aiz threw a glance back at him in confusion. Then, suddenly, she understood. 
Grabbing her knees tightly, she somersaulted backward. 
Leaving behind a crack in the Dungeon floor, she flew through the air to land not on the wall but on the supporters’ shields. 
The moment her feet slammed onto that wall of shields, she readied Desperate, and the massive air current around her undulated as she flourished her sword of silver. 
It took a moment for the shock of it to reach the supporters, who cringed as they stooped with a sort of fixed determination. Raul even lent his own support, using his shoulders to help prop them up. 
An instant later, Aiz let it out, the name of that skill passing her lips. 
“Li’l Rafaga!” She kicked off from the shield to unleash a missile of wind. 
“?!” 
The oncoming hooded figure gave a surprised shudder. 
Leaping forth from the shield, Aiz released that great, spiraling arrow of wind. The creature, realizing it had nowhere to run, could only let out a cry at the approaching attack: 
“Virgas!” 
The response was immediate: the caterpillars released another of their simultaneous acid attacks. 
Acid met wind in a violent blast, but the wind won. 
“?” 
The hooded figure beat a hasty retreat as Aiz’s attack forced back the caterpillars’ acidic onslaught. 
Leaping into a corner of the ceiling, it watched as the vortex swallowed the massive swarm of caterpillars. 
It made a clean sweep of the entire column, tearing through it in one giant blast, then continued on toward the hooded figure as a powerful, raging gale. 
“No way…” the figure muttered beneath its mask as the shock waves hit it and whipped its cloak about. 
“We’ve bought ourselves some time!” 
“—ngh!” 
It was a long spear that came at the figure this time. Finn, not allowing the enemy to find its footing, followed right on the heels of Aiz’s Li’l Rafaga as the swordswoman raced deep into the passage with a mighty explosion. 
The hooded figure somehow managed to ward off the incoming Durandal spear with a flourish of its metal gloves. 
“Seems that even among you creatures, some are stronger than others.” 
“—Ngh!” 
Finn continued his close-range assault as his opponent kicked off the wall and landed on the ground. 
The hooded figure defended itself desperately, its metal gloves coming up to block the onslaught of thrusts again and again, unable to land an attack of its own against the prum’s overwhelming spearmanship. 
Finn could tell instantly that the creature in front of him couldn’t hold a candle to Levis. He’d fought against the red-haired woman on the eighteenth floor, after all. 
The hooded figure, unable to keep up with the increasing speed of the attacks besieging the lower half of its vision, let out a shout. 
“Violas!!” 
Countless yellow-green tentacles rose from the ground to thwart the relentless spear strikes. 
Finn took a step back as the flowers surged toward him. From the ceiling, from the walls, from the ground, their innumerable tentacles punched through the earth and rose from holes, coming at him like a sickening green rain. And as he blocked those incoming attacks, his spear a raging whirlwind, the hooded figure lunged forward to counterattack. 
It was a rapid-fire back-and-forth as the two opponents set aside everything else in their immediate vicinity. Amid the sounds of Aiz finishing off the caterpillar monsters farther down the long path, they relocated the battle to a side passage, silver spear meeting silver gloves in a violent riposte. 
The hooded figure summoned forth a massive tentacle strike from its viola allies, about to add his own attack to the mix—when… 
“Gggnh!” 
It came like covering fire. A single arrow plunged into the figure’s shoulder. 
“I…I hit him…” Raul murmured in wonder. He stood a considerable distance behind the two duelists with his bow readied to fire. 
The hooded figure yanked the arrow from its shoulder, fingers curling around the wood and breaking it with a fierce snap. 
“It…It didn’t even faze that thing!” Raul cried out despondently. 
Finn, however, just smiled as he wiped out the remaining tentacles. “You did well, Raul!” 
An instant later, a figure in a red hakama shrieked down the cleared passageway. 
“Mind if I take a stab at this fella?” 
“? !” 
Her black ponytail fluttering behind her, Tsubaki sprang forward, landing directly in front of the masked creature. 
The hooded figure, still off-balance from the earlier attack, didn’t have time to react before the half-dwarf, her right eye narrowed, unsheathed her tachi at godlike speed. 
It was a direct hit. 
“Guuwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrghhh!!” 
The creature’s right arm went flying, metal glove and all. 
It let out a scream of anguish as the limb danced through the air. Tsubaki readied herself for a second strike. The killing blow had failed only due to her opponent’s split-second dodge. 
But then. 
“—Devour!” it shouted, drawing one of the violas toward it. 
And before Tsubaki’s blade could reach its target, the repulsive flower had swallowed the hooded figure whole. 
“What the—?!” 
The flower let out a scream as the sword sliced at its long body, before scuttling away with the creature in its mouth. 
One of its tentacles snatched the arm still flying through the air before the whole thing disappeared into a nearby cave. Tsubaki, befuddled as ever, made to follow, but not before a certain high elf finished casting her spell. 
“—Wynn Fimbulvetr!!” 
Out shot the three tendrils of icy snow. 
The magic froze the entirety of the cave, all the way to her main target deep within its confines. 
The escaping viola, its back turned to the cave’s opening, was instantly encased in a world of solid blue ice. 
Tsubaki dashed forward in high spirits, her prey now frozen in its tracks. 
“…Huh?” 
“What is it, Tsubaki?” 
Tsubaki had cracked open the flower ice sculpture, tachi at the ready and looking for the hooded figure, but she now stood rooted to the spot in wide-eyed surprise. 
Riveria raced over, leaving Finn, Raul, and the others to fend off the remaining monsters, only to be met with the same astonishing scene. 
“Nothing but a…robe?” 
“How could it possibly have escaped?!” 
Indeed, as the two of them stared into the shattered mouth of the viola, all they found was an empty robe and a frozen, cracked mask. Even the severed arm was gone; nothing remained but the metal glove and strip of cloth that had once covered it. 
“Could it have escaped during that one instant our vision was obscured by my blizzard?” Riveria mused in pure amazement. 
“There’s no way! That’d be the fastest escape I’ve ever seen…” Tsubaki muttered somewhat bitterly next to her. 
The two women raised their heads to find another ever-so-narrow path shooting off from the side of the tunnel, connecting itself to the intricate remainder of the Dungeon. 
“Riveria. Tsubaki,” Finn said from behind them. The prum was followed by Raul and the other supporters, along with Aiz, having returned from her caterpillar extermination. Riveria and Tsubaki turned to face him. 
“I apologize, Finn…we’ve allowed it to escape.” 

“Whadda we do? Follow it?” 
Finn glanced down at the frozen body of the viola, studying the bluish-purple robe and metallic glove for a moment before shaking his head. 
“Our priority now is to reconvene with Gareth and the others. We should hurry to the fifty-eighth floor.” 
“Understood.” 
None of them were about to argue, not when their companions’ safety was at stake. 
And so, with the presence of the creature they’d let escape still on their minds, the group began making their way down to the lower floors once more. 
“Aiz, if you could take the front line again?” Finn asked. 
“Of course,” Aiz responded with a nod. 
The adventurers raced off, leaving the hooded robe hidden beneath snow and frost behind them. 
 
A fierce battle was raging on the fifty-eighth floor. 
The group of adventurers clashed against monster after monster in an attempt to survive, but the path to the fifty-seventh floor—their only path of retreat—was blocked by the incoming swarms of giant caterpillars. 
The caterpillar monsters had formed a multitudinous herd, attacking not only Gareth’s party but other monsters in the vicinity, as well. Their innate ability to sense magic and magic stones was leading them to the battlefield in droves. 
From the caterpillars spitting out their corrosive acid and devouring their unlucky prey whole—magic stones and all—to the ferocious monsters attacking with teeth and claws, indifferent to their own dissolution, to the flock of wyverns overhead, pelting them with salvos of fireballs, it was an outright free-for-all. 
Thunderous roars, bestial cries, and dragons’ breaths mixed throughout the fifty-eighth floor. 
“Is this normal for the floors down here?!” 
“How the hell am I supposed to know?!” 
As friendly fire pervaded the area, Tiona and Bete mowed down the monsters around them to advance on the newly spawned valgang dragon that had just burst through the Dungeon wall. In an attempt to prevent its massive fireball from obliterating friend and foe alike, they charged the great red beast and took it down with an icy kick from Bete’s magic-charged boots and a series of killing blows from Tiona’s massive Durandal sword. If they had to thank those caterpillar monsters for one thing, it was that they’d made it a lot easier to move about the battlefield. 
The two of them deftly dodged the incoming blasts of corrosive acid as the brutal three-way battle continued. 
Lefiya, currently under Tione’s protection, avoided casting anything too recklessly lest she draw the attention of those caterpillars. 
At the same time, Gareth was fighting with a sheer intensity, his mantle fluttering wildly. “Do these brutes ever stop fighting?” he mused, taking out one enemy after another with his two axes. Each mighty swing of his weapons made an impact like a bomb. 
A nearby swarm of caterpillars responded by unleashing a burst of corrosive acid. 
“Show me somethin’ I haven’t seen before!” he shouted before quickly dodging, slamming his Grand Ax into the ground with a brilliant flash. 
The sheet of rock crumbled, bits and pieces of stone flying off to hit the caterpillars like explosive missiles. Their bodies crumpled, riddled with holes and leaking acid on the ground below. 
The dwarf soldier’s Durandal ax took care of the remaining caterpillar with a massive upward swing. 
“Grrraaaagh!!” 
“Gunngh!” 
The beast didn’t even have a chance to respond. The longitudinal swing cut it in half. 
They’d been fighting for nearly eight hours now, and the dwarf’s ferocity had yet to wane. And yet, these uncanny beasts…Gareth eyed the monsters suspiciously from beneath his helmet. He was studying their movement. Comin’ from the northern tunnel they might be; we’ve somehow reached the hall’s center. We’re movin’ south. 
He threw a glance behind him to where the droves of caterpillars continued to pour out of the tunnel leading to the fifty-seventh floor. 
Ahead of him and to the south was another tunnel—the path that would lead them to the next floor down. 
These brutes aren’t fixin’ to reach the fifty-ninth floor themselves, are they? Tryin’ to move even farther downward? 
Could the caterpillar monsters rampaging about these depths be attempting to return home? 
Gareth narrowed his eyes at the entrance to the unknown, shrouded in darkness, then wrenched his gaze away, his thoughts returning to the battle at hand. 
“Th-they’re still coming!” Tione cried out with a curse, sweat forming along her neck and temple as another of the great red dragons spawned on the Dungeon floor. 
The young adventurers couldn’t hide their fatigue as the long battle continued. Bete’s tongue practically lolled from his mouth, Tiona’s wrists trembled, and Lefiya’s breath sounded ragged and strained. 
Gareth, however, as tough as ever and showing no signs of weariness, dashed forward toward the newly spawned valgang dragon breaking through the floor—until. 
“Wynn Fimbulvetr!” 
The massive blizzard descended on them from the northern tip of the hall. 
It froze everything: the valgang dragon and the massive swarms of monsters still littering the area. And as Tione and the others watched in awe, a golden flash reflected in their saucerlike eyes. 
“Ngh!!” 
A golden-haired, golden-eyed swordswoman shot forward like an arrow, shattering the valgang dragon ice sculpture. 
Desperate sliced through the frozen dragon’s neck, separating its head from its body and sending chunks of ice to the ground below in great, thunderous crashes. 
“Miss Aiz!!” 
“Riveria!” 
Lefiya and Tione cried out in simultaneous jubilation at the sight of their companions. 
Aiz came to a stop in the middle of the hall with Riveria, Finn, and Tsubaki hot on her heels. Even Raul, completely unharmed along with the other three supporters, dashed forward to join them. 
“Captaaaaaaaaaaain!!” Tione called out, her energy restored in a flash. 
“Save the celebration for later!” Finn replied, only half acknowledging her before barking out commands to the others. “We still need to finish off the remaining monsters!!” 
The powerful sound of their leader’s voice stoking their spirits, Bete and the others joined forces with Aiz and set their sights on the monsters still roaming the open space. 
The supporters’ protection glowing bright, it didn’t take long for the carcasses of the caterpillars and wyverns to pile up, mountain upon mountain of ash littering the ground. 
“Miss Aiz! You aren’t hurt?” inquired Lefiya. 
“I’m fine, yeah…You guys made it through?” 
“By the skin of our teeth! All thanks to Gareth.” Tiona, this time. 
There wasn’t a presence to be felt; the party had seemingly reached a long break from the encounters. Even the many holes perforating the ceiling thanks to the valgang dragons had sealed themselves up, leaving the fifty-eighth floor in silence. 
The reunited Aiz, Lefiya, and Tiona brought their hands together joyfully. 
Finn and Riveria checked on Gareth while Tsubaki, laughing about one thing or another, gave Tione and Bete a resounding series of pounds upon their backs. Tione just smirked, though Bete shot her a look of hate. Meanwhile, Raul and the other supporters passed out healing items from their backpacks, tears trembling in their eyes. 
“Oh-ho-ho! This a fang from one of those crazy dragons that kept blastin’ away at us? And what’s this? A scale?! You’ve just gotta let me take these back!” Tsubaki pulled out first a valgang dragon fang and then a red scale from amid the plethora of drop items littering the strewn monster carcasses, her face alight with excitement. 
Finn, however, didn’t share her exuberance. “I apologize, Tsubaki, but you’ll have to wait. Something that big will only prove a hindrance as we explore further. Perhaps on our way back?” He kindly reminded her of what should have been obvious. 
The party made their way toward the southern end of the room where Finn instructed them to take a short break. 
“Though we were forced to take separate routes, the entire party made it to the fifty-eighth floor. I’m not sure whether this is a good sign…or quite the opposite,” Riveria mused. 
Bete just snorted. “So what? It’s not like it’s our first time down here.” 
“You say that as if you weren’t gasping for breath about five minutes ago,” Tiona sarcastically replied. 
“Pretty sure that was you!” 
Lefiya, Raul, and the other supporters let out a chuckle as the duo went off on each other as usual. A relaxed atmosphere had settled over the party. 
They drank leisurely from potions and magic potions. Aiz finished off the last of her block-shaped rations from Lulune. And Tsubaki whipped out her smithing tools to perform emergency maintenance on the adventurers’ weapons. 
It was a momentary respite for the group as they sat in a circle, the uncharted depths right in front of their eyes. 
“…” 
“Captain? Is something wrong?” Tiona piped up as Aiz and the others enjoyed their moment of downtime. 
The prum was standing with his back to the group, spear at the ready as he stared down the gaping darkness of that large hole to the south. 
He seemed fixated on it, gazing deep into the void that would lead them to the fifty-ninth floor. 
“According to the records left behind by Zeus Familia, the Glacial Territories await us beyond that passage…” 
“I-indeed. It’s said that glacial streams run across the land, making it hard to advance, and bitterly cold winds make it hard to even move your body…” Tione continued his thoughts. 
“W-we brought plenty of salamander wool! We had to request some from other factions, but we should have just enough for all of us, supporters included.” Raul stood up in a hurry, snatching the crimson fabric from his backpack. Salamander wool was a type of fire-element armor with cold-resistant properties. 
Finn didn’t move, his green eyes, like the surface of a lake, still fixated on the passage in front of him. Finally, he spoke. 
“If the cold is so intense it can freeze even first-tier adventurers…why can we not feel it now? Sitting here with the entrance in front of our eyes?” 
Tione and Raul shuddered in simultaneous bewilderment at Finn’s inquiry. 
It was true. They were waiting right in front of the passage that would lead them to the fifty-ninth floor, yet none of them felt even the slightest breeze of chilled air from the large hole before them. 
Listening in on their conversation, first Aiz, then the others, rose one by one with their weapons readied. 
“You sayin’ somethin’s up?” Bete mused, staring at the dark hole. 
“No idea…but I wouldn’t think Zeus Familia to be one for exaggeratin’ things,” Gareth replied as he adjusted his helmet. 
It was evident from everyone’s faces that this wasn’t something they could just ignore. 
“…” 
Just as a strange feeling of tension began to brew within the party, Aiz remembered something. 
What someone had said to her some twenty days ago up on the twenty-fourth floor. 
—“Aria, go to the fifty-ninth floor. 
—“Things are getting interesting right now. Should answer a lot of your questions.” 
That was what that redheaded non-human woman had told her. 
That there was something down there on the fifty-ninth floor. 
Something she sought. 
As she stood before the hole that led to the very depths of the earth, she unconsciously adjusted her grip on the handle of her sword. 
The crystal hanging from its chain around her loin guard gave off a faint glow, almost as though humming to life. 
“Wh-what do you think we should do, Captain?” 
“…The salamander wool should prove fine. We leave in three minutes.” Finn gave his thumb a little lick. His gaze was still sharp as he took in the tunnel before them. 
The rest of the party quickly finished up their preparations, bringing their moment of rest to a close. Then, equipped with their weapons and reestablishing their formation, they approached the giant hole. 
“Strange. It’s not cold at all…” Tiona observed as Raul and the other supporters lit their portable magic-stone lanterns to ward off the enveloping darkness. 
“…In fact, I would almost say it is…muggy,” Lefiya finished her sentence, the inklings of sweat dotting their skin. 
None of them knew what to say about this unexpected humidity, and a vague apprehension shushed the group. They continued down the long, long staircase to the floor below, senses keen to even the slightest noise. 
Clink, clink. 
Their footsteps echoed throughout the stairwell. 
Farther and farther they descended into the darkness. 
Toward a light at the end of the tunnel. 
“Finn, this is…” Riveria began. 
Finn nodded at the voice of the high elf from behind him. “Indeed. From here on out, we enter a land that no one, not even the gods themselves, have witnessed—the unknown.” 
And with that, they reached the light. 
Descending the last stair, the group stepped out onto the fifty-ninth floor and into the unknown depths. 
“?” 
They found themselves at a loss for words as they took in the scene before them. 
There were no glacial streams. 
No soaring mountains of ice. No frozen rivers of blue. 
No. Reflected in their eyes were masses upon masses of the strangest plants and vegetation they’d ever seen, a landscape altogether divergent from the floors above. 
“A…jungle?” Tione gazed around at her surroundings in wonderment, still gripping her Kukri knives. 
This room, even bigger than the fifty-eighth floor above their heads, overflowed with green trees and vines. Immediately in front of them was a forest of soaring trees. At their feet were a lush green bed of grass and trembling rings of richly colored, poisonous-looking flowers. It was an enclosed room with four far-off greenish walls towering high, and all shapes and sizes of flower buds dangled from the greenery. 
“Is this like the…twenty-fourth floor…?” Lefiya murmured, her voice trembling as she hugged her staff to her chest. 
Even Bete narrowed his eyes as he looked out across the spectacle. The sight closely resembled the pantry on the twenty-fourth floor after it had been taken over by violas and become a plant. 
Aiz was quiet as she gazed across the landscape. Meanwhile, Raul raised his gaze from among the flustered supporters. 
“Do you…hear that?” 
A strange noise was coming from the floor’s center. 
It sounded like something chewing. A crumbling noise followed by an occasional high-pitched, trembling voice. 
As the mysterious noise continued, obscured deep within that dense jungle, all eyes of the frozen party went to their prum leader. 
Spear in hand, Finn gave the order: 
“Forward.” 
That was all it took for the group to move. 
Bete and Tiona took the lead as they made their way along the jungle’s one road, almost like a pathway carved through the trees. 
Everyone’s eyes shifted back and forth from one tree to the next, keeping watch lest something spring forth. Lest they lose their wits. 
A phosphorescent glow shone down on them from the ceiling some ten meders above their heads. This tiny glimpse of the Dungeon walls peeking out from so much green thickness was all they had to remind them that this strange floor was even in the same labyrinth they’d come to know. 
Minutes passed as they continued through the trees, the ever-loudening sound in front of them drawing them forward. 
Then, all of a sudden, the jungle disappeared around them, opening up to reveal— 
“…What…is that?” Tiona asked as she readied her Urga. 
It was a large, open hall of ashen earth, devoid of trees. 
And at the center of that barren wasteland was a multitude of caterpillars and violas. 
It was a nauseating, gut-wrenching amount, and they were all gathered around something—a woman with a giant plantlike lower half. 
“Is that one of those crystal-orb monsters?” Gareth asked, wrinkles forming in his cheeks. 
“Has it…absorbed a titan alm?” Riveria added, identifying the large, vegetative monster that called the deep levels its home. Known as the Corpse Flower King, it preyed at will upon adventurer and brethren alike. 
The caterpillars were extending tonguelike organs from their mouths, offering up the vivid magic stones at their tips to the female body of the titan alm. The violas, too, had opened their giant, gaping jaws to reveal the magic stones in their mouths. 
The woman fed upon the stones with fervor. 
Her body very much resembled the female caterpillar they’d encountered up on the fiftieth floor. As its countless tentacles devoured the vibrantly colored offerings, the caterpillars and flowers, now devoid of their magic stones, rotted and turned to ash, one by one. 
“You’re kidding! It’s already gobbled up that many monsters?” Tsubaki’s right eye widened as she took in the monstrous pile of ash, almost like salt, around the creature. 
It was then that Lefiya and the others noticed it. 
The ashen ground they were standing upon at that very moment was actually the countless carcasses of monsters turned to ash and piled up beneath them. 
“Shit…!” Finn’s face skewed as the rest of the party trembled in fear. 
“An enhanced species…?!” The tattoo on Bete’s face twisted with his grimace. 
“?” 
And Aiz. 
She could hear her own heartbeat. 
It was screaming, so loud her ears felt liable to burst. 
Her blood was churning at the sight in front of her. 
Only then. 
Something changed. Just as Finn and the others were about to respond. 
“? Ah.” 
The faintest noise rose from the creature’s grotesque head as it raised its upper body. 
Only halfway through its feast on the surrounding monsters, it began to writhe like a worm. 
“? Ahhhh.” 
The repulsive-looking upper half still trembling and squirming, its flesh suddenly bulged. 
She released a sigh of ecstasy. Finn and the others watched in amazement as the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen was born, emerging from all that ugliness like a butterfly from its cocoon. 
“? AhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” came the scream of pleasure. 
The adventurers had to slam their palms over their ears at the overwhelming, high-frequency sound waves that threatened to rupture their eardrums. 
The woman, having risen from that husk of flesh, bent backward and directed her eyes to the heavens. 
Long glossy hair descended along the curve of her back. 
Covering her supple arms, her curvaceous chest, and waist was a gown of brilliant colors. 
The gorgeous face of the woman gazing up at the ceiling, still shuddering with pleasure, could rival even a goddess’s. 
She was green. Every inch of her, from her hair to her skin. 
Everything apart from her eyes, which were pools of gold that lacked pupils and irises. 
It wasn’t only her upper, human half that changed, either. Her abnormal lower half also underwent a transformation, now sporting enormous petals and a multitude of tentacles. 
From the middle of that fifty-ninth floor, the gargantuan half-monster, half-goddess let out its first cry. 
“Wh-what is that thing?!” Tione groaned, still holding her ears against the creature’s raucous cries. 
But no one knew what it was, even as it continued its song of rapture. All anyone could do was look on in horror. 
“…No way,” Aiz said from among the din. 
Forgetting to cover her ears, she simply stood there in blank astonishment. 
Her lips were trembling, her ears buzzing, the rapid churning of her blood having reached its peak. 
There was no way. Could that…? Could it possibly…? Could it really be—?! 
The questions ran through her head one after another, her body swaying in resonance with the blood pounding through her veins. 
Could she be feeling the same thing? Could she? 
“She” turned away from the ceiling, head swiveling on her neck as she directed her eyes toward Aiz. 
“Aria—! Aria!!” she shouted, her voice filled with joy. 
Again and again, that strange, abnormal creature screamed the name. 
And when Aiz’s eyes met those golden ones, she knew. 
Her body froze in terror as her trembling lips parted. 
“A…spirit?!”