Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka Gaiden – Sword Oratoria - Volume 7 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE TO BE YEARNED AFTER 

Loki Familia put Daedalus Street behind them. 
Aiz and the others had come and gone with the rest of Orario none the wiser—barely anyone was even aware of their presence, let alone the battle that had taken place underground in Knossos’s hidden passageways. They emerged from the other side with no small amount of injuries and new sacrifices to bear. 
The bodies they were able to recover from the labyrinth’s halls were buried in the First Graveyard, otherwise known as the Adventurers Graveyard, in the city’s southeastern district. Their gravestones would join those of the other adventurers Loki Familia had already lost. Tiona, Tione, Lefiya, and others who had been close with the departed wept for them. For a certain golden-haired, golden-eyed swordswoman, however, tears proved yet impossible, and she cursed her own ineptitude as she offered flowers while mourning for the lost souls of her companions. 
The familia members who had not yet experienced the pang of death had grown few, nearly all of them bore with them the heartache of friends lost. 
And with that anger, they vowed to one day repay the fiends lurking within Knossos in full. 
Though the lingering effects of the retreat were still fresh in everyone’s minds, aside from a certain skirmish, they were able to return to their normal routines, at least for a short time. 
Until, three nights later… 
“Nnnnngah! You can’t tell me you know where the enemy’s lurkin’ and then say I shouldn’t attack yet! That’s just cruel!” 
The voice came from the central tower of Loki Familia’s home, Twilight Manor, where Loki currently had slovenly kicked up her feet on the desk inside her room on the topmost floor. An aura more disconcerting than even her words surrounded her as she glared off into nothing. 
“…And besides that, there’s that key. Oh sure, we can look, but where? We’ve got squat for clues…’cept for ol’ Ishtar, who’s in cahoots with them and all. She our only option…?” 
Considering the assets they had at their disposal, her eyes widened just slightly, and then… 
The goddess heard something. A commotion. 
“…The hell?” 
Straightening up on her chair, she glanced toward the nearby window, only to jump to her feet. She was at the window, eyes opening in startled consternation, then yanking the window open and launching herself from it like some kind of circus acrobat. 
In less than a second, she was on the roof. 
What drew her attention was the Pleasure Quarter to the city’s southeast. 
“Is it…on fire?” 
The night sky was currently stained a brilliant red from the tendrils of flame. 
Loki wasn’t the only one to notice it, either. Civilians had halted throughout the streets and were pointing in the direction of the Pleasure Quarter, and even the windows of Twilight Manor were popping open to reveal the half-shocked faces of Loki Familia members. 
Loki could smell it—the harbinger of war. 
She knew then and there that this was no ordinary accident. 
“A dispute of some kind? Someone stormin’ the lady’s keep?” 
Ishtar Familia was a prominent familia even among the large organizations of Orario. Though her actual military strength was not too impressive, she had the entirety of the Night District under her control. No one would just up and attack her with no regard for the consequences. 
Or, at least, only very few people could manage that, Loki Familia included. 
“What kinda idiot…?” 
But even as the words left her lips, she realized she already knew. 
A single name rose to the back of her mind. 
“Don’t tell me…Freya?!” 
In an instant, her expression twisted from bewilderment to sheer revulsion. Given Ishtar’s open stance of hostility against the other goddess, it could be none other. Loki gave the burning city district a tch as she glared into the night sky. 
“That idiot’s on the move…” 
“Th-there’s no way…?!” 
The world around her had been transformed by flames, screams, and the furtive shadows of incoming assailants. Ishtar found herself at a loss, leaning out over the balcony of her room in her familia’s home in mind-numbing shock. 
She knew who this was. Only Freya Familia could have launched an attack like this on the Pleasure Quarter. 
—She attacked without even waiting for me to strike? 
—And without a single warning! Preposterous! This is an atrocity! 
She could hear all her preparations, all her plans, coming to nothing—unraveling in an instant. 
Reinforcements! I need to get word to Kali in Meren…! But no, the original plan was to launch a pincer attack on Freya’s home! To signal them now would be too late! Then should I escape? To Daedalus Street? And unleash the Bull of Heaven? But…oh…ohhh…ohhhhhhhhhh!! What am I thinking? It’s too late now! It’s too late to do anything!! 
Ishtar’s carefully laid plan relied on her being the instigator. To get word to Kali or escape to Knossos would require her to leave the Pleasure Quarter—impossible now that it had already been surrounded. 
It was too late. There was nothing she could do. 
The moment her enemy had launched a lightning-fast attack, her familia—. 
“Freya…?!” the Queen of the Brothel City hissed with a deep- rooted enmity and bloodshot eyes, digging her fingers into the balcony handrail. 
“Attack anyone who tries to interfere.” 

Meanwhile, along the Pleasure Quarter’s main street. 
The silver-haired Goddess of Beauty walked calmly through the carnage, making her way straight for the temple of Ishtar itself. 
“Ishtar may have a short fuse, but she is no fool. She’s careful, cunning, not likely to instigate a fight if she knows she’s got no chance of winning. From the way she’s been acting, she’s likely to have an ace up her sleeve…” she murmured to herself, gaze rising as her own followers waged war with the Berbera on both sides of her. Her silver eyes stopped when they reached the temple’s balcony and the copper-skinned Goddess of Beauty currently peering over its railing. 
Her features twisted into a chilling smile, cold enough to freeze her alluring enemy in place. 
“But you’ve lost.” 
The true Queen of Beauty was right here. 
Ishtar had tried to snatch away the boy she was after, and Freya answered her with an inferno of rage that rivaled the wrath of Heaven itself and razed the carnal district to the ground. 
Spectating. Trembling. Trampling. 
Though the goddesses played out their respective performances, they shared one common thought between them. 
The turmoil besieging them now had been carefully arranged; each of them had been guided toward their actions, almost like some kind of preestablished script. 
And Loki remembered someone in particular. 
The smile of a certain god rose in her mind. 
 
The center of immoral love was in flames. 
Its Amazonian ladies of the night fell one after another in screams of horror that tore through its streets. In the blink of an eye, the Pleasure Quarter of Orario’s southeastern district, along with its adventurers, fighting beneath the emblem of the warring maiden, was obliterated from the map. 
A certain god narrowed his eyes watching the scene of carnage amid the red embers wafting into the night air. 
“Just how much of this was according to plan?” Behind Hermes, Asfi Al Andromeda asked a question that brought a smile to his lips. “This was your goal, then? The downfall of Ishtar Familia?” she asked again, knowing all too well the evasive nature of her enigmatic patron deity. 
Just as he’d said he would after Ishtar’s name had come up during his investigations with Loki and Dionysus, Hermes had “done his work properly.” The tempest of Ishtar’s jealousy had simply gone too far, and he’d judged her capable of bringing about Orario’s ruin. Thus, he’d set to work in secret, using his connections as a neutral familia, Ishtar’s undiluted rage toward Freya, as well as Freya’s “treasure” to sow the proper seeds. 
Then those seeds had blossomed. 
They gave way to a magnificent, dazzling, sensational bloom of fire and destruction. 
“For your own personal gratification? Or perhaps…a test of sorts?” 
Asfi’s next question was right on the money. 
Hermes just smiled. “Humans…gods…even that one girl; we’re all looking for the same thing. No one is different.” 
The blazing red Pleasure Quarter. 
The spectacle of fire and brimstone as the violent battle ensued. 
And the single boy, fighting on and on in its midst. 
Hermes’s gaze took everything in as he spoke. 
“The world seeks its hero.” 
The One-Eyed Dragon—the last of the Three Great Quests. 
And the equally as formidable menace—the demi-spirit, recently discovered. 
Having left behind the Dungeon, the mother of all this, the darkness now encroached on the city, writhing and squirming as the footsteps of devastation echoed right outside its doors. 
The crisis was already at hand. 
“We still don’t have enough pawns. Yes…we need our Joker,” he murmured, his voice joining the rising embers on the breeze. 
They were all watching the Pleasure Quarter now. 
“A brilliant white light…that can cut through the darkness.” 
The shadowy Labyrinth District and its denizens of the deep. 
“A chiming bell…that will save the chosen ones.” 
The golden-haired, golden-eyed maiden in her soaring tower in the city’s northern district. 
“The last hero…who can bear the Era of Promise on his shoulders.” 
Yes, the gazes of everyone in the entire city had converged on a single battlefield, where the first cries of new warriors ascended to the heavens. 
And in a vague, nebulous, self-righteous, and almost desperate prophecy, Hermes delivered his oracle. 
“For the sake of the world’s deepest, most primordial wish… I will?”