CHAPTER 10
THE WHITE MAGIC PALACE
The White Palace.
That is what the thirty-seventh floor is called. The walls are a strange milky white and the scale of the maze is infinitely grander than the floors I’ve been to before. All the passageways and rooms are huge, easily ten meders across in most places. The ceilings are no joke, either, although I can’t see how high they are thanks to the darkness.
The Ring Walls are especially distinctive.
In the center of the floor there’s a staircase leading to the next floor, and five rings resembling huge castle walls surround it as if to protect the imperial throne of the staircase. This layout doesn’t exist on any other floor. Adventurers must make their way through the intricate mazes between the walls, or else go up and down countless times as they head for the central staircase.
I wasn’t exaggerating when I said all of Orario could fit in here.
Many parts of the floor are still unexplored and unmapped, and they say that if you get lost in here you’ll never get out. That perfectly describes our current situation. We’ve got to break out of this unbelievably huge White Palace.
We must escape this maze of horror.
“SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”
A robust arm covered in blue scales flashes a blade.
The lizardman warrior thunders threateningly as I narrowly dodge its powerful attack, which has trimmed several white hairs off my head and left me drenched in cold sweat.
The lizardman elite.
As its name suggests, the monster is a higher-rank version of the lizardmen that appear in the Colossal Tree Labyrinth. Its abilities are on a totally different level. The scales are blue rather than red, and as hard as armor, leaving no offensive or defensive vulnerability whatsoever. Its hands skillfully wield nature weapons—two axes made of a milky white stone that resembles bone. Although their threat level varies across individuals, the Guild rates them between Level 3 and Level 4. They specialize in close combat.
“GRUO!”
“JAAAA!”
The battlefield is a square room. I face two enemies.
Since she can’t yet move with total freedom, Lyu is forced to kneel behind me as the rear guard, waiting on the sidelines of the battle. I take on both lizardmen at once, protecting her at the same time.
I can sense my enemies’ potential viscerally, but I’m careful not to get pulled into an unnecessary counterattack. Taking an oblique stance, I hold the longsword in my right hand and gradually inch backward, tolerating the lizardmen’s attacks as stoically as I can. I feel Lyu’s sky-blue eyes watching over me from behind. I focus my attention on my enemies’ movements, saving up my strength.
Lyu has imposed a condition on my advance through this deep level.
I must prioritize the conservation of energy above all else. It is essential that I avoid wasteful movements, and whenever possible kill monsters with one strike.
In other words, a single lethal blow.
I’ve got to aim for the magic stone in the monster’s chest!
“Yaa!!”
The instant one of the lizardmen gets tired of waiting and raises its stone ax above its head, I transition from defensive position and unleash a lightning attack.
Lunging forward on my left foot, I thrust my right arm forward like an arrow!!
“GAA?!”
The sword of the dead adventurer pierces the center of the monster’s unguarded chest.
I feel the blade striking something hard—the magic stone.
Its eyes bulging, the lizardman convulses and then crumbles in a pile of ash.
“Haaaaaa!”
I turn on the other monster, confused now that it is left alone. Anxious not to let the opportunity slip by, I thrust the sword forward immediately. The tip pierces my enemy’s chest, but…
“?!”
“Gu…GAaa!”
Although blood gurgles from its mouth, the monster does not turn to ash. Instead, it rolls its bloodshot eyes at me menacingly.
I’ve failed to smash its magic stone. My aim was off!
My anxiousness was partly to blame, but more than that, my lack of skill. The longsword is lodged between two scales, and I can’t pull it from the monster’s flesh. I lose hold of it as the lizardman elite thrashes around. Terrifyingly, it charges toward me still pierced by the blade.
Spinning halfway around, it swings its massive tail toward me from the left.
I block with the Goliath Scarf, which is still wrapped around my left arm.
A second later, a numbing shock reverberates from my arm to my brain.
My left arm has become my Achilles’ heel. Even though I blocked the monster’s attack, the pain is so extreme it immobilizes me, leaving me wide open. And a deep-level monster is not about to overlook that opportunity.
It roars in fury and raises its stone ax.
“Oh, no, you don’t.”
The moment before the lizardman splits my head open, a flying dagger stabs it in the right eye.
“GUGAAAAA?!”
“!”
The support came from Lyu.
Gaping in surprise, my next act is entirely reflexive. I pull Hakugen from my hip, swivel toward the writhing lizardman elite, and dive at it.
“?!”
The glittering white longknife pierces its chest.
Stabbed by both a sword and a knife, the lizardman elite finally expires. The dagger and longsword tumble to the ground as it turns to ash.
“Mr. Cranell, more are coming!”
“…?!”
I don’t even have time to take a breath.
Many footsteps are pounding toward us from far down the passageway. There are too many. If we fight here, we’ll be surrounded!
I grimace and wipe away the sweat, forcing my mind to shift from battle mode to escape. I grab the longsword and the dagger off the ground and pass the latter to Lyu. We can’t afford to waste any weapons. I catch up with her, pull her arm over my shoulder, and hurry out of the room.
After we leave the room where the adventurers’ corpses lie, we’re only able to successfully battle monsters for a short time. We use the map to avoid dead ends and head toward a larger passageway, but our first battle lifts the curtain on unending waves of angry monsters.
Since the thirty-seventh floor is so huge, the total number of monsters—that is, the absolute number that can appear here—is extraordinary. Even the intervals are short, giving adventurers no time to rest. The one saving grace is the fact that the monsters are spread out in the overly large maze, but if you have the bad luck to encounter a cluster of them, you end up in the situation we’re in now.
“OOOOOOO!”
“!”
We’re being pursued by lizardman elites, skull sheep, and lots of other monsters. One fight calls forth the next. One battle cry invites another. If a battle lasts more than a few seconds, the deep-level monsters detect it with their keen senses and gather around the prey.
Lyu told me to avoid fighting as much as I could…but it’s impossible!
We’ve already fought fourteen battles. I stopped counting how many monsters we faced after thirty.
Is this par for the course in the deep levels?
This must be a joke!
“—OOO!”
A loup-garou wielding a stone-sword nature weapon lopes across my field of vision.
It’s a medium-category monster whose short trunk measures from 120 to 130 celches. I almost mistook it for a cobalt at first glance, but it has the head of a wolf rather than a dog. Compared to the low-level monsters in the upper zones, it’s far more sinewy, and capable of violent attacks out of scale with its small body.
If animal people on the surface get wind of a werewolf-type monster, they’ll beat it to a pulp. That’s because they’ve caused more than their share of tragedy by invading the surface. Most of the time when a village gets ransacked on a moonlit night, it’s by a pack of these loup-garous. Even I used to shiver at stories of these beasts when I was a child.
Werewolves in particular loathe these warlike wolf-monsters as if they were vipers!
“AOOOOO!”
“WOOOOF!”
“…?!”
One kicks off the wall and attacks me from overhead, while another creeps along the ground to attack my feet. Wielding milky white stone blades that look like knives, the two wolves attack wildly at the same time. Sparks fly from the longsword I swing overhead even as my left thigh is lightly ripped. I’m suddenly on the defensive thanks to their extreme agility, which is outstanding even compared to other deep-level monsters. Landing a single deadly blow on their chests is out of the question.
Cutthroat close combat.
That’s another reason the thirty-seventh floor is called a “palace.”
In addition to the undead, the place is full of warrior-type monsters.
From the lizardman elites to the loup-garous and spartois, all of them are specialists in hand-to-hand combat who bring brute strength, agility, and mastery of nature weapons to their fights. They’ll plunge even adventurers who excel at skill and tactics into a bloodbath.
They are true guardians of the palace.
And this is the kind of place Aiz and her familia members spend their time in…!
They’re fast and strong.
Way faster and way stronger than any monster in the lower levels.
It’s not that I couldn’t beat them one by one. Their biggest weapon is their numbers.
It takes at least three blows to kill one—one to fend off the attack, another to push them off balance, and a third to bury the knife in their chest. Only then do I finally bring down one monster. And once that’s over, another three are crushing the last one’s corpse underfoot to attack me.
This is impossible—I can’t kill them all!
“Mr. Cranell, over here!”
Perhaps sensing I’ve reached a limit, Lyu shouts urgently to me.
No sooner has she done so than a dagger passes through one of the loup-garou’s ears and pierces its skull. Taking advantage of the moment, I spin around at full force. Dripping sweat as a lizardman’s stone sword grazes my back, I race to Lyu’s side.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooo!”
Naturally, packs of monsters are also chasing us.
We can never fully escape. We’ll be crushed. What in the world could Lyu have in mind?
She’s at the end of the passage as I retreat pitifully toward her. Now she turns the corner and hides.
“We have no choice…I’m using this,” she whispers.
I look at her questioningly.
She reaches down to her hip and pulls a brilliant red stone from her pouch. I realize with a start that I’ve seen one of those before.
“Mr. Cranell, fire please.”
—An Inferno Stone!
The moment she pokes her head around the corner and throws the stone at the approaching monsters, I reflexively raise my right hand.
“Firebolt!”
As I release the electrical fire, Lyu reaches around the corner and pulls me back with her slender arm—that is to say, her Level 4 arm.
Ignited by the electrical fire, the Inferno Stone sets off a tremendous explosion.
“~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~?!”
The shock waves and back draft reach us around the corner, drowning out the screams of the monsters.
When the waves of heat finally recede, I timidly peer around the corner and see, beyond the lifting smoke…a cracked hallway littered with the corpses of monsters killed by the explosion.
“…Ms. Lyu, you just used…”
“Yes, an Inferno Stone I confiscated from that dwarf.”
Shaking from the stink of burned flesh, I nervously look back at Lyu. She’s frowning.
We’re talking about the incident on the twenty-seventh floor when I first made contact with her.
Lyu was stealing something from the vanquished dwarf, who was a friend of the tamer called Jura. I realize now it must have been an Inferno Stone, which they used to destroy the floor.
“I never guessed the Inferno Stone I stole from Jura’s crew would save us…”
As she notes this terrible irony, Lyu for once can’t hide her hatred. Although she said she didn’t have a choice, I get the sense that her feelings are complicated.
In any case…the explosion seems to have stemmed the tide of monsters. Most likely it wiped out any that were near us. The passageway is suddenly quiet.
“…How many Inferno Stones do you have left?”
“Five.”
In other words, we only have five more outs from tight spots…
I can’t think of anything to say. Partly, I’m silent out of helplessness.
“Mr. Cranell, I need a little time. I’m going to do some mapping.”
“Okay…”
“Please stand guard.”
Lyu peers warily around, then sits down in the middle of the shattered passageway and takes out the map. Dipping the feather pen—a magic item called a Blood Feather that allows the use of blood in place of ink— into one of her wounds, she picks up where the interrupted map left off. As a result of getting into so many battles, we’ve strayed far from the part of the maze the deceased adventurers noted down. Lyu’s hand never pauses, as if the complex route we took is imprinted in her mind.
“You can even make maps…?”
“Simple ones. I’m nowhere near as good as specialized thieves and cartographers.”
I could never pull off what this second-tier elf does with such ease.
…I’ve been depending on her.
Far from protecting her, I’ve been letting her rescue me from the start. Honestly, I can’t even imagine where I’d be if she wasn’t by my side.
As I watch her draw the red line with perfect accuracy, I drop to the ground with a thud.
I can’t hide it. This series of battles has completely drained whatever energy I’d regained. How will I ever get through the deep levels like this…?
“Mr. Cranell, you’re still doing unnecessary things. Try to be more efficient.”
“…”
Lyu is still working on the map. She doesn’t even raise her head as she offers this cool advice. My face grows instantly hot—from shame and regret.
“I know, I know! But I can’t!”
I forget our surroundings and shout my answer.
“The whole situation is impossible! The monsters are so strong and fast! The more upset I get the less I can fight!”
I cover half my face with my right hand, drowning in irritation and despair. Lyu looks up silently.
“If things go on like this…”
I won’t be able to protect myself or Lyu…!
“…I’m sorry.”
I end my tirade with a pitiful whispered apology. Then I slump on the ground and groan.
As I’m staring at the ground with a bitter frown…Lyu finally speaks.
“Mr. Cranell. You are not acting like an adventurer.”
Her voice hasn’t changed at all, but her words are totally out of place.
“Huh…?”
“You’re doing a good job. From your perspective, this is a completely unknown world. It’s natural for you to be confused and unable to perform well. Even if you’re Level Four now, that’s still true beneath the surface.”
“…!”
“If you were a normal adventurer you would be screaming that I’m being absurd right now.”
She’s not blaming me, and she doesn’t sound hopeless. She’s simply telling me in a calm voice what she’s thinking.
“You’re too hard on yourself. That’s what I meant when I said you’re not acting like an adventurer.”
“Ah…”
“If you gain a bit more confidence…you’ll be a much stronger adventurer.”
She smiles faintly. I can’t take my eyes off her face, which is clearly visible even in the darkness.
She sets the feather pen down, hesitates for a moment, then squeezes my pinkie.
“Watch your enemies well and gauge them. Deep-level monsters are highly intelligent. Most likely they will execute tactics much more advanced than monsters you’ve encountered previously.”
“…Okay.”
“Your right arm tends to float up when you get flustered. Relax your shoulder and aim for the magic stone.”
“…Okay.”
“Rely on me in the rear guard more. Right now, I’m your party.”
“…Okay!”
Encircling someone’s pinkie with your pointer finger and thumb must have a meaning among elves. I feel calm now, like the tide has receded. Lyu’s words penetrate straight into my brain. The warmth of her fingers clears the haze from my heart.
“Do you remember what I told you aside from aiming for the magic stone?”
“…Use the terrain?”
She nods and looks me straight in the eye.
“We’ll fight again now, and I want you to remember everything I just told you. You can do this.”
Even in our dire situation, Lyu’s words are like magic. They open my eyes to many things. They make me remember many things.
I need to become aware of myself again.
I may have changed when I met the Xenos and when I lost to my greatest rival, but that doesn’t mean I’m a full-fledged adventurer. However much I’ve grown, however much my status has risen, I’ve still only been doing this for five months. I’m still a novice. There’s so much I can’t do yet.
I’m still totally green.
But the flip side is that I can become stronger.
Even starting now. There’s no limit.
This woman really is amazing…
It was the same when we were confronted with the dead adventurers.
She wiped away my anxiety and guided me forward.
I’m determined to become stronger so I can protect this guide of mine from the deep levels.
“…You’re like my teacher, aren’t you?”
Before I realize, I’ve spoken the words on my mind.
Of course, I’m studying under Aiz, whose fighting style mine resembles, according to a certain first-tier adventurer. Still, I can’t help smiling at the relationship that might have existed.
“…That might have been a possibility.”
Lyu widens her eyes just the slightest bit and smiles at me.
Our situation is still as awful as ever. Nevertheless, we’re able to smile at each other.
“Mr. Cranell, let’s get ourselves back in shape.”
After a moment, Lyu switches gears and puts on her usual well-defended expression.
I nod. My self-doubt has cleared, but I won’t be able to beat monsters in my current state of exhaustion. Glancing around warily, Lyu puts away the map and takes out something else: a vial with garish purple liquid sloshing revoltingly inside.
“Drink this.”
“…”
It’s one of the potions of undetermined vintage that we got from the dead adventurers.
I sweat as the solemn Lyu holds out the weirdly discolored liquid to me.
Do I really have to drink this?
“This is no time to demand perfection. Drink.”
She speaks curtly, as if she’s read my mind. She sounds just like a strict, serious teacher who never bends the rules…
“It doesn’t matter if it’s spoiled.”
“Ms. Lyu…”
“It will still work…I think.”
“Ms. Lyu?!”
I can’t help protesting when she lets slip that disturbing “I think.”
But it looks like I’ll have to drink up. After all, Lyu has to save her recovery magic for emergencies. I’m sure lots of adventurers lost in dungeons or ruins have eaten rotten food or used spoiled items to survive…!
I drink the spoiled potion, grimacing as I do.
“Blech…!”
The tingling in my mouth and the disgusting smell invading my nose make my voice sound weird.
The potion is sweet. But after the sweetness comes bitterness…!
With a bizarre gurgling sound, my internal organs start to move around strangely. I double over, gripping my stomach to somehow tolerate this sensation.
“You should be fine because of your immunity…”
Come on, don’t say “should”…!
Tearing up at Lyu’s words, I drink down the last dregs of potion. Fortunately, it doesn’t give me diarrhea or make me vomit.
Abilities, or I should say adventurers, are amazing…
And hey…my strength is back.
Physically, I feel better than I have since coming to the Dungeon, although my nerves are frayed from anxiety and overstimulation. But even my wounds close up when I sprinkle a few drops of the potion on them.
I can fight again.
“Let’s go.”
“Right.”
We quickly check over our equipment and stand up.
Keeping an eye out for danger, we dispose of the magic stones in the corpses of monsters killed in the explosion in order to prevent them from being used to create an enhanced species. We pick up the singed daggers, too, although one is no longer usable.
In contrast to the potion and food, the equipment we got from the skeletons is in excellent condition. When upper-tier adventurers go into the deep levels, they take with them weapons and protective gear forged by High Smiths that can withstand long use with almost no deterioration in performance.
Gripping the longsword in my right hand, I lend Lyu my shoulder and start walking, my side armor clanking.
The White Palace maze is peaceful.
It’s easy to overlook because each passage is so enormous, but the number of intersections and staircases going up and down is also immense. The sheer number of choices we have to make reminds me of Daedalus Street. In that sense, the structure of the thirty-seventh floor may be strangely orthodox.
Unlike the Colossal Tree Labyrinth and the Water Capital, this is a genuine maze. It’s a chalky labyrinth designed to confuse and trap thieves who invade the royal palace of the Dungeon.
“Ms. Lyu…are there any especially dangerous monsters on the thirty-seventh floor?”
“Right now every monster on this floor is a threat to us…but if I had to name two, I’d say the spartois and the peludas.”
We’re whispering back and forth as we advance cautiously down a dimly lit passage. In contrast to the battles of a few minutes earlier, the maze is quiet now. I don’t sense any monsters nearby or hear any battle cries. We haven’t had any encounters since we used the Inferno Stone. But even as we pray for this to continue, both of us know it’s only the calm before the storm.
“Rare monsters aside, spartois are the most skilled of all warriors when it comes to close combat. They’re especially dangerous because they’re spawned with weapons made of bone. Some individuals even carry javelins.”
Still keeping watch for monsters, I compare what Lyu is telling me with the book knowledge I already have. To get through the deep levels, I’ve got to root out all sources of anxiety in my mind. That’s why I asked Lyu about the scariest monsters.
“Peludas attack with poison. Most likely the immediate cause of death for those adventurers we found in the room…was poisoned darts from a peluda.”
“…!”
“If we run into a spartoi or a peluda, we should flee if at all possible.”
I tuck Lyu’s words away in my heart even as I fight back the panic they stir up.
I’ve made a point of asking Lyu about her experiences when she was an adventurer, and she’s told me as much as she could. Greedily, desperately, I’ve stored it away, even as I look around with increased wariness.
The White Palace…
I turn the name over in my mind, thinking how apt it is.
The slightly repellant milky white color of the walls and floors lacks the splendor of a palace, but the incomprehensible scale is definitely fitting for a natural castle. The “palace” of the underworld may be just the right name for it.
As for the difficulty of conquering this White Palace, the Guild has set the requirement for the thirty-seventh floor at Level 4. When I think about that, I realize that Lyu and I do meet that standard. Plus, Bors said that Lyu was at the upper limit of Level 4. She herself told me Astrea Familia had made it to the forty-first floor. Our ability definitely isn’t unsuited to this floor.
That is, if we weren’t in our current situation.
“Ms. Lyu. Do parties of two ever explore the deep levels…?”
“Not likely. Aside from Ottar, the Warlord, even first-tier adventurers wouldn’t come down here solo. It’s not that kind of place.”
“…Not even Loki Familia?”
“It’s probably different if you’re Level Six…but you’ve got to have at least a three-man cell—no, a four-man cell. Plus you’d want a healer.”
Lyu sounds like she’s anticipating what I want to ask.
Even Loki Familia and Freya Familia can’t afford to be careless down here.
Not even the Sword Princess.
I feel as if my lungs just froze.
“Mr. Cranell, do you have a general picture of the thirty-seventh floor?”
Lyu cuts into my silence with a question of her own. I nod, mentally unfurling the map of the deep levels that I received permission to view with Eina.
The perfect analogy for the thirty-seventh floor is a box with a round cake inside.
The box is the floor itself, and the cake is the maze—that is, the White Palace where we currently are. The palace is made up of the five Ring Walls. The walls are numbered, starting with the First Wall in the center, the Second Wall beyond that, and so on. The mazes between the walls have names, too.
The centermost area inside the First wall is called the Throne Zone, and that’s where floor bosses appear. Moving out from there is the Knight Zone, the Warrior Zone, the Soldier Zone, and the Beast Zone. Despite these names, there isn’t a big difference in the type of monster likely to appear in each part of the maze. However, since the area grows smaller and the maze more intricate as you move inward, the number of encounters and surprise attacks also naturally increases. In addition, data suggests that battles are more intermittent in the outer rings, although that isn’t necessarily the case since monsters can move from one area of the maze to another.
The all-important staircase to the thirty-sixth floor is outside the Fifth Wall, on the far southern tip of the “box.” In other words, we have to get out of the White Palace.
On the route we plan to take, there’s no chance we’ll run into the floor boss at the center of the maze. That’s the one saving grace in our current horrible situation. If we had to take on a floor boss, well…I might lose heart altogether.
“This is…”
We run into a number of monsters wandering the maze, and I fight them according to Lyu’s instructions. We’re still not on the route the other adventurers had noted on the map. Eventually, we enter an open space. An enormous wall towers before us.
“…A Ring Wall.”
Even without having seen the real thing before, I know at a glance what it is.
Within the milky tint of the maze, the curved wall is a pure, unclouded white. You could easily mistake it for clear ice—no, for white crystal. It looks a bit like the Great Wall of Sorrows on the seventeenth floor, where the Goliath appears, although this one is incomparably bigger.
The wall extends as far as I can see to the left and right. It’s so perfectly uniform it hardly seems like a natural structure. Because of the darkness, I can’t tell how high it is. But I’m sure that if I searched all the countries in the world, I would never find a castle wall this monumental.
“…No question about it, this is the Third Wall.”
Lyu’s words shake me out of my daze. Still leaning on my shoulder, she squints up at the magnificent wall.
“Each of the Ring Walls has a subtly different color. The only one that’s pure white is the Third Wall, in the middle of the five rings.”
She sounds very confident. At her urging, we walk up to the wall. She quietly presses her palm against its surface, ignoring my terror at being so close to a maze wall, which is an extremely risky place for surprise attacks since a monster could spawn at any moment.
With her hand still against the wall, she moves along it.
“…It’s very slight, but the wall is curving inward toward us.”
“…! That means…!”
“Yes, we’re between the Third Wall and the Second Wall…in other words, in the Warrior Zone.”
If the wall is curving toward us…that means we’re encircled by it.
We just figured out where we are.
The Warrior Zone at the approximate midpoint of the White Palace!
“I’m not yet sure of our exact location…but it’s incredibly important that we were able to figure out the general area of the thirty-seventh floor we’re in.”
I nod, unable to hold back my excitement. My eyes meet Lyu’s sky-blue ones, which give me the go-ahead to start moving along the wall. We have no time to celebrate. We have to find another passage before the monsters realize we’re here.
All we know so far is our general location. We still can’t pinpoint this exact spot.
All the same, it’s a step forward. It’s progress.
A beam of light has shone into the endless expanse of the maze. That’s what I try to make myself believe. As I step forward, I tell myself this path leads toward hope.
We can survive…we can return to the surface! Our party of two…!
I focus my energy into the shoulder that is supporting Lyu’s slender form.
The discrepancy between the two adventurers’ outlook had not faded.
How much can I help him grow before I’m gone?
Lyu was deep in thought as she stole a glance at Bell’s face, which was filled with renewed hope that they would return alive. Although he did not know it, she was mulling over what would happen after her life was offered up in sacrifice.
It’s poor strategy to expect to sacrifice one’s life from the start, but…I need to be ready for that moment whenever it comes…If I hesitate, both of us will die.
Like Bell, Lyu prayed that she would survive their ordeal. Of course she did. There was no harm in both of them returning alive.
But she also knew that the deep levels were unlikely to allow them that luxury.
Although their equipment had improved a bit through their desecration of the dead, their situation was still far from solid. After all, why should the Dungeon let weak, injured prey escape its jaws?
She expected circumstances would force her hand.
Undoubtedly, a situation would arise in which she must sacrifice herself.
Before that happens…I have to teach him how to survive.
Lyu planned to pass on all she knew to Bell in the time she had left.
Even after escaping the deep levels, he had to be able to survive alone until help arrived.
It was a good sign that he was seeking information from her so actively. Plus, because the Dungeon forced him to put what he learned into practice immediately, he was absorbing everything extremely quickly.
He’s stronger now. Much stronger than before. Even if he’s struggling right now…as he gains experience, the unknown will become known and he’ll be able to adapt.
She didn’t doubt that.
He really was stronger now. So much so that she hardly recognized him.
He had pushed the Juggernaut into a corner all by himself. A number of factors had contributed to his success, but nevertheless, it was an extraordinary achievement.
The sight of him fighting so hard against despair and ultimately breaking through had given her hope. She had seen the light of white flames that must never be allowed to die out.
…Even now he is pursuing his ideal. He is pursuing a future in which both of us survive.
The boy was brilliant. So brilliant he blinded her.
Once she, too, had shared his unclouded gaze. She had pushed forward believing in a better future.
She doubted that she was capable of pursuing an ideal anymore.
Rejoice, Kaguya…I’m like you now.
As she walked forward through the dim, milky white maze, Lyu cast a self-mocking smile at her departed friend.
Visions of those days rose in her mind.
As the adventurer Lyu looked ceaselessly around for monsters, the part of her that was already cut free from the present soared into the past.
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