CHAPTER 12
FORLORN HOPE IN THE DUNGEON
The sound of sword fighting was ceaseless.
In the maze shadowed dark as night, countless sparks flew.
The panting of the adventurers intertwined with the battle cries of monsters.
“—!!”
“…?!”
A sword the milky white color of the Dungeon swung down ferociously.
Bell blocked the attack of the skeleton warrior by a hairbreadth.
“Spartois…”
Like the skull sheep, these, too, were skeleton monsters. Their bodies of white bone were Bell’s height or taller. Each one carried a sword or lance of bone, which they wielded murderously. The pack of spartois had surrounded Bell and Lyu along with other types of warrior monsters.
It had been a sudden surprise attack.
Bell and Lyu, who had been watching carefully for signs of monsters, had heard a cracking sound. The fissure had run not along the wall but instead along the floor, spawning spartois from beneath the feet of the flabbergasted adventurers like undead rising from the grave to attack them.
Caught off guard and surrounded, they had been unable to flee. To the contrary, the sound of battle had begun to draw other monsters to them. They were trapped in a net.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
Bell could not conceal his panic as the spartoi lunged at him fiercely, sword in one hand and kite shield–like protector in the other.
This one was stronger than the others Bell had encountered so far. Despite the fact that it lacked skin and muscle, the monster was stronger than a lizardman elite or a loup-garou, and more agile by far than a barbarian. It moved with a skill that brought to mind an adventurer rather than a monster, making Bell realize this was a formidable enemy indeed. When he aimed the sword of the dead adventurer at the magic stone he could glimpse between its ribs, it swiftly countered the would-be lethal thrust with its own bone sword.
He was no match for this level of defense.
His attempts at landing a single deadly blow as Lyu had taught him failed again and again. If Bell were fighting monsters one-on-one, his Level 4 status meant he could win reliably. But this was the Dungeon. Numbers were her greatest weapon. If Bell took too much time fighting one monster, he was soon swamped by several others.
The status required for the thirty-seventh floor was Level 4, and the basic ability rating was D or higher. And that assumed adventurers were in a party. Strangely enough, the feeling Bell was having in the deep levels—that there was a point to these floor standards set by the Guild—was exactly what Welf and the others were experiencing in the lower levels.
I can’t lead its movements…!!
The worst thing was that tactics weren’t working.
By cooperating, the spartois blocked his attempts to limit their movements by leading them where he wanted. They had an outstanding command of battle skills that made use of their various weapons, be they swords, shields, lances, or axes. When Bell tried to advance, he met a shield, and when he tried to retreat, he met a sword. In all his journeys through the upper, middle, and lower levels, he had never encountered a species that worked together so well. The fact that they were fighting in a wide passageway that offered no useful terrain didn’t help, either.
He could not control the battlefield as he wanted.
“Oof…!”
“Ms. Lyu?!”
The spartois were threatening Lyu, too, who was fighting back-to-back with Bell. She was at even greater risk than he since she could not move with full freedom. She was managing to fend off the attacks with her quick-draw skills, but she was unable to avoid them fully, and her white skin bloomed with cuts.
“—Firebolt!”
Unable to hold out any longer, Bell decided to use his magic.
The firebolt hurtled forward, shaving away precious mental strength as it did. His strategy was to blow back enough enemies to break out of the net surrounding them. The decision took courage when the option of conserving his mental strength was also flickering before him, and even Lyu felt it was the right choice.
As long as that monster was not among the pack of enemies.
“What?!”
But no sooner had Bell glimpsed what looked like a black rock peeking out from behind another monster than the electrical fire weakened, just before exploding into its target. The drop was as dramatic as a shell turning suddenly into a bullet.
“Shit—an obsidian soldier?!”
Its distorted form shone glossy jet-black like a precious stone. In the spot where a head would normally be, a purple light glowed eerily like a cyclops eye.
Obsidian soldiers. These rock monsters had bodies made of solidified lava and moved with less agility than warrior monsters; their sole forte was defense. Said to be among the poorest fighters on the thirty-seventh floor, their most distinctive characteristic was their ability to counteract magic. Their obsidian bodies, which were highly valued as drop items, deactivated magic as effectively as amulet stones.
With Bell’s attempt to break through the pack of monsters reduced to merely pushing them back slightly, Lyu furrowed her brows and Bell grimaced. It felt like the Dungeon was using every trick it knew to counter Bell’s growth. Having discovered it could not crush him with brute force, it was now taking advantage of his weaknesses.
The maze had given them a glimpse of an abyss that could not be conquered by ordinary adventurers.
“OROOOOOooon!”
The Dungeon’s barrage continued. A new monster had appeared.
“Peludas?!”
Lyu’s shout sounded very close to a scream.
The monsters had long, thin bodies, like a snake with four legs. Their skin was a nauseating dark green, and their backs were covered with countless spines, like a porcupine. At a glance they resembled lizards, but in fact they belonged to a well-recognized species of dragon.
Peludas…were those the things Lyu mentioned?!
Along with the spartois, they were one of the species she had named as the most dangerous on the thirty-seventh floor. Their special weapon was potent poison.
“You must not allow them to pierce you with their spines!”
The volume of Lyu’s shout communicated the degree of threat well. Bell gaped at the three peludas that had appeared. The spines on their backs quivered as if they were absorbing power, then shot out in unison.
“Ah!!”
Bell pulled Lyu to him as the barrage of spines darted toward them, dashing straight toward a spartoi holding a kite shield. The point of its sword ripped Bell’s skin, but the important thing was that they were able to shelter behind the shield.
The spines collided against the front of the protective gear with a loud rat-a-tat-tat.
At the same time, a pair of bloodcurdling screams split the air.
“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!”
“GE, GUEE—?!”
A lizardman and a loup-garou had been pierced by the poisonous spines. An instant later they toppled over. Their skin turned black, they began to convulse, and blood spewed from every orifice. Even the blood was black. Bell turned white at the sight.
The poisoned spines of a peluda could easily penetrate the defensive ability of even an upper-tier adventurer.
They were incredibly potent as well; even a minor scrape would plunge the unfortunate adventurer into a hell of pain and coughing up blood. The only treatment was a high-quality antidote or detoxifying magic. Given their poorly equipped state, getting shot by one of the spines would spell death for Bell or Lyu.
“Umph!”
As the rain of poisonous spines continued unabated, Lyu broke the spartoi’s arm with pure strength and Bell stole its large shield.
The rapid-fire barrage of spines had thrown the monsters’ “net” into chaos. All Lyu and Bell could do was hunch under the shield like turtles. The only monsters that could keep moving after being shot were the obsidian soldier and the spartois. But with their eye sockets and joints pierced by spines, even the few remaining monsters could not approach Bell and Lyu as they wished.
Rat-a-tat-tat! The shield shook from the pounding of spines against it.
Pressed up against Lyu’s body, Bell gritted his teeth and weathered the storm of spines.
“GOooooooooooooo!”
Perhaps becoming frustrated that their attack was not having its desired effect, or perhaps because they had run out of spines, the peludas turned to another strategy. Befitting their dragon bloodline, the monsters transformed their surroundings into a sea of fire with their scorching breath.
As the flames licked around the adventurers and the undead alike, Lyu thrust her hand into her pouch.
“Mr. Cranell, I’m going to use this!”
She threw the Inferno Stone she had pulled from her bag into the sea of flames. Bell reflexively dropped to his haunches and strengthened his hold on the shield. The next instant, a massive explosion rocked the ground.
“~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ooo?!”
Monsters screamed in their death throes.
Bell and Lyu were blown backward, shield and all, as the spartois and the obsidian soldier exploded into countless shards. The three peludas, too, were swallowed up in the ball of flames.
Bell and Lyu rolled across the floor before finally pulling their battered bodies into an upright position.
“Did that do it…?”
“…At the very least, the monsters nearest to us were taken out.”
Crimson flames illuminated Bell’s face as the shield in his hand crumbled. Flames were still raging in the crater that the explosion had carved out. Countless bones and chunks of obsidian—drop items, it seemed—littered the ground.
Only when he saw the three flaming dragons in the distance did Bell take a breath.
At the very same moment, he heard a dull thud.
A long spine was protruding from his left shoulder.
Lyu froze as Bell looked behind them.
His gaze landed on a monster clinging to the maze wall like a lizard, smoke rising from the back that had just fired a spine.
The fourth peluda.
By the time he realized there had not just been three of them, it was too late.
“!!”
“GUGEEI?!”
Lyu snapped into action and threw her knife.
Pinned to the wall like a scientific specimen with a knife through its magic stone, the peluda collapsed into a pile of ash.
At the same time, Bell collapsed to the ground.
“Mr. Cranell?!”
Even Bell could hear the despair in Lyu’s scream. His pierced left shoulder was distorted by the eddy of poison attempting to invade and rot every organ in his body and destroy him in seconds.
It was leading him toward the same end the dead adventurers had met.
As Lyu dropped to her knees, her face ghostly white, Bell yanked the spine from his shoulder, his eyes bulging.
“Uhh!”
The next moment, he had plunged the knife he held in his right hand into the wound.
This time he was attacking himself. For a moment Lyu questioned his sanity, but then she widened her blue eyes in surprise.
“The knife is stained black…It can’t have…?!”
The sparkling white knife he had sunk into his left shoulder was covered in black liquid.
It was Hakugen, the longknife Welf had made from unicorn horn, a rare drop item. The horn was prized for use in recovery-type items, and had the ability to neutralize many different poisons. It would be logical to expect, then, that Hakugen had antidote properties. Bell had remembered the origins of his knife and swiftly stabbed it into his wound.
Sure enough, the unicorn-horn knife sucked the black poison from Bell’s wound. The sooty black particles gathered at the center of the blade and eventually melted away, purified. As they did, the pain receded from Bell’s body like a wave, reversing his hurtle toward death.
When the knife had finally drawn away all the poison, it glinted in the darkness, having returned to its original sparkling white state.
“Ow…!”
Bell pulled Hakugen from the wound with a sucking sound and collapsed listlessly onto his side. As Lyu looked on in shock, he pressed his right hand, still gripping the knife, to his forehead.
Oh, Welf, Welf…!!
Over and over, he silently called the name of his companion who had made the weapon. If the smith had been here now, Bell would have liked to hug him. He would have liked to rest his head on his chest like a brother and wail pitifully. Because he could not, he murmured his unending thanks to the smith who had saved him from such a close brush with death.
“…Mr. Cranell, let’s get that wound fixed up.”
Having watched Bell shiver for a few minutes, Lyu finally spoke to him in a cool voice. The poison may have been gone, but since blood was still pulsing from Bell’s left shoulder, she made him drink the last of the potion. She had decided that if he didn’t use it now, he might never stand up.
Still flopped sluggishly on the ground, he pressed his hand to the wound and desperately tried to calm his breath. Thankfully, the string of encounters with monsters had ended, and he was able to take time to recover while keeping a watchful eye on the sea of flames.
“…”
As Bell tried to regain his strength, Lyu forced herself to switch gears. Now that they had used up the last of their items, they had to move on. She drew a scroll from her hip—the map they had received from the dead adventurers.
Since she had been marking their route as they advanced, the map was now nearly filled with the complex lines of the maze.
We’ve already come to a number of dead ends…Given Mr. Cranell’s physical condition, we’d better find the main route and fast.
She glanced at Bell, and then back down at the map. Although its previous owner had mapped quite a bit for them, they still did not have a complete grasp on their surroundings. Every time they started down a branch in the road that wasn’t on the map, they would run into a dead end or a pack of monsters and be forced to reverse course.
Given the distance, it’s not a good idea for us to go back to the last side passage we didn’t take. That leaves us with this route marked as being blocked by corpses…
Lyu’s finger traced a line she had not drawn.
Clinging to the path forged by their predecessors was their only choice.
But why did they reverse course on this route…?
The adventurers had been killed by poison. Like Bell, Lyu had decided that was certain. Up till now, she had assumed that they had fallen victim to the potent poison as they were advancing down this last road, and therefore retreated to the small room where she and Bell discovered them.
When she really thought about it, however, she realized that would have been an unnatural thing to do.
If upper-tier adventurers were poisoned and had no way to counteract the substance, would they really leave their course to return to a base far away?
If Lyu were in their situation, she would have continued forward. Without any items, she would be in a race against time with the poison eating at her flesh, so returning to base would be almost the same as cutting off all hope of escape. That was all the truer if she did not expect a rescue party.
She would take a chance on pioneering a way forward to try to find the main route. And assuming that party was made up of upper-tier adventurers capable of making their way here to the deep levels, wouldn’t they bet their lives on that adventure, too?
…Or was there something on this route that forced them to give up…?
A jolt of fear flashed across the back of Lyu’s mind.
“Ms. Lyu, what do we do now…?”
“…We’ll follow the map to the route ahead of us.”
Bell was finally breathing normally again. Lyu answered him curtly as he looked up at her.
No other option existed.
Lyu leaned against Bell’s shoulder, and they began to walk forward again.
“…?”
They had been walking for a while when the passage they were in began to change.
The staircases now led only upward. Unlike before, when each climb had been balanced by an equal descent, they came to one set of stairs after another stretching upward. The thirty-seventh floor did have a multilayer structure, but nevertheless it was unusual to move so consistently upward.
At first Lyu had been puzzled, but with every moment she grew more suspicious.
This terrain…it can’t be…
The staircases were unbroken. They continued up and up.
She felt as if she was being led toward the hangman’s platform or the executioner’s block.
Her suspicion became certain conviction.
A drop of sweat colder than any she had felt since being plunged into the deep levels rolled down her cheek.
—So this is what happened.
It seemed the Dungeon was overwhelmingly bent on killing them.
As Lyu realized where they were and where this route they were taking led, she felt so hopeless she wanted to laugh.
“Ms. Lyu?”
“…I’m fine, I’m fine.”
She took care not to spread her despair to Bell, who had noticed her expression.
It took all she had to keep the hopelessness off her face.
“I figured out where we are.”
“…! Really?!”
“Yes. Please continue along this passage. We should be coming to a large staircase.”
She told him only the facts.
Eventually, as she had said, a large, milky white staircase appeared with irregular distances between each step.
“If we climb these stairs and get past what’s on the other side…we’ll be on the main route.”
Bell’s face brightened at her words. He suddenly began to charge energetically up the stairs. In contrast, Lyu’s mouth tightened as she thought about the single choice she had been forced to give him.
Bell would have done well to think about the situation more carefully.
He should have asked himself why Lyu had been able to figure out their location even though they weren’t on the main route yet. How had she been able to guess when the thirty-seventh floor was as big as all of Orario? The only possible answer was that they had stumbled upon an important point in the maze—or an area that must be regarded with the greatest caution.
But Bell did not realize Lyu remembered this place because it was a danger spot to be avoided at all costs. Only when he mounted the final stair did a terrible shiver run down his spine.
“—”
He was facing an enormous room.
But it was clearly different from the rooms in other areas of the floor.
To start with, there was a gulf of fifty meders between where Bell stood at the room’s entryway and its floor. Far below, he could make out sharp rocks sticking up from the ground, packed as tightly as if an invisible army were holding their spears at the ready. The rocks covered the entire floor. A fall would mean death, even for an upper-tier adventurer.
The sole path across the room was a long bridge that began immediately in front of Bell. It reached far into the dim center of the room, where he could see some sort of large structure. Wavering shadows—most likely monsters—were circling the structure in large numbers. The chorus of battle cries that reached Bell’s ears came from more mouths than he could count, announcing a despair-inducing level of material superiority on the part of the Dungeon.
Standing beside him, Lyu stripped all emotion from her voice as she spoke.
“The Colosseum…this is a place of slaughter where monsters are spawned without limit.”
The Colosseum.
There was only one room of its type known to exist on the thirty-seventh floor.
Although the sprawling space was far larger than any other room on the floor, its exact dimensions were not known. This was because it was so dangerous adventurers had given up on measuring it.
To Bell, it looked about the same size as the cavern on the twenty-fifth floor, or perhaps larger. As elsewhere on the floor, the ceiling was hidden in the darkness, making its height impossible to judge. Air must have been circulating in the room, because a whistling sound like dry, cold wind rushing down a narrow ravine came from the distant, rocky floor. Bell trembled at the scale.
The colossal structure rising like an island in the center of the room was especially noteworthy. It reminded Bell of a certain structure in Orario.
“The Amphitheatrum…?”
The huge round structure looked exactly the same. It threw off a dim phosphorescence so that it seemed to float in the darkness.
Even now battle cries echoed ceaselessly from the milky white form to which the bridge in front of Bell led.
“To be clear, the Colosseum isn’t this whole area—it’s just that structure in the middle. It’s called that because…no matter how many monsters you slaughter, the supply never runs out,” Lyu said.
At her urging, both she and Bell had lain stomach-down on the ground so the monsters wouldn’t notice them.
“In this room, the instant the number of monsters falls, more are spawned from that Colosseum. There is no way to reduce the upper limit. In other words, the supply is infinite.”
“…!!”
“Perhaps you could call this room a miniature version of the Dungeon itself.”
Bell knew about this place.
Eina had told him there was an area in the deep levels where monsters spawned endlessly to maintain a certain predetermined population. But as he looked out on the real thing and heard Lyu describe the reality they faced, he felt despair eating at his heart. Now that he was an upper-tier adventurer, he understood the full meaning of that reality.
Even in the deep levels where the battles came fast and furious, there was always a small break between encounters. But the Colosseum was different. In contrast to ordinary rooms and passageways, there was no end to the monsters no matter how many were killed. The infinite battles continued until the adventurer perished in obscurity.
A “Bottomless Goblet” of monsters.
This was the nickname that trembling, terrified adventurers had given the Colosseum.
“We have come to a danger zone in the thirty-seventh floor that even parties of first-tier adventurers do not dare to approach.”
Bell was dumbstruck by Lyu’s words.
Even first-tier adventurers—even Aiz and her companions—could not enter this place?
It was the deadliest of “dead spots,” on par with or even surpassing in danger the Monster Rex slumbering on this floor.
If they got past this, they would emerge onto the main route.
Bell finally understood the true meaning of the words Lyu had spoken a few minutes earlier.
In order to attain hope, they had to traverse despair as deep as the abyss below them.
He broke out in sweat.
At the same time, he was consumed by an impulse to rip out his hair.
He thought back to the corpses of the adventurers who had died in that little room. The same despair that had broken their spirits now pressed in on Bell. Sweat beaded his forehead. He panted uncontrollably and shifted his eyes restlessly.
“…”
Lyu stole a glance at him. Deep within the torn hood of her long cape, she narrowed her eyes, as if she had made up her mind to take on whatever lay ahead.
“Our only option is to pass through the Colosseum.”
They had moved temporarily away from the room’s entryway, but Lyu’s voice was firm.
“Ms. Lyu, that’s—”
“The fact is, turning around isn’t an option. We simply don’t have the strength or the equipment.”
They were midway up the stairs leading to the Colosseum. Lyu was hurriedly pulling items from her backpack and fidgeting restlessly with them without looking at Bell.
What she said was true.
They didn’t have the energy left to search for another route. At the very least, if they weren’t able to make it to the main route from here, escaping the thirty-seventh floor was extremely unlikely.
To survive, they must pass through the Colosseum towering ahead of them.
“This is the crucial moment…the time to take on the one adventure we cannot avoid.”
She looked up and stared at Bell with her sky-blue eyes.
Bell gulped…then nodded.
Sweat was dripping down his body and his heart was pounding, but he trusted Lyu. She had kept him alive this far. Lyu nodded in response to his naked trust.
“But how can we get past the Colosseum? If we have to take on monsters that spawn infinitely no matter how many we kill…”
“Naturally we avoid all battles. We make our way across the room in secret, without their noticing.”
Lyu paused in her preparatory work. She held a piece of black cloth outstretched between her hands.
“Is that…?”
“Yes. It’s made from skull-sheep robes.”
Bell listened in surprise to Lyu’s explanation. During the course of their battles thus far, Lyu had been carefully selecting drop items and secreting them away in her backpack. The skull-sheep robes were among them.
She had sewn two of the robes together using a third robe torn into strips for thread and a bone needle. It was just big enough to cover both of them.
“…You mean we’re going to use this as camouflage?”
The skull sheep launched their attacks by blending into the dusky darkness that penetrated every corner of the floor. The clandestine movements of the death hermits had given them plenty of trouble on their journey, but now they were going to steal from their playbook. Bell knew from painful experience how well those robes worked. He thought they just might let them deceive the monsters in the Colosseum.
“We’ll mask our scent, too. Please rub yourself from head to toe with the monster organs I’m about to mash up.”
“Bleh…!”
“I understand your apprehension, but you’ll have to put up with it.”
Bell reflexively covered his nose as Lyu held up a bag. The reddish-black substance staining the bottom of the bag was a mixture of barbarian hearts and other monster organs. This drop item was normally used like powerful smelling salts, but even through the tightly closed bag, the horrible smell of the unprocessed ingredients was obvious. It would be hard to tolerate even if it did prevent monsters from sniffing them out. Although tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, Lyu’s face was as blank as a mask.
Nevertheless, to Bell it seemed like the ultimate strategy.
He knew all too well the power of the gray robe. And they’d be eliminating their scent, too. If they just took care to move silently, they should be able to fool the monsters.
“When we got to the Colosseum I realized where we were.”
Lyu had pulled out the map.
“There’s only one Colosseum on the thirty-seventh floor, in the Warrior Zone between the Second Wall and the Third Wall. It’s in the eastern part of that zone.”
She spread the map before Bell, who had gotten down on one knee even as he continued to watch for monsters. Using the blood feather, she drew a large square to indicate the location of the Colosseum.
“There are four doorways in the Colosseum room—north, south, east, and west. The south doorway leads to the main route.”
“So if we can just get to the south side…Oh, but if we don’t know which way is south…”
“There are several warped columns on the northwest side of the Colosseum in the center of the room. I saw them when we were there a minute ago and figured out our orientation. We’re near the northern doorway…which means the south doorway is directly opposite.”
Bell looked at the map. The main route was marked at a slight distance from the Colosseum, and opposite it was the doorway where they now crouched. Lyu had combined what she remembered of the Colosseum with the knowledge sleeping within her to determine the most logical way forward.
Bell was filled with admiration. He couldn’t help staring at the face of this wise elf who had made one good decision after another in a situation that would have broken many a weaker spirit.
“Ms. Lyu, you’re so incredible…”
The words spilled unexpectedly from his lips.
“Mr. Cranell…?”
“Even in a situation like this you stay calm and make the right decision…You’ve come to my rescue so many times. If you weren’t here I’d never be able to get out of the deep levels…”
For just an instant, a guilty look flickered across Lyu’s face as she listened silently. But Bell, who was caught up in regret over his inadequacy, did not see it.
“…Mr. Cranell, please turn your knowledge into wisdom.”
“Knowledge into wisdom…?”
“Yes. If you tie knowledge to action and learn to apply it, you’ll be able to help more people. You’ll become a stronger adventurer.”
Lyu had paused for a moment before speaking. As she looked at Bell, she seemed to be looking at herself on a day long in the past. Her words sounded as if they were rooted deep within her.
Bell nodded gravely, and Lyu flashed him a quick smile.
“Do you remember the layout of the main route and how to continue the mapping?”
“…? Yes…the main route is a large passageway, and as long as you don’t turn down any side roads, you’ll get to the connecting passage…and for the mapping, you convert the units from ten to twenty steps…”
“Excellent.”
Bell thought over what Lyu had taught him. She had instructed him in mapping during their rest stops, albeit hastily. Lyu narrowed her eyes with apparent satisfaction and held out the pouch that had been tied around her waist.
“We have three Inferno Stones left. You take one.”
“But…”
“We don’t know what will happen from here on out.”
Up to this point, Lyu had supported Bell from the rear guard and managed their items. Now she was splitting them up. She wanted to reduce the risk in case of emergency. Each of them had to be able to respond to any situation they fell into.
Bell was dubious, but nevertheless accepted the pouch. After all, Lyu hadn’t said anything he disagreed with. In addition to the Inferno Stone, it held the map with the Colosseum and main route beyond the south side noted on it.
“…”
Bell could not put into words the unease that haunted him. Paying him no mind, Lyu stood up.
“Let’s go.”
Four bridges led to the Colosseum.
They began at the north, south, east, and west doorways and connected to the central structure like a perfect cross. Each bridge was made of milky white stone and measured about six meders across. Needless to say, there were no railings. A misstep would plunge the hapless adventurer fifty meders to the ground.
Instant death awaited on the tips of the countless stone spears.
“…”
His body pressed close to Lyu’s beneath the skull-sheep robe that covered them from head to toe, Bell advanced across the bridge with bated breath.
The real trial would begin when they reached the Colosseum where the monsters skulked. It was impossible to relax. The instant those monsters sensed an invader, Bell and Lyu would be done for. The Dungeon’s infinite material resources would crush them. Of course they were tense. As the stone projectiles covering the floor of the room stared up at them, they slowly moved ahead.
When they looked carefully at the floor, they could make out innumerable writhing forms among the projectiles.
Peludas. Like lizards, they clung close to the rocks, moving around with a slithering sound. This ruled out the option of lowering oneself to the floor and avoiding the Colosseum altogether. A hell of poison and flame awaited anyone who attempted such a strategy.
Bell gagged, having unfortunately glimpsed several skeletons and sets of armor pierced through by the projectiles below the bridge.
In contrast to the central Colosseum, the stone bridge was quiet. But that stillness was a deadly threat to Bell and Lyu.
If they were discovered, their story ended here. They crossed the twisting stone bridge with the utmost care to silence their breath and footsteps. Lyu had poked dozens of holes in the robe with her needle so they could see their way forward, but their narrow view further strained their nerves. They felt as if their very lives were in the hands of this endless journey at a snail’s pace.
Lyu could hear Bell’s uneven breathing.
Bell could feel Lyu’s warm breath caressing his neck.
Suddenly, a handful of small stones fell from the bridge with a clatter. They were chips that had naturally eroded from the structure.
Bell and Lyu froze, holding their breaths.
The noise did not seem to disturb the peludas.
They were okay.
If they had been seen, the monsters would have instantly torn the silence with ferocious howls announcing the pair’s death.
So they were okay.
They were still fine.
Their lives were not yet over.
Bell sent that desperate message to his frozen feet and once again began to move forward.
“That’s…the Colosseum.”
Having neared the end of the seemingly interminable bridge, Bell gulped at the sight of the white stone structure rising up before him. The sheer mass of it was overwhelmingly stately and impressive. The perfectly even circle looked similar in diameter to Babel.
“…Let’s go.”
“…Right.”
At Lyu’s urging, they crossed the remaining stretch of the bridge.
They now entered the outer rim of the Colosseum, which connected to the bridges. Only then was Bell able to see the inner structure of the Colosseum, which had been hidden to his view before.
Like the Amphitheatrum, the inside was shaped like an upside-down cone. There were six enormous plates arranged like steps, and at the very bottom, a round field. In terms of the Amphitheatrum, the former equated to the spectator seating and the latter to the arena where battles took place. The field was at the same level as the stone spears outside the Colosseum.
“…!”
As Bell took in the Colosseum’s structure, he noticed something else. What he saw below him brought home the true meaning of the structure’s name.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The Colosseum was packed with a nauseating number of monsters. But it was not this nightmarish cauldron of monsters that shook Bell to the core.
The monsters were killing one another.
Without a moment’s break, they were roaring in outrage and mercilessly ripping one another to pieces.
“…I’ve heard that aside from the times when someone invades their territory, the monsters in this area are constantly warring among themselves.”
Lyu’s horrified whisper went in one of Bell’s ears and out the other.
In addition to the arena at the bottom, the plates above were also crammed with countless monsters engaged in fierce battle. Near Bell and Lyu in the fifth plate, a pack of lizardman elites was fighting a pack of spartois. The skeleton warriors had the upper hand over the lizard warriors.
At a diagonal beyond them, a barbarian was roaring as it crushed the head of a loup-garou. A fountain of blood spattered the aggressor, making its hair stand on end. Bell could tell at a glance that the huge, powerful monster was an enhanced species. But even that large-category monster was no match for the herd of skull sheep that rushed it from behind. It screamed in agony as they tore it apart.
The second the monsters fell, cracks appeared at various places in the Colosseum.
A motley assortment of monsters was being spawned constantly from the floors of the plates and walls surrounding the arena. Perhaps the best phrase for the cycle of death and birth was “unending replenishment.”
Everything before Bell’s eyes spoke to the uniqueness of this area—to the Colosseum’s danger and heresy.
“…”
Bell covered his mouth with his hand.
It took all his strength to fight back the unease.
This endless repetition of life and death.
Now more than ever before Bell sensed the mystery of the Dungeon.
Or perhaps he had just been reminded of it—of the horrifying power of the supernatural that defied human understanding and imagination.
“Let’s go…we don’t have time to stand around in a daze.”
“…Right.”
The instant this swirling fever of blood thirst turned on them, death was certain. The view before them was enough to drive that point home. Bell nodded faintly in response to Lyu’s whispered words.
Somehow peeling their eyes away from the disturbing tableau, the pair began to move forward. They were at the northernmost edge of the Colosseum, where it connected to the northern bridge. This was the sixth plate, the highest and outermost of all. From here they had to reach the southern edge of the Colosseum on the opposite side. Cutting straight across would be fastest, but descending onto the battlefield of the arena would be suicidal. Instead, they planned to skirt the sixth plate.
To their right, on the northwestern side of the Colosseum, were the warped columns Lyu had mentioned. They looked like a grove of enormous stone projectiles. The sixth plate, which formed the outer rim of the structure in other places, was missing in that spot. The bottom three plates were there, but if they descended that far, the monsters would most likely detect them no matter how clandestine their movements. Everything would be over if the edge of the robe got blown back in the aftermath of a fight.
That meant they had to go east around the sixth plate, or left from where they stood.
The monsters are so close…! It’s like they’re roaring right in our ears!
The aggravating tension was alive and well within Bell. The closer the monsters got, the more strongly he felt he was standing on the border between life and death. Every time a monster passed on the adjacent fifth plate, Bell and Lyu had to freeze.
But fortunately—if that is the right word for it—the Colosseum gave off a horrid smell.
The corpses generated by the endless internecine fighting were left were they fell. Even if their magic stones were gone, chunks of their flesh—drop items—remained, permeating the entire space with an overwhelming stink. There was no way the living monsters could pick up the scent from Bell and Lyu. On the flip side, they struggled to keep from vomiting.
Part of this smell must be coming from the corpses of forgotten adventurers.
If the monsters discover us, will we become just another smear of blood on the wall?
Bell forced his mind away from the gnawing questions that kept bubbling up. He had to focus on keeping himself and Lyu alive.
The constant roars of the monsters reverberated through the torn robe.
…Why…did the Dungeon create a place like this…?
As they crept silently along in utmost secrecy, the question rose in Bell’s mind.
According to the Guild’s records, the Colosseum had suddenly appeared about thirty years ago. Its existence became known when adventurers reported that what had originally been no more than a very large room with multiple layers of bedrock had changed into its current unique form.
The Bottomless Goblet. Endless war. Monster samsara, where beginnings and endings shared a single origin point.
Was it one of the Dungeon’s gimmicks, intended to lure in invading adventurers and kill them?
Or was it a stage created so that monsters could slaughter one another?
Or perhaps it was the product of chance with no deeper meaning behind it.
The sprawling darkness gave Bell no answers.
A howl echoed in his ears, as if to say that the queries of a mere adventurer did not merit response.
“The eastern bridge…”
Finally they reached the first bridge to their left.
Its structure was the same as the northern bridge they had crossed, continuing to the room’s wall.
“Ms. Lyu…if we crossed this bridge and left the Colosseum on the left side, would we end up on the main route? If so, maybe we don’t have to go all the way to the south side…”
“Unfortunately, you can’t get to the main route from the east doorway. The south and west doorways both connect to the maze while skirting the Colosseum itself…but our only option right now is the southern route.”
Bell had buckled under the tension and voiced his wishful thinking, only to be categorically denied by Lyu. He was irritated by the fact that they could have used the western doorway if only the huge columns on the northwest side weren’t in their way.
Still, they had made it halfway.
If they could just make it through the fan-shaped outer rim stretching from the eastern bridge to the southern bridge, they would reach their goal.
But no sooner had the thought crossed Bell’s mind than he recoiled in shock.
“…!!”
Two loup-garous had leaped onto the sixth plate near Bell and Lyu.
They were less than ten meders away. Bell crouched and held his breath. His heart pounded as loudly as a drum.
“uuu…”
The wolf-monsters scanned their surroundings.
Lowering their faces to the ground, they twisted their necks several times and snorted.
They seemed to have detected a scent. Fueled by panic, Bell’s body temperature skyrocketed. He could sense Lyu grimacing beside him.
Go away, go away, go away…!
Beneath the robe that melted into the dusky darkness, they silently begged, pleaded, and prayed.
And then.
They eyes of a monster met the eyes peering out from the robe.
—
Just when Bell’s heart felt like it was about to explode…
“…GURUuu!”
The monsters turned tail and walked away.
Five seconds passed, then ten, and they had still not turned around. They had not seen through Bell and Lyu’s clandestine advance. They were in the clear.
Bell abruptly released the tension from his body.
The sudden slackening of strained muscles nearly made him sigh out loud, but fortunately Lyu pressed her hand over his mouth.
Got through that one…
The accelerating pounding of his heart returned to its normal rhythm. Relief flooded his body.
“GYAAAAAAAA…!!”
That very instant, a monster shrieked in a distant part of the Colosseum. The next moment it had become a pile of ash, its magic stone crushed.
Needless to say, this led a new life to spawn in its place.
The birth cry came from directly below the two humans.
“—”
A dense network of cracks split the floor right below Bell’s feet.
Time stood still.
Lyu froze.
They did not even have time to react before a white bone arm reached up from the cracked plate.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
Five bony fingers grasped Bell’s leg.
The skeleton warrior that sprang from the floor was a spartoi.
Its hand still clutching Bell’s ankle, it lifted him into the air. The camouflage robe dropped to the floor.
Every eye in the Colosseum, every drop of monster bloodlust, zeroed in on the two exposed humans.
“—UAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Letting out a roar that may have been more terror than war cry, Bell cut through the hand of bone wrapped around his ankle with the Hestia Knife.
As he crashed to the ground, Lyu hurled herself against the spartoi shoulder-first, pushing it outside the Colosseum. Its howl was followed by the sound of something shattering.
But it was too late.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
With a chorus of war cries so violent they shook the whole room, the monsters hurtled toward Bell and Lyu.
“Run!!”
The instant Bell heard Lyu’s heedless scream, his legs were in motion. Pulling Lyu by the hand, he threw every drop of energy he had into their getaway.
“Huff, puff, huff!”
His breath was ragged, not from running but from the worst-case scenario that had befallen them.
Gripping Lyu’s hand as if he would never let it go, he dashed across the southeastern fan of the Colosseum, the only way left open to them.
The unending roars of the monsters, their infinite enmity and blood thirst followed close on the heels of the two humans.
Unable to resist the urge to look behind, Bell turned his head only to grimace convulsively at what he saw.
The silhouettes of countless monsters writhing under the phosphorescence looked like an enormous black comet bearing down on them.
Literally every monster in the Colosseum had its sights set on Bell and Lyu.
An army of monsters was flooding toward the adventurers. Should this muddy torrent engulf them, not a bone would remain to bear witness to their passing.
“GAAAAAAAAA!”
“OOOOOOOU!”
The monsters that had been on the fourth and fifth plates leaped over or scaled the walls, emerging onto the sixth plate.
A forest of monsters blocked their way forward.
In twos and threes, they gathered before the adventurers.
“OUT OF MY WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
Bell’s cry sounded as much like a plea as a scream.
Hakugen plunged into the chest of a lizardman elite that had swung its stone sword down toward him. Before the ash had even settled, the Goliath Scarf wrapped around Bell’s left arm was sweeping away the three loup-garous leaping toward them. His recklessly swung fist crashed into them like a huge hammer, crushing their fangs and claws and sending them flying backward.
No sooner were they gone, however, than a pack of spartois charged Bell and Lyu as if to jeer at their struggles.
“…!”
“Don’t really fight them!! Just clear a way forward!”
As a chunk of Bell’s flesh was gouged out and he stumbled backward, Lyu screamed at him desperately. Leaning forward like some sort of beast herself, she flashed her saber. Guarding her bad leg, she lunged nearly to the ground as she sliced through the spartois’ shinbones.
Three of the monsters collapsed on top of one another. Wide-eyed, Bell grasped the hand that Lyu had thrust out at just the right moment and pulled her close to his chest before dashing forward.
Without a glance back at the spartoi’s skull he had crushed beneath his boot, Bell thrust his left hand toward the wall of monsters blocking their way.
“Firebolt!!”
Using all the Mind he had stored up, he fired four consecutive shots of Swift-Strike Magic at the line of enemies. As the advancing front gave ground, he and Lyu charged forward with little concern for the aftermath of the flaming wind he had unleashed.
Squeezing their way through the pack of monsters, they forced their way ahead. The claws and nature weapons of the writhing monsters thrashed recklessly at them, ripping and gouging their skin.
Sliding past countless angry howls, they emerged on the far side of this forest of monsters. They fended off the constant barrage of attacks from the scattered swarm with kicks or swipes of the sword of the dead adventurer, sending their attackers flying outside the Colosseum.
The second Lyu sensed that the pursuing horde of enemies was about to catch up with them, she shouted.
“Mr. Cranell!”
“!!”
She threw a sparkling red object behind her.
It was one of their precious Inferno Stones. As the bomb arced through the air, Bell looked behind him, aimed, and shot.
The electrical fire hit its target, setting off a massive explosion.
“~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~aaa?!”
Raging petals of flame engulfed not only the monsters but the outer rim of the Colosseum itself, sending crowds of monsters plunging to the ground below. As the plate behind them collapsed with the thundering roar of an avalanche, Bell and Lyu glanced back at the monsters practically on their heels. But…
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Every time they killed one monster, a new birth cry rang out.
Here was the true power of the Colosseum that even first-tier adventurers feared. An endless flow of monsters. Cracks covered the ground before Bell and Lyu like spiderwebs, sending forth new enemies the instant the adventurers thought they had made a narrow escape.
Destroying the enemy was meaningless.
There was no end to the pursuing hordes.
—It’s impossible.
Even as Bell parried the monsters that leaped up from the fifth plate and pounced from directly next to them, cold, hard reason whispered the truth in a corner of his mind. Cold blood flowed into his overheated brain, pushing his ash-covered thoughts to their gasping conclusion.
Lyu, her hand still grasping Bell’s, could not run at full speed.
If Bell tried to carry her, they would be overtaken.
Even if they managed to escape across the bridge and leave the room, the monsters from the Colosseum might follow them, and that would spell doom. The infinite parade would pursue them until it dealt the final blow.
It was impossible. This was the end. Lyu had said so herself—if they were discovered, everything was over.
There was no point in fleeing.
There was no escape—
“—Not yet!”
Bell screamed as if to push aside the voice of his weak heart.
What he needed to do was put everything he had into fleeing.
Once they crossed the south bridge, he could use his magic to explode it.
There were endless ways to evade pursuit. No matter how impossible they seemed, he would make them reality. No matter how absurd, no matter if they were castles in the air, no matter if they were childish egotism. Because if he didn’t, their lives would end.
“Not yet, not yet!”
Screaming, he let go of Lyu’s hand and swung his sword wildly at the barbarian blocking their way forward. The sword snaked between the monster’s arm and body and sliced off one leg. Pushing away the body of the shrieking giant with his left hand, he proceeded to shatter the obsidian soldiers behind the barbarian.
Lyu grimaced as she watched Bell battle so fiercely.
Unlike the rubellite eyes that desperately sought the future, her own sky-blue eyes strained to see reality. Refusing to turn away from the cruelty of the world, she prepared to make a cold-blooded choice.
Unnoticed by the boy’s ears, the scale began to creak.
“Huff, puff…! The south bridge…!!”
Bell and Lyu had finally arrived at the Colosseum’s southern edge, having suffered so many wounds and paid so heavily in physical and mental strength.
Bell wanted desperately to find hope in the bridge that stretched straight before him, but—
“OOOOOOO—!”
“…?! Monsters coming from outside the Colosseum?”
Perhaps having heard the commotion inside, a pack had appeared at the doorway leading to the main route.
“It can’t be…!”
They were caught in a rundown.
One group of foes was already starting down the bridge toward them while the endless hordes pursued them from behind. It was obvious that if they tried to cross the bridge they would be crushed between the two waves of enemies. Even if Bell started charging now and launched a firebolt at the pack in front of them, there were too many to wipe out.
Before they crossed the bridge—before Bell had a chance to bring it crashing down—they would be swallowed up from both sides.
Of course, being caught in a rundown on a bridge with no exit ramp meant certain death.
Bell’s face burned with panic.
“…”
That’s why he didn’t notice.
Directly behind him, Lyu’s gaze had grown suddenly distant.
The scale was slowly tipping.
“—Mr. Cranell! Onto the bridge!”
“What?!”
“You destroy the enemy ahead of us! I’ll use my magic to take care of the ones at our backs!”
Suddenly Lyu was shouting orders in rapid succession. Bell couldn’t believe his ears.
True, if they were pinched between two packs their only choice was to deal with both. But in this case, Lyu was in the rear. If one of them was going to take on infinite enemies, it should be Bell, who could still move normally. He would have a better chance of surviving. He was about to protest when—
“Distant forest sky. Infinite stars inlaid upon the eternal night sky.”
Lyu’s chant cut him off. She had stopped moving and was fully focused on high-speed recitation. He could not stop her now, but the loss of time could be lethal.
At this point, Bell’s only option was to take on the enemy ahead of him.
“Damn…! I’ll be back soon!”
He glanced at Lyu, whose back was to him, and the flood of monsters pressing toward them before stepping onto the south bridge. Leaving Lyu at the point where the bridge connected to the Colosseum, he collided with the mass of monsters charging toward him.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
With all his might, he began to slaughter them one by one.
As Lyu had taught him, he landed lethal blows straight to their magic stones and kicked them off the stone bridge. He did not hesitate to use magic as well, raging wildly at his enemies.
“Heed this foolish one’s voice, and once more grant the starfire’s divine protection. Grant the light of compassion to the one who forsook you…”
From behind, he could hear Lyu chanting rapidly. Her song was as swift as the wind, its melody paying no heed to the threats all around.
“Come, wandering wind, fellow traveler. Cross the skies and sprint through the wilderness, swifter than anything.”
The bridge shook beneath Bell’s feet as a thundering roar assaulted his ears.
Lyu must have taken advantage of a peluda’s fiery breath to ignite the last Inferno Stone and repel the advancing flood of monsters. That, or perhaps she was hiding within the explosion’s smoke to escape capture. Either way, the move was ingenious.
Count on Lyu to do something like that. Count on Gale Wind.
She always managed to escape the jaws of death with battle-tested strategies Bell would never think of. As long as he trusted her, he would be able to get through anything. He would even be able to escape the deep levels.
If only he placed his trust in her.
“Imbue the light of stardust and strike down my enemy!”
This was the last line of her chant, the one that announced her magic was complete.
There were still a lot of monsters on the bridge. Bell hadn’t yet cleared a path across, but if he didn’t turn back now to get Lyu he wouldn’t make it in time.
He gritted his teeth and prepared to retreat from the bridge’s midpoint.
He glanced back toward the Colosseum.
“—”
His eyes met a pair of sky-blue eyes, and his mind ground to a halt.
He saw Lyu facing him, and time froze.
Lyu was not fighting skillfully.
She was using only the bare minimum of attacks and defense. She was covered in wounds.
Her back was to a monster that she should have been fighting off.
For some reason, she was aiming her magic at the base of the bridge.
Like a bird shorn of its wings, the battered elf smiled at Bell.
—What was she doing?!
Before the scream could erupt from Bell’s throat, Lyu completed her magic in the most beautiful voice he had ever heard.
“Luminous Wind.”
An orb of light wrapped in wind appeared on her back and took flight.
The first bullet of light landed on Bell’s armor where he stood rooted to the ground, as if to scoop him up from below. Before he moaned at the shock, he felt the wind enveloping his body. The wind enwrapping the orb of light lifted his feet from the bridge and buoyed him into the air. As the monsters craned their necks up at him, he was carried backward in an arc to beyond the end of the bridge.
That is, he was carried out of the Colosseum.
“—”
The next place the stardust magic fell was the bridge.
The remaining orbs of light burst into a chain of explosions that destroyed the bridge in a cloud of dust. The monsters that had been standing on it plummeted to the rocky ground.
As he danced through the air, Bell saw everything.
His eyes wide, he stretched out his right hand even though it could not reach.
It could not reach the elf who, having brought down the bridge of hope, remained alone on the cliff of despair.
“—Ms. Lyu!”
The instant his back hit the ground, the frozen flow of time shattered.
Blown to the passage outside the Colosseum, Bell called Lyu’s name. He called it again and again, even as he pressed his hands against his chest to calm his violent coughing.
Far in the distance, he could see Lyu smiling the same smile.
Why! Why did you do it?!
As violent emotions and sorrow thrashed wordlessly in his heart, Lyu parted her lips.
“It is as it should be…”
Her voice did not reach him, but her lips spelled out the words.
Although he did not want to, Bell understood.
Lyu had made a choice.
Unlike himself, who had tried to escape the jaws of death with no viable strategy whatsoever, she had assessed the situation coolly.
She knew that no matter how fiercely they struggled, they would die together, and so she threw away her life.
She threw it away so Bell could live.
“No, no!!”
Bell wailed like a child at Lyu, who had cut him loose.
He screamed at the elf who had protected him like a mother or a sister.
But no matter how he moaned and cried, there was no bridge to bring him to her.
No matter how far he ran before leaping, he could never fly across the gulf separating them.
The river of darkness between them sentenced him to despair and eternal separation.
“Carry on…”
At the very end, he heard those words.
Carry on? With life? With his journey?
Her sky-blue eyes gazed at him until the last, pleading with him to live.
Presently, a monster fell on her from behind her, and she disappeared beyond the curling smoke.
“—Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
With a wail that seemed to cut through his very heart, Bell turned away from the Colosseum and began to run.
“It is as it should be…”
Lyu squinted at the boy as his screams faded into the distance.
As she had predicted, the Dungeon had finally forced a decision on them.
It had presented them with a crossroads at which everything would be lost unless a sacrifice was made.
And so Lyu had made the decision.
She would give up her own life to save Bell’s.
She would use his trust in her to achieve what she wanted.
She would use the boy’s innocence and tendency to follow her blindly without ever questioning her orders.
She had been prepared to do it from the start. She had no regrets.
But she did feel guilt. The sole needle in her conscience was the fact that she had tricked him.
I’ve given him the map and the items…I’ve taught him all I could…even without me—or rather, without the burden of me, he will be able to escape the deep levels…
Lyu understood that her actions would pain the boy.
All the same, she wanted him to live.
Far more than she herself, the sinner, wanted to live.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The monsters roaring behind her gave her no time for sentimentality.
Bell had been set free. No matter how many monsters she slaughtered in the Colosseum, new enemies would rise in their place. There was no meaning in continued struggle.
Nevertheless, Lyu resisted to the last.
She was an adventurer, and she would not give up her life without exacting a price.
“And…if I don’t suffer through to the end, I won’t be able to face Alize and the others.”
She turned to face the approaching monsters from her position on the southern edge of the sixth plate where the bridge had once connected. She bent her knees and leaped upward.
It was a partial leap since she was protecting her wounded right leg. Still, she made it high enough into the air. As the monsters that had been dashing toward her plunged over the edge onto the pointed rocks below, countless eyes looked up at her.
She landed on the fifth plate but stumbled. As she collapsed to the ground, the shadows fell instantly on her.
A spartoi swung down its cudgel.
She rolled to avoid it and stood, pushing its hand away.
Having fallen farther into the Colosseum, Lyu was pursued by a horde of monsters that was like an enormous serpent, or a whirlpool of beasts closing in around a pitiful sacrificial victim.
She slashed at the loup-garou that lunged at her with the sword of the dead adventurer. She managed to rip open its stomach when the blade bent, and she tossed it away with a word of gratitude for its help.
New enemies appeared. There would be no more reprieve. She fled to the fourth plate but found no escape. Monsters surrounded her. Without even the strength to use her magic, she took a body blow from a lizardman elite.
She fell to the third plate and was grabbed by a waiting barbarian.
“Ah—!”
It kicked her into the air with a leg as big as a tree trunk.
She landed suddenly on the bottom of the Colosseum, that is, in its central arena.
With the breath knocked out of her from the powerful blow on her back, she doubled over in pain.
The monsters surrounded her mercilessly.
It was a scene without hope. She was caught in the center of a many-layered net. She was like a gravely wounded enemy general pursued by an army of ten thousand men. Intent on having her head, every imaginable fang and claw whistled through the air. If a fellow adventurer had been watching from outside the Colosseum, they would almost certainly have abandoned her as a lost cause.
The monsters did not hide their frenzied excitement over this bird who had lost its wings.
They scrambled to be the first to devour her, pushing one another over in a riot of blood and screams.
But that, too, was a trivial matter. The circle around her grew steadily tighter until the monsters were on the verge of trampling her.
“…Aaah…so this is…”
This was the place she would die.
Now she realized it in earnest.
She did feel regret. Her elf’s pride screamed out that she should not die like this in a den of monsters. She did not want to be disgraced by monsters, able to leave behind neither her pride nor her dead body.
But she had secured life for one who was important to her.
In the end, she had fulfilled her role as a senior adventurer.
That was enough. Wasn’t it?
Because of her shameful yet noble self-sacrifice, he had been saved.
She had not lost what was most important to her.
In response to her whispered words, her heart was silent. Her pesky elf’s pride seemed to have been satisfied by her internal arguments.
She smiled fleetingly.
Syr…everyone…
The Benevolent Mistress rose in her mind.
She apologized for disappearing without a word from these friends who had given her a place to feel at home when she had none.
I’m sorry for giving up the life you saved.
Lady Astrea…
Her heart throbbed at the memory of her patron deity.
She lowered her head for those eyes and that sorrowful voice she could no longer remember.
I am sorry for soiling your name and the name of our familia even at the end.
Alize…
How she longed to be reunited.
The death sentence she had longed for at the bottom of her heart, the time of atonement and redemption, had come.
Please, I beg of you, pass judgment on me.
Oblivious to the monsters bearing down on her, Lyu lay her cheek against the ground and smiled.
Just as she had once done in a back alley where she expected to meet death.
She slowly closed her eyes, preparing to welcome her final moment.
But Lyu had made a miscalculation.
She had forgotten.
She had neglected to consider the nature of the life she had cut loose.
She had forgotten that no matter how much he was tricked or injured, the white-haired boy was so simple and good-natured he would insist on rescuing not only humans but even monsters.
She had forgotten that those indomitable rubellite eyes were incapable of leaving anyone behind or parting with anyone—that their owner was a fool who insisted on smashing the scales of choice.
It was just like the time when the girl with the blue-gray hair saved her after she wreaked her revenge.
The person who had gripped her hand so tightly simply would not accept that her life was at its end.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”
The next instant, electrical fire erupted from the Colosseum.
“—”
As the flames roared, swirling sparks drifted down on Lyu where she lay in the center of the arena.
Lyu paid no attention to the stunned monsters, but instead opened her eyes and looked toward the source of the sparks.
She saw white flames.
White flames raging in the midst of horror.
His white hair tousled, his body clothed in flickering flame, a single boy appeared before the monsters.
“Ms. Lyuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!”
He was on the sixth plate at the outer rim of the Colosseum.
He was charging ahead, kicking aside the monsters thrown into chaos by his surprise attack. He headed straight for Lyu, who lay facedown in the center of the net of monsters.
“…Why…?”
At first, Lyu didn’t know what had happened. But the instant her eyes met his beyond the wall of confused and furious monsters, she screamed her question at the top of her lungs.
“Why?! How?!”
She pushed her trembling hands on the ground and looked up at the scene that was, to her, a nightmare.
Her heart was full of a terrible mess of feelings and doubts.
She was sure Bell had disappeared from the southern side of the Colosseum. So why was he here? How had he gotten here? She had destroyed the bridge. Even an upper-tier adventurer could not leap that far. Less than five minutes had passed, so how—?
Her confused train of thought had gotten that far when she stopped in utter surprise.
“He couldn’t have taken…the western bridge?”
He had indeed.
Bell had not given up on rescuing Lyu after he ran out of the room’s southern doorway. To save her, he had dashed around to the western doorway. Given the location of the four doorways, all of the terrain surrounding the Colosseum consisted of stairways leading upward. Even without knowing the exact layout of the passages, he could arrive at his goal by going up at every opportunity. The unique terrain of this area led inexorably toward the Colosseum. And the Colosseum was connected to the western and eastern doorways by mazes. Bell knew all that in advance.
In other words, he used the advice she had given him with the intention of helping him escape to rescue her.
“You idiot…you fool!!”
He was charging downward, from the fifth to the fourth and now the third plate without concern for what Lyu thought.
Why?! Why is he doing this?!
Now it was Lyu’s turn to be consumed by violent emotions.
Why was he destroying her wishes? Why would he not listen to her? Now they would both die! Their deaths would be pointless.
I wanted you, at least, to live!
“OOOOOOOOO!”
“Yaa!!”
As he charged straight toward Lyu, spartois and barbarians lashed out at him from every side. He vomited blood, but his momentum carried him forward.
His reckless suicide mission had quickly run him down. His body was damp with blood. Without his knife, he was very nearly killed by monsters. He was like a broken doll.
Enough. Escape! Escape while you still can!
Lyu’s lips could not form their heartrending cry in time.
Before she knew it, he had landed in the arena where she lay, having ignored the fountains of blood and the walls of horrid monsters on his way there.
“?!!”
He gave a now-meaningless bloodthirsty roar and tore toward her.
He crawled like an animal between the monsters’ legs, kicked off the ground and flew over their heads when they threatened attack, and when an iron wall of monsters rose before him, he drilled a path forward with his electrical fire.
He did not pay them any real attention. Ignoring the fangs and claws that shaved away his flesh, he dashed toward the center of the living net where Lyu lay.
He became a wedge that split open the wall of monsters, a streak of white flame.
It’s no good. It’s no use. It means nothing.
Even if Bell made it to Lyu’s side, all that awaited was the humiliation of being devoured alive. The two would be shamefully torn to pieces without even the luxury of a few final words. Lyu’s wishes had turned to ash.
This was a nasty betrayal indeed. A nasty egotism. A cruel kindness.
Unable to suppress the emotions that rose and fell within her heart, Lyu opened her mouth to scream.
She wanted to curse that incomprehensibly foolish valiant figure to the limits of her strength.
“—”
But before she could, she noticed something.
A fine light was emanating from Bell’s right hand.
Particles of white light were converging as a bell chimed.
She saw that he was gripping a crimson sphere in his hand, and that the particles of light were focusing on it.
She saw that his rubellite eyes had not given up at all.
No way—!
The right hand that held no knife gripped a bomb.
It was the last of the Inferno Stones, which Lyu had handed over to him.
Bell was charging the stone.
This was wisdom. Bell had taken the advice from Lyu and at great risk had tied together his own knowledge into wisdom.
He had experimented with Argonaut before. He knew that his maximum charge was four minutes, and that he could not charge two places at once, and that it was only effective for actions related to attacks. He also knew that the charge could be applied to magic or his fist, or to a weapon like a knife.
He’d charged weapons like the greatswords and the Hestia Knife quite a few times during battles already. He knew that as long as his hand was touching the weapon, it was possible to boost its power.
Therefore, he should also be able to imbue the Inferno Stone gripped in his hand with the power of his skill. He would charge a drop item that produced explosive flames to start with.
To save a single elf, he would venture the risk.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”
The blood-soaked rabbit howled, his super-bomb clutched in his hand, and blasted through the wall of monsters.
He had been concurrently charging during the five minutes he spent running from the south to the west side of the Colosseum and then pushing through the net of monsters surrounding Lyu.
A chime rang out. Two hundred and forty seconds had already passed.
He was fully charged.
The red stone where the white particles had gathered glittered sharply as if it were crying out from within.
And then—
“Ms. Lyu!!”
He broke through.
Running with all his might, paying in blood and wounds, and with willingness to die if necessary, he broke through the wall of monsters.
He dashed into the center of the field.
The elf lay prone, illuminated by phosphorescence.
He reached out his left hand, which was wrapped in the Goliath Scarf.
He reached out the hand that was struggling so hard against cruel reality.
“—”
Fragments of memory flitted through Lyu’s mind, for which time had frozen.
Memories of debating the nature of justice with her companion in battle.
Of mistaking ideals for the meaning of justice.
When she thought about it, she realized she had stopped pursuing pure justice.
…What if someone really does fulfill their ideals?
A memory from long ago.
A question from long ago.
Don’t you know?
That day, her dear, irreplaceable friend had answered.
She was sure of it.
Those are the people we call heroes.
Lyu placed her own hand over the hand that reached out toward her.
“!!”
She was pulled into an embrace.
Into the arms of the boy, and into the heart of an infinite prison filled with monsters’ roars.
Monsters closed in on them from all directions. Their escape routes were gone. Fangs and claws flashed before their eyes.
As the flow of time stretched to its limit, a bell chimed within the boy’s hand, announcing criticality.
As soon as it did, he threw the stone.
It danced above their heads into the center of the Colosseum.
Due to the nature of his skill, a moment after the charged weapon left Bell’s hand, the charge would lose effect and the stored-up particles of light would scatter and dissipate.
But Bell had a fuse that burned faster than that fleeting moment.
“Firebolt.”
His Swift-Strike Magic.
Refusing to allow the particles of light to dissipate, the electrical fire raced toward the red stone.
An instant—and it ignited.
Lyu saw the flames expanding outward.
They were not the crimson flames that had swept through the Colosseum twice already, but instead a beautiful white flash of light.
A pure white aurora that blew away everything else.
The monsters craning their necks to look upward, Lyu’s own wide-open eyes, the Colosseum itself…everything was illuminated by the blinding brilliance.
And then the brilliance that was like a white sun exploded.
A white flare engulfed everything.
The monsters’ screams were blotted out and the Colosseum’s plates crumbled, unable to withstand the shock.
The instant before the glittering light arrived, Lyu had been pressed against the ground, still in Bell’s arms, and the world before her eyes, too, had disappeared in a whiteout.
Deafening thunder and waves of heat pounded over her. Powerful shock waves assaulted her body.
Just as her consciousness faded to white, a sensation of floating enveloped her body.
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