Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka - Volume 14 - Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13 

BEYOND A THOUSAND DARKNESSES 

It was the same as before. 

That day, too, everything began with a powerful explosion. 

That fateful day that proclaimed the beginning of calamity. 

Endless shaking. The sound of rubble falling in the distance. 

Lyu sat up with those sounds still ringing in her ears. 

“Huh…?!” 

The room was in shambles. Huge holes had been gouged from the walls, and the floor was pocked with craters. Claw marks crosshatched the walls, stubbing out the phosphorescence and plunging the labyrinth into a darkness deep as night. 

“Hey, is everyone okay?!” 

“That was close!” 

“So it was a trap after all…although I’ve gotta laugh at a plan as crude as burying us alive with bombs…!” 

The voices of Alize, Lyra, Kaguya, and the other members of Astrea Familia echoed around Lyu. As they climbed over the rubble to stand up, the girls saw that a few of their party had been injured, but it was nothing fatal. 

That day, they had descended to the deep levels in pursuit of their longstanding enemy, Rudra Familia, and had been lured into a trap. Indiscriminate explosions across a large area, set off by masses of Inferno Stones, had nearly penned them in. 

But thanks to the prum Lyra, who had sniffed out the trap and warned everyone, they had escaped disaster by a hairbreadth. 

“Why are you still alive, Astrea Familia bitches?! How many Inferno Stones do you think we wasted on you?!” 

On the far side of the swirling sparks and smoke, Jura Harma was shrieking. 

The tamer was still young then, with both ears and both arms intact, and filled with hatred at the sight of his reviled enemies. But terror, too, seeped in at the edges of his rage. 

Making allowances for unexpected events, they had scattered more than one hundred explosives in the Dungeon. Judging from the scale of the detonation, this was Rudra Familia’s final trap. 

Jura and the rest of his familia were clearly cowed by the fact that even this had not managed to wipe out the clan of justice. 

“Thank you very much, Jura. But this will be the last of your evil schemes.” 

“…?!” 

“We will put an end to it. To the Evils and to this evil era.” 

Alize’s eloquent words rang out as if she were arraigning the men in court. Lyu and the other members of Astrea Familia stood behind her, piercing Jura and his cronies with their eyes as they shrunk away. 

Astrea Familia was about to bring the hammer of justice down onto the cornered Rudra Familia—when it happened. 

The Dungeon cried. 

“?” 

This was not the cracking sound of a monster being spawned, nor the shaking that foretold the coming of an Irregular. 

It was a piercing, inorganic sound, like a blade being run over a taught silver string. 

The instincts of every adventurer present flashed red at this unmistakable lament of the Dungeon. 

Lyu was not the only one immobilized by this unfamiliar situation. The other members of Astrea and Rudra familias froze, too. And then it came. 

A loud crack. 

A deep, wide, long fissure ran down one of the massive crumbling walls. 

A strange purple liquid gushed from the vertical rift. 

The opening breathed out scalding steam and something writhed out, as if it was crawling free of a womb. 

Lyu’s eyes met the piercing crimson eyes nestled inside the fissure. 

The next moment, a fierce slash cut through the air, and Astrea Familia was split asunder. 

“—Huh?” 

Before anyone had realized, not even the adventurer herself, a life ended. 

The purple claws of destruction flashed mercilessly, and a girl’s body was cut in three. 

Someone whispered something. The sound of fresh flesh tearing apart. 

As if suddenly remembering what they needed to do, the head and torso dancing through the air began to spew blood, then tumbled to the ground where the girl’s lower half had collapsed. 

The curtain had risen on their tragedy. 

“No-Noin?! –Uuuooo?” 

Number two. 

No sooner had Neze called the dead girl’s name than her beast-person torso sprang into the air. This, too, was the work of the glittering purplish-blue claws of destruction. 

Number three. 

The dwarf Asta thrust forward her shield, only to be crushed by the enormous form that leaped into the air and pounced on her. 

The three deaths all took place within the span of a mere handful of seconds. 

“—” 

Splash! 

Warm fluid sprayed Lyu’s cheek and long, pointy ear. 

The noble blood that should have been flowing through her friend’s body now clung to Lyu instead. 

It took a moment for her to accept that this was really happening—a moment to realize that her companions would not be coming back. 

Lyu’s face went white, then as red as her friend’s blood with anger. 

“—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” 

Wild with rage at the death of her companions, Lyu flew toward the monster. 

“Leon, no!” 

Alize’s words could not hold her back as she brandished her sword in a frenzy. 

Ominous claws wet with the blood of her friend, crimson eyes glittering in the dark, and a huge, bony body that looked like a dinosaur fossil encased in armor. 

This was the embodiment of calamity called the Juggernaut. 

Lyu roared a thoughtless roar and swung her wooden sword at this apostle of murder sent to massacre foreign bodies in the Dungeon. 

“?!” 

Her ferocious attack cut through nothing but air. 

The monster’s reverse joints creaked as it leaped upward, crushing the ground beneath its feet, and disappeared. It had landed on the ceiling several dozen meders above Lyu’s head. That was only the first in a series of leaps so incredibly fast Lyu did not even have time to be shocked. 

Every adventurer in the room stood rooted to the ground as it ricocheted off walls and ceilings like an unending streak of lightning. Lyu stared in a daze at this impossible display of speed by a large-category monster. 

Having thoroughly disoriented its prey, the monster then landed behind Lyu. 

“!!” 

As terror replaced fury, Lyu realized from seeing how her friends died that she had to avoid those claws at all costs. She swiftly dodged the harbingers of destruction, only to find the monster threatening her with an even more incredible attack. 

“Aaah!” 

Like a third arm, the monster’s tail bore down on Lyu, who had barely been able to avoid the previous blow. 

The Juggernaut’s cudgel-like appendage was plenty capable of delivering a lethal blow. It landed directly on Lyu, sending fissures through every bone in her body. Blood painted her lips red. 

As her back crashed against a pile of rubble, Lyu saw light flash before her eyes and then swirl into a whirlpool that crushed her will to go on. Pulled to the ground so hard that she nearly collapsed, she saw the monster approach causally and then mercilessly begin to swing its claws down toward her. 

“—Idiot!” 

It was Kaguya who saved her. 

The price was an arm. 

As her friend’s right arm flew through the air, raining blood onto Lyu’s stunned face, the claws of destruction crashed into the ground, sending both girls flying backward. 

“Celty, attack! Together!!” 

Lyu, the most bellicose member of the familia, had been knocked down by her intended target, and Kaguya had lost an arm. But Astrea Familia’s spirit was far from broken. If anything, its remaining members seethed with a burning desire to exact vengeance for their murdered companions, and so they chanted and activated their magic. 

But of course, it only served as more fodder for tragedy. 

“?!” 

Magic reflection. 

The spells that the familia’s two sorcerers, Lyana and Celty, had shot at the monster were hurled back at them by its shield—the ability to reflect any and all magic. They horrifically burst into flame. 

The Juggernaut was endowed not only with claws that could slaughter an upper-tier adventurer in one swipe, but also with a mobility unheard of in monsters and a shell that could repel magic. As a full picture of this beast specialized entirely in murder developed before the girls of Astrea Familia, despair overtook them. 

“?!!” 

Its roar was more terrifying and ominous than that of any other monster. 

This was the cry of a beast that excelled in killing at first sight. 

Its incredible mobility suffered no hand-to-hand combat, and magic was insufficient to defeat it. This monster’s potential was enough to wipe out even a party of first-tier adventurers. The Juggernaut was truly a symbol of death. 

The five minutes it took them to evade the first round of attacks and pull together the defensive gear they needed to fend off the claws of destruction seemed endless. 

Not one of them had what it would take to defeat this nightmare. 

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” 

“Don’t eat meeeeeee!!” 

Slaughter, abuse, predation. 

Those who revealed cracks in their will to fight were the first to be cruelly massacred. 

“Iska, Maryu?!” 

Alize’s voice rang out. It was pregnant with tears she had never shown before. 

And what about Lyu? 

She stood beside the groaning Kaguya and witnessed every second of her friends’ deaths. 

“Ah, aaah…” 

The fashionable Amazon was shredded to pieces. 

The sisterly human who was such a good cook was devoured from the head down. 

Those noble, kind girls were slaughtered so cruelly. 

As Lyu watched, she felt something shatter within her. 

Their miserable dying screams, the cruel corpses of these friends with whom she had shared so many joys and sorrows, this symbol of calamity that killed everyone—all of it broke her heart. 

And when the heart of an upright, proud elf is broken, it becomes fragile. At the very least, more so than other races. Lyu certainly fit that mold. It was one of the reasons Kaguya had called her “weak.” 

More than anything, Astrea Familia was what gave her strength. 

These had been her first non-elf friends, and they were everything to her. 

“Aaaaaaah…!” 

As her companions in battle collapsed, or exploded leaving only their weapons behind, or were eaten alive as they screamed, Lyu’s heart was deeply and utterly scarred. 

For the first time she felt helpless. 

For the first time she felt overwhelming loss. 

Despair crushed her proud elven sense of self-worth. 

For the first time, she felt afraid. 

This elf who had never once given in, no matter how brutal or evil her opponent, now knew terror because of a single monster. 

At that moment, a deep wound was carved in her heart. 

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” 

Finally, the damage spread to Rudra Familia. 

Jura’s cronies turned to lumps of flesh, and in a span too short to allow comprehension, countless members of his familia succumbed to the claws and tail. 

Having turned the tip of its spear toward this large familia, the monster proceeded to mechanically wipe them out as if it was loath to let a single survivor escape. 

“…Kaguya, are you okay?” 

“If I look okay to you, Captain, you must be blind.” 

Four members of Astrea Familia remained. They were wounded from head to toe. Alize had suffered attacks along with their murdered companions, but all she could do was go on living. Kaguya, of course, had lost her arm. She had used her teeth to rip up her battle clothes and bind the wound, but her face was horribly slick with sweat. 

The prum Lyra was there, too. 

“…I’m sorry, Alize and Kaguya. It got my eyes…” 

“Lyra…” 

“I can’t see anything…” 

Hit by the magic that had been reflected off the monster’s hard shell, both eyes were shut tight behind her bangs. There was no hope of recovery. Both her eyeballs and the skin around her eyes had melted. Both of her hands were shaking, perhaps because of the terrible pain from having her nerve endings burned away. 

“What the hell is that thing…? Shit, I guess my bad luck ends here…” 

The prum’s curses rang out in the darkness. 

Lyu, who lay facedown on the ground, groggily registered their conversation. Coughs convulsed her. She spat up blood, then shakily looked up. 

“—” 

Their eyes met. 

As the three girls stood before her, one pair of green eyes had glanced swiftly her way. Although she wished otherwise, her gaze met the transient yet beautiful gaze of Alize, so full of decision. 

“I’m sorry—Kaguya, Lyra. Please give me your lives.” 

Alize returned her gaze to the other two girls. 

Lyu’s own eyes stretched wide. 

“I want to save Leon.” 

It was impossible to describe her despair at that moment. 

An emotion far greater than what she felt toward the calamitous monster writhed within her, stopping her breath. 

“…From the start, this has been a battle in which we must choose who will survive. We three are already like broken dolls ready to die here.” 

Ignoring the frozen Lyu, Kaguya confirmed what Alize had said. 

“You guys know me. I put my own life first. But I’m the weakest of us all. I’ll probably die first anyway…so I may as well go along with your plan.” 

Lyra smiled resolutely. After all, she wasn’t one to make a losing bet. 

“But Captain…you must live. As long as you and Lady Astrea remain, justice will live on.” 

“No, Kaguya. It’s like I said before. There are as many kinds of justice as there are people in the world. There is no correct definition of justice.” 

Alize smiled. 

“But I know Leon will make the right choices.” 

No!! 

Lyu’s consciousness was crying out. 

From outside this memory, the Lyu of the present day who crouched in the darkness contradicted Alize’s words. 

You’re wrong, Alize! 

Lyu will be consumed by the flames of vengeance! She will lose her hold on justice! 

You’re the one who should live!! 

Her face contorted, she pointed at herself from that tragic day who lay wretched and immobilized on the ground. But Alize did not hear her desperate shouts. She kneeled beside the Lyu of memory. 

“Leon…can you hear me? We need your magic to bring that monster down.” 

Her final gaze was pure kindness. 

“I need you to stay here and chant.” 

Her final whispered words were pure cruelty. 

“We’re going to pull off its shell.” 

Because Lyu couldn’t fight anymore. Because an elf with a broken heart would hold them back. 

Most of all, because she was Alize Lovell. 

To save her friend’s life instead of her own, this noble girl pushed Lyu away. 

“Please…promise me, Leon.” 

Those words were a curse. 

They were an oath that pinned Lyu to the ground and stole from her the chance to rise. 

They were a pledge forcing Lyu to live. 

They were a plea not to waste their sacrifice. 

Lyu trembled, unable even to cry. 

“Leon, are you there? You…will live!” 

Wait. 

“I’ll give you my shortsword. Don’t tuck it away like a keepsake—use the hell out of it. Be strong, my first worthy rival.” 

Don’t go. 

“Bye, Leon.” 

Please. 

The girls smiled brightly, like offering flowers in parting. 

The tears of the Lyu of then and the Lyu of now mingled. 

“?!!” 

Having finished with Rudra Familia, the Juggernaut announced the resumption of the battle. Alize, Kaguya, and Lyra ran toward it without a backward glance. 

“…Distant forest sky…” 

Lyu began to sing in a trembling voice. 

She sang toward their receding figures, in terror and despair. 

Lyra was the first to give up her life. 

Blinded and unable to move well, she fell at one stroke of the Juggernaut’s claws. 

“Infinite stars inlaid upon the eternal night sky.” 

Just before she died, Lyra activated the explosive she held behind her back. It was one of the finest bombs the nimble-fingered girl had made. 

It took the Juggernaut’s right arm. 

“Heed this foolish one’s voice, and once more grant the starfire’s divine protection.” 

As the monster howled, Kaguya pounced with her longsword. 

Taking advantage of the momentary window Lyra had created, she drove her weapon into its chest at high speed. 

Roaring in fury, the Juggernaut swung its claws horizontally through Kaguya’s body, sending her flying through the air in pieces. 

“Grant the light of compassion to the one who forsook you.” 

All Lyu could do was sing. 

Unable to collect the pieces of her shattered heart, unable to stand, still whimpering, she let the image of her friends being torn apart sear itself into her eyes. 

One man was watching her. 

Jura had been lucky enough to escape the slaughter of his familia. He smiled mockingly as the elf he hated cried and sang and left her companions to their fate. On his face was a terrified, dark smile. 

“Come, wandering wind, fellow traveler.” 

Alize was last. 

“Agris Arvensis!” 

As she spoke the name of her magic, flames rose from her body. 

Alize Lovell. 

She had an unusual skill that gave her strength equal to that of a first-tier adventurer even though she was second-tier. The deities had given her the name Scarlett Harnell because she could use a powerful fire enchantment that sheathed her arms, legs, and sword in an armor of flames. 

This time the flames had converged in her boots, and they shattered the ground as the scarlet sword princess dashed forward with ferocious speed. 

“Cross the skies and sprint through the wilderness, swifter than anything.” 

Kaguya had paid with her life to destroy their enemy’s knee and its reverse joint, robbing it of rapid movement. As the Juggernaut floundered in confusion, Alize drew near to her opponent for the last time in her life. 

“Imbue the light of stardust and strike down my enemy.” 

The Juggernaut responded with a savage swipe. 

What Lyu saw was the back of her dear friend impaled by claws. 

For an instant, time froze. 

While Lyu was plunged into despair, Alize was burning up her life. 

“!!” 

She had purposely enticed the monster to pierce her so as to immobilize its hand. 

With a roar, she countered by plunging her sword into its body. 

“Arvellia!!” 

This was the spell key for her enchantment. 

The flower of flame burned as red as her hair. 

She sent it not onto the surface of the monster’s shell but rather underneath it, so that the river of flames cracked the armor-like covering from the inside out, causing it to explode in a rain of shards. 

Mixed in with the thundering scream of the Juggernaut was a cry of her own. 

Although she did not turn—could not, because she was run through—she spoke the name in a voice that nearly disappeared in the inferno of flame. 

“—Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” 

Tears streaming down her face, her throat trembling, Lyu released her magic. 

“Luminous Wind!” 

There was a flood of light, a storm of huge glowing orbs. 

The light illuminated Jura’s face and glinted off Lyu’s tears. 

The shining wind swallowed up the astonished Juggernaut along with the girl pinned to his hand. 

Waves of violent detonations shook the room. 

The instant the light swallowed everything, Lyu saw it. 

The monster was fleeing. 

Having lost its shell and thus the ability to defend itself, the Juggernaut chose retreat in the face of the massive magical assault. Its remaining reverse joint creaking, the monster accelerated. Even as one orb of light after the next hit home, shattering various parts of its body, the monster fled the room with howls of pain and resentment. 

After the thundering and shaking had subsided, Lyu looked around, her breath ragged. All that remained where the monster had stood a moment before was the heavily damaged floor. 

“Aa, aa…aaaaah…” 

Lyu felt neither amazement nor relief at having driven off the monster. 

The corpses of her friends and the members of the evil familia lay strewn around her. 

Alize was not there. Lyu had blotted her out. 

Lyu had taken this friend who burned brightly until the final moment of her life and banished her beyond the light. She had buried her in light. 

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…!” 

Wails spilled from her as if they were tearing her apart. 

A hundred emotions blended in perfect harmony, branding Lyu as a worthless thing. 

The howls did not even allow Lyu to feel regret or repentance. 

They were synonymous with the shattering of her belief in justice. 

By then, Jura was already gone. This did not bother her. She was tossing on the sea of her emotions. 

The corpses of Lyra and Kaguya sprawled so mercilessly on the ground would not permit her to die a pointless death. 

Dragging her battered body, unable even to collect the remains of her companions, tears streaming from her sky-blue eyes, Lyu fled that place of tragedy. 

That was the full story. 

Lyu had sacrificed her friends so that she could live. She had sent Alize beyond the light to her death. 

This was the true essence of the darkness that still dwelled deep in her heart. 

After the incident, Lyu was constantly tormented by loss and guilt. She did not return to Astrea, but rather tended her wounds on the surface and then returned to the Dungeon as swiftly as possible. 

The bodies of her friends no longer remained in the room where the tragedy had unfolded. Instead she found signs that they had been devoured by monsters. Their blood-soaked weapons sticking into the ground told her everything. Again, Lyu howled and cried. 

Trembling like a baby, fighting desperately against the trauma that had been carved deep into her, she searched for the monster. She wanted to kill the beast that had murdered her friends, but in truth it was also a suicidal act. She had to bring an end to things—both to claim vengeance for her friends, and to pass judgment on herself. 

But in the end, she was not able to fulfill her wish. 

Deep in the Dungeon, she found a mountain of purplish-blue ash that she thought must be the Juggernaut’s remains, as if someone had crushed to powder its magic stone. 

Once again, she lost all hope. 

Her magic had not killed the monster. Something with no connection to her had occurred. There was nothing now on which her terror and raging emotions and hopes could settle. Denied even the chance to find resolution, Lyu gripped her head in both hands and collapsed to the ground. She was a broken elf, her spirit and body alike split by a thousand cracks. 

Afterward, Lyu brought back the mementos her friends had left in the deep levels. She made a grave for them on the eighteenth floor, a place they had loved. Her tears seemed as if they would never run dry. Once they had joked that if they died, they would like to be buried here in the Dungeon’s paradise. 

Her companions gone, her heart thrust into the depths of disappointment and despair, she stood before the weapons she had driven into the ground like gravestones and questioned herself. 

She was the only one left alive. 

What should she do? 

If only she could vanish. 

She wanted to welcome death and disappear from this world. 

But there was little chance she would be able to end her life. 

How could she throw away the life that Alize and all the others had given her? 

That would be the same as rendering their deaths meaningless. 

Her mission was to live. Her most ardent wish was to die. 

In the narrow space between these fiercely competing emotions, a black flame sprang up. 

“I will never forgive him!” 

The world distorted like melted candy. 

Her pent-up emotions congealed in the vengeance she had forgotten until now, and a voice so dark she hardly recognized it as her own spilled from her lips. 

Jura. Rudra Familia. Absolute evil. 

They had brought on disaster and led Alize and the others to their death. They were detestable. They must not be forgiven. If only they had never existed. Lyu’s thoughts converged in this way very quickly. Her black anger burned like hellfire. 

All in the name of vengeance. 

Lyu justified everything by giving herself over to anger and hatred. They must not be allowed to live. If she let them live, they might call forth another calamity. Letting them run free made no sense. Overlooking their crimes was not even an option. She decided that she would use her life to destroy evil. 

This was not for the sake of the city, nor for the citizens who suffered there. This was no noble mission to protect people she had never met. 

It was for herself. 

She would make them pay for the tragic deaths of her companions. 

At the time, Lyu had been unable to think of any other way to use the life they had given her. Or rather, she pretended she was unable to think of any other way. 

She carried out her last act of justice. 

Of all the justices Alize had spoken of, this was perhaps the ugliest. 

In truth, it probably was not justice at all. 

This was the end of the elf who wailed tirelessly, her body broken and her wings rotted away. 

Black flames consumed Lyu’s sword and wings of justice, burning them till nothing remained. 

After she decided to walk the path of destruction, Lyu pushed Astrea away. 

Given over completely to her raging emotions, she could no longer see herself clearly. Unable to grasp her own heart, she did not want to be seen through by a deity. More than that, though, she did not want to be prevented from exacting revenge. 

She did not know what Astrea thought of her when she came to her begging desperately, scraping her forehead on the ground and refusing to meet the deity’s eyes. Perhaps she was exhausted by the endless chain of tragedy and hatred, or perhaps she was disappointed by the children’s inability to stop fighting. 

Lyu could not remember the expression on Astrea’s face that day. Her own eyes had been clouded by anger, sorrow, hatred, and resentment. 

Before her goddess left, she had spoken with sadness in her voice. 

“Lyu…please forget about justice.” 

Lyu exacted her revenge swiftly. 

First she targeted people, then buildings, and finally whole facilities. She did not give the familias that sided with her enemy time to intervene. She struck at night, using surprise attacks and traps. She snuffed out those associated with evil using methods unbefitting an elf. 

There was no technique she would not resort to. She struck those who were evil along with those who were suspicious. It didn’t matter if they were shopkeepers or Guild employees. These were reprisals carried too far, but also a judgment passed on herself. 

If you were going to kill your enemies, you should have been smarter about it. 

Not long after all this happened, Chloe had said those words to her. 

Lyu had no response. Instead, the depths of her heart smiled mockingly. Of course she couldn’t tell the catgirl she wanted to die from the start. 

She could not forgive Jura and his cronies for bringing on disaster. 

She would not forgive herself for letting her friends die. 

It was a dark and reckless time for Lyu. 

She sincerely sought death. 

Revenge had nearly run its course. Lyu was preparing to attack Rudra Familia’s hideout. 

Many familia members still remained there. Jura, too, was there, tormented by fear. 

Lyu remembered those events only dimly. She remembered roaring like an animal and slashing again and again at the tamer. She had cast off coolness and followed the commands of her raging emotions as she sliced off his arm and then his ear, her dagger flashing countless times. 

She didn’t leave a single member of the familia alive. After she killed their leader, she used her magic to burn their hideout to the ground with all their corpses still inside. 

Immediately after it ended, as the smoke was still rising from the ruins, the deity Rudra appeared before Lyu from wherever he had been hiding. 

Even at that point in her life Lyu could not bring herself to kill a deity. But no one remained to protect him, and after Lyu left, the Guild decided to capture and expel him. This dropout of the mortal realm stood before Lyu encircled by raging red flames and roared with laughter. 

And then he spoke to Lyu. 

“When I saw you just now, I wanted to invite you into our familia.” 

The face reflected in his eyes was that of a well-worn demon of revenge. 

Lyu destroyed twenty-seven organizations, including businesses and bands of outlaw mercenaries. 

Lyu’s actions led to four sacred columns piercing the heavens. 

Lyu’s dark impulses drew in many others along with her. 

Ironically, they triggered the end of the city’s dark days. 

But contrary to her wishes, Lyu herself survived. 

When her revenge was complete, she had finished everything she wanted to do. 

What she attained by crushing those who stole her friends and those who sided with them was not a feeling of accomplishment, but instead a terrible emptiness. 

She could remember neither the smiles of her friends nor their wretched faces as they met their ends. 

The tears that had overflowed from her eyes and the wails that had erupted from her throat vanished. 

She made her way to a back alley where no one ever set foot. Empty and drained of all energy, Lyu waited for death. 

Are you okay? 

After that, it was as she told Bell. 

Lyu was taken from the rainy back alley by Syr, saved against her will. She pulled her back onto the path of the living. 

Thank you for fighting for us. 

When Syr said those words to her, she felt as if she’d been forgiven. At the same time, she felt she had to live—to live for Alize and her other companions. All this was thanks to Syr and The Benevolent Mistress. 

But she was not able to wipe the old feelings from the depths of her heart. 

The thirst to be sentenced for her sins continued to smolder. 

She did not confess her crimes to Syr or the others. 

The pain and loss from losing her irreplaceable friends could never heal. 

Even if the wounds had closed, they would suddenly begin to throb when she least expected it, invoking a terrible loneliness. 

The blame that never disappeared hounded her heart for having chosen the path of life. 

It always had, and it still did. 

Lyu stepped out of the forest of reminiscence and stood perfectly still in the darkness. 

Suddenly, there was a blinding light, and she turned toward it. 

It was the same scene she had witnessed many times before. 

Beyond the white light, her friends were standing with their backs to her. Among them was the girl with the red hair. 

They were on the far shore of the light, where Lyu had driven them. The far shore, where the dead are. 

She could call them till she went hoarse and yearn for them from the bottom of her heart, but they would never look back toward her. 

As if to say, This is your punishment. 

Only when she reached their sides and was welcomed into their fold would she truly be forgiven. 

Lyu believed that, and she was sad that once again she had failed to reach them. As that sadness washed over her, the white light blotted out the world and swallowed her up. 

Consciousness returned. 

But Lyu did not know if she was in reality or in a continuation of her dream. 

She was aware only of a darkness like a swamp. Her other senses were not working properly. Her ability to interpret her surroundings stolen by vestiges of the past, her eyelids fluttered. She opened her eyes—and saw a pair of bloodshot eyes right in front of her own. 

“!” 

Astonishment brought her instantly back to her senses. The owner of the eyes was writhing in the darkness. 

She heard a scraping sound coming from all around her. 

It took a moment for her to realize that someone was digging her out of a pile of rubble. 

And another to recognize that the bloodshot eyes were the color of rubellite. 

Eventually, a cool draft blew over her wound-covered skin, and a pair of bloody hands grabbed her. Without allowing her a word in the matter, the hands pulled her body onto a thin back. 

“……Cra…nell…?” 

“…Yes.” 

The voice of the boy who had returned for her was so faint and mixed with exhaled breath that it almost disappeared. 

Suddenly everything came back to Lyu in a rush, and she looked around at her surroundings with wide eyes. 

The straight path ahead had become a mountain of dirt and rubble. The path was completely blocked off behind them, leaving only the option of moving forward. 

She looked up and saw that the bedrock was repairing itself. The holes were nearly closed already. For a brief moment, she saw the vast darkness that veiled the ceiling and unfurled through the Colosseum. 

Did the floor of the Colosseum collapse…and I fell through with Mr. Cranell? 

As if to confirm her guess, the body parts of dead monsters were sticking up here and there from the mountain of rubble. There was a lizardman crushed by rock, a loup-garou with a broken neck, and a dismembered spartoi. They must have been swept up in the collapsing floor. Corpses lay everywhere. 

Like the Water Capital, the thirty-seventh floor had a multilayered structure. 

The power of Bell’s fully charged bomb had caused the floor to fall, plunging Lyu, Bell, and the monsters into a passageway that apparently existed directly below. 

There was a passage like this beneath the Colosseum…? Anyway, I need to focus on other things right now… 

Lyu returned her eyes with a start to the boy who was still carrying her on his back. 

Bell was on the verge of death. 

His breathing was so ragged it was peculiar he was still able to move. 

His irregular gasps made Lyu want to cover her ears. He sounded like a broken instrument or a dying animal. Little red bubbles foamed from the edges of his mouth, and then, as if remembering to do something, he spit up a red glob. 

His body was riddled with holes. 

Droplets of his life were draining away at this very moment. Warm red liquid dampened Lyu’s chest as it pressed against his back. 

He must have shielded her as the massive charge reverberated and their footing caved in. His entire body was stained with blood, and the protective gear he had gotten from the dead adventurers was deformed beyond recognition. 

Most of the nails on the fingers gripping Lyu were either cracked or missing. 

“You idiot…you idiot!!” 

Lyu screamed at him as he carried her swaying on his back. 

“Mr. Cranell, why did you save me?! Why didn’t you desert me?!” 

She was so angry at him for coming back to the Colosseum. The hair right in front of her nose—that hair white as virgin snow that she had so loved to gaze at from afar—was now a dirty bloodred. As she looked at it, she felt her eyes brim with illogical tears. 

“Answer me!” 

“…Ms. Lyu, I mean…” 

Lyu’s eyes were squeezed shut as she barked at him. He barely managed to squeeze out a few words in response between his shallow breaths. 

“Ms. Lyu…you would…surely do the same.” 

Lyu was at a loss for words. Her lips trembled at the certainty in the boy’s voice, the conviction that she would take the same risk in his place. 

“…No I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t…save you!” 

“…Liar.” 

Bell rejected the words that she spit out with such sorrow and pain. She could tell from his voice that his lips were curled slightly. In a smile. 

Lyu hated lies. Lyu was an elf who would not stand for lies. 

Bell was smiling because this lie-hating elf had lied for his sake. 

Lyu’s face distorted like a baby about to wail. 

“Enough! Put me down at once…!” 

“…I don’t want to.” 

Bell flatly refused. 

“I won’t let you die…” 

“You will die yourself!” 

She replied to his whisper with a shriek. 

She willed herself to break free of his hold. 

But she could not make herself do it. 

That was because she knew who he was struggling so long and hard for—the same person Alize and the others had fought to save. 

There was no strength in the two legs that walked forward. 

He stumbled many times, until Lyu was not even sure he was still conscious. 

Nevertheless, Bell continued to walk forward with Lyu on his back as if he was possessed. 

Bell was struggling for Lyu. He was burning up his life for her. 

“Please stop…!” 

Stop. 

Stop! 

Why do you have to save me like Alize and the others did? 

I’m not worth it! 

I wasn’t able to save anyone! 

“…Mr. Cranell.” 

Lacking the strength to scream anymore, Lyu laid her face limply against Bell’s neck. She was like a living corpse that had lost hope and everything else. 

“I…let my friends die before my eyes…” 

“…!” 

“It’s like Jura said…to save my precious self, I…killed my friend Alize with these two hands…” 

Lyu whispered her confession into Bell’s ear. 

She was finally revealing to him what he had asked her about before. 

She did it so he would abandon her. 

For the first time, Bell’s shivering body showed signs that he was upset. 

“I’m not the pure elf you think I am…I’m a criminal, soiled beyond belief…” 

She laid bare her true feelings. These were the dregs at the bottom of her soul. This was the mark of failure branded into her heart. 

“The elf you are trying to rescue…is not worth saving…” 

That was the true content of Lyu’s heart. 

If she closed her eyes, she could see it. 

Her friends’ dying moments. Her miserable self. Alize, killed by these very hands. The endless sorrow and despair she had seen in her dream was eating away at her. 

“I have no right to speak of justice…justice has been lost for me…” 

Lyu realized that she was muttering deliriously. 

She thought of the commandments of the familia that had meant everything to her, and the ties to the friends who could never be replaced. For the five years since that day, there had been a hollow place inside Lyu. The hole could not be filled by all of Syr’s comforting words or by the welcoming embrace of The Benevolent Mistress. This was the loss at her very core that she had tried so hard to keep hidden. 

Even now, the “blessing” of justice carved into her back throbbed like a curse. 

You have no right to carry the burden of justice. Her delusional mind spoke to her in the voice of Astrea. 

Lyu’s face was blank. 

In its place, her frozen heart cried quietly. 

She looked down as she spoke her next words. 

“For me…justice no longer exists.” 

Her dejected words echoed in the darkness. 

Bell’s steps became sluggish. The strength drained from the hands supporting Lyu, as if they had reached their limit. He coughed up a few drops of blood, which fell onto Lyu’s limp arm. 

“I…don’t know anything about justice.” 

But. 

“But…you’ve given me so much.” 

His nearly broken legs stepped once more onto the ground. His quivering arms did not let go of Lyu. He clenched his teeth inside his bloodstained mouth. 

“So…” 

He spoke as if to prove Lyu’s existence—as if to sweep the darkness from her. 

“You do have justice within you.” 

“—” 

Lyu’s eyes opened wide. 

“You’ve saved other adventurers.” 

That was on the eighteenth floor. The elf had thrown herself before the Goliath and saved many lives. 

“You saved our deity…and Lilly, and Welf…” 

That was in the war games. Lyu had run to their aid in the face of Apollo’s absurd Will. 

“You saved me…!” 

That was in so many tight spots he couldn’t count. 

Lyu’s hands had led Bell forward so many times when he was hurt or lost or frozen. 

Lyu’s advice, her words, had always given him courage. 

“You were always like a hero…always right, always on the side of justice…!” 

Bell’s simple words shook Lyu deeply. Her sky-blue eyes wavered and grew hot. His honest, unvarnished voice pierced her heart, just like Alize’s words had. 

“No…you’re wrong! I was wrong! I lost my hold on justice…!” 

She could not allow him to offer affirmation to the self that had abandoned Alize and the others in their time of need, and so she desperately contradicted him. 

But… 

“You, wrong? I won’t let anyone deny your worth…!” 

“!” 

“Not even you…!” 

Bell contradicted Lyu’s contradiction. 

Drops of red liquid were pooling at their feet. Despite that, Bell’s steps were growing more forceful and his words more impassioned. 

“…I don’t know the old Lyu…but…” 

His words evoked the elf possessed by flames of vengeance. All the same, he argued that justice still dwelled in her. 

“…I know the Lyu who is more just than anyone…” 

Bell had changed. As Lyu had sensed several times before, he had grown beyond recognition. Meeting the Xenos had changed him. Foolishness and hypocrisy. Good and bad. Caught between these poles, he had suffered wounds and mental anguish. Now he was trying to teach Lyu something. He was trying to give something back to the elf who had saved him so many times. 

“Ah…” 

Lyu understood already. 

There were three people whom she had allowed to take her hand. 

Three people whom her heart had accepted and respected as righteous. 

Alize had led her. 

Syr had healed her. 

And Bell— 

“Justice…is alive within you.” 

Like a mirror, he reflected back the justice she had given him. 

If Bell was just, then Lyu, who had given him so much, must be just as well. 

“Yes…! There is justice! Within you!” 

A tear fell from Lyu’s eye. 

It was a vestige of the justice that remained inside her, which Bell had shown her. 

Lyu had stepped off the path once. That was certain. 

The flames of vengeance had charred her body and soul. 

Still, within the burned-up sword and wings, the ashes of justice remained. 

This was the starting point for the Lyu who had not turned her back on all those people, but instead had saved them. 

But I know Leon will make the right choices. 

Alize’s words came back to her. 

Bell and many others could attest to the same thing. 

If she looked back, she should be able to see it. 

Many smiles blossomed in the tracks she left behind. 

This was Lyu’s accomplishment. 

This was the accomplishment of justice that had continued to exist even as ash. 

The ash at the bottom of her heart swirled up to fill the hole inside her. 

Her elven heart was empty no more. 

Tears spilled endlessly from the eyes that had been wavering like pools of water. 

“I…I…!” 

Unable to deny the truth any longer, unable even to wipe her tears away, Lyu grasped for words. She did not know what this feeling overflowing her heart was. She had no idea what the boy, who was looking straight ahead, his warm body so close to her own, was trying to give her. 

“For me right now, justice is…returning alive with you.” 

There was no good or bad in the Dungeon. 

There was only life and death, only the strong devouring the weak. 

If justice existed in the Dungeon, then, it was to return alive. 

Returning alive from this infinite maze was the adventurer’s royal road, and their justice. 

“Returning to the surface…to where the deities are, to where Syr and our other friends are…!” 

Let us talk of justice. 

Let us do what is just. 

The only justice that existed for them, and for them alone at this moment. 

“So…I will never let you go!” 

Like dew falling from a leaf struck by rain, a droplet fell from Lyu’s once-dry heart, spreading ripples through it. 

In all likelihood, these horrendous lower levels would not let them go free. Lyu knew that. 

But she wanted to live—if only a little, if only for a few seconds more. 

She wanted to return alive with Bell to Syr and all the others. She couldn’t help it. 

“Uuu…!” 

And then, as if to squash that feeling—a black form appeared before them, jeering at their hopes. 

“…?! A barbarian…!” 

Both Bell and Lyu were stunned to find a panting, snorting large-category monster blocking their way forward. The barbarian was injured. Most likely it had survived the fall from the Colosseum, like Bell and Lyu. Flakes of stone stuck out of the bulging muscles on its shoulders and arms like scales. One corner of its head was bent in as well. Rage colored the blood-drenched monster’s eyes as it glared at the adventurers with something resembling vengeance. 

“Uh-oh…!” 

They were standing in a straight, narrow passage. There was no place to run. The barbarian’s eyes flashed viscously at Bell as he stood rooted to the ground. 

“GAAAAA!” 

“Ah!” 

The massive form raised its cudgel and charged toward them. Bell had no way to parry the attack. He threw Lyu aside an instant before the earth-crushing blow launched him backward like a piece of paper. 

“Oof…! Mr Cranell!” 

As Lyu hit the ground, Bell flew through the air, bounced off the ground, rolled a meder or two, and came to a halt. 

He lay completely still. Not a drop of strength remained in his battered arms and legs. The shadow of his bangs hid his eyes, and Lyu couldn’t even see his chest rising and falling with breath. Sorrow spread over her face as she once again stood on the brink of despair. 

“—Mr. Cranell! Please get up!” she screamed. 

She tried to summon the strength to stand up, but her body would not budge. Her wounded right leg slipped repeatedly, bringing her back down. She could not peel herself from the ground. 

Ignoring this elf shorn of her wings, the barbarian turned toward Bell. 

“Mr. Cranell…Bell!! Answer me!” 

Lyu did not notice the change in her voice as she called him. 

She did not notice how upset she was. 

She simply continued to call his name, having jettisoned her usual cool composure. 

But Bell, who lay facedown on the ground, did not answer. 

The monster strode slowly but mercilessly toward him, intent on delivering the final blow. 

“Bell, Bell! …Please…answer me…” 

Her voice grew weak. In Bell’s prostrate body, she saw the forms of her bygone friends. 

No, no. 

I don’t want to lose any more. 

She did not want to let go of the feeling in her heart. 

She could lose anything…anything except him. 

How ironic that this should happen just as something inside her had been about to change. 

Her wishes were in vain, however. The barbarian stopped above Bell. 

It probably intended to bite right into him. It grabbed his head in one hand and lifted him up. 

“No, don’t, wait…” 

She shook her head sluggishly, tears pooling in her eyes, and stretched out her shaking hands. 

Mocked by despair, Gale Wind’s mask cracked and fell away. 

Lyu’s true self was laid bare. 

This was not the feared elf Gale Wind. This was a weak girl who cried as someone important was about to be stolen from her. This was the real Lyu who had been hidden beneath the adventurer’s armor and mask. 

Forgetting her usual way of speaking, she pleaded vainly in the words of a powerless little girl. 

“Please…stop…” 

Bell’s body swayed limply as it hung suspended above the ground. 

The monster jaws opened wide, revealing its hideous teeth. 

“Bell!!” 

Just as the tears began to spill from her eyes— 

“—!!” 

The rubellite eyes veiled by his bangs sprang open and he drew the knife at his hip. 

He drove Hakugen’s sparkling white blade into the monster’s chest. 

“GAAA?!” 

Stabbed at close range, its magic stone pierced, the barbarian’s astonished grunt became its final utterance. 

Bell dropped to the ground amid a thick swirl of ash. 

For Lyu, time stood still. 

“Huh…?” 

Beyond the swirling ash and scant wisp of smoke, she saw the boy rise shakily. Before she could comprehend what had happened, he walked slowly toward her. 

“I’m sorry Ms. Lyu…I had to draw the monster to me…” 

“Ah…” 

At those words, Lyu understood. 

It had all been a strategy to kill the monster. 

Lyu had taught him to deliver a single lethal blow aimed at the magic stone. Without the energy left to raise his arm, Bell had waited for the barbarian to come to him. To land a blow on its chest, he had played the role of helpless prey. 

It was literally his final gamble. 

“I heard you, but…I’m sorry.” 

He kneeled in front of her and pulled her up. She sat in a daze at eye level with him…blushing far redder than the circumstances merited. 

He’d heard her pleading like a little girl. 

He’d heard that pitiful voice. 

Bell looked somewhat uncomfortable. 

Helped by her embarrassment, Lyu forced her teary eyes to glare fiercely and raised her hand. Bell closed his eyes, and she was about to slap his cheek…but in the end, she lowered her hand without doing anything. 

Giving in to relief, she buried her face in Bell’s chest as if she was about to dissolve into tears. 

“I’m begging you…never do that again…” she muttered, pressing her forehead to his chest. 

“…I’m sorry.” 

Bell’s apology for making Lyu worry fell onto her hair. The heartbeat that reached her ear told her he really was alive, and because of that, she forgave everything. 

After a few moments, Bell lifted Lyu onto his back. They started down the dim passage. 

Bell’s steps were as unreliable as a boat made of sand, but to her they were fantastically reassuring—even if they were the extension of a mission that might cost them their lives. 

…I don’t sense any monsters. Aren’t there any around here…? 

Although the dimly lit passage was littered with rubble and monster corpses, no eyes peered at them and no bloodthirsty animosity lurked in the shadows. The barbarian from a few minutes earlier had come from the Colosseum. Lyu’s exhausted mind concluded it must be sheer luck that monsters were not spawning nearby. 

Just then, Bell paused. 

In the dusky darkness ahead of them, the passage turned. 

A faint blue light spilled from around the corner. 

In the Dungeon, changes in scenery signaled danger. Not that turning back was an option, of course. The path behind them was blocked by rubble. Bell and Lyu continued nervously toward the turn. 

“—!!” 

Lyu gasped at the scene that was suddenly revealed. Although the passage remained the same width, water was running down the center. 

“A river…?” 

Bell was right. A pure blue stream began right before their eyes. 

Water bubbled up like a pedestal from the bedrock and continued as far down the straight passage as they could see. 

“A spring on the thirty-seventh floor…?” 

Lyu had never heard of such a thing. 

Acquiring food and water in the White Palace made of milky white stone was extremely difficult. This was one reason why she viewed escaping the lower levels as of the utmost importance. Even Lyu, who had made it all the way to the forty-first floor with Astrea Familia, had not known that a place like this existed. 

“To think that this was here below the Colosseum…I guess it was never discovered because no one dared to go near the Colosseum…?” 

As Lyu mumbled doubtfully, Bell moved ahead. Whatever else this signified, it was the water they had been wishing for. He stepped toward the river’s edge, planning to sooth his parched throat. 

“…!” 

Suddenly, however, his legs buckled beneath him. The strength strangely drained from his legs, he lost his balance, pitching forward into the water with Lyu still on his back. The impact of the fall knocked his green longsword loose, and it danced through the air. 

“…B-Bell!” 

Lyu planted her hands on the shore and looked up. Bell was underwater beside her, and did not answer. Through the clear water she could see that his eyes were closed as if he had been drained of his final strength. Bubbles broke the water’s surface. 

Fortunately, the stream was shallow. Nevertheless, Bell was bleeding, and the blue water soon turned pink. Lyu reached toward him in a panic. 

Unable to stand thanks to her injured leg, she remained sitting on the streambed and wrapped her arms around his waist to pull his head out of the water. 

“I sing now of a distant forest. A familiar melody of life!” 

She began to chant, clinging to the white-faced boy. This was the last of her mental strength, her last gamble. She knew full well that she might suffer a Mind Down and end up toppling into the water with him, but she activated her healing magic anyway. 

“Noa Heal…!” 

A warm green color enveloped Bell’s body. 

Lyu felt the strength draining from her fingertips as her consciousness flickered, but she bit down on her lip. The healing was very slow. His wounds would not close. Life seeped from his body second by second. 

It was no good. She had to stop the bleeding. She refused to let him die. 

She squeezed every last drop of magic from every corner of her body, half cursing herself as she did, and funneled it toward him. 

The edge of the green light spread outward, carrying a warmth like sunlight filtering through the trees. 

Finally, the light converged. 

Bell’s wounds were all closed. 

“…Bell.” 

She whispered his name so faintly her voice could have been blown out like a candle. 

Clinging desperately to consciousness, she scooped water in her hand and brought it to her lips. Only after confirming that it was safe to drink did she scoop some up for Bell. 

“Please drink…drink,” she whispered again, so that he could live. 

Supporting his head with her left hand, she brought her right hand to his mouth. 

The clear water cupped in her palm quivered. Her fingers touched his lips, which were glued together with blood. 

As if she was praying, she continued to moisten his lips. Again, and again. 

Although darkness enveloped them from above, the pure glittering water illuminated his face. He looked as ephemeral, silent, and noble as a statue of the pietà. 

Only the hushed Dungeon watched over the elf in her vigil. 

Finally, Bell coughed and opened his eyes slightly. 

The stream gurgled quietly. 

The sound of the thirty-seventh floor’s lone spring was a song unconnected to battlefields. 

There was no phosphorescence on either the walls or ceiling. 

But the pure stream that ran down the center of the passage shone, itself a light source illuminating the passage with mysterious blue light. The shore on either side was about four meders wide. It was not rocky but rather as smooth as an iceberg. 

Lyu and Bell sat on one shore, resting with their backs against the wall as they had done up to this point. 

“…How does your body feel?” Lyu whispered, a rustling sound coming from her nearly motionless form. 

“Fine. I slept for quite a while…and I drank that water.” 

For Bell and Lyu, finding water was lifesaving. The combination of the harsh environment and the merciless string of battles had pushed Bell to the edge of dehydration. The stream was the water of life. 

They had already spent nearly an hour by the river. 

Without any monsters to fight, they were able to get a full rest. That was unprecedented given their five-minute breaks up to this point. 

“…” 

“…” 

Both Lyu and Bell fell silent. 

Properly speaking, whatever they talked about, the exchange ended quickly, so that conversation amounted to a succession of short bursts. They looked at the river, not meeting each other’s eyes. 

To get to the point, they were half-naked. 

“……” 

“……” 

Their soaked clothes and equipment had been pitilessly robbing them of body heat—all the more so because they were so tired. They had consequently decided to take their clothes off. It was the obvious choice. 

No matter how much they understood the logic, however, their emotions were another matter. 

The serious, upright elf and the inexperienced human were both thrown into a panic. They blushed, each unable to ignore the presence of the other, as they desperately tried to quiet their pounding hearts. 

That was the situation. 

“………” 

“………” 

Lyu was naked on top but wore her long cape, which had escaped a soaking. From the waist down, she wore only a thin pair of underwear. 

Bell was also naked on top and wore a pair of black long underwear rolled up to the knees. The repeated inadequate healing had glued the underwear to his leg wounds, and pulling it off by force would have opened the wounds again. He’d compromised by leaving them on. On balance, though, he was still more exposed than Lyu. 

At first, she had covered her chest with her arms and insisted, eyes averted and cheeks flaming, that he wrap himself in her cape, but he had managed to convince her to keep it for herself. 

“…” 

Unable to fight off the feelings bubbling up in her chest, Lyu was squirming subtly but repeatedly, and the cape rustled against her skin. Every time she did, Bell held his breath and stiffened. 

This is so embarrassing…even though I know I shouldn’t care right now. 

Lyu muttered quietly to herself, her satiny legs hugged close to her chest. If she stole a glance at Bell, she could see even in the dim light that his face was pink. So was her own. She could feel the heat to the tips of her long ears. 

Their clothes and equipment were scattered on the ground. She hadn’t folded her battle clothes because she wanted them to dry, and her long boots were bent over messily. 

For some reason she did not comprehend at all, the scene struck her as faintly immoral. She couldn’t tolerate it, perhaps because those things belonged to her, an elf. Bell, too, was studiously avoiding looking at them. 

Lyu being Lyu, she also couldn’t bring herself to look at the clothes Bell had taken off. 

They were caught in a negative cycle of contagious tension. 

The gap between their shoulders spoke vividly of their embarrassment. 

Why am I so hyperaware of him? 

No answer came in response to the simple question she asked her heart. Was it because he had saved her? Because they had been tied together? Because he had comforted her by saying she was just? Because he had held her and told her he would never abandon her? 

She continued to question herself, but found no answers. Her heart simply continued to beat as irregularly as before. 

In the first place, she hadn’t felt like this when he’d seen her bathing that time— 

“…!!” 

She cut her thoughts off there. Blood had rushed to her face at the memory of what happened on the eighteenth floor. She looked down, determined not to let Bell see her looking so horrid. 

She succeeded in evading his notice, but he recoiled. 

I never thought I’d end up in this situation in the Dungeon…in the deep levels, of all places… 

She didn’t have time for a farce like this. 

It wasn’t just that she was half-naked. She didn’t have much energy left, either. If a monster attacked at this point they’d be done for. She had to forget her embarrassment and do what she could. 

But for some reason…she had a feeling no monsters were going to show up. 

She guessed that Bell thought the same. 

She couldn’t put it into words, but this whole area around the stream lacked the Dungeon’s usual tense atmosphere. She didn’t sense any monsters or hear any breath, or even feel any eyes on them. All she heard was the gurgling stream. 

The fact that they’d been able to rest for a whole hour backed up what her instincts told her. She even felt that time moved more slowly in this place. 

“…” 

But the current situation couldn’t go on. 

Here they were wasting a good rest by being so nervous they couldn’t regain their strength, Lyu told herself. 

“…There’s something I have to ask you about.” 

“Uh…oh, of course. What is it?” 

Lyu wanted to ease the tension, but she had also been wondering about this incessantly. She looked at him as she asked the question. 

“Why did you come back that time?” 

By “that time,” she meant when she was in the Colosseum. 

Her decision had not been mistaken. She wasn’t trying to glorify self-sacrifice; that situation had demanded a choice. The options had to be placed on a scale. There was no way to know in advance that things would turn out like they had. 

“If you’d taken one wrong step—or even if you hadn’t—we both could have died,” she continued. 

“…” 

“Did you know this space existed under the Colosseum?” 

“No…” 

“Then why did you do it?” 

She had set aside her emotions and was asking as an adventurer. 

Bell returned Lyu’s serious gaze unflinchingly. 

“I didn’t want to let anyone else die…that’s why I did it.” 

His words were simple. The feeling motivating his behavior was unsullied and straightforward. 

But was there really no more to it? Was that the only reason he had saved Lyu? 

That much seemed clear. There had been no calculation or goal to his actions other than saving her life. He had destroyed the scale that forced choices on them for the sake of his own ideals. He had used all his strength and wit, paid with his own blood, and struggled against the world. 

“…” 

He had left everything to chance. 

They were more than lucky the floor of the Colosseum had caved in; if it hadn’t— 

…If it hadn’t, he probably would have fought off the surviving monsters, carried me off, and saved me anyway. Knowing Bell, I don’t doubt it. 

At this point, Lyu couldn’t help coming to that conclusion. 

“Bell…will you listen to me?” 

She was asking without really having intended to. But just like that day in the Dungeon’s paradise, she told all to the boy beside her. She told him what had happened to her and to the rest of Astrea Familia—all the details of the story she had always hid from everyone. 

“—That’s what Jura meant by ‘sacrifice.’” 

“…” 

Having finished her story, Lyu looked at the ground as if to escape. The wounds she had revealed by her own choice were throbbing. She was terrified of what Bell would say next. 

He slowly parted his lips. 

“In that case…it sounds like you have to go on living…” he said, smiling. “The people who cared about you fought because they wanted you to live.” 

“Ah…” 

“Even an idiot like me can see that. If you died now…Alize and the rest would definitely be mad.” 

He spoke slowly, like he was explaining something to a young child. He was not looking down on her or reprimanding her. But he did sound a little angry, as if he would not forgive her if she did the same thing again. He sounded like Syr, and the look in his eyes reminded her of Alize. 

He arched his brows as if he was going to smile cynically again. Pulled into his rubellite eyes, Lyu placed her hands on her chest. Her heart was pounding. 

At least, she felt like it was. Obviously, it was just a feeling. 

And this impulse to reach out and touch him was definitely just her imagination. 

She looked down and clenched her fists. 

“B-Bell.” 

“…?” 

“I-I think we should……get a little closer.” 

“What?” 

Bell had already been giving her a strange look, and now he clammed up. After a long pause, during which he must have understood what she was trying to say, his cheeks began to flush. Lyu, who was red to the tips of her ears as well, stumbled over her next words. 

“Wh-what we’re doing right now…isn’t e-efficient. If you really want me to return alive…we have to warm each other up s-skin to skin…!” 

“Uh, um, but…?!” Bell stuttered. 

“Now is no time to be shy…can’t you feel how cold I am?” 

Bell’s eyes popped open as Lyu gripped his hand. Her own was white and cold as ice. As for Bell, he had lost quite a lot of blood. Now was no time to tough out the situation in a show of upper-tier-adventurer strength. 

Lyu was embarrassed, too, but her point was well taken. She was genuinely concerned for his well-being. 

“B-but you’re an elf, Ms. Lyu…” 

“Don’t worry about that. In emergency situations…I’d even be willing to hug a dwarf…” 

She quickly shut down Bell’s concern about race issues. He was out of arguments. 

“B-but, Bell…don’t get any nasty ideas in your head.” 

“…What?” 

“If you do, I-I won’t be able to stop myself from slapping you.” 

Lyu was dying of embarrassment even though she was the one who started listing rules in the first place. Bell had a blank look on his face. 

“I-I mean, given my body type, I doubt you’d be interested anyway…I mean…!” 

She was now more flustered and redder than ever, unable to escape her upright elf’s nature. 

“Uh…ha-ha-ha. A-owww…” 

“What are you laughing at…?” 

Bell had broken out laughing. The sight of him holding his stomach in pain, seemingly from the strain of laughing, upset Lyu even more. As she was steaming over the fact that he wasn’t taking her seriously, he went on with a smile. 

“I’m very sorry. Please don’t worry…because you’re Ms. Lyu, after all.” 

In other words, she may be acting strange, but she was still the elf he knew and liked. Lyu gaped at him for a moment, then pressed her lips together. She felt like even more hot blood was rushing to her face, and she was getting itchy to boot. 

Bell, who was still doubled over from the pain of laughing, glanced at her cautiously. 

“Um, so…what should we do…?” 

“…” 

“Hugging would be awkward since we’re not wearing clothes, I think, so, um…” 

Lyu broke off and was silent for a few seconds before standing up. Dragging her bad leg, she moved in front of Bell and turned her back to him. Then she slipped off her cape. 

“—” 

The garment fell to the ground with a swoosh. 

Below the white nape of her neck, her naked back was fresh and youthful. Drops of water traced a path from her neck to her slim waist, where they were absorbed by her single garment—her panties. 

Bell gulped. His whole body was extremely tense. Even with her back to him, Lyu was blushing. Logically, he couldn’t see anything from behind, but she hugged her arms to her chest anyway as she sat on the ground. 

The silence only lasted a few seconds, but to Lyu it felt like an eternity. She looked down, and her meaning must somehow have gotten through, because she could sense Bell steeling his will behind her. 

He crouched down. 

Lyu’s heart skipped a beat. 

Very timidly, he wrapped both arms around her from behind. 

Her shoulders shivered. 

The space between them disappeared. 

“…” 

“…” 

Bell hugged Lyu to his breast from behind. He could feel her back and thin chest. He crossed his arms in front of her upper body, which was as naked as the day she was born. 

The burning embarrassment only lasted a few seconds. Their bodies began to warm each other. Cold skin lost its chill and warmth spread through Lyu. Bell’s furiously beating heart slowed and became calm, knocking against her back. The comforting rhythm rocked her like a cradle, relaxing her heart. 

The stiffness melted from their bodies. 

The sound of their heartbeats melded into one. 

They relaxed into this feeling as if it were entirely natural. 

Bell leaned against Lyu’s back as she rested against his chest. 

“Are you warm now?” 

“Yes, very…” 

“Good…” 

“Yeah…” 

“……” 

“……” 

As usual, their conversation didn’t last very long. But the silence this time wasn’t uncomfortable. The gurgling of the stream added to the peaceful feeling. Bell widened his legs a little so that Lyu could fit fully between them. Lyu was very warm, but she thought Bell must be cold. She told him to put on her cape and he wrapped it around both of them. His face was right next to hers. His easy breath tickled her ear and neck a little, caressing her thin ear over and over. 

“I didn’t realize…” 

“…?” 

“I didn’t realize you were so small…” 

“I’m not much shorter than you.” 

“I know, but…I can’t explain it.” 

“What?” 

“…Nothing.” 

“…Tell me.” 

“It’s nothing.” 

“Um—” 

“Hurry up.” 

“…You’re so slender and soft…it makes me realize you’re a woman.” 

“…” 

“It’s like I understand that feeling men have…of wanting to protect women.” 

“…You’re very sly,” Lyu muttered softly. 

She repositioned herself so that her back was pressed more firmly to him, as if she was seeking him out. He responded by firming his chest muscles. 

He let out a shaky sigh. For some reason, it struck her as sweet. 

…It’s not fair. 

Lyu was trying not to think of the girl with the blue-gray hair. 

The elf in the corner of her heart criticized her for being contemptible. 

She wanted to be forgiven. 

Just for this one short moment. 

She didn’t know what she was asking forgiveness for. She didn’t understand who she was apologizing to. She was simply obeying her emotions. 

Her heart whispered that it wanted her to turn around. 

Her chest burned for her to meet the gaze of the beautiful rubellite eyes behind her. 

She wanted to lock eyes with that boy whose face was so close it was practically touching her own. 

But she was afraid. 

She was afraid that something would change irreversibly between them. 

She felt she would not be able to turn back. 

And so she resisted the desire. 

She grasped her slender upper arms and let the upright elf inside her come to the rescue. She scolded the self who was neither an elf nor a tavern waitress nor Gale Wind, but simply Lyu. 

It was sad and painful, but it reassured her. 

“Ms. Lyu…” 

“Yes…” 

“What do you want to do when you get back…?” 

“…I want to eat a warm meal made by Mama Mia.” 

“Ah, me too…Let’s go together, then.” 

“But before I do that, I’m sure I’ll get an earful from Syr and the others…” 

“Ha-ha-ha…” 

“…What about you?” 

“I want to go back home with Welf and the rest of my party, walk into my house, and say ‘I’m back!’ to our deity…” 

“That’s a good plan. You should value your familia…” 

“I will. I’ll value them forever, just like you…” 

“…Thank you.” 

They leaned into each other as they whispered back and forth. 

They were like lovers sharing pillow talk. 

At the same time, though, there was a fleeting feeling to the moment that they could not wipe away. 

There was a peaceful danger in their faint smiles and in their voices so soft the slightest breeze could blow them away, like a candle flame about to flicker out. 

They closed their eyes and slept like travelers through space. 

They held each other, drawing ever closer in their own private world. 

Beside them, the pure stream sparkled blue, as if it were giving them this quiet moment. 

Several hours had passed since Lyu and Bell’s rest began. 

Their deep sleep had restored them in both mind and body. 

Setting aside their physical wounds, the recovery of their mental strength was incredibly important. Their stubborn headaches and lethargy had vanished. Compared to their condition before the rest, it was like night and day. 

As soon as they opened their eyes, they swung into action. 

“Thank you, Bell, for using your precious mental strength to start a fire.” 

“It’s fine, I rested well…I can handle that level of firepower.” 

The sound of a crackling fire blended with that of the babbling stream. The bonfire illuminated their faces. Lyu, somewhat revitalized now, had gathered the kindling and Bell had shot a firebolt into it. Starting a fire in such a damp location without proper fuel or tools was extremely difficult. 

They had used drop items as kindling. Lyu had returned along the passage to the pile of rubble and corpses from the Colosseum to gather monster skins—especially the oily hair of the barbarians. Just like that of the heretical barbarian Bell and the children from the orphanage had encountered in the secret passage below Daedalus Street, the hair burned extremely well. 

“Bell, how strong do you feel?” 

“A lot better, but my hands still shake like this if I’m not paying attention…” 

Since they’d lit a fire, Bell and Lyu were no long embracing. Instead, they were sitting side by side in front of the flames. Lyu stared at Bell’s quivering hand, which he was holding in front of his chest. 

The stream was a safe zone. 

Lyu was sure of it. 

As if the sparkling blue water was an amulet warding them off, no monster had attacked. It was likely the sole “paradise” on the thirty-seventh floor. As long as they stayed here they would shed no blood and could rest as long as they liked. 

Holing up down here is one option…but we don’t have the all-important rations for that. 

There was plenty of water. However, there was not a crumb to eat. 

Second-tier adventurers might be a far cry from ordinary people, but they still relied on nutrition to function. This was why they would never fully recover no matter how long they rested here. 

All that awaited them in this passage was a gentle death. That was the unspoken message of Bell’s shaking hands. 

Even if a rescue party had been dispatched, it would never make it here before they died. She was certain of that. 

To start with, the chances of rescuers stumbling on Lyu and Bell in a floor as big as Orario were slim to none. Adventurers who lost their way in the deep levels were as good as dead. At least, that’s how the Guild treated them. 

The Dungeon does not let those who stop moving return to the surface alive… 

No one wanted to suffer through more brutality. 

But accepting the heart’s yearning for peace was the same as losing to the Dungeon. 

The image of the adventurers-turned-skeletons flickered across Lyu’s mind. If they settled into this peaceful paradise, Lyu and Bell would meet the same end. 

They had to press on. 

They had to risk another adventure—if they were adventurers. 

Lyu made her decision. 

“Bell…let’s rest a little more and then leave this place.” 

“…Right.” 

Bell nodded in response to Lyu’s hushed voice. Drawing on her revived mental strength, she used Noa Heal to fully restore Bell’s physical well-being. That is, with the exception of his left arm and lost blood, neither of which could be brought back with instant healing. 

Lyu also healed her own right leg. When she had enough mental strength, her magic could fix broken bones. The only problem was that despite having stabilized the fracture with her knife hilt, she had been moving around so much that the bones didn’t fit back together quite right. This was the price she paid for not being a real healer. 

Her movement might still be somewhat compromised, but at least she could get around on her own now. There was no question Bell’s burden would be lightened, since he had been supporting her this whole time. When she got back to the surface, she could have a real healer fix it for her. 

After Lyu finished with the healing and took another short rest to replenish her Mind, she and Bell collected their garments. Thanks to the bonfire, the battle clothes were nearly dry. Turning their backs on each other, they started putting their gear back on. By now they weren’t overly flustered by the situation, but they still weren’t used to the sound of the clothes rustling around. 

They finished getting dressed and put out the fire. 

Just before they set off, Lyu realized she felt reluctant to leave. 

…It’s only a temporary weakness. The exhaustion must have gotten to me. 

Enveloped in Bell’s warmth, she had experienced the illusion that her mind and body were one. She had never experienced a peace like that before. 

However, she would not permit herself to drown in that feeling. She was a noble elf through and through. She pretended she did not notice the feelings budding in her heart, telling herself they were mere false attachments. 

“Shall we go?” 

“Yes, I’m ready.” 

She and Bell set out walking side by side. Turning their backs on the place that had allowed them a brief respite, they began to move ahead once again. 

They walked down the passage with the stream for what felt like an eternity. 

As they had suspected, it appeared to be free of monsters, and they were able to advance safely. 

“Is this an ‘unexplored area’?” 

“Yes, in the sense that it hasn’t been mapped. But…I feel like this is a special place.” 

Bell peered around as he talked with Lyu. As it was elsewhere, the walls were milky white stone, but because of the light given off by the stream running down the center of the floor, the passage itself seemed to have a blue tint. Thanks to the water, it felt moist and cool. Diminutive lily-like flowers bloomed along the boundary between the walls and the ground. Some of the petite white blossoms swayed with the passing of the river water. 

These undiscovered flowers, absent from the illustrated guides detailing the Dungeon kept at the Guild, were quite likely the only plants in the White Palace. Lyu stopped at Bell’s suggestion and plucked a flower, then tasted it. 

It was sweet. She offered one for Bell to try. She was right—it had a faint, nectarlike flavor that melted on his tongue. Even if he stuffed his mouth with them, he suspected he would regain very little of his stamina. Still, they were a temporary solace, and better than nothing. In fact, for someone like Bell who hadn’t tasted sugar in ages, they were a delicious treat. 

Then he looked up and noticed that the ceilings were lower than anywhere else on the thirty-seventh floor. He could see the uneven surface clearly. It reminded him of a rocky cave. 

The place felt like a groundwater vein, or a ravine with the sky blocked out overhead. Those were the impressions the passage gave him. 

“This passage goes on forever…all I can hear is the water…” 

The passage and its stream stretched out before them like a blue pathway. 

Compared to the Under Resort on the eighteenth floor or the Water Capital on the twenty-fifth floor, the scene was incredibly bland. But to Bell and Lyu, who had been wandering the dark world of the deep levels, the glowing blue stream was more precious and mysterious than anything they could imagine. 

This, too, was the Dungeon. 

It bared its cruel fangs to adventurers, but it also showed them fantastical landscapes like this one. This was the Dungeon’s one act of mercy within its endless darkness, or so it seemed to Bell. 

“…” 

“…” 

The blue road stretched on interminably. 

Inevitably, conversation had dried up between Bell and Lyu. The journey was long. Where would it end? What awaited them ahead? Now and then Bell stumbled, the price of his blood loss. Would he be able to escape the deep levels in this condition? Anxiety was always with him. 

But he and Lyu held onto hope as they continued down the blue road. Presently… 

“A dead end…” 

Beyond the end of the road was a small spring. An uneven circular space announced the end of the passage. Unlike the clear spring in the center of the passage where water bubbled up, here the water was sucked into the bottom of the spring, as if completing a cycle in the Dungeon. 

There were no tunnels or stairways in sight. As Lyu looked around wondering if they really would have to retrace their steps, she noticed something. 

“That stone…its composition is different from the others.” 

The pure white ore brought to mind quartz more than stone. 

With a tense look on his face, Bell drew the Hestia Knife and thrust it into the mass Lyu was pointing at. No sooner had a crack spread across its surface than the entire lump of ore shattered. Beyond it was a cave and a stairway leading up. 

Bell and Lyu exchanged glances, nodded, and crawled through the cave. They could hear the mineral repairing itself behind them. The cave was just wide enough to fit two people shoulder-to-shoulder, and pitch black. Lyu took out one of the jars she had filled with water from the stream. It gave off a faint blue glow. Using it as a lantern, they climbed step by step. 

When they had climbed about one hundred steps, they came to a ceiling blocked by the same ore that had been at the cave’s mouth. Bell boldly broke through it. 

“This is…” 

They were looking into a room on the thirty-seventh floor. 

It was a cul-de-sac with only one doorway. The ground was littered with rocks as tall as Bell. The chunk of ore leading to the passage with the stream was hidden among these rocks. 

They could sense monsters in the maze beyond. 

Adjusting to the fact that they were now back in the Dungeon’s cruel reality, they stepped out of the room with every nerve on high alert. 

Contrary to their expectations, however, they did not encounter any monsters in the straight, unbranching passage before them. 

Presently they came to a larger passage. Immediately, a huge wall sprang into view. 

“…Ms. Lyu, that’s not…” 

“Yes…a Ring Wall.” 

As Bell craned his neck to peer at the looming wall, Lyu confirmed his guess. There was no doubt about it, the enormous, smooth surface was one of the White Palace’s five Ring Walls. It was perhaps one hundred meders beyond the point where Lyu and Bell had come from the side passage into the larger passage. 

On top of that… 

“This passage…yes, I’m sure of it. It’s the main route.” 

“!” 

“That Ring Wall is gray. In other words, it’s the Fourth Wall.” 

As she spoke, Lyu looked around like she was piecing together a puzzle made of memories. When Astrea Familia was still alive and well, Lyu had come to the deep levels a number of times. Although she did not have a full picture of the sprawling floor in her mind, her body knew the main route instinctively because she had traveled it so often on her way to and from the surface. 

The Colosseum was situated on the inside of the Third Wall, which meant the stream directly below it—the Blue Road—led straight to the Fourth Wall. 

Bell and Lyu had suffered greatly, but their suffering had brought them incredible good fortune. 

“S-so if we get past that wall…!” 

“Yes, only the Fifth Wall will remain. And if we get past that, there is no maze between there and the connecting passage to the thirty-sixth floor.” 

Beyond the Fifth Wall lay a vast wasteland. It was quite a distance to the southern edge of the floor, where the passage was located, but if they got that far there would be no chance of losing their way. Only the White Palace within the Ring Walls had a maze structure. 

For the first time since Bell had been plunged into the deep levels, true hope illuminated his face. Lyu’s expression was forbidding, but she, too, felt the same. 

It was as if a lighthouse had shone its beam on a ship pummeled by the rough waves of a storm. That single beam of light was more than enough for them to cling to. 

“Let’s go! While there are no monsters around!” 

“…Yes!” 

As Bell said, no monsters were to be seen. This was a perfect opportunity. 

The darkness peered down on them from far above as they headed straight ahead toward the Ring Wall. 

We sure are lucky…! No—we snatched luck ourselves because we didn’t give up! 

Bell did not commit the fool’s crime of making a racket in his rush. Advancing with even more caution than they had so far, he stepped boldly forward. One step behind him, Lyu, too, looked around warily as she bounded energetically ahead. 

The maze between the Fourth and Fifth Walls is called the Beast Zone…If we can just get through here…! 

The region between the Second and Third Walls, where the Colosseum was, was the Warrior Zone. The area they were currently traversing was the Soldier Zone. Aside from a few spots, the main route on the thirty-seventh floor was several dozen meders wide. Once they got onto it, they wouldn’t likely lose their way, unless they encountered some irregularity. 

As Bell racked his brain for bits of information Eina had taught him, he ground his molars together as if to squeeze out an extra drop or two of energy. 

I can go home…I will go home! To the surface! To where my friends are! With Lyu…! 

Bell was running toward the future. He blended into the dusky darkness, moving ever farther from the monsters lurking nearby. 

He did not let down his guard. 

Neither did Lyu. 

Still, they should have realized. 

As they frantically tried to take advantage of their good fortune, they should have thought about that luck more deeply. 

Why weren’t they encountering any monsters? 

Why hadn’t the monsters they had sensed as they emerged from the Blue Road found them yet? 

Why were they hiding as if they were afraid of something? 

“The Fourth Wall…! …We made it!” 

Having arrived at the towering wall, Bell and Lyu squeezed into the squared-off hole at its base. They pressed forward without hesitation toward the faint phosphorescence beyond the pitch-black tunnel. 

They stepped out. 

They were on the other side of the Fourth Wall. 

They were in the last maze between them and the connecting passage to the lower levels. 

They were in the Beast Zone, the final battlefield. 

“—” 

Bell sensed it. 

As soon as he emerged from the Ring Wall, he knew. 

He sensed it the second he stepped into that zone. 

A piece of rock fell with a soft patter from above. 

A gaze pierced his head. 

The crimson, murderous gaze of calamity. 

“—” 

The monster was there. 

Far above Bell’s head. 

Clinging by those terrible claws to the towering Ring Wall. 

Waiting for its sole target to come walking beneath it. 

Waiting for its prey—that is, Bell and Lyu—to pass through the Fourth Wall and enter the Beast Zone. 

The grotesque form pulled its claws from the wall and silently descended. 

Giving the adventurers little time to track its movements, it kicked off the ground. 

As the claws of destruction closed in, Bell grabbed Lyu’s hand and leaped with all his might. 

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!” 

An explosion. 

As if it had been struck by a meteor, the ground where Lyu and Bell had stood an instant before shattered. Bedrock fractured, stone shards hailed down, and a brutal dust cloud swirled. They tumbled awkwardly over the ground. When he finally stopped rolling, Bell snapped his head up, dumbfounded. 

“ooo…!” 

The purplish-blue shell glowed faintly. 

There was that distinctive form, reminiscent of a dinosaur fossil in armor. The monster of calamity had wandered in search of the prey that got away and eventually settled in here to lay in wait for it. 

“The Jugger…naut…!” 

Looking once again at that unforgettable nightmare, Bell uttered its name for the first time. As if responding to his call, the monster turned its left side, which was shrouded in darkness, toward Bell and pulled its glittering purplish-black claws from the ground. Its presence was all the more overwhelming since it was injured; there could be no greater symbol of death for Lyu and Bell. 

“Aaa…!” 

The trauma dwelling within Lyu rose again at the breathtaking sight. 

As she struggled fiercely against the terror, Bell grimaced. 

Of all the times…! 

Surging emotions roiled his chest as his left arm recalled the hell it had been through. His flesh throbbing with hot pain beneath the scarf wrapped around it, Bell drew the Hestia Knife. 

He neither gave in to absurd anger nor moaned uselessly, but instead prepared to fight back so he could live. 

The Juggernaut narrowed its eyes at this prey that still had not lost the will to fight, its piercing eyes glowing in the dark. The claws on its feet screeching across the floor of the maze, it slowly rotated its body so it was facing Bell. 

“Wha—?” 

Bell could not believe his eyes. 

“It has its right arm?” 

The right half of its body was turned toward Bell. 

Through the veil of dusky darkness, the silhouette of its right arm was clearly visible. 

What was going on? During their deadly fight on the twenty-seventh floor, Bell had risked his life to take that arm. He had used Argo Vesta, his lethal skill, to erase the arm along with its claws of destruction—or so he thought. 

But now that he looked closely, he saw that the Juggernaut’s tail was back to its original length as well, despite having been severed during the fight. 

Had it self-regenerated? Did it have the same ability as the Black Goliath? 

As Bell was lost in confusion over the regeneration of the arm he had stolen at such great cost, he heard a noise. 

“…?” 

Something was writhing in the darkness. 

It was coming from where the monster’s right arm was, from the shoulder down. 

Perhaps the Juggernaut was making the unpleasant creaking sound intentionally. It reminded Bell of insects devouring one another inside a jar. That, or two gears that didn’t quite fit being forced to turn with a chunk of meat stuck between them. 

A subconscious alarm bell began to ring in Bell’s mind. 

Finally, the monster called calamity took a thundering step forward. 

Beneath the phosphorescence, it shook off the darkness. 

“—” 

Time stopped for Bell. 

Lyu, too, froze. 

The now-exposed right arm—was made of countless masks of bone. 

“…Skull sheep…?” 

From the monster’s shoulders all down the side of its body, sheep skulls were packed close together. The sheep of death that Bell had fought so many times on this floor had become part of the Juggernaut’s body. 

“No way. It…” 

Lyu’s lips quivered as she shuddered uncontrollably. Bell spoke the abominable words that she could not. 

“…Ate those monsters…?” 

That was the answer. 

It was different from an enhanced species. 

It had not eaten only magic stones. 

It had eaten those monsters alive from top to bottom. 

And by eating them, it had absorbed their bodies. 

It shouldn’t have been possible. It was incomprehensible. 

But there was no other way to explain the monster before them. 

It was an Irregular like none before it. 

It was an unknown being unforeseen by even the Dungeon herself. 

Adventurers, monsters, maze. 

When she spoke, Lyu expressed the horror that possessed all that existed in that place. 

“It’s impossible…it can’t be…!” 

The Juggernaut simply raised its grotesque arm as if to show it off. The right arm made of white bone contrasted eerily with the purplish-blue armor covering the rest of the monster’s body. Innumerable sheep ribs, femurs, and twisting horns fit together like a puzzle into a warped curve. Pink scraps of muscle showed through here and there. 

Most likely, the large sinews, still glossy with blood, came from barbarians. 

The humanlike skeletons mixed in among the assortment of bony parts were without question spartois. 

The sizable scales covering the long, curving tail belonged to lizardmen. 

The chunks of stone reinforcing the severely cracked magic-reflecting shell came from obsidian soldiers. 

Skull sheep were not the only monsters the Juggernaut had incorporated. Lacking a magic stone of its own, it had taken in every type of monster inhabiting the deep levels and made their bodies its own. 

The hideous form had grown even larger than before. 

Every monster Bell had fought on this floor had become a single being that now loomed in front of him. 

A chimera. 

Bell couldn’t help thinking of that monster that appeared only in made-up stories—that fairy-tale monster that contained the bodies of a hundred beasts, that powerful goblin he had believed was only a product of inventive imaginations. 

But now that nightmare had taken on the form of the Juggernaut and appeared before him. 

“Haaa…!” 

The Juggernaut breathed out a gust of white mist that could have been mistaken for steam, as if the monster could not contain the billowing volume of heat produced within its trunk. 

With a hiss, some of the bones making up the right arm melted out. Bell’s and Lyu’s faces twitched as skull-sheep heads coated in sticky liquid rolled toward them. 

It was like a human body rejecting a transplant. 

The monsters were resisting their unnatural fusion. 

To Bell, the sound of the various parts rubbing against one another with terrible creaks and groans sounded like screaming—like living monsters sobbing in pain. 

The Juggernaut, too, was likely suffering from this armor of persistence. By devouring its fellow monsters and using their bodies in place of its own, it had gained a new weapon. 

The sole purpose of that weapon was to kill the white prey—that is, Bell. 

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!” 

The Juggernaut signaled the start of the battle, shattering Bell and Lyu’s moment of shuddering horror. Bending its left reverse joint, it leaped abruptly toward Bell. 

“Whoa!” 

As the Juggernaut sped through the air like a bullet, Bell shielded Lyu behind his back and repelled the claws of destruction in the nick of time. He’d used the Goliath Scarf. Sparks flew and pain shot through his brain, but at this point he couldn’t complain. 

His enemy’s mobility had declined. He was quite sure of it. 

Aside from crushing the reverse joint in its knee, Argo Vesta had severely damaged its entire lower body, reducing its jump speed to the point that even in his depleted state Bell could follow the monster with his eyes and parry its attacks. 

But… 

“HAA!” 

The Juggernaut landed on the passage wall and stuck out its composite right arm. As if imitating Bell’s Firebolt, it fired off several pointy white bones. 

“—” 

A total of four white javelins flew from various sections of its right arm. Bell gaped as the sharp projectiles soared in an arc toward him. 

“Pila—?!” 

He and Lyu narrowly managed to evade the deadly weapons. 

Bam-bam-bam-bam!! The four javelins pounded noisily into the ground. 

Bell, whose right shoulder had been grazed, could not hide his agitation. 

“Were those skull-sheep pila…?!” 

Bell was flabbergasted. It seemed his enemy had acquired the attack methods of the monsters it absorbed, including the pila the skull sheep had tormented him with. 

Bel returned the monster’s glare with his own shuddering gaze. 

“?!!” 

The Juggernaut’s fierce offense had begun. 

With a rolling thunder, it shot off pila from its spot on the passage wall. Sixteen of them. Each was a different size and drew its own arc through the air as it raced toward the Juggernaut’s prey. As Bell and Lyu contorted their bodies to escape harm, the rapid-fire barrage of sharp projectiles crashed into the floor, sending up a rain of stone. 

The crimson eyes tracked the two adventurers on the other side of the dust cloud as they dashed frantically back and forth. Suddenly, the Juggernaut bent its knee and flew forward. 

“?!” 

Shifting from shooting to direct attack, the monster turned itself into a shell hurtling forward. 

Bell moved to defend himself from the huge, rapidly approaching form. Although he managed to narrowly evade the surprise attack with skill and tactics, the monster began shooting pila again the instant it landed. 

Bell didn’t have time to catch his breath, let alone feel shock. 

The elongating pila were coming both from the ground and the air following jumps. They flew toward Bell at like a phalanx rushing forward with the force of an angry wave. Bell was forced onto the defensive by the constant threat of a deadly blow from the terrible claws combined with the Juggernaut’s insistence on piercing him like a piece of grilled chicken. 

He couldn’t use a Firebolt because he feared the monster’s magic reflection. 

“It’s using projectiles…!” 

Lyu narrowed her eyes at the spectacle before her. 

Under normal circumstances, the pila would be worse than useless for the Juggernaut. Missiles that moved more slowly than its legs would be nothing but baggage. But since Bell had crushed its reverse joint, they were the ideal weapon for making up the deficiency. 

Hard as it was to believe, the monster was carrying out a hit-and-run made up of repeated missile attacks followed by lunges at Bell. It had come up with a strategy to beat the adventurers at their own game. 

The massive body of the Juggernaut zigzagged across their field of vision along with countless flying pila. 

They’re too fast! 

I can’t track them—!! 

As the glowing red eyes streaked through the darkness trailing a tail of light, Bell and Lyu screamed out silently. The pila were coming from every direction, including above their heads, in a ferocious three-dimensional attack. Forced to intercept them, Bell was tossed from left to right, up and down. 

The terrain was unfavorable for them as well. 

The passage was wide, with no obstacles. The Juggernaut was able to leap freely in all directions around the space as wide as a room, breeding chaos. Even if its astounding jump speed was somewhat reduced, a closed-in space would have allowed Bell to track it more easily. 

The wavelike attacks lapped closer to the adventurers with each passing second. Although it scattered shards of its shell with every leap and shed melted-off monster parts, the Juggernaut did not ease up. With its hideous roars and flashing claws, its unbendable determination to kill was clear. 

Even without its incredible mobility, the Juggernaut was a slaughterer. Clad in an “armor of persistence” made from countless other monsters, it was carrying out a new, unprecedented campaign of destruction. 

Faced with this deadly calamity, the adventurers recalled their despair. The apostle of murder had blotted out the light of hope. 

My hands are shaking. This calamity is terrifying…! 

Lyu’s spirit was the first to be worn down. Although the situation now was different, the Juggernaut’s insane behavior, so unlike that of any ordinary monster, summoned a gray scene to her mind—Astrea Familia, trampled, stripped from her, lost. That same trauma still tortured her. 

The past hounded her. The nightmare was trying to rise from the ashes. 

She could not stand it. She could lose anything but Bell. Determined to ward off the return of tragedy, she tried desperately to infuse her terrified limbs with the will to fight. 

“HAAA!!” 

But the Juggernaut did not wait for her limbs to respond. It pushed its cruelty to the limit in a drive to slaughter the enemy that had escaped its grasp before. 

“Ah!!” 

As it dropped to the ground, it swung down its scale-covered tail, throwing both Lyu and Bell backward. As the white rabbit’s stance crumbled, the monster roared triumphantly. 

Its bony right arm crashed to the ground. 

Its palm smacked down. 

The ground shook. 

Deep fissures raced across the stone at lightning speed. 

The instant the cracks reached Bell and Lyu’s feet, they exploded. 

“—” 

A great thicket of bone stakes rose from the ground directly beneath them. 

Two rubellite eyes and two sky-blue eyes were glued to the mountain of enormous needles that burst through the ground. 

The Juggernaut had fired its bony javelins through the ground. There were so many of these pila—or rather reverse pila—that they could not count them. 

Bell’s and Lyu’s gazes had been focused upward because of the rain of pila launched a minute earlier. Now they were coming from below. It was a surprise attack intended to catch them off guard. They had become accustomed to looking up for incoming attacks when they lost their footing, and so they were not able to dodge this one. 

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaa!” 

It was like a super-sized land mine. The tsunami of pila thundered ominously as it exploded around them. 

They shaved away strips of Bell’s side armor, arm, and cheeks. 

They gouged out pieces of Lyu’s mantle, right leg, and ear. 

The hideous mountain of swords swallowed up the two adventurers. 

Damn—this is the floor boss Udaeus’s attack— 

Lyu shuddered as time spun out to its limit like a revolving lantern. 

A new level of despair descended on her as she wondered if their enemy was equal to the Monster Rex of the thirty-seventh floor. Even as she thought this, pila continued to shoot up like grave markers, gouging her skin as they formed an ever-denser mountain. 

“?!!” 

The Juggernaut thundered its terrible roar, not lightening its attack in the least. It shot one barrage of pila after the next in a continuous attack. 

Within the hideous armor, “he” uttered a monologue. 

—Look. 

The prey is struggling uselessly, using what protective gear it has left, spraying red sweat. It will not succumb willingly to the spikes. It will fight to the end. 

I know, I know. That’s what they’re like. 

They are supreme prey, refusing to die no matter how I crush them. All the more reason, all the more reason— 

The monster of calamity howled and continued to produce its deadly pila. 

On went the thunder of firing so loud it made ears meaningless. 

On flew the pila that sent up their rain of blood and flesh. 

Finally… 

“—Rgh.” 

The final “reverse pilum” hit Bell. 

Beneath the tattered side armor with its broken clasps, it found his stomach. 

The pointy crimson projectile pierced his flesh. 

The artillery fire had been concentrated on him. 

The clutch of pila aimed at the white prey that had stolen the Juggernaut’s right arm did not let that prey escape. 

Time froze for Lyu, who was also covered in wounds. 

As Bell hovered unnaturally in midair and the pilum fell to the ground, she reached toward him. 

But she could not rewind time. 

Instead, as if to shatter the frozen flow of minutes, blood began to seep from the hole in his stomach. 

Blood bubbled from his mouth, staining his lips red. 

It was a perfectly lethal wound. 

An irreversible, decisive blow. 

Bell responded correctly to this worst of all possible situations. 

Before his guts spilled pitifully from the hole, he acted. 

He made the immediate decision to close the wound. 

“—Firebolt!!” 

As he pressed his left hand to the opening, a small explosion erupted. 

His stomach was burning. 

The pain was hellish, a flash of light running across his field of vision followed by the sensation of his insides on fire. 

His eyes were so bloodshot it was like they had turned into pomegranates. 

Lyu gaped and the monster stiffened. 

His stomach smoking, Bell raised his left hand and fired wildly. 

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!” 

The first and second shots hit the ground. 

The third shot on went into the air directly in front of him. 

A wave of heat and wind billowed out as the ground exploded. Abandoning his usual habit of stomping down to withstand the recoil, he grabbed Lyu’s outstretched hand and they both shot backward. 

Pulling the surprised elf along with him, he flew far from the sword-mountain, as if that had been his plan all along. 

“!!” 

For a second, the Juggernaut was caught off guard. 

Billows of smoke swirled in the air, a curtain concealing the prey. From beyond this veil, flames streaked wildly toward the monster. Magic reflection was meaningless if it didn’t know where the prey was. Worse, its attempts to reflect the shots nailed the monster in place. 

The space between the monster and its prey widened. 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!” 

Bell was shooting off firebolts indiscriminately as he flew through the air. 

The price of searing his stomach was an inability to aim properly. Sparks filled his field of vision. It was like he was broken, simply releasing his magic in the blind hope that it would keep his enemy away, buying time and distance. 

After a second or two he and Lyu crashed to the ground and tumbled over and over. 

“Bell?!” 

They had been blown to the edge of the large passage. Lyu screamed as she stood up. 

Convulsing from the extreme pain, Bell flickered in and out of consciousness. 

“…Hrk!” 

Lyu only paused for an instant. 

She saw the smoke swirling behind them and understood their high-risk escape. Dragging Bell behind her, she dashed toward a side passage she could see in the distance. 

“—!!” 

The instant the electrical fire ended, the Juggernaut roared in fury. 

The huge purplish-blue form hurtled toward the adventurers. 

Lyu kicked off the ground even harder as the monster broke through the smoke and raced toward them. Just as the claws reached her long cape and ripped into it, she dove into the side passage. 

It was about two meders wide, enough to fit two adventurers but not an extra-large-category monster. The three-meder-high Juggernaut could not squeeze itself into the tunnel. In terms of width, the parts it had absorbed from other monsters turned out to be its curse. 

“OOOOOOO!” 

“…?!” 

All the same, it twisted and turned, trying to catch the adventurers. Its left arm reached forward, yearning to shred Bell and Lyu where they lay collapsed on the ground. But it could not quite reach. It was like a rampaging giant attempting to rake a dwarf from the hole into which it had fled. Lyu felt the purplish-blue claws persistently scraping the tips of her boots. 

Shivering at the tremendous noise of claws attempting to break through walls and ground, she lashed herself into standing. Now it was she who supported Bell. Sweating from head to toe and breathing raggedly, on the verge of stumbling and falling at any moment, she fled deeper into the tunnel, away from the crimson eyes tracking their every move. 

The path was straight and unbranching. She felt as if the walls on either side were closing in on her. The ceiling, however, was so high she could not see it, making the passage feel like an alley at night. 

“GAAAAAA!” 

“OOU, OOOUN!” 

Lizardman elites, loup-garous, and spartois blocked their way forward. 

The monsters might have been cowering as they instinctively hid from their calamitous kin, but if an adventurer landed at their feet they would show no mercy. Lyu and Bell could not turn back; the only road to salvation lay ahead. Lyu brandished her shortsword, grimacing. 

“—!!” 

At that very moment, however, the Juggernaut—whose left arm had been plumbing the tunnel—stepped back and beat the adjacent wall with its bony right arm. The passage shuddered as deep fissures spread through it. 

Dozens of pila shot through the wall to the right of Lyu and Bell. 

“?!” 

“Ahh!” 

The hellish javelins targeted adventurers and monsters alike. 

The lizardmen, loup-garous, and spartois were all torn to shreds. Lyu’s right leg and hand, which was gripping the shortsword, were pierced and the nape of her neck was gouged. Red splotches swam before her eyes as she collapsed to the ground beside the ripped-open monster corpses. 

Fresh blood splattered the walls of the tunnel and pooled like springs on the ground. Lyu and Bell were both as red as if they’d bathed in blood. The passage looked like the scene of a brutal murder. The monster corpses stank terribly. Bell and Lyu were drowning in a revolting sea of intestines and flesh—as if they themselves were corpses. 

“…!” 

Pila were still shooting through the wall to their right and battering the wall to their left. However, they did not reach Bell and Lyu where they lay. The angle was off. 

Eventually, the Juggernaut stopped its barrage, as if it had realized the projectiles were not reaching their target. 

The crimson eyes stared down the tunnel. 

After observing the perfectly still lake of blood for several moments, the monster vanished silently into the darkness. 

“……Ugh, ahh.” 

Lyu, who had not moved at all, exhaled with a soft moan. 

She was still alive. 

Ironically, the pack of monsters that had intended to kill them had become a wall that protected them from lethal wounds. 

Lyu stopped playing dead and opened her eyes. All she saw was red. Tepid, nauseating bodily fluids and soft lumps violated her senses. The powerful stench made her want to vomit even though her stomach was empty. 

Her wounds were open again. Signals were flashing from her whole body, telling her if she didn’t do something she would die. 

She had to use her recovery magic—no, it was no use. 

She’d lost too much blood. Her magic could not bring that back. Even if they survived this particular moment, they were— 

“…Bell…” 

Steeling herself against the picture of hell surrounding her, Lyu turned her head. Her eyes fell on Bell, who lay faceup beside her. He must have heard her, because his finger twitched slightly. 

“Cough, cough…! …Ms. Lyu?” 

He began to convulse again, as if he had forgotten for a moment and then remembered again, and coughed violently several times. He flopped his head to the side and looked at Lyu, who was lying on her stomach. 

“…Did the Juggernaut…?” 

“It’s gone…it’s not in here…” 

Their voices in this red world were so faint they nearly vanished. 

His gaze still locked with Lyu’s, Bell turned the corners of his mouth up ever so slightly. His smile didn’t even look like a smile. 

“So it’s given up on us…” 

“…Yes.” 

No. 

In all likelihood it had not given up but rather was looking for its next opportunity. The Juggernaut would not stop pursuing them until it had killed them with its own hands. Lyu sensed its persistence and understood that terrible truth. 

“So…we can go home now, right…?” 

Bell probably understood as well. But he was pretending he did not so that he could lie to Lyu. 

He was pretending they could return to the surface—that they could overcome the darkness of the maze and bask in the warm sunlight. 

“You can go back…to Syr and your other friends…” 

Their odds of returning home were worse than terrible. 

As long as the Juggernaut remained, Lyu and Bell would never be able to leave the thirty-seventh floor. 

Bell understood, but he told Lyu a kindhearted lie. 

He promised her a future in which they walked together through the door of The Benevolent Mistress, were greeted by an angry Syr, punished mildly, and then spent the evening laughing and talking together. 

He promised her so she would not be afraid even though she had lost Astrea Familia. 

What a kind lie it was. 

What a happy dream. 

Lyu smiled. 

A light sheen of tears gathered in the corners of her eyes as she smiled peacefully. 

“Yes…we can go home now…” 

The lie tricked her. 

As she lay on the boundary of life and death, sinking in a pool of blood beneath the gaze of the darkness, she drowned in a happy dream. 

The boy and the elf smiled at each other. 

“Bell…” 

“Yes…” 

“…Will you hold me?” 

At the very, very, end, she had finally grown honest. She was finally able to lay bare her feelings for her friend, and her elf’s pride, and the heart that she had kept concealed for so long. 

Bell looked surprised at first, but then he reached a shaking hand toward her. Lyu reached her own hand toward him and he drew her into his arms. 

He’s so warm… 

She smiled as they prayed and held on to each other. 

She basked in his warmth and let the tears spill from her eyes. 

The world truly was cruel. 

Of all the people in the world, Bell was the one she hoped would live on, and yet the Dungeon had made him her companion on this journey. Her heart had been broken, her hopes eaten away by that monster. She could struggle no more. 

She could not let go of this warmth. 

She pressed her cheek to his bloody chest. He smelled of iron. She saw a vision of pure white snow. She saw the two of them embracing as the snow buried them. 

When she pulled her face away, the beautiful snowy field disappeared and all that remained were the two of them wet with each other’s blood. 

I wasn’t able to do anything, and yet these last moments…are so tender. 

Lyu could not help feeling that way. 

At this moment, she was closer to him than anyone else. 

No matter what anyone said, she could tell them this with confidence. 

Right now, for this one brief moment, Bell and Lyu were tied more closely together than anyone in the world. 

She was so glad of it, and so sad. 

So happy, and so lonely. 

“Bell…I’m going to sleep, just a little…” 

Slowly, she closed her heavy eyelids. 

Was she bidding life farewell? 

Or when she opened her eyes, would she still be here in this cold, dark reality, the warmth vanished from beside her? 

Or would she meet Bell once again, on the far shore of the light, beside Alize and the others? 

“Okay…I’ll wake you up soon.” 

Bell’s voice caressed her gouged ear gently. 

She pulled his hands to her chest so that she would not forget the warmth, and drifted off to sleep like a baby. 

… 

Lyu slept. 

Bell smiled faintly as he watched her drift off. 

She had let him fool her. 

This way, he was sure she wouldn’t have any nightmares. 

That was all he wished for. 

He wanted her to dream sweet dreams until everything was over. 

She has suffered so much already… 

As she had suspected, he had lied to her. 

But it was not a kindly lie. To the contrary, it was a terrible betrayal prompted by self-righteous egotism. 

Bell had not given up on returning alive. 

I remember the look on her face when she told me everything… 

He had not forgotten the expression of long-suffering pain on the face of this elf who had lost her companions. 

That was why he did it. 

“…!” 

The wretched spasms were already subsiding. In their place came unbelievable pain. 

He touched the stomach wound that he had seared shut. 

Sparks danced before his eyes. 

Pain. Pain. Pain. 

He wanted to scream and wail and break into a hundred pieces. 

He wanted to howl until all his energy was gone. 

But if he could feel pain, then he could move. 

If his body was screaming that it would die, then he had the energy he needed to cling to life. 

If his heart was insisting with its rapid beat that he run from death, then he had the strength left to escape. 

He would not use that strength to escape death—he would use it to defeat death. 

“!!” 

He heard his instincts screaming. He ignored them. 

He heard his body shouting a warning. He ignored it. 

He heard his heart sniffling that it was impossible. He ignored it. 

His whole self, every element that made up that human called Bell Cranell, was fighting against his decision. He ignored it. 

He heard his soul crying for him to stand up. He affirmed it. 

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa…!!” 

He gave the cry of an animal. 

The adventurer became a beast and chewed up the shards of life so it could stand. 

As light flashed before his eyes, what remained of his human rationality recalled a story. 

It was the tale of Belius the Guard. 

The elf’s guardian was a sorrowful and unyielding knight loved by an elf of the lake. A martyr to love till the very end, he died in her arms. 

Bell begged the elf’s hero to give him the strength to protect what was important to him. 

…I have no light to concentrate. Most likely I only have one charge left. I cannot summon the heroic blow. 

But the desire to be a hero is here in my heart. 

He stroked Lyu’s hair softly, his smile gone. 

The lone male stood. 

The Juggernaut was moving. 

Having given up on penetrating the passage Lyu and Bell were in from its entrance, it circled around to the exit. The Juggernaut had exquisitely refined senses. This immune ability was a gift from its mother, the Dungeon, to enable it to exterminate foreign viruses. It was able to rapidly track any adventurer on the same floor as it. This was one reason the “banquet of calamity” had unfolded with such speed on the twenty-seventh floor. 

Here on the thirty-seventh floor, it knew where Bell and Lyu were. The reason it chose to lay in wait in the Beast Zone was because it disliked narrower passages and did not want to risk letting its prey escape. 

The Juggernaut—he—also knew that Bell and Lyu were still alive. 

He would crush them when they came out the exit thinking he had disappeared. This was the plan he had concocted with his hunter’s instinct. With a speed out of proportion to his large size, he raced to a large room adjacent to the main route. There were four doorways in the room, and he hovered by the one that led to the passage his prey had fled into. 

He still sensed life inside. From his position, he would be able to send pila through the walls to where they were, which meant he would be able to smoke them out. He exhaled a hot breath and peered down the passage with his red eyes. 

“—Firebolt!” 

The next instant, a river of flame erupted from the darkness. 

“!!” 

He jumped backward, his left reverse joint creaking. Electrical flames erupted from the passage and carved a path of raging fire to the middle of the room. 

Slowly, the boy followed in this path of flame. 

Trailing swirls of sparks, his white hair swaying, the adventurer appeared. 

He stopped close enough for the Juggernaut to reach him at a single leap. Then he let out a war cry and lunged forward. 

“?” 

In the middle of his lunge, he froze. 

The prey looked up and smiled. 

A dark, fleeting smile. 

That body so battered it was hard to find a place without a wound was displaying a smile that seemed ready to flicker out at any moment. 

The shadow of death was on the boy. 

The god of death had drawn near and given the boy his gift. 

In other words, the promised end. 

Victory or defeat mattered little to the prey before the Juggernaut. 

Even if he, the monster, did not deliver the final blow, this human would— 

“—OOOOOO!!” 

But it didn’t matter. 

Even if the boy were fated to die anyway, he would slaughter him with the full brunt of his strength. 

The Grim Reaper’s scythe would not take the prey’s life—his own claws of destruction would. 

He would throw all he had against this human. 

That was the raison d’être of the Juggernaut now that it was free of the Dungeon. 

“…I will end you.” 

But neither would the boy embrace a meaningless death with open arms. 

“I will return to the surface…with Ms. Lyu…” 

If he did not win—if he did not return to her—she would die. 

So he had to win. He could not lose. 

He brandished his jet-black knife, his breast full of unspoken feelings. 

The monster understood neither his words nor his feelings. 

What it understood was his will. 

The boy was intent on killing him. He would try to beat him. 

He would turn the Juggernaut to white flame and burn him to ash. 

The monster’s breast quivered. 

A monster of calamity who spread massacre mechanistically wherever he went should not have felt that emotion. 

Joy. 

The Juggernaut gave thanks for having met this human. 

He was moved deeply by the fact that this male was offering himself up. 

“Let’s do this.” 

The monster welcomed the boy’s words with a roar of joy that split the heavens. 

When Lyu woke up, she was sitting in the darkness. 

It was a familiar darkness. 

This was the darkness that had tormented her for the past five years. This was the boundary between life and death where she had been stalled. 

No one was beside her. That person was gone. She felt that was a pity. 

She did not know why. She could not remember anything. But her cold hands struck her as sad. 

Suddenly, light pierced the darkness. 

Beyond the light, she saw her irreplaceable companions. 

Astrea Familia. 

Alize, Kaguya, Lyra, and all the others were standing with their backs to her. 

No matter how she shouted, they would not turn toward her. Lyu knew that. The gulf between her in the darkness and them on the far shore of the light was too wide. 

Suddenly, she realized she could walk forward. 

She could walk out of the darkness. She could walk to the source of the light, to the place where the companions she longed for so deeply were standing. 

Joy filled her. 

No matter how much she called to them or how bitterly she cried, they would never turn toward her. But if Lyu walked toward them, they would welcome her. 

At first they would be angry. Kaguya would scold her and Lyra might crossly pull on her ear. Maryu and the others would probably push her around. Alize would definitely stick her finger in the air and give her a half-baked sermon. 

And then, she was certain, they would break into smiles. 

They would all gather round to welcome her back and praise her for how she had soldiered through these five years. 

They would throw their arms around her shoulders and stroke her head. 

Her wish would finally be granted. 

Her sins would finally be atoned for. 

She would finally be able to pass away. 

Lyu began walking toward the light, searching for salvation. 

One step, two steps, three steps. 

She passed the boundary of the darkness. Only a little farther now until she reached the distant shore— 

You can’t. 

At that very moment, one of the forms that had never before turned toward her finally showed her face. 

“—” 

The red hair swayed and the green eyes pierced Lyu. 

She had been seeking the light, but now her feet stopped. 

Leon, you can’t come here. We won’t let you. 

The eyebrows rose in flat rejection. 

The lips that were always so just denied her. 

Alize spoke as if she were trying to make Lyu realize something. 

You must not run away. 

Alize’s gaze skipped past Lyu into the darkness beyond. 

The monster’s horrible roar pounded against Lyu’s back. It was the same roar of despair that terrified her, robbed her of the mask of wind, and turned her into a wretched elf. 

But within that hair-raising roar was the sound of resistance—a brave war cry like raging flames. 

If you come here, you will regret it! 

Alize’s powerful voice made Lyu’s hands shake. 

Finally she was able to go beyond the light where she had so longed to go, but now she was beginning to question her decision. 

Her dried-out heart that yearned for her friends was competing fiercely with the mad desire to seek out that battle cry of flame. 

“I can’t do it anymore…” 

Lyu’s voice was quiet now. To stop the fight in her heart, to give up on everything, she spoke in the unfeigned voice of her heart. 

“I just can’t, Alize…I can’t fight anymore. I can’t resist the past.” 

The Juggernaut. It was the beginning of everything, the source of all misfortune. A symbol of the past that tormented Lyu. She knew that if she returned to the darkness, harsh reality awaited her. It terrified her. She was crippled by her fear of facing the past. 

Lyu gave a miserable bleat and hung her head. 

Liar. 

But Alize responded with a single word. 

“—” 

Lyu opened her sky-blue eyes and looked up. Her friend’s face was before her, with its firm gaze that saw right through her. 

You claim you don’t want to lose hold of justice. 

Alize did not explain anything. She did not admonish Lyu. She did not lead her. 

She simply presented her with the truth. 

Her words shook Lyu to the core, sending out ripples in her heart. 

Justice is still alive within you! 

What was “justice”? What was “right”? 

Lyu had never known. She had never been able to find an answer. 

All she knew was that Astrea had told her to forget about justice. She assumed that she had lost all right to it. 

But Bell had told her something different. 

He had said she still had justice within her. 

Now Alize, too, was confirming Lyu’s justice. 

The words of the boy and the girl linked up in her mind so that finally she understood their meaning. 

Your justice—your hope has not died yet! 

It was true. 

The justice Lyu had been seeking since the day her companions died was hope. 

When Syr saved her, she decided to live so she could make sure the justice of her companions was fulfilled. She wanted to believe that what Astrea Familia had bequeathed her would connect to hope. She wanted to believe it would bring order and peace to Orario and smiles to the faces of its people. Lyu had been pursuing that vision since the day they died. 

It was like Bell had said: 

Lyu had brought them help and salvation and hope. 

Lyu’s actions had led to hope for someone. 

That’s what Bell had been saying all along. 

There was no such thing as universal justice. 

But this was Lyu’s justice. 

A hope that illuminated the future, not the past. 

Finally, finally, Lyu realized what the justice that lived within her meant. 

As she did, the other members of Astrea Familia turned toward her, as if to compound the change in her heart. 

Go. 

Next to Alize, Kaguya shooed Lyu toward the dark. 

Don’t run away! 

Lyra smiled spitefully, her hands laced behind her head. 

Do your best. 

Beat ’em! 

Each of her familia members had their own words of encouragement for Lyu. 

Unable to bear their words and kind gazes, Lyu frowned and shouted back at them. 

“I…I’ve wanted to apologize for so long! I wanted to say sorry to you all!” 

At long last she spoke the words weighing on her mind. 

This was the true wish she had harbored since the day she lost everything. 

“I stood by and watched while you died, and I didn’t do a thing. I wanted you to judge me! I wanted you to blame me and curse me and condemn me!” 

On the far shore of the light, neither Kaguya nor any of the others spoke a word. 

They simply looked back kindly at her as if to say, But you knew! 

Yes, she did know. 

She knew they would not have blamed her. 

It was only Lyu who could not forgive herself. She could not accept her past. 

By thinking of it as a crime, she was trying to punish herself so she could stop suffering. 

Lyu’s fists relaxed and hung limply at her sides. 

Leon! 

The voice of the girl she loved so dearly rang out high and clear. 

What does justice mean to you? 

Lyu’s throat quivered. 

Before she realized it, she was weeping uncontrollably. 

Desperately holding back her wails, she answered with her truest desire. 

“I want…to save him…” 

Not the gentle light on the far shore, but the depths of darkness where cruelty awaited her. 

Not by the sides of Alize and the others, but by the side of the boy who was alive now. 

“I want to go back to the tavern with him…to where Syr is!” 

Not to the past where her familia was, but to the future. 

Alize smiled. 

Her smile was like the sun telling her she had done well. 

Leon, you must not run away! You must not let go! 

Lyu smiled. 

Tears rolled down her cheeks. 

There was no sorrow in her sobs, and no darkness. 

She turned her back on her companions and walked toward the darkness. 

We will meet another day, Leon. 

Their words sent her softly on her way. 

She would go, and come back one day. 

I loved you, my dear friends. 

“—!!” 

Lyu opened her eyes. 

The first sensations she felt were a burning pain and a will-crushing lethargy. Then the loneliness of having been left by herself. The warmth that had enveloped her was gone. 

Bell had vanished. In his place, in the darkness at the end of the passage, was a fierce song of battle. 

Bell had not given up in the least. 

He was thinking of Lyu and trying to fulfill her hopes. 

He did not want her justice to be lost. 

“Bell…!” 

Lyu drew together her strength and made a fist. 

She knew what she had to do. 

The vision was gone. The hallucination had vanished. Alize and the others were nowhere to be found. Perhaps everything she had seen on the far shore of the light was no more than a delusion that suited her own fancy. 

Still, they had taught her something. 

Justice was alive within her. 

She must not throw it aside. She must seek hope. 

Lyu planted her shaking hands on the ground and peeled herself off it. 

“Aaaaaa…!!” 

In the pool of blood, she gave a newborn cry. 

She broke with the self that had huddled in the shadow of her departed companions, imprisoned by the past, and gave birth to a new self. 

She had to face it. 

She had to face that past she had hid from for so long. 

She had to fight. 

She had to fight the symbol of her past she had feared all these years. 

The Juggernaut, the monster of calamity, was her past personified. 

If she wanted a future, she had to overcome that past. 

If she was determined not to lose anyone else, and to live out her justice and hope, then she had no other choice. 

“Aaaaaaa!!” 

She stood up. 

She grabbed a weapon from the pool of blood—the skeletal sword of a spartoi—and thrust it into the ground. 

Pushing the pain away, she took a step forward. That step gave birth to another, stronger step. She called forth the strength to move ahead. 

Ignoring her screaming body, Lyu walked down the dusky path. 

She walked toward the song of battle. 

Toward the place where the roars of the monster and the war cries of a human reverberated. 

Beneath the phosphorescence that illuminated the darkness, Lyu threw herself toward the place where calamity and cruelty waited. 

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!” 

Beyond the passage, a fight to the death was under way. 

In the center of the room, the monster and the human were clashing, intent on killing each other. Bell was crossing swords with the Juggernaut. Where did that strength come from? It was as if he was literally pouring the last dregs of his life itself into their fight. 

He had pulled the monster into a pure contest of strength. 

With the gleaming white knife in his right hand, he was fending off every pilum the monster shot at him as they ricocheted relentlessly off the walls, floor, and ceiling. 

The enemy’s pila were slower than iguaçu. Of course, that meant he could counter them. He had faced a storm of those murderous swallows before, and now Hakugen knocked down the barrage of evil pila without missing a single one. 

When the Juggernaut, with its hatefully joyous roars, shifted to close combat, Bell switched to the Hestia Knife. It was a high-speed weapon with a double edge. By alternating between the dark purple blade and the sparkling white one in his right hand, Bell successfully shut down the monster’s hit-and-run strategy. He even found time to slash its tail and slice off some of the lizardman scales. 

There was a regular pattern to his enemy’s jumps now that it could not move with complete freedom. With his adventurer’s instincts, Bell registered the relationship between the angle at which it landed and the time needed to prepare for its next jump, and by doing so he managed to withstand the savage attacks. 

Determined to use his earlier loss as the basis for victory this time around, Bell roared and launched a counterattack. 

The knife and the claws flashed purplish-blue, drawing countless arcs through the air. Sparks swirled amidst the deafening clatter. It was a circle dance of fiercely clashing light. 

To Lyu, it looked like one raw life force being hurled against another. 

“—! Ms. Lyu?!” 

Bell had noticed her presence. 

At the same time, the Juggernaut twirled around and looked straight at her. 

Her chest shuddered. She could not hide it. Her trauma creaked with fear. 

But now there was something that scared her more than having her past wounds opened afresh. 

That was the prospect of once again losing something irreplaceable. 

For a brief second of concentrated time, her heart was calm. 

This perfect stillness was followed by a tempestuous gale wind. 

This was the wind of her will driving her forward. 

“—!!” 

Lyu leaned forward and took off running. 

She kicked off the ground, danced through the air, and landed a terrific blow on the astonished Juggernaut. 

She plunged the blade of white bone into the monster’s raised right arm, above its protective armor. 

“Bell! I…can’t be the elf of the lake.” 

Knocked aside by her enemy’s forearm, she hit the ground rolling and shouted at the dazed Bell. Since he liked heroic tales, she was sure he was familiar with the one she’d mentioned. Elves respected the story greatly. Young elven girls dreamed of living that story. But Lyu was rejecting it. 

Bell stared at her. 

“I will not allow those who I care about to protect me while I sit by and do nothing! I will not let you walk into the jaws of death alone!” 

Bell smiled as her strong words reached him. He nodded back to her with his bloody, scarred head. The hieroglyphs on the Divine Knife gripped in his hand pulsated with light, as if it was burning with a renewed passion to fight. 

Standing shoulder to shoulder, the human and the elf launched their counterattack. 

“AAAAAA!!” 

The Juggernaut was wild with rage. 

He was terribly put out to have his fight to the death with Bell spoiled. 

The clock was ticking for this monster who had incorporated so many of its own kind and now wore its unnatural “armor of persistence.” He had decided to pour every last remaining second of his life into the battle against this one male. He absolutely must kill the white-haired boy. 

This worthless being was interfering with his reason for existing despite being nothing but a distraction. At the whim of his anger, the Juggernaut prepared to squash the offending bug. 

“!!” 

“!” 

But Lyu dodged. And that was not all; she fought back. 

Her movements were incomparable to those of a few moments before. It was hard to believe they came from the same adventurer. Blood was still flowing from her right arm and right leg, and indeed from her entire body. She was wounded from head to toe yet still she had found the courage to face her past, her trauma. Gale Wind was back to her old outstanding self. More than that, she was set on overcoming her past limits. 

The beauty with which she fought set her apart from the rabble the Juggernaut had slaughtered so far. 

“I will end you!!” 

She screamed the same words as the white-haired boy, with the same look in her eyes and the same will. 

The Juggernaut had recognized this before. Like the boy, the elf was worth hunting. She was worth giving of himself body and soul to massacre. 

Therefore, he would kill both of them together. 

The Juggernaut gave a fearsome battle cry and devoted every ounce of his being to murdering them. 

“Ahhh…!” 

The accelerated onslaught consisting of a series of jumps and a storm of pila pushed Bell to the limit. 

Five minutes had passed since the battle began. But in their tattered state, it would not have been surprising for either Bell or Lyu to lose their equilibrium at any moment. Their bodies were well beyond their capacity. When their flames of life had flickered out, the journey would end. Although the Juggernaut was paying for its transformation into a chimera through the rejection of body parts, the physical strength of this nonstandard monster exceeded that of the adventurers. When the waiting game was over, it would destroy them. 

When Bell was fighting alone, he had constantly been on the lookout for a chance to land his lethal blow. The Juggernaut, however, seemed aware of this. The evidence lay in the fact that while it still used its claws, the pila were now its main weapon. 

In the current stage of the battle, there was no such thing as a decisive blow. 

“Distant forest sky. Infinite stars inlaid upon the eternal night sky.” 

Against this backdrop, Lyu began to chant. 

“!” 

“!” 

Both Bell and the Juggernaut had the same reaction to the elf as she began to sing in the midst of running and brandishing her sword. 

Concurrent chanting. 

By carrying out attacks, movement, evasion, and chanting at the same time, the user called forth the necessary moment for a lethal blow. 

“Heed this foolish one’s voice, and once more grant the starfire’s divine protection.” 

It was also a song of regret. 

Lyu had sung the same song as she allowed Alize and the others to protect her without saving them in return. Succumbing to despair and terror, she had frozen, able to move only her lips. 

“Grant the light of compassion to the one who forsook you.” 

Now she sang that detestable song as she fought. 

She was determined not to lose what she cared most about. This time, she would not only be protected, she would protect in return. 

“…!” 

Bell sensed the intention behind her actions, as well as their strategic meaning. 

The removal of the Juggernaut’s shell. 

The shell that still remained on the left side of its body was endowed not only with magic reflection, but also with the stone body of the obsidian soldiers it had incorporated. Lyu’s Luminous Wind could not deal a lethal blow as long as their enemy wore this stony armor capable of reducing the strength of magic. And she did not have the mental strength left for two attacks. 

“…!” 

The Juggernaut interpreted the cutthroat speed of Lyu’s chanting as a threat. Given the compromised state of its armor, there was a slim chance the attack could hit home. There was a small possibility this could open the door to defeat. Thus the Juggernaut was determined to destroy Lyu first, before her magic swelled to its full strength. 

“—Firebolt!” 

Bell fired off a shot—not at the monster, but at his own black knife. 

“!” 

The electrical fire converged on the blade, followed immediately by the sound of a chime. He was preparing to activate Argo Vesta. He was summoning what strength he had left to charge for the last time. 

The Juggernaut could not help reacting to this omen signaling the same attack that had taken his right arm. There was no way he could ignore the lethal blow that had almost killed him. 

This was what Bell had been aiming for. 

In front of the monster was a human carrying out a concurrent charge; behind him was an elf chanting as she ran. The one in front was clearly a decoy, yet he could not ignore it. His attention split, the Juggernaut stopped moving for a second. 

“Come, wandering wind, fellow traveler.” 

Behind the monster, Lyu belted out her chant. 

In front of it, Bell charged forward with his flaming knife. 

Their plan was to strip the Juggernaut of its shell and then blast it with magic. 

The monster of calamity reacted by slamming its right arm against the ground. 

“—!!” 

Pila erupted from below—but not only in one spot. They formed a circle measuring ten meders in radius around the adventurers. 

“Shit!!” 

“Ahh!” 

By sending the bone javelins underground, the monster had managed to attack Lyu and Bell at the same time. The sword mountain rose with the monster at its center, injuring both adventurers. Lyu’s shoulder was torn and Bell’s thigh gouged. With one strike, the Juggernaut had shaved away at both of their lives. It intended to finish them off by skewering them on another batch of pila. 

“Cross the skies and sprint through the wilderness…” 

But Lyu did not stop chanting. With an indomitable spirit, she maintained control over her magic and seized a chance at victory. 

Because she did, Bell did, too. 

Even as blood spilled from his mouth, he narrowed his eyes and hit the ground with his right hand. 

“Argo Vesta!!” 

He had charged for seven seconds. 

The lethal blow was not aimed at the Juggernaut itself, but instead at the pila boring through the earth. 

“?!” 

The ground exploded with a thundering roar as the reverberations shook the world before the Juggernaut’s eyes. The underground flare blasted every one of the bone javelins into dust. The supply of pila had been cut off. 

That was not all, however. The power and impact of the sacred fire was transmitted through the pila to the Juggernaut’s right arm. The limb made of the bodies of countless monsters shattered. 

“??!” 

The Juggernaut screamed as its right arm exploded from the inside out. As Argo Vesta sent cracks racing across the floor and the entire room shook, the monster stumbled. For a moment, its guard was down. 

Bell did not let the opportunity slip past. He charged. 

Without the strength left to keep a solid grip on his weapon, the Hestia Knife spun into the air. He closed his hand into a fist instead, intending to dive into the monster’s chest. 

“Damn—!” 

But he was far too late. 

Using Argonaut to carry out his last concurrent charge had robbed him of his remaining mental and physical strength. Even though he cursed his collapsing knees and braved a close press, the threat was no match for a monster specialized in agility. In the final moment, the limits of Bell’s physical body betrayed him. 

Having bounced back from the damage inflicted on him, the Juggernaut turned his outraged red eyes on Bell. 

He anticipated no trouble in intercepting the ragged rabbit that was flying toward his chest. He raised his left arm, brandishing his six purplish-blue claws. 

Raised at an angle above its head, the claws of destruction were without question intended to finish off Bell by skewering him. No doubt they would color the world red when they pierced his chest and exited his back. Just as Bell imagined they would. Just like the attack that had stolen Lyu’s friends five years earlier. 

“—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!” 

Blocked from regaining her footing by the damage from the pila as well as the impact of Bell’s attack, Lyu howled. 

To overcome the tragedy that had been seared into her eyes, she became the wind and flew through space. She kicked her left foot against the ground and pierced the air like a flash of light arcing toward the monster. Approaching from the side, she soared directly to his upraised left arm. 

“?!” 

With Futaba already drawn, she used her two shortswords to dissect the claws of destruction. The blades sliced through his wrist and finger joints. 

Time stopped for the Juggernaut as it realized Lyu had just stolen its most potent weapon, those claws so sharp they could be mistaken for fangs. 

If I’d only done the same on that other day— 

Within the still pool of time, memories of the past rose in Lyu’s mind. 

Again she saw Alize, her back pierced by those claws that she had welcomed in order to protect Lyu. 

If only Lyu had stood up. 

If only she had fought beside them like she was fighting now. 

—she would not have been defeated! 

Regret and pain seared her body as her heart let out a scream that ripped through her chest. 

She knew she could not bring back the past. 

Still, she looked back on that moment when she had been saved and cried out with a heart full of a hundred different emotions. 

All of this while she sailed past the dazed Juggernaut. 

“—OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” 

The next instant, Bell hurtled into the Juggernaut. 

Lyu’s support had allowed him to make the final leap toward the monster’s breast. 

The enormous skeleton froze as the space between Bell and him vanished and the boy’s right fist pounded down on his right side. 

“FIIIREBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLT!” 

The cry came an instant later. Swift-Strike Magic exploded into his body. 

There was just one shot. 

But one shot was enough. 

The final dregs of Bell’s magic raced through the Juggernaut’s poorly defended body, ruthlessly exploding it from the inside. 

“?!” 

The remaining shell on its left side flew off its body as the electrical fire detonated. The obsidian soldier’s armor, too, shattered to the ground in a swirl of sparks. 

A single weak Firebolt did not have the force to take down the Juggernaut altogether. Without a magic stone to be shattered, the unique monster remained standing. However, the massive form was now completely naked and without armor. 

“—swifter than anything.” 

The elf’s song rang out, a beautiful melody of wind. 

From the Juggernaut’s perspective, she was on his right side. Having stolen his claws, she now lay on the ground with both legs pressed into it. 

She thrust her right hand toward the frozen Juggernaut and prepared to release a torrent of magic. 

“Imbue the light of stardust and strike down my enemy!” 

This was the final line, the one that announced the spell’s completion. 

Bell had been thrown backward by his own attack. Astonishment filled the monster’s red eyes. 

Lyu fired. 

“Luminous Wind!” 

The magic was activated. 

Huge orbs of light swathed in green wind materialized. 

Forty-seven of them. 

The magic attack into which she had poured every drop of her mental strength had begun. 

“?!!” 

The stream of light-orbs flew toward the monster. 

There was no escape from this storm of destruction. 

Yet the Juggernaut did escape. 

“What?!” 

Bell stared in disbelief. 

The monster had leaped with such power it seemed his right knee would shatter as it bent. The orbs of light swallowed up his tail and blew off his right leg from the shin down, yet still he flew into the air. 

Having lost their target, the storm of glowing orbs blasted past Bell as he screamed in frustration and crashed into the wall of the room. 

The monster had evaded Lyu’s lethal blow. 

Bell grimaced as reverberations shook the air. But not Lyu. 

“I know your speed better than anyone else in the world.” 

She had kept ten of the forty-seven orbs by her side. 

She had predicted this. 

She had guessed that the monster of calamity would probably evade even the most powerful magic released at the ideal moment. 

Even with the sacrifice of her closest friend she had not been able to fully take down the previous Juggernaut. She had looked at the current situation with coolheaded realism and fully anticipated the monster’s ability to evade her attack. 

From its position on the far wall of the room, the Juggernaut stared along with Bell below him at the ten glowing orbs. 

Ten. 

That was a special number for Lyu. 

The number of irreplaceable battle companions she had lost. 

These orbs, larger than all the others she had produced, hovered around her back. 

“—Let’s go.” 

With that, she dashed forward. 

“?!” 

She did not fire the orbs she had held in reserve but instead pulled them forward with her toward the Juggernaut. 

This would not be a long- or mid-range attack. 

Just before Bell used Argo Vesta on the twenty-seventh floor, the monster had leaped into the air. If Bell hadn’t used the Goliath Scarf to pull him back, his blow would not have hit its mark. Likewise, if Lyu didn’t release her attack from extremely close range, the Juggernaut would not be destroyed. 

Lyu had learned from her repeated fights against the Juggernaut, and she chose a “zero-range attack.” 

Although she could not accelerate as fast as she would have liked because a pilum had wounded her thigh, she leaped forward with a scream. 

“Noin, Neze!” 

As if responding to the names, two of the glowing orbs exploded into the soles of Lyu’s boots. 

“Huh?!” 

The sound of the light slipped into Bell’s ears as Lyu accelerated with explosive speed. The wind-wrapped orbs of light had given her incredible forward momentum. Lyu became a gale wind that cut through the air so quickly it left both the shuddering Bell and the astonished Juggernaut in the dust. As if she was kicking off from the two orbs of light, she hurtled straight toward the monster. 

“?!” 

The Juggernaut scrambled to thrust its right arm, which was now missing its lower half, toward the flying elf. 

A pilum volley erupted from the joint between its arm and its body. 

“Asta, Lyana!” 

Lyu once again howled the names of her companions and shot forth two large orbs of light. One was released from her side and landed on her left arm, which she held close to her, thereby changing her course midair. 

“?!” 

She turned at a near right angle, evading the rain of pila in the nick of time. 

Immediately, the second glowing orb exploded into the sole of her right shoe, and once again she flew forward. 

The arc she drew through the air was like a bolt of lightning. 

As the space between Lyu and the Juggernaut vanished almost instantly, the monster kicked off the wall with its left foot in an attempt to escape. 

“No way!!” 

She followed. 

Ignoring head wind and the law of inertia alike, she twisted her creaking body around by pure force of will, landed on the wall where the monster had been a second earlier, and took off flying again. 

The Juggernaut’s gaze wavered as it took in the form roaring toward it. 

She was using her magic like never before to move through the air. 

Her high-speed leap beat the astonished Juggernaut at its own game. 

Of course, her reckless strategy of changing her magic into propellant force was unlikely to lack consequences. The heels of her boots flaked off, exposing the blazing red soles of her feet. The left arm she had blasted an orb into in order to change directions was fractured as well. 

Her body was not broken, however. 

It might take all the abilities she had to withstand its evil power, but she would not permit herself to die until she had shot that monster dead. 

She shot herself with her own magic, making her flesh smoke and her skin burn, and yet the “flight of the elf” continued. 

—Friends, give me strength. 

Together with her familia, she would shoot their enemy. 

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” 

Correctly perceiving Lyu’s intention, the destroyer sounded a blaring alarm. 

Throwing caution to the wind, it shot all its remaining pila. 

Having lost a great deal of its mobility, it was desperately trying to prevent the elf from drawing near. 

“Celty, Iska, Maryu!” 

As if they were lending her a hand, the three orbs whose names had been called redirected Lyu diagonally and smashed the pila speeding toward her. 

As Lyu flew through the air buffeted by powerful wind pressure, she saw the faces of her companions in war. 

Her ten sisters in justice flew beside her, raising their voices with her in a battle cry. 

It was a hallucination. A mere sentimental delusion. 

A mirage to suit her whims. 

She knew that. 

And so she transformed that vision into the strength that drove her forward. 

“—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!” 

The elf’s roar shook the air. 

Strangely enough, this was a dogfight between two wingless opponents. 

As if drawn upward by this scene unfolding like stardust crisscrossing the night sky, Bell rose to his feet. His eyes wide, he was like an animal unable to do more than stare up at the stars in the heavens. 

He saw: 

The track of the elf as she danced through the air guided by ten orbs of light. 

Her long cape fluttering like wings spread wide, truly a vision of the wings of justice. 

The sword was the girl herself striving to overtake the monster. 

At last, this girl with the name of Astrea, the goddess of justice, carved in her back had the monster of calamity in her grasp. 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!” 

Strangely enough, all this was unfolding in midair in the center of the room. 

As the monster raised its right arm of bone to intercept this pursuit that had left it no escape route, Lyu released one of the three remaining orbs. 

“Kaguya!” 

As if responding to the cry of a companion in arms, the orb raced forward like a fencer throwing off cutting wind. 

The orb pulverized the monster’s last remaining section of arm, its last weapon. 

“—” 

The impact of the explosion sent the monster’s trunk swimming through space. 

Lyu soared very close to it and then overtook it, dancing over its head. The instant her powerful momentum vanished…her body slowly rotated, as if time had been cut away from that patch of air. 

Her legs were stretched toward the heavens, her head toward the ground. 

The Juggernaut twisted its massive body so that it was looking up at her from directly below her eyes. 

“Lyra.” 

She called forth the glowing orb quietly and it approached her feet as she began to fall. It was like an older sister pushing her forward with a smile. 

Tears gathered in Lyu’s eyes, and the next moment the impact hit her feet. She became a shooting star falling downward. 

And last: 

“Alize.” 

The final orb of light flew to Lyu’s palm. 

She had wanted judgment. 

She had wanted redemption. 

She had wanted to die and join her friends. 

She had been afraid to overcome the past. 

She had been terrified of forgetting the past. 

If she could have, she would have taken back her past and made it right. 

But now. 

Now she wanted the future. 

For its sake— 

The monster’s huge form was approaching. It had lost both arms, but its red eyes still stared up at her in a daze. 

Like her, this symbol of her past was battered from top to bottom. Lyu held the orb of light in her right hand and raised it. 

She was sure that in the light of the beautiful glowing sphere, she saw her friend’s hand on top of her own. A tear fell from her sky-blue eyes as she spoke with quivering lips. 

“—Good-bye.” 

Good-bye to the lingering shadow of her friends. 

Good-bye to those bygone days. 

Good-bye to the past that she must overcome. 

Lyu said her farewell to everything, and then she roared. 

“Luvia!!” 

A violent explosion. 

“?” 

The huge glowing sphere crashed into the monster’s chest. 

As if it were receiving all the skill of the girl who had protected Lyu and saved her, it flowered into a circle of light. 

Unable to defend itself, without even a dying scream or a roar of fury or resentment, the Juggernaut burst quietly into pieces. A piercing melody of light and wind rang out as the monster’s body transformed into innumerable fragments. 

Lyu watched the falling shards turn to ash like any other monster and then closed her eyes, drained of every last bit of energy. 

Her tears scattered into the air. 

“Ms. Lyu?!” 

Lyu and the remnants of the Juggernaut drifted down into the center of the room like a meteor shower. As the monster’s ash swirled in a smoky haze, Bell watched, unable in his injured state to dash to Lyu’s side. Instead he dragged himself slowly to the center of the room and gazed at the purplish smoke hanging in the air. 

“Aah…!” 

He saw an elven form hovering at a distance. Gradually its silhouette came into focus and the figure stepped forward out of the smoke. 

It was the battered Lyu. 

She met his eyes and curved her lips up ever so slightly. Bell smiled back in relief. 

The room was entirely still aside from the two of them. 

They had beaten the calamity. 

Still smiling, they walked forward slowly, as if they were seeking each other out. 

But before they reached each other, Bell stumbled. 

His body tilted forward. 

Lyu’s did the same. 

Although they were only steps apart, their knees buckled and with a crash they tumbled to the ground. 

“……” 

“……” 

Blood was erupting from their bodies, which were no more than walking wounds. 

Their breathing was shallow. 

They could hardly feel their hands and feet. 

They could hardly see the hazy world. 

They were close enough for Lyu to place her right hand over Bell’s right hand. 

They lay facedown on the cold Dungeon floor. 

“…We won, didn’t we?” 

“…Yes.” 

“…And now we can go home.” 

“…Yes.” 

Their voices were faint. 

They did not look at each other as they formed smiles that were not really smiles. 

A future in which they returned to the surface had become no more than a dream that they shared, its boundary with reality blurred. 

No adventurers remained in that room. 

There was only burned-out ash. 

They were like birds that had flown to the heavens and back only to lose their wings. 

White embers and the fading vestiges of an elf. 

That was all. 

The howls of monsters echoed in the distance. As if the stillness that the monster of calamity had presided over was a lie, the darkness thundered. The pounding of countless feet twined with roars heading toward the room where Bell and Lyu lay. 

They could not stand. They could not move a muscle. The darkness stared down at them. 

“…Bell.” 

“…Yes.” 

“…I…you…” 

“……” 

Lyu did not finish her thought. 

The light faded from their eyes as they gazed to the side. 

As if they were going to sleep, they closed their eyes. 

By the time the roaring monsters reached the room, their bodies had ceased moving. 

Their adventures had ended. 

They had beat the calamity but lost to the Dungeon. 

They had failed to escape the maze. 

Like many adventurers before them, Lyu and Bell were swallowed up by the darkness of the deep levels— 

“—, —chi, —llucchi!!” 

Or so it had seemed. 

“—Bellucchi!!” 

The volley of the monsters’ roars—the roars that sounded exactly like monsters communicating with companions some distance away—turned into words in human language. 

Within the dimness of his world, Bell sensed a shadow falling over his body. 

His eyelids fluttered open as his body was lifted in someone’s arms. 

“He’s alive, he’s alive!!” 

“Tell the humans!” 

Following an explosion of joyful roars, familiar voices echoed in his ears. 

Bell understood that he had been turned on his back, and a pair of eyes was peering down at him. 

Those very same round amber eyes that he had wanted to see for so long. 

“Bell, Bell!” 

Tears spilled from the amber eyes and dampened Bell’s cheeks. The sparkling red stone in the girl’s forehead glistened as if it, too, was crying. Bell tried to brush the tears from her face, only to remember that he could not move at all. He tried at least to smile, but failed at that as well. Finally he managed to move the muscles in his cheeks and raise the corners of his mouth very slightly. The girl with the amber eyes responded with a huge grin. 

“Mr. Bell!” 

“Bell!!” 

“Lyu!” 

“She’s over there, meow!” 

Bell could hear other familiar voices in the distance. 

The voices of their friends who had found them. 

The curtain had fallen on their adventure; they had lost to the Dungeon. 

But Lyu’s hopes had not been crushed. 

She and Bell had not given up hope. Instead they had risked death to fight the monster, and that fight had called their companions to their side. The ties of friendship they had pulled toward them had beaten the Dungeon. 

Moving quicky, the monsters who had gathered at their sides hurried away. Their jobs were done, although they would continue to watch over the pair from the shadows. Their presence remained near, as if to whisper their reassurances. 

The only two Xenos who remained with the adventurers were the dragon girl and the harpy disguised in hoods and robes. The harpy lifted Lyu and held her close. 

“…Bell.” 

“…Yes.” 

The tearful, joyful voices of the friends who had called their names drew closer. 

Lyu looked Bell in the eye and smiled. 

“We can…go home.”