Sophia
“Looks like the queen’s started fighting.”
Miss Ariel murmurs quietly.
We’re in the Bottom Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
There’s certainly no way to see whether the queen is fighting from here.
Maybe she’s using Panoptic Vision to check on the battlefield?
Miss Ariel has been weakened considerably since that last battle, enough that it’s even having a detrimental effect on her everyday life. Should she really be using a skill like that?
Well, I suppose she wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t safe.
I am a little worried, but I don’t have much of a choice but to trust Miss Ariel to know what’s best for herself, I’m sure.
Now then, perhaps I ought to use Panoptic Vision myself to check on the situation outside.
This skill allows me to see quite a long way, even in spite of the considerable distance between the Bottom Stratum and the outside.
Sure enough, the first thing I see is the queen fighting fiercely near the entrance to the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
Her opponents are a leopard-like monster and a red dragon.
Both of them are probably ancient dragons.
I mean, the leopard is controlling lightning, while the other is breathing fire.
A lightning dragon and a fire dragon, perhaps?
While the queen fights those two beasts, a humanoid army is stationed nearby.
Or rather, two separate armies: One is the demon army.
I even see a few faces I recognize.
Which means the other must be a human army.
The rest of the spider swarm is fast approaching the humanoids.
They’ll collide any moment now.
“Should we call the other queen here, too?”
Looking away from that battlefield for the moment, I check in on the other entrance as I speak.
The Great Elroe Labyrinth is a massive dungeon that connects two continents.
In other words, there’s an entrance on each landmass.
And while one of the entrances is entrenched in all-out war, the other is perfectly peaceful.
At least, as peaceful as anyplace can be when it’s being guarded by another queen taratect and her army of spiders.
Since it looks like the humanoids have decided to focus all their forces on attacking one side, I thought I’d suggest that we summon the queen from the entrance that’s not under siege.
“Nah,” Ariel answers immediately. “I’ll keep an eye on things for now and summon her when the time is right.”
Summon, she says…
“Are you sure about that?”
“As sure as I can be, anyway.”
Won’t summoning be much harder on her constitution than Panoptic Vision?
But just as I expected, Miss Ariel only brushes off my concerns.
She looked pained enough after the first time, though…
Miss Ariel had to summon the queens to each entrance of the Great Elroe Labyrinth, of course.
Though we were at least able to use that spaceship to get to the entrances, Miss Ariel was clearly exhausted after the summonings.
I suppose it was worth the effort, but still…
“Summoning certainly is convenient.”
“Oh, right. You can summon your dear Merazophis, too.”
Being able to instantly call backup to your side is a serious asset in battle.
I’d hate to be the poor sap fighting someone when a legendary-class monster suddenly pops into the mix.
And the queen brings more than just her own strength, too.
“It seems almost like cheating that your summoned subordinate can summon her subordinates, doesn’t it?”
“Eh, I guess.”
The queen has a lot of subordinates of her own.
Just by summoning a single queen, you essentially get an entire spider army thrown in for free.
It’s a little unfair that she’s strong both individually and in a group, isn’t it?
“Well, as far as foul play goes, I’d say being a vampire is even cheaper than little old me. Your subordinates can multiply like rabbits if you feel so inclined.”
Touché, I say.
Being a vampire, I can suck an opponent’s blood and turn them into a vampire, too.
Then, with the Kin Control skill, I can control them as my servants.
And then I can use that freshly made vampire to attack someone else and create yet another vampire.
Those vampires can attack other vampires, and so on and so forth, allowing me to make as many vampires as I so choose.
The scariest part about that is that I can force our enemies to join our side, I suppose.
Not that I would do any such thing.
“You realize you could do that anytime you want, right?”
“No, thank you. Merazophis is the only servant I need.”
I’m not going to turn any old riffraff into my vampiric spawn.
Being my servant is a position with special meaning, and I insist upon keeping it that way.
My enhanced hearing picks up on a muttered comment from Ariel: “She forgot about Wald. Poor guy.”
…I didn’t forget about him!
I was just, you know! Counting him in a different category, that’s all!
“Hrm. At any rate, it looks like the queen is fighting Fire Dragon Nguyen and Lightning Dragon Gohka…”
My guesses about the ancient dragons fighting the queen were right: The one in dragon form is a fire dragon called Nguyen, and the leopard-looking one is a lightning dragon called Gohka.
“…Two ancient dragons might be a little too much for her.”
Just as Ariel says, the queen is starting to lose.
Even a legendary-class monster like her evidently struggles against a fellow legendary-class, let alone two ancient dragons at the same time.
But apparently that isn’t Miss Ariel’s only concern.
“Where are the other ancient dragons?”
Two ancient dragons are fighting the queen.
But there are supposed to be four others: Water Dragon Iena, Wind Dragon Hyuvan, Ice Dragon Nia, and Dark Dragon Reise.
It just so happens that I’ve even met Hyuvan and Nia myself.
Although it’s not as if we had much of a conversation—we just briefly introduced ourselves in the middle of other recent happenings.
I’m told they were technically enrolled as members of the Ninth Demon Army, of which their boss Black was the commander. Still, they each have their own territories to control, and I’ve been busy with business of my own. We never ran into each other before all this started.
Really, if we were going to end up on enemy sides like this, perhaps it’s better that we weren’t friends in the first place.
Knowing each other better might only have made it harder for all of us.
“Could they be in the labyrinth already, by any chance?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I certainly haven’t heard anything to suggest it.”
Miss Ariel’s spider monster spawn has already spread throughout the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
If anything happened, they would report to Miss Ariel right away.
The lack of reports thus far would suggest that nothing unusual has happened inside the labyrinth, at least not yet.
“But yeah, something feels off for sure…”
The missing ancient dragons.
The silence in the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
Normally, we should be celebrating that, but just as Miss Ariel says, it seems a little too convenient to be true.
It’s as if something has gone amiss just out of sight…
“What’s that? Huh? Water?”
At that exact moment, Miss Ariel suddenly turns tense and starts muttering something.
Right on cue, I suppose.
It looks like she’s getting a report from some of her spawn.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure what exactly…but something’s definitely up.”
I guess the report wasn’t too clear on the details.
Most of her spawn aren’t terribly intelligent to begin with, so a lot of their reports tend to be a bit short and to the point.
But still…“water”? What’s that supposed to mean?
“Ah!”
Just as I’m contemplating this mystery, Ariel lets out a short cry.
“Wh-what the hell does she think she’s doing?!”
Then it crescendos into a bellow.
“Flooding us? Are you kidding me?!
…Come again?
“Oh, yikes…”
When I raced to the Upper Stratum, I found it half submerged underwater.
I used a pit that connects from the Lower Stratum to the Upper Stratum to get here, although it was really more of a waterfall, thanks to the water flowing into it from above.
That made for a lovely sight and all, not that now is a good time to be admiring the view.
As for why all this is happening, it would appear that a certain someone decided to bust a hole in the ceiling of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
This labyrinth happens to be underneath the ocean.
Which means that if you make a hole in the ceiling of the Upper Stratum, seawater will flood right in.
The ceiling is incredibly thick and sturdy for that exact reason, but I guess it’s not so tough that, say, an ancient dragon couldn’t break through.
Honestly! What a ridiculous trick to pull on us!
What sane person would ever think to try and flood the biggest labyrinth in the world?!
Not me, I can tell you that much!
As it happens, flooding labyrinths is actually not that unusual of a concept.
I learned about it in the demon academy.
It’s a very effective strategy against an airtight underground labyrinth with no other exits, or so we were told.
The existence of Water Magic makes flooding a place much easier than it would be on Earth, and it would definitely be enough to take out any enemy who can’t swim.
Since labyrinths are generally monster-infested caverns, the aim of flooding one is usually to exterminate all the monsters inside.
The main drawback is that since the labyrinth will then be submerged, you won’t be able to go in and out anymore, nor would you be able to collect the monster corpses, I suppose.
But if your goal is simply to destroy all the monsters within, flooding might be the most effective method around.
Of course, if you’re really going to flood the place, you’d need a massive amount of water.
Just using Water Magic alone would require way too much MP to produce enough of it.
That means you’d have to physically have water on hand. Which only really works if, for instance, you can make a hole directly under the ocean, as this current situation nicely demonstrates.
So it’s not impossible. But the main reason Miss Ariel and the rest of us didn’t consider the possibility is because of our enemy’s goal.
Their entire aim is to get at the door to the core of the system, found deep in the Bottom Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth here.
That means you physically have to go there, right?
And yet you’re going to submerge it underwater?
Um, hello? How stupid can you get?
It doesn’t seem like the act of any sane person, that’s for sure.
But I guess they probably figured they had to do something crazy to have a shot at victory.
I’m not sure whether our enemies know that Miss Ariel is in a weakened state, but even if they do, we’ve still got plenty of power to be reckoned with.
There’s the massive swarm of spider monsters, including the queen.
Then the puppet taratects: Ael, Sael, Riel, and Fiel.
And then there’s Kyouya, Merazophis, and yours truly.
That’s already enough to be a match for a thousand men or more, possibly past the point of being threatened by anything less than an ancient dragon.
On top of that, Phelmina and the Tenth Army seem to be operating independently outside the Great Elroe Labyrinth, too.
And then there’s the free-roaming monsters inside the labyrinth.
While most of them are neither enemies nor allies, the white spiderlike monsters known as the Nightmare’s Vestiges appear to be on our side.
White spider monsters…
They’ve got to be connected to Master, right?
…Well, it doesn’t really matter, as long as they’re going to fight for us.
We’d be here all day if I tried to question everything Master does anyway.
Honestly! When did she even have time to create such a freakishly powerful army?!
Ah, that wasn’t me questioning her, okay? It was, you know, rhetorical. Not a question, I swear…
At any rate, even the Nightmare’s Vestiges might have trouble with this flooding situation.
As much as I was hoping we could let them take care of just about everything, this attack and the enemy behind it might require some bigger guns.
I had better hurry, then.
I set one foot on the surface of the water.
Immediately, the area of water my foot touches freezes over.
I’m using my Freezing Attack skill to put a layer of ice over anything I touch.
The “Attack” series of skills, which apply a particular property to an attack, have power relative to the stats of the user.
With my impressively high stats, it’s so strong that it becomes the ability to freeze anything I touch instantaneously.
I keep running across the surface of the water, leaving a frozen path in my wake.
Freezing all the water surging inward, I prevent any further flooding.
Even I can’t freeze all the water that’s already filled up inside, of course.
But if I start freezing anything in sight, I can at least hold back the flooding somewhat.
Then I’ve just got to stop the flow of water at its source!
And in order to do that, I’ll have to go ahead and beat up the culprit!
Before long, I catch sight of a mermaid fighting off some Nightmare’s Vestiges.
She’s controlling the flow of water at will, using it to take out the spider monsters one after another.
A Nightmare’s Vestige gets engulfed in a sphere of water, then its body bursts.
Mermaids sure use nasty tricks for being so pretty and innocent-looking.
I’m guessing she’s flooding water into their bodies and forcing it outward to destroy them from the inside out.
If I remember right, most living things’ bodies are mainly composed of water. By forcing water of her own into any available orifice, she must be able to rupture their innards and make them explode.
That definitely seems like an unfair ability in this half-submerged battlefield.
The last thing I want is to go head-to-head against someone with such dangerous moves.
So I’ll finish her off in one go!
I close in on her from behind and swing my broadsword down on her neck!
But she dodges the blade by twisting out of the way without even turning around, then shoots water right back at me.
I freeze it in midair.
“Humph!”
“Hmph!”
The mermaid and I both huff in perfect harmony.
At the same time, I freeze the water around us, and close up the hole in the ceiling with ice.
The massive amount of water flowing in through the hole turns into an icicle.
That should stop any more water from getting in right away.
The shock waves freeze the rest of the water in the area, too.
The mermaid hurriedly leaps out of the water before she gets frozen in place, transforming her fish tail into normal human legs.
Um, excuse me, don’t you have any decency?!
No, wait, she’s got clothes on.
Even if it’s nothing but a skimpy swimsuit.
She’s fast not just at transforming, but also at changing into clothes.
The mermaid-turned-swimsuit-model floats in the air, carefully avoiding the ice.
“Not bad. I was hoping that would finish you off.”
“Oh dear, you really thought you could defeat me that easily? How embarrassing for you.”
We exchange casual taunts as we assess each other.
Noticing the woman glancing over at the Nightmare’s Vestiges, I use Appraisal to distract her.
Appraisal causes discomfort for the target, making it handy for situations like these.
The spiders scatter away while she’s busy grimacing at the sensation.
Looks like they’re escaping from the sunken Upper Stratum and heading outside.
Probably for the best, since it wouldn’t do them much good to stay in this half-submerged, half-frozen cavern.
Now, let’s have a look at those Appraisal results.
Water Dragon Iena? Ugh, of course…
Just as I suspected, this is the ancient dragon chief of the water dragons.
She’s the most troublesome of all the ancient dragons, according to Miss Ariel.
Just a glance at her stats is enough to explain that assessment.
All of them are over 25,000.
Come on, she’s even stronger than the queens!
I’ve certainly fought my share of legendary-class monsters, but this is my first time facing one as strong as this.
I guess she’s known as the strongest ancient dragon for good reason.
…Not that I’m worried about losing, of course.
Between all the legendary-class monsters I’ve beaten around the world, Master’s grueling training, and all the other nonsense I’ve been through, my stats are even higher than Water Dragon Iena’s.
As long as I don’t let my guard down, I can handle her just fine.
In which case…
“Let’s make this quick, shall we?!”
“Oh, don’t be like that. Won’t you dance with me awhile?”
I’ll just take her out with a quick attack!
My ice-imbued broadsword swings toward her.
True to her word, Water Dragon Iena whirls out of the way with dance-like smoothness.
As she spins around, water gushes out of both her hands, attacking me in the ever-shifting shapes of dozens of serpents.
This isn’t a magic show, lady!
“Come now, dear girl! Let us dance forever and ever!”
“Oh, stop being so saucy!”
The combination of Iena’s dance-like movements and the mystical whirling of the water make for quite a spectacle, I’ll admit.
But I don’t have time to stand around and watch the show!
I knock back the pillars of water with my sword.
Immediately, the water freezes and shatters.
Normally, it would be impossible to cut a liquid with a sword. I’m sure she would either surround me with it and drown me, or fill my body with water and destroy me from the inside.
Unfortunately for her, our type of matchup works out in my favor.
I can easily freeze her water and render it useless.
I’ve got the advantage in both stats and typing. She doesn’t stand a chance!
Too bad, so sad!
Water Dragon Iena seems to sense this, too; there’s a hint of panic on her face.
She keeps sending waves of water toward me; I knock them all away, freezing and smashing with my sword as I press onward.
But every time I move forward, Iena moves back, preventing me from getting any closer.
I’d like to close the distance all at once, but the water attacks are preventing me from doing that.
Argh! Now you’re getting on my nerves!
“Did you know, my dear? Water dragons rule over all the vast ocean.”
As I get more and more annoyed, Iena starts blabbering at me.
“So? Why should I care?!”
I freeze the entire cascade of water and crash right through it.
Each kind of dragon rules over and protects a particular territory.
Water dragons are in charge of the ocean.
On the other side of the ocean is an expanse where the ground crumbles away. The water dragons sink any ships that venture onto the ocean so that humanity doesn’t reach it by mistake.
“Because of its size, we need plenty of eyes to keep watch.”
Again, who cares?
Iena’s expression hasn’t changed.
It’s still fairly calm, with only a hint of stress.
Wait…still calm?
Even though she’s clearly losing?
“In other words, of all the dragons, water dragons are by far the most numerous.”
Just as I start to get a very bad feeling about where this speech is headed, a huge tremor shakes the cavern.
“Naturally, that means we have the most ancient dragons, too, hmm?”
A tremor like a massive explosion has happened nearby…
Activating my Panoptic Vision with growing dread, I find several different areas of the labyrinth where huge holes have opened in the ceiling, massive amounts of water flooding inside.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I wonder, little girl, can you handle all thirty-seven ancient water dragons by yourself?”
Sure enough, aside from Water Dragon Iena, thirty-seven other legendary-class monsters were trying to flood the labyrinth, too.
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