In an instant, everyone present turned their eyes to Lulune's hands.
There, resting quietly, was a sphere large enough that it took both hands cupped together to hold it.
The sphere was green all over, its shell like a layer of transparent membrane that let you see clearly what lay inside, where something like liquid seemed to float within. It was neither pretty nor ugly.
And yet, inside that sphere that was neither pretty nor ugly, a bizarre fetus hung suspended.
That's right. A fetus.
It had a small, round body, with limbs that hadn't finished developing, and even long hair at the back of its head that marked it as female, curving down from the crown all the way to the top of the spine, an utterly grotesque sight.
More grotesque still, the fetus's eyes were especially large, wildly out of proportion with that undeveloped little body, and its big eyeballs rolled up and down, gazing out at the people around it as though it were conscious, filled with a malice and hostility that no one else could fathom.
"...What is that?"
Ais's voice had gone hoarse without her noticing.
Her eyes met the fetus's eyes, and it was as if some nameless resonance had sprung up between them, her heartbeat, her blood flow, all of it quickening.
She didn't know what the thing was. She only knew that her blood, her instincts, even her very existence itself were all rejecting it, so much so that a sharp ringing rose deep in her eardrums, and beneath her skin came a sensation like earthworms crawling everywhere, a wave of nausea welling up and surging violently into her throat.
Her head spun harder, her breathing fell into serious disorder, and all the strength drained from her body. Her whole slender frame swayed, and she nearly collapsed to the ground.
"Sword Princess?!"
Startled by Ais's sudden, violent reaction, Lulune cried out in a fluster.
"Wh-what's wrong? Are you sick? Are you hurt?"
Clearly, Lulune hadn't had that same inexplicable reaction and sensation as Ais.
It seemed to be something only Ais could feel. Never mind Lulune, even Leo, who was staring into the fetus's big eyes just as she was, was perfectly fine, feeling only that the thing was physically unsettling no matter how he looked at it.
Of course, that wasn't what Leo was most focused on.
Leo had already been watching Ais even before the fetus appeared, and Ais reacting so violently made his chest tighten.
But when Ais swayed all over and nearly fell to the ground, he didn't rush to the girl's side to catch her first thing. Instead he spun around abruptly and drew the Dragon Fang Sword that had stayed gripped at his waist.
At almost the same instant, a figure like a phantom shot out silently from behind.
The figure was blindingly fast, so fast it was like teleportation, closing to right in front of him the moment Leo turned.
"Leo...!"
Ais finally caught a breath through the discomfort, saw that scene, and let out a cry of alarm.
But before her cry could even sound, a longsword had already come down with the force of thunder, from above, hacking heavily toward Leo.
The clang of metal on metal rang out, harsh and abrupt.
The sound was louder than a struck bell, sending sparks scattering fiercely into the air, lighting up the somewhat dim alley and lighting up the two faces facing off across their weapons.
In the instant the longsword came slashing down, Leo blocked it in time with the Dragon Fang Sword, the two blades grinding hard against each other.
A tremendous force transmitted through the enemy's sword, nearly knocking his own from his grip.
"Tch..."
Seeing a strike she'd been certain would land get blocked, the enemy clicked her tongue openly.
"An adventurer getting in the way."
A high, ringing, ice-cold voice came from the enemy's mouth, only to be answered by a merciless spinning kick from Leo.
The sudden kick caught the attacker off guard, and yet it didn't land on her body either, blocked by a raised arm.
The two grinding weapons parted with the burst of that strike, and Leo and the attacker were both jolted back, opening up some distance between them.
"You okay, Leo?!"
Ais could no longer spare a thought for the discomfort. She flashed to Leo's side and steadied him gently.
"I'm fine."
Leo shook his head, but his eyes didn't dare leave the attacker for a second.
The hand gripping his sword was still trembling faintly, gone terribly numb.
That downward hack just now had burst with a force so great it made you wonder whether a Human could even possess such strength.
"Wh-who are you?!"
Hiding behind Leo and Ais with the green orb in her hands, Lulune spoke up in a panic.
Only then did everyone get a clear look at the attacker.
It was a male adventurer, heavy black armor wrapped from the ends of his limbs up to his chest, a scarf like torn rags around his neck, a helmet on his head, his skin a dusky dark, half his face bandaged, leaving only a single left eye exposed.
"A-a man?"
Both Ais and Lulune were a little stunned.
There was no helping it. That high, ringing, ice-cold voice the enemy had let out just now was unmistakably a woman's.
Ais and Lulune had assumed the attacker was a woman, only to see a man, and they couldn't help being taken aback.
Only Leo looked at the enemy with no expression, speaking calmly.
"That's not her real face. It's just a disguise."
The moment Leo finished speaking, the enemy let out an irritated sound.
"Moving around in this getup really is stifling."
The voice was still high, ringing, and ice-cold, badly at odds with the male appearance.
Then the enemy began stripping off the armor.
She first crushed the breastplate with brute force, then destroyed the rest of the armor with total ease. Once the fragments had been flung down onto the ground, out came a full, pale neck and a supple body wrapped in an undershirt.
The bandages wound around her face were torn off too, revealing a male face that neither Leo nor Ais had ever seen.
"Th-that's the delivery man who handed the goods to me!"
Lulune let out that startled cry, and it made Ais understand something in an instant.
The Amazoness owner of the buyback stand had already said that the head of the person killed in Rivira had been stomped to a pulp.
In other words, the killer had done something to the victim's head.
Only, she hadn't completely destroyed the head. She had peeled the skin of the face off it and pressed it onto her own, disguising herself as a man.
That guess was confirmed once the enemy tore off the face-skin, revealing an ice-cold woman's face beneath.
"Much more comfortable now."
The mysterious woman said this without a shred of feeling, raising her head in the light armor of only a helmet, knee guards, and arm guards, gazing at Leo and the other two.
The aura radiating off her was hair-raising. She didn't seem like a living Human, more like a savage giant beast, an unusual pressure to her.
The way she looked at Leo, Ais, and Lulune wasn't like looking at her own kind either, more like looking at a swarm of lowly creatures, cold and pitiless. Only when she saw the green orb resting in Lulune's hands did her gaze change.
"Hand that over."
The mysterious woman spoke coldly.
It was a declaration that brooked no doubt.
It was a notice that brooked no refusal.
No warning, no advice, as if she were simply informing them one-sidedly that they had no right to refuse, and even as she spoke she had already started walking over.
The next second, the woman's figure vanished.
"!!"
Leo's face changed abruptly, his pupils shrinking hard, and almost without thinking he shoved Lulune behind him out of the way.
"Look out!"
"Ah!"
Leo's shout and Lulune's cry rang out at the same time, sending the two of them stumbling to one side and toppling clumsily to the ground.
A longsword slashed through the spot where Lulune had been standing a second before with lightning speed, landing on empty air.
Just now, if Leo hadn't shoved Lulune out of the way in time, she'd already be cut clean in two.
Sprawled on the ground, Lulune understood that, cold sweat sheeting down in an instant, while the green orb in her hands rolled off to one side as she fell.
Having swept in at astonishing speed and brought down that slash, the mysterious woman saw this and was about to turn to grab it, only to be forced back by a silver saber.
"Don't even think about it!"
Ais had finally drawn her blade, her condition seemingly recovered as well, swinging out a strike as sharp as ever, forcing the mysterious woman to leap up and spring back.
The silver flash of the sword swept past like a burst of light, nearly slicing into her body, making the retreating woman click her tongue again.
"Didn't I say... you're in the way?"
The mysterious woman attacked Ais.
Her speed was still that fast, vanishing on the spot as if teleporting. Even Leo could only catch a blurred afterimage, and Lulune couldn't see anything at all.
Only Ais caught the enemy's figure completely, and even met her head-on at a speed that lagged barely at all behind hers.
Saber and longsword collided in the dim alley, kicking up a burst of blinding sparks.
The next moment, the sound of metal striking metal rang out without cease, turning the whole alley into a battlefield in an instant.
Ais and the mysterious woman entered a high-speed close-quarters duel right in front of Leo and Lulune, their figures crossing back and forth as if flickering in and out, the weapons in their hands carving cold arcs of light, colliding dozens of times in a heartbeat, sparks bursting cluster after cluster across the alley.
"S-so strong...!"
Lulune, at Lv.3, was already dumbstruck, trembling all over.
She had never seen a battle like this, never seen a swordfight so fierce. Both Ais and that mysterious woman felt to her like beings she couldn't begin to comprehend.
"You. If you don't want to die, you'd better hide, and don't go running around."
Leo warned Lulune, then paid her no more attention, drawing the Emerald Staff clipped at his left waist, the jewel on its body lighting up.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
He chanted the magic without hesitation, and as the starlight magic circle spread open, he fired off several thick meteors.
Locked in her fierce battle with Ais, the mysterious woman sensed this, and without any attachment to the fight she hacked Ais back with one stroke, then, tapping the tips of her toes in quick succession, exploded backward and dodged the incoming meteors, her footwork nimble in the extreme.
But she didn't know that Leo's magic wasn't so easy to dodge.
The meteors she'd evaded suddenly all curved, as if steered by an invisible hand, chasing down one after another to her retreating form.
"What?"
The mysterious woman's expression changed.
The flying meteors fell mercilessly onto her in that instant, bursting again and again against her slender frame as she threw up both arms in a rush.
Dazzling star-bursts erupted in the alley at once, throwing the air into chaos while the shockwave, riding surging waves of blast, shook the buildings all around.
"You bastard...!"
Arms still raised, her skin blasted a charred black all over, the mysterious woman came flying backward out of the explosion, barely steadying herself to land on the ground, her cold voice and face beginning to turn to rage.
Little did anyone expect that her showing was what left them astonished instead.
"She actually took Leo's magic head-on...?!"
Ais couldn't help her shock.
Others might not know, but how could she not know how absurd the firepower of Leo's magic was? That was firepower that could wound a Floor Boss back at Lv.2, that could rival a Lv.5 Mage at Lv.3, that could punch clean through even the notoriously tough Black Rhino of Floor 51 in a single blow, that could make even those female-form monsters howl in pain!
Now Leo was already Lv.4, and his firepower had grown more terrifying still, yet firepower like that, landing on this mysterious woman, had only left her skin charred black?
She still had the strength to move, to curse?
By the look of it, she didn't even seem to have taken any particularly serious injury...
That kind of defense was nowhere near what a Human should have, was it?
Never mind that the enemy looked like nothing more than a Human. Even a Lv.6 Dwarf great warrior like Gareth, taken by Leo's magic head-on, wouldn't necessarily come away with only that degree of injury, would he?
"Who exactly are you? Why kill people for a thing like that?"
Ais demanded.
No need to think about it. This mysterious woman before them was the one who had killed the courier and set her sights on that green orb.
"And what is that thing, anyway?"
Ais pressed on, but it won her no response from the woman.
The woman only grew more and more irritated, more and more impatient.
"Since things have already gotten this troublesome, then don't blame me for tearing this whole place apart."
The woman coldly reached out and drew a grass whistle from her chest.
Seeing this, Leo behind them immediately called out loudly.
"Ais! Stop her!"
Ais, who trusted Leo completely, at once burst out at her fastest speed and charged the enemy without a word.
"...Come out."
But the mysterious woman, unhurried, tapped her toes to the ground, exploding backward to open up distance from Ais even as she blew the grass whistle.
The grass whistle let out a shrill note, like a whistle-blast, echoing over the town.
The Under Resort descended into chaos.
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