"Whew..."
Having burst into the battlefield, Ais still hadn't made out the situation inside, and was quickly steadying her breathing. Her condition was far from as intact as it looked to others. The fight between her and Revis had been fiercer than anyone imagined, so she couldn't avoid taking some wounds, and her stamina especially had been drained a good deal. Now she just felt pain all over her body, as though she'd taken plenty of punches, with even her internal organs aching faintly.
Of course, compared to Revis, Ais's condition was far better. Revis was the one who was truly badly hurt, unable even to stand quite steady, her condition visibly poor.
"Sword Princess!"
Watching Ais burst into the battlefield, even knocking an enemy into it, Asfi and the rest of the Hermes Familia couldn't help a rush of joy.
Has it already gotten this bad?
Revis quickly swept her eyes across the great cavern, looking at the white-haired man and the Evilus members who were nowhere to be seen, then at the three Giant Flowers driven to madness and the huge swarm of Violas out of control, and finally at Leo standing before the quartz pillar, at the jeweled fetus stabbed clean through, her bloodstained face sinking bit by bit.
"You're here?"
Leo didn't look toward Ais, but he could clearly sense her presence. Unfortunately, the Giant Flower that had crashed down before him came charging in and left him no choice but to meet it first.
Amid the thunderous roars, the two Giant Flowers kept launching attacks at where Leo was, ramming him again and again, subjecting the ground to one round of battering after another. The green-flesh-covered ground was smashed to pieces over and over by the two Giant Flowers, dust flying up, yet they never once touched Leo in the slightest. Leo, his whole body wrapped in starlight, went streaking off with a momentum that seemed fit to break through the clouds, to break out of the very cosmos, the comet his body had become like a streak of light chased by two great beasts, changing direction and racing endlessly, the sight of it actually carrying a certain beauty.
"Leo!"
Only now did Ais make out the situation inside, seeing Leo chased by the two giant Violas, and without a second thought she charged straight forward.
"Look out!"
Seeing Ais about to charge recklessly toward Leo, Asfi and the others cried out in alarm. It was because the Giant Flower that had been tangling with them all this time suddenly lunged at Ais, opening its bloody maw and biting down from above, so that the sky over Ais's head went dark. Faced with that overwhelming bite, Ais showed no intention of stopping at all.
"Awaken."
The low chant bloomed from her mouth, and the surrounding space suddenly surged with currents of air, turning into a strong wind that wound around Ais's body. In this moment, Ais at last used the greatest Falna upon her.
Ariel, activated.
There came the sound of a sword swing. Ais poured every last thread of the wind around her into the silver saber and, against the Giant Flower's descending maw, swung the ultimate slash. It was a great slash that swept everything away, a flash that annihilated everything. All anyone saw was a single searing line of blade-light, and then the Giant Flower was in two pieces. The light had severed its head, split its body, parted head from trunk. Blood sprayed skyward in great swaths. The enormous headless corpse stiffened where it stood.
Amid a rumble through the ground, the Giant Flower's head and body fell together, striking the ground hard enough to make it tremble.
Every sound in the place vanished. Silence. A deathly stillness.
Asfi and the others stood frozen where they were, dumbstruck, their movements halted, their bodies stiffer than the Giant Flower's headless corpse. Gazing at the monster's carcass sprawled on the ground, no one dared believe their own eyes.
One strike. That giant monster, which had left everyone in the place able only to scramble in response, bigger even than a Floor Boss, had been beheaded with a single stroke by Ais, dead in an instant.
"This..."
Asfi and the others were utterly stunned.
"That's her, all right."
Leo, still being chased by the two Giant Flowers, saw this too and praised her from the bottom of his heart. This was something even he hadn't been able to do. There was no helping it. His Status could rival Ais's, but only on the condition that Ais didn't activate that foul-play-tier Magic, Ariel. Even back at Lv.5, Ais had already been able to match a Lv.6 with this Magic, and now that she was Lv.6, if she activated this Magic on top of that, then in pure numbers even veteran masters like Finn probably couldn't beat Ais. Add to that the fact that the Giant Flowers were clearly like the Violas, immune to blunt strikes and weak against slashing, and the result was that a Giant Flower that could tank Leo's magic bombardment couldn't, on the other hand, withstand Ais's full-power slash, killed in a single blow. It was a matter of matchup. If Leo could unleash that kind of magic-empowered great slash, he could do it too. Unfortunately, he currently had no such finishing move for close combat.
Maybe... I could try developing one.
Leo silently thought to himself. Of course, that was something to consider later. As for now...
"First I've got to deal with you two."
Looking at the two Giant Flowers madly chasing him, Leo abruptly began to fly upward. The dazzling comet, trailing a long tail of light, suddenly shot skyward, straight up to the vault of the cavern, so that the two Giant Flowers could only stop below him and roar upward. They reached out their tentacles, ready to attack Leo with them. But just as their tentacles began to stir, Leo, wreathed in starlight all over, stopped in midair.
Looking down on the two Giant Flowers from above, Leo suddenly ignited most of his own Mind. The vast Mind turned into staggering magic power, setting the Giant Flowers and Violas, sensitive to magic-power reactions, all into a frenzy.
The air trembled faintly, and a huge starlight magic circle spread open beneath Leo, rotating as it gave off a brilliant radiance. That staggering momentum told everyone one thing... what came next was the deciding strike.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
The sound of the magic chant was like it came from the distant edge of the sky, faint and drifting.
"Meteor Dance!"
As Leo's chant fell, the dazzling magic circle immediately burst forth with what seemed an endless flood of starlight, lighting up the whole great cavern. Before long, the starlight gathered at the center of the magic circle, turning into a pillar of light that reached from heaven to earth, descending from the sky.
With a terrifying roar, the giant pillar of light descending from the sky came down like a divine judgment sent by a god, like a thunderbolt, crashing abruptly onto the two Giant Flowers, swallowing their huge bodies utterly and completely.
Countless people let out screams and cries of alarm in that very moment, but these sounds all blurred together, and no one could hear them. That star-light pillar reaching from heaven to earth was even bigger than the quartz pillar beside it, the radiance blooming from it more dazzling than the sun, instantly lighting the whole once-dim Pantry brighter than daylight. Everyone was swallowed by that dazzling radiance, the starlight even spilling out of the Pantry to shine on the green-flesh corridor outside. And the roar and tremor kicked up when the star-light pillar came down shook the entire Floor 24, setting countless monsters roaring in unease.
This starlight was like a hammer of heaven, holy and dazzling. This starlight was like a spear of earth, powerful and bright.
The shockwave and the ground-shaking, mountain-rocking tremor swept through the whole Pantry, catching even the people present before they could react, to say nothing of the two Giant Flowers. Their bodies had already been enormous, bigger than a Floor Boss that could easily stand near ten meters tall, and yet under the bombardment of that judgment-like star-light pillar they couldn't even get out a scream, simply fading away bit by bit within the starlight. Their huge bodies were dismantled, their flesh melted, their tentacles burning to ash one after another, until the whole of them, like ash scattering to smoke, slowly dissolved into nothing within the pillar of light reaching from heaven to earth. As a matter of course, the Violas that were close by were annihilated by the starlight too, not even a scrap of bone or flesh left behind.
Only after a long while did the radiance slowly fade, letting the Pantry, bright as day, return to its former state. The magic circle in the sky vanished too, and Leo scattered the starlight all over him, revealing his true face, drifting down slowly from midair, at last landing on the silent ground.
Around him, Ais had both hands raised before her, her golden transparent eyes just now opening, and Revis, down on one knee, was in the same pose. As for Asfi and the others, every last one of them, whether blown away or knocked over or having thrown themselves down of their own accord, all lay sprawled on the ground.
There was only one emotion on every face. That was uneasy alarm and a lingering fright.
They hadn't yet grasped what exactly had just happened, or rather they had grasped it, but still didn't dare believe it.
"...Was that just now a Magic?"
Someone, no telling who, let out this murmur, but got no answer from anyone. People had collectively lost their voices, not daring at all to admit that the divine judgment they'd just seen was a Magic.
"...The first-class adventurers of Loki Familia, are they all this kind of monster?"
Asfi nearly started questioning her whole life. Ais killing a Giant Flower in one strike was already absurd enough, and she hadn't expected Leo to have an even more absurd showing.
"This is the strongest firepower I've got at this stage. Be glad you made me use this strike, monsters."
Leo's voice carried out like that, and he himself, holding the black longsword, began to walk slowly toward Revis. Seeing this, Ais at once did the same as Leo, advancing with sword in hand. The two first-class adventurers who had shaken everyone present with their strength walked, in an encircling formation, toward the last enemy.
Watching this, Revis's twisted face actually calmed slowly back down.
"You think you can win, just like this?"
Revis spoke coldly.
"Don't underestimate me."
The moment her voice fell, an aberration erupted again.
"All of you, come out! Violas!"
At Revis's shout, all the flower buds hanging throughout the great cavern began to stir. The flower buds on the ceiling, and the buds of all sizes on the walls, spread across the whole area of the great cavern, bloomed all together. Many of them were clearly still unripe, but under Revis's forcing they all opened in the end, so that countless multicolored Violas bared their ugly fangs, roaring, and dropped down all together from the cavern roof and the wall faces.
A chorus of grating roars went up together, and the green-flesh walls that had provided the last nourishment for the Violas' flower buds, like a lamp burnt dry of oil, faded gradually in color. Countless Violas of all sizes came roaring in from every direction, surging toward everyone.
"Not good!"
"Again?!"
"Meet them, quick!"
Asfi and the others fell into chaos again, into a crisis, even. This Viola army born at the cost of the entire seedbed, though varied in size, some even only human-sized as if malnourished, like Viola infants, was nonetheless staggering in number, all but drowning the whole vast Pantry.
Violas came at Leo and Ais too, and without a word the two of them raised their longswords and met them. Black blade-light crossed and swept, silver blade-light came down like sudden rain, and Viola after Viola was cut down by the two monstrously strong first-class adventurers, the onslaught held in check. Ais, wreathed all over in strong wind, slaughtered even more fiercely than Leo, cutting away the limbs of countless Violas while also charging toward Revis. She hadn't forgotten this woman. Rather, her target had been Revis all along, not those monsters, and she wouldn't get her priorities backward.
Only...
"Ais! Look out behind you!"
Leo's warning made Ais halt abruptly and whip her head around to look behind her. There, a Masked One, draped in a purple hooded robe, face wearing a mask painted with terrifying patterns, had appeared without a sound, and swung a fist of terrifying force at Ais.
Powerful force burst out, kicking up a shockwave that blasted the hurriedly guarding Ais away. That was a Strength value even higher than Revis's and the white-haired man's. Struck by that fist like a meteor impact, even with her sword raised to block, Ais still flew out like a cannonball, slamming into the gradually withering green wall.
"Meteor Dance!"
Leo cut down the Viola before him with one stroke, then fired off a meteor, blasting it at the Masked One. The Masked One didn't tank it. Whether or not it was because he'd grown wary after seeing the Magic Leo had just unleashed at full force, he flickered aside to dodge the meteor coming straight at him, leaping to Revis's side.
"...You failed."
A ghastly voice, several creatures' voices layered into one, rang out, the Masked One speaking to the Revis beside him.
"...Enyo sent you?"
Revis wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth and stood up.
"It's time to retreat."
The Masked One didn't answer Revis's question, only said this one line.
Revis clicked her tongue, but didn't object.
"Aria." Revis suddenly said to Ais. "Go to Floor 59. There, you'll find the answer you want to know."
With that, Revis and the Masked One, mingling in among a crowd of Violas, began to retreat.
"Don't run!"
Ais pulled herself free of the green wall, meaning to give chase.
"You won't catch them."
Leo, for his part, saw it clearly. Countless Violas blocked the way before them, cutting off their path. And so Revis and the Masked One vanished without a trace, gone from sight.
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