The entrance leading down to Floor 52 was a wide, long staircase.
It opened in the wall of a remote chamber and stretched downward, so far that a glance couldn't find its end.
Once the expedition party arrived and finished off every monster that had chased them, they first smashed the chamber's walls to eliminate any chance of monsters being born there, then began resting on the spot, recovering stamina, drinking water, restoring themselves as close to perfect condition as they could.
Leo was resting too, leaning with his eyes closed against a broken wall, feeling the Mind in his head steadily replenishing itself thanks to the Spirit Healing Development Ability, waiting in silence for it to return to full.
That run just now hadn't cost him much stamina; the potential accumulated in his Endurance parameter was high enough that even running the whole way hadn't brought him near exhaustion. But because they had been attacked by the worm-type monsters several times, he had fired off wide-area annihilation magic covering everything more than once, and the drain on his Mind was more than a little.
Riveria and Lefiya needed time to chant their wide-area annihilation magic, which easily provoked an overly violent reaction from the worm-type monsters and could throw the line into an accident.
To keep the situation from getting out of hand, Finn could only hand the entire job of clearing enemies over a wide area to Leo, who could set off wide-area annihilation magic with a single line of incantation, and that put no small burden on Leo's Mind.
Every wide-area attack magic meant spending extra Mind to add more attacks, and with that many strikes to add, even for Leo there was no way the cost came to nothing.
So the moment they arrived here, Finn ordered Leo to rest, and the three standing watch at the chamber entrance were the Supporters, Raul, Alicia and Lefiya.
Tsubaki, meanwhile, was regrinding everyone's weapons.
"Tch, that dissolving fluid of the worm monsters really is frightening. It's worn down even Unbreakable attribute weapons this badly. No wonder you had no way to handle them last time and had to turn back."
Inspecting the Rolan series weapons everyone had just used, Tsubaki clicked her tongue.
This really was the first time she had seen Unbreakable attribute weapons worn down like this, their sharpness dropped by more than half; a little more wear and they'd be about as dull as stone tools to use.
Even Ais's Desperate was in the same state, and the girl had poured her wind into the blade on top of that, which put a severe load on the sword itself.
Only Leo and Riveria had gone the whole way without using their weapons, so their gear had escaped unscathed.
"Get the equipment back to full condition as much as you can."
Gareth was right beside Tsubaki, and he said it to the city's strongest smith.
"This is the last rest point. Once we're into Floor 52, there won't be another chance to recover."
Tsubaki gave him a dubious look.
"Why?" she said, not following. "Couldn't we take a break at the entrance to Floor 53, the way we're doing now?"
At that, they all glanced at one another, and in the end every one of them wore a grave expression.
"...There won't be a chance like that, Tsubaki." Riveria said it with one eye closed. "From Floor 52 on, every rule the Dungeon has followed until now gets broken. We can only push through to Floor 58 in one go, and only once we've dealt with the enemy there will we have a chance to stop."
"Push through to Floor 58 in one go?" Tsubaki was taken aback. "Are you serious?"
Floors 52 to 58, that was seven whole floors.
They had to pass seven floors in one go, with no rest at all?
A forced march wasn't usually that forced.
The Amazoness sisters, who were drinking water, spoke up at that.
"If we stop, something really bad happens, you know?"
"Once we're on the next floor, you'll understand what it's about."
Tiona giggled, and Tione had the look of someone waiting for a show; both of them seemed happy to see things get out of hand, not the least bit tense the way the others were.
Alicia, at least, standing watch, looked heavy-hearted, and Lefiya was taking deep breaths to steady herself, while Raul had gone pale in the face and was shaking all over, so pathetic about it that Bete couldn't help kicking him.
"...In a bit, whatever you do, don't fall behind, Tsubaki."
Ais, sitting beside Leo with a water flask in her hand and feeding him a mouthful with somewhat clumsy movements, spoke up for once with that warning.
"...Looks like I really am about to run into something outrageous."
Tsubaki was silent for a moment, then broke into a bold, fearless grin, and started to look faintly like she was looking forward to it.
They rested there on the spot for about an hour, and only then were their condition and equipment fully restored.
"Everyone ready?"
Finn, who had said nothing all this time, stood up and spoke calmly.
"If you're ready, let's move out."
At the Pallum leader's instruction, they gripped their weapons and shouldered their packs.
"Same formation as before. Go."
Before long, on Finn's order, they charged down the staircase into Floor 52.
Floor 52's terrain was no different from Floor 51's, all labyrinth of black lead-colored stone.
It was only more spacious here, darker, the atmosphere more oppressive, while the frequency of monster appearances and the number of encounters seemed to show no great change from before.
Herds of Black Rhinos still came trampling across the ground, Deformis Spiders still played assassin in the dark, and besides them there were Venom Scorpions, Lightning Snakes, Great Silver Snakes and other monsters that frequented the Deep Floors. Even though their combat power was worlds apart from the monsters on the earlier floors, Floor 52's difficulty was about the same as the floor before it, with no great difference.
That puzzled Tsubaki, but she soon noticed something was off.
First, no one in the party was talking anymore; every one of them was holding their breath and pounding forward with heavy footfalls, much faster than before.
The first-class adventurers seemed to have stopped looking after the Supporters in the party, advancing at full speed with their real ability on display, so that Raul, Alicia and Lefiya had an extremely hard time keeping up, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat.
And yet not one of them uttered a word of complaint. They didn't even dare stop to rest for a moment, running desperately with their teeth clenched as if something terrifying were chasing them, with no regard for whether they'd run themselves dry.
That desperate look was something Tsubaki was seeing on these Loki Familia adventurers for the first time.
"Avoid battle where you can! Where you can't, put everything into knocking whatever blocks the road out of the way! Don't get drawn into fights! Don't slow down!"
Finn's voice was full of urgency too, another thing Tsubaki was seeing in the Pallum leader for the first time.
And then, for reasons she couldn't name, a sense of crisis began to rise in her own chest.
It was faint at first, but grew stronger as time passed, as if something had fixed its gaze on her, and it left her whole body tense and her heart hammering.
"Roooo..."
Faintly, Tsubaki seemed to hear a cry.
It wasn't the cry of the monsters coming at them from around; it was a roar from somewhere much farther away.
And that roar was unlike an ordinary monster's, full of majesty and pressure.
As a smith who had handled countless monster materials, Tsubaki finally recognized whose cry it was.
"A dragon...?"
That was it.
That was a dragon's roar.
Dragon-type monsters were the acknowledged kings of monsters in the Dungeon.
Dragon monsters were famous for having the highest-grade potential and the strongest combat power among monsters of the same tier. The Infant Dragon Leo had run into on Floors 11 and 12, for instance, was the only dragon-type monster in the Upper Floor region, and though it wasn't a Floor Boss it was better than one, and among Upper Floor monsters classed at Lv.1 it held the distinction of being something even Lv.2 upper-class adventurers had trouble handling.
Floor 24's Green Dragon was a rare species classed at Lv.4, standing head and shoulders above the rest on the last floor of the Middle Floors, where monsters classed at Lv.2 were the norm.
The mighty dragon on Floor 51 went without saying; in terms of Strength alone it was stronger than Udaeus, a Floor Boss classed at Lv.6.
Every one of these cases told the world just how special a monster called a "dragon" was.
Even the last of the Three Great Quests, the one king of monsters still undefeated to this day, the one-eyed black dragon that had caused countless tragedies and disasters on the surface, was a dragon-type monster.
The other two kings of monsters had already been slain by the Familias of "the God" and "the Goddess", but that last black dragon alone had gone a thousand years without ever being defeated and still lorded over the surface, which showed that at any tier, the dragon was without question the strongest race.
And now Tsubaki was hearing a dragon's roar.
Because she had already set foot in the dragons' territory.
Leo, who had kept silent while sprinting along at the very back of the group, heard that roar too.
"Ais!"
Knowing what was going to happen here, he called out to her, up ahead.
She didn't look back, only ran on, her golden hair swaying, and said one thing.
"It's coming."
The moment she said it, everyone felt it.
The ground began to shake.
No, it wasn't the ground shaking. It was the floors below shaking.
It was the tremor of something breaking through rock strata over and over, punching through the crust, coming at them violently and fiercely.
"Turn left!"
Finn's shouted order came without warning, but not one of them hesitated in the slightest; they changed direction and charged into the branch passage beside them.
And in the next instant, the ground exploded.
Like a volcano erupting, a violent blast of flame tore up through the ground, shattering the floor, throwing up a shockwave like a red lotus, bursting upward from below with terrible heat.
The fire lit the rock passage, lit the darkness, and lit the figures and backs of the adventurers who had charged into the branch passage.
"Wha...!?"
Tsubaki whipped her head around to look at the flames rising to the ceiling, and the one right eye she left exposed widened slowly.
Never mind her; even Leo, seeing this scene for the first time and positioned at the rearguard, closest to the blast, had his pupils widen slightly.
The wave of fire scorching his back, leaving it faintly aching, told him just how powerful that heat was.
It was like an oversized landmine going off. The floor was blanketed in red flames, and the monsters around were either swallowed and vaporized by the sea of fire or blown away by the blast's shockwave, shaking all of Floor 52.
"Don't stop! The west passage! Get in there!"
Finn's voice grew louder, no longer calm and steady but charged with excitement, guiding the party, and they changed direction again and charged into another wide passage.
A second great explosion came at once, flame shattering the ground again and rising to the ceiling, throwing up wave upon wave of fire, bringing a shocking tremor and heat beyond imagination, twisting the faces of more than a few in the party.
The great blasts blew huge holes in Floor 52's ground, and the rock bed came crashing down. They could all clearly see the red-lotus fireball smash through the floor and punch through several of the domes above their heads, and the sense of crisis in their hearts erupted completely.
Leo, running at the very back, was bold in proportion to his skill, and in the chaos he looked down through that shattered ground.
His gaze pierced the red-hot cavity and reached the floor below, Floor 53.
And on Floor 53's ground there was likewise only a single red-hot cavity.
That blast of flame had punched through several floors, forming a long, huge vertical shaft that ran all the way down until it reached Floor 58.
That was the deepest floor modern adventurers had reached, the place this expedition absolutely had to conquer.
Through the string of red-hot holes, Leo saw several huge dragons looking up in his direction, savage light blazing in their eyes.
They stood on two legs, red all over, with enormous bodies more than ten meters long.
Valgang Dragons, dragon-type monsters that appeared only on Floor 58.
Their great fanged mouths hung open, smoke and fire leaking through the gaps in their teeth, and that told Leo exactly where the flames just now had come from.
Nowhere else. From them.
They had perception and firepower that could reach across floors; even with several floors between them they could sense enemies above, take aim, and fire flames of extreme range and extreme power.
This long-range bombardment that ignored the barriers between floors was the true identity of those blasts.
That was why Finn had said that once they entered Floor 52 there would be no stopping.
That was why Riveria had said that from Floor 52 on, every rule the Dungeon had followed until now would be broken, and that they could only push through to Floor 58 in one go, and only once they'd dealt with the enemy there would they have a chance to stop.
Because unless they reached Floor 58 and dealt with the Valgang Dragons there, they would be sniped from below the entire way.
The demon dragons' cannons, announcing the omen of destruction with vicious roars, would take aim at them again and again and fire, breaking through several thick layers of rock bed to come at them.
From the moment they set foot on Floor 52 until Floor 58, all of it was the Valgang Dragons' field of fire.
And so people called the layer-domain of Floors 52 to 58 by this name...
The Dragon's Urn.
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