The Monsters seemed endless.
Riveria and Lefiya Viridis skillfully deployed the tactic they'd so often used on past expeditions—ice first, then fire. With their magic they froze the first wave of Monsters that came lunging at them, and then annihilated them.
Combined with the earthen walls Gareth raised and Hedin's balls of lightning, their efficiency climbed even higher.
The overwhelming majority of these half-spider, half-serpent Monsters were destroyed almost the very instant they drew near the group.
"Kekeke—"
From the darkness far off, now and again, woven into that weeping, came the laughter of a woman. She probably found all this effort futile.
After a while, the tide of Monsters slowly began to recede—but this was no good sign, because the enemy was clearly preparing the next wave of attack.
And so.
When the group had waited several minutes, still braced and ready, a "crunch, crunch" sound began to rise from that heavy darkness.
The fine, mincing sound of chewing was impossible to ignore.
Somehow, it seemed like the sound of Monsters devouring one another.
Until, before long.
Out of the darkness, at last, something came walking out—still that same kind of Monster, spider at one end, serpent at the other.
It stood upright.
Its long serpent tail was like a thick pillar of flesh, making it look rather tall—at least over two meters.
And the portion of its body that was spider was, at this moment, cradling something and gnawing at it—or perhaps sucking it dry?
In the silence.
The group saw that what it held was, unbelievably, an adventurer—and one still alive at that.
The clothes on his body had long since been reduced to tatters. His face was blank, holding nothing but an indescribable terror, the whole man frozen stiff and motionless, as though utterly, completely broken.
"It's a remnant of a Dark Familia."
There was a tattoo on the man's exposed back—incredibly, he was a member of the Garuda Familia.
For a moment it was almost impossible to comprehend.
Could it be—were these the Dark Familia bastards from the Artificial Labyrinth all that time ago?
But in this already-altered history, that place had long since been taken by the city, and the terrible collapse that should have happened had never occurred.
Of course.
Because history had changed, there really were a number of Dark Familia remnants whose fates remained unknown.
Perhaps they were lurking somewhere in the Dungeon, or perhaps they had already left the city—including, even, the gods on the Dark Familia's side.
The god of wine;
And that god of death;
From the mouthparts of the spider Monster, a long, sharp spike drove itself into the shoulder of the Dark Familia remnant.
As it drained him.
As if undergoing some metamorphosis, that ugly spider "shell" gradually sloughed away, and from within it, incredibly, a "young girl" slowly grew forth.
Her body took on an eerie, deep-blue hue, crowned with long purple hair.
Slender, beautiful—and yet the expression on her face was one of boundless malice.
She no longer used the mouthparts from before; instead, she tore the Dark Familia remnant in her hands to shreds with great, greedy bites and swallowed him down.
"Too weak… not enough… not enough…"
All within those few short seconds.
The Monster's transformation was complete, and then, all at once, it launched an attack at the group.
Only faster.
Was the spear in Finn's hand.
The Pallum's [Braver], wielding a spare spear as a throwing javelin, hurled it the very instant that mouth opened wide to make its clamor—casting it straight out, ripping the creature's body apart.
The Monster's freshly-grown "female form" burst into a cloud of blood mist, leaving behind only that long serpent tail.
But.
In the darkness, as the chewing sounds from a moment ago gradually faded.
Dozens of these female-form Monsters, leading the spider-and-serpent-tail Monsters, once again closed in and surrounded them.
What was different this time.
Was that these female-form Monsters could unleash magic, and they were faster—far, far faster. Mixed in among that great swarm of spiders, they ceaselessly harried Lefiya Viridis and Riveria and the others.
This began to open faint gaps in a defense that had, until now, been impregnable.
But—
"Stop wasting time."
Allen Fromel, who had been conserving his strength this whole while, finally made his move.
The Cat Person youth, silver spear in hand, became hurricane and lightning; in a single instant, he ground every female-form Monster that had just closed in—along with the spiders around them—entirely into pulp.
"Push in, and fast. That thing might be stalling for time!"
"Mm…"
At first, Finn had thought the Corrupted Spirit was testing their side's strength.
So from the very beginning he hadn't intended to go all out. But at this rate it really was wasting time, so—then let's charge. Straight ahead…
Even though they had Airmid, Sanjouno Haruhime, and Asfi along.
The others were all basically Lv. 7 adventurers or above. So all they needed was to have Ryuu and Ais escort the three girls of comparatively lower level.
And the rest broke through the Monsters' encirclement with utter ease, plunging headlong into that dense darkness.
This area of the 61st floor was also vast beyond measure.
The darkness seemed endless. Finn and Allen Fromel, cutting the path ahead, could only feel wave after wave of countless, revolting insect Monsters surging at them. Slowly, the large Violas they'd encountered before began to appear—which seemed to signal that the group was, indeed, drawing steadily closer to their target.
Until.
"Halt!"
The orange glow of the Magic Stone lamps drove back the surrounding darkness, laying bare the thing before them.
It was a pale, still-throbbing, enormous ball of flesh.
"What is this?"
From the situation just now, it could be surmised that the Corrupted Spirit had, in all likelihood, dragged back many Dark Familia remnants—and perhaps even the already-vanished gods of the Dark Familia.
Finn was worried too, of course.
If, here on the 61st floor, the Dungeon were made to sense the presence of divine power, then something dreadful might well be born from it.
Was this the Corrupted Spirit's aim?
But just now…
It had seemed to be using the Dark Familia remnants as "food," or as a "seedbed."
Those spider Monsters—rather than say they completed their metamorphosis by devouring members of the Dark Familia, it was more accurate to say they were "reincarnated" out through those members' bodies.
So what in the world even was that Corrupted Spirit—how utterly revolting—
The ball of flesh was still pulsing.
Strangely, there were no other Monsters around it whatsoever, which only made it seem all the more suspicious.
"Everyone, get back."
No hesitation.
Now was no time to stand frozen in place, agonizing and overthinking.
Ottar stepped forward. As the city's strongest and, at present, only Lv. 8 adventurer, he naturally had to shoulder a certain responsibility heavier than the others'.
The gold-armored Boaz youth, gripping the Black Tyrant Sword, walked up before the enormous ball of flesh.
Then.
He prepared to swing his sword and destroy it outright.
Whatever the consequences might be, act first and worry later.
"Mercy of the silver moon, fields of gold—bid this body become a boar that fights on, bearing the goddess's divine will, charging ever forward—"
The golden radiance began to gather.
That surging magic was in no way inferior to the magical barrages that Lefiya Viridis and Riveria unleashed.
This was [Hildis Veni].
The slashing magic of the city's strongest adventurer differed from the magic that mages cast in this: its power scaled further according to the very strike the caster delivered.
And so.
Under such an empowerment.
The golden pillar of light took the shape of a colossal boar and slammed, roaring, into the ball of flesh before it.
"——!!!"
The bursting golden light nearly lit up the entire floor.
Farther off, untold numbers of Monsters were ground to nothing outright, unable to withstand the aftershock. Even Lefiya Viridis and the others, without quite realizing it, deployed magical barriers to neutralize the overflowing surge of magic power.
Within the light.
All that could be seen was Ottar's towering frame, standing at its heart.
"Is it done?"
The ball of flesh had, without question, ruptured—no, it had been utterly obliterated.
All that remained was the pale wreckage stuck to the ground. Were it not for the deep-purple, blood-like viscous fluid seeping and scattering from it, one might not even have been able to confirm that it had, just now, truly existed at all.
But that didn't matter. What mattered was…
"Everyone—prepare for battle!"
At Finn's roaring shout, the group finally noticed that Ottar, too, at this very moment stood braced and ready, glaring at what lay ahead.
There.
A twisted silhouette was slowly, as though struggling to rise up off the ground.
["God of Death and Wine"]
"…?"
Impossible to comprehend.
Though the group had grown thoroughly accustomed to names surfacing suddenly from within, they still couldn't make sense of this.
Isagi wasn't even here—so why was this happening?
Could it be that the boy had secretly followed along?
No, surely not!
If that were the case, they never could have made it to such deep floors in the first place.
And besides…
["God of Death and Wine"]—why was this name so terribly familiar?
It was as if it stirred awake some long-distant memory.
Ryuu, who had once traveled through time with Isagi, along with Ais Wallenstein, Lefiya Viridis, Tiona Hiryute, and the rest—they all remembered something.
It was during the battle in the [Artificial Labyrinth].
Not the altered version—the one launched by the joint effort of the Guild and the Familias of justice—but the original one: the battle they'd set off after she and Isagi together had unraveled the god of wine Dionysus's scheme.
Before Isagi fell into the deep floors of the labyrinth.
The girls clearly remembered that something quite momentous had happened as well.
And that was…
The god of death had been parasitized by a Jewel Fetus.
That, it seemed, had been Dionysus's scheme: in the final moments, as the Artificial Labyrinth was about to be breached, he'd implanted a Jewel Fetus into the god of death's body, parasitizing him with it.
That was a "treasure" cultivated by the Corrupted Spirit.
It could parasitize an adventurer or a Monster and turn them into an abnormally powerful creature.
For ordinary Monsters.
It would grant them the ability to cast magic, and at the same time raise their level by at least 1 to 2 ranks.
And for an adventurer, it would draw out the desires buried deepest in their heart, thereby transforming them utterly into a corrupted Monster.
The girls all remembered as well.
Back then, the Lv. 4 master of the Artificial Labyrinth—also a descendant of Daedalus, capable of forging cursed weapons—Barca Perdix, had become a Monster of at least Lv. 6.
But as for what exactly would happen when a Jewel Fetus parasitized a god.
That, no one knew.
The god of wine Dionysus had merely been experimenting, and the final result was that both gods were entirely devoured by it—
And what's more.
In the end this thing had even made its way down to the deep floors?
Impossible to comprehend.
But there was no question—now, all they could do was fight.
In the darkness, the woman's mocking laughter grew louder, grating on the ears, so much so that it stirred a kind of loathing.
And the enemy, too, seemed to drop all pretense; from within the darkness, it revealed that supremely beautiful face of its own——
It had already been nearly a week since he'd arrived here at the [Great Wall].
Isagi was tentatively preparing to have Teardrop Big Bro go to the [Dragon Valley] in his place, to take a look at how things stood there.
These past few days.
Apart from dealing, now and then, with the Monsters lured over their way.
Isagi hadn't been idle either—it wasn't as if he could spend every day just chatting, strolling, eating, and sleeping with the two young goddesses.
Quite the opposite!
Every day he had something very important to do, and that was to grow accustomed to the new strength he'd gained after leveling up to Lv. 7.
After leveling up once more.
As before, his "Character Card" had undergone no essential change whatsoever.
He gained no new abilities, and his existing abilities had already reached their "limit."
But that didn't mean that leveling up now merely raised his ability values. On the contrary, Isagi grew ever more certain that the more he leveled up, the more the "divine power" he originally possessed—and the things he could accomplish using that "divine power"—improved considerably.
This, in truth, was the direction of his leveling-up beyond Lv. 5.
In particular—and he had no idea why—now that he was together with the two young goddesses, Isagi grew increasingly aware that his divine power was beginning to recover faster, as though he were drawing divine power from their side.
Yes.
Before, his divine power had been obtained mainly through the Dungeon.
Go adventuring into the Dungeon, then come back and enter that [Riverside Hall], and there use the power the Dungeon had given him to have Riveria and Ryuu-senpai and the others go on an "adventure," thereby obtaining divine power.
But now that was no longer necessary.
His divine power could not only slowly recover on its own; moreover, when he was together with other gods, the rate of recovery was faster still.
The one thing Isagi couldn't quite understand.
Was that, before leaving the city, he'd rested for several days, and among those, when he was together with the goddess Demeter—mm, that is, at night when going to sleep… or, to put it more precisely, when calling her "Mama," or letting her feel her role as a "Mama"—
The recovery of divine power would grow a little faster.
Isagi didn't understand what mechanism this was either. Perhaps it had to do with the symbol the goddess herself presided over?
After all, Demeter was the goddess of abundance.
"Abundance" also encompassed clan and family—it symbolized not merely agriculture, but so-called fertility and the like as well.
That was probably the reason?
Hmm——
In any case, that didn't matter!
The ways of obtaining divine power had increased, which was, of course, a good thing for him.
But more important than that.
Divine power was, in essence, just divine power. What mattered was what one could do with it.
Based on his earlier tests.
Each of his Character Cards seemed to represent one way of using divine power. For instance, "Puppet Kingdom" could traverse space and time;
"Night of the Hunt" could create so-called [Nightmares];
But even that was quite crude—he had merely, unconsciously, put this power to use.
What Isagi was studying now was how to precisely and reasonably wield this power belonging to the gods, by his own will.
As it happened.
There were two young goddesses right there beside him, who could lend a hand as reference.
No matter how unreliable the two of them might seem, they were, after all, still gods—right?
____
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