At her nod, Bell continued.
"Before we get serious and start hunting Evilus, let me try to recruit a few others who are itching just as much to tear them apart."
Alfia arched an eyebrow.
He turned and began to walk, letting his eyes drift shut.
Deep within the Dungeon, ruby-red eyes opened in the shadow of a lizard monster—a red-scaled, orange-eyed creature clad in a full set of armor.
Lyd raised a claw to rub the back of his head as they passed an enormous tree.
"Man, I wonder when we'll see Bell-chi again~"
His words drew mixed reactions from their group.
"...I see no issue with that." Let adjusted the red scarf and hat covering his goblin features, hiding a small smile tugging at his lips.
"Why are you two so eager to see him?" Ray tilted her head. Her golden feathers—tipped with blue—rustled as her one wing-hand swept lazily through air, slicing a Bugbear nearly in half without even looking. "He's human. Humans are dangerous."
"Oho? Is that right?" Lyd's scimitar danced through a cluster of Lizardmen, smile spreading into a grin. "Then why are your feathers all standing on end like that, Ray?"
Ray's wings twitched. She didn't look at him.
"Could it be—you've got a soft spot for the cold ones?" Lyd ducked just as sharp feathers sang past his head.
"Finish that sentence and the next ones go through your throat." She already had more feathers locked on his neck, her tone more weary than angry.
"Understood!" Lyd brought both arms up. Still smiling.
Beside Ray's feet, an Almiraj had gone rigid after hearing Bell's name. The white-furred, rabbit-like creature adjusted a blue battle jacket draped over her small frame, paws fidgeting with a watch settled around her neck. Arles shuffled closer to Ray's side, her red eyes wide and ears pressed against her head, making a small, uneasy sound.
Those eyes within Lyd's shadow slipped shut. At that exact moment, Bell opened his own on the twentieth floor.
Judging by their surroundings, they were actually on the twenty-first floor.
"Let's go, Aunt."
He called out, quickening his pace. Alfia followed close behind.
They reached the floor below in no time. From there, Bell tracked those Xenos with his eyes closed, moving toward them at top speed.
Some time later.
Lyd was sitting on a large, wooden trunk, his tail moving behind him and face fixed on embers from a bonfire blazing in front of him.
Ray sat on a branch of a nearby tree, her legs swinging idly as light from their fire warmed her feathers.
Arles sat beneath the tree Ray was settled on, her hind legs spread apart, small rabbit hands adjusting her jacket.
Let was closest to the bonfire, adding small wooden branches and dry leaves to keep that flame alive, stirring it with a long wooden stick in between.
Silence lingered around them.
It was broken by Lyd in a moment.
"Hey, Ray. Do you think any other group would have some luck with our brethren, or those abductors?" He asked, his usually jovial voice dropping lower.
"They should have. Don't worry, we'll catch whoever is trying to kidnap our people and show them hell." Ray said, talons flexing unconsciously mid-swing.
"Finding them is one thing. The question is what comes after." Let's eyes reflected firelight, expression unreadable beneath his hat.
Arles had her paws on that watch around her neck, gently running them across it like holding something precious.
The sound of footsteps made them collectively snap their heads in a certain direction. Foliage was pulled aside by a hand, and someone walked through.
Red hair. A crimson sword sheathed in flames on his back.
"Bell-chi!?" Lyd's eyes widened when he looked at that person's face. "Is that you?"
"Mister Bell..." Let dropped his wooden stick.
Ray's legs stopped swinging. She leaned forward on her branch, eyes narrowing as they traced over Bell's figure below—searching, comparing. His white hair was gone, replaced by red. Those abyssal black eyes she remembered, the ones that looked at them and everything else with crushing indifference, were also gone.
Arles had pressed herself against the tree moments before any foliage had shifted. Her whole body trembled, red eyes bulging at that crimson sword blazing on Bell's back—fire reflected in her gaze like a nightmare she couldn't look away from. A small, strangled whine escaped her throat.
"It's me." Bell replied, feeling a little awkward. The last time they had met, he had just been thrown down floors alongside a Juggernaut and Amphisbaena. [Asura] was running in full force then, meaning he had treated them quite... harshly.
He took a step forward—and that step revealed Alfia, standing just behind him like a shadow.
Every muscle in Lyd's body locked. Then he scrambled backward so fast he nearly toppled off the trunk, claws gouging wood.
Ray's pupils dilated to pinpoints, wings snapping open on pure instinct—she was already airborne before she'd made the conscious decision to fly.
Let had rolled sideways into a crouch, one hand on his dagger, the other pulling his hat lower.
Arles had bounded three full strides away, her small frame quivering violently, ears pinned so flat they nearly disappeared into her fur.
The bonfire crackled between them. No one moved.
Lyd raised his scimitar with a shaking hand, its blade catching firelight in unsteady glints. His breathing came fast and shallow, tail rigid behind him.
"B-Bell-chi..." His voice cracked. "Who is that? My—my monster instincts are screaming. I'll die if she comes any closer."
Let's dagger was drawn, but his hand had stopped mid-motion—caught between the instinct to attack and a certainty that attacking would accomplish nothing. He'd calculated survival odds his entire life. Every number in his head was telling him the same thing.
Zero.
"Don't..." His arms shook. "Mister Bell. Don't let her step forward. Please."
Ray had landed on a higher branch, wings half-spread for immediate flight. Her talons had gouged deep into bark, anchoring herself—but her feathers had armed themselves without her permission, rows of golden blades pointed downward at Alfia.
A tense silence fell.
Bell raised both hands, palms open.
"Calm down. She's my aunt." He waved once. "She won't attack you."
They didn't lower their weapons. Not immediately.
Alfia surveyed them without a flicker of expression—whatever surprise she felt, if any, remained buried beneath her stoicism.
"Since when did you start to associate with monsters?" She raised a hand toward the Xenos. Mana began pooling at her fingertips. [Satanas Verion].
Lyd's legs coiled. Ray's feathers loosened by a centimeter. Let's grip crushed down on his dagger. Arles had already vanished behind Lyd's leg.
"Enough."
[Ittou Rasestu] revolved.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then his presence erupted like a rising tide. Leaves shivered on their branches. Hairline fractures raced outward across soil. Nearby trunks groaned and splintered. Fine dust sifted down from the canopy above.
Clunk
An eight-spoked wheel clicked into place above his crown. Its handles stood ready.
Bell unsheathed Crimson Order. Black flames wound around his free hand, hardening into an Aspis.
He raised his shield toward Alfia.
He leveled his sword toward the Xenos.
To reach each other, they would have to go through him.
The mana at Alfia's fingertips flared. Lyd's claws dug into earth. Ray's feathers left their sockets. Let adjusted his grip for a lunge.
Bell didn't blink.
Alfia held. One second. Two.
Then her mana went out, arm dropping casually, like she'd lost interest.
She gave Bell a small, satisfied nod.
His shoulders relaxed.
Haah... She was just testing me.
Lyd's scimitar wavered, then lowered. Ray's wings folded back, feathers still bristling but no longer armed. Let eased his dagger into its sheath, hand trembling. Arles crept an inch out from behind Lyd's leg, ears still flat.
"Alright. Let's start this over." Bell sheathed Crimson Order and dismissed the Aspis.
He gestured toward Alfia, then toward the Xenos.
"Aunt. Friends."
He reversed his gesture.
"Friends. Aunt."
...
Later.
Bell sat on a trunk in front of the bonfire. Alfia sat beside him, her dress spread across ground. Let had reclaimed his old spot, tending to that flame with his stick.
Ray was swinging her legs from a branch above again, though her feathers remained taut.
Arles sat some distance away, paws turning her watch over and over—her gaze drifting toward them between each rotation.
And Lyd—
"You won't believe how Bell-chi and I met! One hell of an encounter!" He was addressing Alfia with animated expressions and grand gestures, claws carving through air as though that earlier standoff had never happened.
His tail flicked so fast it whipped up a small gale behind him.
"Bell-chi was literally falling from above with Amphisbaena and a Juggernaut plunging down with him! Oh, and there was this white monster too! All four tangled together!"
He started shadowboxing, punching at nothing to illustrate their fight.
"Though he was just a silhouette of darkness back then. We even mistook him for a war shadow Xenos and jumped in to help..."
He rubbed the back of his head, gaze settling somewhere above Bell's shoulder—too embarrassed to look at him directly.
Alfia's lips twitched. She turned to Bell.
"Is what he says true?"
Bell had been watching Lyd's antics with a small smile. At her question, it faded slightly.
"Lyd has only told you his part."
He turned toward the bonfire, eyes settling on its embers.
"It went..."
His eyes stayed on those embers. Orange bleeding into red. Red settling into white at its center.
A branch shifted in the bonfire. Sparks spiraled upward—tiny embers, rising.
Embers. Rising.
Just like—
Embers rising around him as Juggernaut's claws punched through stone for support. Amphisbaena thrashing in water, waves crashing in all directions. The floor splintering beneath them—giving way in a single, catastrophic second.
And then they were all falling.
Wind roared past his ears. Debris tumbling alongside—jagged pillars, broken rock, remnants of an entire floor plunging into the abyss below.
Mahoraga fell beside him. Their wheel rotating above its crown, Sword of Extermination aimed ahead.
Across from them, falling side by side: Juggernaut. Amphisbaena.
Flames ignited from Bell's silhouette as he launched himself at Amphisbaena. On his way, a chain of fire wrapped around his waist—its other end extending behind, coiling around Mahoraga's.
He pulled. Hurled the Divine General at Juggernaut.
An inch away from Amphisbaena's face, Bell and it met eye to eye.
Lyd's tail went still. He wasn't smiling anymore. His gaze locked on Bell's eyes, slit pupils reflecting light.
Slit pupils.
Just like—
Abyssal eyes stared into slit pupils. Amphisbaena's twin heads flanking him on either side, tongues flickering, saliva dripping from two jaws into the void below.
Then his black knuckles slammed into one of its faces.
Air detonated in every direction. A pocket of vacuum ripped open around them for an instant—sound swallowed, breath torn away—before everything crashed back with a thunderclap.
Its other head was already lunging. Mouth spread wide. Fangs ready to swallow him whole.
Mahoraga tugged their chain first—wrenching Bell sideways and away just as those jaws clamped shut where he'd been an instant prior. Wind from that bite still grazed his cheek.
He turned mid-air. Legs pointed outward. Head toward Amphisbaena.
Blaze from heels.
He screeched back head-first, ramming his crown straight into one of its necks.
Amphisbaena choked—the impacted neck crashing into its adjacent one, scales grinding against scales with a sound like stone splitting stone. His arms opened wide, looped around a quarter of that neck, holding with a crushing grip.
On the other side, Juggernaut was falling back-first, its underside facing upward. Mahoraga stood on it—one hand wrapped around two bony limbs, another locked around two more. Its tail coiled around the shikigami's ankle, disrupting its balance continuously, forcing it down to a single knee.
Juggernaut stretched its neck up. Jaws open wide. Face an inch away from the Divine General's.
Roaring.
Mahoraga and Juggernaut. Face to face.
The hour hand in Arles' watch trembled. On the verge of rotating.
Trembling. About to turn.
Just like—
The wheel above Mahoraga trembled. About to turn.
Its smirk widened.
Clunk
One spoke smashed straight into Juggernaut's face, blasting its bony jaw sideways with a crack that echoed even in Bell's ears further away.
"..."
"..."
"..."
All of them were looking at Bell now. Alfia. Lyd. Let. Arles. Ray.
"Come on, what happened next?" Lyd leaned forward, voice stripped of its usual casualness—hungry for something he'd never heard before.
"At least finish what you started." Ray's wings had wrapped beneath her chest, ears tilted toward him.
Let continued tending the bonfire, but his body had shifted in Bell's direction. That stick in his hand moved in slow, absent circles through those embers, forgotten.
Arles' paw pressed against her watch, tapping once. Twice. Rabbit ears no longer flat—lifted, straining toward him.
Alfia kept her gaze on his face. Wordless. Waiting.
"Then..."
"We did what we always do. Adapted. Overcame."
"Oh~ Bell-chi, we want those details. Not summaries!" Lyd whined, wagging a claw at him in disapproval.
A teasing smile spread across Bell's face.
"I'll let you all imagine what happens next."
His eyes reflected crimson embers.
"That is a story for another time... after all."
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Enjoy!