The climb back from the thirty-ninth floor was considerably easier than the descent, and that alone told Rayleigh they had truly destroyed the source.
The black strands that had infested the lower passages were already drying out and crumbling as the Dungeon slowly reclaimed the wounds where the foreign growth had forced its way through the stone.
More tellingly, the oppressive pull that had followed every Zanpakutō wielder through the nest was completely gone.
Their blades no longer reacted to the walls, and the strange knocking signals never returned.
They still encountered several Enhanced Species on the way up, but without the network guiding them, the difference was impossible to miss.
The first charged Tsubaki with a stolen spear, overextended almost immediately, and gave her such an obvious opening that she knocked the weapon aside and killed it with a single physical strike from sealed Tobiume.
Another tried to ambush Lyra from a side passage, but there was none of the precise timing the controlled monsters had displayed earlier.
Arachne's silk caught it around the ankle, and Ardi destroyed its magic stone with Nejibana before it could free itself.
After the third encounter, nobody needed further proof.
The surviving Enhanced Species were still dangerous, but whatever had been coordinating their movements and passing lessons from one battle to the next was gone.
Asfi examined the spot where the latest monster had dissolved before adjusting her glasses.
"No unusual reaction from the magic stone, no controlling growth, and no attempt to preserve information before death. Whatever intelligence remains in these creatures is their own."
"That sounds like good news," Ardi said.
"It is. I simply dislike declaring something resolved before we have enough evidence."
Tsubaki looked back over her shoulder.
"You know, normal people are allowed to be happy when the horrible underground monster nest dies."
"I am happy."
"You don't look happy."
"I rarely look the way you expect."
Rayleigh kept walking before Tsubaki could turn that into a longer argument.
"Save the celebration until we've handed the wounded back to people with actual beds."
That reminder was enough to keep everyone moving.
Ais stayed near the front beside him.
She was quieter than usual, though the tension that had followed her through the nest was gone.
Gonryōmaru had remained sealed since they left the source chamber, and while her hand occasionally drifted toward the hilt, there was none of the restless pressure Rayleigh had seen earlier in the expedition.
Whatever she had understood during those fights seemed to have settled naturally rather than leaving her desperate to reach for the next release.
Rayleigh was more than satisfied with that.
He had no desire to watch Gonryōmaru break a second time.
...
They found the first marker left by Loki Familia near the junction Finn had mentioned.
A strip of fabric had been tied around a stone pillar, with several shallow cuts beneath it pointing toward the route taken by the evacuation group.
There were no signs of recent fighting nearby, suggesting Finn's people had managed to move the wounded through without running into another organized attack.
The six followed the markers until voices eventually reached them from farther ahead.
Gareth was standing at the entrance to a large temporary camp when they emerged from the passage, one hand resting on his weapon while Loki Familia supporters moved supplies around him.
Riveria stood nearby with two healers.
The moment she saw Ais walking under her own power, some of the tension left her face.
Gareth was considerably less subtle.
"There you are. Took your damn time."
Tsubaki laughed.
"Funny. Raul said almost the same thing."
"Then Raul has good sense."
Rayleigh looked past him toward the camp.
"The wounded?"
"Alive, and most of them are stable. We moved everyone we safely could farther up, but the ones with worse injuries are staying here until the healers are ready to continue."
Among them were the people Rayleigh most wanted to see.
Raul sat against the wall with his chest tightly wrapped, exhausted but already looking far better than when they had found him.
Anakitty lay nearby with her injured leg properly splinted, while Welf occupied another bedroll with fresh bandages around his wrists and shoulder.
Lulune was asleep as Asfi went straight to her.
She crouched beside the beastwoman, checked her breathing, and turned to the healer sitting nearby.
"How long has she been unconscious?"
"About an hour. She woke twice during treatment and tried to get up both times, so we gave her something to make sure she actually rested."
Some of the stiffness left Asfi's shoulders.
"Good."
The healer blinked.
"You approve?"
"Strongly."
Lyra lowered herself against the opposite wall.
"That may be the most threatening approval I've ever heard."
Asfi ignored her.
Welf noticed Tsubaki approaching and tried to sit up.
He made it halfway before the movement pulled painfully at his injured side, forcing him to stop with a grimace.
Tsubaki folded her arms.
"Go ahead. Tell me you're fine."
Welf glared at her from the bedroll.
"I was going to say welcome back."
"You were absolutely going to say you're fine."
"I can say two things."
"Then say the smarter one first."
Welf laughed despite himself and immediately regretted it when his ribs protested.
Tsubaki sat beside him and checked the bandaging around his wrists with considerably more care than her tone suggested.
"You did good down there, brat. Finding that metal network inside the giant saved us a lot of trouble."
Welf's expression became more serious.
"They were learning smithing too."
"I know."
"They weren't good at it yet, but they understood enough to repair simple weapons and use magic stones as fuel. If that thing had stayed alive much longer..."
"It didn't."
Tsubaki tightened a loose section of bandage before sitting back.
"You're a smith. Noticing what something might become if nobody stops it is part of what makes you useful. Just don't spend the rest of the night worrying about the future of a monster we already killed."
Welf looked at her for a moment, then settled back onto the bedroll.
"All right."
Raul had been watching Rayleigh since the group entered the camp.
When Rayleigh finally walked over, the Loki Familia adventurer glanced toward the passage behind him.
"Well?"
"The source is dead."
Raul stared at him, so Rayleigh continued before he had to ask for the rest.
"The training chamber was connected to a much larger organism farther down. It had three major roots—one drawing energy from the Dungeon, one distributing magic-stone material, and one controlling the Enhanced Species.
We cut all three, destroyed the brood chambers, and shattered the source's core. The black growth is already dying, and everything we encountered on the way back was acting independently."
Raul released a long breath and rested his head against the wall.
"So the expedition didn't fail for nothing."
"No."
Rayleigh looked around at the wounded adventurers scattered through the camp.
"You lost people, but you found the problem before it could spread any farther. The survivors also kept enough of those things occupied down here that they never reached the upper floors in large numbers."
Raul was silent for several seconds.
His gaze moved toward Anakitty and then across the other injured members of the expedition.
"We still lost five."
Rayleigh could have offered him any number of comforting answers.
None of them would have changed that number.
"Yeah."
Raul seemed to accept the simple response more easily than he would have accepted reassurance neither of them believed.
After a moment, Anakitty spoke from her bedroll without opening her eyes.
"If you start blaming yourself for all five again, I'm hitting you after my leg heals."
Raul looked toward her.
"I wasn't—"
"You were."
"I hadn't even said anything."
"You have a very recognizable guilty face!"
Raul sighed.
Rayleigh decided they could handle the rest of that conversation without him.