“Wasn’t he the one calling himself just as much a victim as us…?” Loki’s brows furrowed as Dionysus narrowed his gaze.
“Well, that’s Hermes for you.”
“Speaking of, aren’t the two of you from the same region up in heaven?”
“As much as I wish that we were not,” Dionysus responded with a tired sigh. “Though, correct me if I’m wrong, that is true of you and that Hestia you were so suspicious of, as well, hm?”
The two of them threw identical looks of annoyance in the direction in which their tryingly capricious accomplices had disappeared.
“Has it really been ten days since then…?” Loki murmured from atop her cushiony sofa in the parlor room of Loki Familia’s home, Twilight Manor.
The dwarven marionettes on the automaton clock began to move, signaling the morning hour. The clock itself, along with a nearby music box, was one of many antiques decorating the orange room.
Memories of the Denatus from several days prior and what was going on behind that sham of a banquet ran through Loki’s head as she stared upward at the ceiling…before it all quickly fizzled out entirely.
“There’s nothin’ to dooooooo…I don’t even wanna get up…” Hands behind her head, she let her legs flop lazily over the edge of the sofa. She reached toward the nearby round table and the glass there, bringing the wine—which had been delivered, as promised, by one of Dionysus’s followers after Denatus—to her lips and gulping it down all at once.
She drew a number of looks from familia members passing by the room, those who hadn’t left for the expedition. They viewed their patron deity’s morning alcoholism with equal parts shock and amazement.
“Wonder if Aiz and the others’ll be back soon…” she mumbled absently into the room, which suddenly felt cavernous and lacking in female companionship. It was clear from Loki’s voice that she harbored no doubts as to her followers’ safe return.
“—Loki! Bete has returned!”
“Oh?”
Speak of the devil.
Hearing the sudden call from one of her followers out in the hallway facing the parlor room, Loki popped up into a sitting position on her sofa. She hurried after the messenger toward the manor’s main entrance.
Wait, by “Bete,” you don’t mean…only Bete, do you? she thought to herself with a little cock of her head as she entered the vast entrance hall, only to see the werewolf standing there alone.
The tattered state of his battle gear was a dead giveaway that he’d just returned from the Dungeon.
“Hey hey, Bete! Welcome back!” Loki exclaimed, fully prepared to launch herself on the werewolf despite the circumstances.
“Ah, can it! I still got things to do!” Bete answered with a well-placed sidestep, avoiding the goddess’s embrace. Instead, as though severely pressed for time, he grabbed the nearest junior members who had come to greet him, instructing them to “Bring everyone here right now! And make it fast!”
“R-roger!” they answered in stammered confusion before running off to obey his menacing command. Loki watched this play out before asking the question she’d wanted to ask since she learned of his arrival.
“Hey. Where are Finn and the others?”
Between additional orders for a backpack and meat as he made ready to head back out, Bete replied. After recounting how the entire expedition was holed up on the eighteenth floor, paralyzed by the many injured who had fallen victim to poison-vermis attacks, he explained that he needed to gather up as much of the antidote as he could find and bring it all back down into the Dungeon.
“I see.” Loki responded to the werewolf’s succinct summary of events with a nod.
“I’m headed to Dian Cecht Familia. Even if I buy up every dose they have, it probably won’t be enough, so have Rox and the others start goin’ around to item shops.”
“Okay! Should take, what…two, three days?”
Poison vermis inhabited only the lower levels, and even then they were usually not very numerous, meaning antivenin made from their secretions would be hard to come by. Even if they scoured the entire city, there was no guarantee they’d be able to find what they needed. If the stores didn’t have enough in stock and their human-wave tactics to find more failed, the only option left would be to commission Dian Cecht Familia to craft them some more.
There was, of course, always the option of asking Dea Saint, renowned for her advanced healing magic, to personally venture into the Dungeon and help the afflicted…but that would cost even more than the prohibitively expensive antivenin. While Amid would no doubt be happy to discreetly lend her aid in order to help Aiz and the others, the real problem was her patron deity, Dian Cecht. He was liable to take full advantage of the situation just as he’d done during one of their previous quests—he already charged an arm and a leg for the medical procedures Amid normally performed at their clinic.
Loki understood all of this as she listened to Bete barking out orders, and she traced an invisible check mark in the air with her finger.
“Sure ya don’t need to rest a bit, Bete? You must be bone-tired, fresh out of the Dungeon like that. Need me ta massage those broad shoulders of yers?” Loki waggled her fingers as she made a beeline for Bete’s backside.
Bete, however, only shot her a dirty look. “Enough already! I’m fine.” Shrugging on the backpack one of the familia members had brought him and gnawing voraciously at a hunk of meat still on the bone, he suddenly began rummaging through his battle jacket, almost as though a thought had just occurred to him.
He pulled out a rolled-up piece of parchment. “Oh yeah. Loki,” he said, turning around.
“Whazzat?”
“It’s from Finn. Read it yer damn self,” he called as he headed for the door.
Loki glanced down at the neatly scrawled red print, a smile forming on her lips.
Finn’s handwriting detailed what had taken place on the fifty-ninth floor—“her” true form, the corrupted spirit, as well as the plot their enemies were currently concocting to bring down Orario.
“You did good, Bete,” Loki said with a smile as she watched the werewolf’s receding form leave the manor behind.
CHAPTER 2
RABBIT ROOKIE
Back on the eighteenth floor, the Under Resort.
The bluish veil of artificial night had been lifted as the glimmer of morning crystal settled down atop the safety point. Its soft glow blanketed everything, from the wetlands in the north to the forest spreading far to the east and south, covering the relay town atop the island in the lake to the west as well.
Within that swath of underground land lay Loki Familia’s base camp, erected along the southern tip of the forest.
As the inhabitants of the camp began to rise, so did the noise level as they went about their morning duties.
“Wh-what’s happened, Mister Raul?”
“Huh? Oh, Lefiya.”
Lefiya frantically made her way toward Raul in the crowd of people at the center of camp. Her long auburn hair was loose instead of in its typical ponytail, evidence that she’d only just gotten up.
The young elf had been fast asleep inside her tent until the commotion outside woke her and she rushed out to see what was the matter. Incidentally, the two Amazonian sisters, with their animalistic sensitivity to all things to do with blood and battle, were still fast asleep back in the tent, completely unaware of the alarm gripping their camp.
Raul, along with Aki next to him, turned around to face the approaching elf.
“Some adventurers came down from the seventeenth floor. Miss Aiz found them passed out by the stairs and saved them…” Raul replied.
“Seems like ol’ Goliath had his way with them…they’re banged up pretty good and still out cold,” Aki added.
The group had formed a circle around the three adventurers in question, who were asleep on the grass as Riveria, Leene, and the other healers cared for them, constantly monitoring their conditions.
They were dressed casually
in robes with inner linens fashioned from salamander wool, all of them decidedly worse for wear. Aiz herself sat among the healers, her usual stoic expression overcome with worry as she watched them work.
“Seems like one of ’em is from Hephaistos Familia,” Aki mused as she took in the scene before focusing on a corner of the crowd where a cotton-swathe-clad Tsubaki stood together with her small group of poison-afflicted smiths.
“Oh, Welfy…” the half-dwarf high smith murmured, her right eye (the one not covered by its usual eye patch) staring at the scarlet-haired boy.
While it was an unwritten rule of the Dungeon that parties were supposed to leave one another well enough alone, given that one of the injured was a member of their allied familia, there was clearly no way Loki Familia could ignore their plight.
And it was a plight. Even as low as they were on resources upon their return from their expedition, Loki Familia wasn’t so heartless and narrow-minded as to abandon their fellow adventurers in a time of great need.
At Riveria’s prompt instruction, the red-haired boy’s bandages and armaments were removed and his broken leg splinted, the warm glimmer of healing spells surrounding him.
“Ah, right. And then there’s Miss Aiz’s friend,” Raul added almost as an afterthought.
“Miss Aiz’s…?”
Lefiya’s senses tingled at those words.
Finally, she took a good, long look at the injured adventurers lying on the grass.
She first saw a young prum girl, followed by the human smith Tsubaki was so worried about, and lastly, though his face was hidden by the shadow of Aiz’s frame, she saw a human boy…
…Hm?
The sight gave her an uncanny sense of foreboding.
In the next instant, she found herself winding through the crowd, azure eyes straining with all their might—staring at the boy on the ground. Aiz’s hand was resting softly on his forehead.
Those slender limbs, that slight frame, his features and their immutably cherubic innocence…and finally, that pure-white hair, as white as snow.
Lefiya’s eyes widened with an almost audible snap.
“Hngggggaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh?!”
She stood frozen with her finger pointed straight at the boy.
The horrendous scream squeezed from her throat was enough to make not only Raul, Aki, and the other familia members stop in their tracks but Riveria and Aiz, as well.
It was none other than her (self-declared) fated rival, the boy she’d shared her beloved mentor with in the days leading up to the expedition.
Once again, luck had brought her face-to-face with her archenemy, Bell Cranell.
“Lefiya, you will be quiet!”
“I-I apologize!”
Riveria’s wrath immediately fell upon her.
Soft sleeping breaths permeated the tent.
The firmly closed eyelids of slumbering patients told of the predicament they’d so narrowly escaped. Half-hidden beneath their blankets, the boy, young man, and girl lay fast asleep atop simple beds fashioned for them from outer garments.
Aiz was sitting on the floor, examining the faces of Bell and the other members of his party under the pretense of nursing them.
Half a day’s time had passed since Aiz had carried them back to Loki Familia’s base camp. They were in Finn’s tent, the captain surrendering his space willingly after he learned the situation. After checking in on them earlier, he had instructed her to bring the adventurers to the main tent once they’d awoken, if at all possible. Tsubaki and the other Hephaistos Familia smiths also dropped by occasionally to check on the young man who seemed to be their companion.
Thanks to the efforts of Riveria and the other healers, their wounds had been fully mended. Even the young man’s broken leg, the worst of the injuries, had been restored. The power of strong healing magic and meticulous care was truly impressive. The remaining light scratches and bruises had been treated with what little ointments and bandages remained.
Aiz lowered her eyes toward the white strips of cloth veiling the face of the boy sleeping by her folded knees.
You already made it all this way…?
Voices and laughter drifted in through the tent’s sheets every now and then as her fingers combed through the boy’s bangs.
With most of their items and armor no longer covering their bodies, the unconscious adventurers were an especially sorry sight. They must have been running for their lives, forcing themselves through the middle levels and finally arriving at the eighteenth floor by the skin of their teeth.
It had been only two weeks since she’d last parted with him.
At the time, he had been a Level-1 lower-class adventurer, and she was certain at one point during their training together on the city walls he’d told her the deepest he’d ever gone was the tenth floor.
And yet, here they were, a scant fourteen days later, and he’d already raised that count by eight.
From the upper levels to the middle levels in the blink of an eye.
It was unbelievable. A speed that was enough to make her doubt her own ears.
But the fact that they were here now, lying right in front of her, was proof enough, and she was forced to acknowledge her astonishment.
He’s Level 2 now…
The adventure he’d completed, that cutthroat battle with the minotaur, had caused him to level up, and he’d broken free of his previous level.
Just as Aiz had done with her subjugation of Udaeus.
At least he must have, otherwise it would have been virtually impossible for him to make it all the way to the eighteenth floor.
No doubt, he and his party members hadn’t originally planned on descending to this safety point. She could only guess that they’d run into something unexpected while exploring the shallow reaches of the middle levels, preventing their return to the surface—an incident that made it impossible for them to escape the Dungeon’s halls.
A massive cave-in along one of the main routes? Or a pitfall, perhaps, that they accidentally dropped into after some monster hounded them. These types of things weren’t uncommon in the Cave Labyrinth, the area also known as the “first line,” often considered a threshold to a great increase in danger.
And so the three adventurers, faced with one of these deplorable situations…hadn’t relied on luck. They had not waited for help that may or may not have come. No, they’d pressed on so they could return home with their lives.
“You wanted to save them, didn’t you…?”
She remembered his tragically heroic face as he’d pleaded for her to save his companions, right before he’d passed out completely.
It had been courage, determination, wisdom, and selflessness in the face of certain death that had led Bell and the others to this safety point.
“…But…”
—You shouldn’t push yourself so.
Ignoring the fact that this was advice she, herself, needed to heed, she reached a hand toward Bell’s face.
There’d been so much blood pouring from his forehead and staining his body. Even now, the scars were still visible, and his face remained tormented with fatigue.
She lowered her golden eyes, gently caressing the strips of gauze on his forehead.
When suddenly—
“…Ngh.”
“!”
—his eyelids fluttered, almost as though he was receiving life from Aiz’s touch.
Aiz withdrew her hand in an instant.
It seemed as if he was struggling against an overwhelming feeling of weakness when the slightest of moans passed between his lips.
She stared at his face until finally, the rabbit’s brilliant rubellite eyes cracked open.
“…”
Ever so slowly, his eyelids rose. He blinked once. Twice.
He seemed not to notice Aiz sitting beside him at all. Instead, he simply stared at the ceiling of the tent as though unsure he’d awoken.
But then—
“—Lilly. Welf?!”
His eyes popped wide open as he sat straight up in bed.
He jerked forward, having seemingly no recollection of what had transpired, fully prepared to jump to his feet and come to his companions’ aid, when—
Ah! You shouldn’t move so suddenly! But the words were only in Aiz’s mind, and by the time she could form them on her lips, it was too late.
“Hngh?!”
He curled in on himself as his entire body cried out in agony.
And then he began groaning in front of Aiz, like some kind of crazed, pained rabbit.
Aiz hesitated for a few moments, watching the boy suffer, before finally opening her mouth with a look of resolve.
“Are you all right?”
Bell flinched.
The body that had been writhing in such horrible agony froze.
He was still a moment, then raised his head with a snap.
Gold met rubellite as their gazes locked, the two of them close enough to touch.
“I…erm…uh…”
“…Everything okay?”
What looked like a thousand different expressions ran across Bell’s face as he took in the sight of Aiz sitting next to him.
Her brows were furrowed, pity coloring her features at the boy’s distressed state.
Maybe he hit his head really hard. She couldn’t help but worry.
Bell, on the other hand, was oblivious to Aiz’s anxiety as his actions grew more and more peculiar, until finally he grasped his current situation. He gulped.
The color of his face changed quickly after that, almost as if he had suddenly realized that the person he’d begged in his half-comatose state had been none other than Aiz. The fingers he’d dug into Aiz’s boot began to tremble as his face paled, then flushed red before turning white again.
“Wh-why are you…here…?”
“We stopped here…on the way back from our expedition…” Aiz explained with a slight pause at the boy’s trembling half question, relaying her familia’s current situation.
Bell fidgeted as he took in the information, and his eyes refused to stay on Aiz.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 5 Page 6