“Miss Aiz…can I just ask…how that human is faring?” she asked, eyes boring holes through the floor.
Aiz cocked her head to the side. It took her a moment to respond.
Finally: “He’s very earnest. He tries so hard. And he’s incredibly honest…” As she relayed everything she’d seen, heard, and felt during the boy’s training, she couldn’t help the small smile that formed on her lips. “His growth is unprecedented…and I believe he has considerable room to grow even further,” she concluded, wonder tangible in her voice. In her mind, she thought back to the boy’s training session and the glimpse she had caught of his astonishing growth on only their second day. He had hung so fiercely on her every word, sunk his teeth into her every instruction.
Hearing this, Lefiya’s hands hit the floor with a mighty slap.
“?!”
The impact and power of a Level 3 left a crack in the Dungeon floor and rising wisps of smoke.
Lefiya’s body began to shake.
Her despair had reached its peak.
I couldn’t do…a single thing…
While I’ve been doing nothing but making a disgrace of myself, that boy has only improved?!
Fiery heat engulfed her body. The relentless waves of boiling-hot rage only further fostered the uncontrollable trembling of her every muscle.
In her mind, she could see him. He dashed ahead of her, wearing a disgustingly refreshing smile as he said, Giving up already? Well then, I’ll be going on ahead!
Grrrrr……!! Her mind sputtered in barely repressed, incomprehensible fury.
Her pathetic state was unforgivable.
She wouldn’t tolerate it anymore.
Not when that boy was working hard enough to earn recognition from Aiz already!
—I won’t lose! I won’t!
This was the moment that human boy became Lefiya’s rival.
Roaring from the depths of her lungs, she flung herself to her feet.
Her eyes narrowed, displaying a mettle not present during her training with Riveria, shining with an overpowering determination that seemed enough to pierce through the Dungeon’s walls.
“I can still go on. Please continue!”
Aiz stared at the girl for a moment in wide-eyed amazement before finally smiling.
With a nod, she readied her scabbard, and Lefiya’s Concurrent Casting practice began anew.
Refusing to shrink back from attack after attack, Lefiya continued her song and chants, blue eyes blazing all the while.
“Hey, Riveria. What’s Lefiya been up to lately?”
Tiona was covered from head to toe in blood and wounds.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question…?” Riveria sighed from her position on the couch. One hand held a cup of tea while the other pressed lightly at the spot between her closed eyes.
Five days remained until the expedition.
They were in the parlor room of Twilight Manor, home of Loki Familia, just a bit before noon. The majority of members had already left for the day, leaving Riveria alone to rest in the lounge overlooking the street. Until two twin Amazonian sisters had appeared, their matching pareu-style skirts looking decidedly worse for wear.
A lingering heat wafted up from their exposed dark skin as Tiona’s semi-short mop and Tione’s long silken tresses both swayed softly.
“Tione and I were sparring! Sparring!”
“We were both feeling a little discouraged after Aiz’s last level-up. Couldn’t just leave it at that, now, could we?”
Tione’s slumped shoulders looked mildly out of place juxtaposed with Tiona’s overly cheerful exaltation. Of course, they were referring to Aiz’s recent progress to Level 6.
“Indeed, but we all have our limits…” Riveria sighed again, her eyes taking in the mangled state of both their bodies.
This wasn’t unusual for the twins. Inseparable as they’d been since birth, they were always attempting to help bolster each other’s skills, from sparring matches like this to sisterly catfights, and even included worryingly almost-literal fights to the death. Riveria knew this.
While she had no problem with the two of them duking it out, there was a point where the risk of danger became too high.
“You aren’t the only ones. It seems the entire familia has gotten itself into a training craze. Honestly, and right before the expedition, too…”
Indeed, the entire faction was feeling the effects of Aiz’s recent growth, ushering in a slew of intensive practice regimens. From the lower-class members to the upper echelons, it was like they were all ablaze, everyone inspired to achieve the same greatness as the beautifully powerful face of the familia—the Sword Princess.
This was why the manor was so empty at the moment. Everyone was off in the Dungeon or undergoing harsh training trying to follow in her footsteps.
The second-in-command of Loki Familia sighed in an attempt to flush out her worries.
“I bet Lefiya’s probably training, too.” Tiona thought back first to the deadly aura Lefiya had exuded that one night at dinner and then to the extraordinary new burst of enthusiasm she had been displaying recently. Could Aiz have something to do with that?
“Come to think of it, Aiz has seemed a little off lately, too, hasn’t she?” Tione mused beside her sister.
“You know anything, Riveria?”
“I am just as in the dark as you two…”
Though even as she said it, Riveria’s mind drifted back to her memories of the day prior.
Lefiya had approached her in need of learning materials. This by itself wasn’t at all unusual, but there’d been something about her, like she was possessed by some horrifying demon. The change had been enough to make even Riveria hesitate.
Lefiya had spent the entire night rooted to her desk, paging through book after book. She’d always been a little zealous, but her desperately repeating sessions of trial and error went beyond her normal efforts.
Perhaps she has found a good rival to spar with.
Riveria might not have lived as long as a god, but she was a high elf and had lived her fair share of years—she recognized this kind of change when she saw it.
“More important…Do something about your appearance, you two.” Riveria unsubtly brought up the twins’ disheveled condition.
It wouldn’t have surprised her if the “sparring” the two had done wasn’t closer to that of an actual battle, considering their bloodstained skin and messy clothes, hair, and faces.
Elves were naturally fastidious, and for Riveria, looking at the two of them right now was positively agonizing.
“Meh. We’re just resting a bit before we have another go. Why bother?”
“Yeah, it’d be a pain anyway.”
All Riveria could do was let out another sigh at the blithe and optimistic Amazonian sisters.
Standing up from the sofa, she took Tione’s hand and forced her onto a nearby chair.
“What are you doing?”
“You want to look like a lady for Finn, yes? Then you should at least do something about your hair.”
Riveria circled around behind the girl and started combing her long, dark hair. Using one of the combs in the parlor room, she tamed Tione’s unkempt hair bit by bit.
“You’re actually quite…good at this, Riveria. I’d always thought that, as a high elf, you’d have servants to do these kinds of things for you.”
“It was when I was looking after Aiz. That girl…She didn’t give a single thought to her hair. Things got to the point where I couldn’t take it any longer. I ended up learning,” Riveria explained with a wry smile. Her eyes narrowed as her thoughts drifted back to memories from many years ago.
Tione’s own eyes slowly closed. The feeling of Riveria’s hands softly threading through her hair was a bit ticklish, but it was so wonderful at the same time.
“No fair! Do me next, Riveria!”
“All right, all right, just give me a moment.” Riveria’s eyes softened with a smile as she shoo
k her head, clucking her tongue. These girls.
Helpless between the almost catlike Amazonian sisters in their capriciousness, Riveria wove the tines through Tiona’s long hair with gentle swish-swishes that seemed to fill the room.
“Hey, Riveria?”
“What is it?”
“You knew Aiz since she was little, right? Like…around the time she entered the familia?” Tiona asked slowly, watching over her sister from the nearby chair.
“I did,” Riveria replied, not even turning her head.
It had been almost nine years since that day. Aiz had been only seven.
“Did you know Aria?”
Riveria’s hand came to an abrupt stop.
“Riveria…?” Tione turned around in her seat, eyeing the elf suspiciously.
Riveria, on the other hand, turned her jade-colored eyes toward Tiona.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“Lefiya…She said Aiz was called that during that time down on the eighteenth and twenty-fourth floors,” Tiona explained sincerely, her eyes now fixed on Riveria. The two sisters intently watched the high elf, her beauty surpassing even that of goddesses.
“Seems like a lot of weird stuff has been happening lately. New species of monsters, whatever it was that happened to Bete and the others on the twenty-fourth floor…I can’t be sure, but it seems like something serious is going on.”
The viola attacks that’d plagued them since the Monsterphilia.
The battle that had broken out surrounding Hashana’s control of the crystal-orb fetus down in Rivira on the eighteenth floor and the chance encounter with that monster-manipulating tamer woman, the creature Levis.
Then on the twenty-fourth floor, as if that wasn’t already enough, the remnants of the shadowy Evils faction had decided to make an appearance, along with their schemes to destroy Orario.
Tiona crossed her legs atop the sofa, trembling slightly as she relayed each event in turn.
“It almost makes me wonder whether Aiz being called ‘Aria’ by those thugs has something to do with, you know, everything that’s been going on lately.”
“…”
“I mean, Aria’s the name of the main character in that legend, right? But that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Aiz…”
As Tiona trailed off, Riveria let her gaze return forward.
Silently, broodingly, she ran the comb once more through Tione’s hair before coming to a stop, just as she’d done so many times for Aiz in the past.
“You know anything, Riveria?” Tione asked.
But Riveria didn’t reply.
The only thing that changed was the tilt of her head, just enough that she could direct her gaze out the window.
“The fifty-ninth floor…” Riveria finally said. “…There, everything will be made clear.”
The sky reflected a brilliant blue in her jade eyes.
“Y’know, yer theory was right on the money, Finn!”
It was out on the main street, with the sun shining down and the sky crystal clear, where an unhurried voice—lazy, almost—announced its opinion.
It was about the same time Riveria and company were having their own conversation up in the parlor room of the manor. Bustling carriages and boisterous demi-humans clattered about the cobblestones, while the prum Finn glanced up at the figure next to him.
“How so, Loki?”
Walking along beside him was none other than the goddess with ginger hair and cinnabar-colored eyes, Loki.
The deity in question glanced down at her follower, hands laced behind her head.
“When we went over everything with Gareth and Riveria! Said it yerself, didn’cha?”
It had been six days now since Aiz had gotten them involved in that incident down on the twenty-fourth floor.
Loki had been discussing it together with the three faction leaders in their home’s office, and it was then that Finn had said it. They still knew nothing about that creature Levis, and they were still in the dark regarding that new species of monster and their strange, richly colored magic stones.
“We simply don’t have the knowledge to pacify that many monsters. Doing so—”
—is nothing more than a fantasy, was how Finn had finally completed his sentence in an attempt at masking his true feelings.
“But you actually wanted to finish that sentence like this, yeah?” Loki brought it up again, refusing to let sleeping dogs lie. And then, in a perfect imitation of Finn, “Doing so would put us on par with those monstrous underground dwellers.”
The prum’s shoulders visibly slumped. Loki had seen straight through him.
“It seems even a god like you could take a stab at where that was heading.”
“And what a stab!” Loki teased, a playful smile gracing her lips. “What’s left of the Evils—they ain’t people or monsters. They’re phantoms. Which is why this whole thing with the crystal orb turned into such a big to-do. Finn, whaddaya think is down on the fifty-ninth floor, huh?”
During their encounter on the twenty-fourth floor, Levis had told Aiz:
“Go to the fifty-ninth floor. Should answer a lot of your questions.”
And that’s where they were going on their expedition. To the new depths beyond the farthest they’d ever tread—the fifty-ninth floor.
Just what exactly awaited them there?
“I doubt someone like me could even hazard a guess,” Finn countered, his answer purposefully vague as a sort of riposte. He gave his thumb a little lick, intent on keeping his thoughts firmly to himself.
“Though I will say that we might finally have met our match.”
And it wasn’t just a single entity, either. It was a giant shadow made of countless, erratically overlapping lines.
A presence entangled in the expectations of many…or something like that, Finn believed.
“Ain’t that the truth,” muttered Loki under her breath.
Finn watched her out of the corner of his eye, his thumb beginning to throb.
“Hey, Finn…care if I speak freely?” Loki asked abruptly.
“What is it?” Finn looked up to see her stop short a few feet in front of him.
She turned around.
In that single moment, the air between them changed, almost as if she’d taken off some kind of mask. The corners of her mouth curled upward.
“This is why I can’t leave this world alone.”
“…”
“Hybrids aren’t humans or monsters. Even for us all-knowin’ gods, entirely unexpected things’re happenin’—like an ‘unknown’ that deities themselves can’t predict.”
Loki’s eyes widened just slightly, revealing a twinkle of delight. It was almost as though she was drunk on some sort of high-grade wine.
She could sense the unknown she had thirsted after for so long. The feeling of foreboding was enough to make her stomach curl even as the warm sun shined on the tranquil cobblestones beneath her feet. And yet that wasn’t enough to stop the insatiable elation from building in her belly.
Loki let out a laugh of pure, unadulterated joy.
Finn responded with a faint smile of his own, watching his goddess in silence.
“’Course, I’m most worried about you guys, yeah? I’m all choked up about it! Make sure ya come back alive, y’hear!” Reverting back to her usual blasé attitude, Loki circled around behind Finn and gave his shoulders a little squeeze.
They were attracting attention now. Finn forced a somewhat sardonic smile.
“No need to worry, Loki. I’m an adventurer, after all,” he responded amid the teasing. “I know all too well the feeling of challenging the unknown.”
Loki met Finn’s upturned gaze, pausing for just a moment before shooting him a grin.
The goddess and prum shared a long history, indeed.
Before long, they had resumed their walk.
The path they followed was Northeast Main Street. It bordered the Industrial District, the city’s number two ward and the
heart of the magic-stone manufacturing and production industry, and was constantly clogged with freelance laborers from various guilds and familia craftsmen.
Being an area so focused on manufacturing, the majority of passersby were laborers in work attire. Burly middle-aged humans toted tools and materials to this place or that while animal-people studied production orders and shouted themselves hoarse. All throughout the hubbub echoed the clanging of metal on metal, interposed with the crassly shouted songs of dwarves at work.
It was safe to say women and children were a foreign sight in a man’s world such as this. Looking decidedly out of place, the petite Finn and female Loki wound their way from the main street to the heart of the district.
Still chatting idly, the two of them arrived at a little bungalow of a workshop.
“—We’re here.”
In front of the workshop, the building itself in desperate need of a good soot-cleansing, stood a goddess with hair of blazing vermilion.
She directed her left eye, of the same brilliant hue as her hair, toward Loki and Finn. Her right eye was currently hidden beneath the large eye patch that sheathed half her face.
“Mornin’, Phai-Phai. Or should I say ‘afternoon’?”
The woman in front of them was none other than Hephaistos, world-renowned goddess of the forge and timeless leader of Hephaistos Familia.
“Phai-Phai,” as Loki called her, raised a hand in greeting.
Even with the impressive jet-black eye patch, her divine beauty left no doubts as to whether she was a goddess or not. Her ensemble of white tunic paired with black trousers and gloves exuded an air of rustic masculinity, which, when coupled with her stunning visage, no doubt marked her as the sort of person inclined to care for others.
Hephaistos responded to Loki with a greeting of her own, red hair swaying slightly as her lips formed a weak smile.
“Sorry for calling you all the way out here like this, Loki.”
“Think nothin’ of it! We’re the ones draggin’ yer mates along on our expedition to keep our weapons all nice ’n’ shiny, after all.”
Loki Familia had sought Hephaistos Familia’s help on their upcoming expedition.
Finn had come to Hephaistos (via Loki) to request provision of a High Smith in hopes of staving off wear and tear for their weapons during their expedition.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 4 Page 5