“I apologize, Tsubaki, but could I borrow your strength?” Finn asked, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
“No problem, boss!” Tsubaki nodded in response. She slid her tachi from its scabbard in a flash, bisecting a nearby monster and joining Finn in supporting Aiz from the midline.
Aiz led the way with Raul and the other three supporters directly behind her. Finn and Tsubaki guarded the group on its sides while Riveria protected them from the rear.
The supporters now forming the center of the party, they upped their pace to race down the tunnels of the fifty-second floor even faster than before.
“Whatever you do, don’t stop!”
Still dodging the incoming fireballs from below, they took out only the monsters directly impeding their way forward.
They couldn’t leave anything to chance when it came to beasts that could attack without regard to floors. The flares of those valgang dragons would take care of any monsters they failed to kill.
Getting to the fifty-eighth floor was their top priority, and every move was to that end.
The depths of the Dungeon were vaster than the entire city of Orario. As map data unfolded within his head, Finn tossed out order after order, leading them through the complex maze via the shortest route possible as they continued to dodge salvos from the dragons beneath their feet. Meanwhile, Raul and the other supporters had free hands, so they gathered around the one supporter toting the large-scale weapons and used daggers and spears to provide continuous support to the front line.
Riveria’s Veil Breath enveloped the entire party. Just as it had with Lefiya and the others, the full-body protection magic glowed along the surfaces of their bodies, warding off critical attacks from their surrounding enemies time and time again.
“WUUUUAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!”
An array of atrocious monsters blocked their path.
Venom scorpions, thunder snakes, silver worms—the threat of these monsters was so clearly different from that of the previous floors, it was as though they’d passed some kind of invisible line of demarcation. Together with the fireballs of the dragons some multiple floors below, the sheer number of these powerful beasts was what had kept Aiz and Loki Familia from progressing farther into the Dungeon’s depths…until today.
“Finn! Nine of them!”
“We’ll break through here! Aiz, they’re yours!”
Following Finn’s carefully calculated shortest route, Aiz shot forward.
The roars of the incoming monsters blasting her from all sides, she responded with a scream of her own.
“Awaken, Tempest!!” she shouted, activating her Airiel before swinging her sword into the mass.
It slipped past the oncoming needles of poison, past the electrifying sparks of lightning attacks. In the blink of an eye, she’d mowed down all nine enemies.
The flash of her sword morphed into an undulating wave of air, and their bodies exploded upon impact, scattering into the wind. Her armor of wind, now coupled with the green light of Riveria’s Veil Breath, screamed as she shot forward.
“Aiz’s level-up is really saving our skins,” Finn muttered, watching as the Sword Princess plowed her way through the wall of monsters, then proceeded to annihilate every other obstacle in one relentless wave after another.
“I’ve seen her do some foolish things, so the matter is rather complicated,” Riveria replied as she thought back to Aiz’s defeat of the floor boss Udaeus.
Aiz’s Level 6 abilities, coupled with the output of her strengthened Airiel, gave her an uncanny strength when it came to breaking through enemies. She plowed through the cumbersome venom scorpions and thunder snakes in a manner resembling Gareth’s. Wrapped in winds and bearing the bulk of the front line all by herself, Aiz carved her way through the passageway, leaving piles of monster carcasses behind her.
“Are…are we even necessary at this point…?” Raul mused as he and the other supporters gazed at the sight with a shudder.
“Raul, ready a magic potion!” Finn barked, prohibiting them from turning into mere spectators.
“R-right!”
The rate they were exhausting themselves wasn’t even comparable to the previous floors. If Aiz continued mowing down monsters at her current speed, her power would be gone in a flash. Sensing the condition of their sole vanguard fighter, Finn ordered for replenishment. Raul responded by quickly fishing through his bag for the item in question.
“Narfi, Alicia, Cruz! Your magic swords!”
“Roger!” the three responded in unison.
“The moment Aiz pulls back to recover, attack!” Finn commanded while taking out more monsters with his spear.
The three other supporters—human, elf, and beastman—readied their equipped magic swords. Following Finn’s command, they flourished said swords the moment Aiz, covered in sweat, retreated to the midline.
The instant, chant-less bursts of magic exploded across the path in front of them, wiping out any monsters there.
Aiz grabbed the magic potion from Raul mid-run, finishing it off quickly before returning to the front line. The blazing fires from the magic swords had swallowed up the monsters during her brief respite.
“Those attacks from below have stopped. Y’think Gareth and the others…?” Tsubaki murmured as they continued along tirelessly, with Aiz at the helm. And it was true: the quakes, shudders, and shocks had stopped.
“Most likely. We should take advantage of the opportunity and make haste.” Finn nodded in response.
It would seem Gareth’s group had fallen all the way to the fifty-eighth floor and already mopped up—or at least drawn the attention of—the valgang dragons deep beneath their feet.
In their place, however, wyverns were starting to emerge from the deep vertical tunnel made by the dragons’ blasts and closing in on the party. The winged dragons came and went as they pleased via the neck of the Dragon’s Urn.
Despite the continuous attacks from above as they moved between tunnels and rooms, Aiz’s wind and Finn’s commands helped the party fend off the dragons until, finally, they found the staircase leading to the floor below.
In a flash, they descended to the next floor.
“The fifty-third floor…!” Raul let out a breath of air that could have been excitement or could have been fear, still haggard from their inordinate speed.
Next to him, Finn narrowed his green eyes, studying the perimeter.
“I don’t see any of those new species…?”
Apparently, the magic from Aiz’s Airiel wasn’t enough to draw the magic-sensing caterpillar monsters out of hiding.
Finn gave his thumb a little lick as the party dashed their way through the temporarily encounter-free—and unsettlingly quiet—Dungeon floor.
“Who’s going to join us, then, I wonder.” A small smile rose to his lips as the throbbing of his thumb foreshadowed the coming Irregular.
Almost as if on cue, a swarm of caterpillar monsters appeared to block their path.
“Th-there they are!” Raul cried out.
“No, wait. There’s something…” Riveria’s face turned grim as she eyed the scene in front of them.
From among the deluge of caterpillars filling up the wide passageway, an especially large one appeared, bearing a figure in a bluish-purple hooded robe.
“The guy from the twenty-fourth floor…!” Aiz’s memory flashed at the sight of the figure shrouded completely in cloth and its mask decorated in strange, ominous designs.
A conspirator of that creature Levis, no doubt, who’d appeared during their earlier fight and absconded with the crystal orb.
“Is that a…person?” asked Tsubaki, her right eye narrowing in suspicion at the eerie figure standing, unshakable, atop one of the monsters.
With boots on its feet and silver gloves on its hands, it seemed every bit a human.
It raised its right hand at the incoming party.
In sync with the movement, the herd of caterpillars arranged themselves into line afte
r line, adjusting the heights of their heads into low, medium, and high, almost like a flight of stairs.
“Kill them.”
The entire herd opened their mouths, releasing a simultaneous flood of corrosive acid.
“Nghh!”
“Alter course! Find a cave and run!!” Finn called out the second the tsunamic wave of acid came toward them. The rest of the party responded equally as fast, diving into the nearest hollow they could find.
Behind Riveria, the last to evacuate, the passageway filling up with corrosive acid looked like veins flooded with thick, dirty mud. In a mere moment, the walls, the ceiling, everything began melting upon contact with the monsters’ fluid. An acerbic hisssssss joined the resulting plumes of smoke and strange, nostril-stinging aroma.
“A…A mass acid attack…?!” Raul groaned, his face tight.
To think those monsters could be manipulated to pull off a massive concentrated attack. Not even Aiz’s wind would be able to absorb all that.
The faces of the supporters paled as they watched the indefensible attack wash through the passageway, melting away the very Dungeon itself.
“Everyone, on your feet. They’re coming!”
Raul and the others leaped up at the sound of the multitude of legs scrambling toward them through the corroded tunnel. At Finn’s command, they dashed toward the front of their small cave, Aiz at the lead.
“Controlling those new species as if they were soldiers…Could our hooded friend be the same as that woman?” Finn muttered under his breath as he shot forward, spear in hand.
“…!” The words made Aiz’s brow tremble.
That woman could only mean Levis. If this being was the same as Levis, that would make it another creature.
Her heart cried at the thought that Levis might have a partner also able to control the vibrantly colored monsters.
“Strange place for whoever he or she is to turn up, though,” Finn continued.
“Then what the hell is this person?”
“Simply put, a tamer,” Riveria responded, not bothering to mince her words.
“You gotta be shittin’ me! They can control monsters like these?!” Tsubaki replied in shock.
Raul and the other supporters couldn’t contain their own gulps of surprise at the thought of someone able to control such a giant army of monsters from the depths. No sooner had the short hitches of air left their throats, however, than said army of caterpillars reappeared from the direction of their route.
“Hit the dirt!”
The sound of the massive acid attack swallowed up the supporters’ screams. Aiz and the others were forced to change course once again as the spectacle from before repeated itself all over again.
“A-again?!”
“They’re coming from that direction, too?!”
—Raul and the other supporters screamed as the caterpillar monsters closed in on them from all sides. The hissing noise of the acid shooting from their mouths, the smell of decay, and the anguished screams of other monsters caught in the attack echoed around them as Finn gave order after order, leading the party through the fifty-third floor at an incredible speed.
“Don’t let them escape, my virgas.”
The hooded figure continued doggedly behind them together with its army of caterpillars, now joined by a swarm of violas.
“We’re being herded…!” Riveria grimaced, taking note of the way their every path kept getting blocked by monsters.
“To think we’d end up having to deal with strategizing monsters,” Finn added with a nod.
The army of caterpillars and their hooded ringleader were most certainly shepherding the party, and the net encircling them seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller as they stopped the party’s advance again and again. It was almost as if they were being driven into a corner, and the thought that this could all be a part of that creature’s plan brought cold drops of sweat to the foreheads of the entire party.
…The question now is, what is that thing looking for? Aiz, perhaps? Finn thought, throwing a glance behind him as anxiety settled over the group.
He saw the hooded figure giving orders from atop one of the large rushing caterpillars. He could feel the focus of the being’s gaze, despite the mask that seemed to block its vision.
Could it be it was targeting the golden-haired, golden-eyed swordswoman hidden in shadow at the front of their desperately racing group?
Was it attempting to take her alive, the same as Levis and her friends?
Or did it simply regard Loki Familia as an enemy and wish to annihilate them?
For a brief moment, their gazes met—Finn’s and the hooded figure’s—and the prum’s eyes narrowed.
“Finn, we’re being cornered!” Riveria cried out upon realizing their enemy’s intentions herself.
“…” Finn laid out the map of the fifty-third floor in his mind. The moment he determined their current position and its nearby locations, he raised his head. “Aiz! Turn left!”
Aiz darted into one of the countless byroads and tunnels splitting off from their current path, leading the party down a long, straight tunnel.
Halfway through their reroute, however, Finn called out again.
“We’ll ambush them! About-face!”
Raul and the others were taken aback at the sudden order but did as they were told all the same—they had faith in their leader.
Bearing with him, they forced themselves to a screeching halt and then turned on their heels. The moment Aiz and Riveria found themselves in their new, reversed positions, the hooded figure appeared with its army of monster soldiers along the way they’d come.
Aiz strengthened her Airiel at the sight of the overwhelming swarm of monsters.
“I need three shields lined up now!” their captain cried, to which his party members quickly complied.
The supporters other than Raul peeled off the large shields attached to their backpacks, bringing them together in front of the incoming monster army to form a gapless three-man barrier.
“Aiz!!” Finn shouted again, not wasting a single instant.
Aiz threw a glance back at him in confusion. Then, suddenly, she understood.
Grabbing her knees tightly, she somersaulted backward.
Leaving behind a crack in the Dungeon floor, she flew through the air to land not on the wall but on the supporters’ shields.
The moment her feet slammed onto that wall of shields, she readied Desperate, and the massive air current around her undulated as she flourished her sword of silver.
It took a moment for the shock of it to reach the supporters, who cringed as they stooped with a sort of fixed determination. Raul even lent his own support, using his shoulders to help prop them up.
An instant later, Aiz let it out, the name of that skill passing her lips.
“Li’l Rafaga!” She kicked off from the shield to unleash a missile of wind.
“?!”
The oncoming hooded figure gave a surprised shudder.
Leaping forth from the shield, Aiz released that great, spiraling arrow of wind. The creature, realizing it had nowhere to run, could only let out a cry at the approaching attack:
“Virgas!”
The response was immediate: the caterpillars released another of their simultaneous acid attacks.
Acid met wind in a violent blast, but the wind won.
“”
The hooded figure beat a hasty retreat as Aiz’s attack forced back the caterpillars’ acidic onslaught.
Leaping into a corner of the ceiling, it watched as the vortex swallowed the massive swarm of caterpillars.
It made a clean sweep of the entire column, tearing through it in one giant blast, then continued on toward the hooded figure as a powerful, raging gale.
“No way…” the figure muttered beneath its mask as the shock waves hit it and whipped its cloak about.
“We’ve bought ourselves some time!”
“—ngh!”
It was
a long spear that came at the figure this time. Finn, not allowing the enemy to find its footing, followed right on the heels of Aiz’s Li’l Rafaga as the swordswoman raced deep into the passage with a mighty explosion.
The hooded figure somehow managed to ward off the incoming Durandal spear with a flourish of its metal gloves.
“Seems that even among you creatures, some are stronger than others.”
“—Ngh!”
Finn continued his close-range assault as his opponent kicked off the wall and landed on the ground.
The hooded figure defended itself desperately, its metal gloves coming up to block the onslaught of thrusts again and again, unable to land an attack of its own against the prum’s overwhelming spearmanship.
Finn could tell instantly that the creature in front of him couldn’t hold a candle to Levis. He’d fought against the red-haired woman on the eighteenth floor, after all.
The hooded figure, unable to keep up with the increasing speed of the attacks besieging the lower half of its vision, let out a shout.
“Violas!!”
Countless yellow-green tentacles rose from the ground to thwart the relentless spear strikes.
Finn took a step back as the flowers surged toward him. From the ceiling, from the walls, from the ground, their innumerable tentacles punched through the earth and rose from holes, coming at him like a sickening green rain. And as he blocked those incoming attacks, his spear a raging whirlwind, the hooded figure lunged forward to counterattack.
It was a rapid-fire back-and-forth as the two opponents set aside everything else in their immediate vicinity. Amid the sounds of Aiz finishing off the caterpillar monsters farther down the long path, they relocated the battle to a side passage, silver spear meeting silver gloves in a violent riposte.
The hooded figure summoned forth a massive tentacle strike from its viola allies, about to add his own attack to the mix—when…
“Gggnh!”
It came like covering fire. A single arrow plunged into the figure’s shoulder.
“I…I hit him…” Raul murmured in wonder. He stood a considerable distance behind the two duelists with his bow readied to fire.
The hooded figure yanked the arrow from its shoulder, fingers curling around the wood and breaking it with a fierce snap.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 4 Page 23