by Fujino Omori
If they succeeded in capturing them, they would get a much better layout of the labyrinth and contribute significantly to neutralizing the Evils. As with all bodies—living beings or organizations—once the head was bashed in, the rest would cease to be a threat.
Finn had said that speed would be of the utmost importance on this first strike. They would not give the enemy any time to reorganize, let alone to counterattack. This attack would effectively put the last nail in the coffin—crushing the strength of the Evils’ side.
Following their captain’s order—and, more importantly, to get revenge for their fallen friends—Loki Familia surged forward.
“There’s a door straight ahead in the back and another to the right!”
“Open the one to the right first!”
“It reeks of people here! Don’t get yourself killed from a trap!” Bete yelled as he dismantled a monster with the Dual Roland blades he was wielding in either hand.
“Same to you. Match my timing!” Anakity fired back immediately.
The Daedalus Orb that she held unlocked the door, and as Bete warned, the Evils’ Remnants on the other side fired at once. Anticipating this attack, Bete absorbed the magic with his Frosvirt boots while Anakity and the others took advantage of the small opening to slip through and slice into the enemy squad.
“Wha—?!”
In the blink of an eye, the Remnants fell into chaos. From the first-tier adventurer with his preeminent battle strength down, Loki Familia proceeded to incapacitate the enemy forces. Using magic and magical blades to deal with those who tried to use explosive devices to take them out in a suicide charge, they mercilessly let their fanatical enemies blow themselves up before they could get close enough to do any damage.
The squad in the southeast, which was centered around Bete, was composed mostly of animal people. They could make good use of their enhanced senses to perceive traps and detect the layout of the labyrinth. They were the main mapping squad. The hume bunny Rakuta, who had joined the Fairy Force last time, was in that group, making full use of her skills. During the past operation, she had trailblazed this southeastern part of Knossos with Riveria, so she was navigating for the group as they rushed forward.
“Hurry up with that pillar! Don’t lose sight of Aki and Bete’s team!”
The follow-up group led by Raul immediately reinforced the door that Bete had opened, erecting three metal pillars in between the doors that opened vertically to act as braces to prop them open. This way, they guaranteed that the doors could not be closed remotely, ensuring the squad would not get separated. Even if the orichalcum doors were indestructible, that meant nothing if they could not be closed, and their weight was not enough to break pillars made from high-grade metal.
Those pillars were one of the items that Finn and the others had gathered during the intervening ten days, a crucial tool for taking on Knossos.
—Meanwhile, in the southwest.
“Set up a base! Mappers, spread out from there as you work!”
The squad led by Gareth was setting up pillars, too.
Given that the gates were constructed from the extremely rare material orichalcum, there was a very low probability that there would be a bunch of them. Any reasonable person would put doors at the important points on a route.
Once they could ensure the safety of the surroundings, they used the pillars as a base and unleashed the mappers.
“Make sure you stay with an escort! Don’t make the people from Dionysus Familia do it themselves! Cruz and Narfi, I’m sure the enemy will start pressuring our lines of retreat! I’m leaving the rear to you!”
““Yes, sir!””
Aura and the other members of Dionysus Familia thoroughly investigated the labyrinth, accompanied by Level-3 or higher members of Loki Familia . The secondary force members, Narfi and Cruz, responded to Gareth’s instructions, while he watched out for enemy ambushes.
They continued to open new ground, stopping when they encountered a door or dead end, while Gareth and the others were in the process of holding off and then routing the big wave of enemies pressing from the front.
“Mr. Gareth! The group that went right at the last crossroad found a stairway that goes down!”
“Well done! We’re heading there!”
His voice boomed out at the report as he wheeled the squad around. The southwest squad quickly moved to the next floor as they continued to map.
“Aaaaaaaah?!” shrieked someone from the northeast squad.
“Olba?!”
Knocking down enemies left and right at the head of the group, Tiona suddenly swung around in shock. The enemy’s ambush had hit their lines right from the side, and more and more people were starting to shrink back as those who were cut were unable to stem the flow of blood.
“E-enemies! And they all have cursed weapons!” reported a girl in a shrill voice, causing worry to ripple through the squad.
The combat strength of the lower-tier forces of the Evils was low. At most, they were Level 2. As long as they were careful of the violas, even Dionysus Familia members could handle them. The only problem was that they were wielding cursed weapons. They had to draw blood only once.
Cursed weapons. The unhealable damnation that had stolen some lives from Loki Familia . A single scratch from one of those ominous pitch-black blades would be deadly, an unavoidable depletion of Loki Familia ’s fighting strength.
The remnants of the Evils shouted. With bloodshot eyes, they looked as if they were possessed by death itself. Facing the adventurers who tried to protect those who had been wounded, they devoted themselves to landing a single swing with the curse, even if they were forced to trade blows.
“Healing droplets, tears of light, eternal sanctuary—”
But even that accursed suicide rush was thwarted by her holy hymn.
“Five-meter perimeter. All casualties are inside the area of effect. Activating.”
There was a single healer at the back of the squad, protecting the adventurers as she chanted.
With her platinum hair fluttering in the light of the magic power that she generated, Amid unleashed her magic. “Dia Frater!”
A magic circle in the shape of a diamond appeared on the stone floor. It was as if a pure white splendor had sprung to life, healing all the wounds of Loki Familia ’s members—even the cursed wounds that should have been unhealable. The Evils were aghast at the sight as the adventurers cheered in wonder.
Her magic healed everything . It literally healed all wounds, restored stamina, and managed to boost all Status conditions. Curses were no exception. Essentially, it was a means of complete recovery. If she poured enough power into it, her magic was influenced by her Enigma ability and could even heal faster than an elixir, the ultimate healing item. Even Riveria, who was hailed as the city’s greatest mage, could not begin to match Amid when it came to healing capabilities.
“I will heal everything. And I shall destroy all traces of the curse. Please fight to your hearts’ content.”
Amid Teasanare. Dea Saint. The city’s greatest healer, who was capable of outlasting even a being of immeasurable power, including a Monster Rex.
“Amid, you’re awesome!”
“Since you put it so nicely, I’ll take you up on that…! Let’s gooooooooo!”
Under all normal circumstances, a healer should hang around in the back of the group. Thanks to the efforts of that lone healer, the adventurers’ morale catapulted. As Tiona shouted, Tione licked her lips and leaped out with her, slashing into the enemy forces with her Kukri knives. The Evils could do nothing more than despair as the sisters overran them.
One of the supplies that Finn and the others had pushed hardest to get was the anti-curse medicine. With the enemy capable of spreading an unhealable affliction, it became critical that all the squads have a supply of anti-curse medicine. It was logical to prepare a lot of it in case of unforeseen situations. In the limited time frame that they had to prepare, they neglected to acq
uire the amount of preplanned medicine for even one squad, though the shortened timeline wasn’t the only reason.
That was why Amid had come. She was the one woman in all of Orario who could lift the curse using magic.
“Dea Saint…! Was she always this absurd of a healer?!”
“Even though she’s not a mage, there’s a magic circle…No friggin’ way.”
From her position at the center of the group, Alicia groaned involuntarily as Elfie, who had never seen Amid get serious before, forgot where she was for a moment. Even as a veteran, Alicia had never seen a healer functioning as an offensive force and not just a support one.
But Amid’s confounding abilities didn’t stop there. With a single spell, the shining magic circle morphed into a barrier of light, maintaining a zone where all her allies would continue to be healed. It completely outweighed the damage caused by the Evils desperately trying to fight back. To the Evils, the scene of their enemies’ wounds healing in the blink of an eye must have been nothing short of a nightmare.
But if the Evils were bringing an uncurable malady to the table, they would bring immortality.
The vanguard was freed from the cumbersome task of dealing with items on an individual level. Attack and advance. That was all they needed to do now.
Though she never worked toward gaining the ability of a mage, there was a magic circle at Amid’s feet, raising the power of her spell. With her robes billowing as she released rays of holy light, she was the embodiment of the Enigma ability. If someone said that she was a goddess reborn, everyone would have believed it.
“‘If I’m there, you need not worry about burning through items,’ huh? If anyone else was making that claim, I’d brush them off as reckless, but…you’re quite the healer,” commented Finn, repeating her assurance as he spectated the raging battle, tapping the shaft of his spear against his shoulder with a smile.
It was unbelievable to think that in the northeast squad, exposed to the most intense counterattack of all the parties that invaded Knossos, all the healing was being handled by Amid alone. The two other girls from Dian Cecht Familia were waiting at her side as if they were holy woman’s attendants, eyes closed as they preserved their Mind.
Amid was handling the entire party. She had received the title of Dea Saint from the gods because she could maintain the battle lines against a floor boss by herself . That meant she was more than able to keep up with the needs of a large party alone.
“As the person commanding the squad, this is a convenient arrangement for me, but is your Mind going to be okay, Amid?”
“I will be fine. I have enough potions. Even without a resupply, I can assure that it would be sufficient to continue at this rate for a distance equivalent to going down to around the twentieth floor of the Dungeon.”
Standing next to Amid in the shining white magic circle, Finn smiled wryly at her response. He was seriously considering asking Dian Cecht to borrow her for the next expedition, but he switched gears and started giving out orders.
“The attacks from the enemy are weakening. We’re going to switch from our defensive positions to advancing. Please get ready.”
“Understood.”
Gazing out over the battlefield with a penetrating gaze, the healer bowed piously, as if she had reached the same conclusion as Finn.
Right as Finn was about to move ahead, she called to him. “Captain Finn. I can maintain the battle line, but I cannot foresee how the battle will progress. Do you believe the operation is progressing smoothly?”
Amid had sworn to prevent any victims from sacrificing their lives in this operation.
Finn glanced back. “If I said that we will totally overwhelm them at this rate…well, that would be wishful thinking. There’s no way that Knossos would fall from this much. They still have the creatures,” he responded with his unvarnished opinion.
Looking away from Amid as she listened in silence, Finn stabbed his spear into the devil sculpture built into the labyrinth wall—piercing it right in its eye.
“But we can’t afford to lose. This time, we’ll win.”
The visual information from the eye’s range of sight cut out. Thanatos smiled at the prum’s blue eyes staring at them through the eye, but then it ceased to function.
“They’ve broken in from the northeast, southeast, and southwest doors on the first floor!”
“They’re advancing too fast! They annihilated all the monsters and our dispatched soldiers…!”
“H-have they already advanced to the second floor?! What the hell is going on?!”
A tumult unlike any other roiled all around him.
The labyrinth master’s room in the depths of Knossos.
The space could be called the Evils’ base. It was filled with the incessant shrieks of Thanatos’s followers, pessimistic and badly shaken. Not unreasonably. They were currently being invaded. They were facing Loki Familia ’s attack—what seemed like an all-out assault from an alliance of familias. The fate of their dearest wishes would be impacted by the results of this fight. In other words, it would determine the victors and the vanquished.
“They prepared for this, huh…I guess we earned ourselves a disadvantage by letting them escape Knossos once,” Thanatos muttered to himself as he looked down at the watery screen spread across the central pedestal, at the transmitted information from the eyes placed all around the labyrinth.
Obviously, their enemies were able to control the doors using the keys they had found, but they had even prepared a response to the cursed weapons and all the various traps. They had Barca, the descendant of Daedalus, to control the doors and activate traps from a distance, but Loki Familia was searching out and destroying their eyes—the observation mechanisms embedded in the sculptures’ eyes and wall reliefs—whenever they found them. Without the ability to track the enemy’s movements, they could not effectively activate the traps from afar.
Loki Familia ’s ignominious defeat in the first attack and the Fairy Force’s surprise attack were the cornerstones for this assault. They had examined all the information gathered from those operations and applied them to their current strategy.
Scrutinizing the profile of the prum hero through the screen, Thanatos could not help but be filled with wonder and admiration, even though he was the enemy.
“L-Lord Thanatos?! We can’t stop their advance…! It’s not just the monsters! We’re losing our comrades, too! At this rate…!”
“We gathered the keys from all the children who went out on the front lines, right? As long as the enemy does not steal any more of them, everything will be fine. As long as there are orichalcum doors blocking the way, the enemy can only split up so much.”
They had retrieved the keys from the soldiers deployed all around the maze and gathered them in the labyrinth master’s room. With their stronghold invaded, they desperately needed to avoid the enemy stealing any more keys, just like the Fairy Force had done. The more keys the enemy had, the more they would be able to do as they pleased in Knossos. That was why the Evils had taken that precaution. It had been a last resort because it prevented the free movement of their own forces, even if Barca could control the doors from his spot.
Currently, the only people allowed to carry a key were Thanatos and Levis. With the possibility of running into Loki Familia and being defeated in an instant hanging over their heads, not even the commanders were excepted from that rule.
Planting both hands on his pedestal, Thanatos swayed his crossed legs back and forth. The commander who had come to report to him looked shocked as the god maintained his usual composure despite the gravity of the situation.
“More than that, I’m curious about their speed—it’s like they have a one-track mind.”
Thanatos glanced again at the adventurer displayed on the pedestal. At that rate of advance, they had to be scheming to pressure the head of the organization. More than that, Braver must have had an estimate on the location of the demi-spirit.
Thanato
s’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “Do we know how many routes the enemy came in from and where?”
“Y-yes, sir. Three parties from the first floor, every entrance save the northwest. And the monsters are attacking from the eighteenth floor onward.”
“Ikelos’s toys, huh…? Braver joining hands with those monsters. That was totally outside my expectations…If there are advances from the lowest and highest floors…I wonder if he’s planning a pincer.”
Covering his androgynous face with his long fingers, Thanatos descended into deep thought. There are currently four enemy units…They stole two keys from us during the last fight, plus the two from those heretical monsters with the vouivre…It adds up, but…
From the battle before in Daedalus Street, he’d anticipated this amount of fighters, based on what he knew about Loki Familia and the Xenos. But Thanatos was concerned.
There was a lost key they had not been able to track down—
“Lord Thanatos?! A new enemy party has appeared on the twelfth floor!”
“—As I feared.” Ignoring the shouts of his subordinates, the god allowed a nihilistic smile to appear on his face as he turned around. “Who’s in the group?”
As Thanatos gazed at the scene displayed on the pedestal, the messenger paled as he shouted in reply.
“It’s Nine Hell! And the Sword Princess!”
“Tempest!” Aiz fully unleashed her Airiel as she stepped into the labyrinth.
“Keep up with Aiz as if your life depended on it!”
““Yes, ma’am!”” shouted the familia members in unison behind Riveria.
As if being propelled by their voices, Aiz rushed through the stone-paved passage. She held out the key gripped in her right hand and opened the giant door blocking her path. It was the one that Cruz had received in the bargain with Hermes, the Daedalus Orb that Freya had secretly taken when Ishtar was sent back to the heavens. The final key that the Evils, including their late leader, Valletta Grede, had failed to track down.
The appearance of a fifth party was an unexpected blow to the Evils, who had thought that there were only four squads taking part in the assault.