by Fujino Omori
“Take up your shields! Forget about evasion! Show your courage and stop its attacks head-on! This is when you prove yourself as an adventurer!”
Finn had been defeated by this curse once. He had been unable to recover after an assault by none other than Levis. But this was not about trying to redeem himself, not about restoring his honor, not about earning vindication. What he displayed was only his bravery.
As Finn sprinted without holding a shield, he cut into the Barca Monster. He lurched himself into the rain, not shrinking back from the curse that had almost gotten him once before. He displayed his small, powerful, reliable back to the adventurers who were desperately recoiling in the face of the curse.
“G-get up! Get uuuuuup!”
“Follow the captaiiiiiiiiiiiiin!”
And the familia members answered his call. His inspiration lit a fire in them, allowing their morale to overcome their fear. Hoisting their shields high, they chased after the prum, reminded that no matter how great the enemy, squaring off against a powerful foe and following the bravery embodied by their small hero was what it meant to be part of Loki Familia .
Tiona and Tione raised a battle cry as they led familia members charging in from other directions. Leaving behind the confounded members of Hermes Familia , they displayed the pride of the most powerful familia in Orario.
We must break this curse , the adventurers roared.
CHAPTER 6
AND THEN THE GOD SMILED
“Elfie, hurry up!”
“I’m sorry, Miss Aliciaaaaa!”
Alicia looked back as Lefiya’s roommate, Elfie, desperately tried to keep up as they rushed through the passages.
On the ninth floor of Knossos.
Their group had originally been part of Finn’s squad but had split off into a smaller group. After the transmission from Hermes Familia , Finn had given the order to his squad to branch off, following the footsteps of the other groups. Elfie was racing around the labyrinth with the group under Alicia’s command, working to set up a perimeter around the floor. Their group was composed of six people. With the mage Elfie in the mix and led by the Level-4 Alicia, they had enough firepower to move around the floor by themselves. Now that the enemy’s strength had been whittled down, that was more than adequate force to make a splash.
Thanks to Lulune’s report, they knew that Barca was currently on the battlefront, meaning they no longer needed to fear the enemy opening or closing doors remotely. And with guidance from the thief who had the labyrinth’s blueprints, they did not have to worry about losing their way.
They were working hard to finish off the last pockets of enemy resistance.
“ ?”
Elfie had been desperately sprinting, in real danger of being left behind by the speedy vanguards, when—Shrick . Elfie heard metal scraping against stone.
“What was that…?”
It was the sort of noise that could never happen naturally in the stone-paved labyrinth. But it was trivial enough that she did not even think to shout a warning about a possible trap.
They were in one segment of the passage.
Elfie instinctively stopped in her tracks and glanced around. What caught her eye was the wall diagonally behind her, where there was a small crack in the labyrinth walls, which were supposed to have been constructed from adamantite. That was where the sound was coming from. It was faint, but it kept repeating, low enough that it was drowned out by the ambient sounds of fighting in the distance if she did not listen carefully.
A self-admitted bundle of curiosity, Elfie forgot all about her current situation and approached the crack, drawn to it. Suspicious, or perhaps disturbed, she gulped as she peeked inside.
Peering into the deep, dark void through the crack, she saw what looked like an empty cavern. In that darkness, something was writhing, and in time with its movements, a clanking sound rang out, as though chains were being tugged.
Elfie held her breath. She squinted, as if doubting her sight, focusing—
All of a sudden, a bloodshot eye appeared in front of her.
“—Eraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah?!” she screamed oddly, leaping back.
The shadow in the darkness rammed into the cracked wall with a thud , seeming to notice her presence. Elfie landed spectacularly on her butt after hopping back in surprise.
“Wh-wh-what was that?! Was that a monster?!”
From her position on the ground, Elfie gripped her chest and readied her rod before her. The eye floated in space, peering out of the crack, while its owner moaned hoarsely in a way that the gods jokingly discussed how zombies were purported to groan. It scraped against the wall as if attempting to break free.
“Elfie, what are you doing?!”
“Miss Aliciaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?! Th-there’s something inside this wall!”
“What are you talking about?! We have to deal with the monsters! We’re going to get surrounded!”
Elfie’s eyes clouded over as Alicia yelled back at her from farther down the passage. Looking ahead, she saw that they were already in the middle of a fight—the monsters were approaching from the same direction that their squad had taken to get there.
“The terrain is bad! We’re changing locations and counterattacking! Get a move on and join us!”
“U-understood!” Elfie stood up in a rush, reluctantly leaving behind the crack in the wall.
She trailed after Alicia to the others waiting for her. The eye floating in darkness stared, fixated on her back, as if trying to follow her.
“Prepare yourselves! Incoming!” Riveria shouted as soon as she set foot into the open space.
Loki Familia had spread out in the room on the twelfth floor. A group of heavily armed troops, Level 3 and higher, had been deployed in advance to confront the powerful prey they had lured out. After they had broken into Knossos, they had found an area that fit their requirements, and Riveria had left a dedicated counterattack force there.
The mages readied their staffs, tensing and starting to chant their spells in unison as Aiz in the rear guard leaped into the room. Not a moment later, the figure of a woman with bloodred hair skidded into the space.
“You really ran around, Aria.”
“…—!”
Levis’s gaze pierced into Aiz, who stopped in the center of the room and turned around. The strongest creature was holding a cursed longsword, looking pessimistic as always. Her gaze was trained only on Aiz, flashing Riveria alone a cursory glance, but she did not look once at the rest of the people spread around the room.
“L-Lady Riveria…!”
“Do not be rash. Aiz and I will hold her back to start,” she replied to the elves as they became visibly distraught after spotting the creature, urging them to control themselves.
To deal with Levis, their plan was to place Aiz at the front with Riveria’s support while the rest of the squad bombarded her. Riveria kept her eyes fixed on Levis as she shrank the magic circle to a radius of five meders, down from the full range that she needed to keep a lookout for the creature’s approach. If the creature and the vanguard ever clashed, her Rea Laevateinn ’s flames could erupt at a moment’s notice.
A wall of warriors with great shields stood in front of the mages who had completed their casts. They all fixed Levis with determined glares, cold sweat forming on their brows. The room took on a charged atmosphere—as if an ammunition dump ready to explode at a moment’s notice.
“…?”
Aiz was facing off against Levis, and she furrowed her brow dubiously. Levis stood before her, looking at Aiz with a blank expression. All she was doing was observing her.
She isn’t attacking…?
She did not even ready her sword. Not only that, Aiz could not sense a threatening aura. The forces behind Aiz were mystified as she faced the creature who was just standing there. Even Riveria was split between being on guard and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
“…—?”
Aiz had fought the Warlord to prepare
for this moment. She had approached this operation ready to reach a conclusion in her battle with Levis. But their current situation was too unexpected. She did not know what to do. If Levis attacked, she was determined to respond. She was resolved to fight to the end. However, she herself was not able to attack.
Once the battle started, it was clear there would be casualties. If the opponent was going to spend her time doing nothing, then that was the best possible result. For the purposes of Finn seizing control of Knossos and for their own purposes, a stalemate was the ideal scenario.
This was beyond their wildest imagination, but this was also extraordinarily convenient. It should have been exactly what they wanted. But Aiz could not swallow the intense unease she felt, standing face-to-face with the creature who was her archenemy without crossing swords.
“…”
Levis allowed time to pass as she silently watched Aiz, perplexed, as she maintained her stance.
“Cynthia! Halberd!”
“G-got it!” shouted the mage supporter in response to Tione, tearing a large weapon off her backpack.
She handed over the Durandal special, Roland Halberd. Switching to the longer weapon, Tione sliced into the Barca Monster.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The ax made its landing in its swollen right arm, sending blood gushing out. Tsk ing as she dodged the spray of black blood, Tione used her pole weapon’s reach to attack and evade at range. With Tione’s and Finn’s repeated attacks leading the way, the rest of Loki Familia resolutely lunged in one after the other with spears and glaives.
“Surround it! Surround it!”
“Mages! Don’t stop casting your spells!”
“Don’t worry about scorching all of it! Just fall back!”
The hall on the ninth floor had transformed into a grueling battlefield where the fighting was thick with shields to deal with the cursed black rain. Other than Tiona, all the adventurers had switched to pole or ranged shooting weapons, including bows and arrows. The monster was using its hardened right arm to ward them off and knocking away magic with its cursed left tentacle, but the attacks never ceased. Hermes Familia might have had less combat power to offer, but they contributed superb support on both offense and defense.
“That even Loki Familia would struggle to bring it down…!” Asfi squinted as she looked at the monster that would not fall, withstanding the attacks.
Their enemy was specialized for defense. In exchange for agility, its giant slug of a body was as unmovable as a thousand-year-old tree towering over its surroundings. It endured the adventurers’ attacks, throwing countermeasures with its deformed arms. The rain of blood prevented all from getting close, and even when they managed to slip through, they could not land a critical hit from the off-balance stances that they needed to get through the pelts. Even Tiona’s Urga could not sever any of its limbs.
The parasitic crystal orb fetus—the blackened sphere that was the enemy’s core—sat exposed in the center of its chest, protected by a hardened substance like a budding flower that prevented them from killing it with one blow.
On top of all that, the enemy had the pesky ability of regeneration. The blood vessels all over its body continually burst and re-formed in a speed that surpassed the damage, causing even Loki Familia ’s adventurers to groan. Tiona, Tione, and Finn all judged that it had a potential even greater than the female form they had fought on the eighteenth floor.
They were in a fortress formation with high defensive capabilities to endure enemy attacks while using its curse to consign to oblivion all who faced it. Even as they shuddered at the monster that would have annihilated them in an instant, they didn’t have a means of recovery as they continued to work together and courageously chip away at the enemy’s stamina.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
But there were many casualties. If a single drop of the scattered blood touched someone’s skin, a bloodcurdling shriek broke through the fray. Frontline fighters fell, unable to block the rain of blood with their shields. And even those who evaded the cursed droplets started to hemorrhage blood as they kept breathing in its damned miasma. The curse, the unconditional murderous intent, afflicted everyone standing in the room.
If not for the healing white light pushing back against it, it would not even be a fight. When people collapsed, Amid engaged her recovery magic.
“The man who became the monster’s host…He was the creator of that repulsive curse…!”
Watching the battlefield from the back, Amid was sure of it. The one reduced to a monster was the same hexer who had created the cursed weapons, the originator of that abominable damnation. She realized that the curse’s power was enhanced, as if resonating with Barca Perdix’s Status—with his Enigma ability.
In order to complete Knossos, Barca had needed to develop several abilities. All for the sake of that, he had leveled up three times. Harboring an obsession that no normal person could begin to understand, his body was the ideal host for the fetus of the crystal orb, which feasted on it—or overdosed. In fact, it was compatible enough to trigger this bizarre evolution, giving birth to a monster that specialized in killing with curses, something that should never have been possible.
Amid, who wielded the same Enigma ability herself, recognized what was happening. “A tremendous obsession with this labyrinth…Is that the true nature of your curse?”
One of the reasons that Amid had wanted to take part in this operation was because she had learned of the origin of Knossos, of the descendant of Daedalus Barca Perdix: the source of the curse.
She had wondered if perhaps he had been cursed by his lineage—a victim—and if that unbroken bloodline was the origin of the curse. Now that he had become a monster, his body trapped in the web of black veins seemed to prove it.
“—Then we must break the chains of that curse,” Amid spoke resolutely as she held her staff. “Marta, Bernadette. Take over the recovery in my stead. Please support the battle lines.”
““Y-yes!””
The two healers from Dian Cecht Familia who had been waiting behind her joined in for the first time that day. Not because Dea Saint was no longer able to fully maintain the battlefield herself. But because she devoted herself to breaking the chains of the curse rather than healing.
“Healing droplets, tears of light, eternal sanctuary. Compose a medicinal hymn—three hundred, sixty, and five. The melody of the healer’s almanac saves all things.”
Her clear voice composed a high-speed cast. It was the same spell, but the adventurers recognized that it had more force behind it this time. The Barca Monster seemed to have a premonition and cast a mist of black blood toward Amid.
“Falgar!”
“Haaaaaaaah!”
With the war tiger in the middle, the others blocked it with their shields. With Finn at the front lines and Asfi commanding the middle and back lines, they did not allow any breaks in either their attacks or defense of Amid.
“Come, destruction of evil. The burial of wounds, interment of disease. Curses be gone in the light of vitality.”
The Barca Monster divided the battlefield with its tentacle, smashing into the shields, but Falgar gritted his teeth, determined not to create an empty space in their defense.
“In the name of all that is holy—I heal you.”
Amid responded to their desperate struggle.
“Dia Frater! ” she chanted, unleashing her complete healing magic, the pure white illumination of holy power, toward…the Barca Monster.
“What?!”
“Amid?! What are you thinking trying to heal a monster?!”
Tiona and Tione yelped, vocalizing what everyone on the battlefield was thinking. Upon witnessing the unprecedented act of healing a monster, anyone would have doubted the real motives of this holy woman. In the midst of all that, Finn and Asfi had a different reaction, eyes wide in surprise when they understood exactly what Amid was trying to do.
“ Gh?!”
The Barca Mo
nster started suffering. Bathed in the holy light with the potential to heal all—person or monster—it started writhing with an accelerated fervor, twisting its body in pain. As steam rose from its body, the black color in its veins gradually dissipated . When Tione gazed in wonder with her comrades, her doubts began to melt away.
“She’s dispelling the curse!” Asfi yelled.
“Huh? What? Huh?” Lulune looked back and forth in confusion.
“Dea Saint is dispelling the curse! She isn’t healing the monster’s body! She aimed only at the curse!”
Amid’s Dia Frater was the greatest healing spell, capable of healing wounds, restoring stamina, clearing poison, and dispelling curses. It was an extremely useful capability that could be split into three different effects: recovery, poison eradication, and curse removal. It could heal those sobbing over their wounds and extract poison from those suffering its consequences. At her discretion, she could selectively choose to use only one or two of the possible effects of her spell.
It was mainly an ability to limit using up her Mind unnecessarily, but this time, she poured everything into dispelling the curse—into removing the curse that had accumulated in the Barca Monster.
“A healer rendering a monster powerless, huh? Will wonders never cease…!” Finn murmured with a shudder as the flood of holy light dissipated.
Instead of using it on her allies, she had hit the enemy with her magic to clear the curse. That act had surprised everyone, but none could look away from what ensued.
“Be gone, malevolent curse. As a healer…I cannot allow such a thing to exist,” Amid said, illuminated by her magic light.
The white magic circle expanded beneath the Barca Monster’s feet. While it was to eliminate the curse, the magic power shot up as though a cannon blast assaulting the monster. The torrent of purifying light became a pillar enclosing it.
“Now that you’ve become who you are, I cannot heal you.”
“ Gh?!”
“It would be arrogant to apologize and profane to grieve you. Now that I’ve given up on saving you, I’m nothing more than a hypocrite—but at least allow me to kill that curse.”