Any adventurer could tell how different the air in the dungeon was from that of the surface.
A tangible chill, a subtle perfume of damp earth and stale magic that clung to the lungs, a perpetual twilight that mocked the sun and moon.
It was an invisible line, firmly drawn, dividing the living world from the cold, hungry depths. But today, that difference was a gaping chasm, an assault on every sense.
A guttural roar ripped through the first floor, quickly swallowed by a cacophony of panicked squeals and frantic scuttling.
"Roaaaaaaaaaghhh!"
Shouts echoed, distorted and amplified by the stone corridors.
The usual eerie quiet of the dungeon's upper levels had shattered into pure pandemonium.
"The monsters look very agitated!" Clair exclaimed, her spear held ready, eyes darting through the swirling shadows.
Vasileios, his grip on his shield tightening until his knuckles blanched, replied, "I think something's frightening them!"
"No shit!" Lyra interjected, a cynical grin twisting her lips.
"The ground's shaking beneath their feet, and it sounds like bombs are going off or something! There might as well be a damn fireworks display!"
Around them, goblins, kobolds, and other low-level dungeon dwellers had completely lost their predatory senses, stampeding in a terrified, mindless surge, as if the very world was collapsing around them.
"The quakes down here are way stronger than I expected!" Neze shouted, clutching her sensitive beast ears, wincing at the grinding roar that resonated through the earth.
"I didn't really want to believe that there are monsters capable of breaking through floors, but I do now!"
The assault team felt like a giant had picked them up, rattling them like a pair of dice.
There could no longer be any doubt about the immediate, escalating danger.
"Groooooooooagh!!"
"Horde of monsters, spotted dead ahead!" Dimitra reported, her bow strung, a regular arrow nocked.
"Size is… I don't know, but it's a lot!"
"They're in a panic!" Celty, the elven mage, added, her voice sharp with concern.
"They're attacking anything that comes close!"
"What do we do, Riveria-san?" Dimitra asked, turning to the party leader, her eyes seeking direction in the chaos.
Riveria heard, and her orders cut through the din immediately.
"Just leave it to the first forward team, conserve your strength!" she yelled, her voice carrying an unshakeable command.
"Our target is the big ones!"
With Riveria's directive, Alise pulled her weapon from its sheath, the narrow blade flashing.
One clean slash, three monsters fell, their frantic roars cut short.
"Gyaaagh?!"
"Don't slow down! Don't let anything stop us! Go, go, go!!" Riveria urged.
"Got it!"
The party members answered their leader's command with practiced swiftness, a well-oiled machine against the tide.
The mad rush of monsters ran face-first into Noin and Vasileios's sturdy shields, their charges absorbed and redirected.
The overflow met Kaguya and Ryuu's swords, Lyra's boomerangs, and Clair's spear, dispatched with efficient blows.
The others lightly assisted, conserving their strength for the real battle to come.
Following behind the current attackers, a golden blur wove through her allies.
"Leave them to me," a quiet voice declared.
Ais, the strike team's smallest member, moved with a grace that seemed to defy the chaos.
Her golden hair left a glittering trail as she deftly navigated the scrum, then raised Desperate, her enchanted Durandal superior-class sword.
"Die."
The word was a whisper of finality.
As if parting oceans, a single slash cut through the horde, reducing the monsters to ash.
The little monster hunter seemed unstoppable.
She spun like a top, delivering another devastating swing, before leaping into a dance of death that dissolved the wall of foes like butter.
Her opponents were the runts of the dungeon, but that didn't make her speed or precision any less impressive.
Nikolaos jogged slowly behind, clapping in astonishment.
"She is quite impressive… I can see why she had the balls to attack Draco-nii then!"
"That girl isn't any taller than me, but look at her go!" Lyra muttered, her bad habit of envy kicking in.
"And she's going to keep growing! You call that fair?!"
"Keep your envy to yourself, pallum," Kaguya interjected, her tone firm.
"It's distracting me."
But even Kaguya, a fellow sword maiden, was forced to acknowledge the young girl's strength.
"All power, no technique, yet still, it's a miracle a child so young can fight like this. Now it makes sense why they call her the Sword Princess."
"Hmmf, some sword princess. My sister, Eleni, can do way better if given the same weapon," Nikolaos muttered under his breath, though in the din, no one heard.
Just then, a second figure appeared beside Ais, her own blades a blur.
"Hai-yaaa!" Ryuu casually greeted, her twin swords carving arcs of death through the fleeing monsters.
Ais grunted, a startled sound, "Guhhh?!"
Ryuu was quickly growing accustomed to wielding two swords, and she was making short work of the remaining low-level threats.
The skirmish continued for a short while, then, as the two girls ran side by side, Ryuu realized that Ais had been staring at her for some time.
"…Is something the matter, Sword Princess?" Ryuu asked with an awkward smile, sensing a familiar tension building.
"…Have we met?" Ais replied, her gaze unnervingly direct.
Ryuu's long ears twitched, a tell-tale sign of her internal panic.
'Yes, we have! It was dark, and I was wearing a mask, so maybe you don't remember, but we were basically trying to kill each other!' Ryuu screamed internally, while outwardly attempting to ensure none of her awkward inner thoughts showed on her face.
All she could think about were the events of a few days prior.
A few tactless comments from Ais during Ryuu's vulnerable moment, along with a misguided interpretation of the situation, had led them to a life-or-death struggle.
A fact that, if revealed now, would be so utterly disgraceful, Ryuu feared that none of her fellow familia members and friends from the other familias present would ever want to speak to her again.
'There's no two ways about it....I gave in to my despair and attacked a little girl! I can't let them find out about this, and definitely not Lady Riveria!' Ryuu decided, her resolve hardening. Ryuu was a person sensitive to perceived appearance and dignity.
If her friends discovered this transgression, their teasing was the least of her worries.
As for Riveria, the respect Ryuu's kind felt for high elves bordered on divine worship.
It was unthinkable to allow her embarrassing secret to come to light.
Luckily, Ais didn't seem to have worked it out yet.
The mask had done its job, so that was some relief.
However, in her frantic thoughts, she had failed to spit out a coherent response.
"Your eyes… and your voice. They seem… familiar somehow…" Ais probed, her brow slightly furrowed in thought, her intense gaze not leaving Ryuu's face.
"Th-th-that's because…we got into a fight over the last pastry from a baker one time!" Ryuu spat out, a big, fat, ridiculous lie that raised more questions than it answered, but was the only thing her panicked mind could conjure.
Ais scrutinized the elf girl closely, while a bead of sweat slowly worked its way down Ryuu's temple.
"…Yes. That must be it," the young girl said at last, her expression clearing as if a missing piece of a puzzle had clicked into place.
Completely fooled, Ais moved on, her focus already shifting in search of her next target.
Ais had indeed gotten into fights over pastries in the past, so Ryuu's desperate reply, though absurd, wasn't entirely unreasonable for her.
Ryuu didn't know whether to be relieved or deeply concerned by Ais's unquestioning acceptance.
"…I'm lucky she's an airhead…" she muttered, sighing in relief, though it was probably more accurate to say Ais was simply too singularly focused to dwell on such minor details in the face of a crisis.
However, there wasn't much time to revel in her narrowly averted crisis before she heard Kaguya shouting directly at her.
"What are you doing, standing still like an idiot?! The monsters are going to be on top of us any minute!"
"S-sorry!!" Ryuu yelped, and she ran off to rejoin her allies, her twin blades once again a furious blur, leaving the pastry war behind her.
The ground still thrummed, a constant reminder of the true quarry.
The small monstrosities they dispatched were merely the agitated froth on a far deeper, more dangerous current.
............….
Creatures of the deep began to spill from the lower levels, a tide of darkness surging upward. War shadows coalesced from nothing, giant killer ants scuttled over the stone, and guttural orc war cries echoed through the tunnels—abominations that belonged to far greater depths.
Clair's spear flashed, bisecting a war shadow before she called out to her companions over the din.
"This is madness! Where are we supposed to fight titans the size of a Goliath?"
The tiger-girl's brow furrowed as another tremor shook the dungeon, raining dust from the ceiling.
"Not in these blasted tunnels, that's for certain," Gareth, the veteran dwarf, grunted, parrying an ant's mandible with his axe.
"We need open ground, a proper battlefield for a scrap like this."
"A wide-open space with minimal interference," Riveria added, her voice a calm counterpoint to the chaos.
"There is only one place that fits the criteria."
Kaguya's eyes widened in understanding.
"You don't mean…?"
"The eighteenth floor," Riveria confirmed.
"The Under Resort."
"Two behemoths in the Under Resort!" Alise cried, a mix of terror and thrill in her voice.
Floor eighteen was a sanctuary, a safe haven where monsters never spawned.
While creatures could be lured up from the nineteenth or down from the seventeenth, no one had ever attempted to stage a battle of this magnitude on its pristine grounds.
Running alongside them, the pallum Lyra let out a short, knowing chuckle.
"I'll bet you this was Finn's strategy all along. A man like him would have had this calculated the moment he heard they were coming."
"You think he planned this?" Ryuu asked, astonished.
"Of course," Lyra said with unshakeable confidence.
"Why else would he hold us at the surface for so long? He was timing our descent, calculating the exact moment to send us down so we'd meet them on the eighteenth."
"A fine theory," Gareth interjected, his tone grim.
"But the gods of war aren't smiling on us today. The plan changed."
"What do you mean?" Lyra's confidence wavered.
"The beasts didn't move as we predicted," Gareth explained, his voice low and urgent.
"Their ascent were erratic. Maintaining a staggered formation, a two-floor gap between them, and their pace, constantly shifting. One had suddenly sped up from the nineteenth floor and arrived at the sixteenth floor too early, clawing its way to the fifteenth now. The other, a bit slow on the eighteenth, about to breach the seventeenth."
"So what now?" Lyra pressed.
"Do we fight them where we find them?"
"That was the contingency," Gareth said, "but we have an ace in the hole. We have Vasileios."
"I know he's skilled, but what can one boy do against this chaos?"
It was Dimitra who answered, her voice sharp and clear.
"He possesses a unique skill—a taunt that draws the aggression of targets in his range. The new plan is to use Vasileios as bait. We'll lure the first behemoth back down the hole it's digging, pulling it to either the seventeenth or eighteenth floor. Both have the space we need."
"Is that even possible?" Alise asked, her voice trembling slightly.
Riveria silenced all further doubt with a look of sheer resolve.
"It has to be," she declared, her words ringing with finality.
"Orario is depending on us."
...............
Meanwhile, back on the surface, a chilling cry ripped through the ash-gray clouds, signaling the minions of evil's dark advance.
"Ooooooouaghhhhh!!"
"The enemy is descending from the walls! East, West, South… they're coming from every direction!" atop the Guild HQ, in the northwestern district, Raul's frantic report echoed.
The armies of the evilus converged from all sides, caging the city with no apparent escape.
Yet, Finn remained unperturbed by Raul's panic.
He calmly issued his commands.
"Mages! Magic swordfighters! Prepare to attack at will! Let them come into range, but don't give them a chance to set off any explosives!"
His orders, carried by swift messengers and pulsating magic-stone beacons, cut through the escalating din.
"Ooooooaughhhh!!"
Right on cue, a thunderous barrage commenced.
Fire, ice, lightning, arcane missiles of every element streaked into the encroaching ranks, detonating in earthshaking explosions that illuminated the grim battlefield.
The war against evil had truly begun.
"Besieged on all sides…?! I didn't know the evilus still had so many troops!" Royman, watching the opening hostilities from the Guild rooftop, quailed, overwhelmed by their foes' absolute positional superiority.
"They must be sending everyone they have!" he cried.
Finn, however, narrowed his eyes.
"Correction," he stated, his voice a calm counterpoint to the chaos.
"Not quite everyone."
...............…
"Oh, it's begun!" Valletta cackled, her voice a cruel symphony to the unfolding devastation.
"It has really started now!"
From her perch atop the walls, she gazed down at the city, already a maelstrom of chaos.
"But you know," she added with a wide grin, "where's the fun if we don't add a little twist?"
She peered across the war zone, towards the distant Guild HQ rooftop, where she knew Finn must be watching.
Then, in a voice that carried across the ravaged expanse, she declared, "I'm the kind of gal who likes a big, flashy opening! Feast your eyes on this!!"
The evilus lieutenant snapped her fingers.
The sharp sound hung in the air for a pregnant moment.
Then… an explosion.
"Wh-what?! What was that noise?!" Royman shrieked as a tremor violently knocked him from his feet.
It was a quake unlike anything the dungeon had unleashed thus far.
Scanning the horizon, Raul's eyes finally locked onto towering columns of smoke.
"I-it's an explosion!" he yelled, his voice strained.
"They've destroyed the city gates!"
"What?! Which gates?!" Finn pressed, his composure wavering slightly.
Raul's face went ghastly pale as he stammered, "A-all of them…"
"…What?"
When Raul finally overcame his shock enough to elaborate, he bellowed his report, his voice raw with terror.
"All the city gates have been destroyed! And that's not all! Monsters are entering the city from outside!!"
Deafening screams now mingled with guttural roars and rumbling howls.
There were eight gates equally spaced around Orario's circumference.
And now, from every cardinal direction, unholy legions of monsters began flooding into the city.