An enormous tremor rattled every bone in the bodies of the dungeon strike team.
It felt as if they were standing over a dragon's open jaw, readying to jump in.
The brow of every member was slick with sweat.
Dimitra's fingers tightened around her bow.
"It's getting closer!" she announced, her furry ears twitching in alert.
They were currently on the seventeenth floor, the ground beneath their feet vibrating with increasing intensity, the rumbles from both above and below growing stronger by the second. Ryuu, her movements a blur of controlled fury, sliced a minotaur in two, carving a path for her allies.
She desperately tried to channel her mounting tension into strength rather than fear.
"We're almost at the eighteenth floor," noted Ais, her sword a streak as she cleared a horde of monstrous figures.
"And these rumbles are no joke!" added Clair, thrusting her spear with powerful precision.
"No doubt the behemoths will meet us there as planned!"
The strike team had maintained an exceptional pace, swiftly approaching the deepest part of the seventeenth floor....the Great Wall of Sorrows.
Gareth and Vasileios had taken a detour on the sixteenth floor, tasked with luring the first behemoth back down to the eighteenth.
The main team, meanwhile, had pressed ahead, their objective to stall the second behemoth, which was either already on the eighteenth floor or ascending towards it.
Dimitra had guided them through some shortcuts Draco had revealed in past dungeon runs, allowing them to bypass troublesome floors and save invaluable time.
"I suppose that means we needn't worry about being late to the party," Kaguya remarked, narrowing her eyes and licking her lips in a predatory anticipation.
The fact that the second behemoth hadn't reached the seventeenth floor meant it was stuck on either the eighteenth or nineteenth floor, an advantageous position for the strike team.
"Yeah, in fact, the timing's so perfect it's scary!" cried Lyra, her voice betraying a hint of unease.
This section of the dungeon was typically the domain of the Goliath, a Monster Rex, yet it was startlingly empty.
It was as though all the powerful monsters had gone into hiding.
"We'll take up our positions before the behemoths arrive," Riveria commanded, her voice cutting through the tremors.
"As soon as we reach floor eighteen, take the high ground. We'll start the battle with a barrage of spells, and Dimitra's enchanted arrows."
"Got it!" came Dimitra's spirited reply.
"Leave it to us!" Clair said, sprinting off ahead, the other Bahamut familia members, along with the Astraea familia, close behind.
But just then, Nikolaos spotted something strange, his fur tingling with an inexplicable unease.
A solitary scarlet ember danced erratically in the air.
'…Sparks? Where are they coming from…?' he wondered.
His confusion went unnoticed amidst the team's focused advance.
"I see the hole leading down to floor eighteen right ahead! I'm going in!" Clair announced, her voice ringing with determination.
She leaped through an enormous hole, rent into the floor by the passage of the first behemoth.
Instantly, she was enveloped by a blistering heat.
Her ears were deafened by a thundering roar.
And hellfire, an inferno of impossible proportions, stretched as far as the eye could see.
"Wha….?!" Clair was at a complete loss for words.
Kaguya, Lyra, Alise, Dimitra, and Ais, arriving at the precipice, couldn't speak either.
Riveria paused, her eyes wide with shock.
"…What…happened…?" they all muttered, stupefied, as the familiar Dungeon paradise had spontaneously combusted, now resembling nothing less than a gateway to hell.
.........
The air in the Under Resort's was a searing inferno.
Crystals, once glittering keystones of this subterranean paradise, now wept molten tears.
The vibrant forests were skeletal husks, reduced to ash by an unseen, malevolent force.
The very ground buckled and burned, and previously pristine lakes hissed and bubbled, belching clouds of blistering steam.
It was an apocalypse painted in hues of scarlet and crimson, a stark contrast to the familiar sanctuary the adventurers knew.
Dimitra, her voice raspy with disbelief, surveyed the hellish landscape.
"Is this… the eighteenth floor?" she muttered, the strike team standing dumbfounded beside her. "The paradise we all know and love, reduced to… this?"
Alise felt a pang of remembrance.
Just a few weeks prior, she and her friends had sworn a solemn vow: to be buried in this very place when their adventuring days were done.
Now, that promise felt like a cruel jest.
The vibrant sanctuary was gone, replaced by this fiery ruin.
Ais, her brow slick with sweat, voiced the discomfort everyone felt.
"It's so hot… It's hard to breathe…"
"This is like hell itself," Kaguya declared, her usual bravado tinged with a chilling awe.
Riveria's face was a mask of horror.
"It… it can't be," she breathed, her voice trembling.
"But this is just like…"
She paused, a terrible realization dawning.
"It's the same as the Dragon's Urn on the deep levels!"
The very rock of the walls and floors emanated a terrifying heat, like freshly cooled magma. "What's the Dragon's Urn, Lady Riveria?" Alise asked, her curiosity piqued amidst the unfolding chaos.
Before Riveria could answer, the ground beneath Alise's feet ripped open, unleashing a geyser of pure fire.
"Whoa?! What's happening?!" Nikolaos yelped.
"The ground just exploded!" Neze cried out beside him, scrambling back.
The earth convulsed again, then a third time, each tremor accompanied by a violent eruption of flame.
Clair, her eyes sharp even in the inferno, shouted an alert.
"A large group of monsters got engulfed by the flames… and they're coming this way!"
Though floor eighteen was designated a safe zone, immune to monster spawns, it wasn't uncommon for creatures from adjacent levels to seek refuge.
Now, however, the very floor itself was spewing forth a horrifying new threat.
Clad in crackling, fiery armor, bugbears and mad beetles advanced with unnatural speed toward the stunned adventurers.
"I've never seen anything like it!" Kaguya exclaimed, drawing her katana with a fiery glint in her eyes.
"We have to fight them!"
She lunged, a whirlwind of defiance against the encroaching horde.
Lyra, dodging a blast of fire that erupted from the ground, warned, "The monsters are a pain in the butt, but… those pillars of fire are a real danger, too!"
"What incredible heat… A single hit from one of those and we'll be incinerated!" Dimitra added, mirroring Lyra's agility as they both weaved through the melee, fighting burning monsters while expertly evading the fiery columns that shot up from their feet.
The sheer intensity of the heat seared their skin, a constant, searing reminder of what to expect from the behemoths.
During a brief lull in the combat, Kaguya cried out, "Why is fire coming out of the ground? What's going on?"
"It's coming from the floor below," Riveria replied, her voice grim.
"Wha….?!"
"It's the second monster we're looking for," Riveria concluded, her gaze fixed on the inferno.
"It must be. It's blasting its way up through the floor as we speak."
"By spitting fireballs?! That's insane!" Neze sputtered, echoing the disbelief of everyone present.
If the second behemoth was this crazy, what about the first?
What means did it use to crawl up?
They all wondered.
Compared to Riveria, they were all relative novices.
They watched, utterly shocked, as Riveria continued her explanation.
"The Dragon's Urn is in the deep levels, a place that only the Zeus and Hera familia's have ever reached," Riveria explained.
"We only have Guild reports to go on, but we have heard tales of attacks that cross floor boundaries. From floor fifty-two onward, the dungeon becomes hell. I wouldn't be surprised if our quarry is using the same tactic it would down there."
"So this is what it's like down on floor fifty-two?!" Nikolaos exclaimed, his voice laced with incredulity.
"You've got to be kidding me! That's crazy!"
The Dungeon, they were beginning to understand, was an abyss that defied all logic, its depths a terrifying interlude to their own limited understanding.
Alise, however, surveyed the fiery landscape with an odd, almost cheerful smile.
"So this monster's are as powerful as the ones you find past floor fifty, huh? Yeah, that's scary! My alias is Scarlett Harnell, but that might not be enough to save me here!"
She thumped her chest with a defiant grin.
Ryuu, exasperated, shouted, "Why do you sound so proud when you say that?!"
The rest of the team stared, a mixture of disbelief and amusement on their faces.
Ais tilted her head in confusion, while Ryuu shook her head, wondering if Alise's peculiar brand of foolishness was a welcome distraction or a sign of impending doom.
"Never mind, just form up as Lady Riveria indicated!" Ryuu sighed.
"That's right," Riveria agreed, regaining her composure.
"The second monster hasn't broken through yet, and it might take Vasileios and Gareth a while to lure the first one here. We still have time to…"
Her words were cut short by a new voice, clear and cold, slicing through the roaring flames.
"Do not interrupt."
An unnatural silence fell, as if the very air had been sucked from the chamber.
The strike team froze, their voices seemingly stolen.
From a cloud of swirling sparks emerged a woman clad in a jet-black dress.
Despite the inferno around her, the air near her seemed to grow cold, desolate.
"We bear witness to the final moments of the Age of gods," she declared, her words flowing like a somber poem.
Her ashen hair, unbound, fluttered around her shoulders.
"In death, as it was in life. Obtrusive, violent, and cruel."
Her voice, like the tinkling of a distant bell, carried an unsettling calm.
"Do not resist. There is no need to add your voices to the world's death knell. You can simply remain forever silent."
Her pronouncement sounded like a prayer, but it was an omen of the end times, a prophecy of destruction laid bare before the astonished adventurers.
Kaguya was the first to recover, her voice ringing out.
"Alfia… Silence!"
"I-it can't be," stammered Lyra, the memory of her recent near-fatal encounter with Alfia resurfacing with a vengeance.
"H-how did you get here?! It's not just Babel's sentries… you would've had to sneak right through our main base! How did you manage that?!"
Alfia remained impassive, her gaze unreadable.
"I see no reason to answer that."
Her neck then turned, ever so slightly, placing Riveria squarely in her line of sight.
"I see you are not surprised, follower of the Trickster."
"Finn warned about the possibility," Riveria replied, her voice steady.
"He said there might appear a foe even more deadly than the Behemoths."
"I see. In any case, it matters not. Demise is imminent."
Alfia's interest seemed to wane as quickly as it had appeared.
What followed was a chilling warning of death.
"Promise to neither cry nor act. Remain silent, and I shall leave you in peace. You shall be exempt from despair and destruction. Free from resentment and loss."
The woman was terrifyingly serious.
Her words struck the strike team to their core.
Only Ryuu, Kaguya, and Lyra had encountered her before; the rest of the adventurers were witnessing the sheer power of the Level 7 witch for the first time.
It was as if a messenger of hell itself had arrived to announce their inevitable downfall.
She held the power to carve out the silence she so desired, a power undeniable.
Any adventurer in Orario ten years ago would have recognized her as the Grand Silent Witch, and any god in heaven would have acknowledged her as one of the world's final bosses.
Lofty, supreme, and rarely interrupted in her chosen silence.
Alfia spoke as if tracing the score to her requiem.
"Promise me to wait out the tower's fall and the end of an era without word or deed. If so, then…"
Her unspoken promise hung in the heat-choked air, a chilling conditional mercy offered by a harbinger of ruin.
.........
The oppressive weight of Orario's imminent destruction hung heavy, a silence so chilling it seemed to absorb the very crackle of distant flames.
Then, a sharp, irreverent voice cleaved through it all.
"Nope, sorry!!"
The young redhead, Alise, shattered the solemn decree with a dismissive wave.
"I don't get all this 'bringing an end to the Age of Gods' stuff, but if you think I'm going to stand around while Orario crumbles, then you've got another think coming!"
Alfia's lips parted in a delicate arc of surprise.
Across from them, the jaws of Alise's own bewildered allies collectively dropped.
Unfazed, Alise continued her tirade, eyes blazing with righteous indignation.
"You just told us you're trying to destroy the city! You really think we're just going to go, 'Oh, okay then,' and not do anything just because you asked?!"
She puffed out her chest, a smug smile stretching across her face, eyes defiantly closed.
"Well, I'm sorry, but our justice doesn't care what you think! What do you think of that, eh? Too hot for you to handle? Well, that's too bad!"
The only sound in the aftermath was the roaring inferno around them.
Kaguya was the first to break, a low chuckle escaping her lips.
"Heh. Ha-ha-ha!"
Lyra, her head shaking in mock exasperation, added, "Talk about disrespectful. Sheesh…" But a warm smile bloomed on her face.
"…But I guess that's what we all love about you. Never change, Captain."
A ripple of agreement spread through their ranks.
Alise's outburst, abrasive as it was, had injected a much-needed shot of courage.
The suffocating grip of silence eased, and the palpable tension visibly lessened.
They had been trapped between the twin terrors of the impending behemoths from above and below, and this woman, a living final boss, standing before them.
"Hah-hah-hah!" Riveria's hearty laughter joined the fray.
"I see not even Silence can put the fear of the gods in you! Hold on to that courage… you'll need it against her!"
A glint entered her eyes.
"If Alfia hates noise so much, then perhaps we should be making more of it."
"Yes. Let's take her down," Ais affirmed, her grip tightening on her sword hilt.
"Everyone else is working hard. We won't lose like last time."
In the enthusiastic young girl, they all saw something deep.
It wasn't quite hope, but a raw, unflinching defiance that inspired them nonetheless.
One by one, they leveled their weapons at the impassive witch.
"Hmm."
For a fleeting moment, as burning embers danced around her, Alfia's face, momentarily obscured, softened into a faint smile.
Then, just as swiftly, all trace of amusement vanished.
"The rallying hymn of foolishness mistaken for courage," she stated, her voice devoid of warmth.
"Orario has not changed."
The air around her suddenly gained an unbearable density.
"Very well. If you will not watch this world's demise in silence, then perish alongside it. Let the cries of life and war return equally to nothing. That is the mercy I offer you."
Unbelievable waves of magical energy began to radiate from her, a palpable pressure that threatened to buckle their knees.
"Get ready!" Riveria warned.
She immediately began chanting, swiftly forming a magic circle.
Alise, raising her sword, Crimson Order, bellowed, "Let's go, team! There's a world that needs saving, so we've got a job to do!"
"Yes!" came a synchronized reply, as they launched themselves as one against the ashen-haired witch.