"C-Captain! The monsters keep coming! They won't stop!" Raul's voice, a raw scream, tore across the Guild HQ rooftop, barely audible above the city's cacophony.
Finn stood at the building's edge, a silent sentinel, his grim gaze sweeping over Orario's burning expanse.
He saw the undeniable truth in Raul's report – an endless, swirling tide of grotesque forms consuming the streets.
Despair was a luxury he couldn't afford; its shadow would only cripple his allies.
"Situation report!" he barked, his voice cutting through the din.
"Our scouts city-wide have been annihilated! Stronghold garrisons are down to their last defenders! We had the evilus surrounded, but now we're struggling just to hold the line!"
"Grrr…! Fall back and defend the strongholds! Use magical bombardment, even if it causes damage to the city!"
A Loki familia member, his face pale with fear, scrambled to transmit Finn's desperate orders. His fingers trembled, betraying the unspoken terror that everyone felt.
One didn't need to be a seasoned tactician to grasp the horrifying trajectory: things were spiraling from bad to worse with terrifying speed.
"These monsters have the power to turn the tide of war in an instant," Finn grumbled, his voice low.
"Did they truly gather this many enhanced species? No, that's impossible! There's still something you're hiding from us, isn't there, Valletta?!"
Finn was no god; he couldn't read minds or conjure facts.
His decisions relied solely on his subordinates' reports, his sharp observations, and an uncanny instinct for danger.
While vaguely aware of other Dungeon entrances, he had never imagined the evilus possessed a method to safely extract such a vast, dangerous horde, especially before Knossos's existence was publicly known.
Whatever secret had enabled this feat, Valletta had masterfully kept it shrouded.
Finn grimaced, but then, an impossibly loud clash of colliding blades rent the skies above Orario, shaking the very foundations of the city.
"Oh no… It can't be!"
Every soul heard it….adventurers, cultists, and Valletta alike.
"Hee-hee-hee!" Valletta chuckled, her voice a chilling counterpoint to the city's agony.
"Sounds like the other fight is already over!"
Her gaze drifted towards the city's center, towards Babel and the thick, shimmering wall of ice that cradled it.
There, in Central Park, a duel had just reached its brutal conclusion.
The boaz man, Ottar, fell to one knee, his armor ruined, his flesh torn.
"Gaaah…!"
"You lasted longer than I expected," the conqueror, Zald, remarked.
In stark contrast to Ottar's ravaged form, Zald's plate armor remained utterly unscathed.
He casually shouldered his great-sword, peering down at the broken warrior with an air of absolute triumph.
......….........
The searing breath of the dungeon's eighteenth floor devoured all sound save for the ragged gasps of the fallen.
"Grh… Hrh…!"
Twelve souls, reduced to broken dolls, lay scattered across the scorched earth, the air thick with the stench of ozone and scorched rock.
To the north, the cacophony of a duel raged, punctuated by monstrous roars and the shriek of wind, as Ais fought madly against Delphyne.
"…Hey… Any of you still alive…?" Lyra croaked, her voice a brittle whisper against the roaring flames.
It was Neze who answered, one foot seemingly already in the grave, her breath shallow and ragged.
"I am…" she admitted, a tremor in her voice.
"But I don't have a clue why. How are we not dead after that?"
Alfia's magic had struck them head-on, a cataclysmic force that should have utterly obliterated them, far outstripping the meager defence granted by Asfi's accessories.
"It was Riveria's magic…!" Clair gasped, her eyes wide with lingering terror and awe.
"Without it, we would have been annihilated!"
She stared at her palm, where the faint, protective green glow of Riveria's enchantment had completely vanished, consumed.
It had saved the team from destruction, but faded into nothingness in the process.
A shadow detached itself from the inferno's edge, moving with a grace that defied the chaos.
"I see you are all still in one piece," Alfia remarked, her voice a low hum that cut through the surrounding bedlam.
"Has my magic waned that much? …No, it is that high elf who deserves the credit. She has grown strong."
Ryuu scrunched up her face in worry as Alfia drew closer without a sound, her presence as chilling as the air around her.
"However," the witch continued, her gaze sweeping over their broken forms, "that protection will not avail you a second time."
Just as she prepared to finish them off, a colossal roar ripped through the air, shaking the entire floor again.
Alfia calmly glanced in its direction, her interest piqued by the ongoing battle.
What piqued her curiosity most was Ais.
"So their battle continues," she observed, her eyes tracing the swirling winds of the distant clash. "That little girl fares well against a god slayer who calls the dungeon home."
Ais's form, clad in wind, moved like a storm, a hurricane of steel and magic.
"This may only be a prelude, but it is worthwhile nonetheless."
The beast belched fire, burning away the wind's shackles, a primordial force unleashed.
The earth convulsed beneath its feet, and everything it touched turned to ash and dust.
Watching it was like witnessing the end of the world, a prophecy unfolding before their eyes. Everyone trembled.
There was no room for doubt after seeing it; the dark god's prediction – the destruction of Babel and the manifestation of the underworld – was all too real.
Kneeling on the ground, unable to lift a finger, Ryuu peered up at Alfia, her voice raw with desperation.
"Do you feel nothing?" she demanded.
"About what?" Alfia's response was flat, devoid of inflection.
"All this! Do you see it and feel nothing?!"
Fire flickered against the witch's face, illuminating eyes that showed no emotion whatsoever, as if regarding nothing more or less than the ironclad rules of nature at work.
To Ryuu, Alfia's callous disregard was more than she could bear, more than she could comprehend.
"Your allies are slaughtering people! They revel in death and destruction! They summoned that… that thing… to destroy hope! Doesn't that make you feel something?!" Ryuu's voice cracked with anguish.
"The noise irritates me," the witch answered, "but that is all."
Ryuu could scarcely believe the emptiness in her voice.
"Wh-wha…?" she stammered, utterly bewildered.
But Alfia went on, her gaze settling back on the broken team.
"A slayer of gods. The end of justice," she said, as if reciting a well-learned truth.
"There is no doubt this is the incarnation of evil. But if it can erase my disappointment, then so be it."
Alfia looked down at her palm, her observation chillingly detached.
"For my disappointment is the one thing I truly cannot bear."
In the distance, the dragon roared.
The wind bellowed.
But Ryuu didn't hear any of it.
The battle faded to silence.
What Ryuu wanted to hear, more than anything else, was the witch's answer.
"…What… What is your disappointment…?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper filled with a desperate plea.
"What could be so disappointing to make the city's greatest protectors side with evil?!"
At first, Alfia held her silence, her gaze lingering on the distant, apocalyptic scene.
Before long, everyone else – those who could still hear, could still breathe – were waiting, their battered bodies and shattered hopes hanging on her words.
Then, at last, and perhaps on a whim, she spoke.
"Very well," she said, her voice carrying weight.
"Since you have made it this far, I shall tell you."
She peered upward through the cavernous stone roof to the battlefield of her fellow conqueror and the apocalyptic skies that lay above it.
"I will tell you the tale… of our disappointment."
.........
"Nine hundred and forty-nine," said Zald, counting the strikes that had been dealt.
"More than I expected, but not enough."
His weighty voice echoed throughout Central Park.
"Draped in the finest adornments this city can offer, and still you are no match for me." "Grh…!" Ottar growled.
Ottar was beaten black-and-blue.
Cracks ran through every plate of his armor, including the pauldron atop his shoulder.
All his weapons had been destroyed, leaving only a single great-sword.
His armor aside, the man had taken heavy punishment, too.
The conqueror's sword had left deep gashes in his rocklike skin, and even Ottar's ace in the hole….his transformation ability…..had not been able to save him.
He looked up into Zald's eyes.
They were weighty and discouraged.
"Pathetic," said the conqueror.
"Truly pathetic. If you are the greatest defense this city can muster, then there is no other choice."
Strangely, miraculously, as though tuned in to Alfia far beneath the earth, Zald raised his eyes to the sky as well.
To the ash-gray clouds that blocked out hope and smothered the city.
Far off to the north, and what lay beyond.
"Orario needs to be destroyed. There is no avoiding that."
Ottar struggled to his feet, but at those words, he froze.
"What…do you mean? No avoiding it? What are you talking about?!"
"I am saying there is no other way," answered Zald.
"We must tear down the dungeon's gate, release the monsters within, and cull mortal numbers. I had sorely hoped it would not come to this."
.........…
Against a backdrop of restless sparks from a dying fire, Alfia's ashen hair seemed to glow, framing a face etched with a history of battles won and a singular, devastating defeat.
"Our disappointment," Alfia stated, her voice a low, resonant rumble, "is weakness. Powerlessness. A feeling you must all know well."
"Weakness? Powerlessness? Whose weakness?!" Alise shot back, defiance flickering in her eyes.
Alfia's gaze remained firm.
"Orario's," she replied, the word a slow, heavy stone.
"This whole world's. And above all, our own."
For a fleeting moment, a trace of pity softened the witch's features before vanishing.
Lyra groaned, leaning heavily on a fallen rock, barely able to stand.
"What're you talking about?! Explain it like we're a bunch of babies!"
"Explain our weakness?" Alfia's lips twisted in a grim irony.
"Is it not painfully obvious? We slayed the Behemoth. We felled the Leviathan. But against the Black Dragon, we were truly powerless."
Ryuu gasped, a sudden realization dawning on her.
"The Three Great Quests!"
Alfia offered no denial.
Nikolaos and Clair, though silent, subconsciously shivered.
Their own brief, terrifying encounter with that monster flashed through their minds, a chilling echo of a larger devastation.
"We were so mighty that even the gods recognized our strength," Alfia continued, her voice gaining a bitter edge.
"Yet we were nothing compared to that foul beast. It was a massacre… I have never witnessed one like it, before or since."
"Grh…!"
Nikolaos and Clair instinctively growled, a primal surge of remembered terror.
"The Black Dragon tore us to shreds and devoured us. Those of us who lived, recall only the rivers of blood merging into a single crimson sea."
This was the battle that had ended the mighty Zeus and Hera familia.
The very witch who had brushed aside their attacks with a flick of her hand now spoke of her own utter helplessness before that dragon's might.
"In the end," she concluded, her voice sharp with self-loathing, "we fled. Those of us who did not die."
For the first time, Alfia's face contorted with anger...anger at herself, at the 'heroes' who had deserted their task.
Nikolaos and Clair felt a cold dread deeper than the girls of the Astraea familia, realizing how extremely lucky they and their family were.
They were children when they faced it, barely surviving.
If someone like Alfia, with all her ridiculous power, had barely escaped, what hope had they then?
"It was then that I realized something," Alfia pressed on, her eyes burning with an newfound conviction.
"These methods can never succeed."
"…What do you mean?" Alise managed, her voice strained.
But Alfia ignored her, her words igniting with a righteous, indignant fury.
"Adventurers. You cannot handle true despair. Your hope is a lie to yourselves, and to the world. We cannot escape the end! Not while we cling to our gods!"…
.........
"The world needs heroes," Zald declared, his voice now carrying a strange, somber weight.
His gaze, piercing even beneath the shadow of his helm, swept over where Ottar knelt, battered and beaten.
"But how are heroes born, and how do they grow?"
Ottar's brows furrowed, a tremor of unease stirring within him.
"What are you…?" he began, sensing the precipice on which Zald's thoughts teetered.
He'd never heard such existential questions from the man who stood at the pinnacle.
Zald ignored him, his thoughts spiraling further into the abyss of his obsession.
"Is it even possible while the gods still walk this earth?"
The conqueror posed his questions, a gauntlet thrown not at a foe, but at the very fabric of existence.
But it wasn't long before he also offered what he believed to be the answers.
"It was not our intention," he continued, his voice hardening, "but we proved that it is not possible. We proved that our current heroes are doomed to failure."
A muscle twitched in his jaw.
Beneath his helmet, the warrior narrowed his eyes, a glint of dark resolve emerging.
His lips curled in a snarl that bespoke not of victory, but of a deep, consuming rage as he declared the source of his conviction.
"No hero of the 'Age of gods' can slay that beast! Thus, we are left with only one choice!" Zald's fist clenched, knuckles white.
"We must go back! Back to the Age of Heroes spoken of in myth and legend!"
Ottar's eyes widened in dawning horror, his frame stiffening.
"You…you can't mean…!"
"Yes!" Zald roared, his voice now a desperate crescendo.
"We must reverse the wheel of time! Return to an age when true legends walked the earth!"
His own words seemed to elevate him, lifting him past the crushing weight of his grief, towards a cruel and barbaric solution.
He envisioned a world forged in fire.
"When monsters roamed free and fear ruled the hearts of mortals! When we stood on the brink and still chose to fight!"
The age Zald spoke of was from at least a thousand years ago, before Orario, before adventurers, before even the gods descended to wander the mortal realm.
It was a brutal epoch when all races lived in darkness, and natural selection carved the weak from the strong.
"They chose to be the predator! They refused to be the prey! They tore through despair and went beyond what others deemed possible!"
Several brave men and women had risen from that primordial chaos to change all that, feats still spoken of in hushed, reverent tones today.
"They were fierce! They were brave! They earned their place in history! And no one alive today can claim to be their equal!"
He listed their impossible achievements: exterminating the bull-men invasion; guarding the continent with a spear and a hunting hound; uniting the beast-kin tribes; the revival of Orland; and the most famed hero, a man who plucked out one of the great dragons' eyes.
These were all feats that people of today could never dream to match, considered the crowning achievements of mortal beings everywhere.
And so, after Zald and Alfia had confirmed what they believed to be the hard limits of the Age of gods, their shared despair had birthed a monstrous solution.
When Ottar finally grasped the horrifying implications, his voice trembled, laced with incredulity and outrage.
"You wish to take us back to ancient times?!" he demanded, his own fury igniting.
"And to do that, you would release monsters from the Dungeon? Destroy the peace our heroes strove to uphold?!"
"I would," Zald said without hesitation, his voice flat, resolute.
"The world has grown soft. Only in chaos can a true hero be born. It is the only way!" he roared, as if the fires of his own failures were burning him up inside, consuming him.
"This is the only path forward! If we do not change course, the apocalypse will come for us all!" This was Zald's wail of despair, the very madness that had driven these old heroes to the dark side.
His final words echoed, chillingly clear.
"We must pay the price of millions to produce the one! The one hero capable of overcoming the Black Dragon!"…
.........
"A thousand years," said Alfia as she let her thoughts drift to the past.
"A thousand years since the gods came to the mortal world and gave mortals their blessings. A thousand years to devise a course of action against the ancient beast, and what do we have to show for it?"
Her words were a confession, hollow guilt wrapped in a cloak of silence.
And the team bore witness.
"Everything our familias wrought… Everything our gods wrought… It was all for nothing!" Ryuu, Alise, and the others had no words.
They had never seen the witch show such emotion before.
"Never had there been a man of such majesty as him! Never had there been a woman so fearsome and noble as her! Yet I watched their blood spill! Their limbs fly! I listened to their death cries! All of it, gone in an instant, leaving me with nothing but despair at this world and everyone in it! Even ourselves!"
By this point, there was no stopping her.
The words spilled forth uncontrollably, fiery with hate, and Alfia spat them at the ground as though she could burn away all the sins of her past.
After a while, she regained her composure and lifted her gaze.
"But all is not lost," she said, calm again.
"A heroic tale can still be written."
Mired in despair, the witch spoke of the same idea her fellow conqueror had described.
"In ancient times, there were no Falna. Though the spirits greatly aided them, mortals repelled the monster threat with their own developed skills. Is that hard to believe?"
It was the truth.
The people of old laid the foundation for the modern day, including the city of Orario itself. "Starting with the first hero, a line of great men and women performed impossible feats…culminating in the robbing of the Black Dragon's eye and the removal of monsters from the surface world."
Their tales were still told today, an unbroken tapestry of heroes stretching all the way back to antiquity.
They had even managed to drive off the very beast responsible for Zeus and Hera's downfall. "Those heroes did what we could not. That alone speaks volumes."
When Alfia finished her tale, the team just stared at her in shock.
None of them could find it in themselves to say a word.
The roar of flames continued in the distance, and in the end, it was Clair who spoke up.
"Then what you're saying…" she said through trembling lips.
"Your despair… Your goal… It's…!"
"No hero born of the gods will ever suffice," Alfia answered.
"We must cast them off and raise a true warrior. We must return to the Age of Heroes."
"Wh-what…?!" stammered Neze.
"Then the reason you're trying to destroy Orario…"
"It is to save the world."
This was the reason Alfia had returned.
This was why she conspired with evil to bring death and destruction.
This was why she and Zald joined Erebus, obeyed his commands, and sullied their own hands. They had made up their minds.
They had decided that the fate of the world outweighed everything else.
For the mortal realm to truly thrive…Orario needed to fall.
None of the team members could find the right words.
In the end, it was Lyra who spoke.
"So you guys are after peace as well! Why not team up? We both want the same thing, don't w….?!"
"Lyraaaaaa!" Nikolaos yelled in rage, startling everyone.
What Lyra was suggesting was not only an insult to the efforts of all those who were fighting and the innocents who died at the hands of Alfia or due to her actions, but also to Alfia and her conviction.
Which of these victims would ever accept such a person as an ally? Apparently, Lyra had failed to realize this when she spoke.
"Sorry," Lyra immediately apologized as her mind quickly put together the reason for his anger. The others too quickly realized, nodding in agreement with Nikolaos justified rage.
"Hahaha, seems like the beast-boy is the most rational amongst you all," Alfia remarked with a light chuckle.
"You all have not seen what we have seen, nor felt the despair that we have felt. The threat of that beast is far greater than any of you can possibly imagine."
Fear of the Black Dragon dominated her mind.
"Our views are hopelessly incompatible," she concluded.
"For Zald and me, there is no other way."
Ryuu began to argue back, but then it happened.
The wind howled, and the air shook.
"Wh-what was that?!" cried Neze.
"Look over there!" yelled Iska, pointing to the center of the floor.
There, some mysterious force caused the winds to swirl at an incredible pace.
"A tornado?! Here in the Dungeon?!" cried Lyra, her voice barely audible over the noise.
"What monster's doing that?!"
The whirling winds stretched all the way to the cavern roof, taller still than Delphyne itself.
The whole team turned and stared.
They had never seen anything like it in their lives.
"I…it's not…" said Alise at last.
"That's no monster!".....