The halls of the 5th floor were silent, save for the steady, rhythmic scrape of leather against the ground.
Two figures moved through the gloom with little effort, though they had spent the last forty-nine hours locked in a grueling, unbroken war against the denizens of the deep.
To look at them, one would never guess they had just made their way up from the thirty-seventh floor.
Ais golden hair caught the faint, bioluminescent glow of the dungeon wall-moss, framing a face devoid of fatigue, her eyes carrying that familiar, detached clarity.
A few paces behind her walked Riveria, her breathing as steady as if she were strolling through the manicured gardens of a royal estate.
Their long journey to the surface was nearly at its end.
The fifth floor onwards was notoriously difficult for newbies with stats below 'G' rank.
It was a threshold where novice adventurers took their true first tentative steps into the great unknown.
So it wasn't strange running into him here, but.....
Suddenly, Ais halted.
Her steps ceased so abruptly that Riveria, despite her composure, nearly bumped into her shoulder.
"What's wrong, Ais?" Riveria asked, her voice echoing softly.
Ais didn't answer immediately.
Her chin was tilted down, her gaze fixed a few yards ahead where the corridor opened up slightly.
"A person is on the ground," she replied, her tone flat, yet tinged with a quiet curiosity.
Riveria furrowed her brow, leaning slightly to the side to peer past the younger girl.
Sure enough, sprawled facedown in the dead center of the hallway, lay the solitary figure of an adventurer.
He didn't look like a newbie caught in a bad ambush; rather, he looked like someone who had simply run out of momentum, tripping over his own feet and lacking the will….or the strength…..to push himself back up.
The two women approached cautiously, their boots clicking against the floor.
Riveria knelt beside the fallen boy, her eyes scanning him from head to toe.
There were no shredded garments, no deep gashes leaking crimson, no acidic burns or venomous bites.
"No visible wounds. Healing and poison detox appear to be unnecessary…" Riveria murmured, her diagnosis delivered in a matter-of-fact tone.
She reached out, lightly pressing two fingers against his neck to check his pulse before gently lifting his head to inspect his face.
"Looks like a classic case of Mind Down."
Using magic was not a free action; it was an invisible tax exacted upon the mind.
It required Mind, the magical opposite of physical strength…..to activate and sustain.
And just as muscle fibers tore under the strain of lifting too much weight, mind possessed a hard, unforgiving limit.
Push past the flashing warning signs of the brain, exhaust every last drop, and the system shuts down entirely.
What genuinely amazed the elf was not that the boy could use magic, but that he had somehow managed to ignore every biological alarm bell until he lost consciousness.
While Riveria analyzed the boy's condition, Ais had crouched down beside them.
Resting her hands flat on her knees, the Sword Princess stared intently at a mop of messy, snow-white hair spilling across the dusty floor.
"This boy…" Ais muttered, her brow furrowing slightly as gears turned in her usually placid mind.
"What's that? Do you know him, Ais?" Riveria asked, genuinely surprised.
"Not really. We've never spoken directly…" Ais replied, her golden eyes narrowing slightly. "He's, um, the boy from back then. You know, the Minotaur incident…"
Riveria blinked, the memory rushing back to fill the void.
"Ah… I remember now. He's the kid that stupid mutt insulted."
She had heard fragments of the full tale from Ais, of course.
First, he was the pathetic coward who had fled in blind terror, chased through the upper floors by a rampaging Minotaur.
Later, he was the unfortunate soul who had bolted from the tavern after being publicly humiliated by Bete.
Though Riveria had immediately stepped in to reprimand her own party member and defend the boy's honor, she hadn't actually caught a clear look at his face during the chaos.
Now, looking down at the unconscious white-haired youth, a faint pang of regret tugged at her heart.
She wished she had silenced Bete much sooner.
They had hurt him…..deeply, needlessly.
And worse, Ais had been dragged right into the center of that ugly exchange.
"Riveria," Ais said, her voice cutting cleanly through the elf's internal monologue.
"I want to compensate this boy."
Riveria blinked, her train of thought derailing entirely.
She stared at Ais, letting out a long, long sigh.
"…There are definitely better ways of phrasing that, Ais."
Ais looked up, her golden eyes wide, innocent, and completely uncomprehending.
She blinked twice, her long eyelashes fluttering as she waited for Riveria to explain the linguistic nuance she had apparently missed.
Realizing that trying to teach the Sword Princess the subtleties of social interaction was akin to explaining math to a rock, Riveria gave up with a mental groan.
"Well" the elf reasoned, rubbing her temples.
"Helping someone at a time like this is common courtesy…"
Ais nodded twice in agreement, her blonde hair swishing softly with the movement.
Riveria leaned forward again, studying the boy.
Bell...for she recalled Ais mentioning his name....showed no signs of waking up anytime soon.
His breathing was shallow, his face pale, completely dead to the world.
Shifting her gaze back to Ais, Riveria felt a sudden, familiar headache blooming behind her eyes.
It was astonishing, really.
In all the years Riveria had known her, Ais had never shown this level of proactive, unprompted interest in any male...save for Draco, though that dynamic was entirely its own peculiar beast. Recalling Loki's screeching, theatrical reactions to even the mention of Draco brought a sudden flush of embarrassment to Riveria's cheeks.
If their goddess ever found out about Ais taking an active interest in this random white-haired novice, Riveria shuddered to think of the chaos their goddess would unleash upon them all.
Unknown to her, Loki was already aware about Ais interest in Bell.
'Still...' Riveria thought, glancing down the quiet corridor.
'As long as no one finds out, it should be fine'
"…Ais," Riveria said, straightening her posture.
"Do for this boy exactly what I'm about to tell you. If you're going to compensate him for what happened, that should be more than enough."
"What?" Ais asked eagerly, leaning forward on her heels.
Riveria gave her a hard, knowing look as she leaned down and whispered the instructions.
Ais tilted her head, her expression one of bewilderment.
"…Is it okay just to do that?" she asked, genuinely baffled.
Her mind simply could not compute how a lap pillow...a passive, stationary gesture....could possibly constitute a valid reward or compensation for hardship.
"I'm not certain of the impact," Riveria replied smoothly.
"But you will protect this spot. You don't have to do anything above and beyond what you are doing. Besides, any man in Orario would consider himself blessed just to have you do it."
"I don't… understand," Ais muttered, still deeply skeptical of the elf's wisdom.
'You don't have to understand' Riveria chuckled internally.
The elf looked down at Ais for a brief moment, her expression softening into something remarkably maternal...like a mother watching her fledgling take its first uncertain steps into a vast world.
But just as quickly, she locked the expression away, returning her features to their usual refined, dignified composure.
Riveria turned on her heel.
"I'm returning to the surface. I'll just get in your way if I stay here. The two of you need to be alone to… understand each other."
"Yes, thank you, Riveria," Ais replied obediently.
The elf nodded with an affirmative hum before beginning her walk back toward the exit of the corridor.
She wasn't worried in the slightest about safety.
As far as bodyguards went, the unconscious boy had accidentally secured one of the strongest on the continent.
However, Riveria had barely taken a dozen steps down the corridor when the world ended.
It didn't begin with a sound; it began with a sensation.
A deep, subterranean groan rippled upward through the floor, so violent and jarring that Riveria felt it rattle the marrow in her bones.
Before she could even catch her balance against the wall, a cataclysmic shockwave tore through the dungeon.
Crack.
The sound of shattering rock echoed like thunder.
Light fractures spider webbed across the walls of the fifth floor, and a dense, blinding curtain of gray dust poured down from the ceiling like a rainstorm.
"By the gods… what in the world is going on?!" Riveria yelled over the deafening roar, throwing her arms out to brace herself as the floor violently bucked beneath her boots.
She didn't know the specifics, but she didn't need to.
Her instincts screamed at her that the epicenter of this madness was located somewhere below.
Without a second thought, she pivoted and bolted back toward Ais and the still-unconscious boy. Leaving them behind in a this chaotic nightmare was out of the question.
And as for poor, oblivious Bell?
Due to the sudden, apocalyptic interruption of the earth-shattering tremor, he was about to completely miss out on one of the greatest, most coveted rewards a young adventurer in Orario could ever dream of receiving.
..............................
Almost at the exact moment Riveria, Ais, and Bell were evacuating the upper floors, the Dungeon was thrown into a state of frantic chaos.
It was a panic that spared no one, consuming both the ravenous monsters and the terrified adventurers alike.
The panic was especially palpable in the safe zones above the commotion...the eighteenth, twenty-eighth, and thirty-ninth floors.
These havens, usually filled with the murmur of weary adventurers sharing campfires and alcohol, was soon transformed into a chaotic staging grounds of sheer terror.
Some were rudely shaken from their rest, driven outward by a primal wave of fear as they fled blindly upward, desperately trying to outrun whatever nightmare was currently unfolding down below.
They had no map for this panic, no strategic plan; it was a scramble for survival where it was every man, woman, and familia for themselves.
Yet, the Dungeon was not the only place caught in the grip of madness.
The surface world...more specifically, Orario.....was spinning wildly out of control as well.
It had begun as a night like any other.
Adventurers were streaming back through Babel after grueling runs in the dungeon, immediately flocking to the boisterous taverns to drown their exhaustion in ale.
Night merchants shouted out the prices of their exotic wares under the amber glow of streetlamps, while street food vendors aggressively hawked roasted skewered meats to hungry passersby.
In the darker alleyways, the subtle, pathetic whimpers of rule-breakers and criminals echoed as they were swiftly subdued by Orario's tireless peacekeepers....the synchronized patrol teams of the Ganesha and Bahamut Familia.
It was the steady, predictable heartbeat of the world's greatest city.
Until, without a single moment of warning, that ordinary night was violently ripped apart by the tremor that shook most of the city .
Buildings groaned and creaked ominously from the strain and the cobblestone streets shook underfoot.
Miraculously, thanks to the sturdy architecture and long distance from the source, there was no real damage done and no casualties reported.
Yet, physical safety did little to calm the invisible terror that instantly seized the hearts of the populace.
Civilians screamed and fled into the streets in their nightclothes; merchants dropped trays of fragile goods; and hardened adventurers gripped the hilts of their weapons, staring down at the ground with wide, horrified eyes.
Whatever had just happened beneath their feet, it wasn't a natural tremor.
Panic hung thick in the night air, choking the city's usual festive spirit into terrified silence.
Deep within the guild, Ouranos eyes snapped open....and he immediately called for Fels.
Through his foresight and his unbroken communion with the Dungeon, he possessed a vague understanding of what was going on.
'Sigh, to think all this stemmed from just a simple request...just what exactly is that child doing down there' Ouranos mused, shutting his eyes in prayer, as he awaited his trusty assistant.