Ten minutes before the catastrophic wave shook the very foundations of Orario, time seemed to slow to a crawl within the boss room on the forty-ninth floor.
The room was unnervingly heavy.
The air hung stale, almost too suffocating to draw deep into the lungs.
In the center of this arena, Draco and Alfia stood locked in a tense, unblinking standoff, their eyes measuring each other.
Though Alfia possessed absolute confidence in her strength, looking at the opponent before her forced a rare, involuntary flicker of caution to spark within her chest.
It was only a mild wariness, nothing close to fear....fear was a sensation long since dulled by her bizarre life experiences....but it was enough to make her tread carefully.
She remembered well the past encounters where Draco had displayed power that defied common sense, pulling tricks from his sleeves that were well worth guarding against.
Yet, her hesitation was born more from irritation.
The situation was just that troublesome.
Alfia's objective, dictated by the corrupted spirit currently weaving through the corners of her psyche, was to capture Draco alive.
But as she took in his current physical state, she knew instantly it would be no simple endeavor.
Draco was vastly more powerful than she had anticipated, a terrifying transformation having turned his once-black scales into a dense, earthy brown.
Furthermore, the magic radiating from his core carried an enticing, rich flavor.....the kind that tickled her instincts as a creature, screaming at her to devour him.
If not for the unyielding fortress of her mental fortitude, she would have long since devolved into a mindless beast.
She could feel that mindless fate tugging at her periphery, mirroring the pathetic, half-dead female body type crawling weakly across the floor toward Draco in the corner of the room.
'What to do' Alfia pondered inwardly, her brow twitching in subtle frustration.
She desired a short, decisive battle.
She knew, with acute self-awareness, that Draco was bracing for a long, drawn-out war of attrition.
Unfortunately, this clash of intentions could not be avoided.
Contrary to Draco's internal speculations about her situation.....while her transformation into a creature had completely cured her notoriously fatal congenital illness, her original skills had stubbornly remained intact.
Why was this a curse disguised as a blessing?
Most of her inherited traits were manageable, save for one catastrophic skill: Gif Blessing.
It was a double-edged sword born from the very illness that had plagued her human life.
Even with the disease eradicated, the skill persisted, locking her status into a permanent state of limit off.
The horrifying side effect?
Whenever she entered combat, she was instantly and simultaneously assaulted by a cascade of severe physical abnormalities...poison, paralysis, and bodily dysfunction wracking her system all at once.
Ordinarily, this still wouldn't be an insurmountable obstacle.
With her high-level abnormal resistance development ability and the hyper-durable physique of a creature, she could shrug off the worst of the poison and numbness.
But the second negative effect was the true backbreaker: the longer a battle dragged on, the faster her stamina and mind would drain, suffering a semi-permanent decline.
Naturally, Alfia had not spent the last five years idling in the dark.
In her human days, consuming a branch of the elven sacred tree had temporarily stabilized her condition.
But after her metamorphosis into a creature, the controlling entity within her had kept her locked deep within the dungeon, denying her the freedom to go to the surface.
Deprived of the sacred tree, she had been forced to seek out alternative remedies.
Her search ultimately revealed a dark truth: her innate biological urge as a creature...consuming magic stones...was the key to stabilizing her failing body. Specifically, the dense magic stone harvested from powerful monsters.
Feeding on them not only bolstered her strength as a creature, but temporarily pacified the turbulent rebellion of her own afflicted biology.
However, fate was rarely merciful.
Alfia only had a few magic stones with her.
She had been quietly and routinely hunting monsters down on the sixty-second floor when the corrupted spirit had abruptly yanked her consciousness, dumping her unceremoniously onto the fifty second floor.
It wasn't until she reached the fiftieth floor and crossed paths with Revis that the chaotic puzzle pieces of her mission had finally been explained to her.
It was an infuriating turn of events.
Not only was she commanded to capture some insolent brat, but she was also forced to babysit and ensure the survival of the pathetic, writhing female body type which possessed a fragment of herself.....and worst of all, it was an absolute directive she had no power to disobey.
The grip of the corrupted spirit was suffocatingly tight, particularly on her soul.
Had there been even a microscopic opening, she would have torn her way out of its suffocating grasp long ago.
All she wanted was quiet.
Just a moment of enduring, unbroken silence.
Despite all these inhibitions, Alfia felt as though her situation was way better than it was in the past.
Whether this was her genuine feelings or the influence of the corrupted spirit...…the current Alfia couldn't tell.
..............................…
Draco, meanwhile, maintained his vigil, his eyes narrowed as he studied every subtle shift in Alfia's posture.
His claws, talons, and heavy tail were coiled tight like steel springs, fully primed to react the exact millisecond her lips parted to shape a spell.
Barely five seconds had ticked away since he locked himself into his earth spirit transformation combat state, yet he could already feel the heavy, invisible toll it was taking on his mind reserve.
His reserves were bleeding away at an alarming rate.
This was not a form meant for prolonged usage; it was a devastating glass cannon of a state.
'I only have about twenty-five minutes left at full power' Draco calculated coolly, ruthlessly stripping away the panic and gazing inward at the stark boundaries of his abilities.
He, too, had severely miscalculated.
He certainly hadn't expected to stumble into such an insurmountable wall of a challenge.
He was already carrying lingering fatigue from carving his way through the previous floors, not to mention the energy wasted earlier while toying with the female body type crawling towards him.
Yet, even if he had entered this room at absolute peak condition, Draco harbored no delusions that the fight would be any kinder.
Additionally, his dungeon bag, carrying potions and supplies was on the other side of the room...…..but he knew that Alfia wouldn't let him grab it.
Letting out a deep, steadying sigh in the theater of his mind, Draco completely cleared his cluttered thoughts.
His red pupils dialed in, ruthlessly tuning out his rampaging heartbeat, the distant groans of Fomoire's spawning, and the whimpers of the crawler, leaving only one focal point in his universe: the pale, silver-haired woman standing before him.
Those five seconds of absolute stillness had not been wasted.
While Alfia was caught in her own web of thoughts, Draco had been quietly, methodically saturating the room with his magic.
Down on the forty-ninth floor, manipulating earth magic was a grueling uphill battle.
The dungeon's autonomous will and control over its constituent floors were vastly more potent here, aggressively resisting any external tampering.
The absolute last thing Draco needed was to be aggressively flagged and targeted by the dungeon.
Consequently, he had to exercise extreme restraint, seizing control of just enough earth and stone to bypass the dungeon's immune response without triggering a catastrophic floor-wide erasure.
Now, feeling the heavy, reliable pulse of the earth responding to his will, Draco knew he had enough leverage.
He was ready to make his move.
Alfia, perhaps sensing the subtle shift in his demeanor, instantly narrowed her eyes.
In the exact same fraction of a second, her lips parted, and she began to chant.
"Gospel," Alfia whispered, her voice carrying a terrifying, crystalline clarity.
Without warning, an explosive, concentrated wave of sound erupted forward, tearing through the air toward Draco.
Yet, Draco did not flinch, nor did he waste precious energy dodging.
Instead, he casually crossed his massive, scaly arms over his chest and took a single, heavy step forward.
The reddish-brown soil beneath his right talon violently ruptured, thrusting upward to instantly construct a thick, heavily reinforced barricade of packed earth directly in his path.
Boom!
The sound wave and the earthen wall collided with catastrophic force, generating a deafening shockwave that violently rippled across the room, sending cracks spider-webbing everywhere.
Before the pulverized dust from the impact had even begun to drift downward, Draco launched his counter-offensive.
High above, hanging from the ceiling of the boss room, heavy clusters of dense earth spikes instantly materialized.
With a sharp flick of his wrist and the crushing acceleration of gravity pulling them downward, the lethal, spear-like projectiles rained down upon Alfia with terrifying momentum, packing enough kinetic force to pierce through a monster Rex.
However, with terrifying reflexes that mirrored Draco's own anticipation, Alfia smoothly took a single step forward as if waltzing through a storm.
She spat a single, succinct spell key:
"Lugio."
Instantly, the residual, untamed magic lingering from her previous sonic attack coalesced and pooled above her head, instantly forging a secondary shockwave that blasted upward, obliterating the incoming rain of earth spikes into harmless, falling gravel.
Seeing her effortless counter, Draco couldn't help but let out a low, rumbling chuckle, the sound vibrating in his chest like a revving engine.
A rush of adrenaline flooded his veins, setting his heart ablaze against his ribs in excitement.
Perhaps reacting to the spike in his volatile emotions, the earth magic he had painstakingly bled into the surrounding stone seemed to jolt awake, answering his call with a deep rumbling that shook the entire forty-ninth floor.
Fine motes of dust and tiny pebbles began to rain down from the distant ceiling like a stifling fog, enveloping the entire boss room in a murky, reddish-brown haze.
It was a hellish, eerie tableau, but neither combatant spared the environmental hazard a single glance.
They continued to press forward, closing the distance between them step by agonizing step, trading rapid-fire attacks and instantaneous counters through the swirling dust.
In a matter of mere seconds, they had closed the gap until they stood less than five meters apart…..an uncomfortably proximity that, though neither acknowledged it aloud, was precisely what both combatants desired.
Draco had forced the distance intentionally.
His earth dragon spirit transformation, while exponentially boosting his physical durability and striking power, came at the severe cost of hampered mobility and sluggish movement speed.
By forcing a close-quarters engagement, he maximized his chances of landing a devastating, fight-ending physical blow before he ran out of steam.
Alfia, on the other hand, despite being a mage, a role where it was typically preferred raining destruction from afar, did not mind the close quarters in the slightest.
If anything, she found a thrill in it.
Draco's decision to dive into her personal space conveniently granted her the perfect platform to test out some spell applications…..one's she had previously found entirely useless in her past engagements.
No, calling it a new was technically a stretch; it was one she had possessed for years, but she had only recently stumbled upon a wildly entertaining, unorthodox ways to wield it.
Sadly, Draco was about to learn the hard way how different the current Alfia was from the past....
A/N: For those who can't visualize Alfia's style of attack, think of something similar to the tremor-tremor fruit from One-piece...it will help.