"Miss Belle! There is a group of dungeon worms coming toward us on our left!"
Lili called out, firing a shot from her small crossbow while carrying her oversized backpack.
"Got it!"
Belle affirmed instantly.
Drawing her longsword alongside the Hestia Knife, she leapt straight into the thick of the crowd without a second's hesitation, her blades carving through flesh in a blur of motion.
"Huaaaah!"
Welf roared, stepping in from the flank to cover her blind spots.
After a few minutes of fighting, Belle and the others finally managed to clear the area.
Not a single monster was left alive.
"Hoooh! That was intense. A monster party right after entering the middle floors. I don't know if we're lucky or unlucky."
Welf grunted, popping the cork on a stamina potion and downing it in one go.
"But Belle, do you even get tired? You just killed a whole group of them without even breaking a sweat."
He added, giving Belle a look as if she were some kind of monster.
Belle let out a wry, sheepish laugh in response.
But mid-chuckle, her head snapped to the side.
Her eyes narrowed as she caught a lingering sensation of being watched, only for the presence to vanish a split second later.
'Is someone following us?'
She frowned, her grip tightening on her hilt as her posture subtly shifted into a defensive stance.
"Belle, is something wrong?"
Welf asked, picking up on her sudden tension.
"Ah… it's nothing."
Belle offered a reassuring smile, though her eyes remained sharp, silently sweeping their surroundings.
"Good job, everyone."
That was when Lili came up to them after she had finished picking up the magic stones littered across the ground.
"Even with this delay, we are still on a good pace to reach the 19th floor. After we finish resting, we can use this shortcut to head down to the next floor immediately."
Lili said as she pulled out a map.
"Hmm? Lil Lili, what has gotten into you? I noticed that your callouts have gotten better, and you've become a bit more diligent recently."
"Don't tell me this is the result of that training of yours that Belle told me about?"
Welf asked with a curious expression as he handed her the empty potion bottle.
"Heh… I didn't work hard for nothing, you know?"
Lili said, looking smug as she puffed out her chest proudly.
Although Alfia's training had pushed her to the point of exhaustion and made her want to give up on life, the results were definitely undeniable.
The party continued to head down floor after floor until they reached the 17th.
However, Belle and the others couldn't help but frown when they kept experiencing something strange.
"This is the ninth monster party that we've gone through. Are we really this unlucky today?"
Belle remarked, wiping the sweat from her forehead as monster stones littered the ground, along with monster corpses that were slowly turning into ash.
Although they had experienced monster parties before, they weren't so common that they should be appearing this frequently.
'Something is not right.'
She thought before shifting her gaze toward her companions, who were completely drenched in sweat and looking very fatigued.
It looked like they would collapse at any moment, but she couldn't blame them.
They had just finished clearing a party of monsters earlier, and now another one had spawned right after.
There was even an occasion when Welf had used up one of his magic swords just to get out of a difficult predicament.
The monsters themselves weren't particularly formidable, but the sheer, endless waves were threatening to drag them down by attrition.
'Welf and Lili are already nearing their limits. I just hope that this is the last one.'
She thought as she rolled her shoulders.
Right now, despite her monstrous stats, even she was starting to feel her muscles getting sore.
Just as Belle and her party decided to take a rest…
ROAR!
A chorus of guttural shrieks echoed through the passage ahead of them, accompanied by the heavy, rhythmic thud of approaching footsteps.
"Are you kidding me?!"
Welf's eye twitched violently.
…
At the entrance to the 18th floor, a party of three could be seen stumbling through.
"Haah… that was… pant... the most… pant... exhausting… pant... thing I've ever… done."
Welf spoke between bated breaths as he collapsed onto the ground, feeling relieved as he took in the familiar sights of the 18th floor.
Lili practically unbuckled her backpack mid-stride, letting it slam onto the grass before collapsing right beside it, too exhausted to even form words.
Even Belle was visibly winded.
She leaned forward with her hands resting heavily on her knees, her gear and equipment looking completely worn.
After experiencing their 10th monster party in a row, Belle had pushed through the wave of monsters, sending herself to the frontlines to protect Welf and Lili, who were too tired to fight.
"Guys… you holding up?"
Belle panted, turning back toward them.
Both of them gave her a weak thumbs-up
They smiled, but unfortunately, their rest was short-lived when Belle's instincts suddenly warned her.
Danger!
Shiing!
The sharp whistle of cutting air tore through the silence as a thrown dagger hurtled straight for the back of her neck.
'Behind me!'
She reacted quickly, spinning on her heel and deflecting the attack with her sword.
"Huh?"
"Belle?"
Welf and Lili exclaimed at the same time.
They were too slow to realize what had happened.
It was only when they saw Belle's expression and the dagger on the ground that they finally grasped the situation.
"Who goes there?"
Belle shouted, but she didn't look in the direction from which the flying dagger had come.
Instead, she looked toward the source of the killing intent she had sensed.
In the next second, a distinct male figure appeared from the shadows behind a tree.
He wore a mask that hid his face, so Belle and the others didn't recognize him right away.
"Tsk… you're annoyingly perceptive. Even when I went out of my way to use a magic item to hide my presence."
A male voice came from the attacker, sounding very annoyed.
'This voice…'
Belle thought as she felt a sense of familiarity.
The gears in her head began spinning as she looked at the attacker, who had hidden his face behind a mask, trying to figure out his identity.
"I spent so much time provoking all the monster pantries in the middle floors, so I wouldn't have to personally get my hands dirty dealing with trash like you… but you somehow ended up surviving."
"I knew it… your very existence irks me to no end, Little Rookie."
The masked man said as he pointed his sword toward her.
"Wait a minute... so all those monster swarms were your doing?!"
Welf barked, pulling himself up, his face flushed with rage.
"You bastard! What the hell is your deal? Do you know how much trouble you put us through?!"
But despite Welf's yelling, the masked man completely ignored him and didn't even bother to glance in his direction, as if saying that a Level 1 was an insignificant ant not worth paying attention to.
As Belle continued to stare at the masked man, something clicked inside her mind, and a face finally overlapped with the one before her.
"Wait… Hyakinthos? Is that you?"
She gasped, her crimson eyes widening.
"Hyakinthos?! The Captain of the Apollo Familia?"
Lili stammered in disbelief.
"Weren't they exiled from the city?! What is he still doing in Orario?!"
"Phoebus Apollo? Why are you attacking us?"
Welf shouted with a serious expression.
"Hmph. The jig is up, is it?"
Hyakinthos took off his mask and revealed himself.
"!?"
"What happened to his face?"
"His jaw… it looks crooked."
Belle and her party couldn't help but comment after seeing his disfigured face.
A thick vein bulged violently on Hyakinthos' temple.
"What happened to my face!? That damn silver-haired woman happened!"
Hyakinthos shrieked, his voice cracking with unhinged fury.
"Mother? She did that?"
Belle muttered, blinking a few times.
"Hmph! Doesn't matter. What I want right now is for you to die right here, Little Rookie!"
After Hyakinthos let out a quick monologue, killing intent erupted from his body, causing Lili and Welf to freeze up in fear.
"I see…"
Belle muttered.
A momentary silence fell as the two locked eyes.
Belle reached down and unsheathed the Hestia Knife with a quiet hiss.
"Welf… Lili… stand back…"
"I promise this won't take long."
Belle instructed softly, dropping low into a combat-ready stance.
"You arrogant bitch... are those your last words, you attention-hogging rabbit!?"
Hyakinthos gritted his teeth.
Seeing that Belle was looking down on him, he could feel his blood boiling in his veins.
"I'll make sure to give you a slow and painful death."
Hyakinthos lunged forward, executing a vicious, overhead downward slash.
Belle raised her sword to meet the strike.
CLANG!
The sound of metal ringing reached their ears.
Belle and Hyakinthos crossed weapons, the latter trying to push forward with all his strength.
'What!? Why is she so damn strong?'
He was stunned when Belle refused to budge a single inch.
A Level 2 adventurer was matching him... a Level 3... in raw physical power!
And this was after she should have been pretty tired from fighting off several monster parties previously.
Thinking of this, a sense of humiliation washed over Hyakinthos, making his grip tighten until his knuckles turned white.
"Mister Hyakinthos, did your God order you to do this?"
Belle questioned, but Hyakinthos scowled.
"You insolent trash! How dare you speak Lord Apollo's name so casually from your filthy mouth?!"
Hyakinthos screamed, his eyes bloodshot.
"You will pay with your life!"
Abandoning all finesse, Hyakinthos unleashed a frantic barrage of lethal slashes, driven purely by the desire to tear her to shreds.
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
Sparks showered the air with every parry.
Belle knocked aside every strike with fluid precision.
Sensing the intent behind each and every one of his attacks, Belle's eyes sharpened.
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+15 chapters at patreon.com/drdedot
(A/N: Hey, good news! I passed my board examination first try and finally became a licensed engineer!)