If she wanted to attack Aurelian, she would first have to deal with the female knight in front of her.
Safiroth suddenly retreated, lifted her long blade, and stomped hard on the ground. Borrowing the force, she once again lunged toward Gwen.
Just as her long saber collided with Gwen's sword, she suddenly felt a powerful surge of magic rising behind her.
[Tier Four Magic: Words of Geb]
As Cocotte's light, drifting chant fell, several streams of dirt and gravel burst out of the ground behind Safiroth, forming sharp spikes that pointed straight at her waist.
Safiroth instinctively wanted to dodge, but she sensed another new danger at the same time.
Elsa had long been waiting within the crowd, constantly searching for an opportunity, and now, that chance had finally arrived.
An assassin hides in darkness or among the crowd, waits for the right moment, and delivers a fatal blow.
She swung the massive blade in her hands, her body leaping forward violently.
A cold flash burst forth instantly, appearing at the edge behind Safiroth.
At this moment, Safiroth realized she had nowhere left to retreat.
Two attacks arrived back to back, yet she could only choose to evade one of them.
But there was no longer enough time for her to think through more options.
At this moment, Elsa's massive blade and Cocotte's magic, the attacks of two Tier Four powerhouses, struck Safiroth simultaneously.
In an instant, a wave of white smoke and dust was thrown up.
Everyone's gaze focused on that thick white fog.
As the smoke gradually dissipated, the scene before them left everyone shocked.
The humanoid monster with long white hair had grown dense, hard dragon scales over the entire right side of her body.
At the end of her right arm, her hand had transformed into a massive dragon claw.
Even one of her eyes had changed from green to crimson, growing wider, resembling a dragon's pupil.
The single black wing behind her had also transformed into a dragon-like flesh wing, slightly tattered as it hovered in the air.
Her dragon claw was gripping Elsa's massive blade tightly, while her left hand held a long saber, continuing to confront Gwen.
Seeing Safiroth in this state, Aurelian's eyes widened immediately.
"Dr-dragon… dragonkind!?"
"Absolutely not."
Cocotte's somewhat lazy voice drifted over as she crossed her arms and looked at Safiroth.
"Dragonkind doesn't have bloodlines this messy."
She could tell at a glance that the other party was not human.
When the two attacks landed simultaneously, the opponent didn't dodge at all, but instead transformed into a half-dragon form and took everything head-on.
Dragonkind is the race with the strongest physical bodies.
Whether it's resistance to physical damage or magic resistance, they are all top-tier.
Ordinary weapons before a giant dragon are like wooden swords striking steel plates.
Sharp claws and fangs can tear apart solid steel city walls like mud, and massive wings can even stir up hurricanes hundreds of meters high.
However, it was obvious that this opponent was not a true dragon.
Cocotte simply found it somewhat surprising.
This monster that looked so much like a human, could even use the abilities of a dragon.
But no matter how special she was, "it's time to end this."
Three against one, the advantage is on our side.
Cocotte straightened up, her lazy gaze sharpening slightly, becoming a bit more serious.
She propped herself up with both hands, as strands of natural magic gently surged around her.
"Will of Geb, emerge from the fragmented soil..."
"Natural beings shall pray for your descent beneath the void night sky."
[Tier Four Magic: Nature Shatter]
As Cocotte finished chanting, a powerful wave of magic gradually spread through the surroundings.
Countless magic formations slowly lit up beneath her feet, patterns and runes merging together.
The ground began to tremble nonstop. Green vines covered in spikes tore through the shaking earth, completely wrapping around Safiroth, whose footing had already become unstable from the tremors.
Countless spikes stabbed deep into her skin, piercing even the tough hide of the dragon.
A fissure slowly opened in the ground.
The vines hurled the bound monster violently into the crack, then yanked her back out of the massive chasm and slammed her onto the surface.
BOOM!
Countless trees snapped apart, and waves of sand and dust surged upward, completely engulfing the area.
Everyone raised their arms in front of their faces, feeling the surging sand and soil slam repeatedly against their bodies.
As the vibrations beneath their feet gradually subsided and the dust settled, they finally lowered their arms.
The devastated terrain around them clearly showed what kind of battle had just taken place.
Yet the figure that had been restrained had, without anyone noticing, vanished.
Aurelian stood there blankly, watching as Gwen calmly sheathed her sword, her expression unchanged.
As if she had expected this all along.
Elsa also concealed herself again, returning to the demi-human ranks.
Cocotte guided her cloud over to Aurelian and said slowly, "She got away."
This was an intelligent being, and not a weak one.
Of course, Cocotte could defeat her, but…
judging from the abilities she had shown, if she really wanted to escape, then unless Cocotte had prepared a powerful spell in advance, she could still flee at will.
After all, the limitations of mages are right there.
Not every mage is like Viktor, who doesn't need any preparation and can casually toss out war-grade magic like fireworks.
Cocotte looked ahead, at the gate at the end of the thirtieth floor of the monster rift.
Passing through it would lead to the thirty-first floor.
The lower layers.
The person from earlier hadn't died, but she was seriously injured.
Dragging her wounds, she slipped into the gate ahead.
Perhaps she herself was a monster that came from even deeper layers of the abyss.
The lower layers have far more complex terrain. If she were truly familiar with them, then even if the demi-human team entered, it would be almost impossible to encounter her again.
Besides… the crisis had already been resolved.
Thinking of this, Cocotte felt laziness spread throughout her body. She slumped back onto the cloud again and waved her hand.
"Forget it, let her go."
"We should head back too."
Viktor's mission was simply to reach the end of the thirtieth floor. He never said anything about capturing some special monster.
Cocotte wasn't about to give herself overtime, there was no benefit in it anyway.
It was time to get off work.
'I, Cocotte, never work overtime!'
Aurelian glanced once toward the entrance to the lower floor, then turned back and nodded lightly.
"Mm, I understand."
Just as Cocotte had said, her mission was only to reach the thirtieth floor.
The mission was complete. She could go back.
As the demi-human team finished preparing and was about to leave, no one noticed that Gwen lowered her head and opened her hand.
Several white feathers were tightly clenched in her palm.
They had been torn from that person's body just now.
Gwen had wanted to stop her escape, but the opponent's speed was simply too fast, leaving her only able to grab two feathers from the white wing on her back.
These feathers seemed to contain some subtle magical power.
She didn't throw them away. After thinking for a moment, she put them away inside her armor.
———
Erika slowly opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling.
Her vision was blurry, as if a faint mist were blocking her sight.
A thick, somewhat violent magical power seemed to be surging through every part of her body.
But she didn't have time to care about that.
"Hungry…"
Right now, all she could feel was how weak her body was.
She didn't know how long she had slept, and she hadn't eaten anything for a long time.
She was starving.
Where was this?
Wasn't she taken away by that monster?
But she was so hungry…
Her body didn't want to move at all, as if it had been filled with lead, so heavy, unbearably heavy.
If this continued, she might really starve to death.
Without realizing it, faint conversation drifted in from outside the room, "Teacher, look at this!"
"This is the drop from the floor boss of the thirtieth layer!"
The voice sounded familiar, but she really couldn't identify it.
Driven by intense curiosity, she dragged her weak body and forced herself out of bed.
Weak and unsteady, Erika slowly shuffled toward the door.
Then came an even more familiar voice.
"Mm, it really is [Eyeball of the Soul-Submerging Corpse]."
"The course is passed. You can rest now."
The instant she heard that voice, Erika froze.
That voice… she knew it all too well.
She couldn't help but quicken her steps, suppressing the excitement in her heart as she pushed the door open.
And then, Erika saw that man.
The man she admired, the man she respected.
"Viktor… Professor."
But suddenly, she felt that something was off.
Because the moment she pushed the door open, everything around her went quiet.
Several familiar gazes all turned toward her.
She seemed to see Knight-Captain Gwen? And Her Highness the Princess…
Viktor's gaze also turned toward her.
And there was someone she didn't recognize, who looked like an elf, sitting on a floating cloud.
"..."
'What… is going on?'
After a long silence, the unfamiliar elf was the first to speak in that quiet atmosphere, "…Viktor, earlier I thought it was just a rumor."
"So you really like that type, huh."
———
[Monster Rift]
[Thirty-seventh Floor]
[Gloom-Green Prison]
The surrounding space sank into a boundless, tranquil green, with only traces of darkness allowing one to barely make out the outline of the land.
Every ten floors, the scenery of the abyss completely changes.
Dragging her heavily injured body, Safiroth sat down in an open area.
The left half of her body was still bleeding.
Only under the green glow was the true color of the blood impossible to see.
Yet Safiroth looked completely expressionless, as if she felt no pain at all.
She lowered her head and looked at her wounds.
A purple demonic flame instantly ignited over her body, stopping the bleeding.
Monsters continued to spawn around her. They emerged from the ground, horns protruding as they walked toward Safiroth.
Within this [Gloom-Green Prison], monsters had already reached Tier Four strength.
But when those Tier Four monsters came within a few meters of Safiroth, a cold flash sliced through instantly, and the monster was beheaded with a thud as it collapsed to the ground.
The monster's corpse lay limp on the ground as a crack slowly tore open in the earth, the passage used to reclaim bodies.
But before the crack could fully open, a thorn-covered branch suddenly shot out, pierced the corpse, and dragged it back to Safiroth.
Then she brutally tore the monster's body into chunks of flesh and swallowed them.
Wiping her mouth, Safiroth sprawled back into a corner of the ground, feeling her injuries gradually recover.
She had just closed her eyes when, in the next second, she suddenly became alert.
Her snake-like pupils locked tightly onto the sky.
At some point, a black crow had appeared, standing elegantly on a tree branch.
"Interesting."
"I remember your name… Safiroth, right?"
At this moment, in Safiroth's eyes, there was only that crow.
For some reason, her body's instincts screamed for her to flee this place.
[Target detected. Danger level...]
[Unable to predict]
She tried to stand up, to move her legs, as if she wanted to escape.
But suddenly, the green ground flickered with a twisted black magic array.
Countless dense tentacles burst out, rapidly wrapping around Safiroth's body and restraining her completely.
At some unknown moment, a monocle had appeared over Vega's eye.
Its pitch-black body was dressed in an equally black suit, with a black top hat perched on it's head.
It looked just like an elegant old butler.
"Mm, if it were Viktor, he would definitely be this elegant."
"Then, please allow me to politely introduce myself."
In Safiroth's vision, behind the elegant crow above her head, a massive black eagle phantom seemed to appear.
It flickered and swayed continuously, its eyes so deep they seemed to contain entire worlds.
The shadow kept expanding, completely enveloping her in darkness.
A deep, ancient voice clearly reached her ears.
"I am the Evil God..."
"...Habika."