"Leo! Ais! We're here!"
"...Looks like we're a little bit late!"
As Ais wrapped herself in wind and landed back on the ground, two Amazoness girls with identical faces came leaping out of the vertical shaft, looking less like they were barging into a battlefield than into an amusement park, and arrived at Ais's side one after the other.
"Tiona, Tione."
Ais held Desperate in her hand and called softly to her familiar companions.
"Miss Ais! Are you all right?!"
Lefiya was being carried in Tione's arms, and the magic treasure stone on the staff in her hand still had light lingering on it, telling everyone exactly who that magic had come from.
Yet the Elf girl showed not the slightest awareness that she had just done something impressive. She jumped out of Tione's arms with an anxious look on her face, ran to Ais's side, and chattered out her questions.
"Where's Mr. Leo? Where did Mr. Leo go?!"
Lefiya was still looking for Leo, and when she didn't see him beside Ais her pretty face went white.
"D-don't tell me he's already...?!"
She didn't get to finish the sentence before a comet came sweeping in from the horizon and cut her off.
"Already what? Can't you hope for something better for me?"
Leo emerged from the dispersing protective starlight and spoke sourly as he walked toward Lefiya.
Any other time, Lefiya would certainly not have taken that well. She would have snorted, turned her head away and ignored him, or simply put on a black face and unloaded on him, as if venting all her everyday grievances.
This socially minded Elf was outgoing and cheerful toward other people, and well-behaved, obedient and nervous around Ais and the other Familia seniors, but toward him alone she never had a pleasant expression, and ever since the last time in the God's Chamber when he accidentally saw everything, her attitude toward Leo had been worse than anyone's. Even passing him in the corridor of the home base she would snort on purpose and pretend not to see him, which left him half laughing and half exasperated every time.
This time, though, the Elf girl showed him a straightforward side of herself.
"I-I'm sorry! It's all because of me that you..."
Lefiya came up in front of Leo with guilt written all over her face, head lowered, looking crushed, and the sourness on Leo's face slowly faded away.
"This has nothing to do with you. If you want to blame something, blame that Deformis Spider, not yourself."
Leo patted the girl's slender shoulder and offered that much comfort.
"No! If Mr. Raul and I hadn't gotten distracted..."
Lefiya seemed to be blaming herself in earnest, or rather she couldn't forgive herself for holding everyone back, and one look was enough to tell she was starting to spiral.
"That's enough, Lefiya, now isn't the time to talk about that."
Tiona came forward, took Lefiya's hand and shielded her behind them.
"Right, whatever you want to say can wait until after we get through what's in front of us."
Tione looked out toward the horizon, her eyes narrowing.
Leo and Ais had already been looking up for a while, and they saw the Ill Wyverns flying in without a break.
They had just wiped out a huge batch, and now another huge batch was coming, dense as locusts, and just looking at them was enough to wear on your patience.
"So the flying dragons from the floors above have all come down here?" Tiona laughed without a trace of tension. "The bigger the commotion we make here, the more monsters from the floors above get drawn down. Looks like this won't be ending anytime soon."
"And that's not all." Tione shifted her gaze forward and said with a cold smile, "Don't forget, this floor is huge too. Even if Leo and Lefiya both fired off their magic at full power once, there's no way that handled every monster on the whole floor."
Just as Tione said, in the other directions on this floor, enormous shapes of monsters could faintly be seen drawing closer.
Every monster on this floor and on the floors above had been drawn in by the huge commotion here, and the group's situation had turned dangerous again.
As things stood, there were countless flying dragons circling in the sky and packs of beasts pouring in from every direction on the ground. There was no road to heaven above and no door to earth below.
Worse still, both the Valgang Dragons and the Ill Wyverns had flames surging in their mouths, plainly ready to concentrate their fire, and that enormous barrage was only waiting to come down.
This was a crisis without precedent.
This was a dead end that deserved to be called fatal.
This was Floor 58, after all, the deepest floor any adventurer in Orario had ever reached, and like the Great Wilderness on Floor 49 it was one vast single space, with no labyrinth, and therefore no terrain or structure to block monsters or limit their numbers. As far as the eye could see was an enormous rectangular chamber drawn in black-lead walls and ceiling, where every monster on the floor could surround them at once, and monsters from the floors above could even come down through the vertical shafts.
Here the number of monsters was beyond counting, and unlike the floors above, every one of them was a monster that lived in the Deepest Floors. The dragon-type monsters in particular almost all had Lv.5 potential ability, and some had more than that.
In other words, the situation Leo's group was in now was no different from being surrounded by countless Lv.5 first-class adventurers.
In the past, Finn and the others had taken cross-floor bombardment on the floors above, and after fighting their way down here with everything they had they had lost all their stamina, their items and even the equipment they fought with, and in the end could only give up on going further.
Even Freya Familia, those fearsome warriors led by King, had in the end lacked the ability to enter Floor 59. They could only reach here and then turn back.
And where an expedition party that included Finn, Riveria, Gareth and Bete fighting together could only get this far, right now there were only five people here: Leo, Ais, Tiona, Tione and Lefiya.
It was easy to imagine just how difficult surviving here would be.
And yet, facing this deadly situation, neither Leo and Ais nor Tiona and Tione showed any fear.
"This is exactly what I've been waiting for!" Tiona spun her great double-blade and laughed with perfect innocence. "I'll use this chance to catch up to Ais in one go!"
"The other monsters can wait, but those Valgang Dragons have to be dealt with. We can't let them get in the way of the captain and the others any longer." Tione was no longer holding her kukri, but a heavy halberd, and said, "Last time we got forced into retreating right here. Whatever it takes, we're not losing again."
Both of them were full of fighting spirit, determined to carve out a new path here.
Ais said nothing. She simply walked silently to the very front and took her place ahead of Tiona and Tione.
This time there were no Familia leaders like Finn here, but as a newly minted Lv.6, Ais felt it was her duty to stand at the front and hold back the most dangerous group of monsters.
Only that way would this battle have a chance.
It was also the reason Finn had decided so firmly to split into two groups.
He believed that Ais, now that she had leveled up, could absolutely take his and the others' place and shoulder the heaviest responsibility.
And besides, it shouldn't be forgotten that this time there was one more companion here who was in no way inferior to those veteran Lv.6s.
"The ones in the sky are mine."
Leo looked at the Ill Wyverns rushing in with their roars, and spoke.
"The ones on the ground are yours to handle."
As he said it, the broken-gold patterns of Hieroglyphs on the Starlight in his hand slowly lit up, one line after another.
Leo activated his flight magic, and his whole body turned into a comet, shooting up into the sky and kicking up a wild gust of wind that flipped Lefiya's skirt up beside him, making the Elf girl cry out and press her skirt down, red to the ears.
"Tione! Let's go!"
"I've been waiting to hear that!"
The Amazoness sisters couldn't hold back either, and charged past Ais on her left and right, so fast their figures blurred into afterimages.
But no matter how fast they were, they couldn't be as fast as Ais.
"Awaken."
The golden-haired girl chanted the short incantation in a low voice, and her hair and the hem of her skirt began to sway.
Surging currents of air wrapped around the girl's body, and around that silver saber as well.
With the blessing of "wind" invoked without holding anything back, Ais had, in terms of Status alone, already surpassed even the veteran powerhouses Finn and Gareth.
Looking at the monsters charging in from every direction, the girl who hated monsters to the bone could not help a thread of black flame kindling in her heart, and the Falna on her back grew faintly hot.
Enduring that heat, forcing down the black emotion in her heart with all her strength, not letting Avenger activate, Ais stamped on the ground and shot off like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, tearing out like a storm.
The three girls' figures vanished into the beast horde, and from inside it came roars, wails and screams of pain, one after another.
Only Lefiya was left where she stood.
With no one to protect her, she looked at the seniors charging ahead, then at the horde of monsters behind with no one to block it, and her hand tightened around her staff.
"I want to..."
The Elf girl's face turned resolute.
"I want to fight too!"
The monsters behind were still far off, which was why Ais and the others had dared to charge together. They meant to clear out the enemies in front before the ones behind arrived, then turn back and deal with those.
As for the left and right sides, there were no Valgang Dragons there, so there was no need to worry about a sudden ranged attack. Those could be left for last.
Lefiya, staying here, was safe for the moment and didn't need anyone protecting her.
But the Elf girl clearly wasn't content with that.
"Proud warriors, archers of the forest."
The Elf girl began to chant her magic, and a deep golden magic circle spun at her feet.
She was going to use her wide-area annihilation magic at maximum output to cut down the number of monsters as much as she could before the enemy reached her, and lighten the pressure on her seniors in their fight.
Before long, a downpour of flame cut through the air and fell on the horde of monsters.
In the sky, a comet swept past as well, going out to meet the flying dragons.
[Read 30+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]