While Bell Cranel found the family warmth he had always dreamed of in the past—feeling the affection of his mother, Meteria, and facing the merciless upbringing of his aunt, Alfia—the atmosphere in his original timeline contrasted as sharply as heaven and the depths of hell.
In the future era, the day the Hero of the New Generation disappeared was the day Orario lost its light.
Everything was broadcast live. Millions of pairs of eyes across Orario stared at the giant Divine Mirror screens with bated breath. They watched the exact seconds when Leon Vardenburg swung his sword, tearing away Bell's disguise. They anticipated the epic clash between the Strongest Knight against the Holder of the Fastest Level Up Record and the Hope for the birth of the Newest Hero.
However, what happened next completely shattered everyone's common sense.
A soundless distortion tore through the air. Bell Cranel's body was swallowed by the spatial ripple, vanishing without a trace before the tip of Leon's sword even touched him. The Divine Mirror screen displayed nothing but emptiness.
In the eyes of the gods watching the broadcast from various corners of Orario, the anomaly was instantly recognized as a Dimensional Rift. Only a few gods realized that the distortion was far more horrifying than a mere tear in space; it was a rift in time. And wherever that gap took Bell Cranel, that place was truly beyond the reach of their perception.
On one of the street corners of Orario, in front of a humble Jagamarukun stall, Goddess Hestia dropped her basket of fries to the ground.
The goddess's blue eyes widened immensely, staring at the magical projector above the plaza with a violently trembling body. Her heart seemed to stop beating. In the second Bell was swallowed by the rift, Hestia felt something far more horrifying than the visual sight. The soul bond—the Falna connection carved into Bell's back and linked directly to her divine core—suddenly snapped.
Not fading due to death, but completely vanishing, as if the existence of Bell Cranel was erased from the fabric of reality of this world.
"BELL—!!!"
Hestia's hysterical scream broke, breaking the heart of anyone who heard it. The goddess fell to her knees on the cobblestone street, clutching her chest which felt entirely empty, with tears streaming heavily down her face.
In the city's Amphitheater, the same reaction exploded. Liliruca Arde, Welf Crozzo, Mikoto Yamato, and even Sanjouno Haruhime screamed hysterically. Haruhime almost fainted if Mikoto hadn't been quick to catch her body. They called out their captain's name toward the empty screen, stricken with absolute panic and confusion.
At the Hostess of Fertility pub, Ryuu Lion froze. The wooden tray in her hands fell, splitting as it hit the floor. Her elf eyes, which were usually calm, now projected a vacant despair, as if the nightmare from her past was repeating itself right in front of her eyes.
Far at the northern end of the continent, in the dead lands of the Dragon Valley.
A gripping silence enveloped the Black Wasteland. Leon Vardenburg, the Level 7 adventurer, stood petrified with his sword swung in empty air. His sharp eyes stared at the spot where Bell stood a second ago.
"Bell Cranel...?" Leon called out, his voice sounding almost like a whisper blown by the north wind.
There was no answer.
Behind him, Nina Tulle fell to a sitting position on the rocky ground. The half-elf girl clutched her tight chest. Her breathing was heavy. The youth who had been accompanying her, who promised to finish all this with her, disappeared right before her eyes.
Leon immediately sheathed his sword and moved quickly. He combed every inch of that rocky cliff area, using all his instincts and superhuman hearing to track Bell's trail. He searched behind rocks, inspected the bottom of the cliff, and even approached the storm anomaly area. However, his efforts were in vain. There was no magical trace, no shred of clothing, nothing. The white-haired youth had truly evaporated from this world.
However, before Leon could fully process Bell's disappearance, the ground beneath them shook violently. From the direction of the Dragon Valley storm anomaly, a deafening roar tore through the gray sky. A giant Level 7 dragon, the Venomsky Centipede Dragon, suddenly breached the seal boundary and charged out. Now, with the disappearance of Bell Cranel, Leon Vardenburg had no other choice. The Strongest Knight drew his sword once more, preparing to face the calamity monster alone to protect Nina and hold the frontline of humanity.
Meanwhile, on the main stage of Orario's central plaza.
God Hermes stood frozen in front of thousands of city residents who suddenly went dead silent. In his hands, a parchment speech script and a magic stone-based megaphone simply fell from his grasp. Behind the stage screen, Asfi Al Andromeda kept checking the magical transmission device and the Oculus with trembling hands, trying to track the remnants of the signal from the Dragon Valley to ensure the visual projection to the Divine Mirrors in the city sky was not interrupted.
"The signal is stable, Lord Hermes... There is no transmission interference from our side," Asfi reported in a hoarse voice from backstage. "The incident just now... it really happened there."
Hermes wiped his face roughly, taking off the feathered hat that always adorned his head. His grand plan was shattered to pieces.
Initially, Hermes planned to use the momentum after the climax battle between Bell and Leon to unite Orario. The relationship between the elitist School District and the rough Orario had always been filled with stiff rivalry. From the beginning, Hermes had actually conspired and collaborated with God Baldr as the head of the School District to engineer this entire artificial conflict scenario. They deliberately created tension and tight competition between factions to motivate Bell Cranel's growth, while simultaneously realizing the Orariopiad sports festival as the grandest theatrical stage.
In the original scenario, when the Monster suddenly appeared, breaching the seal and triggering mass panic, Hermes, with his microphone, would immediately act as a theatrical commentator. The hero propaganda strategy he devised with Baldr was supposed to showcase the prowess of Bell Cranel and Leon Vardenburg fighting shoulder-to-shoulder to conquer the dragon threat under live broadcast.
All of that was done for one absolute goal planned by Hermes and Baldr: uniting the entire strength of humanity. If Orario and the School District remained divided by competitive ego, then facing the final calamity, the One-Eyed Black Dragon (OEBD), would be impossible. This extraordinary alliance was supposed to be born today after Bell's battle concluded.
But now? That grand scenario was shattered to pieces. On the Divine Mirror screens, the city residents could now only watch Leon Vardenburg having to fight alone against the giant dragon. The main bridge, the pillar of hope that was supposed to lock the alliance of the two major factions, had instead disappeared without a trace.
However, Hermes's despair was nothing compared to the storm of rage exploding at the new Hestia Familia headquarters.
Inside a closed room, Freya—who was now bound in the form of Syr Flova after her crushing defeat in the War Game against the Hestia Familia—screamed in anger. Her face, which usually radiated charm, was now distorted by the anger and panic of a goddess who lost her greatest obsession.
A divine aura began seeping out of her body, threatening to destroy the pact that bound her. If Allen, and the other former Freya Familia executives hadn't restrained and calmed their goddess, Freya would definitely have gone on a rampage, releasing her Arcanum to turn the entire city of Orario upside down to search for the pure soul she loved most.
The disappearance of Bell Cranel was only the beginning of Orario's downfall.
Two days after the incident in the Dragon Valley, follow-up news arrived, hitting the labyrinth city with a force a thousand times more deadly.
At the entrance of Babel, a group of adventurers appeared in a very pitiful condition. They walked limping, covered in blood, with shattered armor and faces filled with absolute trauma. It was the rearguard group from the Loki Familia, the strongest exploration faction in Orario, which was currently conducting an expedition deep into the Dungeon.
Raul Nord, a second-class adventurer trusted to lead the survivor group, walked at the very front with a broken and severely injured left arm. His eyes were vacant, his lips trembling uncontrollably as dozens of gods and adventurers from other Familias swarmed toward him.
"Raul! What happened?!" shouted one of the gods. "Where is Finn?! Where is the Sword Princess?!"
Raul fell to his knees, tears of blood flowing from his eyes. "Floor 60... collapsed. We were ambushed... by an absolute anomaly from the depths." Raul's voice cracked with horrifying sobs. "The expedition completely failed. The core forces... they were all left behind below. We were cut off."
The news instantly froze the blood of the entire population of Orario.
The elite forces left behind on the 60th Floor were not just any adventurers. The three main figures: Finn Deimne the Braver, Riveria Ljos Alf the Nine Hell, and Gareth Landrock. Plus the deadly Level 7 elite vanguard: Ais Wallenstein, Bete Loga, Tiona Hiryute, and Tione Hiryute.
Even the alliance from other factions who joined the expedition—Tsubaki Collbrande the captain of the Hephaestus Familia blacksmiths and Airmid Teasanare the best healer from the Dian Cecht Familia—were also trapped in that hell. Anakitty Autumn (Aki), Raul's line mate who usually organized the rear formation, was also reported separated and dragged down with the core team.
Those who managed to survive and return to the surface were only members of the rearguard, mostly consisting of low-level adventurers and medical healers forced to retreat when the chaos occurred. As soon as they arrived in Orario, the survivors were immediately rushed to the special medical care facilities owned by the Dian Cecht Familia, which was instantly overwhelmed handling dozens of heavily injured victims.
Orario was struck by mass despair. This was humanity's greatest tragedy and loss since the fall of the Zeus and Hera Familia era at the hands of the OEBD over a decade ago. The scale of this destruction felt even worse than the Dark Age era or The Great Feud seven years ago.
Their new hero had disappeared without a trace, and now the world's strongest combat force was presumed to have been wiped out in the depths of the labyrinth.
In the headquarters room of the Twilight Manor, which now felt so vast and empty, Goddess Loki sat cross-legged on the floor. Her eyes, which were always tightly closed, were now open, glaring fiercely at the floor with veins of anger and resolve popping on her temples.
Even though the entire city had begun to mourn and lament the fall of her Familia, the red-haired goddess refused to give up.
"Stop crying, you fools," Loki hissed at the remaining Familia members sobbing in the room. Loki placed a hand on her chest, feeling the faint resonance that only a god could feel toward their children.
Through the sacred blood bond of the Falna, Loki could feel it. The light of blessing inside the bodies of Finn, Ais, Riveria, and the others hadn't extinguished. Dim, yes. Very weak, yes. But not dead yet.
"My kids aren't dead yet," Loki said with an absolute tone, echoing certainty amidst the despair. "They are still breathing down there. They are surviving... and waiting."
Even so, Loki realized the bitter reality. Time kept ticking, and the resources of the core team on Floor 60 were very limited without logistical support from Raul. They were racing against time toward certain death if no help came down to pick them up.
While Orario sank in tears and despair, the deadly north wind howled again in the dead lands of the Black Wasteland.
At the edge of the rocky ravine of the Dragon Valley, at the exact coordinate point where Bell Cranel was swallowed by the time vortex a few days ago, the air suddenly vibrated. A spatial ripple blinked softly, piercing through the layers of reality without triggering a sudden warning.
From behind the frozen air distortion, six mysterious figures stepped out in absolute silence, setting their feet on the soil of the future.
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