Swarms of monsters, ambushes from the shadows, baffling super-powered elite foes—
Deep within this "Golden Kingdom," Isagi and the girls had long since stopped finding any of it strange. By now it was all utterly familiar, and they pressed ever deeper through it with seamless teamwork, dealing with every bit of trouble they ran into.
And gradually—
The environment itself, working hand in hand with the troublesome monsters, began to plague the squad as well.
Quicksand they would sink into out of nowhere, false mirages, and sudden bursts of "light"—
It was honestly just like a flashbang, and Isagi found the whole thing utterly bewildering.
A pure-white radiance would suddenly flare before their eyes, and in that instant they'd even lose their hearing and their sense of touch, as though nothing in the world existed at all.
But everyone had already grown used to it.
Before they knew it—
Not just himself, but even Ryuu-senpai and Ais and the others had all long since adapted to this peculiar Dungeon before them.
Carefully, in perfect coordination, they kept up their exploration of the interior, running into battle after battle and then resolving each one...
"Isagi."
Lefiya's voice came from behind him.
At that very moment—
From beneath the sand dune before his eyes, bandage-wrapped "serpent men" were crawling out—pale strips of cloth wound about their bodies, their lower halves shaped like snakes, their upper halves spread open like umbrellas, just like cobras.
Except they also had two long, withered arms, likewise swathed in white cloth, and sharp, pointed heads.
They wielded some kind of curved blade and moved in an eerie manner—just like fish, sometimes diving into the yellow sand, sometimes suddenly bursting forth, even able to slip through the houses and walls built of sandstone.
Creatures straight out of the underworld.
But Isagi's side had long since worked out a way to deal with them.
It was simple. Relying on Lefiya's frost magic, they just had to coat the surface of the surrounding sand with a layer of ice.
It couldn't stop them from entering the sandstone, but it created a momentary "barrier."
And for their side, that was enough.
Whether these creatures were suddenly bursting out of the sandstone, or trying to flee back into it, that single instant of pause was all they needed to finish them off.
The battle lasted a remarkably short time.
A few seconds later—
Watching Tiona and Ais each cut down one of the two serpent men before them, Isagi turned back to look at Lefiya, who had just called out to him.
The Elf girl was still maintaining the ice magic she had unfolded.
At the same time, together with Haruhime and Miss Heith beside him, he looked toward the plaza not far off.
By now, the group had been delving into this Dungeon town called the "Golden Kingdom" for quite a while, yet the surroundings here were like a boundless sea, or like rolling forested hills rising and falling one after another. Apart from sand and gravel and scenes of desolation, there was nothing else to be seen.
On and on it stretched, with no end in sight at all.
Just how big was this "Golden Kingdom"?
No one knew.
Did it even include the floors and regions further below?
No one knew that either.
And within so vast an area, the thing Isagi and the girls used to pin down their "route" was, in fact, the corpses of those hunters.
Of course, the group wasn't just running around here aimlessly.
In coming to adventure in the Dungeon, Isagi and the girls had a very clear "purpose" from the start.
And that was to seek out powerful monsters, to fight, to raise their [Stats], to earn [Excelia], and then to level up.
To put it plainly—
It was to find "BOSSes" and "elite monsters."
Naturally, this couldn't be done by wandering about with no direction. After summing up the experience of this period, Isagi had naturally come to know a few methods.
The most important of these was the "plot."
At the very end of a plot, there would surely be a powerful gatekeeper BOSS waiting for him.
And now, although he had no idea what exactly had happened in this Golden Kingdom, there was a very simple plot thread laid out plainly before everyone.
[The hunters once came to explore this place, but for unknown reasons their expedition was halted.]
Why was it halted?
So hard to guess.
Obviously it was because everyone who came in got totally wiped out.
Because they discovered that something extremely powerful lurked deep within the Golden Kingdom, even the [Hunting Grounds Administrators] didn't dare to provoke it—it was just that simple.
So as long as you followed the hunters' corpses, the more corpses there were in a place, the more it was where the "main storyline" lay.
And off in the distance, in that small plaza—
Lefiya had clearly noticed a different sort of hunter as well.
It was an "SS"-rank creature.
Again, based on the experience accumulated over this period of adventuring, Isagi and the girls could be fairly certain that in the lower-level [Hunting Grounds], the BOSSes generally fell into two types: "hunters" and "prey."
And among those, the dividing line was drawn between "S" and "SS" rank respectively.
An S-rank creature was roughly around Lv. 6—not all that strong, more or less an "ordinary experience pack." They were indeed the most numerous, and on every adventure they'd run into quite a few.
But an "SS"-rank one—its strength would abruptly climb to at least Lv. 7, or even higher—
Because it was certain to possess some kind of special ability.
That Dragonman "Sword Saint" he'd suddenly run into before was SS-rank, and the Freya Familia had also encountered several "SS"-rank hunters earlier.
Aside from that—
There was only that [Hunting Grounds Administrator] Alfia had once encountered and defeated. Its level was estimated to be somewhere around Lv. 7 to Lv. 8 as well; that was what she herself had said.
And Isagi felt that even this wasn't enough.
What did he mean by that?
The [Pale King] was Lv. 5;
And the gatekeeper BOSS of the middle levels before had been Alfia herself, at Lv. 7;
Moreover, both of them were the cream of the crop within their respective levels, possessing utterly cheat-tier abilities—or rather, "mechanics."
In that case—
The gatekeeper BOSS of the lower levels couldn't possibly go as high as Lv. 9, could it?
But if that were so, then what level would the gatekeeper BOSS of the deep levels have to be?!
After all—
In the Guild's records, the deep-level dragon-type monsters discovered by the Zeus and Hera Familia—the ones found beyond the 70th floor—were only around Lv. 7 and Lv. 8.
So this brought up an even newer question.
What was the highest level for adventurers, and for monsters?
As for monsters, no one knew.
Because the [Black Dragon] had no estimated level.
As for Behemoth and Leviathan, the Guild had estimated them at Lv. 9 or Lv. 10.
So, in theory, the [Black Dragon] that annihilated the Zeus and Hera Familia should be at least Lv. 11, or even higher?
No one knew.
The answer was simply: no one knew.
As for adventurers, the highest level on record was the Hera Familia's Lv. 9 [Empress]. Whether one could go any further beyond that was, again, unknown.
Even now, Isagi himself had no real sense of it.
According to Alfia, there was a fundamental gap between Lv. 7 and Lv. 8, but between Lv. 5, Lv. 6, and Lv. 7 there wasn't actually much of a difference.
Just like between Lv. 4 and Lv. 5, then?
That doubt still lingered in Isagi's heart.
And on the other side—
Lefiya and the others had already drawn near to that plaza, where several hunters' corpses—even an "SS"-rank hunter's corpse—lay piled up—
____
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