A little over ten minutes passed.
They made their way through a dense forest lit by glowing crystals, then followed the broad curve of a lakeside path for a stretch.
Gradually, the ground began to rise.
And at last — the outline of Rivira came into view.
Though calling it a town might be generous.
It was more an irregular jumble of wooden shacks stacked and nailed together in every direction without rhyme or reason.
Amou Kirukiru walked at the head of the group.
The bone-chilling killing intent that usually radiated off her had pulled back somewhat.
She stepped up a short flight of wooden stairs that groaned under her boots — and officially set foot on Rivira's main street.
The interior of Rivira was nothing like the Orario above.
There were no neatly laid flagstones underfoot — just dirt packed iron-hard by countless boots, broken up here and there by rough planks thrown down at random.
Both sides of the street were crammed with ramshackle wooden stalls and wide-open storefronts of every size.
Back at the entrance clearing, a single sentence from Amou Kirukiru had been enough to cow a whole crowd of adventurers. But inside Rivira itself, the numbers were clearly far greater — all manner of people, every walk of life, crammed together in one place.
Even so.
— The Kyoubou was simply too conspicuous to ignore.
Every time its massive frame took a step, one of those great bear-paws came down on the planks with a heavy, chest-tightening thud.
The adventurers seated at stalls — drinking, wiping down weapons, haggling over prices — kept their composure with remarkable restraint.
No one said a word.
No one was foolish enough to reach out a hand and try to stop them.
In fact, as the group passed, those rough-looking men wordlessly shuffled toward both sides of the street, quietly clearing a path wide enough to walk through.
Because at the end of the day — anyone who had survived for years in a lawless place beyond the Guild's reach was no idiot.
Nobody had the spare time to go picking fights with a group of dangerous-looking thorns like these.
Aihara Enju, for her part, couldn't have cared less about the atmosphere around her.
Her head swiveled back and forth, her crimson eyes brimming with curiosity.
Her orange hoodie stood out like a beacon against the sea of dark leather armor and grey robes that surrounded her.
"Something smells amazing!"
Aihara Enju sniffed the air suddenly.
Her short legs went into overdrive across the muddy ground, and she broke away from the center of the group, scurrying over to an open-air stall by the roadside.
The stall was propped up over a slightly rusted iron grate.
Beneath the grate sat several red Dungeon firestone bricks, glowing a deep, burning red.
Laid across the grate were several skewers of meat, each slice cut absurdly thick.
Fat seeped out through the grain of the meat, dripping down onto the firestones below.
A soft sizzle rang out.
White smoke and a rich, meaty aroma billowed up and spread instantly through the air.
"Hey, mister!"
Aihara Enju pressed both hands against the edge of the stall's wooden counter, stood on her tiptoes, and craned her face up at the half-dwarf vendor — a heavyset man with a grease-stained apron tied around his waist and a face that looked like it had never smiled a day in its life.
"How much for the skewers!"
The vendor glanced down at the tiny girl who barely came up to the height of his counter. He had a jar of coarse salt in one hand.
He kept shaking salt onto the meat without looking up and rattled off a number.
"One thousand Valis per skewer."
"No haggling."
"One thousand Valis?!"
Onigawara Rin had been following a few steps behind and arrived at the stall just in time to hear that price. Her feet skidded to a halt and her eyes went wide as saucers.
"That's highway robbery!"
Onigawara Rin jabbed a finger at the skewers on the grate.
"Even if the pieces are huge — up on the surface, in the red-light district night market, skewers like these go for fifty to a hundred Valis at most."
"You've jacked the price up ten times over!"
The vendor didn't get riled up at Onigawara Rin's indignant outburst.
He picked up a pair of iron tongs and, without any particular rush, flipped each skewer over where they'd started to char.
"Little girl."
"You'd better get one thing straight — this is the eighteenth floor of the Dungeon."
The vendor set down the tongs and, for once, actually lifted his eyes to look at Onigawara Rin.
"The meat itself? Sure, it's cheap."
"But the spices, the charcoal, and those firestones under my grill —"
"I paid through the nose to hire people who hauled all of it down from Orario on the surface, floor by floor, dodging rampaging monsters the whole way."
He rapped the wooden counter twice with his knuckles, two dull thocks.
"The risk. The losses along the way."
"Plus the protection money I have to hand over every single day just to run a stall in Rivira."
"All of that's baked into the price."
"Prices running ten, fifteen times higher in Rivira — that's just common sense."
"Go ask the shops up the street if you don't believe me."
The vendor jerked a thumb at the street behind him.
"At ten times, I'm already giving you the honest price out of respect for a group that's clearly not worth messing with."
"Buy or don't buy — but don't block the line for everyone behind you."
That perfectly reasonable breakdown of costs stopped Onigawara Rin dead in her tracks.
She opened her mouth — and nothing came out.
She turned her head.
Her gaze drifted past the grilled meat stall and landed on a wooden rack nearby, holding shelves of potion bottles.
Those cloudy, crudely bottled basic recovery potions and antidotes in rough glass containers —
— she checked the price tags hanging below them.
Sure enough.
Every single one was ten times, sometimes more than fifteen times the official prices offered at the Guild hall.
"Ugh..."
Aihara Enju didn't understand anything about cost structures or market prices.
All she knew was that the skewers smelled incredible.
So she lowered her head, reached into the large pocket of her orange hoodie, and rummaged around.
A bright clinking sound.
She pulled out a fistful of stones that gave off a faint glow.
They were mid-purity Magic Stones — dropped when she'd kicked that Boar's skull apart back on the tenth floor.
Aihara Enju slapped the Magic Stones down on the vendor's counter without ceremony.
"Mister!"
"Can I trade these rocks for skewers?"
The vendor's bored, impatient gaze dropped to the Magic Stones.
His eyes lit up immediately.
He reached over and picked one up.
He held it up to the crystal light overhead and gave it a look.
Excellent quality.
"Of course we can trade."
The vendor's face of lumpy flesh rearranged itself into something resembling a grin.
"Purity like this? These stones are more than enough for a few skewers."
He got to work briskly, wrapping ten skewers — dripping and crackling with fat — in brown paper, and handed them over.
Aihara Enju happily took the skewers.
Turned around.
Ran straight back to the group.
"Everyone, eat up!"
She held out the biggest skewer first — to Kohina.
"Kohina, this one's for you!"
Kohina's orange-red eyes locked onto the sizzling skewer. She swallowed visibly, took it immediately, and sank her teeth in for a huge bite.
Her cheeks puffed out like a hamster's.
"It's good."
Enju grabbed two more skewers.
She trotted over to Hanasaka Warabi, who was sitting atop the black bear Kyoubou's back.
She strained up onto her tiptoes and stretched the skewers as high as she could reach.
"Um..."
"Warabi-nee-san —"
"These are for you."
Aihara Enju glanced down at her own boots — the edges had completely split open along the seams and were even showing a bit of toe.
"You lent me and Kohina clothes and shoes last night, so — thank you, Warabi-nee-san."
Hanasaka Warabi sat atop the bear's back.
She looked down at the dripping skewers held up in front of her face, then at Enju's wide, beaming smile.
Her gaze went a little distant.
"Ahem."
Hanasaka Warabi cleared her throat, reached out, and pinched the bamboo skewer between two fingers to take it.
A faint, not-entirely-natural flush crept up both cheeks.
"I-It's not like I took them because I wanted them, okay."
"It's just that your arms looked like they were getting tired of holding them up."
Hanasaka Warabi muttered under her breath, turned her head away, and took a bite.
It was actually pretty good.
Kikakujou Mary and Onigawara Rin watched that little scene unfold — and couldn't hold it in. They exchanged a look, both on the verge of cracking up.
Even the Holy Emperor, who had been holding herself a little stiffly, felt the corners of her mouth soften into a warm smile.
And then, just at that moment —
The sound of a clear conversation.
It drifted out from beneath a wooden lean-to slightly ahead and to one side of them.
"Brother, do me a favor and make a run to the surface."
A burly werewolf adventurer.
His left arm hung limp at his side, wound in thick layers of bandage already dark with seeping blood. He was clearly in a bad way.
With his one usable right hand, the werewolf was holding out a fat, bulging coin purse.
He passed it to the person standing across from him — a half-elf with peculiarly styled lightweight running shoes on his feet, a flat pack on his back, and pointed ears.
"Head to the Demeter Familia outpost behind the Guild."
The werewolf spoke quickly.
"Find a girl called Mia, and tell her the expedition ran into some trouble." "I still need to stay here on the eighteenth floor for about another week to recover."
"Tell her not to worry."
The half-elf took the purse.
Gave it a casual heft in his palm, listening to the coins clink inside, and nodded without hesitation.
"Sure."
"Standard rate — five thousand Valis per delivery run."
The half-elf tucked the purse expertly into an inside pocket of his jacket.
"I'll have your message delivered before dinner tonight."
With that —
The half-elf's body gave a fluid, almost boneless twist.
He slipped through the gaps in the crowd with ease, darting past bodies and stalls without a moment's pause.
He took off in a dead sprint straight for the stairway entrance that connected up to the seventeenth floor.
And was gone in the blink of an eye.
Kohina still had a half-eaten skewer in her hand.
Her orange-red eyes stared blankly in the direction the half-elf had vanished, her expression one of complete bafflement.
"They actually hire people specially just to carry messages?"
Kohina tilted her head, chewing the last piece of meat.
"Sure, this place is far from the surface." "But can't you just run up the stairs yourself?"
"Why waste that much money."
Hearing Kohina's confusion, Kikakujou Mary walked over — she'd happened to read about exactly this topic.
"What that half-elf does is called being a message runner," Kikakujou Mary said softly, explaining.
"I saw records of it in the Orario Chronicles." "Large Familia expeditions that head to the deeper floors are sometimes down there for months at a stretch." "Or adventurers who've been badly hurt — like that werewolf just now — who can't move freely and can't get back to the surface right away." "They need to pass urgent word to their Familia's headquarters on the surface." "Things like requesting backup, supply runs, or just sending word that they're safe and forwarding money they've earned." "When they can't go up themselves —" "they pay people like him — runners who specialize in shuttling between the safe floors and the surface, acting as couriers."
Kikakujou Mary gestured around them.
"These message runners typically have extremely high agility — they're specialists at fleeing and evading monsters." "It's a trade that grew up here specifically in Rivira, the underground town. Unique to this place."
Tendou Kisara stood nearby.
She listened to Kikakujou Mary's explanation.
Her cool, clear eyes swept across the surrounding scene.
Not far away —
Two adventurers were tucked into a dead corner behind a well-hidden tent, exchanging a fistful of coins for an unknown powder wrapped tight in black cloth.
Diagonally across, at the open doorway of a rundown tavern that didn't even have a proper door, three men armed with axes and greatswords were shoving each other, trading curses, on the verge of drawing steel over an uneven split of battle loot.
People passing by didn't spare them a glance and simply detoured around.
No guards. No Guild intervention.
In this underground Dungeon town that called itself a safe floor, the only rule was the fragile balance maintained by the coin in your pocket and the weapon at your hip — a balance that could collapse at any moment.
"What a cesspool."
Amou Kirukiru's voice came from the front.
She had stopped walking at some point, arms crossed over her chest.
Those narrow black eyes were filled with undisguised contempt for the scene before her — the reek of money and the low-level scheming of it all.
Compared to standing here watching adventurers squabble and backstab each other over pennies, the air here just felt suffocating to her.
Nowhere near as satisfying as cutting through the maze's corridors and caving in a monster's skull with her bare hands, tearing apart those massive bodies.
"Let's go."
Amou Kirukiru didn't spare another glance at the scene around her.
She set off, long legs eating up the distance, heading straight down the main street toward the exit at the far edge of Rivira.
"Nothing worth seeing in this dump."
No one in the group had any objections to that.
Onigawara Rin shrugged and fell into step behind her.
They'd come down to the eighteenth floor partly out of curiosity — to see for themselves what this oft-mentioned important waystation actually looked like. They'd seen it now.
And that was enough reason to have no desire to linger any longer in this lawless place.
The group followed that packed-dirt road.
Before long, they had left the noisy din of Rivira behind.
They stepped back into the vast underground forest canopied by the light of the ceiling crystals.
Following a dirt path clearly worn down by adventurers over many years of footfall, the group walked for about a few minutes.
The dense, towering vegetation around them gradually thinned.
The view ahead opened up considerably.
A flat expanse of meadow appeared — not small at all in area.
The soft green grass glowed with life under the light from above.
Not far across the meadow, a crystal-clear stream wound its way past, filling the air with the pleasant sound of gentle running water.
A sight like this, no matter how many times you saw it, made you forget you were buried hundreds of meters underground.
"Let's take a short rest here."
Kikakujou Mary pointed toward a few clean, flat rocks by the stream.
The group made their way over.
They set their weapons down to the side.
The Holy Emperor walked to the edge of the stream and crouched down.
She cupped both pale hands together, scooped up a palmful of cool water, and splashed it against her face.
The water washed away the thin film of fatigue that had accumulated over the walk.
"No matter how many times I see it,"
The Holy Emperor took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the droplets on her cheeks. She raised her head.
Those pale violet eyes gazed up at the massive glowing crystals overhead and at the endless forest stretching into the distance.
"The Dungeon is just... incomprehensible to me." "That something like this can exist deep underground — nurturing an entirely self-contained world of its own."
"Truly."
Hanasaka Warabi had also dropped down from the black bear Kyoubou's back.
She reached into the leather pouch at her hip and felt around inside.
She pulled out the sheepskin map she'd bought at a roadside stall in Orario.
Unfolded it.
Spread it flat on the smooth rock.
She traced the route with her finger a few times.
Finally, her finger stopped on a spot marked with a tree symbol.
"I had a look at the markings on the map just now," Hanasaka Warabi said, raising her head.
"The entrance to the nineteenth floor of the Dungeon is actually not very far from this meadow where we are right now." "Just through the forest ahead."
She glanced up at the largest white crystal in the center of the ceiling.
Its light was noticeably less blinding than when they'd first entered — it had dimmed somewhat.
This was how the eighteenth floor tracked the outside time of day: the crystals' brightness cycled in sync with the surface's day and night.
"By the look of the light, the surface time is probably around two or three in the afternoon."
"Since we came down this time mainly to familiarize the newer members with the environment — no subjugation quest to complete, traveling light — "
Hanasaka Warabi rolled the map back up and tucked it into her pack.
She looked over at the rest of the group, resting on the rocks.
"What do you all think —"
"Should we take a small detour on the way back, just to see what the entrance to the nineteenth floor actually looks like?"
"If we only peek at the edge of the entrance and don't go in, then turn around and push the pace, we should be able to get back to the surface well before dark."
The proposal landed.
The girls exchanged looks with each other.
Onigawara Rin rubbed her chin, thought it over briefly, and was the first to nod.
"I'm in."
"We came all this way — it'd feel like a waste not to at least lay eyes on what the Great Tree Labyrinth looks like."
Tendou Kisara reached out and wrapped a hand around the hilt of her cursed blade at her side, signaling she had no objections either.
Everyone was in agreement. No time was wasted.
The group gathered their gear.
And so — having reached the eighteenth floor of the Dungeon — the group crossed the flat meadow and officially stepped into the connecting passage leading down to the nineteenth floor.
The terrain underwent a complete transformation.
The hard stone walls of solid rock that had defined the passages above were gone entirely.
In their place rose massive, gnarled tree roots and enormous intertwining vines growing in every direction.
The air here was notably more humid than the floor above.
The ground was blanketed in a layer of thick, short grass, and dense greenery crowded in on all sides, nearly blocking the line of sight.
"Wow, so this is the Great Tree Labyrinth."
Taking in the sight, Onigawara Rin and Kikakujou Mary and the others let out sounds of open amazement.
However.
Amou Kirukiru, for her part, didn't show much interest in the exotic natural scenery around her.
The lightweight armor fitted close to her body gave off faint metallic sounds with each stride, tracing the silhouette of a tall frame coiled with explosive power.
Something seemed to occur to her. Still walking, she turned her head and glanced back toward Tendou Kisara, who was walking slightly ahead and to one side of her.
"By the way —"
Amou Kirukiru spoke.
"Earlier, on the seventeenth floor — when you drew your blade and cut down those two Minotaurs —"
"I saw it clearly."
"In the instant you swung, there was already a condensed, almost tangible blade of aura extending from the edge."
"You deliberately reined it in — didn't let it go all the way."
"I'm curious."
"If you hadn't held back at all and swung with everything you had —"
"Your Sword Aura —"
"What would its maximum output look like?"
At that question —
The attention of Onigawara Rin, Hanasaka Warabi, and the others up ahead snapped over instantly.
They turned their heads one after another, ears practically perking up.
Because when it came to Tendou Kisara's strength — they had always been intensely curious about it themselves.
What was the true extent of Tendou Kisara's power, now that she had achieved the rank of full mastery — all secrets transmitted?
Hearing Amou Kirukiru's question, Tendou Kisara stopped walking.
Black hair slid forward along her neck and shoulder.
She slowly lowered her eyes.
Her gaze settled on the hilt of the heirloom cursed blade at her hip — the Killer Blade: Snow Shadow.
"If I didn't need to account for the cost, and released the Tendou Blade-Draw Art: Zero Form at full power —"
Tendou Kisara's fingers brushed lightly over the blade.
"— one stroke." "Would be enough to bisect the body of a Level 4 Coelenterate."
"A Level 4 Coelenterate?"
Onigawara Rin and the others blinked, momentarily thrown.
They'd heard the term 'Coelenterate' the night before and knew it was what creatures from their original world were called. But —
Having never seen one themselves, none of them had any real sense of the scale.
"How big is a Level 4 Coelenterate, exactly? Or — how tough is it?"
Onigawara Rin couldn't help but ask for specifics.
Tendou Kisara raised her head.
She thought for a moment.
Then she extended a hand and gestured into the air.
"Picture something like a giant beast, tens of meters tall."
"The hide is so hard that ordinary artillery shells can't punch through it."
"..."
The moment those words landed, the passage of the Great Tree Labyrinth they had just entered fell absolutely silent.
Onigawara Rin's jaw dropped and wouldn't close. A dry, strangled noise came from her throat.
Up on the black bear Kyoubou's back, Hanasaka Warabi's hand gave a sharp jerk.
The sheepskin map she'd been looking at slipped from her fingers and disappeared into the bear's fur.
Kikakujou Mary sucked in a sharp breath, her water-blue eyes wide as she stared at Kisara.
Tens of meters tall.
A hide that artillery couldn't breach.
Plus vitality that made it a nightmare to kill.
Didn't that mean —
Onigawara Rin and Kikakujou Mary and the rest had never witnessed the power of the Dungeon's floor boss, the Goliath on the seventeenth floor, in person. But —
As people who had come from the modern world, they understood very well just how devastating artillery fire was.
Which meant —
As long as Tendou Kisara drew her blade and went all out — she could cut something with the combat power roughly equivalent to a floor boss, the Goliath they had yet to encounter —
— clean in half?!
And that was her power before she'd received God's Grace.
Now that she had Grace — and had gained several of those profoundly extreme killing techniques on top of it — just how far beyond that had she gone?
Good lord.
Hearing that concrete comparison laid out, Onigawara Rin, Kikakujou Mary, and the others felt a wave of defeat wash over them.
As for Amou Kirukiru, who had brought up the topic in the first place —
After hearing that answer —
The wild, ferocious light deep in her eyes blazed instantly hotter.
"Interesting."
"Someday, when we get back — if we get the chance —"
"You absolutely have to give me a proper fight!"
Amou Kirukiru fixed her stare on Tendou Kisara, not bothering in the slightest to conceal the nature of the battle-hungry creature she was.
"..."
"Mm."
Just as Tendou Kisara gave a quiet nod and opened her mouth to reply —
The small, delicate girl who had been walking silently in the center of the group the whole time — white cloth over her eyes, the Named Blade: White Heron cradled in both arms —
— Inaba Tsukuyo —
— suddenly stopped walking.
Those soft, pale ears gave a gentle twitch.
"Someone's coming."
Inaba Tsukuyo spoke up directly, cutting through the group's exchange.
"Footsteps — quite a few of them. Coming from around that bend in the tree roots ahead."
Then, Inaba Tsukuyo turned her head slightly and shared what she'd heard in rapid sequence.
"Eleven people total." "Going by how heavy the steps are and the sound of armor grinding together — ten men, one woman, essentially all of them fully armed." "And also..."
The white cloth–like brow of Inaba Tsukuyo furrowed faintly.
"The footsteps of the one at the front are very light, but the heartbeat is extremely steady."
"The person leading them has a powerful presence."
"Comparing them to the adventurers we've run into over these past few days — it's most likely someone at Level 4 or higher."
The group had still been debating Sword Aura a moment ago. Hearing Inaba Tsukuyo's razor-precise intelligence report, their expressions sobered at once.
In a place like the Dungeon, where death could come at any moment, encountering an unfamiliar large group — especially one led by a fighter of unknown strength —
And on top of that, their own group was made up entirely of conspicuously attractive young women.
Staying alert was non-negotiable.
"Get ready."
Kikakujou Mary's voice dropped low.
Onigawara Rin's palm went straight to her sword hilt.
Amou Kirukiru lowered her crossed arms from her chest, shifted her weight subtly forward, and fixed a cold stare on the bend in the passage ahead.
The Holy Emperor, surrounded and shielded in the center of the group, watched her companions shift into combat readiness in an instant — and her own shoulders drew tight with tension.
A few minutes later.
"Thump, thump, thump..."
The disorganized footsteps grew steadily clearer.
A group of more than ten people rounded the corner formed by a massive tree root.
At the front walked a tall man.
Black hair.
His upper face was hidden behind a pair of semi-transparent smoky-lens goggles.
He wore a black longcoat, somewhat worn but clearly of exceptional quality, and held a spear in one hand — carried loosely at his side, point down — emanating a dark crimson, ominous aura.
— It was none other than the captain of the Ikelos Familia, Level 5.
"The Savage" — Dix Perdix.
As Dix led his men out from behind the bend, he walked straight into the wary, combat-ready group of young women.
Still roughly a dozen or so meters between them.
His pace didn't falter for an instant. His gaze, behind those goggles, simply swept across the striking group of young women —
Especially when it passed over the massive black bear Kyoubou, and over the constant killing aura radiating from Amou Kirukiru and Tendou Kisara —
The corners of his mouth pressed down slightly.
He said nothing. He hoisted the spear he'd been trailing point-down up onto his shoulder.
And with that, he led his ten subordinates —
— silently hugging the opposite wall of the passage —
— and passed the Haimer Familia group by, maintaining a short but deliberate gap between them.
...
Once the distance had stretched to several dozen meters — both groups entirely out of each other's line of sight —
Walking behind Dix was a broad, bald, heavily tattooed man with a dark eye-socket tattoo and wearing a brown leather vest, lugging a greatsword with a chipped tip. He couldn't help but glance back, rubbing his shaved head.
"Hey, Dix."
The bald man, Gran, pitched his voice low, disbelief bleeding through.
"Those people back there — that has to be the Haimer Familia, the ones that have been making waves up on the surface for the past couple of days."
"That absurdly huge black bear — no mistaking it."
"Didn't think they'd only been in the Dungeon a few days and they're already diving to the nineteenth floor!"
"There's been talk on the eighteenth floor these past few days — apparently the women in that group are all carrying named blades forged by the Hephaestus Familia."
"Should we find an opportunity to..."
"Don't get any ideas about the Haimer Familia, Gran."
At those words, Dix ahead suddenly stopped walking and turned around.
His gaze, from behind those semi-transparent smoky goggles, reached straight over the heads of the men between them and landed squarely on the bald man Gran.
"Ikelos personally warned me — the patron deity of that group is a lunatic."
"If we want to keep running our monster trading business down here without trouble —"
"we don't touch anyone from that Familia."
"Sure, we usually treat what Ikelos says as background noise —"
"but for a concrete warning like that, we actually listen."
"Besides, we came down here with real business to handle."
"Heading deeper to capture those monsters with intelligence — that's our actual big score."
"Absolutely no reason to complicate things over a few weapons."
"Understood."
Gran immediately nodded and backed down.
And with that —
Dix and his ten-odd men didn't linger another moment.
Hugging the passage wall, they quickly disappeared into the depths of the tangled tree roots.
But little did they know —
On the other side of that passage —
Inaba Tsukuyo's small, soft, delicate ears gave two faint tremors.
Her specialized hearing had captured every single word of that conversation from dozens of meters away, without missing a syllable.
"What's the matter, Tsukuyo?"
Kikakujou Mary was the first to notice something was off with Inaba Tsukuyo.
She stepped closer and followed the direction Tsukuyo's face was turned — and saw nothing but the shadowy depths of enormous tree roots.
"Have they gone far enough?"
"Yes, they're gone."
Inaba Tsukuyo gave a small nod.
Then she turned her face toward the group.
"But — I heard something."
"Heard something?"
The Holy Emperor walking nearby paused.
"But... they'd already walked that far away — we couldn't even hear their footsteps anymore."
That group had gone at least several dozen meters off, and on top of that, the Dungeon's ambient noise was everywhere. At that kind of distance, how could any normal person possibly hear a whispered conversation?
At the Holy Emperor's question, Onigawara Rin came over and dropped a hand on the Holy Emperor's shoulder.
"Your Imperial Highness, this is something you might not know about."
"Tsukuyo has lost her sight — but her perception is the strongest among all of us."
"Forget a few dozen meters — even across a few streets, if she wants to listen in, she can hear a pin drop on the ground crystal clear."
The Holy Emperor and Tendou Kisara exchanged a glance.
Both of their eyes flashed with the same disbelief.
A perceptive ability that terrifying actually existed.
"So — what did you hear?"
Amou Kirukiru had her arms folded, generally uninterested in other people's chatter — but seeing Inaba Tsukuyo's unusually serious expression, she was curious in spite of herself.
"They said they have business down here."
"They're going deeper — to capture monsters with intelligence. Trading in monsters is their real operation."
The words hit.
Every single person froze where they stood.
Slack-jawed. Utterly dumbfounded.
Even Amou Kirukiru lowered her folded arms, a flash of disbelief crossing her eyes.
"Mon... sters... with intelligence?"
"There are monsters in the Dungeon that actually have intelligence? I thought monsters were just mindless killing machines."
"And — trading monsters?"
"Is that kind of thing even legal in Orario?"
The Holy Emperor's face was a mask of shock as she turned to Kikakujou Mary.
Kikakujou Mary shook her head immediately.
"Absolutely not legal."
"Outside of the Ganesha Familia's annual Monster Festival — where, with the Guild's special approval, live monsters are brought to the surface as part of taming performances —"
"any private individual carrying a live monster out of the Dungeon is a strictly prohibited serious crime."
"Once discovered, the entire Familia faces severe Guild sanctions."
"Then how are they getting them out?"
Amou Kirukiru cut to the most critical question.
"The entrance above is right under Babel Tower, guarded by a huge number of people."
"They can't possibly just walk out the front door carrying live monsters, right?"
That was a fair point.
The question gave everyone pause.
After all, the Babel Tower entrance was the only publicly known passage in or out of the Dungeon.
If a live monster were carried through there, the Guild's people couldn't possibly be blind enough to miss it.
Unless —
"Unless the Dungeon has other exits to the surface that nobody knows about."
Kikakujou Mary offered a deduction that sent a chill down everyone's spine the moment it was spoken.
The group looked at each other.
Everyone felt that the waters of Orario ran far, far deeper than any of them had imagined.
"But..."
"It's getting late. If we stay any longer, it'll be dark on the surface before we make it back." "We've already reached the nineteenth floor — we've seen what we came to see."
"As for those people —"
"Tsukuyo already said it herself: there are a lot of them, and the one leading them is definitely not low-level."
"This whole thing — underground black operations, a possible unknown exit — it's a problem that's way above our pay grade."
Onigawara Rin turned to face the group.
"Rather than acting on our own —" "We don't know the nineteenth floor's Great Tree Labyrinth at all — chasing after them blindly in here would get us ambushed."
"We should get back as fast as we can and tell Kami-sama everything exactly as it happened."
"Leave it to Kami-sama to decide what to do."
"Kami-sama's judgment is always sharper than ours, after all."
"Yeah!"
Hearing Onigawara Rin's words, everyone nodded in agreement.
Their minds made up, the group had no intention of lingering any longer at the edge of this dark, damp forest.
The Kyoubou turned its massive body around.
The group turned back.
Following the path they'd come by, they headed for home.
____
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