Chapter 82: The 59th Floor!
"Hey! Bete! Get out of the way! I clearly had my eye on that one first!"
Tiona shouted at Bete, who had just kicked a wyvern to death.
"Hah? Who cares, idiot!"
"Tione, you say something about this bastard werewolf too... huh? Where's Tione?"
As she spoke, Tiona suddenly realized that Tione, who had been behind her just moments ago, had already run far away at some point.
The monsters along her path had been killed cleanly, and Tiona could even hear roars coming from the distance.
"Hahaha!!! All of you, die! You've been screeching nonstop since earlier, and it's annoying as hell!!"
On the intense battlefield, brutal monsters swung their claws.
Swarms of wyverns fired flame bullets from above, while Valgang Dragons gathered power in the distance.
However, Bete, Tiona, and the others did not take even half a step back.
Instead, they were busy accusing each other of stealing the prey they had already set their eyes on.
When Finn and the others finally arrived at the 58th Floor, this strange scene was what they saw.
Finn even saw a trace of... excitement in their eyes.
"In any case, let's deal with the monsters in front of us first, Riveria."
After failing to understand the situation, Finn spoke to Riveria.
"Wynn Fimbulvetr!"
A massive blizzard blew in from the northern side of the floor and froze every monster in sight.
The adventurers immediately seized the chance and quickly shattered the ice blocks before their companions could steal them.
After all, in Bete and the others' eyes, these were no longer ice blocks.
They were motionless experience orbs.
For a moment, the only sound left on the entire floor was crack, crack, crack.
However, there was one exception.
"Captain!! You're here!!"
Tione, who was still in an excited state, immediately understood that Finn's reinforcements had arrived when she saw Riveria's magic.
She put down the monster corpse she had been carrying and ignored the ice around her.
The moment she spotted the blond Pallum, she skipped happily toward Finn.
However, with the blood splattered across her body and face, the sight looked strange no matter how anyone looked at it.
"Can you explain the current situation to us...?"
Finn, who was already used to this side of Tione, asked her calmly.
Tione naturally would not waste this rare chance to speak with him.
She quickly told them everything that had happened after they arrived on the 58th Floor.
After hearing it, Finn looked somewhat helpless.
Meanwhile, Ais left behind the words, "I'll go support them," before rushing out as well.
Thanks to the adventurers' tireless efforts, shattered ice soon covered the ground of the 58th Floor.
The monsters that spawned from the walls again were immediately fought over and wiped out, turning into piles of dust on the ground.
After the monsters had appeared continuously for so long, they seemed to enter a long rest period.
There was no movement around them, and the holes blasted open by the Valgang Dragons above had also been repaired by the Dungeon's self-healing ability.
The group seized this chance and sat down on the ground before the large hole leading to the 59th Floor, taking a rare rest.
The members of the Hephaestus Familia quickly used this opportunity to perform emergency repairs on the adventurers' weapons.
Torajirou Shiro handed out food from the Gift Card to everyone.
He also took some for himself and chewed on it.
According to Shiro's sense of time, they seemed to have spent half a day killing monsters on the 58th Floor.
Fortunately, adventurers had absurdly high stamina.
Even after such an intense battle, they could still appear relatively at ease.
"Next is the 59th Floor, right?"
Shiro said while biting into bread he had bought from the Hostess of Fertility.
The 59th Floor held special meaning for the Loki Familia.
The two strongest Familias in Orario at present were the Loki Familia and the Freya Familia.
Both of their current exploration limits were the 58th Floor.
Reaching the 59th Floor might not prove that they had surpassed Freya, but it would still raise the morale within the Familia by quite a lot.
"Mm... but... something feels strange..."
Unlike the others, Finn did not sit down to rest.
He stood alone before the large hole, his back facing the adventurer team.
According to the records left behind by the Zeus Familia, the 59th Floor should be the [Glacier Territory].
It was also supposed to have terrifying cold air capable of freezing even a first-class adventurer's limbs.
Because of that, Finn had bought a large amount of cold-resistant [Salamander Wool].
And yet, despite being a floor with such terrible cold, they could not feel even the slightest chill while standing at the entrance.
Naturally, they did not think the information from the Zeus Familia was wrong, especially when so much accurate Dungeon information had come from them.
But if the problem was not with the Zeus Familia's information, then that meant...
"Something we can't predict has definitely happened on the 59th Floor."
Finn spoke in a low voice.
"And I have a feeling that we'll encounter that red-haired tamer again this time."
When Shiro and the others had jumped down to the 58th Floor, Finn's team, who came rushing over later, had also encountered the tamer's companion along the way.
The other party wore a mask with mysterious patterns on it and commanded worm monsters to block the team's path.
Fortunately, that person was weaker than the red-haired tamer from before.
After a battle, the enemy somehow escaped.
Listening to Finn's words, Ais remembered what the red-haired tamer had said to her several days ago.
"Aria, go to the 59th Floor."
Facing the cave that led underground, Ais tightened her grip on the sword at her waist.
The rest time ended.
Shiro and the others equipped their weapons.
The Salamander Wool they should have worn remained inside Shiro's Gift Card because they still had not felt any cold.
They formed a line and entered the hole in order.
Tap, tap, tap—
Inside the cave covered in darkness, Raul lit a portable magic-stone lamp.
The temperature did not drop.
Instead, because they were in a narrow space, it even felt a bit stuffy.
The wrong information brought a trace of unease to the team.
They suppressed the anxiety in their hearts and advanced silently through the cave.
Finally, light appeared before their eyes.
The adventurers knew that what lay ahead was the unknown, something even the gods had never seen.
With both excitement and unease in their hearts, they finished descending the stairs and arrived at the 59th Floor.
A chilling scene opened before them.
There were no glaciers here.
There were no rivers either.
Inside a chamber even larger than the 58th Floor, countless tall trees stood densely packed together.
Colorful little flowers grew from the ground.
And most importantly—
Just like the scene on the 24th Floor, countless flower buds hung down from the green walls.
The familiar sight made the adventurers who had experienced it before hold their breath.
They still remembered that the man-eating flower monsters had been born from those buds.
At that moment, a sound came from ahead of them.
It was like someone chewing stones inside their mouth, producing sharp grinding noises from time to time.
Facing this strange situation, the adventurers looked toward their commander, Finn.
At this moment, he was frowning deeply, as if thinking about something.
In the end, he gave his order.
"Advance."
Shiro charged at the front of the team and cut down the flowers and plants blocking the way.
His ability was unexpectedly useful in a situation like this.
Everyone moved forward silently along the path he carved open.
At the same time, they observed their surroundings to prevent any monsters from hiding above the trees and launching a sneak attack.
The sound grew louder and louder.
That also meant they were getting closer to whatever was making it.
After more than ten minutes of walking, they finally reached the end of the dense forest.
Strangely, not a single monster had appeared along the way.
But soon, they understood why.
"What... is that...?"
Tiona held her huge double-bladed weapon and muttered as she stared at the scene in the distance.
At the end, the dense forest vanished.
In its place was an open gray land.
On that gray land were countless larvae and Violas.
But that was not what shocked Tiona.
What shocked her was the enormous corpse flower surrounded by the larvae and Violas like they were worshiping a god.
To be more precise, it was an orb monster whose lower body was a giant corpse flower.
…
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