Silver sword light erupted as adventurers unleashed a roaring tide.
Members of Loki Familia, Ganesha Familia, Hephaestus Familia... all adventurers raised fervent battle cries, brandishing their weapons as they charged toward the demonic fortress's entrance.
Without any resistance, they easily broke through into the first underground floor.
Bzzzt—!
But at that moment, magic circles manifested across the ceiling of the mucus-coated passageways.
Crimson magic circles unleashed flames, while golden ones summoned lightning!
"Magic bombardment right from the start?!"
Tiona from the sixth squad shouted in wide-eyed disbelief.
"Wasn't the corrupted spirit fragment supposed to be busy chanting that Hexagonal Ring thing? How can it still cast magic?!"
She yelled while dodging the magical assaults.
"Could it be... this entire labyrinth has been parasitized by the Green Flesh?"
Tione's expression turned gravely serious.
"An unexpected situation already at the outset!"
As patches of green flesh pulsed with light, magic circles emerged one after another, throwing every squad into chaotic disarray.
After each magic circle appeared, the glowing section of green flesh rapidly decayed.
"Destroy the Green Flesh—that's the mana source for the magic circles!"
Riveria sharply identified the anomaly and shouted through the eye-crystal.
"Understood!"
Cheerful responses came from other squads.
"Ora!"
Bete kicked forward violently, smashing an about-to-glow patch of green flesh in the corner.
"Mr. Bete, that's so crude!"
"Exactly why you're trash! Crude is what we need now!"
Bete loudly berated Raul Nord behind him.
"—Tempest!"
Ais chanted softly.
An emerald gale howled forth, scouring every trace of green flesh from the entire passageway.
"Lefiya—"
She instinctively glanced backward.
Only cheering adventurers and trusting gazes met her eyes—no golden-haired elf stood there.
I see.
Without realizing it, Lefiya had changed from before.
She used to tremble while hiding behind Ais, but now she'd stepped onto the battlefield willingly—no longer a weakling needing protection.
Remembering Lefiya's determined eyes before their departure, Ais felt a complicated pang in her chest.
She couldn't tell whether this change was good or bad.
Having found their strategy, the stronger adventurers shielded the weaker ones as all squads advanced in orderly fashion.
While the assault teams pushed through the labyrinth...
A certain crimson-haired goddess reached its deepest recesses.
She hadn't used any of the six surface entrances, but had instead sneaked in through the passage connecting to the Dungeon's 18th floor—completely alone, without a single guard.
A helmet covered her head.
Walking through deserted corridors, no magic circles manifested around her for some reason.
Thus she swaggered all the way to the labyrinth's ninth floor, retracing her previous path into the core chamber.
The hole left by Thanatos's departure still gaped in the ceiling.
But the control console hummed with activation.
The crystal flowers used to monitor the labyrinth's movements had been activated, with numerous watery membranes floating midair.
Before the control panel stood a figure.
A presence that had been there even before she arrived.
"Found you, Enyo!"
The crimson-haired chief god—Loki—narrowed her fox-like eyes as she removed the helmet from her head.
Instantly, her form materialized fully within the labyrinth.
"Loki? You actually came here?"
The figure turned, casting a deeply astonished look her way.
"If you die here, the Loki Familia will be finished. Have you no regard for the bigger picture?"
His tone was familiar.
As if he and Loki had known each other for ages.
And indeed, he was Loki's acquaintance.
He had shoulder-length golden hair, enigmatic emerald eyes, and wore a mask-like gentlemanly smile while gripping a gem-encrusted cane.
"Isn't it just you here, Enyo? Or should I call you by your real name?"
Loki spoke slowly.
And revealed the true name of the divine being before her.
"—Dionysus!"
That golden-haired, green-eyed male god.
The very Dionysus believed to have long since returned to heaven!
"My, my. I didn't expect to be exposed."
He stepped down from the control panel.
Utterly unfazed by the unmasking, he even smiled brightly, clearly delighted.
"Care to enlighten me? Where did I slip up?"
He even asked Loki with genuine curiosity.
"Everywhere! Your scheme was full of holes!"
Loki curled her lip in a derisive sneer.
"To drag my Familia into this, you overplayed your hand from the very beginning!"
Dionysus adjusted his collar, all ears.
After the Monsterphilia incident, while investigating the man-eating flower monsters, Loki coincidentally encountered Dionysus. Under the pretense of avenging Familia children, he naturally formed an alliance with her.
That much was unremarkable—the problem lay in Dionysus's subsequent actions.
He deliberately steered Loki's suspicions toward the Guild and the Ganesha Familia to incite conflict between them. He also subtly guided her to investigate the second entrance at Lake Lolog... In hindsight, many of Loki's actions were nudged into place by Dionysus's "casual" suggestions.
"But the most damning evidence was your one and only subordinate."
Loki raised a finger, her smile mocking.
"That masked woman—she made one too many unnecessary moves, didn't she?"
For instance, appearing on the 58th floor during the Loki Familia's expedition, launching a single attack before vanishing inexplicably.
Or when the Loki Familia first entered the artificial labyrinth, she coincidentally appeared just as they considered detouring, voluntarily opening the orichalcum gate.
And most tellingly, while Finn and others escaped the artificial maze under Eiji's guidance, she "accidentally" discovered the underground waterway exit with Riveria and Lefiya, bringing them back to the surface.
Any single oddity could be dismissed as coincidence. But all together? That was deliberate design.
"Because your subordinate, that masked individual, wanted to ensure Lefiya's safety, so they deliberately brought her out of the artificial labyrinth, right?"
Loki spoke with a complicated expression.
From the moment she safely returned to the exit with Riveria and Lefiya, both Loki and Finn had sensed something was off.
Because that girl clearly knew the labyrinth's pathways.
Why would she be so familiar with the maze? That became the biggest question.
The answer was obvious, of course—she was the mole.