In the milky-white passage lit only by dim phosphorescence, a smothering silence spread out, until it was hard to breathe.
Lefiya had that hard-to-breathe feeling as she looked at the silent Ais, her heart full of worry and uneasy alarm.
Remembering how Ais had been just now, Lefiya kept starting to speak and stopping, stopping and starting again, and in the end she froze there because she didn't know how to broach it.
Tiona and Tione were looking at Ais with complicated expressions too, no telling what they were thinking.
All three of them were seeing Ais in that state for the first time, and it just felt like the Ais of that moment was completely different from her usual self.
The usual Ais was quiet and reserved, seemed extremely cool by nature, doll-like and devoid of feeling, but those who knew her well knew that Ais was actually very rich in feeling and simply wasn't good at expressing it.
They were the ones in all of Loki Familia closest to Ais, and the ones who knew her best. How could they not know what the real Ais was like?
But the Ais of just now had felt so unfamiliar to them, and so frightening too, not like her at all.
Most important of all, the Ais in that state had been able to burst out with such astonishing power.
That was a power they knew nothing about.
Yet whether it was Tiona, Tione, or Lefiya, they all felt in their hearts that a pitch-black power like that was absolutely nothing good.
They wanted to ask something but didn't know how to broach it.
Because they'd been through it themselves, they understood clearly that since Ais had always kept a power like that hidden, there had to be some private reason behind it that couldn't just be spoken aloud.
Of the people present, apart from the pure and untainted Lefiya, nearly all of them had pasts and secrets that couldn't be told to outsiders.
So Tiona and Tione opened their mouths, and in the end chose to ask nothing at all.
Leo didn't ask either.
Of course, in his case it wasn't that he couldn't get the question out, but that he'd known all along where that power came from.
That power just now... was that Avenger?
Avenger, the only Skill Ais possessed, the Skill she'd kept sealed all this time because it was too dangerous, had unexpectedly revived today under these circumstances, along with Ais's feelings going out of control.
Remembering Ais's showing just now, Leo had to admit that this power really was extremely strong. Once activated, it could probably surpass her Ariel-activated self with ease.
That was quite an astonishing thing.
After all, the Ais who'd activated Ariel had the strength to challenge across Levels, and going by Status alone she even exceeded Lv.6 fighters like Finn. She was strong by any measure, yet the Ais who'd activated Avenger was stronger than even that state of hers, which shows just how astonishing this Skill's effect was.
But this power was also just as they'd anticipated back then: strong it might be, yet the danger was real danger too.
You could tell from the name alone. It was the made-manifest form of the hatred Ais had always kept buried deep in her heart. By sealing it away, Ais had in effect concealed the hatred she'd always hidden inside, and that was how she'd become the Doll Princess in people's minds.
But once it started to come unsealed, that meant the hatred Ais had always hidden in her heart was being released again.
The power of hatred was precisely the fuel used to drive Avenger.
The stronger Avenger's effect grew, the more fiercely the hatred in Ais's heart would blaze, and in the end it would only set her alight from within, turning Ais into a monster of hatred and stripping her of all reason.
At that thought, Leo reached out and took Ais's hand.
The silent Ais started, turned her head, and saw Leo staring straight at her, saw the extremely rare unease and worry in his eyes.
That eased, somehow, the heart Ais had kept so smothered these past days.
Right then, Ais wordlessly held Leo's hand, and said nothing.
Watching this scene, apart from Lefiya, who widened her eyes slightly and puffed out her cheeks for no clear reason, both Tiona and Tione suddenly broke into relieved smiles.
Well, with Leo there watching over her, nothing much should go wrong.
"Today's attacking's about done too. Shouldn't we be heading back?"
Tiona changed the subject as if turning the page completely on what had just happened, steering it straight to their attack plan.
The look of her, it was as if she were saying nothing at all had just happened.
"We really should head back." Tione nodded, taking her meaning. "The packs are just about full, and the week we originally planned on is nearly up. It's about time we went home."
"...I've got no objections." Lefiya glared at Leo and Ais's joined hands, sounding sullen. "My training plan's basically done too, so leaving the Dungeon right now is perfect."
"Right, right." Tiona nodded again and again. "We didn't manage to clear the debt, but there's always coming back another time."
On this run, Leo, Ais, and Lefiya had all come for real-combat training, while Tiona and Tione had come to make money.
After a week of attacking, once all the loot earned in that time was sold off, each person should be able to split off ten or twenty million valis. For Tiona and Tione, who owed a debt of over a hundred million, that was only a drop in the bucket, but just as Tiona said, there was always coming back another time.
If you could make ten or twenty million valis in a week, then making forty or fifty million over a month should be no problem, and in about two months they could clear the debt.
And that was just diving to Floor 37. If they could dive to deeper floors later, the money would only come faster.
Clearing the debt in a month or two, so there was no need to be in any rush.
In any case, nobody would think a first-class adventurer couldn't pay back money, never mind that this first-class adventurer was also a member of the city's strongest Familia, so no one would come knocking to collect, and Tiona and Tione could pay it back at their leisure.
A week, that was the attack duration set from the start, and now it really was time to head home.
Only...
"Before that, there's one more thing I have to do."
Leo, holding Ais's hand, suddenly spoke up, drawing everyone's attention.
"What thing?"
Tiona immediately asked, curious.
"I'm sure you've all noticed, I'm just about ready to level up." Leo didn't hide his thoughts, saying it straight out. "Right now I just need one last great feat to level up, so I want to fit that final piece into place."
At these words, everyone's expressions shifted slightly.
"You want to challenge for a great feat here?"
Tione frowned.
This was no small matter.
Challenging for a great feat meant, in other words, challenging a powerful enemy stronger than yourself, and one strong enough to let you rank up to Lv.5 and become a first-class adventurer at that. It was absolutely not an opponent you could take on carelessly.
The high-grade excelia needed to rank up to Lv.5 was more than anyone imagined. It wasn't a matter of just finding some enemy stronger than yourself to challenge, or else there wouldn't be fewer than forty first-class adventurers in all of Orario, and Raul, Anakitty, Alicia, and the others wouldn't still be stuck at Lv.4 to this day, unable to rank up to Lv.5.
These few weren't much behind Ais and the others in seniority.
Ais had joined Loki Familia at the age of seven, nine years ago by now, and Raul and the others had been in Loki Familia for seven or eight years too. In that time they'd entered the Deepest Floors with the expedition force who knows how many times, and brought down who knows how many powerful enemies alongside the team, including the various Floor Bosses, accumulating a huge amount of high-grade excelia as a result. And yet they still hadn't leveled up, which shows just how hard ranking up to Lv.5 was.
If Leo wanted to complete a great feat by challenging a powerful enemy and achieve his level-up, he'd have to pick an opponent far stronger than himself.
How dangerous fighting an existence like that was went without saying.
This was the kind of thing where you could die at any second, which left everyone no choice but to be serious, and to change expression.
Especially at a time like this, with the location being Floor 37.
Anyone who wasn't a fool would understand who the opponent Leo had picked was.
"Y-you're not thinking of challenging Floor 37's Floor Boss, Udaeus, are you?"
Lefiya thought of it too and cried out involuntarily.
At once Ais also looked sharply at Leo, no longer moving her gaze away.
Floor 37's Floor Boss, Udaeus.
Its spawn interval was almost up, and before long it would reappear.
It was precisely because of its existence that Leo and the others' original plan had been to attack here for a week and head home before Udaeus respawned, to avoid running into danger.
And now Leo had set his sights on this Floor Boss?
"Are you insane!?"
At this, even Tiona went pale with shock.
"That's Udaeus we're talking about!"
A Floor Boss classified at Lv.6, was that something a Lv.4 second-class adventurer could pick a fight with?
The man had a death wish, plain and simple!
"Does it make a difference?" Leo spread his hands with put-on ease. "Didn't I challenge a Lv.4 Floor Boss back when I was Lv.2? I challenged across two Levels back then, and it's still challenging across two Levels now, so not much difference, right?"
"There's a huge difference!" Tione said without any tact. "How could Goliath possibly compare to Udaeus?"
They might both be crossing two Levels, but how could the gap between Lv.2 and Lv.4 possibly be bigger than the gap between Lv.4 and Lv.6?
What's more, Udaeus wasn't an ordinary Lv.6 either.
Though this Floor Boss was classified as Lv.6, its latent Status had always been above Lv.6.
Just like how Goliath, though classified as Lv.4, was an Endurance-specialized Floor Boss whose Endurance parameter alone exceeded Lv.4 and reached the Lv.5 level, Udaeus, as the Floor Boss of Floor 37, was even more extreme than that Floor Boss of Floor 17. It had multiple abilities that exceeded Lv.6, and special abilities and special mechanics on top of that. Never mind Lv.4, even a Lv.5 first-class adventurer, taking a hit from it, would probably struggle to escape a fatal wound.
That wasn't something a Lv.4 could handle, wasn't even something a Lv.5 or even a Lv.6 could handle.
Even for a Lv.7, whether they could handle it was still an unknown.
At the very least, an ordinary Lv.7 facing it would definitely be in for a rough time.
Lv.4?
To Udaeus, that didn't even count as an ant.
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