"..."
The world in front of him had turned the color of red lotus flame. Everything he could see was fire, and nothing else.
Leo, having fallen into the vertical shaft, was wrapped head to toe in terrible flames, burning, tongues of fire rising and falling all around him.
A Valgang Dragon's great fireball was the kind of attack that could gravely wound or even burn away a first-class adventurer in a single hit. Even after punching through several floors, obstructed by the ceilings and floors of each one, its power had dropped considerably by the time it reached Floor 52. But the fact that it could tear through that many floors and still reach Floor 52 was itself proof of how frightening that flame's power was. No ordinary adventurer could have blocked it.
And yet Leo, burned by flames of such fearsome power, had taken no injury at all.
He was wearing the Giant's Battle Garb, which could block physical and magic attacks alike, and the hooded cloak also resisted high and low temperatures, giving him more than enough protection. On top of that, Riveria's defensive magic, Veil Breath, was still active, that layer of green light robing him and shutting out nearly all of the fire and heat. With two layers of protection, Leo only looked like he was being burned by the flames. In truth there wasn't a single mark on him. He was completely unharmed.
"Fly like a comet."
Seeing that his body was still falling, Leo chanted his flight magic as he passed through the fire, and starlight bloomed across his whole body.
"Roar!" "Roar, roar!" "Roar, roar, roar!"...
Just as Leo's form came to a halt in midair, wave after wave of dragon roars rang out, the kind that made you want to cover your ears, and he turned his head to look further down.
Down there, in the horizontal tunnels connecting to the vertical shaft like an ant nest, Ill Wyverns came flying out one after another, in flocks, heading toward Leo and roaring as they came, terrifying in their numbers and noise.
"Coming for me?"
Leo's eyes flickered, and his body began to move.
He saw it. Some of the Ill Wyverns had bared their fangs, ready to bite at him, while others spat out searing fire bullets that formed a barrage, blotting out everything as they came.
Those fire bullets were clearly inferior to the Valgang Dragon's great fireball in scale and power, but they made up for it with an extremely fast firing rate. Leo even saw one Ill Wyvern spit out over a dozen fire bullets in an instant, one after another, all of them shooting toward him.
Under that all-covering barrage of fire bullets, Leo accelerated in midair, turning into a brilliant comet, dodging wildly.
That comet swept back and forth like streaming light, veering left and right, rising, dropping, banking, spinning, dragging a long tail of light behind it, like an acrobat performing in midair. Its course was unsteady and its path impossible to catch, and as it carved arcs of light it evaded every incoming fire bullet.
To dodge the fire bullets, Leo even flew into other floors, but the Ill Wyverns kept up the pursuit, a whole flock of flying dragons trailing behind him. If this scene had happened on the surface, it would probably have frightened a good number of people to death.
"Roar!"
One Ill Wyvern burst out of a horizontal tunnel like an ambush, fangs open, biting at the comet sweeping past, only to be blocked by the brilliant starlight.
"Get lost!"
Leo, in comet form, watched this and simply reached out, seized the Ill Wyvern by the horn, and with a burst of raw strength dragged it bodily along and hurled it behind him.
Countless fire bullets landed on that Ill Wyvern one after another, blasting it into pieces.
The comet Leo had become also changed course. He stopped dodging and instead flew straight at the flock, passing through the shredded remains of the Ill Wyvern, closing on the several monsters at the front, and ramming into them head-on.
For a moment it was like a comet striking the earth. That brilliant comet sent one Ill Wyvern after another flying, charging straight through, knocking more than a few of them tumbling toward the ground.
"Roar!" "Roar, roar!" "Roar, roar, roar!"...
Seeing this, the surrounding Ill Wyverns roared in fury and spat fire bullets, but those bullets couldn't even catch up with Leo's tail. All of them were left behind, and the few that did land on him were blocked outright by the protective starlight. They couldn't hurt Leo at all.
"Meteor Dance!"
At last Leo unfolded his magic circle and released a dense, uncountable swarm of meteors, blasting them into the flock of Ill Wyverns.
An unbroken roar of explosions rang through the tunnel-riddled Dragon's Urn, shaking the ceilings of several floors.
The meteors fell like rain, and most of the Ill Wyverns didn't even have time to react before they were run through or blown apart one by one, bursts of starlight blooming in midair, a beautiful sight.
A small number of Ill Wyverns got lucky and dodged the volley, but before they could react a second time the meteors they had avoided suddenly banked back around and slammed into their backs, blasting them until they were covered in wounds and sending them plummeting downward, smoking, alive or dead unknown.
Having dealt with the flock, Leo turned into a comet once more, cutting through the air, flying back toward the shaft he had fallen down, meaning to return to Floor 52 and rejoin his companions.
But when he flew back up, what he saw was a raging storm.
Silver blade-light flashed in midair, and a golden-haired girl wrapped in fierce wind shuttled back and forth in the shaft, cutting down the Ill Wyverns attacking from all sides at a dizzying speed, killing them one after another.
With the blessing of "wind," the girl couldn't fly freely the way Leo could, but she could still sweep briefly through the air. So even inside the shaft she swung her longsword as she pleased, as if gravity didn't apply to her, her blade flickering at extreme speed, taking the head off an Ill Wyvern lunging to bite her, severing the wing of a flying dragon that brushed past, sometimes cutting them clean in two with one sharp strike, dragon blood scattering through the air.
"Ais!"
Leo's expression shifted, and without hesitation he shot forward, flying toward Ais.
Just then an Ill Wyvern roared and brought its claws down at Ais, coming in hard, the attack fierce beyond compare.
This Ill Wyvern was larger than the rest, more than five meters long, and several times faster than an ordinary one. One look was enough to know it was a special individual, different from the common ones, and its potential ability was probably far above that of a normal Ill Wyvern.
Ais twisted her body in midair and raised her silver saber, about to parry that ferocious blow, when her vision blurred and a brilliant comet burst into view.
Leo's form appeared in front of Ais, the starlight around him dispersing to reveal him fully as he stopped accelerating, and the white-platinum sword in his hand slashed out like a flash of light, tracing a half-moon arc, severing the special Ill Wyvern's claws.
"Roar, roar, roar, roar...!"
The Ill Wyvern let out a howl of pain, savage light flaring in its eyes, and without a pause it opened its mouth and spat a fire bullet at Leo, who was right in front of it.
Unfortunately, that fire bullet was intercepted by a silver saber wreathed in gale winds.
Ais flashed in front of Leo and brought her blade down, splitting the incoming fire bullet open on the spot, scattering it into a sky full of sparks.
"Meteor Dance!"
Leo didn't hesitate. He raised his hand and fired off a single meteor.
The meteor was thick as a pillar, shooting straight toward Ais's back, but just as it was about to touch her it rose sharply, then veered again, curving around her body and blasting toward the Ill Wyvern.
The pillar-thick meteor slammed into the clawless Ill Wyvern, reducing it to shredded meat, blowing it apart into a sky full of fragments. It couldn't have been any deader.
The gorgeous starburst even kicked up a hard gust that blew Ais backward, straight into the arms Leo had opened for her.
"Why did you come?"
Leo held the girl's warm, soft body as they fell, and asked.
"...To find you."
Ais let her wind disperse as well and leaned back into Leo's warm embrace, her answer brief and to the point.
That one line was enough for Leo to understand. Most likely this silly girl had seen him fall into the shaft and charged over without a second thought, jumping in after him, which was why she was here.
This girl was always like this. The moment she saw him in danger, she'd come running.
It didn't matter when, and it didn't matter where. It was always the same.
Leo really didn't want to encourage that kind of behavior, but up to now, he had been saved every time by the girl's straightforward way of doing things.
Whether it was facing the female-form monster on Floor 50 back then, or challenging the Floor Boss Udaeus on Floor 37, this girl had done exactly this, charging straight at him and saving him from danger.
So...
"Next time say something first, at least. A signal would do."
Leo said it with a wry smile.
"...Mn."
The faintest possible smile bloomed on Ais's face, but since she had her back to Leo, held in his arms, a certain someone was very unfortunately unable to see that rare sight.
"!!!"
Then both Leo's and Ais's expressions changed.
They felt it. A scorching heat was rising from below, and getting closer.
The two of them looked down, and then they saw it.
At the very bottom of the shaft, at the end of the Dragon's Urn, on Floor 58, several ten-meter red dragons had raised their heads and opened their jaws wide, the flames surging between their fangs gathering into enormous fireballs.
The fireballs were at least five meters across, larger than any of the Ill Wyverns, and the Valgang Dragons fired them all together, turning them into vicious cannons of red lotus flame that vaporized the air and scorched everything as they rose at terrifying speed.
Leo and Ais, falling down the shaft, were their target. Three great fireballs in all, each with horrifying power, capable of blasting through the ceilings of several floors and burning away everything in their path, making Leo and Ais look like tiny ants standing at the mouth of a volcano, about to be swallowed by the erupting red lotus flame.
Facing this...
"Let's go!"
"Mn!"
Leo let go of Ais, flipped himself head-down, and dove, treading on air, going straight at the enormous fireballs without a shred of hesitation.
Ais wrapped herself in wind again, and with that powerful force behind her she became a storm descending from the sky, charging at the fireballs as well.
The first great fireball was cut in two by the great slash of Leo's Starlight, bursting apart and dispersing in all directions.
The second great fireball was run straight through by Ais, who had become an arrow of wind, and it couldn't even explode. The wind simply blew it out of existence.
The third great fireball was destroyed by Leo and Ais raising their weapons at the same time and cutting through it together, sending a surging wave of fire bursting outward and washing over them both.
But for all its considerable power, that great cannonade achieved nothing at all against these two.
Leo was no longer using his flight magic with its protective effect, but the Giant's Battle Garb and the green light robe alone were enough to block that scorching blast of flame. It didn't affect him.
Ais also had Riveria's defensive magic protecting her, and with the wind on top of that, the double protection let her weather the damage perfectly.
Anyone else, even a first-class adventurer, would probably have been out of options by now in such a dangerous spot.
But Leo and Ais could cut their way down, slaughtering countless Ill Wyverns, ignoring the terrifying sniping of the Valgang Dragons, and even at this very moment they could fly back up at any time and escape the danger.
Put it this way: if the ones who had fallen down here had been anyone else, then even veteran Lv.6 powerhouses at the very top like Finn or Gareth could only have watched helplessly as they dropped to the bottom of the Dragon's Urn.
Only Leo and Ais, one with flight magic and one with the ability to fly briefly, could shrug off this danger so easily.
And Leo and Ais happened to be thinking exactly the same thing.
"Let's go straight to Floor 58!"
Leo shouted as he swung his cloak, flicking away every spark, letting himself drop.
He wanted to reach Floor 58 in one go, and tie down the Valgang Dragons there, the ones sniping his companions across floor boundaries, so that Finn and the others would no longer be threatened from below and could take the proper route through the region between Floors 52 and 57 and reach Floor 58 to link up with him.
"Mn!"
Ais was clearly thinking the same, and nodded without hesitation, the wind around her growing more violent, her momentum surging.
The two of them fell all the way down, finally passing through the shaft and arriving at Floor 58.
"Roooooooaaaaaaaaarrrrrr!"
The great red dragons at the bottom of the Dragon's Urn roared at the boy and girl who had descended from above so brazenly, their voices loud and savage.
Before the great red dragons could attack, Leo and Ais both turned themselves into cannonballs and shot downward, slamming into two Valgang Dragons and knocking them to the ground.
A fierce battle was about to break out.
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