The voice flowing from the Oculus on the Guild's main command table froze the entire room. The projection crystal emitted a blurry silhouette from the depths of Floor 60, but it wasn't the visual that shattered the rationality of the gods on the surface. The woman's voice that had just spoken, dissecting the identity of the monster down there, was a voice they knew all too well.
Loki was rooted to her chair. Her usually closed eyes were now wide open, radiating absolute shock. Her fingers pressing against the edge of the table trembled violently.
"A-Alfia..." Loki gritted her teeth, uttering the name as if chanting a curse. Cold sweat drenched the temples of the trickster goddess. "That voice... that is definitely Alfia! How is this possible?! She should have died seven years ago!"
Panic began to spread across the command room. Hestia, holding the connecting Oculus, could only remain silent, not knowing where to begin explaining. Just then, Hermes stepped forward from the corner of the room. The messenger god pressed the brim of his fedora, partially covering his eyes that radiated a rare seriousness.
"Calm down, Loki. What you heard is not an illusion, nor is it a ghost," Hermes said, taking control of the stage.
Loki turned her head roughly. "What do you mean, Hermes?! Do you know something?!"
"Of course I know. I saw it with my own two eyes at the Hestia Familia headquarters," Hermes answered in a heavy tone. He swept his gaze across the other gods present. "The woman who just spoke is indeed the Silence, Alfia. And she is not alone. Zald is also with her."
A suffocating silence instantly gripped the Guild command room. The names Zald and Alfia were taboo, the embodiment of Orario's darkest era when Evilus ran rampant during The Great Feud.
"They are now part of the Barbatos Familia, under the wing of a bard god named Venti," Hermes continued, dropping the information bomb without hesitation. "Zald unleashed the pressure of his power before us. He has highly likely broken through Level 9. While Alfia... her level is completely unpredictable. What's more, Zald has declared a war challenge to all Familias in Orario in place of the canceled Orariopiad festival."
Loki staggered backward, collapsing into her chair. Her reaction was exactly the same as Hermes's earlier. Her mind as a brilliant goddess spun wildly, trying to find the common thread in this logic-shattering puzzle.
"What kind of timeline is this..." Loki muttered, her voice laden with frustration and confusion. "Why are the two of them here? Why did those Evilus executives suddenly appear as allies of Chibi's kid? Hermes, are you absolutely sure they are from a different timeline?!"
"Considering Bell Cranel disappeared in front of millions of people and then returned bringing two monsters from the past who claim him as their nephew..." Hermes smiled bitterly. "I think we have no choice but to throw away our common sense for a while, Loki. Right now, focus on your children down there."
Deep in the depths of Floor 60, beyond the reach of light and hope, Ais Wallenstein's consciousness floated in the void.
Ais stood in the midst of absolute darkness. There were no labyrinth walls, no roaring monsters, no gleam of ice crystals. Only a boundless vacuum.
Where am I? she thought. Her voice didn't come out, only echoing inside her head.
She didn't know where she was. She didn't even know why she ended up in this place. Her last memories were very blurry—a massive magical clash, a nerve-paralyzing poison, and bone-piercing freezing ice.
As she looked down, Ais suddenly realized something odd. Her sword, Desperate, was gone. So was her silver armor. Instead of combat gear, she was wearing a simple dress. Her hands and feet were no longer calloused like a veteran fighter's, but had reverted to being small, round, and soft hands and feet.
Ais had returned to her younger body form. She was back to being a seven-year-old child.
When did this happen? Ais blinked her large golden eyes. Is this a long time ago? When Father and Mother were still here?
In that small form, Ais's mind also shrank. The sharp mindset of a Loki Familia executive faded, replaced by the innocence of a child. Ais had always behaved like a child... or perhaps not. Her memories piled on top of each other, creating an illusion that made her brain unable to clearly recall the past and present.
One thing was for sure, she was alone in this dark place, and it made her feel incredibly lonely. The air felt cold piercing through her thin dress.
Suddenly, a cheerful voice broke the silence of the vacuum.
"Let's go on an adventure, Ais!"
Ais was startled. From beneath her feet, as if sprouting from the shadows, appeared numerous figures. They were her new "friends". However, their forms were very strange and disproportionate, like children's toys brought to life by magic.
There were identical twin girl dolls. There was a gray wolf doll that kept barking cutely while wrapped in a blanket. There was a small wooden soldier holding a spear with a confused face. There was a green-haired fairy whose body was made of soft light, as well as a cat-shaped soldier with a round head that kept meowing.
Even though their size was smaller than Ais, somehow Ais could feel that they were all very strong. Deep within her heart, Ais knew that she could rely on them. They would protect her, just like the family she always longed for.
A small smile bloomed on Ais's face. Her loneliness faded instantly.
"That's right!" exclaimed Ais with her clear childish voice. "I, Ais, am an adventurer!"
With strong determination, Ais snorted proudly. Hmph!
She bent down, picking up a wooden toy sword and shield that suddenly lay near her feet. With her toy friends lining up behind her, Ais began her adventure.
The darkness around them slowly transformed into a dimly lit, eerie labyrinth corridor. Monsters with silly faces appeared from the shadows—but Ais was not afraid at all. She didn't need to be afraid.
Every time a monster approached, her friends would jump forward. The twin dolls and the blanket wolf swung their little arms and legs, knocking the giant monsters down one by one like bowling pins. The light fairy floating in the air emitted rays in shades of jade and golden yellow, clearing the path ahead with warming seven-colored magic.
Ais ran at the front, swinging her wooden sword.
"Hi-yah!" Ais cried out with every strike.
Magically, every hit from that toy made the monsters' eyes roll back, and then they fell unconscious with a funny thud. There was no blood, no pain, no despair. All obstacles felt like a game of hide-and-seek. There was nothing scary in this world as long as she was with her friends. They could go anywhere.
Come on, let's sing a song! Ais thought cheerfully.
With her clapping hands and stomping tiny feet, the labyrinth's atmosphere turned into a festival. Her toy friends blew brass trumpets and beat small drums. Ais kept swinging her sword in the air, moving like a conductor of an orchestra.
The toy hammers sounded cheerfully. Clang, clang. The pure, tiny, and adorable sound of children's laughter accompanied their steps, encouraging every sword swing.
They followed the rhythm of the music, forming a neat line. Everyone walked together, stepping in rhythm in one long line. Everything was complete: a valiant adventurer parade, with Ais as the captain leading at the vanguard!
Lun-paka, lun-paka!
The rhythm of their footsteps echoed off the labyrinth walls. They played joyfully, helping each other past stone traps, laughing when someone fell, and kept walking deeper down towards the core of the labyrinth.
They kept going down. Down. Down, down, and further down.
Down and down and down and down and down and down and down—
Even as the jade light from the fairy slowly dimmed and the labyrinth's darkness swallowed the colors more densely, they kept walking deeper inside. Ais's smile never faded; she trusted this parade unconditionally.
They descended a long spiral staircase exactly sixty times. And the moment Ais's tiny footsteps touched the sixtieth landing—
The wind blew.
Not the warm breeze that usually accompanied her steps, but a cold wind. An icy wind carrying the scent of old metal and rot.
Ais stopped. Her left hand instinctively rose to hold down her golden hair that was blown hard. She closed her eyelids tightly, enduring the sting of dust sweeping across her face.
Splatter, splatter.
A wet sound was heard. Something scattered and splashed right around her. A drop of liquid, very warm and sticky, touched her pale cheek and the back of her hand.
What is that? Ais wondered internally. Its texture felt wrong. Too thick for water.
Slowly, Ais opened her trembling eyelids.
The first thing she noticed was the silence. All sounds had vanished. The clapping, the clanging of hammers, the blare of trumpets, and the parade song they had been singing together were swallowed by absolute silence. There was no more laughter.
Everyone? Where are you?
Ais slowly turned her small body to look behind her.
And there—a vast expanse of a dark red spring lay before her eyes.
Those were not flowers. That was not water. That was a sea of thick liquid pooling on the labyrinth floor.
In the middle of that red puddle, the bodies of her "friends" lay motionless. Their tiny arms and legs were now twisted unnaturally, broken at angles that defied anatomy.
Ais stared at the figures of the twin girl dolls that were always near her. Those dolls... their right arms were gone, forcibly torn off at the shoulder joint. The bodies of the little spear soldier and the catman were full of holes, their flesh torn and crushed beyond recognition.
The stuffing inside those dolls was no longer white cotton. Its bright red stuffing—with a color and texture so striking it made Ais's stomach churn instantly—spilled out scattered over the rocks. The liquid was wet, pulsating, and glistening like human entrails that had just been forcibly extracted.
From their broken and split button eyes, thick red drops trickled down, as if they were crying blood in silent agony.
Ais touched her cheek with a trembling hand. The warm splash that hit her skin earlier... was the blood of her friends.
"■■■■■."
Ais stood rigidly silent. Her vocal cords were completely paralyzed. Her brain, which had shrunk into a child's form, was unable to process this visual terror that shattered her soul.
Her entire body became freezing cold. Numbness crept from the tips of her toes up to her scalp. Her fingers and toes felt as stiff as blocks of ice frozen amidst a blizzard.
Then, something howled. The howling sound was very close, whispering right next to her ear, blowing putrid breath onto her neck.
With a blank stare, Ais's eyes slowly trailed down to her right hand. Finally, she realized the reality that had been hidden by her hallucination all along. The wooden toy knife she held proudly... was actually a real sword blade coated in thick red blood.
The blood of her friends clung thickly along the sword's blade. The blood dripped slowly, and in the suffocating silence, those drops of blood seemed to form words whispering into her eardrums.
You did this.
Ais's heart felt like it stopped beating. Her eyes widened to their maximum limit, the fine veins in her eyes turning red. The sword in her hand fell to the floor with a pitiful metallic clang.
That same cold wind howled louder. The air froze, swirling to form sharp vortexes around the dropped knife blade.
"Ahaha... Ufufu... Ihihihi..."
The laughter drifted slowly. A laugh that was incredibly shrill, deformed, and filled with a disgusting sadistic ecstasy.
Something unseen had just torn Ais's vocal cords, stealing her voice from her throat—and laughed in its place.
Before her eyes, frozen by pure terror, the wind's laughter grew louder, spinning faster until it turned into a raging hurricane within the space of her mind.
In the blink of an eye, everything vanished. The labyrinth walls, the stone floor, and the surrounding air were erased. Everything vanished except Ais.
In the midst of that storm, all the fallen corpses of her "friends" were lifted high by the wind. Lifted even higher, into the empty void—
—and shattered to pieces.
The wind pressure tore those ruined bodies into fragments of dust and flesh.
Red rain began to fall from the unseen ceiling. A rain of pure blood that painted the darkness with striking, dense, and truly horrifying shades of red.
The rain of blood and chunks of flesh scattered, showering Ais's small body that had frozen into ice. Her simple dress was now drenched in the blood of the people she wanted to protect.
Her entire body was covered in red. Ais's golden pupils shrank unnaturally, shrinking to the size of a pinprick. Her grip on rationality slipped.
Something very fundamental inside her mind and soul had just snapped. The sound of that mental crack echoed clearly inside her head.
What happened next—was pure instinctive despair. A long, heart-wrenching scream finally forced its way out of her hoarse throat. A voice filled with terror, regret, and indescribable pain.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"
Ais clutched her head with both her small, bloodstained hands. She pulled her golden hair hard until a few strands were ripped out. Her knees went weak instantly, losing all strength, and she fell face-first onto the wet ground. Her body curled up, trembling violently in hysterical sobs that pierced the silence of the labyrinth.
From all around her, the freezing air began to respond to her despair. Countless pillars of ice shot sharply upward with a deafening cracking sound. Those ice pillars interlocked and curved above her, forming a frozen prison in the shape of a giant cage that absolutely sealed her existence.
Or perhaps... it wasn't a prison. Those magical ice pillars were a sanctuary, a dome-shaped structure reflexively created by her soul to protect her heart—already shattered to pieces—from the outside reality. A final form of self-defense from her Ariel magic, which had been distorted by trauma.
From above the ice cage, a giant shadow blocked the only source of light. Something incredibly evil, something whose form was horrifying like an amalgamation of sin and despair, looked down at the little girl trapped in that endless nightmare.
"Ihihihihi... Aaaaariaaaaaaaaa..."
That voice was a defect of nature. That horrifying and incredibly massive presence—so massive that its magical aura seemed to swallow the entire mortal world—enveloped the ice birdcage where the girl huddled with a disgusting affection.
The monster, the Corrupted Spirit, let out sounds of dark ecstasy and joy. A centuries-old longing that had finally found its vessel. The monster dripped putrid liquid from its giant jaws, while its long, thorny, pale-purple tongue licked the ice bars separating them. The tongue slowly melted the ice, preparing to swallow the girl's soul whole.
However, the moment the monster's tongue nearly touched Ais's golden hair, an anomaly occurred.
From behind Ais's huddled back, an incredibly gentle golden wind vortex suddenly formed. The wind did not originate from Ais's magic. The wind was pure, warm, and carried the soothing scent of cecilia flowers.
In a matter of seconds, the wind vortex condensed and formed the silhouette of a woman with long blonde hair. That woman was the manifestation of the remnant memories of Aria—Ais's mother.
The artificial wind spirit stood covering Ais's small body. And when the Corrupted Spirit opened its jaws to swallow Ais's soul, it was that wind silhouette that was sucked and absorbed into the monster's core.
The monster shrieked in delight, thinking it had truly swallowed the existence of the great spirit it coveted. Its focus was completely diverted from Ais's physical body, granting the girl temporary protection inside her slowly crumbling ice cage.
Far on the surface of Orario, Venti sat leaning back in his wooden chair. A wooden lyre rested on his lap. The god's fingers plucked a single string very softly, emitting a teal-colored resonance that instantly vanished into the air.
Venti's teal eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.
It was the wind commanded directly by Venti. And because Venti thoroughly understood the pure essence of Aria's soul—the elemental spirit sister he had once embraced from the black dragon in his timeline—he could command the wind to create a perfect replica of the wind element's resonance to deceive the monster's senses.
In truth, Venti had known since the first time he became aware of this timeline. He had commanded the wind to read the elemental fluctuations from Floor 60. If Bell and Orario's elite team forced their descent into the Dungeon late because the rescue was delayed from the original canon due to Bell Cranel being sucked in by the Temporal Severance, mathematically, they would definitely be too late. Ais would be swallowed whole before Bell went into the dungeon.
Therefore, from the very beginning, Venti had prepared this backup plan.
Even though Venti couldn't use his powers explicitly because he was restricted by the Arcanum rules, he was the God of Wind, and the wind listened to his commands. He only needed to issue an "order" to the air currents buried underground.
A single wind decoy mimicking Aria's resonance was a cheap price to pay to deceive a gluttonous monster devoid of common sense.
Venti smiled faintly, stopping the plucking of his lyre. He had done his part. Now, the stage was fully handed over to the future hero. And perhaps an extraordinary Excelia for Bell Cranel before the climax battle against Zald and his Aunt Alfia.
On the ruined Floor 60, the Corrupted Spirit was still lulled in the illusion of absorbing Aria. The monster didn't realize that at the end of the dark crystal corridor, a flash of white light had just arrived.
If Ais hadn't been helped by Venti's artificial wind decoy to divert the monster's soul consumption, Ais would certainly have been swallowed whole and lost her life even before the footsteps of Bell Cranel and the Orario alliance forces arrived at the battlefield.
Now, with the ice cage still standing guarding the unconscious Ais, the real battle to end the nightmare finally began.
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P - Gem_Blanks
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