The iron cavalry, treading a flowing river of dazzling color, surged toward them like a tide.
And in response—
Alfia's answer was—
"Evangelium."
Invisible magic power shoved straight back against them. The knights slammed into what felt like an unseen wall, unable to advance another inch — riders, horses, and that dazzling color all crushed together into a single mass. And yet, even so, the longswords in their hands and the iron horses beneath them still pointed straight ahead.
Then...
The colors writhed like some twisting Monster, bursting with an indescribable, overwhelming Strength. They fused together into spikes, transforming from the once-orderly ranks of knights into a single, colossal, many-hued Monster.
Then came a crisp crack, like breaking glass.
Alfia's invisible sound-magic was "burst apart," and that dazzling color surged toward them once more, like a tide.
That wasn't entirely unexpected.
When magic clashed with magic, whichever was stronger simply won out. Earlier, Alfia's magic had been able to erase those colors — but now, having gathered together, the massed color had broken through her magical barrier and turned into an unstoppable wave.
Isagi had already seen it too — this wasn't a situation they could meet head-on. So— "Fly!"
Isagi and Ais, each with one free hand, seized the girls beside them and shot straight up into the air.
The others — Ryuu-senpai, Alfia, Tiona, and the rest — each used their own means, leaping and pulling themselves up along the nearby walls, finally hooking themselves high against the stone with grapples.
They watched as that many-hued tide surged past beneath them. This clearly wasn't some horde of a few hundred Monsters — it was some kind of "trap."
"Let's move."
There was no telling whether those things would turn around and come at them again once they reached the end of the corridor.
Isagi hovered in midair, one hand carrying Haruhime, the other carrying Heith, and swiftly made for the towering castle at the end of the corridor.
They pressed on until they reached the wide-open castle gate.
[Abandoned Land of Filth · Old Cathedral Knights' Headquarters].
So this really was, in some sense, a new map?
Walking through the castle gates, they were greeted by a fairly spacious courtyard.
Scattered across it were scarecrow-like training dummies — some stuck with arrows, others scarred all over from spears and swords — it looked like some kind of training ground.
Not far off stood the castle's main structure.
Roughly twenty or thirty meters tall, made up of several towers, it didn't look especially vast.
And high up—
Isagi could see, high on the main keep, a window mostly shattered, the wall around it blown open as if it had been torn apart by something extremely violent.
And right there stood a figure wrapped head to toe in fur, a dragon-bone mask over its face, gripping a great axe — standing coldly, watching the group below.
That had to be the boss, right?
No other tricks to it, it seemed. All they had to do now was make their way to the far end of the castle.
Let's go.
The group pressed onward. Meanwhile, elsewhere—
Riveria, Gareth, Finn, and the others had also arrived at a "special location" of their own.
Before them lay a graveyard.
And in the distance, past the rows of headstones, stood a small monastery.
Once they arrived here, the Monsters they encountered had changed as well.
Giant specters floated in midair, flickering in and out of view just like the earlier Bone Wraiths, each one bearing a color-drenched cross and chains on its back, and possessing extremely strong resistance to ordinary physical attacks.
As a result, all along the way, only Riveria had been able to deal effective damage to these Monsters.
"—Crimson lotus flame, merciless blaze, thou art the incarnation of karmic fire that sweeps away a thousand armies, that brings the curtain down on the great war and burns all to ash, sword of Surtr — my name is Alf!"
As Gareth drew a cluster of Monsters together before her, the streaming fire in the sky took the form of a colossal blade and cut straight down.
"[Advanced · Sword of Victory]!"
The flames died out, and dozens of specter-Monsters quietly vanished, dissolving into scattered Magic Stone fragments and a few strips of cloth stained with brilliant color — evidently dropped materials.
"Are we going in there?"
Finn, who'd been standing guard nearby to make sure Riveria's spellcasting wasn't interrupted, gazed at the distant church. For some reason, his thumb prickled again with that phantom sting.
Another bad feeling.
"Let's go. Clearly, there's a boss in there."
More than just clearly, in fact.
The monastery's doors stood wide open in the distance. At a glance, they could see, at the end of a blood-red carpet, a cross of pure gold — though one already stained by that corrupting color.
And beneath it knelt a figure in a black robe, its back turned, looking for all the world like a nun.
With the keen eyesight of high-level adventurers, they could just make out something lurking beneath that black robe, twitching now and then.
It felt dangerous.
"The Monsters we've run into along the way have all been around Lv.6 to Lv.7, right?"
"Yeah."
Floor 37 was, in truth, a rather "delicate" floor.
It was the first floor of the deep levels, yet entirely self-contained — at its center, before the passage leading down to Floor 38, a Monster Rex stood guard.
Normally—
a party would need to be made up of at least Lv.4 adventurers to venture here at all, but to press on to deeper floors, at least one Lv.5 adventurer had to come along — otherwise, once the Monster Rex respawned, the party would be sealed in below with no way back.
That was the Dungeon's malice.
Because of that, aside from the rare adventurer looking to level up past Lv.5, hardly anyone came here normally.
But for Familias like Loki Familia and Freya Familia, Floor 37 was a great spot to earn money.
Monsters were plentiful here, with no shortage of rare materials, and one could check in now and then to see if the Monster Rex had respawned. The Monsters themselves were also easy enough to handle — mostly Barbarians, Lizardmen, and skeleton soldiers with a certain amount of combat skill, posing no threat whatsoever to high-level adventurers.
Finn, Gareth, and Riveria all knew this floor well.
Whenever Loki Familia was short on funds, they'd bring the second-string members here to farm Monsters for cash.
So....
"Going by that same logic, if the ordinary Monsters here are around Lv.6 to Lv.7, the ordinary boss should be around Lv.7 too, right?"
"Yeah."
Riveria, Isagi, and Ryuu had once defeated the gatekeeper boss guarding this place before — it had been Lv.7. Back then, she herself had only been Lv.6, and the boy and girl had been Lv.5. They'd only managed to take it down after a genuinely grueling fight. Now, it ought to be far easier.
"Still, something feels off..."
His thumb kept prickling.
As they drew near the monastery, Finn finally stopped Gareth and Riveria in their tracks, then motioned for the two of them to turn back.
What they failed to notice was this—
The moment the three of them actually turned to leave, the "nun" kneeling beneath the cross turned her head — and fixed her cold, unblinking stare on their retreating backs, for a long, long while—
____
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