Combat erupted in an instant.
"Ah-hahahahaha!"
Hiruko Kohina let out a string of laughter, silver-bell-clear yet sickly enough to send chills down the spine.
The orange-red of her twin pupils blazed open in the gloom of the passageway.
Her petite frame swept out almost flush with the floor, so fast that not even an afterimage could be caught.
『Twin-Moon Death Wheels』 — activated!
Two blinding silver-white arcs burst open in the air.
Hiruko Kohina gripped her two pitch-black kodachi in reverse, her whole body transformed into a high-speed spinning top of death.
The Mammoth hadn't even had time to finish a single full roar.
Hiruko Kohina had already cut in below its thick right foreleg.
"Shhrip——!"
A dull, abrupt sound of blade cleaving flesh rang out.
The Mammoth's tough hide, capable of turning aside most slashes and stabs, was torn apart in an instant before the two First-Class kodachi in Hiruko Kohina's hands.
A great gout of blood spurted forth with a wet "pwoosh," splashing across the wooden floor, hammering down in a chorus of pattering, crackling sounds.
"ROAR!!!"
The Mammoth let out a howl of pain.
Its massive body, having abruptly lost the support of its right leg, lurched violently to the right. The enormous tusks crashed into the wooden cave wall with a thunderous "BOOM," gouging out a huge, deep crater — the entire passageway shook violently!
"Take this!!"
Before the Mammoth could even struggle back onto its feet —
A clear, ringing battle cry exploded from mid-air.
Aihara Enju came down like an orange meteor falling from the heavens.
『Crimson Lotus Battle Dance』!
Wearing her custom-made metal long-boots, her right leg carved out a full-moon arc through the air.
The air itself was ripped raw by that whipping kick, screaming with the shrill crack of a sonic boom.
"BOOM!!"
The metal long-boot slammed with pinpoint precision down onto the Mammoth's massive skull.
A bone-shattering crunch rang out, scalp-crawlingly loud.
The explosive enchantment laced into Aihara Enju's boot detonated in the same instant.
A blazing fireball burst across the top of the Mammoth's head, the sheer impact bearing down like a mountain crushing it from above.
The Mammoth's massive body was driven by that terrifying downward axe-blow to its knees, all four limbs hammered against the floor. Its jaw smashed clean through the wooden planking and embedded itself there.
"It's over."
Tendou Kisara, clad in her black-and-white form-fitting training uniform, the cloth tracing the taut lines of an exquisite figure —
Held the pitch-black scabbard in her left hand, her right resting on the hilt.
Her thumb pushed the guard.
"Shing——!"
A crisp, ringing sound of a blade leaving its sheath.
Tendou Kisara, expression cool and indifferent, drew her blade and struck!
In the air, she left behind a pale-white arc of sword-aura, like a thin crescent moon!
The sword-aura sank instantly into the Mammoth's thick neck!
The very next second.
The Mammoth's massive body went rigid in a single beat.
Along with those two enormous tusks, the entire head slid slowly, smoothly, down from the neck!
With a muffled "thud," it rolled to the floor.
The huge headless corpse, at the very same moment, dissolved into a sky-wide swirl of black ash.
Left behind was a Magic Stone the size of a grown man's fist, and one massive mammoth tusk, clattering down to the ground.
From the first contact to the kill — it hadn't even taken three breaths.
"The monsters on this floor still aren't enough to fight."
Amou Kirukiru, arms folded across her chest, standing at the back, gave a dissatisfied click of her tongue.
She hadn't even gotten warmed up.
However.
As if it had heard Amou Kirukiru's arrogant taunt —
Or perhaps, as if the deep malice of the Dungeon itself had at that very moment been fully triggered.
"RRRRRUMBLE——!!"
The entire wooden passageway — even the rock walls and the ceiling overhead — began to shake and tremble violently.
This tremor was a hundred times more violent than the one caused earlier by the Mammoth's movements.
As if the entire world were caught in a magnitude-twelve earthquake.
"CRACK! CRACK!"
The shrill, splitting sound of timber breaking came roaring in from every direction.
On the walls. On the floor. On the ceiling.
Countless enormous fissures spread and tore themselves open.
Right after that —
A spine-chilling chorus of howls came welling up from deep within those fissures.
The sound grew louder and louder, more and more chaotic.
"This kind of disturbance..."
Onigawara Rin tightened her grip on the tachi in her hand, eyes sweeping swiftly over the cracks all around them.
As a swordswoman who had received the strictest training from a young age, her instincts had already picked up on the danger.
"Monsters are spawning in mass."
Kikakujou Mary tightened her grip on her rapier.
Inaba Tsukuyo closed both her eyes.
『Mind's Eye』 — fully unfurled.
Within her perceived world —
From all four directions, from above and below, dense pinpoints of light, like a tidal wave rushing in backwards, were surging toward their location at a frantic speed.
A hundred.
Three hundred.
Five hundred.
Or even more!
"It's a Monster Feast."
"Numbers...overwhelming."
"And the count's still rising."
Inaba Tsukuyo's voice had barely fallen —
When the ceiling overhead detonated outright with a "BOOM."
More than a dozen massive Bear Goblins, their entire bodies covered in coarse brown-black fur, came smashing down, brandishing thick wooden clubs.
At the front of the passage, and at the rear, vast hordes of War Boars came charging in suicidally, their eyes red, screaming their death-cries.
In that moment, the Dungeon bared its most hideous fangs.
It was attempting, through the sheer overwhelming superiority of numbers, to crush and wipe out this band of intruders that it perceived as a threat.
Meanwhile.
Not far from this passageway —
Atop a high, hidden vantage point.
A deep, dark shadow stood quietly in place.
——『Sage』 Fels.
She had not left.
Ever since leaving the Xenos (Variants) encampment, she had been tailing the girls of the [Haimer Familia] from a distance, relying on her powerful concealment magic.
When the Monster Feast erupted —
"The Dungeon...actually voluntarily triggered a defensive mechanism on this scale?"
Fels stared down at the cramped passageway below, now packed nearly instantaneously with monsters of every kind, and her chest tightened.
"Even if their individual combat capability is exceptional, in such a confined terrain, facing this number of besiegers, without a Lv.5 or higher senior adventurer in the front line to carve a path and absorb the damage, the sheer attrition of stamina alone is enough to drag them to their deaths."
Fels tucked her hands inside her wide sleeves.
She shook her head slightly.
The geniuses of Orario were always so easily cut down before their time.
Especially when, before they had fully grown, they faced the Dungeon's malice alone.
Fels had even prepared herself, ready to intervene at any moment.
After all —
If that silver-haired girl, possessed of such surpassing magical talent, were to fall here, it would be a tragic and irretrievable loss for Orario.
But.
Just as Fels was certain that the girls below would, faced with this sudden upheaval, fall into panic and have their formation utterly broken —
She witnessed a scene the likes of which she had never seen in her long eight hundred years of life.
Below.
Inside the passage.
Facing the tidal wave of monsters rushing in —
"HAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!!"
"That's more like it! THIS is what this Dungeon is supposed to look like!!"
Amou Kirukiru threw back her head, her pitch-black hair whipping wildly in the gusting air.
Those long, narrow eyes were lit with a light of the absolute purest hunger for slaughter.
『Battle Frenzy』 — fully activated!
A layer of red killing-aura, nearly tangible in substance, came faintly seething up across the surface of Amou Kirukiru's body.
It was precisely the terrifying high heat her flesh had radiated for years on end — when her body craved combat, craved being torn apart, craved tearing the other apart.
Faced with a massive Bear Goblin barreling down on her with a thick wooden club raised high —
Amou Kirukiru didn't dodge at all.
She stomped down hard, and the solid wooden floor instantly exploded into a wide crater.
Her whole body shot forward against the current like a cannonball just fired from its barrel, slamming straight upright into the Bear Goblin's chest.
『Avatar Blade』!
Amou Kirukiru's body was the sharpest weapon!
"BAM!"
A muffled, devastating crash.
Amou Kirukiru's fist smashed clean through the Bear Goblin's rock-hard sternum, her entire arm punching deep through its chest cavity.
Scalding blood spattered across her pale cheek.
Amou Kirukiru didn't even blink. Reverse-gripping it, she seized the Bear Goblin's huge, still-beating heart, and squeezed —
"Splrch!"
Blood sprayed.
The Bear Goblin's massive body spasmed once, then dissolved into a swirl of black ash.
And before the black ash had even dispersed —
Amou Kirukiru had already turned, her right leg sweeping out horizontally like a great axe!
A War Boar attempting to ambush her from the side had its spine snapped clean through by that single kick, its massive body sent flying like a torn sack, smashing through several more monsters as it rocketed past them from behind.
Savage.
Brutal.
Brimming with a kind of primal aesthetic of violence.
On another flank —
Onigawara Rin raised her hand, removed the eerie hannya mask from her waist, and slowly fitted it over her face.
『Sealed-Heart Sword Soul』!
The instant that not-quite-smiling, not-quite-snarling hannya mask was fitted over her face —
The aura around Onigawara Rin shifted completely.
A Bear Goblin's arm was severed clean off!
Everywhere she passed, all that was left behind was the swirling ash of monsters!
"Shing——!!"
A blade of piercing white light cut through the darkness.
A drawn-blade strike of absolute, ultimate speed.
Wherever Inaba Tsukuyo's white flash passed, monsters were cleanly cleaved in two, halved corpses tumbling.
Aihara Enju and Hiruko Kohina were even more ferocious.
Aihara Enju used the walls, the ceiling, even the bodies of monsters as springboards.
Shuttling back and forth in mid-air, every downward axe-kick would utterly smash a monster to pulp.
Hiruko Kohina darted between the monsters.
Her blades nimbly slicing the tendons of their feet, opening their throats.
Hanasaka Warabi, meanwhile, was riding on Kyoubou's back.
——『Coordinated Fang』.
Both parties received bonuses to [Strength] and [Agility].
If they attacked the same target, the damage would receive additional bonuses on top.
Kyoubou completely ignored the physical attacks of the vast majority of the monsters.
Roaring, swinging those massive bear-paws, every single swat could mash an entire patch of monsters into bloody pulp.
Up on the high vantage point —
Fels stared down at that brutal battlefield.
The body beneath the black robe trembled, just slightly.
Were these still human?
Was this even a group of normal adventurers encountering a Monster Feast?
This was clearly a band of monsters wearing human skin, conducting a one-sided slaughter of the Dungeon's native fauna!
Every one of their attacks, every coordination, every deployment of a technique —
All of it radiated a heart-stopping skill and ruthlessness.
As if they had been born for this kind of last-ditch slaughter from the very start.
Especially that black-haired straight-hair woman.
She didn't even need a weapon — she was going toe-to-toe with those thick-skinned, tough-fleshed monsters using nothing but her own body.
What's more, she even seemed to be enjoying this process of being painted red with blood.
"No...no, that's not it."
Fels' gaze locked tight onto the battlefield.
"There are too many monsters."
"The Dungeon's malice is without limit."
"No matter how sharp their attacks are, the drain on their stamina is unavoidable."
"At most another ten minutes, and their speed will begin to slow."
"And the moment a single opening appears..."
Fels' judgment wasn't without basis.
And in fact, that was exactly what was happening.
As time passed, the number of monsters pouring out into the passage didn't merely fail to decrease — it kept rising, and rising.
Even the Giant Cave Spiders, which under normal circumstances rarely appeared in groups, came charging out mixed among the monster horde.
All manner of venoms, spider webs, fire, petrifying beams of light were tangled together.
Even Amou Kirukiru and the others were unavoidably starting to take wounds.
Onigawara Rin's arm had been grazed by a spider web, leaving a bloody streak.
Tendou Kisara's uniform, too, was now stained with conspicuous filth.
There were just too many monsters.
So many that even the space to swing a blade was being compressed to its limit.
The group, backs to one another, kept tightening their defensive perimeter.
Their breathing was slowly turning heavy.
The speed at which they were swinging their blades was, visibly to the eye, beginning to slow.
"So they've hit their limit..."
Fels let out a sigh, raising her right hand slightly, the palm beginning to gather a brilliant blaze of magical light.
She was preparing to intervene.
No matter what, she could not stand and watch that silver-haired girl die here.
"Family..."
The Holy Emperor, sheltered at the very centre by everyone, looked at her companions battling on relentlessly, bathed in blood, to protect her —
The Holy Emperor's hands were clenched tight in front of her chest.
"I can't..."
"I can't keep hiding behind everyone forever."
"I can't be the one who's only ever a burden, accepting protection."
"Kami-sama said..."
"I still have my own worth."
A flash of resolve, like none she had ever shown before, passed through the Holy Emperor's eyes.
She drew a deep breath.
Her hands slowly parted, lifting upward, palms cradling the air.
She closed her eyes.
A surge of pure magical power — even greater than the one she had unleashed earlier at the Xenos (Variants) encampment when she had cast 『Gensokyo』 — woke and erupted within her body, like a sleeping volcano.
The free-floating magical particles in the air gathered madly toward the Holy Emperor's body.
Even the attack rhythm of the surrounding monsters fell, under the pressure of this suffocating magic, into a brief moment of stillness.
Atop the high vantage point.
Fels — who had just been about to act — froze stiff in her tracks, as if she were staring at a scene she couldn't believe.
"Magic on this kind of scale..."
"This can't be possible!!"
"She just released a highest-tier wide-area healing magic only moments ago?"
"And these fluctuations..."
"This is...wide-area buff magic?!"
At the center of the battlefield —
The Holy Emperor's crimson lips parted softly.
An ethereal, far-reaching, sacred voice rang out across the air.
Amid the howling of the monsters, that voice — far from being drowned out — reached every single ear with perfect clarity.
[By this oath, the wishes of all beings are joined.]
[Though our paths diverge, we shall converge once more.]
Wide-area support magic — 『Utopia』!
"HMMMM——!!"
As the final phrase of the chant fell —
A ring of brilliant golden light, with the Holy Emperor at its centre, surged outward in a single ripple!
In an instant, it enveloped every single member of the [Haimer Familia] present.
In that moment.
The magic's effect-judgment began.
According to the skill description of 『Utopia』, it would, based on the races already present within the current Familia, grant the entire group specific Buff bonuses.
[Human] Branch Buff —
『Human's Valor』!
Greatly increases Courage! Small all-stat bonus!
When facing desperate circumstances, the buff effects are doubled!
"Ding!"
[Beast] Branch Buff —
『Beastly Mimicry』!
Greatly increases Strength and Agility! Pain perception is dulled! Resistance to physical impacts is reinforced!
And random, faint beast-traits will manifest!
Fatigue was swept clean away in a single sweep!
Aches and pains vanished in an instant.
But what truly struck them as unbelievable were the strange physical changes happening to their bodies.
"Uwah!"
Aihara Enju let out a startled little cry.
She reached up and felt the top of her head.
In addition to the rabbit-shaped headband she had always worn —
Right next to that headband, a pair of fuzzy, real, red rabbit ears had sprung up with a "poof"!
The rabbit ears were still twitching and shaking in time with Aihara Enju's startled cries.
"?"
Hiruko Kohina blinked those orange-red eyes.
Atop her head, a pair of pitch-black, dainty cat ears had grown.
A slim, long black cat-tail was flicking irritably behind her, whipping the air with sharp "thwip-thwip" sounds.
Beneath the hannya mask covering Onigawara Rin's face —
Amid her originally clean, sharply-cut short black hair, a pair of rounded dog ears stood prominently upright.
A fluffy black dog-tail stretched itself out from her waist.
Kikakujou Mary's golden hair was crowned with a pair of rounded, golden lion ears perched atop her head, and behind her was a long, slender lion-tail tipped with a tassel of gold.
Among Inaba Tsukuyo's silver hair —
A pair of soft, drooping, snow-white lop-eared rabbit ears emerged.
Making her already frail and sickly atmosphere even more endearing.
However.
The most dramatic change, the one with the most overwhelming visual impact, was without question the one standing at the very front — Amou Kirukiru.
"Grrrh..."
A low, suppressed growl rumbling deep in her throat.
Amou Kirukiru's pitch-black long hair whipped about wildly.
A pair of pure-black wolf ears, sharp and radiating a feral aura, stood high among her hair.
Just above her hip —
A massive, thick black wolf-tail with its bristling fur standing on end suddenly swept out.
"Ah...ahhhhhhh!!!"
"What...what the hell kind of magic is this?!"
Atop the high vantage point —
Fels' skeletal jaw finally lost all control and dropped straight onto her sternum.
What was this?
Ears? Tails?!
A magic that could let humans grow beastman traits directly?
What's more —
The truly terrifying part was —
Along with those beast ears and tails appearing, the aura emanating from the girls below seemed to have undergone an unmistakable change.
How was this possible?!
A Lv.1 newbie, with not one but two highest-tier wide-area high-rank magics.
Fels was thunderstruck.
This was far, far too much.
Meanwhile —
The truth, just as Fels had sensed, was unfolding.
Under the combined dual-buff stacking of 『Human's Valor』 and 『Beastly Mimicry』 —
And especially being right in the middle of this desperate situation, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of monsters.
『Human's Valor』's desperate-circumstance doubling effect was perfectly triggered.
On top of that, with the explosive growth that 『Beastly Mimicry』 brought.
The girls of the [Haimer Familia] —
Could quite literally be said to have undergone a complete metamorphosis.
"HAHAHAHA!! Excellent! This sensation of pure power surging through me!!"
Amou Kirukiru looked down at her own hands, then clenched them tight in a sudden snap.
Even between her knuckles, a chain of shrill sonic-boom cracks rang out.
The wolf ears atop her head flattened backward.
"BOOM——!!!"
Amou Kirukiru moved.
She simply, purely, savagely, charged straight forward.
The massive wolf-tail behind her swept hard.
Just one simple charge.
In the passageway ahead, more than a dozen massive Bear Goblins were like things hit by a train going at full speed.
Their bodies came apart into quarters in an instant.
They didn't even have time to scream before they burst into clouds of blood-mist dispersed across the air.
Amou Kirukiru threw out one punch.
The air was forcibly compressed to its absolute limit, then exploded outward all at once.
A visible shockwave of compressed air carved out, inside the passageway, a vacuum corridor several meters long.
Every monster within that range, regardless of type —
Was, by the aftershock of that single punch alone, shaken into dust.
"This feeling...isn't bad at all."
From beneath Onigawara Rin's mask came a low murmur.
The dog-tail behind her suddenly swept.
The very next second —
Her figure simply vanished from her original position.
When she reappeared, she was already above a cluster of monsters.
Her blade gave a single, gentle stroke.
No sword-aura spilled forth.
And yet.
Those dozen-odd monsters, all of them, came neatly apart in mid-air.
Fast.
Fast beyond all measure of fast.
Aihara Enju, sporting two pairs of rabbit ears atop her head, was bouncing excitedly back and forth across the walls.
Every single landing footstep, the powerful force in her legs alone gouged out craters in the wall up to half a meter deep.
...
Fels stared at this scene.
Unable, for a very, very long time, to say a single word.
"..."
____
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