Dragon God's Hole, 2950th Floor.
A world turned upside down.
That was the only way to describe the vast mountain ranges of the Dragon World. Everything was inverted. The sky lay beneath, and the mountains hung above.
The deep blue void seemed to spread beneath everything, as though the entire world had been turned inside out, while immense mountain chains loomed overhead.
Rivers of cloud poured downward, yet that "down" was where the sky should have been, and entire masses of earth and stone floated at impossible angles, upheld by some absurd logic.
While fighting one of the hardest battles of his life, Rygar could not stop thinking.
His mind kept moving constantly.
Even while facing four immensely powerful Dragon Generals, armed with demonic spears and all manner of strange magic, his thoughts wandered without end.
The original Six Worlds.
Each one representing a race.
Each one eventually reduced to a single facet of the current world because of the wrath of the First Dragon God and the schemes of Hitogami.
Even while moving rapidly through the floors, Rygar had still been able to make out the broad history of the five destroyed worlds, at least in outline.
Dragon God's Hole did not merely show ruins, monsters, and bosses. It showed history as the fallen civilization itself had seen it.
And because of that, for the Beast God World, the story was very different from what it had been in the Dragon World.
One day, the Beast Race lost the Sacred Beast of their world, the mount of the First Beast God and his most faithful companion.
A being born from nature itself, perhaps the first "Miko" to ever exist, vanished without a trace. Enraged, the Beast Race gathered its armies and set out to search for it.
But before they could truly begin that search, the Dragon God, together with his Five Dragon Generals, invaded their world.
Naturally, the Dragon God had reasons of his own.
He was searching for the murderer of his wife and the mother of his child, Lunaria, daughter of the Human God.
Both manipulated, and both dragged into a meaningless war.
And so the Beast World, the first world to fall, was destroyed because of the folly of two gods and the cunning of a third.
That was the beginning of the Dragon God's foolish and cruel crusade to find someone to blame.
In his search, he went on to destroy the Sea World, the Sky World, and at last he reached the Demon World.
By that point, the cruelty and slaughter of the First Dragon God had already become irreversible.
Together with his Five loyal Generals, the Dragon God annihilated not merely populations, but entire worlds, and did so without the slightest mercy.
In a way, Orsted had inherited some part of that in his core. Anything that stands in his way, in the way of his goal, must be removed.
Exterminating entire civilizations was still not enough to satisfy the rage of the foolish First Dragon God. He could not even see his own hypocrisy, massacring whole civilizations over the death of a single woman.
The Demon World was the only one capable of resisting the Dragon God's invasion. At least they, unlike the Dragon Race, had a good reason to fight.
But even they were defeated in the end.
Watching history from the perspective of each civilization, Rygar could see everything in stark, vivid colors, just as it truly was.
In those times, people were not especially subtle or calculating. Even among the most powerful beings in the world, there had been a certain innocence in the way relationships worked.
With one glaring exception.
The Human God.
Living up to his title as the god of humans, he was the weakest among the gods, but also the most cunning.
After all, that was how humans always came out on top.
Through cunning, and through intellect.
But even with that so-called "innocence" among the races, Rygar could not help finding the Dragon Race utterly repulsive.
Was the Labyrinth influencing him, making him hate that race?
He could not say for certain.
It was genuinely difficult to tell.
But one thing was certain: merely by showing him history, the True History, the great labyrinth Dragon God's Hole had succeeded in making Rygar despise the Dragon Race of that era.
And more than all the others, he despised the First Dragon God most of all.
The greatest among them, and the most despicable.
That whole race was, in a sense, one great mistake. At least in that age.
Their hypocrisy. Their pride. Their stupidity. Their cruelty.
And their so-called "loyalty" to their leader.
Necross Lacross, a Great Demon King, had been able to morally oppose his Demon God the moment the possibility of betrayal by the Dragon God was raised.
But among the Dragon Generals, there had not been a single one who truly questioned the reality before them. Even knowing that some of them had been manipulated by Hitogami, Rygar still despised them deeply.
He despised them because, in the final stretch of the Labyrinth, within the Dragon World, he could see the history told by the Dragon Race itself.
The Five Dragon Generals, their paths, their trails, their decisions, were nothing but steps sinking deeper and deeper into a grave.
And now, facing these so-called Loyal Dragon Generals, he could finally witness their final and greatest act of stupidity.
These same utterly loyal subordinates, who had never once truly questioned their manic, genocidal god, finally chose to rebel only after four entire worlds had already been destroyed.
Rygar was, truly, trying to see things from their side once again. The contradiction in their hearts as they watched the Dragon God's actions.
Hitogami's subtle manipulation. Their wills slowly being broken. He was trying, at the very least, to feel some trace of pity.
But all he could feel was contempt.
Watching the mighty dragons finally abandon the one thing they had never abandoned before—their loyalty—Rygar could not even bring himself to praise Hitogami.
The strategy, though intricate, had been ridiculously simple.
And yet it worked.
How?
Because his targets were fools!
The outrage in Rygar's heart grew each time he clashed with one of the monsters that represented the Dragon Generals.
Szilard, the Saint Dragon General.
Dora, the Armored Dragon General.
Chaos, the Mad Dragon General.
And Maxwell, the Black Dragon General.
Of course, those were monstrous copies of them, warped echoes reconstructed by the Labyrinth, but because of the history this place told, Rygar knew exactly whom each of them represented.
This must have been the coalition that faced the First Dragon God in their final betrayal.
Rygar was having some difficulty in the battle, mainly because he was fighting many enemies at once in a completely inverted environment.
Even so, the stalemate did not last very long.
The Apocalypse Beast, like the Dragon God of that age, finally overcame his opponents by relying on strength alone.
Of course, these versions were probably far weaker than the originals.
Even so, this was not something a single person should have been capable of facing.
Perhaps it truly took one monster to fight another.
Rygar killed Dora with a Dimensional Rupture, opening a tear in the air that split the Armored General apart along with space itself.
He executed Szilard with Twelve Lightnings of Olympus, twelve slashes descending at once from every direction, piercing his defenses and incinerating his saintly body before his spear could complete its final movement.
He incinerated Maxwell with a Purple Laceration, a slash of fire and destruction so intense it tore across kilometers of inverted sky, leaving behind a burning violet trail that devoured the Black Dragon General together with everything around him.
And finally, he crushed Chaos completely by conjuring a Black Hole above him.
Without question, this was the fight in which Rygar had suffered the most damage since entering Dragon God's Hole.
He had to regenerate again and again.
He had to restore his Armor again and again.
At one point, he was fighting so wildly that Eris could not even approach, only watch from afar.
Which, in truth, was already more than most of the world could have managed. Merely witnessing a fight at that level was lethal even for great warriors.
That was precisely why Rygar had brought Eris.
She might not be useful in the worst battles, but she would never drag him down.
And when the fight in that upside-down world finally ended, leaving behind only a trace of what that floor had once been, Rygar was still regenerating after finally crushing Chaos, and at last his Sixth Sense came to rest.
Then he heard a whistle.
He turned and saw his adorable wife leaping across the floating stone outcroppings as she made her way toward him.
The exhaustion showed clearly on her face. Even if her body was still at one hundred percent of its physical peak, her mind was visibly slower at that moment.
Even so, she was still stubbornly forcing herself to remain proud and cheerful.
"What a beating they gave you! Hehehe!"
Rygar smiled and flicked Eris on the forehead.
"Ow!"
"And who are you to talk?" he teased. "You looked completely panicked when that light attack hit me. Did you really think I wouldn't notice?"
Eris held the spot on her forehead where he had flicked her and flushed in embarrassment.
"Hmph! I knew you were going to win in the end! I can see the future, remember?!"
Without saying anything else, Eris boldly leapt toward the entrance to the next floor.
Rygar watched her for a brief moment.
Then he accessed the communicator built into his armor to check for any important news.
He quickly reviewed the information on the communicator.
Successful attacks, the invasion progressing well and quickly.
The Iron Legion was still holding the initiative. But when he reached the part about Verdia's Future Vision, he paid closer attention.
Saint Millis?
Rygar tensed slightly, and grew a little curious as well.
How strong was he supposed to be?
What caught his attention most was not even the warning itself, but the fact that there was no mention whatsoever of Saint Millis's resurrection in the Future Diary.
That meant this was not an event Oldgar had ever had to face. It was a new plan, something Hitogami had chosen to carry out only in this timeline.
Either way, if he was being treated as a trump card, then Saint Millis had to be immensely powerful.
That alone was reason enough for Rygar to press even harder.
Rygar lifted his gaze and watched Eris for a moment.
Even exhausted from the constant battles, even clearly worn down by the accumulated mental strain, she kept moving forward without complaining even once.
She did not complain about pain, did not complain about exhaustion, did not complain about him, did not complain about the haste—not seriously, at least. She simply kept going with the fierce stubbornness that only she possessed.
Seeing that, Rygar burst forward at the same time she did.
Badigadi and Laplace had to be getting closer and closer. They could not stop. Only fifty floors remained.
Most likely, from there to the end, they would find nothing but dragons and ordinary draconic monsters.
Of course, "ordinary" was a very generous word for creatures that were all still extraordinarily dangerous, each one capable of massacring normal adventurers without the slightest effort.
But for him and Eris, that was no longer the biggest problem.
If anything, those monsters merely prevented the two of them from resting.
That was the real problem.
Even the "simpler" floors still demanded attention and movement. They could not simply sit down and catch their breath.
They could not stop for even a minute to let their minds cool, gather their thoughts, or simply breathe in peace.
But they were too close to falter now.
Nine hours until Saint Millis would be revived in Begaritt.
Nine hours.
Rygar repeated the number silently to himself as he crossed the portal to the next floor.
It was time for the final shot toward the Labyrinth's deepest floors.
If there was one good thing to celebrate, it was that many floors in the Dragon World were centered on pure combat. That meant Rygar and Eris could skip most of them.
And that was exactly what they did.
The 2951st Floor barely had time to receive them before they tore through it like two arrows.
A flock of armored wyverns rose between the inverted mountains and clouds, but Rygar carved a path through them with a slash so vast that half the upside-down sky was dyed blue.
Eris passed through the survivors in the same motion, her Foresight Eye reading the shortest possible routes.
On the 2952nd Floor, smaller dragons with black scales and twisted horns dove toward them in formation.
Rygar did not even look at them when a wave of gravity distorted space and dragged them all downward, while Eris shot forward in a red streak and sliced through the rest before they could complete their dive.
Stronger with every step.
Faster with every step.
No pause.
No rest.
The Dragon World blurred past before them.
Rygar could feel the tension and urgency building within him.
Ahead of him, the end of Dragon God's Hole was finally drawing near.
At the same time, without their knowing it, a little more than a hundred floors behind them, their hunters were drawing closer and closer.
Badigadi and Vita continued descending at speed, using everything they had.
And between the two sides, Fate worked in mysterious ways for each of them.
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