It was a brilliant bombardment.
Countless meteors flew like a downpour, like a meteor shower streaking endlessly across the night sky, blasting apart the worm monsters charging toward Leo. Even the dissolving fluid spraying out from inside the worm monsters' bodies was vaporized along with them, and the whole chamber shook under the meteor bombardment.
After blasting apart the worm monsters, each meteor kept on going without losing momentum, slamming into the ground, the walls, and even the ceiling, blowing craters into them.
Dust flew up at once, rubble scattered everywhere, and the whole chamber shook violently as though it had been hit by an earthquake, as if the earth were splitting and the mountains crumbling.
Under such indiscriminate bombardment, Ais, standing in front of Leo, and Lefiya, held in his arms, were one thing, but Tiona and Tione, who had still been tangled up with the worm monsters, very nearly got caught in it.
"Whoa! That's dangerous!"
"Hey... watch where you're aiming!"
The Amazoness twins dodged the incoming meteors in a panic, and it looked extremely close, but in fact these meteors would automatically veer off course as they neared the twins, avoiding any direct hits. Otherwise, with an attack this dense, the twins really might not have dodged them all.
And so, countless worm monsters were all killed by Leo's Magic, vaporized along with the dissolving fluid, and a crisis dissolved into nothing.
"Phew..."
Only then did Leo, holding Lefiya, let out a breath, an irrepressible weariness surfacing in his eyes.
Clearly, an area-wide Magic attack like that, just from adding more attack instances without raising the firepower, had cost Leo no small amount of Mind.
"You okay?"
Ais finally turned around, crouched down beside Leo, propped him up, and asked softly.
"H-here, take a potion!"
Seeing the weariness Leo couldn't hide in his eyes, Lefiya started in alarm too, hurriedly squirmed free of Leo's arms, and fished a Magic Potion out from her person.
It was a specially made high-grade Magic Potion, with a Mind-restoring effect even better than the high-quality Magic Potion Leo had prepared to use in the fight against the Floor Boss.
"Thanks."
Leo didn't refuse either, taking the potion and downing it in one gulp.
"I gotta say, that Magic just now was way too much, wasn't it?" Tiona came in close, looking at Leo, and said with some excitement, "Taking out that many monsters all at once... feels like the range was even bigger than Riveria's Magic!"
"That Magic of yours really is handy." Even Tione voiced her admiration, saying, "Magic where you can just add attacks at will, so long as you're willing to spend the Mind, the range is probably bigger than a lot of large-scale wide-area annihilation Magic."
"As long as you're willing to burn the Mind." Leo tossed away the empty bottle drained of its potion and said with a wry smile, "That one shot just now evaporated over eighty percent of my Mind, way more than it costs to push the firepower up to Lv.6."
Couldn't be helped. To deal with all the worm monsters in one go, the extra attack instances Leo had added to the Magic this time really were too many. The meteors he'd just fired off had to number at least a thousand, and the only reason it hadn't drained his Mind dry outright was that Leo had gone through systematic study and learned more efficient methods of using his Mind. Otherwise, using this Magic in the state he'd been in before would probably have knocked him straight into Mind Down.
"I-I'm sorry." Lefiya grew dejected once more, saying disconsolately, "It's all because of me, you..."
The Elf girl pinned the whole blame on herself.
After all, those worm monsters had clearly been after the magic stones she'd been carrying, and on top of that her own performance had been so poor, she hadn't even managed to run, forcing Leo to come save her.
If not for her, maybe he wouldn't have had to be so reckless.
"What are you talking about?" Leo shot Lefiya a glance and said, "Isn't it common sense to prioritize protecting the rearguard Mage on the battlefield?"
What he meant was that saving her just now had simply been a matter of course.
"But you're a rearguard Mage too."
Lefiya said it instinctively.
"I only get put in the rearguard Mage position when the Familia fights as a group. My actual job is still a Magic Swordsman, a middle guard class that can go to the front line. Supporting the vanguard or supporting the rearguard, both are things I can do or should do."
Leo, who had already recovered a good deal of his Mind, stood up and patted Lefiya on the shoulder as he said this.
"All right, stop overthinking it. It's all in the past now. Let's get the real business done first."
Hearing Leo's words, Ais and the others, who had still wanted to comfort Lefiya, snapped back to attention.
"Right! We still have to collect the spring water!"
Tiona quickly looked around, then her eyes lit up and she pointed in one direction.
"Over there!"
Everyone immediately followed Tiona's finger.
There, in the pockmarked and ravaged chamber stretching out before them, in a corner at the very deepest part, a pool of clear spring water lay quietly, beautiful in its solitude.
On the wall beside it, deep-blue radiant mystic spring water trickled slowly down through a crack, accumulating in a low hollow overgrown with flowers and grass, forming a beautiful clear spring rippling outward in waves, its surface cold and clear and blue. Just one glance at it left a person refreshed and at ease.
"Good, the spring wasn't destroyed."
Tione let out a breath of relief.
She'd been a little worried that in the fierce battle between the dragon and the worm monsters, or under that full-area Magic attack Leo had just unleashed, this Cadmus' Spring had already been destroyed, in which case they'd have come all this way for nothing.
"There's a lot, too."
Ais retrieved her Desperate, flicked off the dissolving fluid clinging to it, then came over to the edge of the spring to take a look and said this.
"I-I'll fill them!"
To play even the tiniest part, Lefiya pulled herself together, hurriedly fetched back the backpack Leo had thrown away, and ran into the spring water.
All that could be said was, thank goodness the backpack hadn't been destroyed, or else they really would have come all this way for nothing.
The water of Cadmus' Spring had to be held in specially made containers to preserve its potency, otherwise its effect would drain away with the passage of time and finally turn into plain water of no use whatsoever.
The special containers were lying in the backpack right now. Lefiya took them out one by one and began drawing the spring water.
Normally the spring water would be drunk dry by Cadmus the moment it welled up, so even if someone came here to collect it, they could usually only collect a little. That was why Finn had decided to head to both Cadmus' Springs at once, collecting from both at the same time to gather the needed amount.
But this time, Cadmus had been dealt with by the worm monsters first, so Lefiya filled up the amount specified by the adventurer commission in one go, which left her expression somewhat complicated.
"Speaking of which, what even were those worm monsters?" Tiona, bored, stood guard for Lefiya, knitting her brows, and said in puzzlement, "Since when did Floor 51 have monsters like that? Are they really a new species?"
"Who knows."
Tione spun the one curved sword she had left and said with a curl of her lips, "Maybe they came up from the floors below?"
"No way, right?" Tiona countered directly. "We've been all the way to Floor 58, you know. There weren't any monsters like that anywhere from Floor 52 to 58. Don't tell me they came up from Floor 59, which we haven't been to?"
That really wasn't very likely.
It wasn't that monsters couldn't cross floors and run off to other floors, but most of them only moved around on specific floors. At most, one or two might wander onto another floor by mistake. It was generally pretty unlikely for monsters to run off to another floor in great droves.
And when monsters did run off to another floor, they usually only moved a few floors up or down from where they were, never crossing multiple floors at once.
And from Floor 59 to Floor 51, there were a full seven floors in between.
Crossing seven or eight floors at once was something almost impossible to happen.
"It's only almost. It's not completely impossible." Tione said a little impatiently, "The Dungeon isn't some place that plays by the rules. Anything can happen down here. Maybe this is an Irregular?"
"Then that's way too irregular, isn't it? A huge swarm of what looks like a new monster species killed Cadmus and even swallowed its magic stone. Could the Dungeon really have birthed an enhanced species race?" Tiona looked over at Ais and asked, "Ais, what do you think?"
Ais shook her head and said nothing.
She only watched Lefiya drawing the spring water, then looked over at Leo, her mind churning with countless thoughts.
Leo, who had no idea what the girls were talking about, was at that moment examining a membrane in his hand.
It was none other than Cadmus's Membrane.
Be a waste not to grab this.
That was exactly Leo's line of thinking.
True, on this trip to Floor 51 they hadn't picked up any of the drop items along the way, but Cadmus's Membrane was an ultra-rare item worth over ten million valis. Not grabbing it wouldn't be wasteful, it'd be stupid.
So Leo picked Cadmus's Membrane back up and stuffed it into Lefiya's backpack.
"Once the spring water's done, let's hurry up and leave." Leo said this. "Those worm monsters might still show up. We'd better head back to the base and report."
"Wh-what?" Lefiya finished packing the spring water, and on hearing Leo's words she said in surprise, "There are still more of those monsters?"
"What else?" Leo cautioned. "Don't tell me you've all forgotten how Floor 51 has felt way too quiet all day today?"
That one line sent a flash darting through everyone's minds.
"You mean... the reason Floor 51 has been so quiet today is all because of those worm monsters?"
Tione's face changed abruptly.
Leo answered with a question instead.
"If they could even set their sights on Cadmus's magic stone, then with all the monsters on Floor 51, all those magic stones just sitting out in the open, do you think those worm monsters would ignore them?"
Everyone fell silent, a chill starting to spread in their hearts.
Remembering how there had been far fewer monsters along the way compared to past trips to this floor, everyone finally understood where all the missing monsters had gone.
They'd definitely all been eaten by those worm monsters.
And Floor 51 was bigger than the whole of Orario, yet so many monsters had gone missing along the way. How could it possibly be just this handful of worm monsters doing the hunting?
The monster spawn interval on Floor 51 was very short, and the spawn numbers were large too. For new monsters still not to have spawned even after they'd arrived here, leading to a massive drop in monster numbers, proved this hunting was still going on at a very fast pace.
So there were definitely a lot of worm monsters hunting on Floor 51 right now. Otherwise this phenomenon never would have happened.
What's more...
"If those worm monsters really did come up from the floors below, then will they keep climbing up, heading for our base?"
Leo's words, one after another, drained the color from the girls' faces.
"And another thing, we ran into worm monsters over here, so what about the captain's side?"
The moment he said it, none of the girls could sit still any longer.
"Don't say any more!"
Tione growled in a low voice, her face livid. "We're going back right now!"
Unfortunately, this decision was still made too late.
"Aaah!!!"
Extremely suddenly, a shrill, agonized scream rang out, echoing across the whole of Floor 51 and reaching the ears of Leo and the others.
The pain in that cry drained the color from everyone's faces, Leo included.
"That voice is...!?"
Lefiya's face went white in an instant.
"Raul!"
Tiona and Tione cried out at the same time, their faces twisting.
Leo and Ais, without a word, launched off the mark and shot toward the outside of the chamber in an instant.
"Captain!"
Tione let out a scream no better than the one just now, and somehow burst into a speed she'd never shown before, leaving even Leo and Ais, who had charged out of the chamber first, behind.
"Wait...!"
"Miss Ais! Miss Tione!"
Tiona and Lefiya hurried to keep up.
All five of them ran at top speed, shaking off even the monsters that appeared along the way, charging toward where the voice had come from.
Before long, they spotted their goal.
"Captain!"
"Finn!"
"Old man!"
"Mr. Bete!"
Yes, they'd found the members of the first group.
Finn, Gareth, and Bete, the three of them, were sprinting madly this way, while Raul, who had screamed just now, lay on Bete's back, looking like he was at death's door.
Finn and the others saw Leo's group of five too, but didn't stop their feet.
"Run!"
Finn shouted in a voice more urgent than ever, sending the color draining from Leo and the others' faces again and again.
Without any hesitation, Leo and the rest turned around and began a new round of running.
Because they had all seen it: behind Finn and the others, a huge swarm of yellow-green-bodied monsters was chasing after them.
They jostled and shoved against one another, bobbing up and down as they advanced, their massive bodies slamming several times into the four-meter-high ceiling, shaving off several chunks of it. Their lateral width nearly matched the road from one end to the other, just like countless worms squeezing their way outward, an utterly revolting sight.
Those monsters, Leo and the others were no longer strangers to.
"So there really were more of these worms, aaaaaaaaah!"
Tiona let out a scream of having had enough, and together with everyone else, fled for her life.
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