The dome overhead was no longer the familiar rock ceiling. Instead, it had become a mass of enormous, mutually compressed ice crystals, glowing with a dim blue light. Lofty, frigid, and faintly luminous, they barely illuminated this deathly silent world of biting cold.
The air was thick with cold that never seemed to melt away, along with snowflakes drifting down at a leisurely pace. Every breath felt like inhaling countless tiny needles of ice, stabbing painfully into the nose and lungs.
Stamping a foot against the ancient ice beneath them, one could feel at once that its hardness surpassed steel itself.
The surrounding silence was terrifying. The only sounds were the wind and, from time to time, the ominous creaks of the ice layer beneath their feet, making it feel as though the vast frozen plain could split apart at any moment.
"This damned place... it's even colder than I imagined!"
The white vapor from Gareth's mouth instantly froze into frost on his beard and brows. He stamped his feet hard, adjusted the shield on his back into a more comfortable position, and frowned at the slick, iron-hard ground beneath him.
Because of a dwarf's constitution, this kind of environment did not suit him at all.
"The ground's too slippery. Moving around is going to be a pain."
Riveria raised a slender gloved hand and wrapped it in magic before lightly touching a nearby cluster of ice spires that rose like a crystalline forest, carefully sensing their nature.
It was a small trick she was extremely practiced in, one that helped her avoid unnecessary trouble—like having her fingers instantly freeze and stick to the ice.
In a place this cold, no accident would be surprising. All they could do was be cautious. Cautious and then more cautious.
"It's not just the temperature... the elemental activity here is unnaturally sluggish. A simpler way to put it would be that everything feels as though it's hibernating. In this state, not only is magical power consumed faster, even the range of my magical perception is being severely compressed."
A trace of gravity flashed through her emerald eyes. Even the jewel atop her staff, Great Spirit, was pulsing with a somewhat dulled light.
So far, every scrap of information they had was bad news. The increasingly unfavorable situation piled pressure onto them one layer at a time.
Finn crouched down, his gloved fingertips brushing over the ice as he carefully examined its minute纹理 and the half-buried monster carcasses faintly visible ahead beneath the drifting snow—various ice-aspected creatures frozen solid, as though their lives had been snatched away in an instant.
"The environment itself is the first obstacle we have to overcome. Stay alert. The monsters here may be perfectly fused with their surroundings... or things may be just like before."
He lifted his gaze, voice low and steady.
"Whichever it is, proceed carefully. Danger is right beside us."
Everyone nodded silently. Even veterans this experienced were on edge, so for someone like Xien, who had only been an adventurer for half a year, caution came even more naturally. Sure, he had cheats, but that did not mean he could act recklessly.
The party began making its way with difficulty across this beautiful yet lethal frozen wasteland. The brutal environment forced them to keep moving faster than they wanted.
After some effort, they passed through a "forest" made of countless ice towers dozens of meters high.
Along the way, they carefully detoured around bottomless fissures that suddenly cut across their path, half-hidden by the snow. Every one of them kept their senses stretched to the limit, searching constantly for anything that might be their objective.
The deeper they went, the more malicious the Dungeon became.
And not all danger came from visible enemies. Some of it lay hidden in places that looked perfectly ordinary.
Once, while crossing a stretch of ice that seemed flat and solid, the surface suddenly collapsed without warning, revealing a trap pit beneath lined with countless sharp icicles.
Fortunately, their senses and awareness of danger were sharp enough that they had noticed the faint cracks ahead of time. A close call, but nothing worse than that.
And of course there were also monsters.
Above them, clinging to the ice walls, were slowly moving eight-legged shadows nearly identical in color to the surrounding frost. These spiders could manipulate thin sheets of ice and create traps laced with deadly venom. One careless step, and they could strike from nowhere.
There were also elemental-like creatures no one had ever seen before.
Aside from magic stones wrapped in energy and ice crystal, they possessed no true physical bodies. They drifted closer like pale white mist, silent and insubstantial.
Once enveloped by that mist, one's vitality and body heat would rapidly drain away. Movements would grow stiff and sluggish—until, eventually, one became a frozen statue.
Against monsters like these, for which physical attacks had extremely limited effect, Riveria had no choice but to repeatedly cast wide-area fire magic, using the warm radiance of her spells to temporarily drive back those invisible killers.
At the same time, Xien was struggling to clear out the lesser enemies with Sun Breathing and Fireball.
But here, flames were being heavily suppressed. Their power was drastically weakened. In contrast, the enemies were made all the more terrifying by the environment around them. Even Xien, if he let his guard down for the slightest moment, could be turned into an ice sculpture on the spot.
Under these conditions, Riveria's large-scale fire magic became especially crucial. It gave them precious moments to breathe.
But as time passed, every cast became more difficult for her in this environment, where ice held overwhelming dominion.
"This can't go on. The drain is too great."
Riveria's breathing had grown faintly ragged, and her face was paler than usual.
"We have to find the path to the next floor as quickly as possible. Otherwise... I may not be able to hold on."
There was no helping it. There were simply too many enemies.
Looking at yet another wave of monsters surging toward them, and then at the pained restraint in the eyes of the elven royal, Xien made a split-second decision and chose to use one of his abilities.
"Amaterasu."
Pitch-black flames suddenly erupted around them, wrapping the ground on every side except behind them, forming a deadly wall of fire.
The effect was immediate.
Anything that rushed into the flames burned on contact. The terrifying heat incinerated those monsters so thoroughly they did not even leave ash behind. A tremendous wave of heat burst outward, temporarily dispelling the extreme cold pressing in from the surroundings, and for the first time, everyone actually felt a trace of warmth in the air around them.
The scene left the other three utterly stunned. Just as they were about to exclaim in amazement, Xien's next words yanked them back to reality.
"Don't touch those flames. Once they stick to you, unless I actively retrieve them, they'll burn you to nothing. I can't control them properly right now. This is the best I can do—barely use them to block the enemy. Take this chance to recover. We need to find an opening and break through."
That was the fundamental reason Xien avoided using Amaterasu.
In an environment like this, it was undoubtedly a divine skill. But since he could not manipulate the shape of the black flames the way Sasuke could, the ability became one that might injure the enemy at the cost of injuring allies just as badly.
The enemy consisted of mindless monsters. When they saw adventurers, they would only charge forward by instinct. If they ran into something Amaterasu could not instantly burn away, then the fire might spread in ways Xien could not control. With his current ocular power, simply creating and maintaining this wall of fire was already his limit. If a teammate got touched by it, he would not have the capacity to save them in time.
Even so, while staring fixedly at the situation ahead, he still kept a hand on his companions, restoring their stamina and injuries.
At a moment like this, Finn had already pressed his thumb to his lips, relying on the near-cheat-like intuition he had been born with to guide their path.
His deep blue eyes swept sharply across the surroundings before finally locking onto a giant whirlpool-like opening in the far distance across the ice field, one that continuously poured out visible streams of white cold.
Under normal circumstances, that place looked even more dangerous than where they were standing now.
But his intuition told him that was exactly where they needed to go.
In a situation like this, naturally none of the others objected to their captain's judgment. Xien gradually extinguished the Amaterasu, and once again the party broke into a run.
If those flames were left unchecked and spread wildly enough to burn through the floor itself, then what awaited them would be far more terrifying than their current predicament.
As they drew closer to the opening venting icy currents, the temperature plunged even further.
Minute ice crystals, like drifting diamond dust, began floating through the air, striking their armor with crisp chiming sounds.
The tunnel beyond was abnormally wide, its walls smooth as if polished, as though some gigantic creature passed through it regularly.
What felt strange, however, was that the monsters pursuing them all stopped the moment they reached the mouth of the tunnel. They circled outside instead, unwilling to step even a single pace within, as if the cave beyond was some forbidden zone to them.
When at last they passed through the lengthy corridor and stepped into the deepest part of the cavern, the sight before them made even the battle-hardened trio hold their breath.
It was an enormous frozen dome-cavern beyond description.
Its vastness surpassed every place they had passed through before, as though the interior of an entire mountain had been hollowed out to form it.
At the center of the cave was a bottomless icy abyss radiating absolute cold.
And that was not even the most striking thing.
The most eye-catching sight stood at the very center of that abyss, on a slightly raised point—a naturally formed colossal tree of ice.
The giant tree was made of innumerable immense interwoven crystals, dazzling and dreamlike in its beauty. Several enormous roots stretched outward, becoming the key pathways connecting the outer area of the cavern to the center.
Looking at that great ice tree, easily over a hundred meters tall, Riveria was suddenly reminded of the World Tree in her homeland.
And at the front of those roots, there was a huge transparent object like a crystal.
With their keen eyesight, it was easy to see that inside it, frozen in place, was the figure of what appeared to be a small child.
That bizarre sight made all three veterans' hearts shudder, while Xien first showed shock—and then sudden understanding.
(So that's where the Sword Princess came from? There has to be an incredibly cruel story behind this...!)
That was right. Xien recognized the little girl.
Or rather, he recognized what she would look like when she grew up.
Ais Wallenstein—the heroine of the original story, the daughter of a human and a spirit, the future absolute trump card of the Loki Familia, and the person Bell looked up to with all his heart.
At this moment, no more than around ten years old, she was sleeping inside that crystal, sealed in ice not far away.
"So... this is what we were looking for. Quite unexpected, really. I thought it'd be some kind of item."
Gareth gripped his battleaxe tightly, scanning the surroundings with caution.
The area was oppressively silent.
And that, precisely, was the problem.
Even Orario rarely felt this silent, let alone the Dungeon. It was not as though they had never encountered such situations before—but every previous experience had ended badly.
This was the sign of an approaching crisis.
"Let's move. Go take a look. If that really is what we came for, then we need to—"
Finn's call urged them into motion once more, but—
At that exact moment, the mutation struck.
Crack— RUMBLE!!!
The entire cavern suddenly began to shake violently.
At the entrance to the tunnel they had come through, countless gigantic icicles dropped like a gate, sealing their retreat in an instant.
At the same time, from the great icy abyss in the center of the cavern came a horrible grinding roar—the sound of ice being crushed apart by some colossal force.
"Fall back! Everyone fall back! Get away from the edge of the abyss!"
Finn's sharp shout echoed through the vast cavern.
In the next moment, before the horrified eyes of the entire party, an immense shadow—like a mountain rising—suddenly emerged from the depths of the abyss.
The heavens were eclipsed.
Everyone stared fixedly at the newly appeared figure, their eyes filled with shock and alarm.
A change like this had not been outside their expectations.
But after seeing its true form, they still could not help being shaken.
That size. That pressure.
Without question, this was an existence utterly unlike the other monsters they had encountered—a being of ultimate danger.
Though it was a monster, it bore the form of a great eagle.
Or perhaps... something like a snow-white spirit.
Its shape was sleek and fluid, carrying a fatal sort of beauty.
Its colossal body was covered not in feathers, but in metallic, ice-blue plumes that gleamed with frosty light.
And its size was simply absurd.
From what Xien could judge with his current knowledge, if it fully spread its wings, the span would be more than fifty meters. A genuine behemoth.
Compared with other creatures of its kind, its appearance and bearing were far too holy.
It spread those vast wings, beat them mightily, and soared toward the vault above, proclaiming to all present the arrival of a king.
This was an unseen floor boss unknown to the adventurers of Orario—
The sovereign of the sky—
Livioso Falco.
Its very existence was a natural disaster.
And one especially fatal fact made it even worse:
It was an enemy with complete aerial superiority.
Faced with such an opponent, everyone unconsciously tightened their grip on their weapons. Even if they tried to stay composed, the seriousness and tension on their faces were impossible to hide.
The enemy, of course, did not care in the slightest.
It intended to make these insects pay for daring to intrude upon its domain.
Its molten-gold eyes looked down coldly upon the tiny figures beneath it like ants. In those pupils, there was only icy hostility.
Without any warning whatsoever, it swung its enormous wings.
And along with the gale came countless icicles sharp enough to shear through tempered steel.
"Tactical formation—Triangular Spearhead!"
Finn's shout cleaved through the roaring cold.
The others moved instinctively.
And the one who should have been protected by the group—
Riveria—
stepped to the very front.
....
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