Chapter 390: True Deep Floors (Patreon)

The floor was shaking.

Almost visibly, the great tower was crumbling, breaking apart under the assault of magic and that absurd, off-the-charts "monstrous Strength."

The fight had gone far more smoothly than anyone expected. That was probably thanks to everyone leveling up to Lv.8 — Isagi, Ais, the Queen, and the rest all felt like they hadn't even used their full power yet. Even Lefiya, Riveria, and the other mages hadn't resorted to that taboo, unspoken-of [Primordial Magic].

Brilliant colors pooled across the ground. The shockwaves of the battle had shattered a good portion of the buildings beneath the tower as well. Visibly, the [White Blood Cathedral] — that fusion of countless towers, castles, and corridors — now lay in broken, scattered ruin, and the Dungeon didn't seem to have any intention of repairing it.

That was more than a little unsettling.

Honestly speaking. If something like that had happened before, it should have provoked at least some reaction from the Dungeon. Not necessarily summoning [Juggernaut] outright — or rather, the [Dungeon's Avatar]. But there should have been some sound, sharp or wailing, something.

Why was the Dungeon giving no response at all? Was destruction on this scale simply beneath its notice now? Was it holding back? Or...

Maybe it really just didn't matter to her anymore.

"Let's take a break," Isagi said.

The fight hadn't actually taken much time, but it had still drained both stamina and focus. At Isagi's call, everyone set up camp right where they stood, as usual, cooking a meal while cleaning up the battlefield.

Lefiya soon brought over the Magic Stones and materials dropped by the boss — chief among them, a broken suit of humanoid armor.

[Emperor's Husk: A husk cast aside by the miracle of kings, proof of a bygone age. Once new power was gained, the past no longer mattered. The Emperor abandoned his people and his throne, becoming a "god," and set off into the deep-rooted dark in search of the unknown. Perhaps one day it will be picked up again by a new emperor, or perhaps it will simply crumble into the dust of history.]

Take it back and let Cecil look it over — see if she can forge another [Zeroth-Class Armament] out of it.

As more and more of them leveled up to Lv.8, the demand for new equipment kept climbing. Of course, the girl wasn't the only one who could forge a [Zeroth-Class Armament]. As long as the materials held out, Goibniu could forge them too — Isagi had heard that over in Freya Familia, Ottar's new gear was currently being handled personally by the god Goibniu himself, still in the process of being forged. That, it seemed, had also caught Hephaestus's interest.

Riveria and the others' [Zero-Class Armaments] were currently being handled by Hephaestus Familia. Cecil was certainly busy. But she wasn't shouldering everyone's equipment alone — which meant the girl could at least catch her breath a little.

After a short rest. the question became whether to keep pushing further down.

"Below us is a safe floor called the [Underbridge]. There shouldn't be any real problems," someone said.

Ais, Riveria, Ryuu, the Freya Familia members, Alfia, and the others had all been to the deep floors before, so they knew this place well. By the Dungeon's usual "rules," the floor below was a safe zone, similar to the earlier [Under Resort] or [Elf Garden] — no danger should exist there.

That said. the one difference was that the [Underbridge] wasn't nearly as beautiful an environment.

According to the others' descriptions, it was a massive stone bridge connecting two cliff faces, and strangely, it bore clear marks of "artificial construction" — something exceedingly rare anywhere else in the Dungeon. It genuinely looked as though someone had built such an enormous suspended bridge deep within the Dungeon on purpose. And visibly, it wasn't something human hands could have made.

The bridge was tremendously wide. Nearly a hundred meters across, and its length was even more absurd — even an adventurer above Lv.5, moving at full speed, would need ten or twenty minutes to reach the far end. At an ordinary walking pace, it would take at least half a day.

As for the area around the bridge. Or rather, the entire floor was blanketed in an extremely thick gray mist, shrouding everything on both sides of the bridge, making it impossible to see what lay ahead or behind.

Countless "ghost stories" had sprung up because of this. Tales of people walking forever without ever reaching the far shore, unable to turn back either, trapped endlessly on the bridge; of hidden rooms or labyrinths supposedly lurking to either side; of enormous Monsters flickering in and out of view within the gray mist.

The [Underbridge] was called a safe floor, but in truth it was an oppressive, unsettling place. Many adventurers heading for the deep floors, Loki Familia and Freya Familia included, always crossed it as quickly as possible without lingering.

"It's really easy to get messed up psychologically here," someone remarked.

"Mm!"

"It really is terrifying!!"

Ais and Ryuu said it almost in unison, both rendering the same judgment. Clearly, neither girl thought highly of the place.

As for that. Isagi decided they'd go down and see for themselves.

Once the break was over, the group set off together, walking into the slope beyond that door of flesh and blood.

Inside, it wasn't as dark as they'd imagined. A faint green glow, hazy and dim, fell like starlight from some distant sky, lighting the path ahead just enough. Combined with the orange glow of the Magic Stone lanterns in everyone's hands, the darkness around them was mostly driven back. Even so, the place still felt distinctly oppressive.

The slope seemed to have no end. The group quickened their pace, and after ten or twenty minutes of walking, the terrain finally began to level out, and they caught sight of an exit ahead. This connecting corridor between floors turned out to be far longer than they had imagined.

Once they stepped out, what met their eyes was, indeed, an absolutely massive stone bridge. Just as the girls had described, this bridge was so oversized for an ordinary person that it gave off a genuinely colossal impression. It looked as though it had originally been designed for some kind of "giant." The bridge was made of countless thick stone blocks fitted together, its surface carved with strange, ancient, abstract murals.

At the same time, the thick mist that shrouded everything around them wasn't actually gray fog at all.

It was [Color].

Those intensely saturated hues they'd seen before were now drifting through the air, like impossibly heavy cloud banks. Writhing, shifting. Those colors were still giving off light, making the stone bridge before them shimmer with a strange, eye-searing brilliance.

Everyone felt a distinct sense of unease. A heaviness settled over their heads. Staring at those colors, it felt as though they were constantly reshaping themselves into some unimaginably vast form, or some grotesquely deformed Monster.

"Let's go," Isagi said in a low voice.

The boy narrowed his eyes slightly, looking down and away, trying his best not to look directly at the shifting colors. That, at least, made him feel somewhat better. Just as the girls had said, this really wasn't a place to rest.

No one knew what lay on either side of the bridge. It was said to be a bottomless black chasm, though by rights that shouldn't be so — some adventurers had once tried lowering ropes and other tools to investigate, and the result had been "nothing found."

Absolutely nothing.

Below was pure fog and bottomless black. That sheer depth of pressure was enough to unsettle even Lv.5 adventurers.

Isagi could fly. But he hadn't thought to try going down for a look — there was no need to, after all. Even if some so-called "hidden zone" really existed down there, it was probably nothing special. Or perhaps...

Roughly half an hour later, the group reached the far end of the stone bridge. It was, after all, a safe floor. Visually oppressive and strange as it was, there was no genuine danger here. Still, it clearly wasn't a place to rest either.

At the bridge's end was another rocky platform, scattered with what looked like ruined structures. Unlike the ruins on the 37th floor, though, these were made of enormous stone blocks, crude and primitive. Many had eroded so badly their original shapes were barely recognizable; the few better-preserved ones were so abstract you could just barely make out a human face, or some kind of animal. These stone blocks ranged from tens of meters tall to just ten-odd meters, jutting up haphazardly across the platform.

Not far off, another downward passage opened up. Once they passed through here, they would truly be in the "deep floors."

According to Riveria and the others, everything from here down to the 49th floor belonged to a region called [Volcano], and at its very deepest point — the heart of the flames, the lowest reach — was the [Moytura], home of the Monster Rex Balor.

Isagi still decided they'd go down and take a look. There was no realistic hope of pushing all the way to the 49th floor in one expedition this time. But scouting out the map ahead of time was worthwhile. They'd already come this far — it would be a shame not to look.

So, without resting, the group soon stepped into the downward sloping passage once more.

The result was that they quickly felt a scorching heat radiating up from the impossibly hard stone and earth underfoot. The surrounding air had turned unbearably hot as well. Practiced by now, everyone pulled out cloth wraps made from fire-attribute Spirits and tied them around their necks like scarves, which helped a little to lessen the effects of the heat.

Even so. the thick, oppressive air, nearly heavy enough to feel solid, still made everyone deeply uncomfortable.

Unlike before, the surroundings now shimmered with streaks of red, molten light — magma flowing slowly beneath the walls. The Magic Stone lanterns in their hands had already stopped working. The overheated air was warping and twisting their metal shells.

Given an environment this brutal, Isagi could tell at a glance that without at least Lv.5, no one could set foot here at all — it was almost absurd.

At the end of the passage, the first thing that caught their eyes was a breathtakingly beautiful expanse of crimson "clouds" —

Endless skies, wild grass stretching to the horizon.

The beauty of the scene before them was so striking that everyone half-wondered, "Is this really inside a Dungeon?" Of course, the "sky" was so vivid and gorgeous that it gave off a strong sense of unreality instead.

There was no sun; that orange, blazing light seemed to radiate outward from the far edge of the horizon, setting the huge banks of cloud and the "sky-vault" ablaze with red.

As for the ground beneath their feet, it was covered in wild grass reaching waist-high, spread evenly in every direction as far as the eye could see, taking on the same fiery red as autumn maple leaves.

Beyond that, scattered here and there in the distance, stood enormous stone statues. Much like the ones they'd seen at the far end of the stone bridge. Only now they too were bathed in red, some resembling giant human faces, others strange animals or "totems" impossible to describe. Quite a few of the statues stood joined with tall, rising ridgelines, forming something like a crude, primitive "fortress."

And further still, in the distance, a single massive peak rose out of the earth, seemingly reaching "straight into the sky" — and that was no exaggeration; from where the group stood, craning their necks upward, they still couldn't make out where that mountain ended.

Just how high was this floor's ceiling? Hundreds of meters? Or maybe thousands? It was exactly this that gave the whole place a sense of not really being inside a "Dungeon" at all.

But that distant, towering mountain range stirred a strange sense of familiarity in the group, especially in Riveria and Ottar. Because, that was [Volcano].

This region worked exactly like that — from what could be called the "surface," meaning the floor everyone currently stood on, you could see an impossibly tall "volcano" rising up. They would need to climb to its peak first, then descend through the countless tunnels and passages inside the mountain itself, to finally reach the true [Crimson Mountains] beyond the 44th floor. And at its deepest point was the [Moytura], home of the Monster Rex Balor.

"Well, whatever else, at least the goal is clear," someone said.

For now, the group was very, very far from that mountain — reaching it on foot would be no simple task.

This sea of grass. It looked calm enough at the moment, but this wasn't the safe floor they'd just left — Isagi was certain something dangerous lurked within it.

So.

"Let's split up and explore like before, then," Isagi said.

If this followed the same pattern as the rest of the Dungeon, then the grassland ahead and the distant volcano together likely made up the region spanning floors 40 through 43. Just like the dense forest and the [Great Waterfall] before it. They called it separate floors, but in truth it was really "one floor."

As such, the map before them was going to be vast, and splitting up to explore would make it much easier to gather information and clues. And this had been the plan from the very start anyway.

Isagi nodded. He watched as Ottar led the Freya Familia group away, followed by Riveria and the others — except for Finn and Gareth, Alfia now traveled with them too, forming a four-person team.

It seemed, after all this time, Alfia's relationship with Riveria and the others had improved somewhat.

Only once both teams had left did Isagi call over the girls beside him, and together they chose yet another empty direction.

Then, they walked deeper into that sea of crimson grass.