Meanwhile, with the Holy Sword in her hands, Anzu had been forced to walk into the deepest part of the continent, the Last Dungeon itself. She looked terrified.
She might be ruler of the Ascorbic Domain, the holy training grounds for martial artists everywhere—but Kunlun was the stuff of legend, and what lay beyond that… Well, she wasn’t here by choice. Her legs were moving for her, and she was so not ready. Each time she stepped on a twig or made the leaves rustle, she flinched.
The brush cleared, and she found herself in the open.
Across the field was an ominous rock.
Her feet were taking her that way, and she could not stop them.
“Please, no! My instincts are screaming that it’s dangerous!”
Complaining out loud to no one, she reached the rock face. The sight before her was downright unnatural.
The building was more avant-garde and modern than anything she’d ever seen, buried beneath—no, fused with—the rock face. Calling it a cave felt deeply wrong.
But Anzu’s feet didn’t even hesitate. This was unbearable.
“Where am I? The gates to hell? Aughhh!”
Someone had grabbed her from behind.
“Hellooooo!”
Eve had flown here—literally—and snatched her by the waist, flying them both all the way to the back of the cave.
“E-Eve! Let me go!”
“Sorry, Anzy. We’re all out of time.”
Anzu knew what that meant. “Wait, Lloyd showed up?”
That boy was a miracle worker—basically everyone knew that now.
“Your instincts are getting sharper, Anzy.”
Then Eve swore under her breath. They flew on and on, farther and farther into the Last Dungeon.
In the distance behind them, they heard a boy’s voice—likely Lloyd’s.
“Is this the place? Wait for me!”
“Argh, already? Nope, still good! I work quick!”
Eve sped up—and there it was.
The Last Dungeon.
The very back of it was so quiet, it was like no man had ever dared tread there before.
Natural rock mingled with the man-made objects—such as concrete corridors, like the remains of the laboratory.
At the center loomed the keystone. It was difficult to describe—like a large stone weight placed on an even larger rock lid.
If you’ve seen the stones used in pickling, imagine those, but massive.
If they’d draped ropes around it, you’d assume this was a place of worship—but just the bare rocks were far more sinister.
There was a mosquito-like whine coming from somewhere. It was almost ticklish and unsettling.
Anyone setting foot here would know that humans did not belong.
“What is this place…? Yikes!”
Tossed aside, Anzu landed on her face.
Eve was gazing up at the keystone, the emotions catching up with her.
“Hundreds of years…but it feels just like yesterday.”
Long, long ago—she’d found this witchcrafty, shamanistic-looking keystone on a deserted island, bringing color back to a life she’d grown weary of. Her new toy got her brain juices flowing again.
“Good thing it brought the lab over with it—that means the steps will be the same. First…” Eve was muttering away to herself.
There were no warning signs or colors, but Anzu’s brain was telling her that nothing here was safe to touch. “What is this?” she asked. “Eve, this thing is crazy dangerous!”
“…Oh, well spotted, Anzy. Those animal instincts going off?”
“Yeah. It’s like…super-concentrated demon lord.”
“Concentrated! That’s the word!” Eve cackled.
It was far too frightening for Anzu to muster any sort of smile.
This stone looked like it was sealing something away. Like in a children’s story, where removing it would unleash evils upon the world. And she knew Eve had talked about releasing the demon lords.
“Is this what seals away the demon lords that Alka and the Kunlun villagers defeated?”
“Ooh, you can tell?” Eve said, in the kind of tone a clothing shop employee uses.
“Even a baby would know not to touch that thing!” Anzu was hissing like a kitten that had just seen the ocean.
“See that little gap here? Weaker demon lords slip through there, even after they’re defeated. The really bad ones take much more time, I hear.”
It was barely big enough to fit a pinky.
The image of a demon lord squeezing itself through that was unsettling.
“And if we popped the keystone off entirely…”
“A whole bunch of demon lords would return. And not just that.”
“It gets worse?!”
“Everyone in the vicinity would get flung to the other world and get exposed to so much mana, they’d lose their minds good and proper.”
“Good and proper?!”
Eve fixed Anzu with a flinty glare. “It means you’d become a demon lord.”
Anzu gulped.
“You’d maintain your own ideal age and gain a superpower derived from your dreams and aspirations. A wish would be granted that’d you influence the world. Eugy was always grumbling about how she wanted other people as short as her around—and so the dwarven species came to exist. That’s why we have dwarves, but not any elves.”
“Elves…? What are those?”
“Oh, never mind. For that reason—I don’t need to open it all the way. Just wide enough for me to fit through. That will be enough to unleash the demon lords!”
They heard Lloyd’s voice in the distance.
“Oh! I have got to stop running my mouth. Okay, Anzy! Stick that rock with the Holy Sword.” Eve waggled her fingers, forcing Anzu to move.
Anzu was sent stiffly toward the keystone.
“Damn it! I know moving this thing at all will spell doom!”
“Don’t worry! Once I’m through, you can just close it right back up. It’s only a moment! Of course, lots of demon lords will crawl out in that moment. All the scientists, transformed to achieve their dreams.”
Abaddon had been researching edible insects. The treants had once dreamed of turning the deserts green—or maybe that was just a random unlucky gardener. Eve’s mind was running over the past.
Meanwhile, Anzu was putting up a last-ditch resistance.
“Hngggggg…!”
This would plunge the world into chaos. She had to fight it.
“Oh, this is no time for a trip down memory lane! Spare me the crisis adrenaline, please.”
“If the fate of the world rests in my hands, I’m gonna do what I have to!”
“The world? Those chips will fall where they may; it hardly matters. Stabby stabby!”
Eve waved an arm like a conductor, and that forced Anzu to thrust the sword at the stone.
“Augh!”
It glowed bright—and the blade turned liquid, flowing into the cracks on the keystone.
“It’s like resin or a concrete pour.”
Soon, only the hilt remained. The rest of it was fused with the keystone.
“That hilt functions as a lever; that’s how you move it. Come, Anzy! Do what I’m doing!”
“Aero!” Lloyd’s voice echoed through the Last Dungeon’s deepest chamber.
Boom! Ka-blam! Whamm! Ka-blooey!
“Wh-what the—?!”
The dungeon wall collapsed, and Lloyd and Satan flew out.
“Lloyd! Such violence! I never knew about this!”
“The chief told me about it recently! We call it the Kunlun-Style Dungeon Shortcut Technique!”
“You can’t believe anything that crazy grandma says…but this time it worked out!”
As he had grown less timid, Lloyd was starting to make bold moves—and copy things he probably shouldn’t. Satan was very much in worried dad mode.
“It worked out, right?”
“Yup! All’s well that ends well!”
Lloyd smiled at the compliment from his master.
Eve gritted her teeth, furious at this interruption. The bones in her jaw creaked unpleasantly.
“Lloyd…Belladonna!”
“This ends here, Eve Profen!”