The crystals were melting. The forests had been reduced to ash. The land itself cracked and burned. Glittering lakes had become bubbling pools that belched blistering steam, and droplets of molten crystal rained from above like hail.
It was a vision of apocalypse painted in scarlet and crimson. Not a memory remained of the Under Resort the adventurers knew.
“Is this really…floor eighteen?” Lyu muttered in disbelief as the girls of Astrea Familia stood dumbfounded beside her. “The paradise we all know and love, reduced to…this?”
Lyu recalled the vow she had exchanged with her friends just two weeks prior. Astrea Familia had promised to be buried here when the time came, but there was no sign of that paradise now.
“The trees are burning…” wailed Celty. “All the greens and blues…they’re gone.”
“I ain’t never seen anythin’ so…horrible,” muttered Lyra.
Aiz lifted an arm to her sweat-soaked brow. “It’s so hot…” she complained. “It’s hard to breathe…”
“This is like hell itself,” said Kaguya.
“It…it can’t be,” cried Riveria, the horror plain on her face, “but this is just like…”
“Yes.” Gareth completed her thought. “It’s the same as the Dragon’s Urn on the deep levels!”
The rocks in the walls and floors disgorged a terrifying heat, like magma. The two first-tier adventurers scanned the area, taking it all in.
“What’s the Dragon’s Urn, old man Gareth?” asked Alize, but she didn’t get to hear his answer before the ground at her feet split open, unleashing a column of fire.
“Whoa?! What’s happening?!” cried Iska.
“The ground just exploded!” yelled Lyana.
The strange phenomenon occurred three times, the ground shaking violently with each burst.
“A large group of monsters got engulfed by the flames,” cried Neze, “and they’re coming this way!”
While floor eighteen was a so-called safe point where no monsters spawned, a good number of monsters still ventured in from the adjacent floors seeking respite. Clad in fiery armor, bugbears and mad beetles advanced toward the adventurers.
“I’ve never seen anything like it!” shouted Kaguya. “We have to fight them!”
She drew her katana and lunged for the horde.
“The monsters are a pain in the butt, but…”
“Those pillars of fire are a real danger, too!” Lyu finished Lyra’s warning. “What incredible heat… A single hit from one of those and we’ll be incinerated!”
The two girls leaped with impressive agility, fighting burning monsters while dodging fiery columns that shot up from their feet. All the while, the sheer heat scorched their flesh, leaving no doubt in their mind that these flames were responsible for floor eighteen’s dramatic transformation.
Kaguya paused during a break in the hostilities to cry out to her allies. “Why is fire coming out of the ground?” she yelled. “What’s going on?”
“It’s coming from the floor below,” came Gareth’s reply.
“Wha—?!”
Riveria studied the landscape. “It’s the monster we’re looking for,” she concluded, after drawing on the wisdom she and her fellow first-tier adventurer had obtained over the years. “It must be. It’s blasting its way up through the floor as we speak.”
“By spitting fireballs?! That’s insane!” cried Neze. Her thoughts echoed the minds of everyone else in Astrea Familia. Compared to Riveria and Gareth, they were practically greenhorns. While they looked on in utter shock, the first-tier adventurers went on.
“The Dragon’s Urn is a deep level that only Zeus and Hera have ever reached,” Riveria explained. “We only have Guild reports to go on, but we have heard tales of attacks that cross floor boundaries.”
“From floor fifty-two onward, the Dungeon becomes hell,” added Gareth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if our quarry is using the same tactic it would down there.”
The girls of Astrea Familia were stunned. “So this is what it’s like down on floor fifty-two?!” spat Lyra in disbelief. “You’ve gotta be kidding me! That’s crazy!”
The Dungeon was an abyss that defied all reason. Lyra was only now beginning to realize its true extent.
Alize, meanwhile, eyed the fiery landscape, then gave a cheerful smile and a nod.
“So this monster’s as powerful as the ones you find past floor fifty, huh? Yeah, that’s scary! My alias is Scarlett Harnell, but that might not be enough to save me here!”
Alize thumped her chest with a smug grin.
“Why do you sound so proud when you say that?!” Lyu shouted.
The rest of the girls fell about in disbelief. Aiz tilted her head in confusion while Lyu shook her head, wondering if it was a good or a bad thing that Alize’s foolishness had banished the tension in the air.
“Never mind, just form up as Lady Riveria indicated!” she said in the end.
“That’s right,” Riveria agreed. “The monster hasn’t broken through yet. We still have time to—”
But before she could give any concrete orders, a new voice interjected.
“Do not interrupt.”
All sound disappeared at once. The adventurers froze in stunned silence, as if their voices had been stolen.
Out of a cloud of whirling sparks stepped a woman in a jet-black dress. Despite the scorching conditions, everything around her seemed cold and desolate.
“We bear witness to the final moments of the Age of Gods.”
Her words flowed like poetry. Her ashen hair fluttered around her shoulders.
“In death, as it was in life. Obtrusive, violent, and cruel.”
Her voice carried like the tinkling of a bell.
“Do not resist. There is no need to add your voices to the world’s death knell. You can simply remain forever silent.”
Her words sounded like a prayer, but they were an omen of the end times. A prophecy of destruction laid down by the second conqueror before the astonished adventurers.
It was Lyu who recovered first and spoke the witch’s name.
“Alfia… Silence!”
“I-it can’t be,” stammered Maryu. “H-how did you get here?!”
“It’s not just Babel’s sentries—you would’ve had to sneak right through our main base! How did you manage that?!”
Alfia remained cool throughout Kaguya’s interrogation.
“I see no reason to answer that.”
Then her neck turned ever so slightly, placing Riveria and Gareth squarely in the path of her unopened eyes.
“I see you are not surprised, followers of the Trickster.”
“Finn warned us,” answered Riveria. “He said there might appear a foe even more deadly than the Dungeon monster.”
“Yes,” added Gareth. “We wouldn’t be here were it not for his canny hunch.”
“I see. In any case, it matters not. Demise is imminent.”
Alfia quickly seemed to lose interest in the pair. What she said next was a pronouncement of death.
“Promise to neither cry nor act. Remain silent, and I shall leave you in peace.”
“““Hrh?!”””
“You shall be exempt from despair and destruction. Free from resentment and loss.”
The woman was dead serious. Her words cut Astrea Familia to their core.
All—save Lyu, Kaguya, and Lyra—were seeing her for the first time. The raw power behind each of the Level 7’s words was incredible. It was as if she were a messenger of hell itself, come to spread word of humankind’s downfall.
She held the power to carve out the silence she desired for herself. That much was undeniable.
Any adventurer in Orario ten years ago would call her the Grand Silent Witch.
Any god in heaven would call her the world’s final boss.
She was lofty, supreme, and no mortal could intrude upon her silence for even a moment.
Alfia spoke as if she were tracing the score to her requiem with her finger.
“Promise me to wait out this tower’s fall and the end of an era without word or deed. If so, then—”
“Nope, sorry!!”
One insensitive young redhead shattered the weighty mood.
“I don’t get all this ‘bringing an end to the Age of Gods’ stuff, but if you think I’m gonna stand around while Orario crumbles, then you’ve got another think coming!!”
Alfia’s lips parted gently in surprise. The jaws of the rest of Alize’s allies, on the other hand, hit the floor in shock.
Alize ignored all of them and continued shooting off. “You’re trying to destroy the city! That’s ridiculous! Besides, we’ve already come all this way! You really think I’m just gonna go, ‘Oh, okay then,’ and not do anything just because you asked?!”
Riveria and Gareth went uncharacteristically wide-eyed, while Aiz blinked multiple times.
“Well, I’m sorry, but our justice doesn’t care what you think! What do you think of that, eh? Too hot for you to handle? Well, that’s too bad!!”
Alize puffed out her modest chest and put on the smuggest smile she could muster, eyes closed. The only sound that ensued was the roaring of the flames.
Kaguya was the first to break the silence.
“…Heh. Ha-ha-ha!”
“Talk about disrespectful. Sheesh…” Lyra hung her head in defeat. “…But I guess that’s what we all love about ya. Never change, Captain.”
She gave a warm smile. Lyu couldn’t help but agree. Alize’s outburst gave them all courage. So long as she was there for them to look up to, the disciples of the stars could go on fighting adversity for as long as it took.
Freed from the grip of silence, Lyu’s fingers curled around Adi’s blade.
“Hwah-hah-hah-hah!” Gareth chuckled. “I see not even Silence can put the fear of the gods in you, lass! Hold on to that courage—you’ll need it against her!”
“We could all take a leaf out of Alize’s book,” added Riveria with a smile. “If Alfia hates noise so much, then perhaps we should be making more of it.”
“Yes. Let’s take her down,” said Aiz, tightening both hands around the hilt of her sword. “Everyone else is working hard. We won’t lose like last time.”
All of them saw something in the enthusiastic young girl. It couldn’t quite be called hope—but it inspired them nonetheless, and each of them leveled their weapons at the witch standing in their way.
“Hmm.”
For one short moment, while her face was obscured by the sparks…Alfia smiled. Then any trace of amusement was obliterated.
“The rallying hymn of foolishness mistaken for courage,” she said. “Orario has not changed.”
The air about her suddenly gained an unbearable weight.
“Very well. If you will not watch this world’s demise in silence, then perish alongside it. Let the cries of life and war return equally to nothing. That is the mercy I offer you.”
Suddenly, unbelievable waves of magical energy began radiating off her.
“Get ready!”
Riveria immediately set up a magic circle and started chanting, while Alize raised her sword, Crimson Order.
“Let’s go, girls! There’s a world that needs saving, so we’ve got a job to do!”
“Yes, Alize!” came Lyu’s reply, and she and the other adventurers all launched themselves at the ashen-haired witch.