“Grh… Hrh…!”
The roaring flames on the Dungeon’s eighteenth floor virtually drowned out the groans of someone trying to stand. To the north, Aiz fought madly against Delphyne, while here, the girls of Astrea Familia were lying on the ground.
“…Hey… Any of you still alive…?” Lyra croaked. It was Neze who answered her, one foot in the grave.
“I am…” she said. “But I don’t have a clue why. How are we not dead after that?”
Alfia’s magic had hit them head-on. That level of power should have far outstripped the meager defense granted by Asfi’s accessories.
“It was Riveria’s magic…!” exclaimed Lyu. “Without it, we would have been obliterated!”
She looked down at her palm, where the green glow of Riveria’s magical protection had completely vanished. It had saved Astrea Familia from destruction but faded in the process.
“I see you are all still in one piece,” said Alfia. “Has my magic waned that much? …No, it is that high elf who deserves the credit. She has grown strong.”
“Grh…!”
Lyu screwed up her face in disgust as Alfia drew closer without a sound.
“However,” the witch said. “That protection will not avail you a second time.”
But just as she prepared to finish them off, the dragon roared, and Alfia calmly glanced in its direction. What piqued her curiosity most was Aiz.
“So their battle continues,” she said. “That little girl fares well against a god-slayer who calls the Dungeon home.”
Her form, clad in wind, moved like a storm.
“This may only be a prelude, but it is worthwhile nonetheless.”
The beast belched fire, burning away the wind’s shackles. The earth convulsed beneath its feet, and everything it touched turned to ash and dust. Watching it was like witnessing the end of the world.
Lyu trembled. There was no room for doubt after seeing it with her own eyes. The dark god’s prediction—the destruction of Babel and the manifestation of the underworld—was all too real. It made her heart pound and turned her blood to ice.
Kneeling on the ground, unable to lift a finger, she instead peered up at Alfia.
“Do you feel nothing?” she asked her.
“About what?”
“All this. Do you see it and feel nothing?!”
Fire flickered against the witch’s face, but she showed no emotion whatsoever, as if regarding nothing more or less than the ironclad rules of nature at work.
To Lyu, Alfia’s callous disregard was more than she could bear…or comprehend.
“Your allies are slaughtering people! They revel in death and destruction! They summoned that…that thing…to destroy hope! Doesn’t that make you feel something?!”
“The noise irritates me,” the witch answered, “but that is all.”
Lyu could scarcely believe the emptiness in her voice. “Wh-wha—?” she stammered. But Alfia went on.
“A slayer of gods. The end of justice,” she said. “There is no doubt this is the incarnation of evil. But if it can erase my disappointment, then so be it.”
Alfia looked down at her palm.
“For my disappointment is the one thing I truly cannot bear.”
In the distance, the wyrm roared. The wind bellowed. But Lyu didn’t hear any of it. The battle faded to silence. What Lyu wanted to hear, more than anything else, was the witch’s answer.
“…What… What is your disappointment…?” she asked. “What could be so disappointing to make the city’s greatest protectors side with evil?!”
At first, Alfia held her silence. Before long, all of Astrea Familia—Alize, Lyra, and everyone else—were waiting for her answer. Then at last, and perhaps on a whim, she spoke.
“Very well,” she said. “Since you have made it this far, I shall tell you.”
She peered upward through the cavernous stone roof to the battlefield of her fellow conqueror and the apocalyptic skies that lay above it.
“Tell you the tale…of our disappointment.”
“Nine hundred and forty-seven,” said Zald, counting the strikes that had been dealt. “More than I expected, but not enough.”
His weighty voice echoed throughout Central Park.
“Mewling brat. Draped in the finest adornments this city can offer, and still you are no match for me.”
“Grh…!”
Ottar was beaten black-and-blue. Cracks ran through every plate of his armor, including the golden pauldron atop his shoulder. All his weapons had been destroyed, leaving only a single greatsword.
His armor aside, the man had taken heavy punishment, too. The conqueror’s sword had left deep gashes in his rocklike skin, and even Ottar’s ace in the hole—his transformation ability—had not been able to save him.
He looked up into Zald’s eyes. They were weighty and discouraged.
“Pathetic,” said the conqueror. “Truly pathetic. If you are the greatest defense this city can muster, then there is no other choice.”
Strangely, miraculously, as though tuned in to his fellow conqueror far beneath the earth, Zald raised his eyes to the sky as well. To the ash-gray clouds that blocked out hope and smothered the city. Far off to the north, and what lay beyond.
“Orario needs to be destroyed. There is no avoiding that.”
Ottar struggled to his feet, but at those words, he froze.
“What…do you mean? No avoiding it? What are you talking about?!”
“I am saying there is no other way,” answered Zald. “We must tear down the Dungeon’s gate, release the monsters within, and cull humanity’s numbers. I had sorely hoped it would not come to this.”
“Our disappointment,” said Alfia, “is weakness. Powerlessness. A feeling you must all know well.”
“Weakness? Powerlessness? Whose weakness?!” asked Alize.
The witch’s ashen hair was framed against the sparks. “Orario’s,” she said. “This whole world’s. And above all, our own.”
For a moment, a trace of pity almost seemed to cross the witch’s face.
“What’re you talkin’ about?!” groaned Lyra, barely able to stand. “Explain it like we’re a bunch of babies!”
“Explain our weakness?” Alfia replied. “Is it not painfully obvious? We slayed the Behemoth. We felled Leviathan. But against the Black Dragon, we were powerless.”
Lyu gasped. “The Three Great Quests!”
Alfia did not deny it. “So mighty were we that even the gods recognized our strength,” she said. “Yet we were nothing compared to that foul beast. It was a massacre—I have never witnessed one like it, before or since.”
“Grh…!”
“The Black Dragon tore us to shreds and devoured us. Those of us who lived recall only the rivers of blood merging into a single crimson sea.”
It was the battle that ended Zeus Familia and Hera Familia. Just hearing of it was enough to render the girls of Astrea Familia speechless. Even though a survivor was recounting it firsthand, it didn’t feel real. This witch had brushed off the girls’ attacks like it was nothing, and now she spoke of the powerlessness she felt before the dragon’s might.
“In the end,” she said, “we fled. Those of us who did not die.”
For the first time, Alfia looked angry. Angry at herself and the other so-called heroes who deserted their task.
“It was then that I realized something,” she said. “These methods can never succeed.”
“…What do you mean?”
Alize was only barely able to speak, but Alfia ignored her. Her words burned with a righteous, indignant tone.
“Adventurers. You cannot handle true despair. Your hope is a lie—to yourselves, and to the world. We cannot escape the end! Not while we cling to our gods!”
“The world needs heroes,” said Zald. “But how are heroes born, and how do they grow?”
“What are you…?” asked Ottar, stunned.
“Is it even possible while the gods still walk this earth?”