At last, a groan came forth from the center of the black wind.
“Haah…haah…! Hrh…hrh…!!”
Aiz panted heavily, taking no notice of the sweat pouring off her. The wind had only just begun to groan, but the girl’s muscles and bones had been complaining for a long time already. She was incapable of withstanding the unrestrained might of Airiel for prolonged amounts of time, and her arms and legs were feeling the burn.
Her body was covered in open gashes, her muscles were torn, and her bones felt like they had been ground to dust. Her little finger was bent at an impossible angle from swinging her blade. She wrenched the finger back into place and gripped her sword once more.
“Nizelle!”
At Aiz’s word, her festering hatred poured forth. It gorged itself on her magical energy, turning her groans into screams and restoring the black wind that shrouded her. She couldn’t feel a thing anymore, but that was just how she liked it. Her hate was never-ending; as long as she used it as fuel, the flames of battle would never die out.
Aiz launched herself once more at Delphyne, without realizing or caring how closely death crept.
“Riveria!” yelled Gareth. “Use your magic and take care of its wings! Burn them, freeze them, whatever works! Once it stops moving, I’ll attack!”
The old dwarf’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his ax. But Riveria’s face went pale.
“Gareth?! What do you mean?!”
“I’ll hack my way to its magic stone, even if it kills me! I don’t know where it is, but if I keep slicing, I’ll have to get there eventually!”
“Are you drunk, fool?! Even Aiz can’t overcome that creature’s regeneration! All you’ll do is get yourself killed!”
“Then what do you suggest?! The girl is in danger! If we waste any more time, we’ll all be doomed!”
“Grh…!”
Their argument tipped the scales this way and that, but Delphyne was ready to sweep them aside without waiting for them to come to a decision. There wasn’t enough time to come up with an optimal plan, and so Riveria was forced to make a difficult decision.
“Aiz…Gareth… I…!”
But at that moment, a chain of magical blasts, stardust, flames, and lightning struck the beast head-on.
“Graaaaaaaahhh?!”
“Magical bombardment?!”
“It can’t be! It’s…!”
Gareth and Riveria were stunned. Then the dwarf recognized several figures, running like the wind to assist in Aiz’s fight.
“Astrea Familia!” he yelled.
“Hrh…what…?”
Aiz paused and looked up in confusion, seeing the multicolored missiles striking her foe out of nowhere.
“You must have taken leave of your senses,” someone said, “to take on a beast this size by yourself.”
“…!”
“Let’s join forces. Will you help?”
When Aiz saw who it was, her eyes widened. Standing there before her, her cloak and golden hair fluttering in the wind, was Lyu, a wooden sword in her hand.
“Join forces…? Never! That monster’s mine! Stay out of my way!”
Once she understood what the elf was saying, Aiz screamed. Lyu silently approached the girl and…
“Ow!”
…conked her on the head.
“Listen to me,” she said sternly.
“That hurt…”
“You need to calm down. Do you have any idea how difficult you’re making life for Lady Riveria?”
Lyu looked down at the girl, a full head shorter than her, and sighed. But it was a sigh that was aimed, at least in part, toward herself.
“I wonder if that’s what I looked like, back when we fought. It’s embarrassing.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“…Nothing,” she said, abandoning that line of thought and peering into Aiz’s golden eyes. “Just listen to me. We can only beat this monster by working together.”
“No! Let me do it! I want to do it!”
At that moment, a second voice came to Lyu’s rescue.
“You can’t just say gimme, gimme, Sword Princess! Or maybe I should just call you ‘Shorty’ from now on!”
“Shorty?!”
Alize leveled a finger at Aiz’s shocked expression.
“You might end up hurting yourself so bad, you’ll never be able to eat a Jyaga Maru Kun ever again!” she declared.
“B-but I like Jyaga Maru Kun!”
“And besides,” Alize went on, in a less frivolous tone that sounded more like the voice of a gentle big sister, “you’ll make everyone who cares about you sad. Only monsters make people cry! You don’t want to be a monster, do you?”
“…!”
As the girl’s exhaustion set in, the hate and anger swirling around inside her finally began to fade. At the mention of her fellow familia members, the light returned to her eyes, and she turned to look down toward the Dungeon floor.
There, she saw Riveria and Gareth, fighting to protect her.
Alize’s words struck a chord somewhere deep within her heart, and Aiz found herself slowly coming to her senses.
“It’s okay,” Alize said. “We’re all at our strongest when we fight together! If we join forces, that big, bad monster’s going down! Wink! ”
Alize beamed like the sun.
“So put away that nasty wind, okay? You don’t need it with all of us here.”
“…Okay.”
At last, her words seemed to get through to the girl. The black wind faded away and reason returned to her eyes.
“That’s our leader for you,” said Lyu to herself. “Nobody can compete with her when it comes to dealing with children.”
Then her expression turned grave as Delphyne’s furious roar shook the Dungeon.
“Looks like it’s finished regenerating…” said Alize. “Here it comes, everybody! We three need to keep it busy while our allies set up!”
“Got it!” replied Lyu.
Alize looked between them, frowning. “But what are we meant to do?” she asked. “I slashed and slashed, but nothing seemed to work…”
Nobody knew more about the creature’s terrifying capabilities than the one who had been fighting it head-on. She glanced down at her sword, Desperate, and at the cracks running along its length. But just then, Alize puffed out her chest so hard it looked like she was about to topple over backward.
“Don’t you worry about that!” She grinned. “As of a few moments ago, we pure, pretty, and perfect girls are now pure, pretty, and perfect Level 4 girls! Heh-hem!”
“What’s that?! Every member of the familia ranked up at once?!”
Riveria struggled to process what she was seeing, when all of a sudden came the voice of none other than Astrea herself.
“That’s right,” she said. “I updated their Status a moment ago. Their earlier victory earned them plenty of excelia.”
“Wait,” said Gareth. “One shocking turn of events is quite enough for one day, I fear. I was just coming to terms with Alfia’s defeat, and now this?! Perhaps I’m getting too old…”
“You’re not alone,” Kaguya said. “I’m having trouble processing it myself…”
The reckless behavior of their patron goddess was enough to put exasperated smiles on all the girls of Astrea Familia. Among them, Lyra alone wore a fearless grin that much resembled that of Braver.
“But just think how much stronger we are now,” she said. “That’s eleven levels worth of improvement—we gotta be able to do somethin’ with that, right?”
Unless we concentrate our attacks, we’ll never cut a path to its magic stone!
That was what Gareth had said when first confronted with the beast’s regeneration. The creature’s unique skill was healing, not defense or evasion, and so with enough firepower, it was possible to overcome the rate of regeneration and expose the core. With that, it wouldn’t matter what level the monster was—one attack would end it.
For the new-and-improved Astrea Familia, such a feat should be possible.
“To think there was enough excelia to rank up all eleven of them!” exclaimed Riveria. “Alfia really was something else!”
“Indeed,” said Gareth, “but this does give us a chance…!”
Excelia from a target was divided among its recipients according to their contribution. The received value could therefore fall below the amount required for a great feat. The fact that this didn’t happen, despite the eleven-way split, only went to show how formidable a figure Alfia really was.
Lyra felt the new weight of her weapons in her hands. Overflowing with an innate sense of power, she turned to Gareth and Riveria and explained her plan.
“Might take us a while to get used to our new strength,” she said, “but now that the gang’s all here again, how’s about we have a real raid battle, like we were always meant to? Give us a buff, Nine Hell.”
“Shields in the front, mages in the back,” said Kaguya. “And my sword will be wherever it can do the most damage. After this, it’ll finally be over.”
Riveria and Gareth both nodded. In bitter spite of their wounds, they summoned the last of their strength.
“Alize! Riveria’s magic is here! And all the others, too!”
The jade light of Veil Breath enveloped the trio as Lyu deftly evaded a fireball and turned to look behind her. There, Gareth, Riveria, Lyra, Kaguya, and the rest of Astrea Familia clanged their swords, raised their shields, and readied their staffs.
“Right!” Alize chirped back. “Then let’s finish what we came here to do! It’s been a long time coming!”
Alize leaped toward the dragon, and the other adventurers followed. Only one figure stood back, watching over the fight.
“Erebus…” Astrea muttered. “These girls are about to draw the curtain on the battle you started.”
The searing air, filled with sparks, carried her words to the top of the bluff where Erebus stood, but the dark god did not answer. He simply narrowed his gaze, watching events play out with neither fury nor spite. In the void of his silence, one sound triumphed.
“I will not lose here,” Lyu yelled. “I must carry her justice into the future!”
And so the fate of this battle was already set in stone.
With her detection magic, Lyana swiftly deduced the location of Delphyne’s magic stone. Then eight fighters in all—Lyu, Alize, Kaguya, and Lyra among them—got up close and personal in an attempt to overwhelm the beast.
The two greatshields of Gareth and Asta protected the back ranks, where Maryu treated the party’s wounds before they grew too serious. At the very rear stood Riveria, the main target of the party’s defense and support.
Free of distractions or interruptions at last, she recited the words of her ultra-long incantation: a spell powerful enough to hit across floors, and the reason for her inclusion on the monster-slaying unit. At last, she unleashed it, and it joined Celty’s and the other mages’ spells, dealing a fearsome barrage of blows to the dragon that destroyed its wings, its armor-like scales, and tore a path to the core.
Then the wind sang once more. Aiz, her silver sword wrapped in a tornado, combined all her magic and skills into one devastating swing that shattered the purple orb into a million pieces.