It’s about time I wrap this up. I’d never had to use it up to this point, thankfully, but a situation so dire that I needed it had finally appeared.
Open status menu. I selected the Key to Agartha from my inventory.
The golden key appeared in my palm.
Use the Key to Agartha. Transport me and all my allies here to the second floor, please.
Saito squeaked. “What the...? Your body’s transparent...? What’s this light? Hey, wait! Where are you going?!”
“I’ll be back soon to kick all your asses.”
“But, how?! How are you escaping?! We already made sure you couldn’t telepoooooort!”
Saito’s screams were our background music as the scene changed to Agartha.
†
The 13 Floors to Agartha: Floor 2.
Last time, the floor was the inside of a cave where Legendary Goblins made their nest.
However, this time, we were on the bare rock face of a mountainous terrain, on which stood a stone palace that looked straight out of Ancient Greece.
“Master Shinobu, where are we?” Alice looked even tinier in an area like this.
“I’d mentioned it to you before, but this is the dungeon called the 13 Floors to Agartha. The difficulty level is Extreme.”
“These...are the 13 Floors?”
“Yup. It’s the best place to level up, and there’s even a chance of obtaining special skills if you clear a floor.”
Extremely broken skills, at that. The risks, in turn, were stupidly high. My number of remaining Recovery Orbs was a solid zero. But even this situation was several times better than the certain death we had been facing just a second ago.
Looking around, the theme of this floor appeared to be Greek mythology, so maybe the boss here would be a god, like Zeus or somebody?
Alice yelped and pointed at something far off. “Over there! I think that’s a tower.”
Using Far-Sight Magic, I could see a tower way in the distance that was so tall that it literally scraped the sky. The tower itself was very slim, so there was no way I could see it with my bare eyes.
“Your vision really is superb. Thanks for spotting it,” I smiled and nodded.
Her cheeks flushed, and her smile in return was lovely. “Hee hee! I got praised!”
I had her take another look around, but nothing else caught her eye. Guess that means our only option is to head for the tower.
Just as we started walking, a ding ding ding rang in my head, followed by an announcement.
—Welcome to the 13 Floors: Floor 2!
—On this floor, you will climb the tower, nest of the demon lords, and aim for the top.
—Every demon lord that has appeared thus far in the game spawns here, so please make sure that you are fully prepared before challenging it.
A hoarse noise resembling a laugh squeezed out of my lungs. I’d thought we were going to be fighting Greek gods, but instead, we were going into a nest full of demon lords?
“Wh-What was that, Master Shinobu? I heard the voice of God too!”
“It’s saying we’re about to do a boss rush.”
“Moss lush?”
“Meaning we have to fight ultra strong monsters, one after the other.”
“Oh, I see! I understand now!”
A ‘demon lord’ was a specific concept within the game. It was a powerful race often attributed to bosses. As far as I could remember, there were quite a few of them in La Vita. All of them were strong, but I’d defeated each one at least once during the story or event quests when I played. I was willing to bet that I could one-shot the older ones, not that I expected this floor to send those out to me. Perhaps they’d come at me in droves, or maybe they’d be powered up for this dungeon.
But considering we were only on the second floor, it was hard to imagine that the difficulty level was so high that it was physically impossible to beat. I’d expect that of the first or last floors, or maybe the fifth or tenth, even. I had Release of God’s Might and I was level 99, so there was a distinct possibility that I could beat this floor with ease.
The only problem was Alice. Just like last time, it didn’t look like this floor would let us leave without clearing it. It definitely wasn’t going to be easy getting her through this when she was only around level 30.
“Nothing we can do except press on. Cerberus.” I summoned Cerberus in his beast form. He bowed his head immediately. “Your role is to be a shield for Alice. Prioritize her over me, please.”
“As you wish.”
Letting the voice of God direct us, we walked toward the tower.
†
“All right, what’s gonna come at us? Demons? Snakes?”
As soon as I opened the door to the tower, everything in front of me went dark, replaced by moving dots, similar to that of TV static with the noise to match.
It cleared up in an instant. I stood there, blank and mystified.
I’d envisioned demons and snakes, but not—
“I really didn’t expect to find myself in Shibuya, of all places.”
The public square in front of Hachiko was in front of me.
I pushed down my urge to panic and checked my surroundings.
No people. Half of the buildings around us were destroyed. Several of them were smoking, so they’d probably been set on fire.
For a second, I thought I’d returned to the real world, but the scene was so unrealistic I couldn’t believe it. It looked like a war had happened, and there weren’t any people.
I saw an even more unbelievable sight nearby.
“...What is that?”
Lying down in front of where the train station opened up was the demon lord Astaroth. The Grand Duke of Hell was one of the pivotal, tough boss characters that hunted dragon monsters for fun. Its head was nowhere to be seen, and its body wasn’t moving. The dragon it was typically depicted riding on was in a similar state, lying nearby and completely still.