It happened so quickly.
The deafening sound of shattering reached my ears, then the sound bounced through the space, compounding on itself. I—everyone—looked up at the sky, where cracks splintered through the heavens. A gash burst open and split the ifrit’s artificial sun in two. As the two halves separated, the full moon beneath revealed itself.
“No, that’s not it…” I whispered. Not the full moon. What shone there was a woman with a flash of luminous silver hair.
Kisaragi Claire.
The sun, its energy rent apart and destabilized, exploded.
Dozens of fiery fragments scattered everywhere. Pieces of it raced toward us, but Claire whispered something again.
“Cursed.”
Her voice sounded so cold, it could’ve frozen me to my bone marrow.
As she said the word, she swung her ice sword. It emitted a cold wave that devoured the hellish fires. Snowflakes bloomed and drifted through the air as she landed smoothly beside me.
Questions piled in my mind: How was she here during a Span? How did she destroy the boss room ceiling? Could she stop the ifrit? I had no idea where to begin.
“Compared to the exterior, this was much easier to penetrate. Very fragile,” Claire said casually.
I stared, completely dumbstruck.
“I apologize for the delay,” she said. “Entrust me with the rest.”
Claire spun on her heel, bowed low, and aimed the point of her sword at the ifrit.
“Absolute Ruler,” she commanded.
She summoned an ice magic circle around herself, large enough to surround me, Hana, and everyone else too. Massive amounts of mana spilled from it.
“No way!” I gasped. Our near-fatal wounds had healed in the blink of an eye. That wasn’t all. The healing effect fully restored my HP and MP. Was that possible?!
“Claire, what is…” I began, finally finding a question to start with, but I couldn’t finish it. It didn’t seem to matter as much as her elegant beauty, the snowflakes framing her like stars as she brandished her sword of ice. The sight of her from behind unexpectedly overlapped in my mind’s eye with the memory of the adventurer who saved me all those years ago.
“You might not know what you’re doing,” she told the ifrit, “but I can’t allow you to harm them anymore.” She fixed her severe blue gaze upon the creature. “I will exterminate you.”
That’s when I witnessed what the strongest of us could really do.
✦ ✦ ✦
I had to wonder what the ifrit felt, seeing Claire appear out of nowhere. It snarled with a ferocity it hadn’t aimed toward the rest of us, as if it recognized a true threat posed to its life. Five new suns rose above the ifrit’s head. Each one was connected with a thin stream of flame that drew a pentagram. It radiated the most scorching heat we’d felt so far.
“Out of my way,” Claire said in a low voice.
Her blade flashed. The suns froze over and the ice fractured into snowy powder, as if there had never been fire at all. This moment proved the exact disparity between the two of them, and the ifrit must have realized how outmatched it was. It abandoned its five-sided star, set its sights on us, and released a forceful stream of flamethrower breath.
“Do you think I will permit that?” Claire sounded dismissive.
The ice magic circle glittered with light and formed a barrier of thick, interconnected glaciers to protect us. The flamethrower attack slammed into the glaciers but failed to penetrate them.
The ifrit screeched in frustration and stepped backward. It must’ve expected to rattle Claire and use that moment to damage her, but it knew now it had no hope of victory. Claire inhaled slowly, then said in her iciest voice, “Now, let us finish this.”
Her preamble done, Claire flipped her ice sword, Cursed, into a fighting position. She struck in a decisive upward arc. A monumental sweep of ice left her blade and froze everything in front of it, air and fire. The ifrit was hit dead-on: even its tough skin couldn’t withstand her power. Its flesh was artfully bifurcated by her ice. The wound revealed the magic stone in the ifrit’s brow, and the cracks that laced through it. A moment later, it fractured into bits.
I gaped.
Was what I glimpsed even real? I stared at Claire’s back in a stupor. Her domination of the ifrit was absolute.
“Gained XP: Level increased by 923!” the system said in my mind.
The system recognized that I contributed damage to the defeat, but I didn’t care about the level boost. Claire’s moonlit silhouette held my complete attention as she looked at the ifrit’s toppled form.
“It’s over,” she said, turning around.
Our gazes met like two blades clashing together. For a second, her eyes widened and she halted, but then her expression softened and she resumed walking, until she came to a stop in front of me. She extended a white-gloved hand. The strong extending a helping hand to the weak. My heart thumped as I saw it.
“I, uh…” I stuttered, but I didn’t know what to say, so I settled for taking her hand.
The warmth I expected was drowned out by a menacing shadow that loomed over us. We whirled toward the source simultaneously—the palace, the most abnormal thing in this space.
A man stood there.
Since when was he there? He’d appeared silently, as if he was there from the start. His eyes and long hair were the same color as freshly spilled blood and he wore an ink-black coat. The aura he carried was even stranger than his appearance. He didn’t seem stronger than the ifrit, yet he emanated a malignant air that the ifrit hadn’t.
I couldn’t say why he was so threatening. Whatever the reason, I knew this man was more dangerous than the rest of us.
“Amane-san, is he one of the people swallowed by the dungeon outbreak?” Claire asked.
“Definitely not. He just appeared.”
The man’s sharp gaze snapped to us, and instantly, I realized that I’d never seen him before, but I’d felt his presence. How could I forget it? It was right at the onset of the outbreak.
The source of the bloodlust I felt was him.
I drew Nameless and slid into a fighting stance. Claire did the same with Cursed.
The man remained unconcerned as he smiled and started toward us.
“What a surprise,” he said. “I’ve been watching the riffraff fall to the ifrit from inside the palace, and just when I thought this world was a waste despite its purported development, someone delightfully strong shows up. You’ll be a bit of a hassle to take care of, but I suppose it’s better than crushing ants all the time.”
“Who are you?” Claire asked.
“Hmph. Since you’re a lovely little thing, I’ll tell you.”
The man halted, grinned, and dropped a piece of information like a guided missile into our understanding of the world.
“I am the vampire Cain Fon Vertia. To make it easy for you simple-minded folk to understand, I am a being from another world.”
Cain’s words made everyone’s eyes widen in surprise—even Claire’s.
“A being from another world…?” she echoed. “Are you speaking sincerely?”
“Naturally, I am.” He gestured to himself. “You truly haven’t noticed? The mana that cloaks us is completely different.”
“Let us say I believe you,” Claire offered, “why would you be here? Too many things about this situation are unbelievable, this abnormal space included.”
“My presence should speak for itself. I merely overwrote ownership of this dungeon when it spawned and designated myself its ruler.”
Something was off about his phrasing. Claire’s doubtful expression indicated she was with me. Her posture stiffened. “Then, you didn’t create this dungeon?”
“Clearly not. That’s the work of God. Even a being such as I cannot manifest a dungeon.”
Overwrite. Ownership. God. I couldn’t let go of any of those words, though they were spoken so casually. Was this “God” of Cain’s the system’s voice? Was he saying that the dungeon system had a singular will behind it? What was this another world stuff anyway? Assuming it was real, what role did dungeons play in that other place? We needed a hint of answers to keep us from drowning in questions.
One thing was clear: We were getting closer to the truth behind dungeons.
I would have to quench my thirst for knowledge later, because something else took immediate priority. I didn’t know what Cain meant when he claimed he “overwrote” part of this dungeon, nor what “ownership” was in this context. What I did know was that Cain was stronger than I was, yet he sat and watched while the ifrit brought us to the brink of death.