Just like that, Riezel and Finn each led a small group, splitting up and heading into the passages they were responsible for to begin their exploration.
"Just say the order, Riezel."
"So... what’re we doing?"
Tiona and Tione casually asked Riezel.
Riezel did not give any special orders and instead issued a single, simple one.
"I’ll handle reconnaissance. You guys just stay alert and move forward."
As he spoke, Riezel led the group onward while fully activating the Transparent World.
Transparent World was not magic, so its effects were not weakened by the Anti-Magic Stone. As long as it remained active, everything within his field of vision was seen through and laid bare, leaving no need to worry about sudden surprises.
Because of this, he took over the role previously held by beast-humans like Bete and Anakitty, scouting ahead while guiding the group forward.
No one voiced any objections to Riezel’s decision.
They trusted him deeply, and seeing him sprinting at the front, everyone immediately broke into a run as well, accelerating their pace and charging straight down the passage.
Once they abruptly shifted into a rapid advance like this, their travel efficiency increased dramatically.
Thanks to that, they quickly reached the end of the passage.
"I can see the exit!"
Lefiya’s eyes shone as she blurted it out, and everyone else saw it as well.
At the end of the passage, the branching paths and monotonous stone-tiled paths vanished, replaced by a single entrance.
"...It’s just ahead."
Ais also informed everyone in a murmur that they were about to reach their destination—the presence that made the blood within her stir restlessly was right ahead.
Riezel narrowed his eyes, ran out of the passage first, and dashed into the destination area.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group followed one by one, bursting out of the passage without the slightest hesitation.
Under these circumstances, the group arrived in an extremely spacious, square-shaped area.
It was a cavernous chamber resembling part of the Dungeon, with sides measuring at least close to a hundred meters and a ceiling that rose several dozen meters high. On both the left and right sides of the open space stood doors made of orichalcum, while directly ahead, an upward staircase led to a passage at the top.
A gloomy, oppressive atmosphere hung over the surroundings, making several of the more timid members, including Lefiya, quietly swallow.
"There’s another passage?"
"C’mon, let’s go. Keep moving."
Carefree as ever, Tiona and Tione looked fired up, staring at the passage at the top of the stairs as if they were ready to charge.
Ais was the same, silently stepping forward to follow.
However, in that very instant, Riezel, whose eyes had been shimmering with a transparent sheen, moved.
He suddenly darted to Ais’s side, faced one of the orichalcum doors, and without hesitation drew Fool from his waist.
*BOOM!*
Almost at the same moment, the door burst open.
From within, a figure launched a surprise attack the instant the door swung wide, like a ferocious beast released from its cage.
It was a violent assault.
It was a vicious assault.
When the attacker burst out of the doorway, even a roaring wind could not keep up with their speed, and a sonic boom came a split second later, sending turbulent air surging violently in their wake.
The suddenness of the attack left almost everyone present unable to react.
Only Riezel, at the moment the vicious figure charged in, raised his sword without the slightest hesitation.
*Clang!*
In the next second, a longsword with an eerie, jet-black exterior slammed heavily into the sword Riezel had braced.
A shockingly powerful shockwave erupted from the collision of the two swords, whipping Riezel’s clothes and violently blowing away Ais and the others.
"!!!"
Ais, who was closest—or rather, the original target of the attack—took the brunt of the impact for the first time, her body flying backward as her feet scraped a long trail across the ground before she barely managed to stop.
"Riezel!"
"Mr. Riezel!"
Like Ais, the others were also flung away amid cries of alarm, forced away from the very center of the shockwave.
Riezel’s thin crystal sword and the attacker’s jet-black longsword ground violently against each other, sending sparks flying nonstop.
"So you’re here to ruin my plans again?"
Revis, who had launched a lethal surprise attack on Ais with her jet-black longsword, only for it to be blocked by Riezel, clicked her tongue, her green eyes fixed on him with icy hostility.
"That’s my line, actually," Riezel said, frowning as he spoke while he felt the terrifying strength pressing in from the woman before him. "You guys are really persistent."
As their gazes met, it looked as if both were recalling past enmities, with old grudges and new hatred surging together, colliding, and throwing off fierce sparks.
"Hah!"
"Ha!"
With two cold shouts that rang out at the same time, the crystal sword and the jet-black longsword separated in an instant, then struck again just as quickly, one tracing a graceful curve, the other carrying an ominous aura, both slashing heavily toward their opponent.
*DING!*
An even louder, bell-like crash erupted, accompanied by an explosive shockwave, instantly marking the opening of this sudden and fierce battle.
"Riezel!"
"Go! Help him!"
At this moment, Tiona and Tione, who had been blown away earlier, finally steadied themselves. Seeing Riezel and Revis plunge straight into battle without a word, the two did not hesitate and immediately sprinted forward.
Ais was even faster than Tiona and Tione, sharply drawing her silver sword, Desperate, from her waist and dashing out like a gust of wind.
"Unleashed streak of light, bow limbs of the holy tree. You are an expert of the bow."
Even Lefiya reacted in time, immediately beginning to chant magic along with the surrounding members, preparing to support Riezel.
However, without exception, none of them managed to approach the battlefield between Riezel and Revis.
Because new enemies had appeared and blocked their way.
"SWORD PRINCESS—!!!"
A deafening roar was the first thing that rang out.
It was an extremely unpleasant roar, not only piercing but also saturated with intense hatred, provoking instinctive revulsion and even physical discomfort.
And the master of that hatred-filled roar had now transformed into a massive black shadow, plunging from above Ais like a collapsing mountain.
"!!!"
Ais’s expression changed as she abruptly halted her charge and leapt away.
*BOOM!*
In the next instant, the falling black shadow slammed a battle axe, even more exaggerated than Gareth’s main weapon, into the ground where Ais had stood a second earlier, shattering the stone floor like splintered wood.
In an instant, clouds of dust and fragments of flooring filled the air, and the shockwave rattled the ground itself, strong enough to knock ordinary people nearby off their feet.
Ais landed lightly on her toes, pulling some distance away from the enemy, and cast a pair of vigilant golden eyes forward.
"Who are you...?"
Ais, now the merciless Sword Princess, voiced her cold question.
What answered her was a burst of loud laughter that sounded like the croaking of a toad.
"Of course it was me, the most beautiful woman in the world!"
"Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten me!"
"Sword Princess!"
Laughing and shouting at the same time, the massive shadow walked out of the spreading dust and entered Ais’s field of view.
It was a female giant, one whom one could not easily classify as either a beast-human or an amazoness.
Holding a massive battle axe, she stood well over two meters tall, possessed an enormous body, yet had disproportionately short limbs. Her torso was frighteningly thick, and her face was as large as a toad’s, making her appearance genuinely hard to look at.
Her body was clad in full-body armor that perfectly covered her towering frame of over two meters, its entire surface gleaming a deep crimson. Judging from the dazzling metallic luster alone, it was obvious that it was First-Class Equipment.
"You’re—?!"
Seeing that unforgettable, overwhelmingly distinctive appearance—one that could never be erased from memory after a single encounter—Ais recognized her almost instantly.
It was not only Ais—the members of the Loki Familia present were the same.
"Wait, that voice and that body..."
"Could it be—?!"
"Phryne Jamil...?"
Some were shocked, some wavered, and others wore an expression as if they had swallowed something profoundly disgusting, as though a buried psychological trauma had been stirred awake.
"Androctonus..."
Ais softly uttered the other party’s alias, her resolve wavering.
It couldn’t be helped.
"Why... are you here...?"
Phryne Jamil, the captain of the Ishtar Familia known as Androctonus, was someone who shared a personal grudge with Ais.
More precisely, Phryne harbored an inexplicable, one-sided hatred toward Ais, and because of that, she had been deliberately picking fights with her for a long time.
In the past, Ais and Phryne had clashed fiercely on three separate occasions.
The first time, Ais had only just advanced to Level 2 and was still a Third Class Adventurer, while Phryne, who was already a Second Class Adventurer above Level 3, had suddenly attacked her, nearly dealing Ais a crushing defeat.
The second time was two years later, when Ais encountered her again by chance in the Dungeon and fought her once more, the battle ending in a draw.
The third time was three years ago, right after Ais had advanced to Level 5.
And that time, Ais had won decisively.
After that, Phryne’s inexplicable hatred toward Ais had only grown more intense, but even so, that fact alone was still not a reason for Phryne to be here.
Why would the captain of the Ishtar Familia appear in the Man-Made Dungeon?
Could it be that this major familia of Orario was also colluding with the remnants of Evilus, Enyo, and the Corrupted Spirit?
Thinking this far, Ais could not help but feel shaken.
In contrast, from beneath Phryne’s helmet came an ear-piercing, creepy laugh.
"Can’t figure it out, huh? Of course you can’t!"
"A hideous thing like you doesn’t need to understand anything. All you have to do is keep that doll-like, ugly face of yours and kneel, begging before beautiful me."
"Of course, I won’t let you off that easily."
"I’ll carve up that annoying, ugly face of yours this time, you broken doll!"
As she laughed on and on, Phryne’s voice became saturated with resentment.
Truth be told, the true reason she unilaterally hated Ais was extremely simple: ugly jealousy.
Some said that Ais was beautiful enough to rival a goddess, and so Phryne felt jealous.
Some said that Ais was prettier than Phryne, and so she felt hatred.
Needless to say, her reason for hating Ais was that simple, that crude, and that utterly unreasonable.
And Ais, from beginning to end, had never understood this.
"...Move aside."
After wavering for a moment, Ais regained her composure.
"The person I’m looking for isn’t you."
She had no time to waste on Phryne.
All she wanted was to draw her sword and rush toward Riezel’s side, to settle things once and for all with that red-haired Creature who had called her Aria.
Naturally, this act of disregard was more infuriating to Phryne, who harbored one-sided hatred toward her, than anything else.
"You dare ignore me? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU AAAAARRRE—!!!"
Phryne roared as she charged straight at Ais.
At the same time, the Loki Familia members, led by Lefiya, were surrounded by a group of amazonesses that suddenly poured out from the passage at the top of the stairs ahead.
"Not good!"
"They’re the Ishtar Familia’s berberas!"
"N-No, there’s more—there are unfamiliar faces too!"
Lefiya and the others cried out in shock, only to be immediately assaulted by a group of provocatively dressed amazoness warriors.
"Go! Don’t let a single one escape!"
A tall, fierce-looking berbera barked out the order.
"Se wehga! (Thou art the true warrior!)"
"Se wehga! (Thou art the true warrior!)"
"Se wehga! (Thou art the true warrior!)"
Another group of amazonesses shouted the same slogan in unison.
Immediately afterward, the berberas and amazoness warriors lunged at Lefiya and the others together, kicking off the fight unilaterally.
Naturally, Tiona and Tione were also blocked, and the ones blocking them were, among all the enemies present, the strongest and most vicious existences aside from Revis.
"It’s been a long time, Tione."
These words were not spoken in the continent’s common language, but in the racial language of the amazonesses.
And the one speaking was an amazoness who suddenly appeared before Tione, sharing her brown skin and slender physique, wearing revealing clothing, and having sandy-colored long hair tied into a waist-length braid.
Her waist was wrapped in hide covered in scales, and she possessed sharp, gleaming eyes and upturned lips that evoked a reptilian image.
Upon seeing this amazoness, Tione not only halted her charge but also widened her eyes as if struck by an unprecedented shock.
"You’re... Argana!"
Tione shouted in shock, rarely losing her voice.
At the same time, another figure stepped out in front of Tiona.
"...Tiona."
As she spoke, the figure had almost the same appearance as the amazoness called Argana, but her mouth was covered by a black veil, concealing the lower half of her face. Her sandy-colored hair swayed gently, and the gaze she cast toward Tiona was icy cold, as if she were staring at an enemy that had to be defeated.
"Bache!"
Like her twin sister, Tiona also widened her eyes and cried out in shock.
Thus, two pairs of twins bound by a deep, shared past met again in a foreign land, locked in a reunion that neither side welcomed.
===
[A bonus Chapter for every 500 Power Stones.]
[Support me and read next Chapters early at: /VALRRR]