At that moment, the 50th floor was already reeling from the tremors of the Black Dragon's violent ascent. The camp was on high alert, weapons drawn as the very foundation of the safe zone shook.
Lyra, unaware of the two fairies' true nature, was startled when two figures—one radiant and one shadowed—suddenly materialized from her hair ornament.
"Who are you?!" Lyra shouted, her hand going to her blade as the two entities took flight.
Ellie and June offered no answer. They exchanged a brief, silent glance and shot toward the passage leading to the 51st floor.
The rest of the camp watched in a state of high vigilance. Even in a safe zone, the sudden appearance of two unknown entities during a floor-wide earthquake was cause for alarm.
Ellie and June paid the onlookers no mind. As they flew, they began to spiral around one another, drawing closer until they merged into a singular, blinding ball of light.
As opposing elemental forces—light and darkness—they were naturally mutually restraining, yet when their wills aligned, they became mutually reinforcing.
By suppressing their natural repulsion, they could temporarily fuse into a state of overwhelming power. They had achieved this once before at Level 7 to reach Level 8. Now that both had reached Level 9, their combined strength sat on the very precipice of Level 10.
Crucially, as elemental fairies, they were void of human emotion. They knew no hesitation, no doubt, and most importantly, no fear. They existed only to fulfill Leon's orders, indifferent to their own survival. The Black Dragon's psychological pressure—"Fear"—held no sway over them.
The ball of light vanished into the passage and then expanded, revealing the new form of their fusion.
This hybrid, which could be called Julie, lacked the distinct traits of their components. They radiated a pure, golden luminescence, and six pairs of shimmering wings unfurled from their back. While their facial features remained similar to the two fairies, their presence was entirely different.
Julie did not unleash a crushing aura, remaining eerily calm. Their eyes glowed with a steady golden light as they transformed back into a concentrated stream of energy.
Targeting the center of the floor, they launched downward. With a deafening roar, they blasted a massive hole through the bedrock, initiating a vertical descent to intercept the dragon head-on.
Boom!
The charge was unstoppable, a golden meteor falling into the darkness to meet the King.
Though the Black Dragon ascended with a terrifying momentum, its path was violently checked on the 58th floor.
The moment the two forces collided, the atmosphere of the floor didn't just shift, it ignited. The battle escalated to a fever pitch instantly.
Bound by Leon's command, Julie abandoned all restraint, pouring every ounce of their dual-elemental power into the blockade.
The Black Dragon, driven by a frantic impatience, met them with equal savagery, showing no mercy as it lashed out with world-ending intent.
The sheer scale of their first exchange was cataclysmic. In a single encounter, more than half of the 58th floor's geography was reduced to rubble.
The Valgang Dragons native to the floor and the wyverns were vaporized in an instant. Those few that survived the initial shock attempted to flee, but in a duel of this magnitude, the entire floor was a kill zone. Within ten seconds, the aftershocks of the collision had swept the level clean of life.
The Dungeon, sensing the overwhelming power, failed to spawn a single replacement.
...
Far above the epicenter of the destruction, the residents of the 50th-floor camp felt the world tilting. The ground bucked and groaned under the weight of the fluctuations rising from below.
"What on earth is happening down there?" Lili murmured, bracing herself against a supply crate as the vibrations threatened to collapse the makeshift fortifications.
...
Meanwhile, on the surface, the crisis had transitioned from a hidden observation to a public emergency.
Shakti and Asfi had been dispatched from the underground altar with the grim mandate of the gods. They moved through the streets of Orario, rallying the various factions and the Guild to begin an immediate, city-wide evacuation.
The gods were no longer willing to gamble. They did not know if Julie could hold the line, nor if Leon could break his siege in time to intercept the dragon. If the blockade failed and a Level 10 disaster reached the surface, Orario would be deleted.
The Ganesha Familia strategically avoided the term "Black Dragon" to prevent a total societal collapse. They spoke instead of an "unprecedentedly powerful monster" emerging from the depths.
Thanks to the years of trust built by the Ganesha Familia, the citizens followed the orders, even through their grumbles and complaints.
"Leon, are you all alright?" Eina whispered, her eyes fixed toward the Central Park spire even as she directed a group of civilians.
Among the crowd, the adventurers maintaining order whispered among themselves.
"What kind of monster makes the gods this terrified?" A middle-aged veteran muttered.
"They didn't even call an evacuation for the Level 7 demi spirits."
"I don't know, but it has to be worse than a Level 8." His companion replied, his voice heavy with awe.
"Leon destroyed a Level 8 demi spirit, and yet the gods are still running. This thing must have come from the floors far beyond the Dragon's Vase."
"But Leon is down there with the Loki and Freya Familias. They have Level 7s, Level 8s like Ottar, and Leon himself. How could they be stopped?" Another interrupted, frowning.
"According to Shakti, the Dungeon itself targeted them to slow their progress. Leon sent people ahead to stall it, but the Guild is worried they'll be overwhelmed. I just hope there's enough time." The veteran explained.
While the residents of Orario fled, the 80th floor remained a theater of absolute violence.
The battle between Ais and the Corrupted Spirit had reignited with a new, desperate intensity.
The Corrupted Spirit's obsession with the Black Dragon had reached a breaking point. It shrieked in fury, attempting to break away and follow its "other half," but Ais was a relentless gale, entangling the creature at every turn.
Driven by a manic rage, the Corrupted Spirit's power surged beyond its previous limits. The air in the abyss grew thick with toxic mana and jagged spells.
Ais, even with her triple-buffed state, found herself being forced back. She was not defeated, but she was firmly on the defensive, struggling to weather the storm of a Level 10 entity that had completely lost its sanity.
The battle on the 75th floor between Finn and his companions remains a relentless grind.
The monsters populating this place were all Level 7, and their numbers were nothing short of staggering.
Despite the elite coordination of the Loki and Freya Familia members, they found it impossible to clear the floor in a short window of time. Every monster slain was seemingly replaced by two more, born from the walls of the dungeon itself.
For Leon, the situation on the 77th floor was even more targeted. It had become clear that the Dungeon was no longer acting randomly, it was determined to trap Leon within this specific floor.
Monsters spawned in an endless, rhythmic surge, throwing themselves at him in a suicidal wave.
While the massive onslaught provided Leon with valuable combat training, his mind was far from the battlefield immediately in front of him.
His primary concern was the escalating crisis on the 58th floor. The Level 10 Black Dragon was proving to be a nightmare of unprecedented proportions.
At the start of the engagement, Julie was able to match its movements and hold the line. However, as the minutes tick by, the output of the black dragon was beginning to take its toll.
Julie's defense was being chipped away, and the blockade looked ready to shatter at any moment.