Bell Cranel's footsteps echoed softly within a gigantic chamber spanning hundreds of square meters. The walls and floors made of purplish flesh pulsed sickeningly, emitting wet, squelching sounds as if one were trapped inside the belly of a living monster.
Far behind him, the entrance to this main hall had been partially collapsed. The sounds of magical explosions and clashing metal could still be heard faintly. Leon, Bete, Lyd, and the others were risking their lives, building an absolute barricade to hold back the sea of Thracian spirits so that not a single monster could interrupt this main stage.
Now, only he remained.
At the far end of the spacious room, a Great Heart encased in thick walls of flesh pulsed slowly, pumping corrupt magic to every corner of the labyrinth. Inside the heart's transparent membrane, Ais Wallenstein's small body curled up unconscious, her spirit energy being siphoned away second by second.
And hovering precisely ten meters in front of that heart, the ruler of hell was waiting for him.
The Corrupted Spirit.
Yet its form was no longer that of an irregular, tentacled giant monster. The entity had condensed its entire existence into a far more efficient and lethal form—the Black Girl.
The figure resembled a fully grown woman with extremely long, jet-black hair, borrowing its developmental shape from Ais Wallenstein's memories. Her body was draped in a transparent gown woven from dense, deadly aura. Her skin was deathly pale, covered in divine hieroglyphs glowing with a purple light. Her vacant black eyes—along with a horrifying third eye upon her forehead—gazed down at the white-haired youth below her with a look of utter contempt.
"Just you alone, Little Hero?"
The Black Girl's voice flowed melodiously, yet it was laced with pure sadism that froze the surrounding air. "Where are those pathetic friends of yours? Did they send you here to die first so they could buy themselves another extra second of life?"
Bell Cranel did not answer. He stared straight into the monster's three eyes. His face was remarkably calm. His right hand gripped the Hestia Knife extremely tight.
"Give Ais-san back," Bell said. His voice wasn't loud, yet his firmness sliced through the labyrinth's silence.
The Black Girl chuckled softly. Her laughter sounded like a shattered glass bell, grating against the eardrums. She raised her slender index finger with exquisite grace.
"Taan."
A pitch-black wind spear formed out of thin air and shot forward faster than lightning. Its speed far exceeded sound, carrying a piercing power designed to tear through orichalcum steel like wet paper.
Bell did not dodge. The youth merely tilted his upper body, raising his dagger, which was coated in physical reinforcement energy. With a single, precise flick of his wrist, he deflected the spear's trajectory.
BLAAR!!
The wind spear missed his shoulder, slamming into the flesh wall behind Bell and triggering an air explosion that blasted organic debris in all directions.
The Black Girl stopped laughing. Her third eye narrowed in confusion.
At the Guild headquarters on the surface of Orario, the gods held their breath.
"He... parried it without using magic?!" Loki cried out, leaning forward toward the Oculus projection.
"You could deflect that?" The Black Girl tilted her head, her voice now sounding colder. "Interesting. Then let's see how you dance amidst this storm!"
The Black Girl spread both of her arms wide. The air within the room screamed as if being forcibly torn apart.
In mere seconds, hundreds—no, thousands—of magic circles blossomed in the air like petals of a deathly flower. Bone-white scorching flames, soul-freezing ice, crackling lightning, and pillars of pitch-black wind. Every element gathered, locking down every inch of space around Bell. Above, below, left, and right were completely sealed off.
This was no ordinary spell barrage. This was an apocalypse-scale execution capable of leveling an entire city in an instant.
"Die."
All those elements were fired simultaneously, creating a tsunami of destruction rolling toward the single point where Bell stood.
Bell took a deep breath. Oxygen filled his lungs, setting his blood on fire. He did not chant Firebolt. He concentrated all his energy upon the absolute teachings of the Silence.
Never wait for the enemy's magic to finish, Bell! Alfia's cold voice echoed back inside his memory. Mages have a delay time they cannot avoid. Physical fighters don't! If your pure power is dense enough, you can cleave the concept of magic itself!
Pure Level 6 physical energy surged within Bell's muscles, condensed beyond their limits, and channeled into the blade of the Hestia Knife. The black blade ignited with an intensely dazzling silver radiance.
Bell did not wait for the storm to swallow him. Instead, he planted his feet firmly into the floor and dashed forward, piercing through the magic wall that had yet to fully form.
"Afterglow Initiative."
Bell swung his dagger horizontally, spun his body for a vertical slash, and finished with a crossing diagonal slash. Three consecutive swings executed in less than a second.
Three waves of Afterglow shot forth.
Those physical energy projectiles did not merely fly through the air, cleaving it. Their extreme density created vacuum distortions around them. When those silver waves collided with the Black Girl's magic tsunami, the laws of nature were broken.
The first slash shattered a hundred fire magic circles on the left, splitting those roaring flames into two halves that instantly extinguished. The second slash cleaved the pitch-black wind and ice vortexes on the right, shattering them into harmless mana particles. The third slash drove straight through the lightning storm, split the lightning apart, and surged directly toward the Black Girl's neck.
"What?!"
The Black Girl jolted in surprise. She hastily summoned multi-layered wind shields to block the third slash. The impact between Afterglow and the wind shields exploded mid-air, creating a gigantic shockwave that violently shook the entire labyrinth.
Thick smoke billowed. Amidst the billowing smoke, the shadow of the white-haired youth shot upward, using a collapsed flesh pillar as an aerial foothold.
Bell gave her no time to breathe. He leaped from pillar to pillar, defying gravity, and bombarded the monster with dozens of Afterglow slashes.
Flashes of silver rained down upon the Black Girl from multiple angles.
"Annoying insect!!" the Black Girl screamed in anger. She unleashed a spherical black shockwave from her body, swallowing all of Bell's light slashes. Explosion after explosion rocked the room.
"You are strong, Human," the Black Girl's voice sounded trembling with suppressed rage from behind the smoke. "But physical techniques like that must drain your stamina and body! You won't last long!"
From the flesh ceiling above, the Black Girl chanted a silent spell. Dozens of dark-red thorny roots shot downward with whip-like speed, targeting Bell's blind spots while the youth was still floating mid-air without a foothold.
Bell twisted his waist in mid-air, dodging the first two roots. However, the third root managed to graze his arm, tearing his silver armor and sending a burning pain straight to his bones.
Bell gritted his teeth, landed hard on the flesh floor, and rolled to avoid the barrage of whipping roots that continued to rain down, striking the spot where he had just stood.
"Damn it," Bell swore, wiping the blood flowing from his left arm.
"Stop running around!"
The Black Girl raised both hands upward. Pitch-black fog began to spew out from the labyrinth's pores, swirling across the ceiling. This was no physical attack magic. This was pure miasma—the residual trauma of the Black Dragon's despair, locking away sanity and devouring the soul of anyone who breathed it in.
That highly toxic charm fog descended rapidly, swallowing Bell's body on the floor.
The Black Girl laughed with satisfaction seeing the black fog completely swallow the Little Hero.
"Sleep within an endless nightmare, and become my meal," the monster whispered.
Yet, amidst the Black Girl's triumphant laughter, a strange sound was heard from within the fog.
Ting.
A holy resonance echoed. Extremely clear. Much like a church bell rung amidst the silence of a winter night.
The Black Girl stopped laughing. Her abyss-black third eye narrowed in confusion. The black fog blanketing the youth slowly stopped swirling. That miasma current began to be repelled outward, as if touched by an overly sacred entity.
From within the darkness of the fog, a pair of red eyes flared brightly. Not a dim red filled with fear, but a blazing red akin to the core of a volcano.
"Ah... I see," Bell's voice was heard from behind the fog. His tone was so calm, so utterly calm that it made the Black Girl's monster instincts scream the highest-level danger warnings. "So this is what it feels like."
BLAASH!!
That black fog exploded in all directions, blasted away by the reddish radiance emanating from Bell's body.
The youth stood upright. The slash wound on his left arm released white steam, then his muscle fibers fused back together, closing instantly without leaving a single trace of a scar. The blood staining his cheeks evaporated. His muscles tightened slightly, and his aura surged insanely, distorting the surrounding air.
The Black Girl stepped back a pace in mid-air.
"What... what are you doing?!" the monster screamed, losing her composure.
On the surface, Hestia—who had moments ago been nearly in tears—now laughed nervously, wiping away her tears roughly. "Vanadis Tevere's ability... is active!"
The absolute skill: Charming Resistance: Vanadis Tevere. The absolute blessing of the Virgin Goddess. When the user is inflicted with charm effects or mental manipulation miasma from an enemy, this skill not only rejects the curse instantly, but triggers an anomalous body-defense response.
All of Bell's status parameters increased absurdly. His speed, strength, and dexterity were pushed far beyond the highest limits of Level 6. Even more terrifyingly, as long as that miasma remained in the room, this skill provided infinite Auto-Heal that forcibly restored the user's physical stamina and Mind (magical energy).
Bell now possessed infinite ammunition.
The youth lowered his posture. He swung the Hestia Knife sideways. Just a single casual swing.
SWUUUUUUSH!!
A gigantic Afterglow wave shot forth, cleaving a room fifty meters wide and slicing off one of the Black Girl's illusory wings before the monster even realized what had happened.
"GYAAAAAAAH!!" the Black Girl screamed in agony as her wing shattered into particles of light.
Bell wasted no time speaking.
BOOM!
The flesh floor beneath his feet shattered into pieces due to the repulsive force of his dash. Bell shot forward at a speed that completely abandoned reality, leaving afterimages all along his path. He had transformed from a tactical fighter into a natural disaster itself.
Panic-stricken, the Black Girl chanted hundreds of pitch-black wind spears to pierce Bell. Yet Bell no longer stopped to parry. He broke through head-on. The wind spears that managed to pierce through gaps in his armor and graze his cheek and arms healed instantly within milliseconds thanks to Auto-Heal.
"Die! Die! Dieeeee!!" the Black Girl screamed hysterically. She fired pillars of fire and lightning from close range, trying to create a wall of death.
Bell leaped past the pillars of fire, spun his body in mid-air like a spinning top, and unleashed six consecutive Afterglow slashes within a five-meter range. Those waves of silver light sliced through the Black Girl's chest, shoulders, and wings. Black blood spurted heavily, drenching the air.
That Level 9 monster was driven back, screaming in agony from the mortal youth's barrage of pure physical attacks.
Realizing she would be slaughtered alive if this close-quarters combat continued, the Black Girl gathered all her remaining strength. She retreated backward, hovering directly in front of the Great Heart. She plunged her flesh tendrils deep into the heart, siphoning away all the remaining energy from the Floor 60 labyrinth, sacrificing the vitality of the room itself.
The Black Girl's body was enveloped in a pitch-black storm swirling insanely. Her form grew larger, distorting reality, until a giant shadow formed behind her. That shadow took the shape of the darkest memory ever recorded within Ais Wallenstein's soul—the silhouette of the Black Dragon's jaws (OEBD).
An aura of absolute destruction—a fusion of black and indigo apocalypse elements (Calamity from the Heavens)—gathered within the throat of the illusory dragon's jaws. A death beam tens of meters wide was ready to be fired, poised to melt away Bell's space, time, and existence down to the atomic level.
At the Guild headquarters, the gods rose from their seats.
"She's summoning a manifestation of the Black Dragon?!" Hermes shouted, turning deathly pale.
Inside the labyrinth, the suction storm from the dragon's mouth drew rocks and flesh fragments into the air. Bell stood motionlessly in the center of the hall, roughly thirty meters away from those jaws of death.
He sheathed the Hestia Knife at his waist, lowered his center of gravity, and placed his right hand over the dagger's hilt.
He would not run. He would not evade. Behind this giant monster was the girl he had to bring home.
Bell closed his eyes.
Toll... Toll... Toll...
The sound of a giant bell began to toll loudly within his soul, echoing until it drowned out the roar of the dragon storm before him.
Skill: Heroic Wish (Argonaut) activated.
Because Vanadis Tevere replenished his Mind and stamina back to full instantly, Bell needed to hold nothing back. He didn't fear his body shattering. He channeled Firebolt magic to its absolute maximum limit into the Hestia Knife, transforming the dagger in its sheath into a blazing stellar furnace glowing with blinding white light.
At the same time, he compressed all of his Level 6 physical energy—currently boosted by Vanadis Tevere—focusing it into that very same blade for a final Afterglow slash.
Dual loading. Magic and Physique. Fire and Void. Two opposing laws of nature forcibly combined into a single vessel.
The fake Black Dragon unleashed that black-and-indigo beam of destruction. That apocalyptic ray shot forth, cleaving the labyrinth, swallowing everything in pure darkness.
The second that beam was about to touch him, Bell opened his eyes. His ruby reds blazed brightly, radiating the absolute conviction of a hero.
"ARGO VESTA: IGNIS ZANKOU!!!"
Bell drew his dagger from its sheath and swung it upward from below in a flawless Iaijutsu motion.
A cataclysmic slash was born.
An Afterglow shockwave twenty meters wide, coated in blazing sun-white Firebolt flames and driven by the hero Argonaut's will to its ultimate limit.
The white-and-red light collided directly with the dragon's black-and-indigo beam.
Time stopped. All sound within the labyrinth vanished completely.
For a fleeting moment, the two immensely powerful energies pushed against one another in the center of the room. Yet the fundamental nature of Afterglow—which cleaves the concept of magic itself—combined with Argo Vesta's destructive power, seized dominance.
The hero's slash tore straight through the center of the dragon's death ray, splitting that black beam into two deflected streams that shattered the labyrinth walls to Bell's left and right without touching him.
The wave of Argo Vesta surged forward without losing a single shred of momentum.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
The Black Girl's scream echoed, filled with disbelief and pure terror.
That slash of white light slammed into the fake Black Dragon's jaws, splitting it from bottom to top, piercing through the dragon's skull, and striking straight into the Corrupted Spirit's true body.
Purgatory flames erupted from within the Black Girl's body.
White light swallowed the absolute darkness. Hundreds of nature spirit souls that had been absorbed by the monster over the centuries screamed in a chorus of liberation as their shackles were shattered.
The Black Girl's body cracked, fracturing like porcelain, and slowly evaporated into glowing dust ash floating upward.
The explosion sent forth a heatwave that brought down the remaining pillars and flesh ceilings throughout the room. The labyrinth screamed in a violent earthquake before finally falling silent.
Orario's deepest hell boss had been annihilated by a single knife swing from a youth.
Absolute silence descended upon Floor 60.
At the Hearth Mansion headquarters on the surface, Hestia collapsed to the floor, covering her tear-streaked face. "He... won. My boy won!"
Cheers erupted, shaking the surface of Orario. The gods cried out in joy, Loki laughed freely while wiping away tears of relief, and Freya smiled with bated breath, hugging herself, obsessed with the radiance of the hero who had just conquered the apocalypse.
Inside the labyrinth, Bell Cranel stood with his shoulders heaving. White smoke billowed from his armor and skin. The effect of Vanadis Tevere slowly faded as the charm miasma vanished from the room, leaving behind an overwhelming exhaustion that crushed his bones. His right hand was covered in minor burns from the temperature of his own slash, yet he still stood upright.
Casting his gaze away from the floating ashes of his enemy, his eyes instantly locked onto the singular thing remaining in the room.
At the edge of the scorched crater, the Great Heart that had previously pulsed violently had now withered and frozen over. Its flesh walls were cracked.
Bell forced his trembling legs to step forward. One step. Two steps. His body screamed in exhaustion, yet he did not stop.
The protective mucus of the womb melted away, releasing the tiny body of a girl who fell limply forward.
Bell quickened his pace, discarded his weapon, and caught Ais Wallenstein's body right before the girl hit the hard stone floor.
He cradled her tightly against his chest. The golden-haired girl was breathing steadily. Her skin was warm. Her heartbeat pulsed slowly. She was safe. She had not been absorbed by the corrupted spirit.
Deep within the absolute darkness of her mind—remnants of the monster's captivity hallucinations—the young Ais, huddled in fear amidst an illusory sea of blood, saw a light break through.
A white-haired youth with scorched armor and a dirt-smudged face knelt before her, breaking through the cage of despair that had imprisoned her heart.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," the youth said softly. "I've come to take you home."
Ais raised her tear-streaked face. She shook her head slightly. "Who... are you? I... I'm not a hero. I only bring destruction."
The youth smiled warmly, reaching his hand out through the bars of darkness. "I'm just an adventurer. And if you aren't a hero... would you let me be your hero?"
Ais extended her trembling pinky finger, touching the youth's hand. The warmth she had long forgotten flooded back.
In the real world, Ais slowly opened her eyelids. Her still-blurring vision caught Bell's face smiling in relief with remnants of dirty ash on his cheek.
"Welcome back... Ais-san," Bell whispered softly.
Ais's tiny fingers moved slowly, tightly gripping Bell's torn cloak. She uttered not a single word. She merely buried her face against the youth's chest, feeling the heavy heartbeat that had brought her back from the abyss of the apocalypse, refusing to let go of the warmth she had finally found.
At the far end of the open corridor behind them, Finn, Riveria, Gareth (who had been freed from their cocoons by the rescue team), Leon, Bete, Lefiya, and the others stepped inward with emotional smiles and indescribable relief.
The Loki Familia Rescue Operation—complete. The hell of Floor 60 had finally been completely conquered.
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P - Gem_Blanks
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