Strike at the heart of it!
The Ishtar Familia's headquarters — the so-called Pleasure Palace of the Goddess — was located within the slums of the Third District, not far from Daedalus Street at all.
Back in the day, from the temporary residence Isagi had been staying at, he could already see it: a magnificent, gorgeous palace rising above the low-roofed tenements, like a miniature citadel unto itself. It had become one of Orario's most iconic structures — one could even call it the landmark of the Pleasure Quarter.
All he could say was: they were loaded.
The Ishtar Familia wasn't just powerful — they were arguably the premier commercial Familia in the entire city.
Well, Orario was the City of Adventurers, after all.
For people who couldn't even be certain they'd survive tomorrow's Dungeon dive, living for today was the most universal philosophy around. Earn money, spend money. Drink, eat well, chase pleasure — hedonism was simply the natural order of things here, and no one batted an eye.
Romance between adventurers tended to be incredibly direct, to say nothing of a place like the Pleasure Quarter.
But anyway.
Isagi's goal was to make the Astrea Familia a name everyone knew.
To declare to every adventurer and every God in this city: the Familia of the Goddess of Justice had returned. And not just returned — they were here to take over, to become the strongest Familia in Orario.
If that was the plan, then naturally, he needed a stepping stone.
Loki and Freya were both out of the question for now — his level simply wasn't there yet. The Ishtar Familia, on the other hand, was just about a fair match. At the very least, they had a Lv.5 captain, so it wasn't like there was no challenge involved. Right?
Ahem, ahem, ahem.
In any case!
If he was going to make a name for himself, he had to do it in style — and with a certain flair that set him apart.
Which was exactly why he had no intention of going through the Guild to file for a War Game.
Too much hassle. And honestly? A little boring.
He'd already asked his Goddess how it worked. To put it bluntly, it was just a bunch of Gods gathering together to randomly draw a 'game mode' out of a hat.
Castle Siege — one Familia attacks a castle defended by the other.
Deity Guard — both sides rally around their own God and fight for control.
Or the simplest format of all: a straightforward tournament bracket, and so on.
Way too much trouble.
Isagi genuinely felt it was way too much trouble.
Why not just walk up to their front door and beat every single member of their Familia into the ground? That was simpler. To put it plainly — he was going to crash their place and challenge them all. Fight ten of them. No, a hundred?!
That shouldn't be a problem at all.
That evening.
While grilling fish, Isagi casually explained his plan to the Goddesses seated around him.
Astrea let out a long, weary sigh. Her expression was one of someone who had expected exactly this — a mix of indulgent exasperation and helpless resignation.
Goddess Demeter blinked, looking thoughtful. She seemed on the verge of talking him out of it, but then something seemed to occur to her, and she fell quiet again.
Aphrodite, on the other hand, was a different story.
The Goddess of Beauty was actually entirely in favor of his idea. She put on her most theatrical act, speaking in that honeyed, deliberately coy falsetto of hers — and she really was shameless about it.
She said something along the lines of:
"So when you go, could you do me a teeny-tiny little favor~? It's the smallest thing, honestly, barely any trouble at all, you could do it just in passing—"
"What kind of favor?"
"It's really simple, you just have to, um... when you're there... mmm..."
She trailed off, hemming and hawing.
Aphrodite's evasive, squirming demeanor made it abundantly clear that nothing good was coming out of this.
Especially suspicious was the fact that Lefiya and Tiona nearby were both wearing oddly strained expressions. And Artemis — the pure Goddess of the Moon — also seemed to be on the verge of saying something but choosing not to.
Something was off. Very, very off.
"Anyway! Isagi, you absolutely must notify this Goddess before you set off, okay?!"
She kept up the deliberately coquettish tone — the kind of breathless gravity a boy might place in a first love's promise, a vow treated as the most important thing in the world.
Too bad.
Isagi wasn't falling for it.
He wasn't some naive kid anymore. Ha.
The more the Goddess of Beauty acted like this, the more suspicious the whole thing felt.
He decided to ignore her entirely. A few days after this vacation wrapped up, once they returned to the city, he'd just go handle it.
What he hadn't anticipated, however — not even he himself — was that the moment the thought took shape: Defeat the Ishtar Familia. Make the Astrea Familia the strongest in the city.
A chain of unforeseeable changes followed. Changes that even the Gods themselves had never seen coming.
And the cause of it all was a certain 'hidden' ability — one belonging to the new Character Card he had obtained after leveling up to Lv.5: [Night of the Hunt].
Night fell, little by little.
After dinner — whether it was the afternoon fishing trip that had worn him out, or the effort of preparing the meal — Isagi was overcome with drowsiness. He decided to head back to the cabin and sleep early.
The early summer stars and moon were vivid and brilliant.
The sea stretched out in endless black, dotted with constellations that shimmered through the wooden cabin's window like a faint, otherworldly luminescence drifting atop the water.
Not far away, the warm glow of a bonfire flickered outward.
The Goddesses had gathered on the beach for a small, impromptu drinking party. Even as he lay in bed inside the cabin, Isagi could still faintly catch the sweet, heady scent of the fruit wine Demeter had brewed.
Further away still.
Somewhere deep in the woods beyond his line of sight, faint tremors and small explosions rang out intermittently.
Clearly, Ais had dragged Ryuu-senpai, Lefiya, and Tiona off to train again after dinner.
Come to think of it.
Once he fell asleep, was he going to end up inside the [Dark Hall] again?
Since returning from the last Dungeon trip, Ais and the others had already gone in once more. The energy reserves should be depleted by now.
The girls had a surprisingly good time in there.
Though the BOSSes he had conjured gave them a rather rough time — Riveria in particular had actually pulled him aside to demand a full strategy guide, then spent a long time studying it meticulously, dead set on redeeming herself.
Isagi honestly thought the Princess was taking it a bit too seriously.
As for the [Dark Hall] itself, he currently treated it as nothing more than a game. It didn't interfere with anything important, and occasionally letting the girls go in to experience it — to suffer a little — while he gained Divine Power from it was genuinely a win-win situation.
Still.
It nagged at him. Why had that place appeared in the first place?
Was it the Dungeon's power at work?
Or had the Dungeon and his own abilities resonated in some way, producing this space that felt so much like a 'Round Table Hall'?
Suspicious.
He was fairly certain it wasn't solely the Dungeon's doing — it was intimately tied to his own abilities.
Of course, thinking about it further led nowhere useful.
At this point, he was just letting his mind wander aimlessly before sleep — and soon enough, his thoughts drifted to the question of how he was going to raid the Ishtar Familia's headquarters.
Speaking of which, what was the Pleasure Quarter actually like?
He'd never been.
As his thoughts floated further and further away, the darkness descended.
Isagi slipped into his dreams.
And in doing so, brought something upon certain people in the city at that very moment — a deep, nameless nightmare that crept over them without warning...
...
Orario. Twilight Manor.
Night had barely fallen when Riveria finished her day's work and returned to her room to rest.
Recently, the joint operation between the Loki Familia and the Freya Familia — the expedition to subjugate the Corrupted Spirit lurking in the Dungeon's Deep Floors — had been consuming everyone's time with intense preparations.
On top of that, the Guild had floated an idea worth considering: using Isagi's special Dungeon to allow herself, Finn, Gareth, and Freya Familia's Hedin to all level up to Lv.7 before undertaking the expedition.
A reasonable suggestion. Isagi himself had no objections.
The only caveat was that it would have to wait until the boy had explored deeper floors — the monsters they encountered at their current depth weren't sufficient to grant Lv.6 adventurers the combination of Ability Score gains and Excelia they needed.
But it wouldn't be long.
Roughly this year — perhaps autumn, perhaps winter.
Those had been Isagi's own words.
Standing at the window, gazing out at the languid yet strikingly bright summer night sky, Riveria found her thoughts wandering far away.
She thought of Ais. And of Isagi. She wondered how the two of them were doing right now—
Hmm?!
Why had she thought of two people?!
Worrying about Ais was perfectly understandable — the girl was off on a 'vacation' at another God's Familia right now. But why on earth was Isagi in her thoughts too?!
It was obviously because that insufferable person had teased her with his story and never finished telling it.
That was the only reason.
Riveria found her justification with admirable speed.
Before, inside Isagi's [Dark Hall], they had suddenly been transported to some kind of 'new world' — a place where they went on an adventure, encountered all manner of powerful BOSSes, and each BOSS came with its own [Backstory].
Not just one story. Many.
A world on the verge of annihilation, where one had to sacrifice themselves as kindling to keep the flame burning — a pitiable world sustained only by that.
A prince who faced invasion from a foreign power, and in order to protect his kingdom and people, would stop at nothing to obtain the power of undying.
A being who inherited the great will of those who came before, tracing the path of six lost things, until at last becoming an undying, roaring wildfire that could never be extinguished.
Strange, dazzling worlds and the sorrowful stories within them.
They always left Riveria utterly captivated.
It wasn't that she liked stories in the abstract — it was something deeper. She could feel that these things were real. Not words on a page, but worlds that could be seen and touched, existing perhaps somewhere impossibly far away, or perhaps in some place she had never known.
Happening. Unfolding. Ending.
That was what made them so captivating.
Among all of them, the one Riveria found most difficult to grasp was the world of 'Nightmares.'
That world was far too complex. What was this supposed to mean — a world formed from the 'dreams' of various Gods?
The different yearnings of different Gods, and the dreams of those who had obtained divine power and sought to become Gods themselves — all of it woven together, twisting into something utterly terrifying.
What on earth was any of that about? She hadn't understood a single word of it.
Still.
If a world born of 'dreams' could truly manifest in reality... that would indeed be frightening.
Riveria thought this to herself.
What she did not know was that at this very moment, far away, on a small island at sea beneath the night sky — the boy had sunk deep into his dreams.
And simultaneously, in the city, certain adventurers were beginning to witness the birth of a 'nightmare.'
____
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