Isagi led the girls to find that [Orphan of the Fishing Village].
When they had first arrived at this "fishing village," everyone had heard that voice carrying from afar.
It had informed them all that there were two options before them.
Find the "correct path."
Or hunt the "Orphan of the Fishing Village."
Isagi had been pondering all along what exactly this was supposed to mean—was the Dungeon up to some new trick again? But in any case, from what he understood of her, no matter how many forms it took, it never strayed from its fundamental nature.
The Dungeon was still that same Dungeon. It could not change itself; it could only add onto its existing foundation.
Just like those special monsters—they were beings that already existed in the first place. The Dungeon couldn't conjure up out of thin air a kind of monster it had never seen.
Take, for instance, those fish-men just now.
They were the "half-fish-men" most commonly seen in the [Great Waterfall] region—or one could call them "Marmen."
They were utterly different from the "mermaids" like Marie.
After all, a mermaid has the upper half of a human and the lower half of a fish, whereas a half-fish-man is the complete opposite: upper half fish, lower half human.
And moreover, "mermaids" are all female.
As for the "half-fish-men"... well, no adventurer has ever bothered to research the question of their sex. Perhaps certain great nobles or merchants outside the city might have some knowledge of it... ahem, ahem, ahem...
In any case.
As Isagi pondered the so-called "correct path" and "wrong path," he thought of something he'd heard about before.
On the 25th to 27th floors of the Dungeon—that is, the [Great Waterfall] region—there was an "underground river" that ran straight up to the surface, or to put it another way, another exit from the Dungeon.
Not man-made, but a natural point of entry and exit.
Starting from this region, following the intricate, crisscrossing underground rivers, one could go straight to the port town of Melen outside the city—the bottom of that boundlessly vast Lake Lolog.
In fact.
Melen was not merely Orario's "logistics base"; it had once also borne the duty of guarding "the Dungeon's outlet to the sea."
Poseidon, Tethys, Njord, Varuna, Nun... many gods of the sea had once brought their own followers to guard that point of entry and exit at Melen.
However.
Compared to the great pit-hole on the surface, the exit located at Lake Lolog was very small, and moreover, only "aquatic monsters" could pass in and out of it, so in terms of danger it was far weaker.
After all, within the Dungeon, only the [Great Waterfall] region had a great many aquatic monsters, so their levels were basically fixed at around Lv.3 to Lv.4—not all that difficult to deal with.
But one couldn't be careless either.
After all, a creature like the [Leviathan] had been born there before.
Come to think of it, Isagi was curious too: how had the Leviathan, so enormous, left the Dungeon back then?
Had it crawled out through the great pit-hole on the surface?
Or was it originally very small, and only after getting out did it grow in the sea to such a monstrously exaggerated size?
Back to the main point.
Earlier, up in the high tower of the [Holy City], he and the girls had all seen it: "the monsters from below, in order to fulfill the Dark Mother's wish to see the sky, chose to ceaselessly assault the upper floors."
Isagi immediately thought of it—this was the so-called [correct path].
That is——
[Fulfill the Dark Mother's wish].
But the problem was that, whether going upward or taking the waterways to Lake Lolog outside the city, both paths were now impassable.
Above the Dungeon stood Babel, so the monsters simply could not freely leave this place.
And the exit at Lake Lolog had long ago, many years earlier after the Leviathan was subjugated, been dealt with by the Hera Familia, who stepped forward and used the rare materials dropped by the [Overlord of the Sea]—which were also part of its body, its "bones"—to fashion a stone slab.
And then they used it to plug up that exit.
Because the Leviathan's aura still lingered upon it, ordinary monsters couldn't even get close to it, let alone destroy it.
So the [correct path] was a dead end.
This was precisely what Isagi had realized.
In that case, the only thing left to do was to go hunt that [Orphan of the Fishing Village].
This one was easy enough to understand—it definitely meant fighting a BOSS.
As for how he'd found this creature, that wasn't complicated either. That sprawling fishing village, all tangled up everywhere, only looked "endless and inexhaustible."
Within the Dungeon, there could never exist a floor with no boundaries and no end.
The reason it gave such an intensely complicated impression was that he and the girls had originally been situated inside the fishing village.
It was just like walking into an intricate labyrinth.
When you're inside it, you naturally get the illusion that no matter what you do you can't get out, as if it has no end at all.
But no matter what kind of labyrinth it is, as long as you can stand somewhere high—or rather, simply take to the air—then even the most intricate labyrinth becomes plain to see at a glance.
It was just that simple.
During the time spent flying through the sky, Isagi and Ais, carrying the other girls, soon found, in some corner of the fishing village, a huge, white, round-looking, semi-transparent fish egg.
Inside.
A gaunt, pale half-fish-man gave off an impression of malnutrition.
This place was practically a dedicated "BOSS battle" arena, with heaps of garbage piled all around, intensely damp, oozing a sticky, fishy-stinking liquid—no telling what it all actually was.
It looked as though seaweed, dead fish, and all sorts of "kitchen scraps" had been heaped together, the ground of the plaza at the center uneven and bumpy, always dotted with small, murky puddles.
And right at the front of the plaza, at the center of the garbage heap, was that discarded fish egg.
"Brace yourselves."
Isagi and the girls quickly made their battle preparations.
As they all descended.
Behind them, the road that had originally led to this garbage plaza materialized a fog-door, turning this place into a pure "dueling ground."
Then.
The fish egg ruptured.
From within that soft membrane, a great deal of fishy yellow fluid flowed out, and the pale, gaunt fish-man tumbled out along with it.
It snarled, unable even to open its eyes, able only to sprawl on the ground and struggle.
[Orphan of the Fishing Village].
This fellow could barely even manage to stand up, but Isagi didn't dare to underestimate it.
"Be careful."
For some reason, he had a rather bad premonition.
That is.
Although they'd found the correct answer, that didn't mean they could clear it smoothly. On the contrary, in a certain sense, the "correct main-quest stage BOSS" was the one that was comparatively harder to conquer.
"Evangelium."
As the formless voice, like a sharp, long spear, pierced through the chest of the monster before her.
Alfia gave her opponent no chance to heal again.
Instead, she continuously cast her magic, raining down a wild bombardment upon it.
And so.
After that swift, low-voiced incantation.
The monster's body was pierced through by countless formless spears, and at last, like a tattered rag, it fell along with its pulverized flesh and blood.
Finally took it down—quite the troublesome one, wasn't it.
The woman frowned slightly.
The monster before her should have been the one originally called the "Floating Crystal" on the lower floors.
It itself was a round, shield-shaped crystal construct that floated in midair, with a single enormous eye growing at its center, able to fire lightning-attribute magic beams through that eye.
Interestingly, casting magic itself didn't require it to expend mental energy—or rather, perhaps this kind of monster simply had no such concept.
They released magic by consuming a certain kind of energy.
And once the energy stored within their bodies was depleted, they needed to "recharge"—that is, stay motionless in some corner of the water, in order to restore their energy.
It took Alfia some time as well before she recalled the characteristics of this low-floor monster.
After all, for her.
Her adventuring days in the [Great Waterfall] region had been truly quite brief. As that saying goes again—she was only fifteen when she became a Lv.7 adventurer.
The battle was over.
The woman silently stepped forward, treading over the crystals that, even shattered all across the ground, still gave off little points of blue light.
This place seemed to be a mineshaft.
It was not at all cramped—one could even say it was quite spacious. Whether the ceiling or the distance between the two side walls, both exceeded several dozen meters.
It was just that the crystal clusters heaped haphazardly together gave off light of every color, always making one feel it dazzling to the eyes.
They also took up most of the space, so it felt as though one had walked deep into a crystal forest, and among these crystals, one could from time to time catch sight of a severed ear.
Just the ordinary, rounded sort of human ear.
Abruptly, it would just appear there inside the crystal, giving one a deeply uncomfortable feeling.
Alfia remembered that, at the very beginning, it had seemed to be counting—from the ears, thin threads like tapeworms crawled out, repeatedly wriggling their bodies while forming the shapes of numbers within the crystal.
At first Alfia had actually found it rather interesting.
After all, this really was the first time she had ever seen such a thing existing within the Dungeon.
So what did it mean?
She still hadn't figured it out even now. At any rate, in the depths of this mineshaft she had found the creature she was meant to hunt, and had defeated it.
This fellow, whose prototype should have been the "Floating Crystal," had turned into a towering "Crystal Man" like a bamboo pole.
It was almost completely unafraid of physical damage.
And its entire body was covered in eyes, able both to fire lightning-attribute beams and to "refract" them among the surrounding crystals.
Its own strength should have been around Lv.6—a fairly powerful monster, all things considered.
Not bad.
Alfia found it quite interesting.
At first, the woman had thought that Isagi's special Dungeon was perhaps a bit of "alarmist talk."
After all, when it came down to it, wasn't it just a matter of encountering more powerful monsters?
And moreover, there would be more of them—BOSSes whose [Endurance] couldn't match the Monster Rex, but which were stronger in attack power and destructiveness, ones you could say were specifically aimed at adventurers—that would appear.
Add to that the traps in the terrain and so on—when it came down to it, it was just that, really.
As a veteran adventurer, Alfia didn't feel that Isagi's "special Dungeon" had anything particularly special about it.
But having experienced it a little just now, she found that it really was somewhat different.
[Hunt complete].
From afar, that ethereal voice came once again.
This was what most astonished Alfia, because in the Dungeon of before, this kind of situation absolutely would never have occurred.
How to put it.
The Dungeon of before was purely natural—or rather, in a certain sense, it was the "wilderness." There were no traces of civilization, and the so-called monsters were no different from "beasts with special abilities."
Within the Dungeon, although there were also many kinds of regions, on the whole they were nothing more than caves, cliff-faces, green forests, volcanoes, deserts, and the like.
But now it was completely different.
This place seemed like another "new world" with its own rules and common sense.
Alfia quickly grasped this point.
The firsthand experience let her better understand what Isagi and the girls had earlier meant by the [Goblin Kingdom].
So then, this current [hunting ground]—just what kind of place was it?
Alfia was an adventurer.
Just why had she become an adventurer in the first place?
Everyone's reasons were of all different kinds—there were those who harbored hatred toward monsters, those who wanted to make a name for themselves, those who simply wanted to challenge themselves, and those who wanted to protect others——
Of course.
Exploring the unknown, uncovering the secrets of the Dungeon, also counted as a fairly common reason.
And then there were also plenty of those who did it purely to make a living, regarding it as a job much like that of a "mercenary" or the like.
But Alfia didn't know.
She thought of that younger sister in the Familia who was almost "utterly useless."
It wasn't because of her that she had become an adventurer either.
One could even say that the two of them had, quite naturally, simply joined the Hera Familia. That aged and incomparably stern goddess seemed, back then, to have merely caught sight of her and her sister on the long street.
And then taken it upon herself to strike up a conversation, saying.
[Want to be an adventurer?]
[Sure.]
It seemed the whole affair had been just that simple.
Alfia still hadn't figured out, even now, her reason for becoming an adventurer. Looking back on it now, the most she could say was "I don't dislike it, anyway."
Whether it was fighting, exploring, or even dying because of it——
Life is always full of all kinds of things, and her own past was not something to be disliked either. That was all.
[Find the correct path, and escape the hunter's pursuit.]
[Or.]
[Kill the hunter.]
The crystal that had originally existed before her suddenly shattered, and from within it a brand-new path appeared.
"The hunter's pursuit?"
Alfia tilted her head slightly.
She had no idea what this so-called "hunter" was supposed to mean, but she wasn't so arrogant as to think that no matter what kind of creature it was, it could never be a match for her.
In the Dungeon, one had to stay vigilant at all times and in all places.
Careless fellows usually died miserably—this was something that the woman, as a veteran adventurer, could not possibly fail to know.
So...
"Interesting indeed, isn't it."
Stepping onto the path before her, that crisp "pop" sound appeared once more between Alfia's ears. Then.
It was as if she had come to another world.
Everything before her eyes underwent a change—a tranquil little town beneath the night sky simply appeared before her.
It was just that.
On all the walls of all the houses in the little town, noses of every size, large and small, were drawn.
[Human] noses.
And at the same time, from behind her came the sound of a dog barking, and the footsteps of a "human"——
____
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