Finn and the others had also just encountered a fellow who called herself a "Hunter."
It was a creature over two meters tall, plainly one of the monsters from Floor 37 known as "Barbarians"—long hair deep red like blazing flame, a tall and upright frame, wearing some sort of feline mask; and that signature pair of massive, jet-black horns was, of course, indispensable as well.
The other was female, with only a scant amount of thick fur wrapped about her body, a great axe slung across her back, her voice ringing deafening as a great bell.
She called herself Lumina.
Very interested in the appearance of "adventurers," she made Finn, Gareth, and Riveria all sense a certain intense fighting spirit in her eyes.
She very much wanted to challenge the three of them, yet that bloodthirsty desire was being suppressed by something.
She claimed that she too was trapped within this [Hunting Grounds], and that if things continued, she would end up losing her sanity, becoming a puppet that could only be manipulated by the "Administrator."
"Who is the Administrator?"
"The eyes of His Majesty."
"Who is His Majesty?"
"The Miracle born upon the most ancient throne."
"Aren't you also sent by His Majesty? Then why would you lose your sanity because of the Administrator?"
"Because the [Hunting Grounds] has gone out of control."
"Why did it go out of control?"
"That is exactly why we need you to find and destroy the [Miracle] here." "..." Somehow it felt as though the other side had said a great deal, yet at the same time had said nothing at all.
"The current situation ought to be like this."
Finn, who walked at the very back of the three, held a sheet of paper, drawing a real-time map upon it.
The cylinder in the middle represented the "crossroads" from when they had first arrived;
The nine doors among the surrounding cliff walls represented the complex caverns that had originally surrounded the [Great Waterfall];
And the maps within the doors—whether the castle he and the others had just visited, the town that came afterward, or this karst cave they now threaded through underground—were all part of those original caverns.
"In other words, we're inside some labyrinth—this is what's called the [Correct Path] and the [Wrong Path]."
"Do you remember? Earlier, after we split up, a path that let us leave appeared before us all on its own—and also back when we defeated those Red Spirits."
Finn's words immediately jogged the memories of Riveria and Gareth.
The two of them spoke almost simultaneously.
"The [Correct Path] is fake?"
"No."
Finn felt he should describe it a little more precisely.
"It's that any path which appears before us on its own is the wrong one; only the path we find for ourselves is the correct one."
Put that way, it was a bit of a tongue-twister.
But at this moment, Finn and the others were walking the true "Correct Path," because this was a road they had found for themselves.
Following the sound of the water.
An extremely faint rustling sound came flowing from far away.
And the three discovered that as long as they advanced following this sound, then whether wall or cliff, even where there was no path, after a tiny "pop" a brand-new path would abruptly appear.
That's right, that's right—just like this.
Finn was certain that at this moment, he, Gareth, and Riveria were continuously heading downward.
This too was correct.
If that hunter named Lumina was right, and the objective of his group was to find the so-called "Miracle"—the Monster Rex Two-Headed Dragon that had originally dwelt on Floor 27—
then indeed they would only be able to find it at the very bottom.
Everything began to fall into "place."
Finn couldn't help but sigh in admiration—Isagi's "special Dungeon" really was something else.
Even a veteran adventurer like himself was, for a moment, utterly baffled.
It wasn't merely that the monsters had grown stronger; within it there were far more complex changes. If one simply charged in and forced one's way through by brute force, one might not even know how one had died. And what's more.
In here, relying on brains alone wasn't enough either.
The karst cave the three were in was deep and winding.
At its narrowest, even a Pallum like Finn had to stoop to pass through, and Riveria, rather helplessly, could only crouch down and force her way forward.
And it was in just such a place, where there was no room at all to move freely,
every so often,
monsters would emerge from the darkness.
Such as a crab crouched in a blind spot, wielding a long blade;
a shellfish hidden in a dim corner that would suddenly spew a jet of water powerful enough to punch through rock;
and that "Half-Fish-Man," misshapen in appearance, slipperier than a loach, utterly indistinguishable from the scattered rubble when it lay motionless on the ground.
Fortunately, Riveria was quite experienced, always muttering her ice-attribute magic under her breath.
The instant danger struck, she would activate it at once, freezing the things solid on the spot.
Yet even so,
Gareth, who walked at the very front, still rather unluckily suffered no small number of attacks.
Luckily the Dwarf uncle's armor was thick enough, and these monsters were generally around Lv. 5, so they didn't inflict any serious injuries.
Even though most of those attacks were laced with "toxins" besides, under his high-level [Abnormal Resistance] ability he remained as right as rain.
It made even Finn sigh with relief—a good thing they'd brought Gareth along.
And on the other side,
the Dwarf uncle had long grown used to such sudden attacks.
After all, he'd previously knocked about the Goblin Kingdom with the younger members of his Familia, and had long since learned that Isagi's Dungeon was just like this—nothing to be done about it.
The Dwarf uncle, gripping his great shield like a heavily-armored tank, slowly forged a path at the front.
After a long while,
as the sound of water from afar grew louder and clearer, there even came a rumbling—plainly the sound of a "waterfall" plunging down.
The three of them, as if they could finally breathe easy, pressed onward with even greater drive.
The slope gradually turned into stone steps.
Though somewhat rough, there had indeed appeared traces of something "man-made."
The three felt as though they were walking toward some ancient ruin buried deep underground; the karst cave on both sides grew ever wider, and the height of the ceiling kept rising.
Every so often, perhaps because of the dampness,
the stalactites overhead, shrouded in a dim blue glow, would drip down bone-chillingly cold droplets of water.
The atmosphere gradually grew heavy.
Whether Gareth, Finn, or Riveria, all of them sensed a certain "air of danger."
This was the intuition of veteran adventurers.
And the intuition was correct.
Just ahead, when the three finally reached the end of the karst-cave passage, the view opened up all at once, and that dim blue glow scattered across the ceiling vanished.
And so,
all three immediately lit the Magic Stone lanterns hanging at their waists.
The orange light burst forth in an instant.
And they saw an utterly familiar "chamber"—within the Dungeon, such chambers were truly all too ordinary, all too common.
Not only were they everywhere on the upper floors, but within the [Great Waterfall] they were even more ubiquitous.
And the chamber's exit lay far off, directly ahead of the three.
Only,
a monster blocked the way—it just stood there in the very center of the chamber, severing the connection between the three and the exit.
____
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