The gods said Ais had fallen into a Nightmare.
The Guild summoned Ikelos, the deity who presided over "Nightmares," to examine the girl and confirm it.
And so.
By the time Isagi returned to the city, Ais had in fact been trapped within her dream for well over a week. Ever since the Corrupted Spirit had been subjugated, all the way back from the deep levels until now, the girl had never once awakened. Like a sleeping beauty, she was sunk in a deep, deep Nightmare.
Under the night sky, Isagi could see the fear surfacing across Ais's pale, lovely face.
Now and then the girl's brow would knit tight, and at times her features twisted into something almost vicious.
A Black Wind coiled about her, and within it churned an unspeakable, violent Strength.
Loki, Riveria, and Ryuu-senpai were all worried sick, and so the little room was packed with people at every hour.
What on earth had happened?
No one could say for certain. The situation at the time had been chaotic.
Under the crowd's assault, the Corrupted Spirit had scarcely any Strength left to fight back, so the battle had even drifted, strangely, into a kind of "easy" mood, right up until the sudden moment when Finn and Ottar were about to deliver the finishing blow.
That was when the thing abruptly charged straight at Ais, and everything ended up like this.
"Let me give it a try."
Isagi switched his Character Card over to "Night of the Hunt," to see whether he could slip into the girl's Nightmare.
Divine Power flowed through him.
Soon a mist seemed to rise before Isagi's eyes, and slowly he formed some kind of "link" with the sleeping girl—
Ais truly had been dreaming a very long dream.
It was a dream about adventure.
"Heave-ho, heave-ho, heave-ho, heave-ho! Let's go on an adventure!!"
So chirped the Elf girl like a little duckling, and beside her another Elf girl held her proud head high like a little rooster.
"Dadadadadadadada!"
The girls hoisted their little wooden staves and little wooden swords and set off toward the Dungeon!
And then.
An Amazon girl, a great blade slung over her shoulder and noisy as a puppy, joined the party too.
And most important of all.
That little lion cub, dazzling as the sun.
The doll squad was complete!
Everyone marched merrily toward the Dungeon, and along the way they met a delicate, pitiable fox lady, and a pink puppy healer who bristled up from time to time.
How happy it was.
Adventure was truly a joyful thing.
Striking down Monsters, growing stronger, everyone gathered together to chat and talk, kindling a campfire, simmering a meat stew, helping one another, holding one another up.
But why was the Dungeon so deep?
The path ahead seemed forever mired in vast, sprawling darkness. On and on they walked, on and on, yet they never reached the end.
Ah—
Maybe they should turn back?
So Ais thought to herself, but it seemed she couldn't. Everyone wanted to keep adventuring on, so how could she abandon them all?
No, she couldn't. So even if it was a strain, she had to press on with the adventure.
Was that how it was?
[Was that how it was?]
[Was it for everyone's sake that the adventure had to go on?]
[No, was it?]
[Wasn't it really you forcing everyone else along?]
[Wasn't it you making everyone accompany you into danger?]
[Just like—]
The darkness swallowed every doll in the girl's hands.
The duckling and the little hen, the Elves;
the puppy-like Amazon;
the fox lady;
the pink puppy lady;
and most important of all, the one who always walked at the very front, cheering everyone on, bright as the sun—
"Ais."
"!"
A voice came from somewhere, and the girl lifted her head without thinking.
Only then did she realize she had sunk into great heaving masses of pitch-black. It was the "darkness" that terrified her, that frightened her—the "darkness" that had once devoured everything she had, that was…
The Black Dragon.
"!!!"
Father, mother, and her companions—
all of it because of her.
If she wasn't strong enough, that final, terminal black would in the end tear away everything that was hers.
[No no no no no no no no no no no no!!!]
The Black Wind howled, letting out a dreadful sound that made the heart clench.
"Black" was the strongest.
And so—
"Holy hell, what is this?"
When Isagi entered Ais's Nightmare, what unfolded before him was a desolate garden, ruined houses, and a single great tree long since withered.
Beneath the tree.
Stood a sword-bearing girl, ringed all around by pitch-black wind.
["Wind of the End" Ais Wallenstein (Spirit)].
…
…
"Ais is a Spirit?!"
"Mm… perhaps she carries some measure of Spirit blood. At the very least… she's definitely not an Elf or a human."
"What the hell is that?!"
In the girl's room, after Isagi too had fallen into slumber, everyone sat by the orange lamplight.
Riveria and Ryuu and the others had, oddly enough, turned it into something like a tea party, gathered around the round table, talking as they sipped.
Riveria, Lefiya, Tiona, Ryuu, Haruhime, and Loki, Astraea, Artemis, and Aphrodite—several goddesses.
Gods and girls sat together, listening to Riveria tell a tale from long, long ago.
Ais had been handed over to Loki's side by the Zeus Familia.
The girl had been found in the crevice between the 60th and 61st floors of the Dungeon—the hidden chamber known as the [Thousand-Azure Ice Garden]—and had then been carried all the way back up to the surface.
The Ais of that time had been sealed in ice, having passed through who knew how many years and months.
What on earth had it all been?
No one knew the answer, and the Zeus and Hera of old had said only that in this child they had glimpsed the hope of a [Hero].
Just as the great [Hero] Albert of old had once been surrounded by many companions, along with a Great Spirit at his side.
The girl was one of the [Heroes] who would save the world, and so the Loki Familia was to take good care of her, without fail.
"So if that's the case, back then Ais still hadn't awakened, yet the Zeus and Hera Familias had already gone off to subjugate the [Dragon Valley]…"
Wasn't that doomed to fail?
"Maybe they didn't believe it. Or maybe they had their own pride to answer to."
What was past needed no more dwelling on, and besides, it wasn't the point.
The point was this.
A Spirit and a human could not possibly produce offspring.
This wasn't a matter of reproductive isolation between races. It was simply that a Spirit's propagation was unlike that of humans, Elves, dwarves, and the rest—as impossible as a human and a tree bringing forth a child, no matter what.
And so.
What exactly "was" Ais?
Not just Riveria—even Loki did not know.
The gods could not comprehend it either: what kind of existence the golden-haired girl now belonged to. The only thing that could be said for certain was that within her ran, indeed, the "blood of a Spirit"—that, and nothing more.
And what could now also be confirmed was this.
Ais's mother had truly been the Great Spirit Aria—which made the whole thing all the more baffling.
____
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