Riveria had quietly followed Isagi and Ais out of the city.
Hidden in a small grove, silent, she watched the boy and the girl standing in the grass a short distance away.
Then she watched as Ais, with visible pain, called forth that pitch-black Wind of the End,
as though she were locked in some kind of "struggle" against it.
As the girl's mother.
Riveria understood Ais well, of course, and knew exactly what it was the girl was suffering over.
But she believed that as long as Isagi was there, everything would be fine.
Only in this moment did Riveria finally realize that she seemed to have developed some indescribable "reliance" on the boy, some "trust" in him, to the point that she felt he could do anything at all. It really was incredible.
And soon enough.
Isagi did indeed step forward, and before long he and Ais had drawn close together, the two of them simply sitting down there in the grass…
Huh?!
Why had the mood turned so suggestive all of a sudden?!!
Riveria blinked. Weren't they just trying to master a brand-new power a second ago?
So why did it now look like—
No, no, no!
What exactly was wrong with it?!
They were sitting far too close, that was what!
She had told herself before that as long as Ais liked it, that was enough, and that she had no business interfering. For an adventurer, after all, the finest thing was to "do what you love and what you want to do" and leave no regrets behind.
So why did her feelings tangle up like this now?!
And more than that.
Without a single conscious thought.
Riveria had already walked out of the grove, quietly— not quietly at all, in fact. Isagi and Ryuu had noticed Her Highness the Princess emerging from the trees long ago. As high-level adventurers, how could they possibly be unaware of every stir of wind and rustle of grass around them?
The result being.
Riveria hadn't even reached the boy and the girl yet when, from some way off, she saw the two of them turn their heads in unison to look straight at her.
"Ah—"
Another small, faintly mortified yelp escaped her.
The Elf Princess's mind went blank on the spot. She had no idea how she was supposed to explain why she was here, whether she had been tailing them, whether she had been spying…
This was far too humiliating!
Thankfully.
Isagi and Ais didn't suspect a thing. They simply waved Riveria over to join them.
[Join them]?!
Her head only spun harder.
It wasn't until she finally reached the pair, bent down, and saw the image projected in front of the boy and the girl by a tiny Eye Crystal.
Hm? What were they watching?
"The Dragon Valley," Isagi explained, and the words gave Riveria a violent start.
The Dragon Valley?!
The Dragon Valley where the Black Dragon was sealed?!!
"That's right." Isagi nodded again.
"I went to the Dragon Valley a while back, and I used the Eye Crystal Miss Fels gave me to record everything I saw and heard."
"…"
That was far too dangerous!!
That was the place that had wiped out both the Zeus and Hera Familia to the last member. That was where even the Lv.8 and Lv.9 adventurers of the [City's Strongest] had fallen and died.
The lifelong wish of every adventurer was to complete the Three Great Quests and slay the one that remained—the [Black Dragon].
And yet.
Every soul in the city, including a great many gods, feared that One-Eyed Black Dragon beyond all measure.
The reason was simple.
The strongest Familia, Zeus and Hera, had marched out in full force, each leading its finest party of adventurers—and after entering the depths of the Dragon Valley, they had been annihilated. Not one of them escaped.
Perhaps those proud fools had refused to flee out of sheer pride, choosing death instead.
That was possible.
But perhaps.
Perhaps they had never been given the chance to flee at all.
It might have been a wholly one-sided slaughter, the strongest adventurers alive trampled and torn apart by the Black Dragon, dying in there without even managing to run.
No one knew what the situation inside the Dragon Valley truly was. Not a single god knew either. And it was precisely that unknown that made the Dragon Valley and the Black Dragon so terrifying.
For Riveria to claim she felt no fear of it whatsoever would have been a lie.
Adventurers were human too.
So when Isagi said he had entered the Dragon Valley and even recorded the conditions inside, it wasn't just Ais who was stunned. Riveria was dumbfounded as well.
Then, like the girl, she obediently sat down at the boy's side and fixed her whole attention on the "image" before them.
This was a record of immeasurable value.
In the image.
A [Soul Teardrop] identical to Isagi walked into that colossal tornado.
Isagi, beside them, narrated as it played—
the guardian of the Dragon Valley he had run into, and how he had defeated it.
And after that.
Pressing on deeper into the tornado brought you straight to the [Dragon Valley].
As the wind and sand fell away, everything before them opened up at once.
What did the place where the Black Dragon was sealed actually look like? Down through the ages, countless adventurers, and even gods, had made their guesses.
But no god, however outrageously bold, would ever entertain the idea of taking a stroll inside the Dragon Valley's seal.
Because the Black Dragon was a genuine Monster of the Dungeon.
It was also a "pitch-black Monster" capable of devouring gods. No deity would gamble on that. And in any case, an ordinary god would likely never even manage to get near the Dragon Valley. Those draconic Monsters swarming its outskirts meant nothing to an adventurer like Isagi.
But to a god with nothing more than a human body, they were utterly unbeatable Monsters.
That was a digression.
In any case, mortals and gods alike had spun all manner of theories about the Dragon Valley, and Riveria and Ais were no exception. They had imagined that this so-called Dragon Valley was most likely a wasteland, or perhaps a genuine gorge walled in by layered mountains;
perhaps a vast pit like the Dungeon;
perhaps a lone, towering peak;
the ruins of an ancient city;
a beautiful, dreamlike paradise;
But at this moment, the truest Dragon Valley, laid out before all three of them, was "none of those things."
Or rather, it was something Riveria and Ais couldn't quite comprehend.
One second earlier there had been a wasteland thick with the scent of death—and then, as the wind and sand cleared, what filled their eyes was a dazzling pink sunset glow.
"Clouds?"
Following the [Soul Teardrop]'s field of view, the woman and the girl both felt as though they were standing high in the heavens.
Before them lay layer upon layer of gorgeous clouds banked together.
And deep within them.
Something seemed to be stirring restlessly.
It was a [Heart].
Through the cherry-pink of the evening glow, behind those layered banks of cloud, a pitch-black heart was beating, as though something were about to be born from within it.
[The Black Dragon—it's humanoid? That's impossible…]
Ais's eyes went wide in disbelief.
Impossible. The Black Dragon was supposed to be a Great Dragon—the ancient storybooks said so, the fallen dragon scale said so, even her own dream said so—
"Could it be…" Riveria murmured, and then gave voice to something truly terrible.
"Is the [Black Dragon] growing stronger?"
No.
To be precise, the word should be "evolving." Or "adapting."
Just as the Dungeon, out of its loathing for the gods, had birthed pitch-black Monsters untouched by divine power.
The Black Dragon, once defeated by the great [Hero] Albert Waldstein, was now undergoing a metamorphosis of its own—and becoming stronger than it had ever been.
____
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