Isagi was starting to regret letting Cecil forge a [Level Zero Armament] for a certain queen.
Deep within the 36th floor of the Dungeon.
The desert underground known as the Golden Kingdom was a wasteland battlefield littered everywhere with skeletons and weapons.
Watching the lower-floor final boss in the distance, Isagi could only grimace.
It hadn't even been a week since he and Ais had returned from the era a thousand years past. With nothing else to do, he'd come to the Dungeon again as usual, to spar with this foolish queen.
Except— with her new equipment, the [Empress] had gotten harder to fight by more than just one level!!
Amid the sky full of swirling yellow sand, Isagi watched the tall, slender, beautiful figure in the distance, his eyes trembling for a moment.
She held a great lance in her hands.
Like a knight's jousting lance, it was absurdly long — at least three or four meters. Past the halfway point, the design grew ever more monstrous, as if countless Monster fangs and teeth had been fused together, packed densely, until they formed this strange shape.
Near the very tip was a massive crimson dragon's head, its jaws spewing a blade made entirely of blazing red flame.
[Thundering Dragon's Might]. For some reason, Cecil's knack for naming weapons kept getting weirder.
But the moment Isagi had first laid eyes on the thing, he'd known it was no ordinary weapon. Now, having experienced it firsthand, he realized it was even less ordinary than he'd thought.
Because—
Before, whenever she'd been far away, the [Empress] would hurl a javelin or mime drawing a bow — it hadn't mattered which, since either way she'd loose bolt after bolt of golden lightning as her ranged attack.
The lightning's power was immense — no weaker than the thunder-attribute Magic barrages of Hedin, who was now Lv.7.
But that was about it. Once you got used to it, you realized her attack pattern was actually quite simple, even simplistic.
Now, though, it was a completely different story.
From far off, she'd simply raise the great lance, and the dragon head at its tip would erupt with searing draconic flame, rolling forward like a boundless crimson tide crashing straight at him.
It was vast — like an actual sea — leaving no gap, no blind spot to dodge into.
And within that surging crimson mist, every so often, a bolt of lightning would suddenly tear through it, crackling with a string of explosions as it shot straight toward him.
It was faster now, too!
Worse still, with the mist as cover, there was no telling where the bolt would come from, or when it would arrive—
as if a Great Dragon were truly hiding behind that roiling curtain of sky, hurling thunderbolt after thunderbolt at him.
Way too underhanded!
Isagi remembered that the [Empress] had figured out this trick the very instant she'd gotten her hands on [Thundering Dragon's Might].
She might look like a fool, but her combat talent was honestly terrifying.
And that wasn't all. The mist kept pressing in on him from every direction.
It spread at a pace that was neither fast nor slow, yet left nowhere to run — and if he tried to force his way straight through it—
The instant it touched him, Isagi felt a scalding burn wrap around his entire body. It wasn't actually damaging his flesh — wearing his upgraded [Dragon's Feast], flames of this magnitude weren't enough to burn him.
The problem was — the thing was burning his Mind instead!
Isagi could feel the Magic inside him draining away rapidly, accompanied by a mild dizziness. Soon strange pains and nausea followed too — clearly this attack carried some sort of built-in status effect!
Why was it such a grab-bag of everything?!
Sometimes Isagi genuinely wondered what went on inside Cecil's head!!
Visibility inside the mist was terrible, and he still had to watch for lightning strikes coming from who-knew-where.
And once he finally broke through, if he still wasn't close enough to the [Empress], there'd be a second wave, a third, a fourth…
Wasn't this ranged punishment a bit much?!
Still, that much he could handle. What really broke Isagi's composure was what happened once he closed to melee range.
Before, he'd already known that as an Amazon, the [Empress]'s melee ability far outstripped her ranged one.
But back then, she'd mainly relied on her fists and feet.
Her speed and Strength were absurd beyond description, and once Isagi had leveled up enough to finally match her stats, he quickly discovered another kind of "strength" he'd missed before.
Her sheer flexibility.
Isagi struggled to explain it — her strikes would sometimes come at him from angles that shouldn't have been physically possible.
It was ridiculous. Even Isagi felt that many of her movements simply weren't things a human body should be able to do. And yet she did them anyway.
Even so, that much was still manageable! Fists and feet, no matter how creative, had their limits.
But now that she had the great lance in hand, the melee prowess she displayed bordered on the absurd.
The thing could even [transform].
As he closed in, the silver-grey lance began to shed countless motes of swirling Magic, much like the starlight that wreathed Ryuu-senpai, and it rapidly spread to coat the woman's sun-bronzed skin.
Then — a clanging, hammer-on-anvil sort of noise rang out.
Right before Isagi's eyes, the queen turned into a "dragon" — not armor like his own, but an actual silver-grey dragon.
Though she wasn't especially large — about the height of an ordinary person, maybe just over two meters tall.
Even so, that was more than enough.
As a dragon, the [Empress] didn't just gain an all-around power boost — more importantly, she could keep shifting mid-fight, switching back to wielding the lance, or to her bare-handed form.
In other words, she had three whole "movesets" mid-battle, switching between them with zero frame delay and no recovery lag, spinning out endless nightmarish combos that were impossible to defend against!!
There in the Dungeon, Isagi sparred with the [Empress] for the better part of the day, and only after burning through several lives' worth of close calls did he finally decide to head back to the city.
Absurd. Truly, utterly absurd!
Isagi had even briefly considered going back to the era a thousand years past just to confiscate her weapon, then return it to her only after she'd "revived."
Wasn't he basically building his own personal boss monster?!
But then again, the stronger the [Empress] got, the more it proved his instincts right — once she became an ally, her value would only grow.
So, no problem at all! The team to take down the Black Dragon was practically complete—
As Isagi and Ais leveled up,
before long, Lefiya and Tiona became the second batch to reach Lv.8, along with Riveria, Alfia, and Allen Fromel from the Freya Familia, among others.
A great many people leveled up this time.
As for the remaining ones — Finn, Gareth, Hogni, Ryuu-senpai, and the rest — they were close too. By the gods' estimates, it would happen by this summer at the latest.
So, there was still a year left.
The girls didn't know the details of the Appointed Time, but they did know that the seal on Dragon Valley was about to fail.
So now was the time to race against the clock, preparing for the assault on the Black Dragon.
Given that, those who'd just leveled up naturally needed to study and adapt to their new powers.
So, early that morning, Lefiya and Tiona came together to the port city of Melen, waiting there for Riveria and Alfia to arrive.
Originally, they'd also reached out to Allen Fromel from Freya's side.
But he seemed to have his own plans and didn't show up, so there was nothing to be done about that.
Much like Isagi, who was still off in the Dungeon right now — the two girls had originally planned to wait for him to get back, but who knew how long this Dungeon trip of his would take.
Better to start training early and come back to give him a proper surprise!
Ais had come along with Riveria as well.
Besides them, Goddess Artemis had come too, saying she wanted to "broaden her horizons" — and naturally, tagging along like a shadow was the Goddess of Beauty, Aphrodite.
But then again! Lefiya seriously suspected
that the real reason the two goddesses had come was that Aphrodite just wanted to skip her shift at the Hostess of Fertility!
Still, Goddess Astrea had given her blessing, so it hardly mattered.
For now, the group's destination remained the same deserted island out at sea.
Of the three, Lefiya and Riveria were both mages, and testing their new powers in the Dungeon right now would probably be too "dangerous."
Even on the upper floors — if they accidentally blasted a floor apart, even without triggering Juggernaut, there were plenty of other adventurers around who could easily get caught in the blast.
They could hardly clear out the whole Dungeon just for practice, could they?
A mage's destructive power was on a whole other level compared to Warriors like Isagi or Ottar.
What's more, one of the things they meant to study this time was a brand-new "Explosion Magic."
Just on paper, its calculated power was dozens of times more absurd and terrifying than the previous Explosion Magic.
Even Lefiya and Riveria didn't dare use it there, afraid that a single blast might punch straight through the Dungeon, upward or downward, and cause enormous problems either way—
So, on the goddesses' suggestion, they finally settled on heading to the isolated island out at sea.
It wouldn't matter even if they ended up making the island "disappear" entirely, and the vast ocean offered endless room to cut loose.
Actually, Dragon Valley might have worked too. But it was too far.
A round trip would take several days, so it made more sense to just stay somewhere closer out at sea.
No boat needed. Ais's Magic these days was incredibly convenient — she simply lifted everyone up on a current of clear wind, and they flew off together toward the distant sea.
Once they'd fixed their heading, there was no risk of getting lost.
They pressed on wordlessly, straight into the depths of the ocean. Until—
it took two or three hours in all — an absurdly long time, given Ais's full speed. If she'd really wanted to, she could have flown clear across a continent in not much more time than that.
Far off, stretches of shattered islands scattered across the blue sea came into view.
The moment they drew near, an inexplicable dread welled up in everyone's chest, as though something colossal lay hidden beneath the calm surface — silent, still, simply existing, and yet unbearably terrifying.
This, the goddesses had said, was what the Academic District had discovered — the largest surviving fragment of the Overlord of the Sea, [Leviathan], which had once been blasted apart.
Looking at her own handiwork, Alfia's face took on a reminiscent look, as if some memory from the past had surfaced.
"No need to worry — the [Magic Stone] here has already been recovered by the Academic District. It's just an ordinary deserted island now."
Artemis said.
She didn't much care for the sea, but back when the Academic District and [Poseidon Familia] had scoured the world's oceans for the shattered remains of Leviathan — the so-called Dragon Palace — she'd taken part in that search too, so she knew a fair bit about it.
Though "ordinary" was a relative term. The island was, after all, once a fragment of Leviathan's body, and it naturally still carried some trace of that power—
Within a few hundred kilometers of the island, there wasn't a single Monster in the sea.
Even Monsters that had bred and evolved in the ocean for a thousand years would flee the instant they sensed Leviathan's presence.
Because of that, the Guild and the Academic District had even considered towing the fragment back to the port city of Melen, to keep the waters around the town free of Monster incursions. But that was a matter for another day — for now, nothing had actually been done about it.
As mentioned before, nothing mattered more to the Guild right now than the campaign against the Black Dragon. The world was full of messy, unresolved matters, but all of them would have to wait until after the Appointed Time had passed.
A light breeze blew, carrying the girls down onto a beach strewn with ash-grey sand.
Everything was utterly silent — not even the usual cries of seabirds could be heard — and the quiet left everyone a little uneasy.
"Right here — let's get started?"
Lefiya, brimming with enthusiasm, wanted to jump straight into the biggest "Super Explosion Magic!"
That was the name the Elf girl herself had come up with.
Riveria and Alfia, however, both looked a bit anxious about that.
"Let's start with something else."
If they actually "erased" the island outright, how would they continue training afterward?
Better to ease into it.
Especially since Tiona was here too, the only one of them who wasn't a mage.
The Amazon girl clearly belonged to the "Warrior" category.
Her power was likely more like Isagi's or Ottar's — less destructive than a mage's — so it made sense to let her go first.
"?!"
Tiona didn't have any objection.
In fact — she'd already gotten something of a grip on her brand-new power — if only in her head!
That's right. She'd worked it out just yesterday, lying in bed before falling asleep.
It was the strongest, the most invincible—
"Then let me go first!"
"Time for the show!!"
Humming to herself, Tiona gestured for the two goddesses nearby to duck behind Riveria and the others, and with great seriousness, told everyone to get their [Defensive Magic] and barriers ready first.
Because next, Lady Tiona was about to show off her true power!!
____
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