The reason they'd gone to such lengths was painfully simple—there, at the bottom of the letter, sat an unmistakable emblem in bold.
HERA FAMILIA.
The content itself was brief: a verdict on Orario's current situation, to be decided by a single battle.
Hera Familia would face the combined forces of Loki Familia and Freya Familia—and settle everything in one fight.
"Mia," Finn Deimne asked quietly, "do you think they still have anyone who can answer this?"
The speaker was the captain of Loki Familia. To be honest, Finn's unease hadn't lessened in the slightest. His right thumb throbbed with a faint, persistent ache—an omen he'd learned never to ignore.
Since the great purge, Hera Familia had gone eerily silent. In terms of momentum and politics, Loki and Freya had pinned the remnants down completely… but a centipede doesn't stop twitching the moment you crush it.
No one knew what the true situation was.
The shadow Zeus and Hera had left behind was simply too deep. After receiving that letter, they'd spent days turning it over from every angle—only to arrive at the same conclusion.
There was no solution except to show up.
"As far as your intelligence says," Mia said with a tired, almost irritated sigh, "Silence is still alive, isn't she? If anyone's coming, it's her."
Finn's mouth curled into a bitter smile.
"I honestly can't imagine what kind of monster they were in their prime, if they could make my idiot goddess this nervous. But from the 'tone' of that letter… it was written like we aren't even worth acknowledging."
Mia looked no happier about being here.
Truthfully, she hadn't wanted to come at all—but she still hadn't officially stepped down as Freya Familia's captain. She hadn't managed internal affairs in a long time, yet in a matter like this, the strongest available pillar couldn't simply hide.
Especially not when that fool of a goddess had begged her in person.
"Yeah," Finn said softly. "It's been a long time since I've tasted this kind of helplessness…"
That was the weight of the strongest familias.
A single letter—and it was enough to force them into full battle readiness.
Finn was about to say more when a voice slipped in, slicing neatly through their conversation.
"Punctual. I suppose your noisy little chorus isn't entirely without merit."
It was a beautiful voice—smooth, refined, almost gentle.
And yet the moment it sounded, cold sweat rose on skin across the arena, as if they'd just heard a devil whisper their names.
All heads snapped toward the source.
Not far away, a figure stood there.
No one knew when she'd arrived.
No one knew how.
But the features were impossible to mistake.
A gothic dress like something cut from the night itself. A face too perfect to belong to a living person. The air of a queen. And eyes that remained closed—forever shut, as if the world were too filthy to deserve being seen.
"Silence."
Alfia.
The prodigy of Hera Familia—once spoken of as their future, then cursed by fate itself.
Today, they were finally granted a glimpse of her in the flesh.
She gave off no overt pressure, no flashy aura.
And yet her mere existence pressed down like an invisible mountain, crushing the breath from their chests.
Everyone stared.
Only Finn—forcing his mind through the weight—began scanning the surroundings.
His long-honed clarity was dulled, but the danger sharpened him in return, igniting his instincts and pushing his thoughts into frantic motion.
But—
"Don't bother," Alfia said calmly. "There's no one else. It's only me."
Gareth Landrock stepped forward, his voice rough and hard, trying to anchor the room with blunt practicality.
"Lady Silence. I won't deny your strength, but a single Level Seven challenging this many of us… isn't that arrogance taken too far?"
In Gareth's eyes, even if Hera Familia was terrifying, it was still one person against a wall of elites. They had climbed to their own heights through blood and genius—numbers mattered at this level, and they were not children.
Alfia's lips curved, not quite into a smile.
"How foolish," she murmured. "Do you truly believe quantity can trample all things? I thought time might have refined you—yet your voices have only grown more discordant."
Her tone cooled.
"Annoying."
Then—
Her magic pressure detonated.
A vast, crushing wave roared outward, and the arena itself seemed to tremble. The air shook with a resonance born from emotion and power, and the strain on everyone doubled in an instant.
They braced as if a calamity had just descended.
"Don't misunderstand," Alfia continued, voice still smooth—almost bored. "A challenge? You think I am challenging you?"
A soft exhale—almost pity.
"How laughable. How tragic. After all these years, you still can't even grasp that basic truth…"
She paused, as though deciding not to ruin her own mood by belaboring the point.
"Enough. I'll indulge your arrogance."
She lifted her chin slightly.
"Come, then. I'll grant you the privilege of crossing blades with me. If—by some microscopic chance—you manage to play a note that interests me… or if you truly believe you can defeat me…"
Her words fell like a verdict.
"Then take this city. What would it matter?"
The air around her thrummed.
"Come, you barbaric 'heroes.' The final aria of Hera Familia awaits your answer…"
The space itself shuddered. Pressure and magic bared their fangs.
This was not a duel invitation.
It was a queen stepping onto the stage.
A trial had begun.
White Palace.
That was what people called the thirty-seventh floor.
Pale walls that made the spine prickle. A labyrinthine structure so enormous it silently announced how different it was from everything above.
With a few exceptions, the corridors and chambers were vast—most areas easily exceeded ten meters in width. The light was too dim to measure the ceiling by sight, but even so, its scale was unmistakable.
It was hard to believe such space existed underground.
Yes, the Dungeon grew wider the deeper one went—but they weren't even halfway down, and it already felt like a world.
And within this world, the most distinct, most overwhelming landmark was the colossal structure called the Great Round Wall.
As if the staircase at the floor's center—leading downward—were some final throne, the Dungeon had raised five concentric layers of massive circular fortifications around it.
No other floor used a maze like this.
Adventurers had to navigate the tangled passages between those walls, scrambling up and down uneven terrain, just to reach the center.
People said the floor could swallow the entire labyrinth city and still have room to spare.
They also said vast portions remained unmapped—true uncharted territory—and once you lost your way, you would never come out again.
And now…
Xien and his party were here.
A place that could properly be called the Deep Floors.
But their situation was grim.
Put simply—
They were at their limit.
A powerful arm wrapped in blue scales swung its weapon in a flash.
A few strands of red hair were severed. Sweat flew cold across skin.
Alise twisted aside at the last possible instant, evading a fatal blow—and before she could even breathe, the enemy's second strike came down with brute force, backed by a roaring threat-call.
A Lizardman Elite.
Just as the name promised: a superior variant of the lizardmen that haunted the Great Tree Labyrinth.
Same species, completely different creature.
Its scales had shifted from red to blue—hard as armor. Offense and defense with no gaps to exploit.
In both hands it wielded natural weapons: two chalk-white rock axes shaped like bone.
Individual strength varied, but the Guild rated its overall danger at Level 4—sometimes even Level 5.
A close-combat specialist.
In the lower floors, an occasional enhanced Level 4 could ruin your day.
Here?
Monsters like this appeared in clusters.
Their power, speed, experience—every parameter—had undergone a qualitative leap.
Even with Xien's borderline absurd recovery support, they were living on the edge, moment by moment.
Xien himself had been forced to learn new coordination under constant pressure—healing while actively supporting the frontline.
His body had to engrave new instincts.
He had to see every motion, predict every follow-up, read their intent—
Deep-floor monsters were intelligent.
Not just stronger, but smarter.
They demanded tactics with higher purity than anything above.
He had to learn when to loosen his shoulders to conserve strength, when to focus everything on the magic stone, how to bend terrain into an advantage—
And inside that extreme state, Xien was growing at a frightening speed.
So were his companions.
With Xien as their lifeline, they began to adapt—slowly—painfully—to the relentless intensity of consecutive battles.
And alongside them, unseen by most, that green-haired figure kept a fraction of her attention fixed on the boy fighting like his life depended on every breath.
Ryuu maintained her own advantage with difficulty, ready to trigger her skill and force an emergency reversal at any second.
Honestly, they'd already been close to breaking when they reached Floor 35.
Supplies were nearly gone.
Tsubaki, the smith, was doing everything she could to keep their equipment functional—but constant high-level combat chewed through durability at an accelerating rate. They were surviving on repairs held together by stubbornness.
How many fights had it been since they entered the Dungeon?
Fifty? A hundred?
No one could count anymore.
They'd reached this far on a single, shared obsession:
If we're going on an expedition, then we're seeing the Deep Floors—no matter what.
That obsession had carried them. Step by step. Shoulder to shoulder.
And the Deep Floors had welcomed them with exactly what they promised—
A menu of despair.
A roar split the darkness.
Lizardman elites, skeletal beasts—monsters of multiple types surged in pursuit.
Battle called battle. Howls called howls.
If they slowed for even a moment, the deep-floor breeds—keen of sense—would detect it and converge like starving wolves.
They couldn't stop.
They had to run.
They had to get away, or what waited for them would be the real hell.
Now their only option was to fight while retreating—bleeding distance from the enemy while refusing to collapse.
But the Dungeon didn't intend to grant them that mercy.
Before they could stabilize—
A new predator entered.
A Cunning Wolf shot across their field of view, swinging a natural stone blade toward the party's rear—aiming for the weak point with ruthless precision.
It stood only 120 to 130 centimeters tall—small, mid-sized among monsters—its body compact and cruelly efficient. Beast head, humanoid frame.
At first glance, someone might mistake it for an advanced form of a gnome-like creature.
But its head wasn't a dog's.
It was a wolf's.
And despite its small body, it carried bones and muscle far stronger than anything from the upper floors, striking with violence that didn't match its size.
Even among deep-floor monsters, the Cunning Wolf was infamous.
Because when monsters slipped to the surface and caused tragedies, this species often sat at the center of the worst stories.
Villages erased in the dead of night.
Whole communities wiped out under moonless skies.
Most of those nightmares carried the same culprit: packs of Cunning Wolves.
Another vicious brawl erupted.
By now, everyone was pushing past their limits—Xien included.
As Ryuu and the captain held the pressure line, Xien didn't dare let his healing lapse for even an instant. It was a judgment made from brutal reality:
They had already adapted to fighting under his fast recovery.
If that support suddenly stopped, it could trigger a chain reaction—a single crack spreading into total collapse.
And he wasn't just a healer anymore.
Beyond occasional magic support, he'd become a frontline protector—shielding the supporters when the rear was threatened.
His mana was nearly dry, squeezing his mind like a vise.
His stamina remained—but that didn't make it easier.
His body moved almost mechanically. His thoughts rationed every thread of output. The sense of nearing the edge wrapped around him constantly as he endured attacks like a storm.
This was what he wanted.
If he didn't wring this body dry, he wouldn't break through.
Divine Blessing was an accelerator, yes—
But it was only an accelerator.
If he truly wanted to grow, he had to survive pressure like this… to go beyond the death threat it pressed against his throat.
If there was anything to be thankful for, it was this:
Floor 37 was famous for its endless "guards."
One reason it was called a palace was precisely because of them.
Not only did the undead appear here in force—so did the so-called warrior-type monsters.
Lizardman elites. Cunning Wolves. Earth-born fighters and other weapon-using breeds—monsters that wielded natural arms, relying on raw strength or agility, all specialized for melee.
Even adventurers known for technique and tactics could easily end up drenched in blood against them.
They were, in every sense, palace sentinels.
And because Floor 37 was so vast, the total number of monsters—how many could appear—was staggering.
Their spawn intervals were short, as if the Dungeon refused to grant adventurers even a single calm breath.
The only comfort was that the floor's sheer size scattered them across the maze.
But if luck turned and you got caught by a group even once…
You became exactly what Xien's party was right now.
A hunted cluster, running on fumes.
Yet in this hell, the blade named Astraea's Familia was being hammered—again and again—into something sharper.
And while Xien and the others fought for their lives…
On the surface, at Orario's ritual grounds—
A "great battle" had just reached its conclusion.
....
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