This had been the final stop of their last expedition.
They had not even managed to go inside. Just reaching the entrance, they had been forced back by the overwhelming number of monsters and the terrifying strength of each one. They had not even caught sight of this floor's true ruler—the new floor boss, Udaeus.
This time, however, with their overall strength and manpower far superior to before, Xien finally had the chance to see what lay within.
The name White Palace came from its chalk-white walls, as well as the sheer scale of the labyrinth itself.
This floor was on a completely different level from everything they had seen so far. The corridors, the chambers, even the walls—everything was broad and enormous.
There were some exceptions, such as the smaller rooms meant for resting, but nearly every path and every cavernous chamber was at least ten meters across.
The entire circular floor was built like a fortress, made up of five concentric walls. The stairs to the next floor lay at the very center.
To reach that central area, adventurers had to pass through the open routes between those ring-shaped walls, climbing up and down a series of uneven elevations along the way.
The domain was vast enough to rival a great city. Although the Guild had, after countless years of exploration, mapped out the best route, anyone who got lost here might never escape.
Even the space overhead was so high that not even high-level adventurers could see the ceiling. Darkness filled the upper reaches, making the place feel especially dim.
Only the phosphorescent glow spaced along the milky-white walls illuminated the adventurers' faces. Honestly, in a place this immense, it was difficult to believe they were still underground.
As expected, no sooner had they arrived than they were attacked by a horde of more than twenty monsters.
Finn swept his spear to force open a path. Xien followed close behind, cutting down the creatures around them. Candlelight, after its transformation, had undeniably undergone a qualitative leap. Combined with Xien's technique, the monsters' bodies were split open with alarming ease, making his movements even smoother than before.
Even so, no one dared relax. The moment they cleared one wave, they advanced at once.
Or rather, they were advancing at full speed while being forced to kill the monster packs swarming at them along the way.
Floor Thirty-Seven was simply too vast. Its monster population was among the densest even compared to floors beyond the fortieth, and their spawn interval was extremely short.
The only blessing was that the monsters were spread fairly evenly across the floor. So long as they did not have the misfortune of stumbling into a sudden concentrated swarm, the floor was not unmanageable for a force like theirs.
Facing the flood of monsters rushing at them from the front through the enormous corridors, Xien, Finn, and Riveria stood protectively around several supporters as they fought.
"Guhhh!"
Xien slipped aside from the natural weapon of a hulking Barbarian, the blunt clubs mounted on both its arms smashing into the ground. With a backhand slash, he turned it to dust, then intentionally moved closer to Riveria's side.
No, his thoughts were not straying.
The reason was simple: this floor was packed with warrior-type monsters.
There were Barbarians, boasting physiques comparable to Minotaurs; Elite Lizardmen, stronger versions of the lizardmen that first appeared on the nineteenth floor; and Obsidian Soldiers, whose bodies were made of black obsidian...
The White Palace was crawling with these medium-class and above humanoid monsters.
For a mage, this floor was a nightmare. Enemies could close the distance before a chant was finished, and monsters like the Obsidian Soldiers had bodies that weakened magic itself, like charms made of warding gemstones.
Riveria was not a pure mage, but overall she was still a fragile backliner. Better safe than sorry.
Finn and Gareth were already looking after the main formation, and Xien was also healing and supporting as needed. There was no problem there.
Within the dark chamber, the two of them did not do anything in particular. For a while, silence hung between them.
As they continued deeper, the cries of monsters grew distant. Not a single living thing seemed to approach the broad cavern. That unnatural stillness, like the pause before a storm, settled over the group.
The air brushing against their armor and battle clothes was freezing. The high-ceilinged, phosphorescence-starved thirty-seventh floor was steeped in a chill that made one shiver.
The Dungeon's breath itself seemed to exhale cold along the back of their necks.
Everyone's expressions became increasingly grim.
This atmosphere—this oppressive calm before disaster—was something they had all experienced before, in one way or another. The danger sense they had honed over years of hardship made cold sweat trickle down their backs, yet their bodies still moved instinctively into the most suitable positions, preventing any obvious loss of composure.
At last they reached a place where towering walls loomed on both sides, stretching beyond sight, while ahead lay a massive opening.
Finn raised a hand, signaling the group to halt.
At once, the silence became absolute.
A faint tremor—just the slightest one—vibrated through the soles of their boots.
"It's here."
"What?"
Finn's brow tightened. His expression turned grave as he fixed his gaze on the center of the chamber.
Gareth had only just begun to ask when he noticed it too.
The ground was shaking.
And the tremors were growing stronger.
"Don't tell me…"
Riveria murmured.
The words had barely left her lips when the floor ahead of them began to bulge.
Then—
Crack.
With a shriek of tortured stone, countless fissures spread across the ground.
The earth exploded open as though ripped apart, the fractures racing outward without end, and a colossal black mass burst free, rising toward the unreachable darkness above.
The rocks and sand lodged on its enormous body cascaded down like a landslide, and the violent upheaval shook the entire cavern.
It spread a deafening thunder throughout the chamber, until at last its full form emerged.
Now, directly before Xien and the others, that pitch-black monster gazed up toward the darkness of the endless ceiling.
"ROOOOOOOOAAAAR!!"
The creature cried out like some beast from the pits, a supermassive monster whose size far surpassed even Goliath, the first floor boss.
The pressure radiating from it was at least twice as oppressive as Goliath's.
This was the new floor boss.
The sovereign of Floor Thirty-Seven.
Udaeus.
Its overall form resembled a gigantic version of a skeletal earthborn. Its entire body was jet black, its bones glossy and ominous, as though light itself would be swallowed by them.
Its lower body remained buried beneath the ground, and from the pelvis upward alone it stood over ten meters tall. Its curved spine rippled strangely, each vertebra seeming to move of its own accord.
Two demonic horns jutted from its skull, and within the vast hollows of its eye sockets burned two flickering crimson ghost-lights.
At the center of its chest sat an absurdly large magic stone, exposed to the air and protected only by the thick breastbone and ribs around it.
There were no organs within that body. Only that brilliant blue-violet crystal pulsed there like a heart.
Before anyone had time to recover, the black-boned giant moved.
Faced with intruders who had stepped into its domain, it unleashed its purest murderous intent.
Udaeus roared and fixed its crimson flames on the golden-haired prum before it, drawing back its exposed black left arm—a grotesquely twisted limb like a gigantic blunt weapon—as it gathered force.
There was almost no time to react.
The arm cut down through the air in a crushing vertical strike aimed at the tiny figures before it.
"All units, battle stations—Gareth!"
"RAAAAHHHHH!!"
Finn's command was critical. As comrades of many years, Gareth understood the meaning from nothing more than the situation and Finn's tone.
With several massive strides, shield in hand, the dwarf rushed to the very front and raised it overhead, lowering his body as much as possible to disperse the impact.
Yes.
He intended to stop that blow.
Why not dodge?
Because they were a team, and this was a corridor.
They had no room to evade.
As this emergency unfolded, Xien reacted without hesitation, hurling a burst of Abundance power onto Gareth's body. A translucent emerald barrier sprang up around the dwarf, doing everything it could to reduce the damage.
A heartbeat later, the floor boss's murderous strike came down on Gareth.
The earth shook and the mountain trembled.
No phrase described it more accurately.
The violent air pressure from the collision made everyone else struggle to keep their eyes open.
The ground beneath Gareth's feet sank by half a meter, and the cracks from the force radiated for more than ten meters around him. The hard stone floor shattered, gravel spraying everywhere.
And this was the result after Gareth had already done everything he could to diffuse the blow.
If that strike had landed directly on the ground, the surrounding terrain might simply have ceased to exist.
And yet—
He stopped it.
His shield was on the verge of breaking apart, but with Xien's support arriving at just the right moment, Gareth had endured.
"Now! Riveria, start chanting! Everyone else, attack!"
"OOOOHHHH!!"
The successful defense sent the group's morale soaring, and with the enemy stuck in the recovery of that blow, Finn had no intention of wasting such a perfect opening.
He immediately ordered the charge.
Magic swords fired first, their power exploding against the floor boss's body.
Xien moved as well, but as he passed Gareth, he gave the dwarf a quick touch, sending another pulse of healing into him.
Gareth felt strength and vitality surge back into his battered body. His injuries began to mend. There was no time to throw Xien a grateful glance. With a roar, he thrust forward again, trying to pin the monster in place with sheer force and the bulk of his shield, buying time for everyone else to press the attack.
At first glance, everything seemed to be developing in their favor.
But it did not last.
Before the party could close into proper melee range, the ground erupted without warning.
Countless black bone-spikes shot upward, instantly shattering the momentum of their charge.
Among them, however, two figures alone broke through the field of spikes—
Xien and Finn.
With the heavy rhythm of his breathing rising, Xien accelerated. He drove his left foot down hard enough to crack the floor and blast splintered bone into the air, launching himself forward in a burst of speed.
Flames wrapped around him, and everything in his path was cleaved as though by a beam of light, the cut edges glowing red with heat.
Lowering his body, he slipped forward—not only clearing the way for the allies ahead of him, but also diving into Udaeus's reach before its other arm could swat him away.
At a range so close he was nearly inside the monster's guard, Xien invaded its blind spot with a speed that seemed to erase him.
The floor boss's burning eyes lost track of the streak of red.
But there was no time to search for him.
Because directly in front of its face, a prum with a spear had already arrived.
At the exact same moment, Finn's attack served both as a strike and as a distraction, creating cover for Xien's real assault.
The floor boss had no choice but to bring up its arm to protect its skull from the potentially lethal blow.
With a sweep, it knocked Finn away.
And that was the chance Xien had been waiting for.
The empty ribcage was right before him.
Using the arm as a foothold, he kicked off and leapt upward.
He raised his sword toward the unguarded left side of the monster's chest.
"Sun Breathing—Solar Halo Thrust!"
"Grrrraaaah?!"
But at the last possible instant—
The strike aimed at the huge magic stone within the ribcage was blocked.
A rib shifted.
The floor boss had, in a split-second, located the danger, reacted, and moved one of its thick black ribs into place, intercepting the fiery thrust meant to shatter its core.
From the ribs themselves, a forest of spikes burst forth. With no foothold in the air, Xien had no choice but to retreat.
—What a pity.
His gaze flicked over the gouge cut into the black rib as he fell back.
Before he could land, more spikes lunged up from the ground toward him. Thanks to the dynamic vision of the Sharingan, he spotted a side angle he could use, kicked off it, and flipped away.
At the same time, Finn, whose strike had failed, passed by Udaeus's left side and landed behind it, immediately pivoting.
He drove his spear toward the floor boss's exposed spine—
And in the next moment, black pillars erupted from the ground beneath his feet.
"!"
He twisted only his upper body and barely avoided the sharp spike that shot up toward his jaw.
The black column brushed past his ear, scattering his golden hair, and then five more spears burst from the ground. Finn darted sideways in rapid succession.
The forest of spikes, like a field of lances or blades thrusting upward from the earth, pursued the adventurers relentlessly from below.
This.
This was the true problem.
The reason even a full-scale assault team could not easily take down the rotation-impaired floor boss, Udaeus, lay right here.
It could endlessly summon bone-spikes from the ground, preventing anyone from closing with it—like the cursed treasure of a tyrant ruling his domain.
Leap carelessly into its reach, and the very floor would skewer you alive.
This sea of blades was the floor boss's weapon, both attack and defense in one.
....
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