That was right.
On the next floor, the forty-ninth, unless something went wrong, they would be facing a truly heavyweight opponent: a brand-new Floor Boss.
To be honest, no one in Loki Familia had ever seen this enemy before. The only reason they knew anything about it at all was because of the expedition records left behind by the two great Familias. At this point in time, its appearance was unknown, its abilities were unknown—everything about it remained shrouded in mystery, and that uncertainty alone placed enormous pressure on everyone.
More importantly, their captain intended to defeat it head-on during this expedition.
No one voiced any objections, because what awaited them was a historic achievement: a triple Floor Boss conquest. This was Loki Familia's chance to surpass Freya Familia and become, beyond dispute, the strongest force in Orario.
As for fear—of course it existed.
But they were adventurers. They knew how to turn fear into armor.
What mattered had never been whether fear arose in their hearts, but how they chose to face it. Would they be broken by it, die ugly deaths beneath its weight? Or would they subdue it and forge it into the strength that let them keep moving forward?
To explore the unknown, understand the unknown, conquer the unknown, and make it part of themselves—that was what it meant to be an adventurer.
Resolve did not mean recklessness. Their enemy was a terrifying existence with power at least comparable to Level 7. No amount of preparation could be called excessive.
Their stamina had mostly recovered, their equipment had been refreshed, and there were the strengthening spells from the Elven Princess as well. Their bodies felt lighter, their defenses harder.
Having learned from the last Floor Boss, they knew that any magic worth casting should be cast before the battle began.
And so—
Forward, adventurers.
They stepped into the forty-ninth floor of the Dungeon.
Unexpectedly, there were no monsters around.
No matter how far they stretched their senses, they could not detect a single creature. But that did not mean the place was safe. On the contrary, it felt deeply wrong.
The air no longer moved like wind. Instead, it hung thick and stagnant, like some filthy liquid congealed in place. Every breath carried a nauseating stench, enough to make their stomachs churn.
And then Xien felt it.
Something was wrong.
"Everyone, be careful! There's something wrong with this mist—it's poisonous!"
The instant he sensed the disturbance in the Abundance power within him, Xien warned them.
His words jolted everyone awake. Faces changed at once as they hurriedly checked their own bodies.
Sure enough, abnormalities had already appeared.
Dark violet-black veins had crept across their skin. The functions of their internal organs had begun to go awry—yet somehow they had felt none of it.
It was an extremely insidious toxin, something capable of numbing the senses and concealing its own effects.
So that's why no one noticed it right away.
This was not supposed to exist on this floor, according to the records.
No one had time to solve that mystery.
The party reacted immediately, pulling out the antidotes they had prepared in advance and drinking them without hesitation. Their symptoms eased, but only temporarily. In an environment like this, antidotes would not last long, and their supply was limited.
In other words, they had been forced into the worst kind of situation: they had to end this quickly.
And yet, even now, they had not seen their enemy.
Finn's original battle plan was already beginning to unravel.
As if responding to the weight of their anxiety, the giant crystals hanging from the ceiling no longer seemed to cast light. Instead, they shone down like pale execution stakes.
"If it comes to it," Finn said grimly, "we stick to the previous decision. We endure the pressure and force our way down to the next floor."
But reality had other plans.
Just as the group prepared to break through by force, the earth shook.
A deep, distant pulse rolled through the ground—a heartbeat like ancient war drums, vibrating their chests until they went numb.
The floor split open. Vast cracks tore wider, and from them poured forth an even denser poison mist than the one already hanging in the air.
"It's coming!"
Finn's left thumb suddenly erupted with tearing pain, worse than it had ever been before. His intuition was not merely warning him now—it was screaming.
His golden eyes contracted sharply, and his voice sliced through the suffocating atmosphere like a blade of ice.
"First formation! Brace for impact!"
The moment the order fell, the ground exploded.
A mountain tore free from beneath them.
Its body blotted out the light of the crystals above, casting the shadow of death over the battlefield.
Its scales were like black obsidian, swallowing light itself. Around it, there was no illumination—only a darkness so absolute it felt like despair made visible.
It possessed the shape of a dragon, but its limbs were wrong, as though skeletal claws had been grafted where they did not belong. In the center of its face burned a single eye like a molten abyss, sweeping over them with the cold indifference of a weapon born for war.
And in grotesque contrast to its darkness, bright crimson crystal-veins ran across its body like living channels of magical energy. Stranger still, flames wrapped its entire form, as if it wore a mantle of black fire. Whether it was energy bleeding from within or fear itself given shape, no one could tell. It obscured the creature's outline and made the monstrous war-engine seem even more incomprehensible.
Then it opened its jaws.
What came out was both a roar and a breath attack.
"So the poison fog came from this thing…"
Finn's face tightened.
At last, they knew why the floor had turned into this death zone.
But that answer was no comfort. If anything, it made things worse.
In a space this vast, the creature had changed the very environment with its breath alone.
There were no other monsters here because nothing else could survive this corruption.
The battle gave them no time to think further.
Without warning, the beast unleashed another deafening roar.
"ROOOAAARRR!"
"Gareth!"
"Leave it to me! HAAAHHH!"
The dwarf's furious bellow shook the field.
As the man who inspired the greatest sense of security in the party, he did not fail them now. Slamming his great shield, Divine Great Armor, into the ground, he activated the magic circles etched across its surface, raising a barrier of steel across the battlefield.
The next instant proved Finn's command correct. The wind pressure from Baror's mere rise and roar crashed into the shield so violently that the legendary defensive tool groaned under the strain. The purple-black poisonous breath gnawed at the magic patterns across its surface, dimming them little by little.
The situation was grim.
But at least the worst of the impact had been contained.
"Riveria, long-chant spell! Xien, with me—flank both sides! Everyone else, support with magic swords! Aim for its supports!"
The command snapped across the field, precise and immediate.
No one wasted breath responding. Their bodies moved first. That alone showed how absolute their trust in Finn was.
They were staring at a monster large enough to blot out the world, a being that radiated terror from every scale and crystal vein.
And yet they still stepped forward.
Because even when fear threatened to fill their hearts, one thing had not left them:
The courage to face it.
Their "Brave" was still here.
The battle began like a charge into death itself.
Finn became a golden meteor. His spear, sharp enough to pierce nearly anything, struck Baror's ankle in a spray of sparks. Each blow could shatter an ordinary monster's skeleton instantly, yet all it left here were faint white marks on the scales.
He bit back frustration.
This was not the result he wanted.
Magic sword blasts rained down across the creature's body as well, but the effect was hardly better. Attacks capable of wiping out an entire adventurer party were reduced to fireworks bursting harmlessly against its frame.
And Xien—
He darted to what should have been the softer underside of the monster, his blade flashing with perfect technique. His strike pierced through the scales, but went no further.
This was not flesh.
It felt like striking refined steel.
To Xien, cutting through steel would actually have been easier.
This defense had already surpassed orichalcum.
Just as expected, his speed and the damage he could inflict drew the creature's attention.
Baror released a deep growl, like the rumble of tectonic plates.
Then it lifted one claw and slammed it down.
The world turned upside down.
Everyone scattered.
The trouble for the front line was far from over.
Purple-brown flame-like matter scattered off the creature's body. The instant those droplets touched adventurers, horrific things happened. Armor and flesh alike vanished on contact, as if snow hit by boiling water. It was less like burning and more like being erased by a toxin beyond reason.
Screams rang out one after another.
Those who could not be healed immediately had no choice but to drink the special healing elixirs they carried with them, stabilizing themselves just enough to stay in the fight.
But even that was not the end.
Gareth roared, muscles bulging, and drove his shield into the ground once more. He caught the shockwave from Baror's stomp before it could tear into the rear line, though the earth beneath him caved into a massive crater.
Even so, he stood firm.
That weight—that immovable presence—was the very embodiment of reassurance.
And faced with the dwarf's unyielding resistance, the proud Elven Princess refused to be outdone.
Because she had committed to chanting at full power from the start, she now had the confidence to unleash everything.
At last, Riveria's spell reached its peak.
The staff in her hand, Great Spirit, blazed with brilliant light. The sheer density of her magic made the air seem to bow around her.
"Harbinger of the end, ruin of the azure world, crimson flames, merciless inferno—thou art the incarnation of conflagration. Sweep away ten thousand foes, summon the supreme light, and burn all things to ash—!"
Nine overlapping magic circles bloomed before her like the gears of divine judgment. The elemental light of the chamber was violently drawn into a single point, condensing into a sphere like the core of a miniature sun.
This was the second-tier transformation of High Victory Sword—
A variant that concentrated countless pillars of fire into a single point, converting a wide-area annihilation spell into a one-target extermination strike.
A white-hot divine lance of destruction.
"—Terminal Laevateinn!"
A beam of brilliant white fire tore through the space between them, racing straight for the dragon's heart.
This was the peak offensive trump card of Loki Familia.
A killing blow powerful enough to vaporize a Floor Boss.
The party, already spread out around the battlefield, looked on with fierce hope.
But then—
Baror's lone eye moved.
That lava-like pupil turned toward the incoming beam, and what filled it was not fear.
It was ridicule.
The beast opened its jaws again.
This time it was not the mist-like poison breath from before.
A red-black mass of destruction gathered at impossible speed—no magic circle, no incantation, just raw annihilation compressed into a torrent.
And in the next instant, black-red and gold-white collided in the center of the chamber.
All sound vanished.
Not because the world had gone silent, but because the collision had erased sound itself. Light consumed everything, reducing the battlefield to pure, blinding white.
The stalemate lasted only seconds.
Then, in front of everyone's disbelieving eyes, the black-red torrent began to push back Riveria's Laevateinn.
It overwhelmed it.
Swallowed it.
Crushed it completely.
"Pff—!"
The instant her magic was shattered by force, the backlash struck Riveria like a hammer. Blood burst from her mouth, and the elegant Elven Princess fell helplessly to the ground.
At the same time, one phrase flashed through her mind:
Magic Erasure.
Terror seized her, and she shouted at once:
"Move! Don't let it hit you!"
To any mage, that property was a nightmare.
The principle was simple enough: high-order energy annihilating lower-order energy, the way an iron sword destroys a wooden one in a single clash. It was a concept every mage despised.
But that was not what frightened Riveria most.
What truly horrified her was the scale.
The enemy's energy output far exceeded her own.
Which meant—
As if proving her fear correct, she saw the worst possible sight.
After breaking through her spell, the red-black torrent had not vanished.
It swept onward like a living whip of destruction, cutting across the battlefield.
"Scatter!" Finn's shout carried helpless urgency.
The situation had already become nightmarish. An enemy they could barely wound, a corrupted battlefield, and attacks that could erase anyone unlucky enough to touch them—
Despair began to spread through the party like floodwater battering a crumbling wall.
The beam swept across Gareth first.
"GRAAAAHHHH!"
Unable to evade, he poured every ounce of strength into his shield.
But what came through Divine Great Armor was no mere impact.
It was disintegration.
The legendary magic patterns on the shield instantly dimmed and shattered.
Like a man struck by a falling star, Gareth was hurled backwards together with the fragments of his broken shield, smashing into the rock wall behind him.
Whether he still lived or not, no one could tell.
....
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