On the other side of the battlefield, facing the heavy, sweeping slap of the Goliath, the flames beneath Aiden's feet abruptly exploded.
Boom!
Using the immense explosive impact, he launched himself into the sky like a cannonball, narrowly dodging the giant palm by a hair's breadth.
The shockwave from the explosion also caused the massive Goliath to stumble, nearly losing its footing.
Aiden shot straight toward the ceiling. Reaching the apex, he adjusted his posture with a beautiful flip, planting his feet firmly against the uneven rock ceiling.
Boom—!
The second explosion was dull and powerful, not sharp like the previous one, but rather like the heartbeat of the Abyss echoing through the empty 17th Floor tunnel.
At the ceiling of the cavern, Aiden's body defied all physical laws, pausing for a fraction of a second at the apex of his fall.
This momentary stillness, like a fully drawn bowstring, was to accumulate an even more furious, all-tearing downward momentum.
His legs kicked off the hard rock ceiling violently, blasting a shallow crater beneath his feet. Crushed stone mixed with embers of flame scattered in all directions.
In his inverted field of vision, the Goliath below, massive as a mountain, was captured in perfect detail—its rough, rocky skin, its twisted face of rage.
Then, the world rapidly enlarged in his eyes.
He transformed into an inverted shooting star, trailing a long, crimson tail of flame, plummeting straight toward the giant's head like a spear of divine punishment.
The wind screamed wildly in his ears. Even the air itself was distorted and scorched by the extreme heat, hissing in agony.
In this moment, he wasn't using any delicate sword techniques. Instead, he transformed himself into the purest, most primal destructive force.
Astrea's emerald pupils contracted sharply.
That flaming figure descending from the heavens without hesitation perfectly overlapped with the red-haired girl in her deepest memories—the girl who, just as recklessly, burned herself to illuminate the path of justice—across time and space.
The same heedless abandon, the same dazzling brilliance, like a moth drawn to a destined flame.
She subconsciously reached out her hand, her fingertips trembling slightly, as if wanting to grasp that fleeting phantom.
However, all she touched was the cold, solid sensation of the wall of light radiating from Jeanne's barrier.
Through the intense pain and fury in its arm, the Goliath finally sensed the lethal threat approaching from above.
It was a terror transcending rage, originating from the most primal instincts of life.
It roared, raising its intact left hand, attempting to swat away this audacious "fly" like a mosquito.
However, Aiden's falling speed was simply too fast. So fast that its sluggish neural reflexes didn't have time to fully transmit the brain's command to its arm.
All it could do was despairingly raise its massive head. In its crimson eyes, the light symbolizing destruction drew closer and brighter.
At the center of that light, Aiden's gaze was as calm as ten-thousand-year-old ice.
On the tip of the Fire Spirit Sword in his hand, all the flames were compressed and condensed with unprecedented intensity, ultimately forming a point of light more blinding than the sun.
There was no earth-shattering boom as expected, only a pfft sound so soft it was almost eerie.
Like a red-hot branding iron silently piercing into a solid block of butter.
The blade of the Fire Spirit Sword sank cleanly and without resistance through the Goliath's massive eye socket and into its head, right up to the hilt.
Time seemed to stretch infinitely in this moment.
Aiden released his grip on the hilt. Flipping lightly in the air, he actually used the longsword buried deep within the giant's head as a pivot, landing his feet firmly onto the giant's broad, rock-like shoulder.
He didn't even turn his head to look at the wound he had inflicted.
A second of dead silence.
Then, the destructive power violently erupted from within.
BOOM!!!
Centered on the Goliath's head, the raging inferno spewed in all directions like an erupting volcano.
It could no longer be called an explosion, but a miniature firestorm that swept across the ceiling of the entire tunnel.
Half of the giant's head was instantly blown to pieces.
Dark, unknown fluids mixed with charred brain tissue and shattered bone fragments cascaded down like a waterfall, only to be instantly vaporized in mid-air by the extreme heat, turning into an overwhelmingly nauseating, foul-smelling fog.
"Uuuu—ROAR—!!"
The Goliath let out a wordless, agonizing wail.
There was no longer any majesty or fury in its voice; only the purest, most desperate cry of a dying beast.
Its massive body trembled and convulsed violently. Completely blinded, it began thrashing its remaining left arm wildly, randomly smashing against the surrounding walls and floor. Every impact caused the cavern to quake and shudder.
"The Captain is so strong..." Cassandra covered her mouth. Her green eyes, usually brimming with anxiety, were now filled with unbelievable radiance.
"Ai-dear is getting stronger and stronger..." Hyacine was also a bit dazed. The little Pegasus she had summoned, Ica, nestled in her arms, seemed to sense its master's emotions and happily flapped its pink little wings.
"Beautiful."
Tifa muttered a quiet compliment while flawlessly executing her own battle.
Before her words even fell, her body slid to the side like flowing water, dodging a massive wooden club swung by a Hilichurl with perfect timing.
Following the motion, a sharp knife-hand strike precisely hit the opponent's exposed neck. With a crisp crack, the Hilichurl collapsed limply.
Simultaneously, her left leg whipped out like a taut steel cable, sending a Hellhound attempting a sneak attack from the other side flying backward, crashing hard against the distant wall and bursting into a cloud of black smoke.
Every one of her movements was filled with rhythm. It felt less like she was fighting and more like she was performing a lethal dance. Every cell in her body pulsed for the most efficient slaughter.
"Don't get distracted."
Daphne called out coldly, reminding her companions who were slightly dazed by Aiden's heaven-shaking strike.
The rapier in her hand flourished into a dazzling, deadly sword blossom in the air. Three streaks of cold light, almost impossible to catch with the naked eye, flashed by.
The three Minotaurs in front of her, who had just been letting out threatening low growls, froze simultaneously. In the next second, a fine line of blood sprayed identically from their thick throats, and they collapsed with a crash.
Her combat style was completely different from Tifa's, filled with aristocratic precision and efficiency.
Every thrust aimed for the most fatal weak point, absolutely never wasting a single ounce of excess energy. She was as calm as a precision killing machine.
In the center of the battlefield, the Goliath, missing half of its head, didn't fall as everyone expected.
After launching a frenzy of self-mutilating attacks and slamming its body against the walls to force Aiden off its shoulder, its massive body actually began to regenerate at a visible rate.
At the wound where its head was blown open, countless tendrils of flesh squirmed and wove together madly, recovering with a grayish-brown, rocky skin.
Soon, the messy, shoulder-length black hair grew back, and two crimson eyes, the size of normal human heads, slowly opened amidst the new flesh. Carrying a cruelty and hatred even more intense than before, they locked onto Aiden, who was slowly landing in mid-air.
This was the true terror of a Floor Boss—endurance and regenerative abilities that defied common sense.
Aiden frowned slightly. He knew that while that strike just now had immense power, he had intentionally controlled the range and depth of the explosion to avoid damaging the Magic Stone.
Now it seemed that against a monster of this caliber, killing it while preserving the Magic Stone was bound to be an arduous war of attrition.
Our Familia is still too poor...
He sighed helplessly in his heart.
The value of an intact Magic Stone from a Level 4 Floor Boss was enough to lift the entire Focalors Familia out of their current financial straits.
It was a temptation he couldn't refuse.
"ROAR!!!"
The fully recovered Goliath let out an even more furious roar. This time, it learned its lesson.
Instead of swinging its fists blindly, it slammed both arms violently onto the ground.
The floor of the entire 17th Floor quaked violently. Spiderweb-like fissures spread outward with its fists at the epicenter.
Immediately after, countless sharp stone spikes violently erupted from the ground. Like a wildly growing bamboo forest, they instantly covered a radius of dozens of meters around Aiden, sealing off all his evasion routes.
"Gospel!"
Unpanicked, Aiden half-closed his hands, aiming his palms directly beneath his feet.
----
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