The ice evaporated into churning steam, rubble crackling and splitting black in the heat. The air warped with the temperature, giving off a hair-raising sizzle...
Blasts of heat swept over them, snatching at the hems of everyone's Demeter cloaks and setting them flapping.
Gazing at the enormous room, now transformed into a full-blown sea of fire, Leon pushed back his hood, let the heat wash over his cheeks, spread his arms in comfort, and closed his eyes, undisguised contentment surfacing on his face.
"After freezing in that blizzard for hours on end, Margaret's fire is giving me the blissful feeling of being tucked under a thick quilt in the dead of winter with the AC on."
Before he'd even finished, he was rewarded with a synchronized round of eye rolls from Persephone and the others.
"Jeanne, what's the situation?"
A thread of pale gold light flickered through Jeanne's eyes as Revelation turned in silence. A moment later, she gave Rose and Persephone a small nod.
"It's over."
"It's... over?"
Laurier, Kureha, Margaret, Irisviel, and Aura, all of them frazzled and visibly worn after the brutal fight, gathered around. At Jeanne's confirmation, everyone went still for a beat, and then excitement and elation they couldn't suppress leapt up in their eyes like flames:
"W-we actually did it...?!"
"We... we defeated Goliath!!!"
"Hahaha! Lady Laurier fought as the main force and accomplished an impossible Great Feat!"
"Lv.2... taking down a Monster Rex above her level..."
"Heh heh... heh heh heh..."
Watching Laurier giggle dopily off in her own little world, the ghost of a smile crossed Aura's tired face. She seemed quite satisfied with her own performance in this subjugation battle.
Beside them, Margaret and Irisviel exchanged a glance, then threw their arms around each other and started bouncing:
"We won! We really won!"
"Yeah, who would've thought... we got to take part in a Monster Rex subjugation while still at Lv.1, and... we actually pulled it off!"
Iri's eyes sparkled as if studded with stars:
"And we... even snagged the final blow!"
Compared to those four, Kureha kept a bit calmer. But only a bit. She wasn't hopping around like Laurier and the others, but the smile on her face was just as impossible to suppress. And with the vague sense that the Excelia within her had surged sharply yet again, even the care of her beloved sword, normally first in her heart, was set aside for the moment.
"Whew... now that was satisfying."
The battlelust she had pent up for so long had been let loose completely in this fight. Kureha felt her head clear and her whole body loosen with ease, her entire bearing growing noticeably more relaxed.
Leon and the others caught the buoyant mood as well, gentle smiles appearing on their faces.
"Facing a Monster Rex, in a fight under that much pressure, and you still brought the bulk of everything you built in training fully to bear..."
"Everyone, beautifully done!"
Laurier puffed up like a peacock fanning its tail, lifting her small chin, her voice dripping with smug pride:
"Hmph hmph! Naturally! I mean, who do you think we are?"
"Hahaha!"
For a time, this fiery purgatory rang with laughter and cheering.
That lasted until Margaret's flame magic, which filled the entire room, gradually guttered out, starved of Magic and fuel. There, amid the scorched ruins at the center, it revealed the colossal, staggeringly huge Magic Stone the Monster Rex had left behind.
Only then did the cheering slowly soften, settling into a hushed chorus of awe.
"Whoa... th-that's way too big, isn't it?"
Seeing a Magic Stone of this size with their own eyes for the first time, Margaret and Irisviel tilted their heads back, mouths falling open in unison, scalps prickling, utterly dumbstruck!
"How... how are we supposed to get this out of here?"
"Not even a Wonder Pack could hold that thing!"
While those two worried about logistics, Laurier had her chin pinched in her fingers, putting on the thoughtful pose of a detective:
"Hmm... this Magic Stone alone has to be worth five million Valis, doesn't it?"
"Tsk tsk, and on top of that it respawns like clockwork every half month. No wonder that Rivira crowd treats Goliath as private property... this is basically that 'ATM' Leon talked about, plain and simple."
Leon walked a few laps around the Magic Stone, marveling with clicks of his tongue as he sized it up:
"Good god, is there something special about this Goliath? That Magic Stone has to be three, four meters tall."
Rose stowed her shield and one-handed sword and nodded.
"It's several notches bigger than any we've ever seen... though of course, it still can't compare with the Magic Stone the Amphisbaena dropped."
She looked at Leon. "What do we do with it?"
Leon didn't answer right away. Instead he turned his head, gaze settling on that 'buddy' still frozen inside his ice sculpture, wearing a more than slightly comical expression: Bors.
Then everyone watched that familiar, faintly teasing smile curl slowly across his face.
"That guy... is definitely hatching some scheme again."
Laurier pressed in close to Iri's and Margaret's ears and dropped her voice, as if sharing some momentous discovery:
"According to the 'law' I've distilled from years of observation: every time he makes that smile, somebody is guaranteed to be in for some serious misfortune..."
Iri and Margaret traded a glance, then turned their eyes to Leon in unison.
He just spread his hands, his tone as light as if they were debating what to have for dinner:
"Heh heh, since our buddy Bors volunteered so eagerly, it'd be rude of us to refuse his kind offer. This Magic Stone here... we'll just leave it in his 'safekeeping' for now. Once we're back from the Expedition, we'll swing by and 'collect' it on our way to the surface. And I'm sure Bors, my boy, wouldn't dream of minding such a tiny favor. Am I right, everyone?"
Everyone: "..."
Mind? That baldy would absolutely mind!
But they were all Leon's people here, so naturally nobody spared a thought for Bors's feelings.
Yep, even a kindhearted Holy Maiden like Miss Jeanne gave silent approval to Leon's way of doing things...
Couldn't be helped. Bors was the one who'd made the first mistake, after all.
...
The Dungeon, Middle Floors, Floor 18: the Under Resort.
A crisp crack of splitting ice rang out, and crystal-clear chunks came clattering down across the grass in a shower.
One second, Bors had been charging aggressively at the Monster Rex's chamber; the next, his consciousness had sunk into total darkness.
Face blank, he squinted, and once his eyes adjusted to the light thrown by the crystals in the ceiling, his vision swam slowly from blur into focus...
Which meant he got a clear look at what lay before him!
The very first thing to greet him: an oversized Magic Stone towering in front of him, glinting with a dark luster!
"Huh? This is... Goliath's Magic Stone?"
"Hahahaha! It's mine!"
Bors dashed to the Magic Stone in a few bounds and reached out to stroke "his property," only for a slender arm to clap down on his shoulder out of nowhere.
"Bors~~ my boy, what exactly do you want to do with my gold coin?"
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