Floor 58, southern end.
A dark, gaping hole stood silently in the wall here.
When the expedition party arrived, a swarm of worm-type monsters was still burrowing into the hole.
"Deal with them."
Finn gave the order without much hesitation, and everyone rushed in at once and wiped out the pack of worm-type monsters.
Now that they had weapons with the Unbreakable attribute and no longer had to worry about their gear being corroded, these monsters that had once caused them so much trouble had been reduced to roadside nuisances. As long as they were careful not to get drenched by the dissolving fluid from a dying one's self-detonation, they could slaughter them freely, instead of having to flee in a panic like before.
With the worm-type monsters dealt with, everyone came to the mouth of the hole and looked into the darkness inside.
"So this is... the entrance to Floor 59."
Someone murmured it, and a tension quietly rose among them.
Floor 59. This was a floor Loki Familia had not yet conquered, and one that no exploration-type Familia in Orario had ever reached.
If they walked into this hole, they would become the only Familia in present-day Orario to successfully reach Floor 59, surpassing Freya Familia, the other strongest faction, and standing at the very front of all the powers.
It would be an honor, and it would be a new challenge.
Win the challenge, and Loki Familia's name would ring out across the city, all of Orario cheering for the great feat they had accomplished.
Lose it, and the result might be total annihilation.
At the thought, even Tsubaki, who did not belong to Loki Familia, could no longer keep up her carefree manner.
"What exactly... is waiting for us up ahead?"
Tsubaki licked her lips and laughed dryly.
Riveria, for her part, spoke quite calmly.
"According to the records left behind by Zeus Familia, Floor 59 has terrain unlike anything before it. A glacial region."
Zeus Familia, one of the two thousand-year factions that had once stood at the summit of Orario.
The god Zeus and the goddess Hera, two great deities of Greek myth, had come to Orario a thousand years ago when the gods first descended to the lower world, and there they had established their own Familias.
After a thousand years of building, Zeus Familia and Hera Familia had become the two strongest Familias in the world, two mountains in Orario that no one could dispute, crushing down countless brilliant figures and leaving innumerable adventurers full of ambition and dreams unable to raise their heads.
At its peak, Zeus Familia had two Lv.8s.
At its peak, Hera Familia had one Lv.9.
As for Lv.7, which present-day Orario and indeed the whole lower world regarded as the ultimate weapon and the highest Level, in the Zeus Familia and Hera Familia of that era it was nothing particularly rare.
Two Familias like that. If they had not been defeated fifteen years ago at the hands of the One-Eyed Black Dragon, at the hands of the last of the three great monster kings that had ravaged the surface for countless years, then Loki Familia and Freya Familia would never have had their day.
So when those two Familias were defeated fifteen years ago and nearly their entire main fighting strength was lost, Loki Familia and Freya Familia joined hands and drove their remnants straight out of Orario.
There was no helping it. They had been crushed down too badly for too long.
That was why Finn said this city had once held two mountains no one could climb over, filled almost entirely with monsters who did not spare a glance for those chasing them from behind, every one of them terrifyingly strong.
Back then, any adventurer staying in Orario had to train their techniques for fighting other people to the highest possible polish, or they might be trampled to death by some harassment those people took up on a whim.
For the adventurers of present-day Orario, everything past Floor 59 was unexplored territory, an "unknown" place.
But the Zeus Familia and Hera Familia of the past had certainly reached this floor.
The records those two Familias left behind were now sealed in the Guild's archives.
So at Finn's request, the Guild disclosed that portion of the information to Loki Familia.
"According to the records, Floor 59 is covered in glacial lakes with ice flowing through them. Hard enough to advance through, and on top of that there's a terrible cold that can freeze a first-class adventurer's hands and feet solid." Gareth said in a low voice, "The extreme cold will make our bodies sluggish, while the monsters down there will be in their element."
An adventurer's body would freeze up and stop moving while the monsters would be unaffected. You didn't have to think long about that kind of terrain to know how much trouble it would be.
To deal with that trouble, Loki Familia had prepared a large quantity of fire-spirit cloths, which provided continuous warmth so the cold would not affect them too much.
But...
"...Why don't I feel any cold air?"
Finn's low murmur startled quite a few of them.
A terrible cold that could freeze a first-class adventurer's hands and feet was supposed to be everywhere on the floor below. That being the case, standing right at the entrance to that floor, they should be feeling at least a trace of cold air, shouldn't they?
"What's going on here?"
"Don't tell me something's gone weird again."
Tiona and Tione looked at each other, both of them frowning as they spoke.
Bete, unusually, wasn't grumbling either. He glared into the dark hole as if trying to see through something.
As for Ais, she remembered what a certain someone had said on Floor 24.
"Aria, go to Floor 59. The answer you want to know is there."
Remembering what Revis had said, Ais quietly tightened her grip on her sword.
Of everyone present, only Leo looked calm. Too calm, even.
"Leo, do you have any thoughts?"
Finn noticed it and put the question to him.
Everyone turned to look at Leo at once.
Bathed in their gazes, Leo's expression stayed calm, but what he said left no one else calm at all.
"Since those Creatures brought up Floor 59 themselves, wouldn't it be stranger if nothing down there had changed at all?" Leo pointed at the iridescent magic stones on the ground and said, "At the very least we can be certain there were no worms here before this. Now the worms are heading down to Floor 59 in droves. Even if the place has gone from a glacier to a nest of insects by now, I wouldn't be surprised."
At that, everyone fell silent together.
"Creatures?"
Tsubaki, though, looked thoroughly confused, with no idea what Leo was talking about.
"...Are we still going in?"
Alicia said it quietly, and Finn narrowed his eyes.
"Let's go." Finn said it without expression. "We've come this far. If we turn around and go home now, we won't have the face to return to Orario."
No matter what kind of tiger's den lay ahead, they had to go in.
For no other reason than this: conquering every floor of the Dungeon was an adventurer's mission.
"Move out."
At the Pallum leader's command, everyone readied their weapons, formed up, and stepped into the hole before them.
Walking down the passage shrouded in darkness, their sight was stripped away, so Raul, Lefiya, and Alicia hurried to light their portable magic-stone lamps for illumination.
The passage sloped downward the whole way, and the farther down they went, the more stifling and hot the air became.
The damp air that appeared nowhere in the intelligence made them feel all over again that the territory they were about to enter was a mysterious region that had undergone unknown changes, and every single person there felt their heartbeat quicken slightly.
After walking like that for who knew how long, light finally appeared at the bottom of the dark passage.
Carrying an indescribable tension, the group walked into the light, out of the passage, and into unreached territory: Floor 59.
Their field of view opened up, and they all stopped in their tracks.
A second later, the scenery that broke into their sight left every one of them without words.
There was no terrible cold there, no trace of any glacier, only a spread of plants and trees growing thick enough to make the skin crawl.
"...A dense forest?"
Lefiya said it in astonishment, naming the landscape in front of them.
What lay before all of them was a chamber even larger than Floor 58 directly above it, growing green trees and vines, with tall woods packed thickly into the space in front of the passage, and the ground nothing but verdant grassland and gaudy, eye-searing flowers.
In this enclosed space, along the walls of the floor, in the far distance on all four sides, walls of green rose as well.
Hung on those green walls were countless flower buds of every size, just as gaudy and eye-searing in color, unpleasant to look at.
"What in the world is this?"
Tiona said it in astonishment too.
Only Ais, looking at those green walls and the countless flower buds hanging on them, went wide-eyed as if struck in the head by an invisible attack.
"This is the Floor 24...!?"
Yes.
In the Pantry on Floor 24, there had been these same green walls and flower buds.
That terrain transformed by the parasitism of the monsters called Giant Flowers: the seedbed.
And now it had appeared on Floor 59 as well.
"Leo..."
Ais took hold of Leo's hand beside her.
"Don't tense up." Leo gripped her hand back, looking at her, and said in a low voice, "Haven't we already prepared ourselves for this?"
That this place was connected to those Creatures and those gaudy, multicolored monsters was something Leo and Ais had known before this. Now they had simply witnessed it with their own eyes.
"Is this the thing your report mentioned, the one that appeared in the Pantry on Floor 24?"
Riveria had clearly heard Leo and Ais talking, and she turned her head to look at the two of them.
"That's right." Leo nodded. "Those Creatures said it was a seedbed used to cultivate Violas."
Tione rubbed her kukri together, sneering.
"Which means there's a very good chance we run into those Creatures here."
Some of them frowned, some went on guard, some turned cold, some looked puzzled, each reacting in their own way.
Leo, though, knew that those Creatures were not here.
But what did exist here was far more terrifying than the so-called Creatures...
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