"A Spirit?! That thing is a Spirit?!"
"Impossible!"
"How could there be something like that...!?"
Out in the wilderness of Floor 59, on the gray earth, Ais's words set the whole group in an uproar.
Riveria, Lefiya, and Alicia in particular went pale, unable to believe their own ears.
Spirits and Elves were different races, but both were long-lived races of the lower world, and both were born magic races, which made them the two great names of the lower world, forever talked about.
Elves were loyal, pure, beautiful, unblemished.
Spirits were holy, mysterious, sacred, noble.
The two had a great deal in common, and on top of that the heroes of ancient times had driven the monsters ravaging the surface back into the Dungeon only under the guidance of the Spirits, and the gods would convey their will directly to the Spirits and have the Spirits carry it out on their behalf, so Elves generally held Spirits in the highest respect.
In the hearts of those proud, self-important Elves, Dwarves were crude, Beast Humans were savage, Amazonesses were licentious, Humans were unbearable, Pallums were feeble, and Spirits alone were noble, existences worthy of respect.
Relations between Spirits and Elves had always been good, and many reclusive Great Spirits chose to live in seclusion where the Elf race dwelled, far from the world, which showed how little separated the two by now.
Riveria, Lefiya, and Alicia had all seen Spirits before, and more than one.
The Spirits they had seen in the past had been gentle, pure, kind existences.
And now Ais was telling them that this thing before them, so ominous, so mad, so evil, was a Spirit?
How could they believe that?
Ais did not want to believe it either, but the blood inside her had already told her: that was a Spirit.
With its enormous monster half, as though it had forgotten the shape it was supposed to have, a female body dressed in gaudy multicolored raiment, a hair-raising holiness mixed together with a repellent blend of beauty and ugliness. It made people want to flee from it, threw every one of them into a panic, and yet she was a Spirit without a doubt.
And it was not only the thing in front of them that was a Spirit. The female-form monsters they had encountered before, and the green orb embryos that caused those female-form monsters to appear, were all Spirits too, or rather, avatars of the defiled Spirit.
The defiled Spirit had made those green orb embryos and cultivated them on the nutrients provided in the Dungeon's Pantries, and once an embryo matured it could pick a monster to parasitize, fuse with that monster, gestate a female-form, and give the avatar its shape.
Then the female-form used the worm-type monsters and the Violas to gather more nutrients, more power, more magic power, strengthening the magic stones inside them by attacking individuals with outstanding magic-power reactions, and in the end all those magic stones were delivered here to the female-form for it to gnaw and absorb.
Once it had eaten enough magic stones and stored up enough magic power, the female-form could eclose in earnest and become a defiled Spirit like the abomination in front of them.
The green flesh wall covering almost the entire floor, the so-called seedbed, was cultivating precisely the tentacles that let a female-form ascend into the defiled Spirit form.
That was why the worm-type monsters and the Violas both reacted to powerful magic power, why they attacked monsters and devoured their magic stones.
As for the Creatures, they were guards the defiled Spirit had made for that purpose.
Revis, the white-haired man, even that mysterious Masked One, had all been born that way. Only Revis was purer about it, close to no side, carrying out the work of a guard alone and quietly cultivating the orb embryos, while the white-haired man had ties of every kind to Evilus, and the Masked One was together with the god Enyo, joining in as a third party. Their duty was the same, but their positions were completely different.
The female-form monsters encountered before were all cases where the final eclosion had failed, but this one had eclosed successfully and been born as a proper avatar of the defiled Spirit, and it was not something that could be spoken of in the same breath as the others.
Every kind of thought flashed through their minds, and they finally strung together everything up to now and unraveled the biggest riddle of all.
"Aria! Aria!"
The defiled Spirit went on calling to Ais as if it knew none of this, a radiant smile on her face.
"I want to see you so much! I want to see you so much!"
The call was so sweet, the cry so joyful, and yet in Ais's ears it dropped her into an ice pit.
Then...
"Become one with me!"
The defiled Spirit smiled as she said the words that froze the whole place.
"Let me eat you... will you?"
The moment she finished, the worm-type monsters and the Violas that had been offering magic stones around her wheeled about and turned as one toward the expedition party.
A roar went up almost at the same instant from the entrance leading back to Floor 58, where a green flesh wall rose and sealed the way completely.
"Prepare for battle!"
Finn reacted fast, sensing the danger and shouting at once.
"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!"
The mass of worm-type monsters and Violas let out cracked, blaring cries that rang out in every direction and charged this way in a frenzy.
The fight was about to break out, and the adventurers, still in confusion a moment before, reacted at once, drawing their weapons with the Unbreakable attribute on reflex against the swarm of yellow-green gaudy shapes bearing down on them.
"Damn things!"
"Don't even think about it!"
Bete and Tiona, the two vanguards, met them first, one drawing twin swords, the other raising her great blade, hacking at several oncoming worm-types.
The worm-type monsters reared their upper bodies up together, opened their mouths, and sprayed out huge volumes of dissolving fluid, the purple-black liquid turning into high-pressure jets that carried a thick, rank stench as they blanketed the sky and shot at the expedition party.
The party scattered like bullets, every one of them, with even Raul, Lefiya, and Alicia dodging in a scramble, breaking apart from one another to evade the incoming dissolving fluid.
"Lefiya! All of you fall back! Don't come to the front line!"
Tione called the warning out anxiously, then took up her halberd and charged the worm-type monsters.
"Finn! What should I do?!"
"We'll handle the Violas!"
Tsubaki and Finn were together, one shouting as she drew her tachi, the other giving a hurried instruction, and then they were in among the Violas that came ramming in with their tentacles lashing.
"Alicia! Bring me a bow!"
"Yes!"
Worried that the reaction to her magic power would draw those gaudy multicolored monsters, Riveria did not dare start a chant, so she called out to Alicia and took a bow and a quiver of arrows from her hands.
And so they fought, some against the worm-type monsters, some against the Violas, with only Leo supporting Ais as he leapt to the rear, away from the battlefield.
"Calm down! Ais!" Leo held Ais's trembling body and called out in a low, firm voice, "That thing isn't a Spirit anymore, it's just a fallen monster!"
Ais gritted her teeth and forced herself back to composure.
"Get yourself together. I'm going in first."
With the situation urgent, Leo had no time to keep soothing her, and after those words he drew Starlight and flew out, trailing a cold white-platinum light.
"Ooooooooooooo...!!!"
Several Violas burst up out of the ground just then and lunged at Leo with their blaring cries, coming on hard.
"Out of my way!"
With Leo's strength as it was now, these Violas were no longer worth his notice, and against their attack he did not dodge at all but closed in and met them head-on.
White-platinum sword light bloomed in midair, and the legendary-class weapon called Starlight turned into a blur in Leo's hand, dozens of strokes cutting out in an instant and severing the tentacles that came at him first with a wet ripping sound.
At the same time as he cut the tentacles away, Leo kicked a huge Viola off its feet, then used the recoil in midair to leap high, dodging two Violas coming from either side and leaving them to slam into each other.
Still in the air, Leo's sword dance bloomed again, one white-platinum flash after another cutting at the Violas with cold edges, taking their heads off, cutting their bodies through, some of them hacked into chunks of meat.
"Meteor Dance!"
The two magic treasure stones on Starlight lit up, and the veins of shattered gold lit one after another as a magic circle spread above Leo's head and loosed a wide meteor shower down on the remaining monsters.
The roars came one after another, making the air shudder faintly.
The meteors falling from the sky drove into the ground one by one, wrecking the foundation, gouging out rock strata, throwing up debris and shockwaves, tearing open even that gray earth formed from monster remains, and dust flew up to cover everything.
Under that meteor shower, the worm-type monsters and the Violas alike were nothing but fragile live targets, smashed, run through, and blown apart by the meteors coming down from above.
The powerful magic-power reaction drew countless gaudy multicolored monsters over, and they howled their cracked howls at Leo.
Even the joyfully smiling defiled Spirit turned her head slightly to look at Leo, her large eyes full of innocence, curiosity, and... greed.
That was the look given to prey.
That was the reaction that came from seeing delicious food.
"Laaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"
The defiled Spirit let out a scream bigger, louder, more piercing, and more joyful than before, one that stabbed at the eardrums.
Then... she moved.
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