—Shun's Perspective— Intermittent rumbling from above, accompanied by the sounds that came with it.
Without thinking, I looked up, lifting my face skyward.
"Don't worry. Even if the Upper Layer collapses down on us, we'll hold the line."
Maybe it was because I'd been glancing upward so often, but Fire Dragon Guen said those words to put me at ease.
"S-Sorry."
"There's no need to apologize. It's only natural for a mere human to feel afraid facing a battle on this scale."
Guen spoke gently to me as I shrank back and apologized.
I wasn't the only one worried about what was happening above.
Kathia,
It wasn't just the rumbling and the noise that I could sense.
It was the overwhelming current of power from the two beings clashing up there.
Water Dragon Yena and
In the Upper Layer—the space above our current Middle Layer.
I'd passed through the Great Ello Dungeon on my way to the Elven Village, so I knew how vast it truly was.
Flooding that enormous dungeon, or freezing every last drop of water rushing in to stop it—the sheer scale of it defied all sense of reality.
But that was the kind of battle this was.
It drove home, once again, just how utterly useless my power was in a fight like this.
My role was simply to reach the deepest depths of the lowest layer while Guen and the others protected me.
Right now, we were riding on Guen's back in dragon form, advancing through the Middle Layer.
After opening a hole from the seabed into the Upper Layer and flooding it with seawater, we'd exploited the confusion to have Lord Ronant teleport us near the Middle Layer's entrance. From there, we'd been riding Guen forward.
Yena was our decoy.
Yena's flooding of the Upper Layer was the most extravagant smokescreen imaginable.
The real objective was us.
"Will Yena be okay?"
I activated my Far-Reaching Eye to watch Yena and Sophia's battle.
The two of them exchanged blows at such ferocity that I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Their speed was so extreme that my eyes could barely keep up, and each individual attack was so massive that I couldn't tell which were feints and which were the real thing.
Even if I had the footage on slow-motion replay, I'd probably need commentary to understand their fight.
That was how high-level it was.
I couldn't even tell which one had the upper hand.
"She'll lose, though."
"Wha—?!"
She even had a small smile playing at her lips as she predicted her own companion's defeat.
There was something almost relaxed about her attitude.
Which meant—even in losing, there had to be some kind of plan. A plan to make sure Yena survived.
But.
"Well, Yena's the most level-headed of the bunch. She understands her role perfectly. I'm sure she'll buy us plenty of time before she dies."
Reise flatly dismantled my hope with those words.
I was stunned by Reise's attitude.
Their companion was going to die, and she was being this casual about it?
"Reise."
Guen called her name in a reproachful tone, apparently feeling the same way I did.
"Guen. Yena will fulfill her role and pass on. When that happens, shouldn't those of us left behind take pride in her and see her off with a smile, saying 'well done'?"
"……"
Guen fell silent at Reise's words.
And I felt a pang of shame for having thought Reise cold.
I had it backwards.
This woman gave off a certain air of amusement, a devil-may-care quality—but behind it lay an unwavering resolve.
"Then the best tribute we can offer Yena is for us to fulfill our own roles as well."
Otherwise, those words wouldn't come so easily.
"You're right. That's exactly how it is."
I'd only met the Ancient Dragons a few days ago.
Even in that brief time together, it was clear that every last one of them had steeled themselves with a fierce determination for this battle.
It was nothing like me.
That was precisely why they were so dependable.
"Nngh. It's hot. It's awful. I wanna go home."
Correction.
There was one exception—
Actually, Nia was the one keeping the heat of the Middle Layer in check.
With magma threatening to overflow down here, just being in the Middle Layer drained our stamina.
Kathia, who had lost nearly all her Skills in order to obtain Purity, was especially affected.
She could die just from being here.
Nia was the one easing that burden. Because the Ice Dragon Nia was releasing cold air to neutralize the Middle Layer's heat, we'd been spared from taking damage.
I was grateful—though Nia looked even more miserable from the heat than the rest of us, and I couldn't help wondering if she was going to be all right.
"Nia. Shape up. We're about to reach the target point."
Guen said with an exasperated look, his gaze fixed ahead.
The target point. There, we planned to open a hole leading to the Lower Layer.
Rather than plowing straight through the Middle Layer, we would create a shortcut at a spot where the passageways of the Middle Layer and Lower Layer were vertically aligned.
There were vertical shafts that connected the Upper Layer all the way down to the Lower Layer, but according to the Pope's assessment, there was a nine-in-ten chance they'd be trapped.
The remaining Queen was probably lying in wait there.
So why not just bypass it entirely?
I'd always vaguely assumed that I couldn't break through the walls of the Great Dungeon.
A fixed idea from gaming, huh.
But once I threw that assumption out, methods like this became possible.
Of course, this only worked because the Ancient Dragons possessed more than enough power to blast open a hole.
"All right. This is the spot."
"Indeed. It appears the battle on the surface has also reached a lull. I shall go fetch them."
With that, Lord Ronant vanished via teleportation.
If he said that, it must have meant the battle above—Wind Dragon Hyuba and Thunder Dragon Goka versus the Queen—had concluded with a victory.
With teleportation at his disposal, Lord Ronant could bring the two of them here to rejoin us right away.
Teleportation really was a bit unfair, wasn't it?
"Then, let's dig the hole while we wait for them to—"
"You're not getting away!"
In that instant, I had no idea what had happened.
All I knew was that scorching flames erupted in every direction, forcing me to shut my eyes. When I opened them again, I'd been thrown from Guen's back and slammed into the ground of the Middle Layer.
"Guh!"
Groaning, I forced myself upright and looked around to assess the situation.
That was when I saw the man standing face-to-face with Guen.
"Kyoya!"
It was Kyoya.