After firing a blue-purple Deep Banish on the 36th floor.
The sheer power of it caused something absurd to happen.
A hole had been blasted through part of the 36th floor, and the 37th floor was visible.
I could see it. Even I went pale.
Shiro looked at me with half-lidded eyes and said:
"You overdid it."
"Oh my God… oh no you…"
"S-sorry."
I didn't realize it had this much power… Hm? Someone's approaching.
"Oh… this is terrible…"
"Who is it? A girl?"
"A girl?"
It was a girl in a plain brown robe, her messy dark-brown hair hanging over her eyes.
The robe was tattered, and she wore it like someone who'd been forced to put on clothes.
She had tanned skin, was short, and looked about my age or a little younger.
She was clearly not a delver. There was no reason for a delver to be somewhere like this inside a dungeon.
That was why Shiro and Doha were confused. But she didn't look like a monster either.
But I instantly saw through the true identity of this girl who'd appeared out of nowhere.
"You're the will of the Earth Dungeon…"
"Hey, you. Wof. Quit pulling stuff like this."
"S-sorry…"
"This much I can fix right away, but punching holes in a dungeon is off-limits."
"The will of the Earth Dungeon?"
"Yeah. Land girl?"
"Anyway, you three. What are such strong people doing in a place like this?"
"Well, actually—"
I gave a concise rundown of everything that had happened.
The will of the Earth Dungeon was exasperated.
"Do you humans have a death wish or something? Even we don't make stuff like magic potions. They amplify a Relic's power and effects, sure, but they drain your life. The dependency is brutal too—keep taking them and you'll die."
"That's why they're banned. Shiro can't forgive it either."
Shiro looked furious enough that you'd think something had happened to her because of magic potions.
"Well, I do appreciate you lot. Those jerks who illegally seized one of our dungeons—you really put them in their place."
"We haven't dealt with the ringleaders yet, though."
"So… does that mean I can leave that to you too?"
"Yes, okay, land girl! Leave it all to us!"
The moment Doha blurted that out, the will of the Earth Dungeon backed away from her a little.
"R-really? Then I'm counting on you."
"Oh, wait one second."
"What is it?"
"Um, why are you in human form this time?"
"Because with the mineral lizard, I might have been mistaken for one and attacked."
"I see. Also, um, do you know that the Dungeon Wills of other dungeons have become delvers and formed parties?"
"Whoa, really!?"
"That's news to Shiro too."
Fair enough.
The Dungeon Will of the Earth dungeon answered.
"I know, more or less. What about it?"
"Do you also know that their party name is 'Five Sisters'?"
"That, we don't know about. Why Five... there's one short, isn't there?"
"Probably. I think they're waiting for the Dungeon Will of the Earth dungeon."
That must be it.
"...Huh. I'll keep that in mind. Oh wait. Five... Sisters? Sisters?"
Ah, so that's where she'd get hung up.
But I think it's better not to touch on that too much.
"I think it'd be bad if you looked into that."
"...Yeah. I don't want to step on that landmine either."
It seemed like she understood.
I understand — Hydrangea's Dungeon Will doesn't want to make her angry.
The Dungeon Will of the Earth dungeon filled in the hole I'd made and left.
"Wof, what do you mean by the Dungeon Will?"
"Even I was pretty surprised by that one."
"That's..."
I told them about the incarnation boom and the Five Sisters.
"Whoa..."
"I really don't know what to say about that."
Shiro must have had complicated feelings about it.
A death dungeon.
Its ruler, the King of Light Death, was pretty much the Dungeon Will himself.
But still. I need to reflect on this.
You shouldn't go overboard with anything.
I shouldn't use Deep Banish unless things are truly desperate.
That's the rule I set for myself.
Anyway, we took the warp circle to the forty-sixth floor.
It was a rare forest-area floor. So there were places like this too.
But I couldn't afford to relax. The moment we entered the forest, a thick fog had rolled in.
Fog... that's suspicious.
To be cautious, I activated the Relic Danger Discernment, and six red dots appeared on the display.
I told the two of them there were hostiles, and we took out the red dots one by one.
It went really smoothly, and the moment we defeated the last one, the fog lifted in an instant.
Shiro looked at the man I'd taken down and murmured.
"He looks familiar. This is Nebula."
"The one that witch let slip away."
So this gray-haired, gloomy-looking guy was him.
I was the one who took him down, but with just a knife, it was almost too easy.
If anything it was anticlimactic, but oh well.
"Let's get going to the next one."
"Um, next is..."
"That's obvious. We're crushing the Golden Horn clan on the fifty-sixth floor."
Shiro stated it matter-of-factly, and there was something almost lively about her.
We'd already gotten the location of the Golden Horn clan's hideout from the survivors.
They were living on borrowed time at this point.
And I mustn't forget.
Our real objective is the Soup of Life on the sixty-third floor.
I almost forgot about that.
Would we be able to head back by tomorrow?
Nebula had been from the Royal Capital.
An orphan living in the Royal Capital's slums, he later became a hired hand.
The fate of a hired hand from the slums was a miserable one.
But Nebula had possessed two Relics: Fog and Wind.
Having two Relics—that meant a great deal.
Even as a hired hand, he held the advantage.
But he was still a hired hand.
The resentment and jealousy were fierce.
At first, it was self-defense. But gradually it shifted to offense.
And so he used his Relics to eliminate those who posed a threat to him.
He came of age and became a delver.
But Nebula had little interest in dungeon exploration.
What he sought was money. Power through money.
In the slums, he had tasted the power of money to his heart's content.
He formed the clan "Nebulaborn" and fell under Kuun Hunt's umbrella for the sake of profit.
Since honest work didn't pay, he naturally turned to criminal enterprises.
Even back in the Royal Capital's slums, he had never placed much value on human lives.
There was always something he thought about.
"I'm always standing alone in the fog…"
And within this fog, he could do anything. He could even escape from the witch.
The Relic [Fog] was invincible.
But that was nothing more than an illusion.
The red dot Wof pulled out from within the fog using the Relic [Danger Discernment].
The dense fog was now meaningless—all the red dots had been defeated by Wof and the others.
That included Nebra, too.
Death came swiftly for him, and the moment his life faded, the fog cleared as if it had all been a lie.
Wof and the others didn't spare the corpse a second thought, leaving it where it lay as they headed for the next floor.
The body would eventually be absorbed by the dungeon, and the equipment would be sent off to the Junkyard in Hydrangea.
That was simply the way of dungeons.
And Nebra's soul would return to the sea of souls.
After drifting for a time, it would be reincarnated once more.
For now, it could only drift across the endless expanse of that sea.
The waves would wash it in, then pull it back. Draw it close, then carry it away.
Across tens of billions, hundreds of billions.