Chapter 80: Charging Toward the 58th Floor!
The spider silk was burned apart by the intense heat around her, and Lefiya barely managed to adjust her posture in midair.
Then, she saw it.
The place she was falling into was an endless abyss.
All around her were broken walls and ruins destroyed by bombardment.
Around the 56th Floor, wyverns circled in midair, searching for prey.
At the bottom of the abyss, several red dragons known as Valgangs were raising their heads to look at her.
Smoke leaked from the gaps between their fangs.
Lefiya had once dreamed of falling from high in the sky.
But reality was far more absurd than any dream.
Flames burned inside the dragons' mouths.
Their crimson maws aimed straight at Lefiya.
Boom—!
The fully charged red dragons fired their bombardment at her.
It was over.
Unable to dodge in midair, Lefiya's mind went completely blank.
Looking at the approaching fireball, she instinctively closed her eyes.
A fierce pressure from the wind rushed toward her.
Even from so far away, her skin could feel the burning heat of the fireball.
"Lefiya!"
At that moment, the shout from above pulled her stretched-out sense of time back to normal.
Immediately after, a silver light flashed past her side and crashed straight into the fireball.
The fireball was split in two by the silver object and exploded violently in midair.
The blast wave from the explosion also slowed Lefiya's fall slightly.
Torajirou Shiro, who had jumped down from the hole, seized that chance.
He dismissed his Device and pulled Lefiya into his arms with one hand.
"Shiro...-san?"
"Hold on tight!"
He spoke to Lefiya.
Since there was no way to return now, they might as well kill their way straight down.
"You three handle the wyverns farther away from us!"
Shiro shouted at someone, though Lefiya soon understood who he meant.
Shiro had not rushed down alone.
Above their heads, three figures were running along the wall toward them.
Lefiya, held in Shiro's arms, saw them clearly.
They were Tiona, Tione, and Bete.
"Don't drag me down, idiot!"
Bete cursed while kicking a wyvern that tried to approach him to death.
"Aaaaaaahhh!!!"
Tiona, on the other hand, roared and rammed straight into a fireball.
"Watch out!"
Lefiya suddenly shouted when she saw that scene.
With a thunderous boom, Tiona collided with the fireball in front of her.
"Hot, hot, hot!"
When the smoke cleared, her figure reappeared before Lefiya's eyes.
From the outside, she did not seem injured. Only the magic veil Riveria had placed on her body had grown a little thinner.
Ignoring the chaos caused by his companions behind him, Shiro narrowed his eyes and looked downward.
Below them were not only the seven red dragons that had sniped at them earlier.
There was also a swarm of wyverns, as well as one Wyvern King that was clearly an enhanced species.
The 52nd to 58th Floors were called the Dragon's Vase by adventurers.
The name came from the wyverns that appeared starting from the 56th Floor, as well as the red dragons on the 58th Floor that could snipe all the way up to the 52nd.
The red dragons' fireballs destroyed the floors.
An even larger number of monsters jumped down from the edges of the walls, beginning an aerial battle with the falling adventurers.
Holding Lefiya, Shiro summoned his sword and stabbed it into the wyvern beneath his feet.
Taking advantage of the wyvern's pain as it flew around wildly, Shiro grabbed one of its legs and swung toward the monsters farther below.
"Lefiya! Can you use magic right now?"
"Barely, in this situation."
"Then aim at the monster swarm below!"
To prevent the wounded wyvern and the red dragons below from attacking them from both sides, Shiro quickly gave orders while moving through the air.
Ever since the last incident, Lefiya had been asking Filvis for guidance on concurrent chanting inside the Dungeon.
Now, that technique was finally useful.
"Unleashed arrow of light, bow of the sacred tree. I am the master archer."
The wyverns noticed the chant from their side and fired flames like flying stones.
Shiro kicked off the wall and instantly carried Lefiya out of the attack's path, landing on top of another wyvern.
The wyvern Shiro had captured shook its head wildly, trying to throw both of them off.
"Snipe them! Fairy Archer!"
Tiona took out several blade fragments in midair and threw them at the wyverns circling above Shiro.
They had no way to fly, so this was the only way they could kill any stray wyverns they missed.
Looking at the wyvern corpses constantly falling from above, Shiro kicked his captured wyvern downward.
Using that momentum, he and Lefiya also reached the center of the cave.
"Now!"
"Pierce them, unerring arrow!"
The chant was complete.
Magic power turned into an enormous arrow of light and fired straight downward.
"Roooaaaarrr!"
Sensing danger, the wyvern swarm roared and flapped their wings, trying to escape the approaching arrow of light.
But—
"Turn!"
As Lefiya gave the command, the huge arrow of light curved through the air at an impossible angle, chasing the fleeing wyverns.
Boom—!
Before they could even scream, a large section of the wyvern swarm was turned into magic stones by Lefiya's spell.
Only the enhanced species survived, dragging its badly wounded body as it gathered another attack.
"Rooooaar!!!"
If the attacks fired by ordinary wyverns were magic bullets, then this Wyvern King's attack was a magic cannon.
This shot nearly covered the entire cavern.
It intended to wipe out every intruder that had entered its territory.
Looking at the only wyvern that had survived Lefiya's magic and the magic cannon it released, Shiro's gaze sharpened.
The blade in his hand began to gather power.
In the next instant, a streak of silver light shot forward like a meteor and collided with the magic cannon.
Together with the Wyvern King, it was split in half.
...
"Ais! Don't go!"
When Shiro and the other three jumped into the hole, Ais also tried to follow.
Finn stopped her.
"We'll follow the proper route and meet them on the 58th Floor. If anyone else falls into the hole along the way, we'll need you, the fastest one here, to save them."
Ais stood at the edge of the hole and looked bitterly in the direction Shiro had fallen.
She, who could blow away the worms' corrosive liquid, had to stay with the team to maintain their advance speed.
Fortunately, Finn had no intention of abandoning Lefiya and the others either.
"Gareth, I'll leave them to you. We should reach them in about a day. Can you hold out until then?"
"Aye!"
Gareth answered Finn with action.
He equipped his original axe in his right hand, then carried another unbreakable axe on his back before jumping toward the bottom of the hole.
"It's all my fault..."
After Gareth left, Raul blamed himself deeply.
If he had been more careful, this would not have happened.
The spider-type monster was not even that fast.
Even Lefiya, who was only Level 3, had reacted to it, yet Raul had been frightened out of focus by the earlier bombardment.
It could be said that this accident was entirely his responsibility.
"We'll punish you later. But right now, we need to hurry and meet up with them."
Riveria used those words to calm Raul's restless emotions.
At the same time, Ais moved to the front as the vanguard and charged toward the deeper floors.
…
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