In reaction to Udaeus's taunt, Ais did not respond with words.
The wind around her erupted into a violent gale, her golden hair whipping around her face like a halo of light.
Then, she lunged...an emerald streak against the grim, black bones of the king…..and the battle for the 37th floor began in earnest.
Her first movement was a blur.
Rather than rushing the towering skeleton head-on, she cut a trajectory designed to carry her around its massive frame.
Ariel, her unique wind magic, did more than merely boost her speed; it also manipulated air currents, granting her the impossible ability to shift her momentum mid-stride, and much more.
She ricocheted off a crumbling wall to the monster's left, her form multiplying into a series of fleeting afterimages in the dim light of the throne room.
Her target was absolute: the throbbing magic stone nestled within the cage of its ribs.
She knew the golden rule of the dungeon….a monster's core was its lifeblood, guarded by its most impenetrable defenses.
This rule did not exclude the Monster Rex.
However, Udaeus was not the slow-witted behemoth its skeletal appearance suggested.
The blood-red sparks in its eye sockets flared, tracking her impossible path with precision. Before she could complete her opening strike, a forearm as thick as a carriage swung with terrifying velocity.
It wasn't a precision blow, but a wide, sweeping arc intended to clear the space entirely.
The air shrieked as the bone limb tore through the space Ais had occupied a heartbeat before, pulverizing the stone wall into a choking cloud of dust and gravel.
Ais twisted mid-air, Ariel flaring brighter to allow her to angle her body in an unnatural arc, narrowly evading the blunt force.
She landed lightly on the fragmented floor, the impact barely registering before she pushed off again.
This time, she aimed low, scything beneath the sweeping arm to rush the creature's waist, which seemed fused directly into the dungeon floor.
She intended to use the monster's own foundation as a springboard.
"GROOOOOOOOHHHHH!"
Udaeus roared, a sound so deep it rattled the very foundations of the level.
A faint, sickening glow pulsed from its magic stone, and from the deep fissures surrounding its base, the ground erupted with smaller, obsidian-black skeletons: Spartoi.
They didn't appear in pairs or trios, but in droves.
A dozen, then twenty, their numbers swelling with every passing second as they clawed their way from the abyss.
They were smaller and swifter than their master, immediately forming a living wall of bone, their hollow eye sockets locked onto Ais.
"An army of Spartoi?" Draco muttered, a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he swiped aside a shard of falling debris with his tail.
"That was fast."
Riveria tightened the grip on her staff, her gaze darting between the swordswoman and the rising tide of monsters.
"It always does this when it feels threatened," she noted, her voice grim.
"And it can regenerate. This will be difficult for Ais."
Ais, however, did not panic.
The Spartoi were obstacles, but she refused to squander her stamina on a war of attrition.
She wove through the first wave, her sword, Desperate, a sliver of silver light.
A horizontal slash cleaved a Spartoi in half, but instead of following through, she used the creature's own momentum to vault over its comrade, landing on its shield and kicking off to propel herself toward the ribcage at breakneck speed.
Ariel sang around her, a constant, vibration-fed hum that fueled her assault.
Udaeus, sensing her proximity, slammed a colossal, five-fingered claw down…..not just at her, but at the cluster of Spartoi beneath it as well.
The floor groaned, a resonant rumble sending tremors through the chamber.
But Ais was already gone, a shadow flitting past the crushing blow, her feet catching the cascading dust as if it were solid ground.
The impact of the fist pulverized several Spartoi into shards of black bone, which, to no one's surprise, drifted and coalesced around Udaeus, seamlessly grafting themselves to repair any cracks.
"It's using them to regenerate!" Draco observed, his eyes narrowing.
"She has to be fast, or its defenses will never break."
Ais had realized the same.
The regenerative potential of the Rex meant she could not afford piecemeal strikes; she needed a sustained, focused assault on the core.
The throne room was rapidly degrading into a chaotic slaughterhouse.
Udaeus, committed to denying Ais any footing, began to actively demolish the structural integrity of the chamber.
Its fists slammed into walls and supports, turning the architecture into cascades of rubble.
The walls themselves tore open as its massive frame scraped against the stone, releasing a torrent of masonry and dust.
With every strike, the rhythmic pounding intensified, vibrating through Draco's marrow.
Above them, the ceiling cracked, spider-web fissures spreading across the stone.
"Is it trying to collapse the floor?" Draco muttered.
"No," Riveria replied, her eyes fixed on the battle.
"It wants to bury her. It's trying to ensure she has nowhere left to perform those ridiculous acrobatics."
Ais sensed the space closing in.
The rain of debris, the narrowing corridors, the deepening quakes…..it all played into Udaeus's trap.
But trapped in the chaos, she found an opening.
As a massive block of stone dislodged from the ceiling and plummeted toward her, she didn't dodge.
Instead, she infused Ariel into her feet, transforming her sprint into a leap that bordered on flight.
She met the falling block with a powerful upward kick, shattering it into smaller projectiles. Planting her foot on one of the larger fragments, she used it as an unstable platform to launch herself over Udaeus's shoulder.
Before the monster could react, she was behind its head, using its own massive, ossified cranium as a pivot.
Desperate descended in a fury of strikes, targeting the back of the skull.
The blows were shallow, sparking like flint against the obsidian-like bone, but they served their purpose.
Udaeus roared in irritation, its head snapping back violently to dislodge the girl who would not be silenced.
That was the opening.
As its head tilted, a brief, fleeting gap appeared between its massive cervical vertebrae and the upper curve of its ribcage.
It was a miniscule window, barely wide enough for a her to slip through, let alone deliver a decisive blow.
But Ais didn't need to slip through.
She needed to strike through.
Infusing Desperate with Ariel, the silver blade shimmered with an emerald glow so intense it cast a stark green light on Ais's determined face.
"Lil Rafaga!" she whispered, her voice lost in the roar of the monster and the rending of stone.
It wasn't a full‑power charge; she was testing the durability of the area where she would land the final blow.
Attacking from below the ribcage wasn't feasible solo.
This was due to the constantly spawning Spartoi.
Despite their smaller size and low durability, these were still level‑4 monsters; they had weapons, were agile, and were even stronger than elite lizardmen.
From above, however, was much easier…..and even better...due to its anatomy, Udaeus was limited in its ways to counter from above.
She created a momentary vacuum around her blade, sharpening its edge and increasing its velocity exponentially.
Ais pushed off Udaeus's skull, propelling herself downward and forward.
The blade, now a concentrated beam of green light, found its mark in that brief, vulnerable gap. It wasn't a clean penetration, but a deep gouge, piercing through dense bone with a sickening crack.
Udaeus shrieked, a sound of rage that was even more terrifying than its birth‑howl.
The red sparks in its eyes flickered violently.
It spun, its massive body shaking the entire floor, sending a wave of Spartoi scattering like dust. Its free arm swept horizontally, not to block but to crush…..an instinctual attack aimed at anything near.
Ais, anticipating the counter, had already pulled her blade back, losing a splinter of her focus in the process.
The sweeping arm caught her, not with a direct hit but with the force of the air displaced by its movement, sending her flying across the chamber, tumbling through the accumulating debris like a ragdoll.
She slammed into a partially destroyed rock, the impact momentarily knocking the wind from her lungs.
A sharp pain lanced through her side, but she ignored it, pushing herself back to her feet, her eyes still locked on the Monster Rex.
The gash on Udaeus's neck bone, while not immediately fatal, was a significant wound.
Black mist, thick and sickly, began to seep from the wound, and the magical stone within its chest pulsed erratically, its light dimming for a fraction of a second before flaring back to an angry, blood‑red hue.
It was wounded, enraged, and even more dangerous.
The summoned Spartoi, sensing their master's distress, surged forward in a hysterical wave, a black tide of skeletal warriors.
Udaeus itself began to slam its fists into the floor with a terrifying rhythm…..not just for destruction now, but in a primitive attempt to create a barrier with the very earth, pulverizing stone into a defensive wall of dust and debris, all while protecting its heart.
The entire throne room groaned.
Massive cracks spider‑webbed across the remaining ceiling, and dust poured down like a gray waterfall.
Ais knew she was running out of time, and out of room.
The floor was threatening to give way beneath them, potentially leading to a catastrophic collapse into the 38th level.
She had to end it now.
She drew a deep breath, focusing Ariel not just around her but into her.
Her eyes burned with a golden light, and her aura intensified, turning from emerald to a blinding, concentrated green.
She was ready to go all in.
Ignoring the Spartoi swarming around her, she launched herself upward, a vertical leap powered by her magic.
She aimed for the highest point of Udaeus's exposed ribcage, a seemingly impossible target given its height.
As she rose, the Spartoi jumped, clawed, and swiped at her, but they were too slow, too numerous, and too disorganized to land a decisive hit.
She used a Spartoi's upraised arm as a fleeting stepping stone, then another's skull, bouncing higher and higher with each successive contact, gaining incredible vertical velocity.
Udaeus snarled; its colossal skull dipped, its free arm sweeping upwards in an attempt to swat her from the air, but Ais was too fast.
She was a missile guided by the wind.
She reached the apex of her ascendency, momentarily hovering above the monster's left shoulder, the pulsating magic stone now directly below her, visible through the bone lattice.
The lattice itself was thick, having regenerated from the Spartoi pieces, but it was still just bone.
Her power, however, was about to exceed that.
With a final, guttural shout, Ais plunged downward, her entire body a spear, Desperate held point‑first.
Ariel roared to life, surrounding her blade in a drill‑like vortex.
This was a direct, terrifying manifestation of her strongest attack…..Lil Rafaga at its absolute peak…..infused with every ounce of mind she could muster.
The point of Desperate struck the intersection of two massive ribs, directly above the magic stone.
The bone, thick as a tree trunk, screamed in protest.
For a split second it held, a defiant black against the green surge.
Then, with a sound like a thunderclap ripping through solid stone, the bone shattered.
The blade plunged through, unimpeded by the weakened and fractured defenses, straight into the glistening, pulsating heart of the monster.
The obsidian‑black magic stone pulsed once, a desperate, fading light, then cracked, scattering its essence within the monster's cavity.
Udaeus froze.
The red sparks in its eye sockets faded, replaced by dull, empty blackness.
The rhythmic pounding of its fists ceased.
The throngs of Spartoi, mid‑charge, mid‑leap, froze in place, temporarily incapacitated due to the loss of their commander.
A low, groaning sigh echoed through the throne room, not from a dungeon celebrating a birth, but from a life being snuffed out.
The colossal skeleton, no longer held together, began to disintegrate.
First, the bone lattice protecting the magic stone fractured and peeled away.
Then, the immense ribcage cracked, collapsing inward.
The massive skull, once so menacing, tilted, then detached, tumbling onto the ground.
Slowly, majestically, the entire upper half of Udaeus lost its cohesion, dissolving into a mountain of black bone dust and rubble that rained down.
Ais landed lightly amidst the settling dust, Desperate still in her hand, Ariel dissipating around her in gentle wisps.
She was breathing heavily, a fine sheen of sweat on her brow, her golden hair clinging to her face.
A small cut marred her cheek, and her right arm trembled slightly from the immense effort, but her eyes held a quiet satisfaction.
With a final, resonant thud, still echoing in the now eerily silent throne room, the massive, glistening magic stone of Udaeus...dark as a moonless night but now utterly devoid of its inner light...detached from the crumbling remains and fell to the floor, rolling to a stop just a few feet from Ais's boots.