Flap! Flap! Flap!
Draco's leathery wings caught the hot, subterranean updraft with authority as he hauled his battered frame upward.
The ascent was dizzying.
In the mere blink of an eye, he had vaulted past the 51st floor and breached the 47th.
Dodging and weaving through the narrow, glowing cascade of a falling magma-fall, Draco marveled at the scale of the wreckage.
He and Alfia had done this.
Well, he had done most of the structural damage, seeing as it was his redirected attack that had bored this colossal, smoldering chimney.
Still, that realization did nothing to diminish Alfia's terrifying might.
Technically, it was her magic that had decimated the 49th through 52nd floors, turning the subterranean strata into a chaotic furnace.
And the fight had ended in a draw.
A draw....
Draco couldn't, in good conscience, claim a definitive victory when the outcome remained frustratingly ambiguous.
He was unquestionably on the verge of collapsing from internal trauma, blood loss, and hunger.
And Alfia…..well, she was probably in a similar state.
Or perhaps worse.
He honestly couldn't tell, having completely lost her in the blinding flash of the final explosion.
Yet, a persistent, prickly instinct warned him that the silent menace was still alive, lurking somewhere.
"We will have to settle this someday," Draco muttered, his voice a low, raspy rumble that vibrated in his chest.
He glanced down one last time toward the churning lake of magma far below, before tipping his head upward and driving his wings harder.
"For now, I just want to go home and rest."
He pushed higher, crossing the threshold into the 42nd floor, and froze.
The hole just kept going.
'Just how far does this thing go?' Draco marveled, a cold sweat breaking out despite the oppressive heat.
Even in his reckless arrogance, he hadn't expected the collateral damage of his ultimate attack to pierce quite this deeply.
The situation was rapidly teetering past the boundary of dangerous and entering the realm of the absurd.
The higher the chimney extended toward the surface, the greater the probability that his redirected beam had intersected with some unfortunate, wandering party of adventurers.
If it had hit them, their deaths would have been instantaneous, painless, and their bodies vaporizing.
Yet, that grim mercy offered no comfort to Draco's churning stomach.
They would have been innocent bystanders, swallowed by a conflict that didn't belong to them.
Subconsciously, with every single floor he conquered in his grueling climb, Draco cast out a wide, sweeping pulse of magic, scanning for the faint signatures of life.
To his relief, only the hostile, chaotic pulses of wandering monsters echoed back.
Though the localized destruction was staggering, the path carved by his magic had been astonishingly straight and narrow.
The odds of an adventurer being trapped in that exact line of fire were mercifully low…..though not entirely zero.
Furthermore, the deep and lower floors of the Dungeon were gargantuan, spanning miles of subterranean terrain.
In reality, his catastrophic beam had barely inflicted seven percent structural damage from the 47th floor onwards it had pierced; it was just a very deep, very clean hole.
Ascending further through the vertical scar, Draco broke into the 39th floor.
Also known as the Under Bridge...one of the safe zones of the Dungeon.
True to form, his rogue spell had neatly carved its way right through the sanctuary, pressing onward.
At this point, Draco wasn't even surprised.
The absurdity had wrapped around to become entirely mundane.
Sensing no life signatures in the immediate vicinity, Draco shifted his priorities from reconnaissance to survival.
He needed supplies.
Specifically, clothing.
Being entirely naked in the smoldering drafts of the lower floors was deeply uncomfortable, not to mention, it was deeply undignified every time his bruised genitals flopped against his thighs, with a heavy, swinging momentum.
Scouring the vicinity of the safe zone, he found slim pickings.
There were no discarded potions or elixirs, no dropped weapons of any value, and certainly no armor sized for his anatomy.
However, fortune favored him just enough: he unearthed a heavily worn out, ash-stained grey cloak and a dusty, half-full flagon of dwarf-grade fire-brandy.
It would have to suffice.
Using his claws, Draco shredded the grey cloak into manageable strips, fashioning makeshift loincloth-style pants and rough-hewn bandages for his torn flesh.
But before wrapping them around his bleeding wounds, he raised a hand, conjuring a delicate balance of miniature water and fire magic.
Tossing the fabric into a swirling, superheated ball, he boiled the textiles thoroughly.
This was cloth he intended to press directly against his groin and open lacerations; basic hygiene was non-negotiable.
Being dragon-kin granted him a terrifyingly robust immune system capable of shrugging off most venoms and plagues, but resistant was never synonymous with immune.
There was no profit risking a gangrene in the middle of a dungeon.
Once the boiling cycle finished, Draco pulled the steaming fabric out and dried it with wind magic.
He slipped into the makeshift pants, letting out a breath of relief as the friction ceased.
Then, uncorking the flagon of dwarf-brandy, he poured a generous amount over the improvised bandages, his teeth gritting hard as the high-proof alcohol soaked into the cloth.
With a reluctant expression, he wrapped the stinging fabric tightly around his torso and thighs.
He had multiple hairline fractures along his ribs, collarbone and torso, but internal skeletal damage was beyond his ability to fix down here.
That would have to wait until he reached the surface and subjected himself to a healer's magic or drank an elixir.
Taking a long, deep swig from the remaining fire-brandy, Draco savored the searing, volcanic trail of ethanol as it burned down his throat.
The alcohol wouldn't intoxicate him...his hyperactive metabolism would burn through it in seconds.... but it played a brilliant psychological trick.
For a few precious moments, the fiery burn in his gut created a sensory illusion that dulled the roaring agony of his injuries.
More importantly, it successfully curbed the vicious, hollow hunger pangs.
Thankfully, the continuous updraft of searing heat from the magma falling from above kept the local monster ecology disrupted.
No creeping beasts dared crawl up or down the vertical chimney.
For now, he occupied a temporary, sterile vacuum, granting him a desperately needed window to catch his breath.
He let his eyes slip shut, leaning his aching head back against the warm stone of the wall.
He needed this rest.
Every fiber of his being screamed for cessation.
And as he sat in the gloom, the harsh reality of his situation washed over him.
The mission had been a catastrophic failure.
He had lost everything.
His specialized exploration gear, his reserve rations, the rare drop items he had painstakingly harvested, and, worst of all, the primary mission objective.
Reviewing the sequence of compounding, amateurish mistakes that led him here, Draco let out a low, self-deprecating scoff, raising the flagon to his lips to drain the last dregs of the brandy.
If only he had possessed the basic common sense to retreat the moment he failed to locate the elusive jewel fetus down on the 45th floor.
Instead, fueled by stubborn pride, he had gone all the way down to the 49th, only to stumble straight into a female body type.
And rather than cutting his losses, killing the target swiftly, and executing an immediate extraction, he had lingered.
He had played with his food.
He had tested the waters too long, allowing his meeting with Alfia.
Draco shook his head slowly in the darkness, the movement sending a fresh spike of pain through his tail.
He had fought stupidly.
And even worse, when he had achieved a moment of tactical clarity mid-combat, he had defaulted to fighting even more stupidly.
He possessed an expansive, versatile arsenal of magic, martial skills, and elemental affinities. Yet, paradoxically, because he had too many options at his fingertips, he had never truly mastered any of them to absolute perfection.
He was a jack-of-all-trades wrapped in a terrifying physical shell.
If he had achieved true mastery over just a single element…...wind, for instance...would the clash with Alfia have been remarkably easier?
Unquestionably.
If he had fully committed to the wind attribute, defeating Alfia without sustaining such severe injuries was entirely within the realm of possibility.
While Alfia's infamous magic-negation skill rendered incoming spell projectiles entirely inert, the kinetic utility of wind magic remained completely untouchable by her parlor tricks.
By utilizing his wind-dragon spirit transformation, he could have blitzed her with insurmountable speed and momentum.
Alfia's magic cancellation could nullify spells, but it could not rewrite certain laws; she couldn't magically negate kinetic force, blunt trauma, or the sheer velocity of a supersonic charge.
It was a glaringly obvious, viable strategy that he had completely blinded himself to out of intimidation.
Instead, the moment she shrugged off his initial magical barrage, and he took a direct hit from her spell, panic had subconsciously set in.
He had allowed fear of her legendary moniker to dictate the pace.
Terrified of her offensive output, he had retreated into a defensive shell, playing the role of a terrified turtle relying on heavy earth magic, rapidly burning through his mind reserve in a wasteful war of attrition.
There hadn't even been any necessity to turn the duel into a grand magical artillery exchange. Pure, physical overwhelming force...claw, scale, and muscle.... might have cracked her defenses wide open.
'Could it be…' Draco thought with a heavy, humiliating sinking of his heart, 'that I actually suck at real fighting?'
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but introspection demanded honesty.
'Perhaps it's because I was gifted too much, too soon' he reasoned, staring down at his scarred, calloused hands.
'I got strong too fast. My actual combat experience hasn't caught up. Adding to the fact, I keep trying to master everything quickly, with my life span, I have all the time and yet...' Draco let the thought trail.
Recalling all the things that were at stake in such a short time, Draco couldn't help but shake his head.
Tiamat, that name alone was enough to warrant his desire for quick progress.
'Sparring with monsters and practicing empty-form katas.... it's simply not enough to overcome my flaws in tactical psychology' Draco concluded.
Closing his eyes once more, he forced his mind to re-run the choreography of the battle from start to finish.
He stripped away the ego, the anger, and the pain, dissecting every exchange like a scholar reviewing a failed thesis.
He searched for the missed pivots, the paths not taken that would have preserved his body and guaranteed victory.
And in the silence of the Dungeon, as the pain began to dull into a steady, throbbing baseline, a strange realization settled over him.
Though he had lost his gear, his mission, and his dignity, he had walked away with something somewhat valuable.
He had acquired another, life-or-death experience.
The kind of crucible that could only be forged in the fires of a match against a monster like himself.
And beneath his torn, boiled rags, deep within himself, a dense reservoir of excelia pulsed, thrumming with violent energy, pushing him relentlessly toward the precipice of breakthrough.
The birth of a new level eight adventurer was quietly, painfully at hand.
..............................
Roughly at the exact same moment Draco sat meditating in the gloom of the 39th floor, the majority Orario's populace had finally subsided from its frantic uproar.
The seismic rumbling that had occurred sometime prior, though subtle enough to easily be mistaken for a passing tremor by an ordinary citizen...had instantly snapped the eyes of every adventurer and deity wide open.
Naturally, it would.
Orario was literally constructed as a massive, circular basin directly capping the mouth of the Dungeon.
Any shift deep below was a cause for concern.
Within minutes of the incident, the main thoroughfares had erupted into a chaotic pandemonium. Citizens flooded the streets, pointing nervously toward Babel tower piercing the center of the skyline, whispering rumors of a new threat.
However, Orario's premier forces hadn't panicked.
Before the chaos could fully metastasize into a riot, members of the Ganesha familia and the Bahamut familia mobilized, flooding the main streets to secure the perimeter.
Veteran executives barked orders, cordoning off critical zones, reassuring panicked merchants, and guiding civilians away from the immediate vicinity of Babel's main entrance.
This swift, iron-fisted mobilization wasn't merely about maintaining public order; it was a preventative measure designed to stymie any opportunistic third-party forces attempting to exploit the city's sudden vulnerability.... a bitter, bloody lesson seared into the collective memory of the populace from the devastating war, five years prior.
Deep within the heart of the guild, a parallel crisis was unfolding.
The captains, high-ranking executives, and trusted familia representatives had finally converged in an emergency general assembly.
The air inside the chamber was thick with tension, smelling of stale parchment and cold sweat.
Rapid-response scouts had already been dispatched down within the first thirty minutes of the tremor, and an orderly evacuation of all active diving parties currently stranded in the upper and middle layers of the Dungeon had been issued.
It was only a matter of time before the scouting reports surfaced and the true nature of the subterranean cataclysm became clear.
Yet, as the high-ranking officers murmured among themselves, not a single soul in the room felt an ounce of ease.
Every single veteran present.... those who had survived the harrowing trials of the Dark Age.... carried the right to be deeply paranoid.
The last time the Dungeon had shuddered with this specific, bone-deep resonance, it had signaled the dawn of a nightmare that had nearly torn Orario apart at the seams.
And as the familia executives leaned over their maps, waiting for word from the depths, none of them knew that the epicenter of the panic wasn't a rampaging monster horde, but by just two individuals of a completely different breed...who had temporarily rewritten the geography of the dungeon.