The Dungeon, Floor 17.
Jagged rock walls hemmed in the view above, below, and on every side, and the massive boulders jutting out from those walls radiated a heavy, oppressive weight from all directions, weighing down the heart.
The ceiling here was quite high, and the stone passage underfoot was so uneven it was hard to take a single step. The paths themselves crossed and tangled irregularly, and together with the gloom, the terrain was about as bad as it could get. It was hard to believe anyone could actually fight monsters in a place like this.
But however hard it was to believe, the scene unfolding right here told a plain truth.
That truth was: someone really was fighting monsters here.
"Buooohhhhhhhhhhh!!!"
Red-copper bull-headed monsters came charging one by one from the far end of the cavern passage, each one with a brawny build that called rock to mind, eyes red enough to seem ablaze, a vicious, savage aura constantly bleeding off of them.
Minotaurs, the most representative monster of the Middle Floors, each classified at Lv.2. Any single one that strayed into the Upper Floors would rival or even surpass an Infant Dragon, yet here they were charging in a pack, and at a target that was only a single "scrawny" Human.
They roared and bellowed, their powerful hooves trampling the already uneven ground, kicking up splinters of rock and clouds of dust, and they bore down on him with the momentum of something meaning to stamp that tiny Human into paste.
Such a horde of Minotaurs, even a seasoned Lv.2 five-man party would most likely turn and run from. Even the Leo of before, faced with this many raging bull monsters, would have had to open with Magic to thin out the enemy first.
But this time, Leo wasn't even willing to waste that much Mind, and simply charged straight in.
Compared to the Minotaurs' charge, his rush had no momentum, none of that trample-everything force.
Yet the instant he burst forward his figure melted into the dark, turning directly into a faint, imperceptible gust of wind, and in the blink of an eye he had blown into the cluster of monsters, slipping inside the encirclement of those huge beasts.
The next moment, sword-light flashed.
In the span of a single instant, flashes of sword-light cut through the air and slashed into that pack of bull-headed monsters.
A whole crowd of Minotaurs had no time to react. As though they didn't even know the enemy had already charged in, they were struck mid-charge.
Several charging Minotaurs had their forms broken apart on the spot. One had an arm cut off, one a thigh, one was opened at the belly, one had its throat severed, and blood gushed out by the gallon.
By the time those Minotaurs crashed to the ground, howling in pain, Leo's slaughter show had truly begun.
Sword-light swept across, blood burst out, and another Minotaur was cut down, this one sliced clean in two at the waist, its upper half sliding away as great sheets of blood immediately fountained up, bloody and brutal.
Leo just tore through the great pack of Minotaurs in a frenzy, his form like a gale, and not a single Minotaur could keep up with him. Wherever he passed the sword-light became a cold arc of light, and every time it appeared another Minotaur was hacked to the floor, still spraying blood, the ground gradually staining red.
Standing before dozens of Minotaurs without the slightest waver, charging in for a slaughter-feast that cut them down like chopping vegetables, going straight into that one-man-army state, his figure left the girls following close behind him utterly stunned.
"S-so... so..."
Lefiya, seeing Leo fight monsters for the first time, gripped the staff in her hands tightly and stared blankly at that one-man-army stance, murmuring those broken words.
"He really is strong."
"...Is this the kind of strength a Lv.2 should have?"
Tiona and Tione gave their reactions one after another, one marveling, one puzzled.
It wasn't that they didn't know Leo's strength was no joke. After all, Leo sparred with Ais almost every day in the courtyard at headquarters, and even when these Familia members weren't present they could watch Leo fight from the sky corridor. But sparring was sparring, and it was a little different from a real fight held back by nothing.
When sparring, Leo gave it his all too, attacking Ais as hard as he could, but the gap in strength between him and Ais was simply too great. Even with Ais holding back the whole time, he was the one pinned down hard, so even though onlookers could make out some of Leo's strength, they couldn't take in the whole picture, just glimpsing a spot on the leopard, never grasping all of him.
But when his opponent became monsters, who needed no restraint and could simply be killed outright, the strength of a Leo butchering them one-sidedly was laid completely bare.
The way he could put out a hundred percent of his strength without being much affected even by the terrain showed plainly just what level Leo's strength had reached now.
The Minotaurs, classified at Lv.2 and a handful even for upper-class adventurers, were like so many chicks under his hand, unable to put up even a sliver of resistance before they were slaughtered.
Just as Tione had said, this was simply not the strength a mere Lv.2 should have.
To so completely ignore the difference in numbers and one-sidedly butcher a pack of Minotaurs would be utterly impossible without an overwhelming strength great enough to form a Level gap.
"Mr. Leo's gotten so much stronger again..."
Line, by contrast, had a pretty flat reaction.
She'd been teamed up with Leo for nearly a month now, and just yesterday the two of them had been adventuring together, right here on Floor 17, so Leo's performance no longer stirred much of a reaction in her.
True, yesterday's Leo definitely hadn't been this strong, but Line had grown used to it.
Her teammate seemed to make a huge leap in strength every time he updated his Status. At first Line had found it astonishing, but not anymore.
So Line just quietly moved along with everyone, watching Leo cut a wide swath through the Dungeon.
The whole way, Leo kept on slaughtering like this, charging in the moment a monster appeared, drawing his sword and hacking, as though doing one last warm-up to keep his body at peak condition.
Watching Leo like this, Tiona suddenly said something.
"Don't you all think Leo looks like someone when he's like this?"
The moment the words were out, all the girls present instantly turned to look at that person.
"?"
Ais, who had been watching Leo's back the whole time, felt everyone's eyes on her and froze, a blank look on her face.
"That's right, we're talking about you." Tiona threw her arms around Ais, grinning. "Aren't you just like Leo? Every time you see a monster you charge right in and draw your sword and hack, slicing monsters up like vegetables, easy as anything?"
Put that way by Tiona, Ais belatedly realized that the way Leo went on his killing spree in the monster pack was exactly like her.
"Well, Leo's been learning the sword from Ais all along." Tione, for her part, was unimpressed. "His whole fighting style was learned off of Ais, so of course he'd look just like her."
Beside them, Line nodded along, as though in agreement.
In truth she'd had that feeling for a while. She always thought the way Leo fought and the way Ais fought were almost identical, like they'd been cast from the same mold.
When fighting with Magic it was fine, but the moment it turned to close combat, Leo's fighting form could practically overlap with Ais's.
It wasn't a clumsy imitation, but a fighting style you could clearly feel came down from the same source.
The resemblance between the two wasn't just a matter of matching techniques, but of that hesitation-free, decisive and coldly sharp, one-strike-kill edge.
It was because of this fighting style that Ais came to be called the War Princess.
And now Leo had inherited this fighting style too, like a born monster-hunter, colder and more... cruel than any other adventurer.
"...Did I teach him wrong?"
Ais suddenly felt a little uneasy.
Watching Leo fight, Ais finally understood a little of what it felt like for others to watch her own back as she fought.
That merciless way of fighting, she'd never thought there was anything wrong with it when she did it herself, but watching someone else do it, there was this feeling that maybe it was too heartless, too cold, too frightening.
For the first time this made Ais start to reflect, the thought rising that maybe this wasn't such a good thing.
There was no helping it. Even with monsters for opponents, the scene of flesh flying, severed limbs and shattered remains scattered everywhere, as though making a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, was after all a bit much in its impact.
This made Ais belatedly start to worry, worry that she'd unknowingly taught Leo wrong.
If she turned him into someone like herself, revered and feared, kept at a distance by everyone, what then?
Wouldn't her sin be a great one?
Completely unaware that it was because of the respect and love of those around her, because she was simply too beautiful, that people grew timid and didn't quite dare approach her, the girl had somehow worked herself into this bewildering worry.
"It's nothing of the sort!" Lefiya hurriedly spoke up, objecting. "Getting to learn how to deal with monsters from Miss Ais is something countless people would beg for and never get. How could that possibly be learning wrong?"
For Lefiya, who had always admired and looked up to the girl, this point was beyond any doubt.
After all, it was precisely from watching Ais's dignified fighting form that she'd come to admire her in the first place.
That figure who, anytime and anywhere, could throw herself to the very front of danger, who showed no fear and no flinch even facing hundreds or thousands of monsters, who dared to face down savage, terrifying things head-on, had been a salvation to Lefiya more times than she could count, Lefiya who didn't dare fight monsters directly and who had so often felt nervous and afraid amid their roars.
You could say it was in Ais's back that Lefiya found her sense of safety, found her encouragement, and that was why she'd wanted to keep moving forward.
So she had the right to say something like that.
"Yeah, Ais, you're overthinking it. We've always fought right at your side, you know. Nobody understands better than us how much safety your figure brings everyone when you charge into the fray." Tiona chimed in too, in agreement, laughing. "Compared to you, Tione losing her mind is the truly scary one."
"Hey, who's scary? I'm not scary, okay?" Tione bristled. "Aren't you and Bete the ones who always ignore orders and go barging off wherever you like? The captain's lost count of how many times he's chewed you out over it!"
"But at least we don't lose control. Not like you. You look like a good girl most of the time, but the second you get mad you go berserk." Tiona bristled too, shouting. "I still remember to this day how scared everyone looked the first time they saw you go so berserk you threw down your weapon and went at the monsters with your bare fists."
"What did you say?!"
Tione's face twisted with anger, and the two sisters instantly started quarreling, completely ignoring the fact that this was the Middle Floors of the Dungeon, where monsters could appear at any moment.
Of course, these two had the right to do that. For them, already Lv.5, the Middle Floors were like a back garden. Even empty-handed they could stroll wherever they pleased, with no need whatsoever to worry about running into danger.
Watching the quarreling Amazoness twins, Lefiya and Line both started trembling.
To them, Tiona and Tione were both equally frightening.
One who always wore an innocent, guileless smile while swinging a great blade heavier than her own body, casually cutting monsters into two lopsided halves at the drop of a hat. One who got angry the moment she felt irritated, and lost control the moment she got angry, who, even when the opponent was a monster dripping lava and soaked in deadly poison, dared to march right up and punch it with her bare fists, so fierce that, never mind not seeming like a girl, you could practically say she didn't seem human.
Compared to those two, the always-cool Ais who charged to the very front to hold back the monster pack really did look incomparably beautiful and lovely.
Too bad the girl herself hadn't the slightest awareness of it, looking even now a little puzzled, with a lost expression, about why the sisters had suddenly started quarreling.
Leo, of course, had no idea of the farce unfolding behind him.
He'd already thrown himself heart and soul into the fight before him and the challenge soon to come, completely forgetting the presence of Ais and the others.
He just kept charging and killing, pressing forward once he'd dispatched the monsters, his pace unhurried but his purpose clear, walking steadily in one direction.
And as he advanced, the cavern passage began to widen, gradually opening into a roomy space that could let dozens of people through, the path turning into a single road with few forks, as though he'd walked into the body of some gaping-mawed beast. Even the ceiling grew higher and higher, as if the Dungeon itself were consciously providing a battlefield large enough for some enormous being to unleash its power, and everything around grew quieter and quieter.
By here the monsters too had begun to thin out, as though in dread of some presence, not daring to come near this stretch.
Leo pressed on, his footsteps now able to form echoes.
And at last, he arrived.
He arrived at the place at the very end of this floor.
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