Beneath the sheer cliffs where Rivira stood, the lake rippled, a soft breeze sweeping across its surface, an exquisitely beautiful sight.
But the very instant the shrill note of the grass whistle rang out from the town, the ripples spreading across the lake surface suddenly began to widen, shattering that tacit peace.
A spray of water burst apart, and a massive figure broke through the surface from below, tearing out of the water.
As if setting off some chain reaction, sprays of water burst one after another across the surface, and countless massive figures appeared in succession.
"OOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!!!"
Roars like cracked gongs spread from the mouths of these figures, rumbling and shaking the air.
Before long the spray fell away, and the full forms of the massive figures were laid bare, lit by the radiance the crystals on the vaulted ceiling gave off.
They were monsters with long, slender bodies and smooth skin tissue, no eyes or other organs on the front ends of their bodies, only some bulging shapes like sunflower seeds, their whole forms a pale yellowish-green that gave off an unpleasant impression.
The monsters were like snakes without faces, their long bodies writhing over the water surface, bizarre tentacles growing out at their sides and squirming along with the bodies.
While letting out their grating cries, they raised the front ends of their bodies, and then those parts split open along several lines, like countless petals blooming apart, slowly opening to reveal a head of gaudy colors, as if it hid a deadly poison, its center a huge mouth crammed with teeth and dripping mucus.
That shape wasn't any faceless snake at all, but a savage flower.
Savage, and ugly, man-eating flowers. Violas.
The Violas emerged one after another from beneath the water, tentacles branching endlessly from their bodies and dancing around them, their main forms swimming across the water surface like snakes, heading for that sheer cliff.
Soon they climbed up the cliff one by one, came before Rivira, and then went over the towering wall, cutting into the town where the adventurers were gathered.
"Monsters!"
"Monsters are attacking!"
"Somebody, help!"
Only now did the people in the town realize the monsters had cut into it. Faces going white, panicking, they shouted while fleeing in a scramble.
The Violas displayed a ferocity and aggression beyond anything ordinary, wrecking the buildings inside the town, crushing tents and huts flat, then surging like a tide toward the fleeing people, throwing the whole town into panic in an instant.
"Wh-what is this...?!"
Having lost their targets after failing to keep up with Leo and the other two who'd suddenly accelerated into the dark back alleys, Lefiya and the others, forced to wander the streets, watched this sudden monster assault, every one of them dumbstruck.
"Miss Tiona! Miss Tione!"
Lefiya finally managed to react and called out with some panic, but before she could even speak, Tiona and Tione had already drawn the weapons they carried and dashed off at a sprint, charging the Violas closing in on them.
"Take this!"
Tiona's movements were as broad and sweeping as ever, the great double-blade in her hands raised high and hacking down heavily, cleanly splitting a Viola in two with a wet tearing sound, sending green blood spraying everywhere.
"These monsters..."
Tione stared at the Violas' gaudy, multicolored bodies, her brow furrowing as if something had come to mind, though her hands didn't slow in the slightest, her two kukri flashing past like light, easily severing a tentacle a Viola swung at her and drawing an anguished wail from it.
The sight of the two of them fighting so valiantly seemed to breathe a little courage into the routed swindlers of the town.
"Hey! You lot! Don't just go running off!"
"We're getting in too!"
"This town's our property, y'know!"
"How can we let Loki Familia strut around showing off on our turf?"
A pack of fierce-looking adventurers howled loudly, brandishing their weapons and baring their fangs as they charged the Violas.
But the Violas, so easily dealt with in Tiona and Tione's hands, showed a terrifying toughness against these adventurers.
Some of the adventurers who charged in were whipped flying by the countless tentacles that reached out before they could even touch the monsters. Others were slammed aside by a Viola crawling at them like a snake, their whole bodies flung up into the air. And some were caught and held fast in those hideous, fang-lined maws, unable even to wail, only able to kick their legs and struggle.
Of course, it wasn't as if no adventurers landed hits on these Violas, but their attacks, falling on the Violas' bodies, were like hacking at steel, bounced off one by one, utterly unable to deal any effective damage to the Violas.
"N-no good! I'm running!"
"What even are these monsters? There's no beating them!"
"Run!"
"Help!"
Watching the vanguard that had charged in become cannon fodder one after another, the remaining adventurers cried out in an uproar and scattered in flight without a shred of shame.
Tiona and Tione could only stare dumbly as these unscrupulous adventurers, like defenseless commoners, fell into panic and ran off to every corner of the town, plenty of Violas chasing and hunting them from behind, and for a moment they couldn't believe these people were their fellow adventurers.
"...I already knew the people in this town had no scruples and could only play swindlers ripping folks off, but isn't this running away a little too fast?"
"A bunch of spineless cowards! Serves you right!"
Tiona wore a speechless expression, and Tione was even more livid.
There was no helping it. There were simply too many Violas that had broken into the town. Though the two of them were clearing them out, they'd ended up surrounded after all, and now they could no longer break out of the encirclement.
They'd been counting on these guys to lend an assist, to give a hand, but who'd have thought this pack of bastards would run without a second thought, making the two of them look like real clowns for rising up to fight back.
"Loosed arrow of light, bow-shaft of the holy tree, I am the master of the bow."
"Snipe, fairy archer."
"Pierce, arrow that never misses."
In the end, it was Lefiya who raised her staff toward Tiona and Tione and chanted the magic loudly.
"Arcs Ray!"
This was Lefiya's first magic, a single-shot magic with an automatic tracking effect, of the short-chant type.
Though it was only a short-chant single-shot magic, once it fired from Lefiya's hands it wasn't any arrow of light at all, but a huge pillar of light.
The pillar of light swept over the street, gouging up the earth, scraping away the rock strata, striking the Violas and blasting a great number of them away on the spot.
That single strike freed the Amazoness twins caught in the encirclement, but it also stirred a powerful reaction from the Violas.
At once the Violas in the surrounding area gave up chasing the routed stragglers, gave up wrecking the buildings, and all surged toward Lefiya together.
"Wh-what?"
Lefiya hadn't expected that simply casting a single spell would make her the target of everyone, and looking at the Violas roaring in at her, she went stiff on the spot, unable to move.
"Lefiya!"
Tiona kicked off the ground hard, sweeping in like a whirlwind, cutting down several Violas in one stroke and landing before Lefiya, shielding her.
"These monsters really are the same as those disgusting things, all of them react abnormally strongly to Magic...!"
Tione charged in swinging her kukri all the same, cutting through the body of one Viola with one stroke and severing the head of another with the next, her face grim enough to be frightening.
She had already halfway guessed at where these Violas came from.
Or rather, she'd made some connection from the Violas themselves.
The Amazoness twins raised their weapons high, facing off against the great swarm of Violas rushing in.
Sheltered behind the two of them, Lefiya didn't dare cast magic carelessly now either, and could only watch the twins fight with their backs to the wall and the town being wrecked step by step.
The Violas, long and huge of body, ran rampant everywhere in the town, ramming about like snakes, their tentacles flinging tents and huts away with a single careless swing, their gaudy petals surfacing amid the chaos as they trampled everything they could, rock, crystal, crowds of people, all of it with full force, drawing out endless miserable wails that rang all around and lingered long.
Over on the cliff side, another great swarm of Violas kept climbing up one after another, like a school of fish leaping over a waterfall, pouring into the town in succession and joining this feast of destruction, until half the town had turned into the yellowish-green of the monsters' bodies, a sign that their numbers were still steadily growing.
Danger was closing in, her companions were fighting hard, and the Elf girl's azure eyes trembled faintly.
"Miss Ais... Mr. Leo...!"
The girl could only call out helplessly for the two who'd vanished from sight.
Little did she know that at this very moment, Leo and Ais had likewise fallen into crisis.
The silver saber and the strange-colored longsword collided for who knew how many times, striking harsh sparks off each other in a clash of metal like a struck bell.
The fierce battle between Ais and the mysterious woman was still going on, growing more intense still.
Both their figures had already moved so fast that even Leo couldn't make them out clearly at all, seeing only a flurry of flashing blades, seeing the destruction their fierce swordfight left behind, marks scored across the ground, the walls, and the buildings of the alley.
The longsword raised and hacking, the saber slicing past at extreme speed, both danced madly to the point of making the wind shriek, striking, ringing, and colliding against each other, playing out a symphony rapid and swift that shook everyone watching to the core.
"Wind..."
Ais had already unleashed the wind magic she took such pride in, her whole body wreathed in an invisible airflow as she slashed savagely at the mysterious woman.
But facing an Ais whose strength had surged, the mysterious woman not only still kept up with her movements, displaying astonishing power that lagged not at all behind her opponent's, but also, as if she'd discovered some enormous delight, lost the ice-cold look on her face entirely, leaving only a sudden shift into shock and excitement.
"So you were here! I've been searching for you so long!"
That tone was completely different from before.
Ais's brow furrowed slightly, but she wasn't thrown off by her opponent's baffling attitude. Her whole body wreathed in surging airflow, she raised her hand and cut, splitting a wooden hut clean in two with a single stroke.
The mysterious woman leapt up before the blow could reach her and dodged it, so all the damage was taken by the wooden hut instead. Not just that hut, though... right, everywhere Ais and the mysterious woman passed through while trading blows was unavoidably wrecked.
Without a second thought Ais chased straight after her and once again opened up a fierce battle with the mysterious woman.
The two of them were evenly matched in every respect, ability, technique, experience, combat instinct, all of it, absurdly strong, so much that Lulune, hiding to one side with her head in her arms, couldn't help crying out.
"Who on earth is that woman? How can she be so strong...!"
That Ais was so strong, Lulune could completely understand.
After all, the name of the Sword Princess had long echoed throughout the entire lower world, and the alias of the city's strongest female swordsman was one everyone knew. Even though Lulune had never seen Ais fight and was scared by the astonishing power Ais displayed, it still didn't feel out of place.
But that mysterious woman was another matter.
To fight to a draw against an Ais going all out, even using magic, the opponent had to be at least a first-class adventurer.
Lv.5... maybe even Lv.6, or there was no way she could be a match for the Sword Princess.
But how many first-class adventurers were there in all of Orario?
Fewer than forty!
And if it came to Lv.6, there weren't even ten!
And among those fewer than ten Lv.6s, there wasn't a single woman like this who used a longsword, with such extraordinary skill, seemingly a Human.
Hermes Familia was in the business of dealing in information to begin with. The secrets Lulune knew weren't many, sure, but she wasn't so ignorant as to not even recognize an adventurer this strong. By rights an adventurer like this should have made a name long ago, should even be famous across the world, yet she couldn't place the woman, which made no sense at all.
Could that face be a human-skin mask too, not her real face at all?
But that voluptuous body was surely real, wasn't it?
Among the Lv.6s, there was simply no female swordsman with a figure this good either!
Or else, was the woman from outside the city?
But even if people outside the city received the Falna, because there was no Dungeon, no endless stream of monsters to subjugate, challenge, and draw excelia from, leveling up was far harder for them than for adventurers inside the city. Those who could reach Lv.2 were few enough to count on one's fingers, never mind Lv.6, of which there were probably barely any to be found in all the lower world.
Same point again: for a figure of this strength to be impossible to identify was itself unreasonable.
Compared to Lulune, lost in her doubts, Leo hadn't thought it through so elaborately.
Never mind that he already knew the woman's identity, just given his current situation, it wasn't a good time to think too much either.
Amid the rumbling, a great many Violas smashed through building after building and came charging in from outside, striking at Leo.
"OOOOOOOOOOHHHH!"
Broken-gong roars rose and fell one after another, making Leo narrow his eyes, his expression turning utterly cold.
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