"Wh-what kind of monster is that?!"
Watching the Violas smash through building after building and appear in the dark alley, Lulune let out yet another cry of the same tenor.
She had never seen monsters like this. They didn't look especially fierce or terrifying, yet they made her feel physically sick from the depths of her being, enough to turn her stomach.
Leo, by contrast, surrounded by the Violas, looked at them with a stony face.
Their outward form was different, but that gaudy, multicolored body coloring, those harsh, rasping cries, and that familiar, physically sickening look, these traits were exactly the same as the worm monsters that had appeared on Floors 50 and 51 of the Dungeon not long ago, which had caused enormous trouble for their Loki Familia expedition force and forced them to retreat back the way they'd come.
There was no doubt about it. These too were new species monsters, and they were bound up inextricably with those worm monsters.
Before setting out, they'd all worried they might run into those worm monsters again in the Dungeon, and in the end the worm monsters hadn't appeared, but these Violas, clearly connected to the worm monsters, had shown up instead.
They'd been hiding in the safe floor that spawned no monsters, hiding beneath the lake on Floor 18, and had emerged at that mysterious woman's summons to attack all of Rivira.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!!!"
Broken-gong voices rang out all around, and the Violas swung their tentacles, sweeping them at the surrounded Leo in an overwhelming mass, kicking up gust after gust of shrieking wind, an enormous commotion.
"Look out!"
Slumped on the ground, Lulune let out another cry of alarm, but Leo had already moved before she could speak.
With the Dragon Fang Sword in one hand and the Emerald Staff in the other, Leo sprang straight up from a standstill, leaping high into the air and evading the countless descending tentacles.
The countless tentacles slammed into the spot where he'd just been, smashing the ground there to pieces and sending up a cloud of dust and smoke.
Leo had dodged one wave of the assault, but because he was up in midair, he couldn't dodge what came next.
Several Violas came roaring in, opening their fang-lined maws and biting at Leo, each scrambling to get there first.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
Leo extended his left hand, gripping the Emerald Staff, and lit up the jewel on it.
"Meteor Dance!"
Several thick meteors rose from around him and flew at the Violas lunging in.
One of the meteors arrived first, striking a Viola in the head and blasting its whole skull apart.
Amid the rumbling, thick meteors either punched through the Violas' bodies or blasted their forms apart, turning them to ash on the spot, scattering into the air.
The remaining Violas weren't cowed by the deaths of their fellows. On the contrary, because of the magic Leo used, they reacted strongly to his Magic, howling and continuing to lunge, biting at him one after another.
Though Leo was in midair, his agility didn't slack in the least. He kicked out at the head of the first Viola to lunge in front of him, planting his foot on its face and using the force to spring away, then swung the Dragon Fang Sword at a Viola behind him, drawing a sharp arc of light as he cut down.
The Dragon Fang Sword split the Viola's outer hide smoothly, sending green blood spraying out.
But the cut was far too shallow. Never mind a fatal wound, it didn't even amount to a serious one.
The Viola seemed to feel nothing at all, and a tentacle lashed out violently, striking Leo hard across the body and knocking him flying with a heavy thud.
"So tough..."
Leo's whole body slammed through several buildings like a cannonball before landing on the ground, stomping it in as he came down.
He wasn't hurt, though. The Violas' tentacle attacks weren't weak, but they still couldn't break through the protection of the Giant's Battle Garb on his body to injure him.
Still, looking at the Dragon Fang Sword in his right hand, then at that shallow wound on the Viola's body, Leo realized his sword probably couldn't pose much of a threat to these Violas.
Tiona and Tione could cut these Violas down like so much straw, first because they were Lv.5 first-class adventurers with enough Strength, and second because both had First Class superior equipment in hand, easily breaking through a Viola's hide, cutting into its flesh, and splitting it in two.
Leo couldn't manage that. First, he was only Lv.4, his Strength no match for the Amazoness twins, and second, the weapon in his hand was only Third Class superior equipment, its power only approaching that of Second Class equipment, still far short of the First Class equipment in the twins' hands.
In other words, his slashes, whether in attack power or lethality, were far weaker than the Amazoness twins'.
For someone like that to manage to make a wound on a Viola at all was already a decent showing, considering the adventurers in Rivira couldn't so much as budge these Violas with their blades.
"Still have to rely on the power of magic after all."
Leo didn't put the Dragon Fang Sword away, but the jewel on the Emerald Staff was clearly glowing brighter.
He converted his Mind into Magic in an endless stream, channeling it into the Emerald Staff, preparing a high-powered spell.
The Violas, reacting strongly to Magic, naturally couldn't just watch and do nothing, and charged at Leo as frantically as ever, the tentacles thrashing wildly about their bodies wreaking enormous destruction on the surroundings.
Any other Mage in his place would surely have had to stop chanting, choose to run first, and evade the frenzied Violas' assault before doing anything else.
But Leo didn't need to.
Amid a burst of wind, meteors flew out like flashes of light, blasting toward the Violas.
Since there was no time to chant, then he simply wouldn't chant. Leo cast the magic without a chant, sending countless meteors firing out to meet the Violas.
At a glance, it looked as though the Violas were throwing themselves at the meteors on purpose, and doing it in waves, one after another.
And so, in the blink of an eye, the Violas on every side were all struck by meteors.
The sound of bodies being blasted apart rose and fell one after another, dazzling star-bursts appearing in succession, blinding to the eye.
The countless meteors either punched through or blasted apart, killing the Violas one by one on the spot, not a single one spared.
Within a mere two seconds, every Viola that had come here was slain, not even leaving their magic stones, all of them turning to ash and vanishing.
Only Leo was left on the scene, sword in one hand, staff in the other, just standing there, making Lulune, who'd watched the whole thing, swallow hard.
"S-solved that easily...?"
Lulune's eyes were full of shock as she looked at Leo.
The magic just now, was its power really that strong?
Was this the power of the Monster Rookie who'd risen all the way from Lv.1 to Lv.4 in a mere two months?
Could two short months really make a person this strong?
"He really is a monster..."
That was the only thought Lulune had left.
Leo still paid her no mind, only looking toward the direction Ais and the mysterious woman had gone, before turning to Lulune.
"Where's the green orb?"
Leo's question left Lulune stunned for a moment, and then she hurriedly began searching all around.
Soon she spotted the green orb in a corner.
"There, it's over there!"
Lulune rushed over and reached out toward the orb.
Just as Lulune was about to touch it, the fetus inside the orb suddenly let out a cry.
It was an extremely unpleasant cry, so grating it made you start to wonder whether someone was shrieking in agony.
"No!"
Locked in her fierce battle with Ais, the mysterious woman heard the cry, and her expression changed drastically.
Ais's face changed too, and she turned her head to look toward where the sound had come from.
At the same moment, as if something had come back to Leo, his eyes narrowed and he immediately raised his hand and fired off a meteor, sending it blasting toward the green orb.
The fetus inside the green orb struggled and shifted its body at once, its tiny little hands and the head set with those bizarre eyeballs poking straight through the green membrane and reaching out.
Its small body drew force from somewhere and leapt like a rubber ball, springing up into the air, actually dodging the incoming meteor shot.
But Leo seemed to have been waiting for it, and fired a second meteor that slammed into it, vaporizing the green membrane around it completely.
The fetus, liquid dripping all over it, tumbled to the ground, its bizarre eyeballs fixed dead on Leo, some venomous emotion seemingly hidden within them, hair-raising to behold.
Leo was about to fire off a third meteor, but the fetus gave a single leap, slamming into a Viola crawling out of the corner and clinging onto its body.
Then the fetus melted into the monster's body, boring its way inside.
"Wha...?!"
Everyone present was taken aback.
Ais and Lulune above all wore looks of shock at this sudden turn.
The mysterious woman's face was extremely grim.
"Damn it! It was all for nothing...!"
She looked as if she'd seen some treasure defiled. She had valued that green orb so highly before, but now her eyes held only fury as she looked at it.
Leo was about to keep casting magic, to attack the Viola parasitized by the bizarre fetus.
The Viola seemed to sense danger. It let out a saliva-soaked wail from its maw while rolling on the ground in agony, red vein-like lines suddenly surfacing across its body as though its blood vessels were rising up, swelling that already long, huge body further still.
Like a chrysalis, the part of the Viola the fetus had parasitized began to bulge outward, but what bored out from within wasn't a moth or a butterfly, but an upper body shaped like a human's.
An upper body with every feature of a woman's, and eerily familiar with it, tore its way out through the Viola's flesh.
"...ahh, ahh."
The next second, the female opened her mouth and let out a sound.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The sound gradually turned into a grating scream, blasting the air away and becoming a wave of sound that swept around the monster like a shockwave.
Lulune had already fallen into a daze, mouth agape, unable to get out a single complete sentence.
The mysterious woman's face was full of vexation, and she smashed a fist into the crystal pillar beside her, shattering it. You could tell this was a situation she hadn't wanted to see, and it had put her in a foul mood.
As for Ais, looking at the female body growing out of the Viola, her golden eyes were already trembling violently.
It was only because that shape, that body, was unmistakably identical to the female-form monster she and Leo had encountered on Floor 50.
At least, the female upper body was exactly the same. The only difference was the lower half.
The female-form monster on Floor 50 had had a huge worm for its lower half, while the lower half of this female-form monster before her was a Viola.
It made this female-form monster like a giant octopus, huge tentacles extending from its body, tentacles that seemed to have grown far more nimble than before, bending, tumbling, and squirming as if with a mind of their own, and together with its gaudy, multicolored body and the upper half in the shape of a female form, from a distance it looked exactly like a half-human, half-octopus thing.
But that vaguely familiar female form forced Ais to make more connections.
Thinking of how the female-form monster had only turned into this after being parasitized by that bizarre fetus, even someone as slow as Ais should understand now.
"The one on Floor 50, and this one too, both became female-form monsters after being parasitized by that fetus!"
The female-form monster on Floor 50 had very likely been born when another green orb parasitized a worm monster.
And this one before her had been born when a green orb parasitized a Viola.
"What in the world is that green orb?"
Ais demanded of the mysterious woman again.
The mysterious woman was in a foul temper just then, and being pressed like this by Ais, she was so angry she laughed instead.
"Shouldn't you understand what it is better than I do?" the mysterious woman sneered. "In a certain sense, you and it are the same kind!"
Hearing this, Ais felt that wave of nausea from when she'd first seen the green orb come surging back.
"Who's the same kind as that thing?!"
Ais utterly rejected the notion.
To that, the mysterious woman only said a single cold line.
"Stop deceiving yourself. The blood in your body has already told you the answer. Isn't that right? 'Aria.'"
"'Aria.'"
When that name came out of the mysterious woman's mouth, Ais froze.
No, she was frozen solid. Body and heart alike, both frozen in that instant.
On her face, an emotion she'd so rarely shown in days past surfaced with unprecedented intensity.
The Doll Princess mask cracked apart on her face, replaced by shock, by astonishment, by disbelief.
"You..."
Why do you know that name?
Ais's emotions surged violently.
"Ais! Look out!"
But before Ais could get a trembling word out, Leo's loud shout snapped her awake.
Only then did Ais notice that the Viola female had already turned its head, fixing its sights on her.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
The grating scream was like a roar, shaking the air.
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