In the sunlit chamber of Loki's private quarters, the executives of the Loki Familia gathered around a map-laden table, their discussion centered entirely on Evilus's next predictable strike.
As Finn Deimne surveyed the room, he noted a distinct vacancy. Turning his gaze toward the High Elf, he inquired, "Riveria, have you seen Allen?"
"Oh, him?" Riveria replied, her tone perfectly even. "He is currently in the archives, correcting his past mistakes."
"?"
Finn raised an eyebrow, though he didn't press further. Everyone in the upper echelon knew that ever since the dark factions of Evilus rose to prominence, the sheer volume of Guild and internal paperwork had become a bureaucratic nightmare. Under normal circumstances, it would easily take a dedicated team of administrators four full months of continuous labor just to sort through the backlog.
"Now that I think about it, I haven't seen him in a month," Tiona muttered, tapping her chin as she remembered. "He promised he was going to supervise our training sessions, but he completely vanished."
"Heh! Got exactly what he deserved," Loki chuckled maliciously. She gingerly rubbed her side, a phantom ache recalling the time Allen's counter-slap had sent her flying across the room, to say nothing of his endless, humiliating remarks regarding her completely flat chest.
"Well... I made sure he remained confined to the office until late last month," Riveria explained, adjusting her posture. "However, it seems I sla—I mean, lost track of time due to the intensity of our tactical situation."
She smoothed over her near-slip flawlessly, and thankfully, no one in the room suspected a thing. After all, to the rest of the Familia, Riveria was the very definition of duty—an iron-willed matriarch who would gladly shoulder every burden herself rather than delegate it to others.
Little did they know that for the past four weeks, Riveria had enjoyed the most peaceful, worry-free period of her entire career.
Paperwork? Allen was chaining himself to the desk to finish it.
Bolstering the Familia's combat readiness? Allen had meticulously drafted customized training regiments, mechanical breakdowns, and counter-strategies for every technical deficiency their frontliners possessed.
Ever since she discovered Allen's unauthorized excursion into the deep floors last month, Riveria had ruthlessly exploited his "absence without leave" as leverage, forcing him to ghostwrite her entire administrative workload. It had granted her one of the finest structural breaks of her adult life. Of course, she hadn't actually slacked off; she had spent her newfound leisure time quietly decoding and mastering advanced magical theories provided by her "little friend."
'Allen, I must admit, your timing was truly immaculate,' Riveria thought to herself, a subtly devious smile gracing her lips as she plotted exactly how many more ledger books she could saddle him with.
"Ahem! Moving on," Loki interrupted, her ruby eyes narrowing slightly as she scanned her captains. "What do you think Evilus has been plotting over the last month?"
"They must be terrorizing the civilians outside the city walls, right?" Ais offered, a dangerous, cold intent flickering within her golden eyes.
The executives nodded in silent agreement—it perfectly matched the cult's vicious modus operandi. Yet, Loki's next revelation caused the entire council to freeze in sheer disbelief.
"Nothing. They've done absolutely nothing for the past thirty days."
"Huh?" Six voices echoed in unison.
"That's right," Loki confirmed, leaning back. "The evil gods have entirely recalled their operatives, forcing their branches to drop off the grid and hide. And from what my information network gathers (Finn), this sudden retreat might be directly linked to Allen."
Silence stretched across the room, thick and unbroken for a full thirty seconds, before Ais finally voiced the question on everyone's mind.
"How?"
"Well, my favorite little child, it appears their human resources are plummeting at an unsustainable rate," Loki revealed with a wicked grin.
While Ais didn't entirely grasp the geopolitical logistics of bleeding an underground cult dry, she understood the fundamental bottom line: whatever Allen had done in the dark, Orario was safer for it.
"But just because they've crawled into their holes doesn't mean we get to relax," Finn commanded. "We need to pinpoint their staging grounds immediately."
Determination hardened the faces of everyone present.
"Right then. I want a vanguard dispatched to investigate the middle floors of the Dungeon," Loki ordered, pointing toward the map. "Statistically, those sprawling, erratic layouts are the perfect territory for establishing covert bases."
Before Loki could flesh out the deployment details, Riveria calmly cut in.
"I have already dispatched a reconnaissance unit to those exact coordinates. Allen specifically instructed them to map out anomalies and gather intelligence—not to engage in open combat. Furthermore, he left rather odd parameters... something about 'not being completely useless like the police who stand around waiting for a crime to finish.' While I didn't understand what he meant, I presume his core directive was for them to retreat the moment conflict arises."
Finn looked up, his tactical mind instantly catching a discrepancy. "Wait. What is the level distribution of the team you sent?"
"Two Level 3s, three Level 2s, and one Level 1," Riveria stated flatly.
"IS HE INSANE?!" Loki erupted, slamming her hands on the table.
While navigating the middle floors was standard fare for seasoned Level 2s and 3s, introducing a fresh Level 1 rookie to those volatile depths was practically a death sentence.
"Do not glare at me," Riveria sighed, a pained, weary expression crossing her elegant features. As an elf who deeply valued life, the high mortality rate of young adventurers always weighed heavily on her conscience. "He insisted this was a necessary trial. A harsh lesson to teach the newcomers that the Dungeon is a living abyss, not a playground for amusement."
She had initially protested the dangerous assignment, but Allen had confidently told her to set her worries aside, claiming he had already arranged for a specific "security detail" to shadow them from the dark.
'Almost a century old, yet he handles severe operations with the casual whimsy of a child,' Riveria mused internally, a faint image of Allen's smug, irritatingly cheerful face flashing across her mind.
"I refuse to let my children be slaughtered before they even learn how to properly hold a blade," Loki growled, her tone dropping into a rare, fiercely protective register. To Loki, every mortal who swore fealty to her emblem became her family; she took the loss of any child personally.
"Loki, calm down," Finn interjected, his sharp eyes turning to the High Elf. "Allen is many things, but he doesn't throw away lives needlessly. He wouldn't steer our rookies into a slaughterhouse... correct, Riveria?"
"Rest assured," Riveria replied softly. "Though his demeanor is entirely childish, his judgment becomes absolute when the situation turns critical."
"Sigh... Fine," Loki grumbled, crossing her arms deflatedly. "I will defer to his tactical judgment this single time. But it had better be flawless. If even one of those rookies doesn't make it back, he had best prepare himself for the consequences."
With the meeting effectively concluded, Riveria excused herself and quietly left the chamber. Walking down the polished corridors of the Manor, she realized her blissful period of administrative immunity was rapidly coming to a close. Soon, Allen would collapse from exhaustion, and she would have to return to her grueling daily routines.
'Well, it was bound to end eventually,' she thought, dismissing a brief wave of disappointment. Instead, her mind drifted toward a more intriguing riddle: who exactly were the "people" Allen had deployed into the lower depths to keep her rookies safe?
The Dungeon: 15th Floor
"Whoa! Did the Dungeon undergo a sudden structural evolution or something?"
One of the Level 2 scouts stopped dead in his tracks, staring open-mouthed at the cavernous tunnel ahead. The standard rough, damp stone of the 15th floor had vanished, completely replaced by a breathtaking, jagged corridor of solid, translucent crystal that shimmered under their lanterns.
"The architecture definitely wasn't like this during the last faction sweep... right?" a Level 3 vanguard murmured, running his gauntlet along the sharp, glowing facets of the wall.
"No way. I bet a highly destructive, undocumented variant of a monster nested here," another added, drawing his sword slightly.
"Um, guys..." the rookie Level 1 stuttered from the back of the formation, his voice trembling.
"Are you out of your mind? What kind of monster completely alters the geological composition of an entire floor?" the vanguard countered, ignoring the boy.
"Guys, seriously..."
"Hmph. My money is on Evilus," the Level 2 muttered, scanning the crystalline ceiling. "They probably triggered some sort of black-market magic item to terraform the area for a hidden outpost."
"GUYS!" the rookie finally shouted, his voice cracking with genuine panic.
The abrupt outburst startled the seasoned vanguard, and the team swung around, their expressions a mix of annoyance and sudden alertness. "What is it? Speak up."
"I... I don't know if my mind is just playing tricks on me because it's dark," the rookie whispered, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his basic iron spear. "But do you guys feel like... we're being actively watched?"
A heavy stillness fell over the party. The veteran Level 3 closed his eyes, extending his senses into the quiet hum of the crystal cavern. Slowly, his brow furrowed. "Now that you bring it up... there is a distinct pressure. Someone is tracking us from the blind spots."
The leader gripped the hilt of his weapon tightly, his eyes darting toward the intersecting pathways ahead. "Form a tight defensive perimeter. We stick together from here on out, shields up. Understand?"
"Yes, sir!" the team echoed, drawing their weapons and locking into a compact vanguard formation.
Unbeknownst to the tense adventurers, three towering, nightmare-inducing silhouettes materialized out of the dark shadows far behind them. The creatures moved with eerie, silent grace, their bizarre, spherical heads rotating slowly. Three pairs of glowing, compound violet eyes blinked on either side of their faces, perfectly tracking the party's every movement from the pitch-black recesses of the crystalline labyrinth—ensuring their wards remained entirely unaware of the monstrous guardians trailing their footsteps.
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Hello everyone, It's been more than a month since I last dropped a chapter, and the reason for all of this was that after I finished the exams, I started to enjoy life to its fullest, and when I was about to make a chapter, the internet cable was burned underground, which made me unable to use the internet.
Now, as always, I hope everyone is doing well in their life.