The city's renovation of the Artificial Labyrinth was still ongoing.
In fact, they were seizing the opportunity to completely overhaul Daedalus Street as well — the area surrounding the Labyrinth's entrance. One of the city's most infamous slums was about to become a thing of the past.
The Artificial Labyrinth's most important function was the construction of an "elevator" capable of reaching the Dungeon's deep floors at speed. The amount of Adamantite required for that was staggering — and so, at regular intervals, the Guild would commission adventurers to travel to the [Academic District] and transport it back.
Adamantite was the hardest metal in existence. Its value went without saying, and its rarity was equally extreme. Theoretically, stealing the Guild's "property" was something no one in their right mind would attempt — but it was still better to leave nothing to chance, just in case someone happened to be spectacularly stupid.
More importantly, there was also the matter of defending against monster attacks.
"The [Academic District] is out at sea," Isagi said.
Before their departure, he had gone to the Guild himself to confirm the exact details of the commission, and was now briefing Lefiya and Haruhime — his companions for the journey.
"We'll need to board a ship and sail out to rendezvous with them. Once we've linked up, we load the [Adamantite] onto the ship, sail back to Melen, and then transport it overland to the city."
"So the danger is during the voyage?"
"Yeah."
The ocean was full of monsters.
The Njord Familia, which had previously managed the port city of Melen, had been completely unable to deal with the sheer volume of sea monsters. Not only did they make sailing out a constant gamble with death, but the creatures had devoured so much of the ocean's fish stock that fishing had become essentially nonviable.
In the end, they'd had no choice but to accept the Dark Familia's offer of cooperation — allowing them to secretly cultivate Viola monsters within Melen's waters.
And of course — that problem had still not been solved. In truth, it couldn't be solved.
The ocean was simply too vast.
Even mobilizing every adventurer in existence to cull the sea monsters would be like trying to drain the tide with a cup. And besides, this was not the time to be worrying about marine ecology.
Compared to the mountain of other pressing concerns, this one would have to wait a little longer.
In short.
"There are a lot of monsters in the sea. Very powerful ones, especially in the deep water far from the continent."
Ordinarily, the [Academic District] never ventured into the deep ocean. But something had happened recently — something that had pushed it off its usual route — and the Guild had only recently managed to re-establish contact. The moment they did, they issued the commission to transport the [Adamantite] directly to the Astrea Familia.
After all, they were now one of the city's strongest and most reliable Familias. And on top of that, it seemed both Loki and Freya had recently received their own assignments dealing with [Dragon Visit] incidents.
"Everyone's busy, huh."
The morning after receiving the commission, Isagi set out from the city alongside Haruhime and Lefiya, heading for the port city of Melen. By afternoon, they had boarded a cargo vessel and were underway, sailing toward their rendezvous with the [Academic District].
And then began a surprisingly long stretch of life at sea.
According to the crew, reaching the [Academic District] would take at least several days. The full round trip was estimated at about a week — and if anything caused delays, two weeks wasn't out of the question.
—Phew.
Life at sea turned out to be more interesting than Isagi had expected.
The ocean breeze carried a faint tang of salt and moisture, cutting right through the heavy, stifling heat that was summer's trademark. It was, honestly, a relief.
Isagi ate a cold orange.
It was one of the few fruits available in unlimited supply on board — tart and sweet, and absolutely perfect to pop into your mouth against a backdrop of endless, brilliant blue.
Out on the wide deck, Lefiya was "testing" Haruhime on the progress she'd made in her recent training.
The two girls got along remarkably well — partly because they were close in age, and partly because the Elf girl had a genuine, deep fascination with the mysterious and distant Far East.
That said.
Haruhime had grown up in an affluent household, which meant she'd actually had very little exposure to her homeland. Her childhood had been spent almost entirely within the walls of her family's estate, with only the rarest, most treasured opportunities to venture outside and play.
She still remembered one of those times clearly. There had been a shrine not far from her home — managed by the god Takemikazuchi — and it had taken in many orphaned children, including some who had been her friends.
One day, those friends had snuck over and helped her slip over the wall to escape the estate. They'd played together in the village for what felt like forever.
It was one of the few memories from her childhood that Haruhime could call truly happy.
"I wonder how everyone is doing," the fox girl murmured wistfully.
Returning to her homeland felt like a distant dream now.
"Who cares! Just get stronger and go back yourself!!"
Lefiya was breezy about it.
"All you need is to become a powerful adventurer."
"Yeah!"
Haruhime pumped her little fist.
The weeks of training she'd spent with the Freya Familia had left their mark. The fierce, self-reliant spirit of those warriors had rubbed off on her, at least a little. She was beginning to understand, in her bones, that power was the reason why—
"Here, Haruhime. Swallow this."
"Wha — what is this, Isagi-niisan — mmpf!"
Isagi shoved the elixir directly into the fox girl's mouth. He watched her face shift into that blissfully vacant, eyes-rolling "so good" expression — and simultaneously popped the second one into his own mouth.
The elixir in question was the same one as always: the [Jade Lotus Minor Restoration Pill].
Its effect was simple. It added a flat 100 points to the [Endurance] stat — a direct increase, no prerequisites, no conditions, no limits.
Beyond that, he also had the [Taiyi Minor Restoration Pill] for boosting Magic, the [Nine Revolutions Minor Pill] for increasing Dexterity and Agility, the [Iron Bull Pill] for Strength, and more.
There was even one that raised all five base stats simultaneously — the [Five Aggregates Pill].
Right now, Isagi had a pill furnace set up on deck, using the idle time at sea to refine a fresh batch.
The [Five Aggregates Pill] required far too many materials and had terrible cost-efficiency.
His personal favorite, at the moment, was the [Jade Lotus Minor Restoration Pill] — the Endurance booster. The reason was simple: Endurance was the very foundation of a king's power. High Endurance meant you never died. Never dying meant you were unstoppable.
And there was one more reason.
He could feed them to Haruhime and stack her Endurance through the roof.
As a Renart-type spellcaster who could only play a support role, her two biggest weaknesses were her lack of combat experience and the fact that she was dangerously fragile. Combat experience could only be built through actual training and taking hits — there was no shortcut for that. But if you could directly supplement it by raising Endurance with pills, wasn't that killing two birds with one stone?
Higher stats meant faster level-ups. And higher Endurance meant she could take more hits, which meant more combat experience, which meant more Excelia. The cycle fed itself beautifully.
Naturally, all of these divine-grade elixirs required [Exquisite Magic Cores] to refine — and those only dropped from elite monsters or Boss-class creatures in the Dungeon. But for now, between just himself and Haruhime, the supply was holding up.
Haruhime, for her part, couldn't eat that many anyway.
And crucially — he could farm Boss encounters in the Dungeon over and over using Divine Wine.
Isagi had specifically set aside time earlier to do exactly that, grinding away for quite a while. Not only did it boost his Internal Force values, it also yielded Excelia, and the [Exquisite Magic Cores] dropped as loot on top of that. Three birds, one stone.
The only resource he was burning through was the Divine Wine itself.
But that was manageable.
Soma hadn't been sent back to the heavens — the Guild was keeping him confined in a cell, and he was still brewing away in there. The reclusive god of wine was pure in his dedication to a degree that was almost unbelievable: completely indifferent to everything else, singularly focused on crafting his divine brew.
Which gave Isagi a stable, reliable supply chain.
Which meant, theoretically speaking — as long as he wanted them, [Exquisite Magic Cores] were effectively unlimited. It honestly felt like he'd found an exploit in the Dungeon's code...
This is incredible.
Isagi watched the two girls rolling around on the deck.
Lefiya was already Lv.5. She trained in combat daily with Ryuu-senpai and Tiona. She'd been doing impressively well right up until she started sparring with Haruhime.
Then, without fail, and in no time at all, the fox girl assimilated her completely.
Before long, they always ended up exactly like this — a tangled heap of limbs on the deck. Honestly.
"By the way, Haruhime — you're almost ready to level up, aren't you?"
"Mm!"
The fox girl, pinned under Lefiya on the deck, puffed out her cheeks and let out a muffled grunt.
As a spellcaster of her type, her stat gains were actually quite fast. Every day she'd spent at Folkvangr casting [Uchide's Mallet] to level-boost the Freya Familia's officers had translated into a significant stack of [Magic] points.
And her Excelia accumulation came easily too.
Like a healer, all she needed was to cast her support magic on others during combat — and she was already on track.
So Ryuu-senpai and the others had kept taking Haruhime along to hunt Goliath and leech Excelia from the boss kills. Over these past two or three months, she'd built up a solid stockpile. At one point, they'd even descended to Floor 27 and taken on the freshly respawned [Monster Rex · Two-Headed Dragon Amphisbaena].
Smooth sailing.
All in all, things were going very smoothly.
Having finished the latest batch of pills, Isagi reclined in a deck chair in the ship's cabin area, watching the golden sunlight pour down from above. Against the vast deep-blue sky, that blazing little orb glared and pulsed — just bright enough to drag you straight toward sleep.
He was drifting off — almost entirely gone — when it reached him.
A sound. Melodic and lilting, like a song. The fox girl's voice.
"Grow——"
"By thy power and thy motion — endless treasures, endless wishes. When the bell tolls, I pray for glory and for illusion. A thousand blessings upon thee."
"Grow——"
"This body that has swallowed the sacred offering — receive the golden radiance of the divine. Return the mallet to the earth, bestow thy blessing."
"——Grow."
"[Uchide's Mallet]!"
Golden light gathered and blazed.
And then — the Elf girl's sharp cry rang out alongside it.
"[Explosion Magic]!!"
The light detonated without a sound.
For one suspended instant, Isagi felt as though everything before him had simply ceased to exist. The sea, the ship, the sky, time itself, sound itself — all of it, swallowed whole by a colossal surge of magical power.
What the—?!
What on earth was Lefiya doing?!
Isagi lurched to his feet.
Along with the startled crew members who'd come rushing out, he turned to look — and saw it. Out across the brilliant blue ocean in the distance, glittering motes of residual magical energy drifted on the air like scattered sparks.
They twisted and wove together like iridescent thread — complex as script, strange as symbols — spiraling, coiling, spilling outward in every direction.
Where the ocean had been, there was now a vast, hollow void. The water had been vaporized entirely.
Even at this distance, the residual magical energy thrumming within those particles was powerful enough to send an instinctive shiver through the chest. Something primal, something that bypassed thought entirely.
And because of those particles — the surrounding seawater seemed to have simply stopped. Frozen. The enormous void hung there, suspended, and looked as though it might take days before the ocean reclaimed it.
Isagi had seen this before.
Back when the Familia used to vacation at that deserted island, Lefiya had frequently let loose with her Explosion Magic out there — partly as practice, and partly, as she'd once admitted herself, just for the sheer pleasure of it.
She'd said it herself: there was something deeply satisfying about draining your mental energy in one single go and sending your brain into a completely blank, empty state.
Haruhime was already handling it expertly — one hand steadying Lefiya, the other pressing a mana-restoration potion to her lips.
Facing Isagi's bewildered expression, the two girls explained: they had just seen an absolutely enormous monster lurking beneath the surface of the water.
So.
They'd panicked and attacked.
"It was really, really big!" Haruhime said, spreading her arms wide, straining to convey the scale of it. Beside her, Lefiya nodded vigorously in confirmation.
"Unbelievably huge!"
"The whole underwater shadow was almost entirely it!!"
"It was terrifying."
"If it swam toward us, our ship wouldn't even be a decent toothpick for it!"
"What kind of monster even is that... I can't imagine what it actually looks like up close..."
The existence of colossal monsters in the depths of the ocean had long been a legend passed between sailors and seafarers the world over. Every part of the world had similar stories.
In the Far East, for instance — Haruhime's homeland — there was a tale that on stormy, thunder-lit nights, if you sailed out far enough, you might catch a glimpse of something at the horizon's edge: an enormous silhouette, vast enough to touch the clouds, striding through the sea like a walking mountain. It was known as the Umibouzu.
Facing the girls' wide-eyed alarm, Isagi found himself genuinely at a loss, casting a puzzled look at the slowly receding void in the distance.
Sea monsters weren't exactly his area of expertise, he had to admit.
Neither were they the expertise of any adventurer in this world, really. What actually lived in the depths of the ocean — that was, by and large, a complete mystery to everyone.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the deck, the crew members who had come rushing over in alarm listened to the full account of what had happened — and their expressions shifted into something worried.
Because.
They were afraid that what Lefiya had just attacked wasn't a monster at all — but something the sailors called their "guardian deity."
"Guardian deity?"
"Well..."
Not a god — not a deity in the divine sense. But something real. An actual living creature of the ocean.
One that attacked monsters. One that protected ships mid-voyage and rescued those who fell overboard.
"Oh no!" Lefiya's face crumpled with guilt.
Fortunately — once the crew confirmed that what the girls had seen was a shadow of overwhelming, immense size floating beneath the surface, they all visibly relaxed. Whatever that thing was, it definitely wasn't their "guardian deity" — nothing that size could be.
At that, Isagi found his curiosity piqued.
Something similar was crossing Lefiya's mind too — the realization dawning across her face a beat behind. As someone who had grown up in the [Academic District], she had, of course, heard of the ocean's "guardian deity" before.
And as it turned out — it was actually a type of fish.
"A fish?"
"That's right."
Like a storyteller settling in for a tale.
Having recovered a bit of her strength, Lefiya stretched out in the deck chair Isagi had just vacated and began explaining to Haruhime, who was listening with wide, earnest eyes.
And at that, Isagi quietly dragged over a small stool, sat himself down beside them, and leaned in to listen too.
____
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