Only from the deepest despair can the purest faith be born.
"Why don't they just join one side?" Tiona asked. "Why aren't these monsters moving up or down with the others?"
"No idea," Isagi said.
What made the murals genuinely fascinating was this: the monsters representing the upper floors were clearly Goblin-dominant, while those from the deep floors were a far more varied assortment. Among them, Isagi spotted a flash of vivid, striking color.
Against the mural's ancient, weathered tones, that indescribable brilliance simply refused to be ignored.
He thought of the Udaeus from before. Was that meant to represent the deep-floor monsters?
As they pressed on, the murals filled in more and more of the picture.
A colossal skeleton lord led its armies in a relentless push upward — yes, that was clearly the deep-floor faction.
Which prompted a new question from the group.
"But what about the Two-Headed Dragon?"
The middle floors of the Dungeon spanned floors 13 through 24. Below that came the "lower floors," floors 25 through 33. If the deep-floor monsters were surging upward — what were the lower-floor ones doing?
They went back and reviewed the murals from the beginning.
And confirmed it: not a single lower-floor monster appeared anywhere.
That made sense, in a way — the creatures of the Great Waterfall region were distinctive enough. Almost entirely aquatic monsters, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the skeletal soldiers of the deep floors.
But more importantly.
No matter how you looked at it, the Monster Rex of floor 27 — Amphisbaena, the Two-Headed Dragon, the definitive representative of the lower floors — should have appeared somewhere.
Puzzling. Utterly baffling.
But whatever the answer, it probably wouldn't become clear until they actually reached the lower floors. Isagi had passed through the Great Waterfall region once before, but he'd been in too much of a hurry to get back to the surface to pay any attention to his surroundings. So that territory remained largely unknown to him.
"Let's set that aside for now," he said.
However you looked at it, the murals were simply conveying the Dungeon's "story." Whether or not they engaged with it didn't really matter in the end.
The tower still needed to be climbed, and as they ascended, the murals shifted once more. The middle-floor monsters began to pray. They built a holy city. They made their pilgrimage toward what they called the "Under Resort" —
— which was, of course, the same story Isagi and the girls had already pieced together.
But the holy city and the Under Resort had never truly existed.
And so the monsters' so-called pilgrimage was, in truth, simply the process of killing themselves. Through death after death after death — including, in the end, the Church itself choosing to perish — what was ultimately born was a "miracle."
"The strongest existence."
At the very end of the murals, Isagi finally understood the purpose of that so-called Anthropomorphic Church.
[Only the strongest can create paradise.]
[Only the strongest can protect paradise.]
Of course.
It wasn't hard to grasp — only the mightiest of beings could forge a world free of conflict, and only they could guarantee its continued existence. That was about as simple a truth as truths got.
For that purpose, the Church had been willing to "transform" itself into adventurers.
And what was born from that was the "strongest monster" and the "strongest adventurer" — both of which had once existed within Rivira.
When they finally reached the top of the tower — or more precisely, the middle, where the two towers connected — Isagi found himself facing an enormous bronze stone gate.
And before it.
Two altars stood side by side, each bearing a massive stone effigy — one of a great monster, one of a female adventurer.
Obviously representing [Absolute Evil] and [Alfia], respectively.
What was this supposed to mean — pick one to fight?
Did they even need to think about it?
In terms of sheer difficulty, [Absolute Evil] was obviously the easier choice!
In truth, comparing the so-called "strongest monster" and "strongest adventurer" was like comparing a pebble to a mountain. The [Absolute Evil] that Riveria had one-shotted with a single spell — calling it a roadside pebble against Alfia would be generous. At best, it was probably somewhere in the range of "a fairly tough elite mob."
Something was off. Very, very off.
Each altar had a clearly visible switch. Predictably, pressing one would presumably summon the corresponding boss from behind the stone gate.
Isagi didn't move rashly. He lingered there, thinking.
[Can't I just press both?!
Even when it comes to boss fights, a grown adult picks all of the above!
Otherwise I'm basically leaving five coins on the table!!]
This whole adventure — Isagi's original plan had been to challenge Alfia. He never could have imagined it would spiral into something like this.
"Strange," Riveria and Ryuu-senpai voiced their thoughts.
"If it's going to be like this, there's no point, is there?"
"Exactly — we didn't encounter a single monster on the way here. If the enemies are still just Alfia and Absolute Evil, didn't we just move the fight from one location to another?"
"Something's wrong!" Lefiya's instincts screamed at her. "What if it's a trap?!"
The Elf girl who had been adventuring through this peculiar Dungeon alongside Isagi since the very beginning had clearly caught the scent of something suspicious.
"Maybe there's an answer somewhere," Tiona offered, thinking it through. Perhaps somewhere along the way, they'd missed a plot thread.
But ultimately, it didn't matter.
Because no matter what, the boss still had to be fought.
Further analysis was pointless. Isagi simply walked up to the two altars and, without hesitation, pressed the switch on the [Alfia] side.
"?!"
The stone gate groaned as it slowly swung open — and mist poured in once more.
Along with it: a ghost-buddha resurrection point, cradling pale blue flames in its hands.
Inside was, indeed, a boss fight.
But Isagi didn't let Riveria and the others follow him through. He planned to scout the situation alone first.
After reaching Lv. 6, his daily resurrection count was still more than generous.
More importantly.
As if he'd already guessed what was waiting — Isagi thought he understood why the Dungeon had gone to all this "extra trouble." Why it had interrupted the boss fight back in the Church, only to relocate it here and resume it.
Was it really just to make him watch a cutscene? To let him learn the backstory of this place?
No.
The Dungeon was never that "kind." So the answer was obvious —
Beyond the mist-gate, "Alfia" was indeed waiting for him. But the woman standing there now was completely different from the one he'd faced moments ago.
Not her personally.
But what surrounded her.
The [Absolute Evil] coiling behind her back.
The monster was no longer the sky-blotting colossus from before, but it was still far from anything resembling a "normal size" — somewhere in the range of a large boss, perhaps. Its serpentine body was several meters thick at minimum; raise your eyes and you'd see that grotesque, warped skull — hideous as some kind of demon, jaw thrown wide, unleashing a grating, discordant roar.
[Divine Miracle Manifest · "Absolute Evil" Alfia].
The boss's name had changed.
It was clear that the woman before him now was meaningfully different from the one inside the Church.
And what made Isagi immediately realize something was very, very wrong was that the thing in front of him was obviously a dual boss fight!!
"Evangelium," Alfia intoned — a single word, her incantation impossibly brief.
Almost simultaneously.
Absolute Evil threw its jaws wide and unleashed a deep crimson beam of searing heat. An invisible shockwave surged alongside the rising flames, and in an instant, everything in front of Isagi was consumed.
Beyond the mist-gate lay an enormous temple.
Aside from its ornate floor, walls, and ceiling, there was nothing else inside — a completely open space, built for nothing but an all-out battle between combatants with no need to hold back. A perfect boss room.
But that was precisely the problem!!
The space was too large.
And yet — infuriatingly, perfectly — no matter where you stood inside it, you could still hear Alfia's cool, detached "voice" without fail.
Isagi's hands shot up instantly, raising his shields.
But this time, no familiar impact came crashing into them.
Instead, the crimson beam Absolute Evil had spat forward made contact with the surface of his great shield first.
The steel began to glow red as the heat tore through it.
Almost on instinct, Isagi hurled the shield away from himself. Visibly, unmistakably — the great shield that had held firm against Alfia's sonic magic was burned clean through by Absolute Evil's breath. And the red, viscous liquid that followed — thick as magma — kept spreading.
Within seconds, the great shield melted completely, swallowed whole by the crimson lava.
Absolute Evil's breath was not a magic attack — which meant the specialized, mass-produced great shields he'd crafted specifically to counter Alfia's sonic magic were completely useless against it.
Countered.
Absolutely, deliberately countered.
Just as he'd suspected — the battle in the Church had been, in some fundamental sense, a "test!"
[The Dungeon is alive.]
It had been watching his every fight, every moment, without exception.
So.
The moment it identified the trump card he'd used to overcome his enemy — it immediately halted the fight, devised a countermeasure, and only then allowed the boss battle to resume.
And on top of that.
What had been a single boss was now a dual boss. It was like piling garbage on top of garbage!!
While Isagi was still cursing the Dungeon under his breath —
An invisible shockwave slammed into him, launching him off his feet. He hit the wall behind him hard.
The sheer force of it pinned him there, completely unable to move.
And in that moment.
Absolute Evil was already in his face — almost nose-to-nose — jaw thrown wide again, the deep crimson breath already building in its throat, ready to be discharged point-blank.
A few minutes later.
The girls waiting outside watched as a tiny blue point of light drifted out from beyond the mist-gate.
Then the boy hauled himself wearily upright in front of the ghost-buddha resurrection point.
The [Wolf's Banquet] that had covered him was barely holding its shape — writhing, twisting, frantically knitting itself back together.
Heith and Ryuu both immediately flung healing spells his way.
But it was a drop in the ocean.
The armor's self-repair was devouring the boy's own vitality at a ferocious rate. The agony was so severe that Isagi himself could barely stay upright.
But none of that really mattered.
What mattered was —
Looking back at the massive mist-gate, Isagi let the corner of his mouth curl into a grin.
He was completely certain now.
"Alfia" and "Absolute Evil" beyond that gate — the strongest adventurer and the strongest monster who had once existed within Rivira — were, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the final bosses of this place.
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Uchiha Reborn in Jujutsu Kaisen: The System Thinks I'm in Konoha, but I'm Not
Let's hit these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!