Sleeping in the Dungeon, for some reason, never brought any dreams.
At first.
Isagi hadn't paid the matter any mind at all, simply chalking it up to intense concentration and exhaustion.
Until, quite abruptly, it was Ais who first brought the question up.
As it turned out, sleeping in the Dungeon was supposed to bring dreams.
For instance, the dreams the girl so often had—about her early childhood with her father and mother, and that all-devouring pitch-black darkness.
Those nightmare-like scenes had tormented Ais for many years, and the deeper she went into the Dungeon, the more intense they grew. Yet ever since joining the boy's party, one day she suddenly realized with a start that it seemed she hadn't had that dream in a very, very long time.
And after talking it over with her companions, Ryuu-senpai, Tiona, and even Miss Heith who had joined later, all seemed to have noticed the same thing.
Ryuu-senpai and Heith hadn't been to the Dungeon in a long while, so they "didn't quite remember."
As for Tiona, well, no need to even mention her—she was an idiot, so that was just how it was.
And as for Isagi and Lefiya, the two of them had been in this distinctive Dungeon from the very beginning, so naturally they never felt anything was out of place.
Until.
Once Ais pointed it out.
Only then did everyone belatedly realize that, within their own special Dungeon, none of them ever dreamed.
Did this carry some special significance?
Isagi didn't understand. He only thought of the [Dark Hall]—the one he always visited each time he finished a Dungeon adventure and returned to the surface, the one that could even drag others into his own dreamscape.
The Dungeon was the "Mother of Darkness."
And within the human conception, [Darkness] naturally included [Night], which in turn gave rise to the so-called [Dreamscape].
This, then.
Gave Isagi a very curious idea.
And that was: do monsters dream?
Perhaps this question could be answered by seeking out the Xenos, but strictly speaking, they no longer counted as monsters.
And the Xenos did dream. Marie, along with many other Xenos, had previously been pulled in by the Dungeon while dreaming, made to serve as "NPCs."
Isagi had once felt nothing in particular about this, but thinking about it now, perhaps some secret lay hidden within…
When this adventure ended and they returned to the city, it was the dead of night.
The city was perfectly quiet.
The spring sky was lovely; in the night hours, the stars were sparse and the moon bright, with little wisps of cloud hanging at the very edge of one's vision, wearing an air of cool indifference.
As always, they rode the elevator, so everyone set out from Daedalus Street this time. After leaving, they came out onto East Main Street, and only upon reaching here could they hear the somewhat noisy clamor drifting over from the Magic Stone factory not far off, as well as from the Vakara Red House, the base of the Hephaestus Familia.
Because it was so late, everyone naturally headed home to their own places first; as for compiling the intelligence from the adventure, there was no rush—they could pull it all together tomorrow.
And so they parted ways.
Isagi and the members of Loki Familia still bid farewell first at Central Park to Hedin of the Freya Familia and Miss Heith and the others, then walked together along North Main Street all the way to its end. But this time, Ais was extremely firm, under the pretext of needing to "discuss" things with Lefiya and Ryuu-senpai and the others.
She didn't return to Twilight Manor, but instead followed everyone back to the Garden of Stars, leaving Miss Riveria rather "at a loss" about it.
The night deepened.
Isagi finished his bath, ate a late-night snack, and watched the girls chattering as they scurried back to their rooms. As for himself, he lay alone on the long sofa in the empty living room, switched off the light, and pondered something by himself in the darkness.
In his hand he held a magic gem.
It was the thing dropped after defeating that monster called the "Sword Saint" earlier. According to Cecil's appraisal just now, it counted as a rather fine, high-grade item.
Its effect was the ability to use a magic called "Inherited Blood."
Isagi gave it a try.
A deep crimson color would spread across the entirety of his weapon, and then a strange sensation would take control of his hands, his body suddenly fighting on its own accord—somewhat like his own [Wolf's Feast], both being magic that forced the body into motion.
Perhaps it could be given to Lefiya or Miss Heith and the others to use in a critical moment.
This thing definitely had side effects.
Even for things the body couldn't accomplish, it would forcibly drag your body into doing them, and the result would naturally lead to ruin.
What Isagi cared about wasn't actually the gem's function.
Through the adventures of this period, he had accumulated quite a few similar materials. The BOSSes within the Dungeon even gave the impression of growing more and more numerous.
Nothing else to say about it.
"S"-rank hunters and prey really were everywhere. What Isagi was pondering, as ever, was a certain piece of lore contained within this gem.
There was a line on it that Isagi found rather intriguing.
[Prey and Hunter, eternally exist.]
This sentence was actually easy to understand. Put abstractly, it meant that as long as there still existed "two fellows," strife was sure to arise, thereby distinguishing the identities of "Hunter" and "Prey."
It wasn't anything complicated.
And according to what the Loki and Freya Familia sides had briefly mentioned on the way back.
Based on what they had encountered during this adventure, it was basically confirmed: from the 25th floor all the way to the low-level [Hunting Grounds] region on the 36th floor, the storyline could roughly be divided into two factions—"the Hunters who came from the deep levels and their administrator" and "the prey represented by the monsters native to each floor."
As it appeared now.
It seemed both sides had their own respective storylines.
On the surface, Isagi and the others had from the very start received guidance from the Hunters, whether it was to hunt down prey, or to seek out the so-called "Divine Miracle," the Monster Rex Two-Headed Dragon on the 27th floor.
But in fact, this band of Hunters had been attacking his side the whole time—no matter how you looked at it, they didn't seem like good people.
Quite the opposite.
After returning this time, once he and the girls, along with the Loki and Freya sides, put their heads together, only then did they belatedly realize.
As for the battles with those "prey"—
The number of times they fled, or refused to fight his side at all, was far greater than with the Hunters.
Of course, most of them still attacked the moment they appeared.
Did this perhaps mean that the storyline of the "prey" was the more reliable one?
But Isagi thought Gareth and Ottar had put it rather well.
And that was….
[We might as well just kill them all.]
When it came down to it, both sides were monsters.
Indeed, there was no need at all to pick a side—just cutting a path straight through would do the trick.
Thinking of it that way, it seemed many problems were readily resolved.
In his hazy, drowsy state.
Isagi fell asleep on the sofa, and then, as always, he arrived in that [Dark Hall] that resembled an ancient castle.
Following the familiar path, before long, in a room on one side of the castle, he caught sight of the little mermaid Marie, soaking in the bathing pool and fast asleep.
This girl was actually snoring away in deep slumber!
For some reason, Isagi had the absurd illusion that "maybe I really did guess the truth earlier."
____
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