That night, no one knew what was happening.
The city's residents were still singing of Loki Familia's great feat, and talk of it showed no sign of dying down.
None of the city's major Familias knew either that on this very night, a part of the strongest Familia, the one everyone was praising, was slipping down into a remote underground no one knew about, burrowing into a den of monsters capable of destroying the entire Labyrinth City.
Even Leo, Riveria, Loki, and the others left waiting outside the orichalcum door had no idea what was happening inside the man-made labyrinth beyond it.
All they knew was that at the start, the members Finn had assigned to the scout group could still bring back news and intelligence now and then, but at some point those members stopped bringing back anything new, and as time passed the whole waiting group grew restless.
"...They couldn't have run into trouble, could they?"
Loki muttered the words without thinking, and they filled the whole waiting group with a sharp unease.
Riveria's brow stayed furrowed, Line kept wringing her hands anxiously, and the rest either paced or talked in low, agitated voices, thickening the uneasy atmosphere.
Leo managed to stay calm at first, but when he felt the star beasts he had summoned break their connection with him one after another, until all six had vanished, he finally opened his eyes.
And just as Leo was about to charge in regardless of everything, the strange sight... appeared.
A pillar of light that pierced from earth to sky suddenly shot up from underground, smashing through the surface and flying toward the heavens.
It climbed and climbed, as though sailing toward the cosmos.
It burst up out of the earth like a giant column standing at the edge of the sky, bright and dazzling.
One end joined to the ground, the other to the sky, it was blindingly harsh in the black night, lighting up everything, driving away the darkness and the night, and spilling its glow across the whole city.
In that moment, it was not only the Labyrinth City of Orario. Anywhere on the surface seemed able to observe this dazzling pillar of light, which stole away all color and stole away everyone's vision as well.
In the city, human and god alike had their hearts seized in that instant by that white, beautiful, tragic pillar of light.
They stared blankly at the pillar that ran from earth to sky, and only after a long while did the uproar break out.
"It's a return light!"
"It's a return light!"
"Who? Who got sent back?!"
"Why would a god suddenly be sent back?!"
Ordinary residents who knew nothing aside, every being with some knowledge was, without exception, shocked.
They recognized that the pillar of light was not a natural phenomenon, nor some unknown power, but the vehicle used to send a god back to Heaven.
The return light, the thing that appeared only when a god in the lower world suffered an unavoidable grave wound and was about to die.
After a god of the lower world took an unavoidable grave wound, the Arcanum sealed within them since their descent to the lower world would be released, and the pillar of light, sensing the Arcanum appearing in the lower world, would appear along with it, enveloping that god and returning them to Heaven.
In other words, it was the thing that announced a god's defeat in the entertainment called the lower world, a complete Game Over.
Its appearance meant that at this very moment, a god had already fallen into a dying state, the Arcanum within released, and was now being sent back to Heaven.
It threw all of Orario into confusion, into a frantic storm of heated speculation.
But Leo and the others waiting in front of the orichalcum door were struck by a terrifying shock the instant the return light appeared.
The kinetic force of the return light breaking the surface, rushing up out of the earth and straight into the sky, turned into a real physical shock that not only shook the entire man-made labyrinth but shook the areas near it as well.
The violent tremor hit the waiting group, forcing all of them to take that fierce impact without warning.
Cries went up from the group. Some were knocked flat, some staggered and swayed on unsteady feet, and others collided and fell in a heap, throwing the whole formation into disorder.
"Ah!"
Line was one of those who lost her footing, and with a cry she nearly went down, until Leo moved quickly and caught her in his arms, steadying her.
"Careful!"
Riveria caught Loki, who had fallen to the ground with no dignity at all, and shielded her goddess.
"Damn it! Just who got sent back?!"
Loki paid no attention to her own state and stared toward the direction the return light had risen from, her face turning terrible.
An overwhelming shock that drowned out the adventurers' five senses invaded the area, cracking the sewers apart, the ceiling overhead shedding chunks of stone that crashed down, cracks and collapses appearing all around one after another.
The wave of light connecting sky and earth became a true disaster to Leo and the others, leaving them in chaos as though caught in a natural catastrophe.
"No good! We can't stay here!" Riveria lifted Loki up and shouted in Leo's direction. "Leo! Organize everyone and pull back!"
Leo knew this was no time to be precious about anything. He forced himself calm, picked Line up in the same way, and shouted to the people around him.
"Nobody panic! Head back the way we came, now! Get out of this area!"
Under Leo's direction, Anakitty and Alicia hurried to lead their groups out as well, everyone resisting the violent quaking of the ground and running for their lives.
Under these conditions the ceiling overhead rained down more and more fragments, and those fragments grew larger and larger, until whole slabs were dropping, each one big enough to crush a person to death.
Amid the bursts of shattering stone, the adventurers struck out one after another, breaking the falling slabs and shielding the companions who couldn't react in time or were too slow to retreat.
Anakitty, Alicia, and the other core figures of the Second Army all took action, and even Leo, while carrying Line, struck several times, leaping up to shatter a few of the huge falling rocks.
Under these conditions they charged out of that underground space, out along the spiral stairs leading to the orichalcum door, into the sewers, and escaped with their lives.
But in the next second, an even stranger situation came.
Just as the seemingly endless pillar of light faded, showing signs of ending, and the astonishing roar and tremors vanished along with it, accompanied by a nauseating squirming sound, countless hideous lumps of flesh came welling up from below.
It was a terrible turbid flood of green flesh that flooded the entire passage and underground space in an instant, leaving not the slightest gap.
Endless green flesh poured out of the ground, crushing rock, swallowing everything, like a green murky tide, sickening tumors of flesh squirming and multiplying without pause, filling the sewers one after another at a shocking speed and spreading out in every direction.
Side passages, stairways, vertical shafts... nothing was spared. The green flesh buried everything that could be called space.
"That's... the seedbed that appeared on Floor 59...?!"
Riveria's face changed at the sight.
Leo's pupils contracted as though he had seen a true horror, and he shouted at the top of his voice.
"Run! Don't look back! If that green flesh touches you, you're dead!"
That green flesh devoured all the nutrients it could devour, including human flesh and blood, using them as fuel for its own multiplication, expanding the range it could reach.
"Hurry! Get out of here!"
Leo led the charge, carrying Line, who still hadn't caught up with what was happening and wore a stunned expression, running in the direction opposite the flood of green flesh.
Seeing this, the others followed without a second thought, the whole passage filling with the ragged sound of their footsteps as they ran with everything they had.
The seedbed that had been used to cultivate those brightly colored monsters multiplied and spread at a shocking, visible speed, chasing after the fleeing adventurers like a monster that had grown a will of its own and was filled with malice.
It was more violent than any seedbed Leo and the others had seen before, wringing out every life present in this space, turning everything it passed into an explosive tide of green flesh, sending the adventurers scattering in panic.
"No good! It's going to catch up!"
Line finally reacted, poking her head out of Leo's arms and looking at the multiplying, squirming, devouring green flesh behind them, her pretty face going white.
"Leo!"
Riveria, running at full speed with Loki in her arms, shouted at Leo again.
Leo more or less understood what Riveria meant, and without hesitation he raised a hand toward the ceiling.
"Meteor Dance!"
A dazzling star magic circle spread out beneath him, and starlight turned into a pillar of light that, while lesser than the return light, was still immense, blasting into the sewer ceiling.
The meteor pillar destroyed the sewers in an instant and pierced up to the surface, opening a huge hole in the ground in some corner of Daedalus Street and throwing up a sky full of rubble and dust.
"Go!"
Leo took the lead and leapt, using the falling chunks of stone as footholds, jumping again and again, and finally leapt out of the sewers, up to the surface, and saw the night sky outside.
"Everyone up! Hurry!"
At Riveria's order, everyone began climbing and leaping upward, squeezing out of the sewers as fast as they could and rushing outside.
The tide formed by the green flesh was still welling outward. No sooner had Leo and the others cleared the sewers than it came bursting up out of the underground after them, reaching the surface.
Without the confines of a narrow space, the green flesh spread out unrestrained in every direction, its aggressiveness could not have been any greater.
"Wh, what is that?"
"A monster?"
"You've got to be kidding, what monster looks like that?"
The residents of Daedalus Street around them were alarmed, some poking their heads out of buildings, some appearing from nearby, and as they looked at the sickening green flesh pouring out of the ground, terror spread across their faces one by one.
Before Leo and the others could even warn them, these people took off running as though their parents had shorted them two legs, running for their lives to get out of the area.
That saved Leo and the others a good deal of trouble, letting them run without holding back for anyone's sake.
The green flesh went on expanding the area it covered until it had swallowed everything within a few dozen meters, and only then did it slowly stop multiplying.
"Is, is it over?"
The Loki Familia members who had run up onto the surrounding buildings finally stopped, looking at the green flesh with the shock still on their faces.
The green flesh had stopped multiplying, but it still squirmed ceaselessly as though it had a will, some of it crawling up the walls of buildings and covering them, turning everywhere it passed into seedbed.
"...What on earth happened?"
Riveria set down the Loki she had been carrying, her pretty face slightly twisted as she voiced the question no one could answer.
"What about the captain and the others?"
"Don't tell me they've already been swallowed by that green flesh?"
"Impossible! That's absolutely impossible!"
"Then where are they?"
"We never saw them come out!"
The members around them began to panic too, arguing back and forth, one after another, turning the scene into chaos.
"Everyone..."
Line, whom Leo had also set down, couldn't help calling out, but her voice was so faint it sounded like weeping.
Leo stood at the edge of the rooftop looking down, glanced at the squirming green flesh, then abruptly turned his head toward the direction where the return light had slowly been fading.
In the next instant, blinding starlight burst out over Leo's whole body, and he turned into a comet, flying toward where the pillar of light had been.
"Leo!?"
"Mr. Leo!"
Someone called to him from behind, but Leo did not turn his head.
Leo simply flew, without stopping, toward the place where the return light had vanished, faster and faster.
At his current flight speed, it would take him only a few dozen seconds to fly clear of Orario, and the location of that return light was within Daedalus Street, not far from him at all.
So Leo arrived there quickly and saw the huge hole the return light had punched open.
At the same moment he arrived, sickening green flesh came pouring out of that hole like a volcanic eruption, surging with tremendous force, exactly like a monster's roar, brimming up and spilling out of the hole's interior.
And before the huge hole was completely plugged by the green flesh, before it was filled with hideous lumps of flesh, Leo saw figures desperately escaping from it.
Inside there was Bete, the werewolf youth, his face twisted as he carried two people, there were the Amazoness twins leaping out in a shouting, disheveled mess, there was Raul crying and yelling, and there were the Pallum leader and the Dwarf great warrior bringing up the rear.
And of course, there was that golden girl who rode the wind upward, beautiful as an Elf.
"Ais!!"
Leo stopped his flight, his figure emerging from the protective starlight, and shouted toward Ais.
"Leo!"
Ais, who had leapt high into the air and escaped with her life, was carrying Lefiya in her arms. Hearing the voice she searched for its source and saw the youth who had appeared in the brilliant starlight.
The moment they saw each other, both of them moved toward the other without hesitation.
Only, the chaos below still went on, and would not settle for a long time.
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This side story is now COMPLETE at 191 chapters.
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