At this point, according to the map, Leo's group still had a full half of the distance to go before reaching the Pantry.
In other words, this green flesh wall was blocking the middle of the passage to the Pantry, and it completely sealed off the entire enormous corridor of Floor 24.
It had to be at least ten meters in both length and width, and at the center of the flesh wall there was a door like overlapping petals, or rather an organ resembling a mouth, its diameter large enough that even a large-class monster could easily pass through. It was probably the entrance and exit on the wall.
Only, this entrance was now tightly shut, not moving in the slightest, and it gave off some kind of sharp, foul stench, exactly like the reek of rot, so much so that even the keen-nosed Lulune couldn't help letting out a "yuck" and backed away, pinching her nose.
"What on earth is this?"
"Can the Dungeon even grow something like this?"
"I've never seen this kind of terrain structure before!"
"It seems to be alive!"
The Hermes Familia members all couldn't help speaking up one after another, and one of them examined the flesh wall and made a hair-raising judgment.
"...Alive?"
Ais glanced at the nauseating flesh wall, gently reached out a hand, and touched the surface of the wall.
She felt a warmth, like the temperature of human skin, along with a faint pulsing similar to a heartbeat. No wonder someone said it was alive.
"Should we try another route?"
Lulune offered that suggestion.
There wasn't only one route to the Pantry. They'd taken the shortest path, but there were other routes leading to the Pantry as well.
But Lulune had barely gotten the words out when Leo, who had stayed silent all this while, spoke up.
"No point wasting the effort." Leo said calmly. "If my guess is right, the other routes are definitely blocked too."
"Otherwise, this floor wouldn't have had an Irregular with the monster numbers surging like this."
At those words, everyone turned to look at Leo at once.
"You mean the reason the monster numbers surged so abnormally is this flesh wall?"
Asfi asked, a little surprised.
"That's right." Leo nodded. "The Pantry is the monsters' cafeteria, the supply station that keeps their life activities going."
"Whenever the monsters feel hungry, they go to the Pantry on their own to fill their stomachs."
"In that case, if they get blocked on the way to the Pantry and can't get in at all, what do you think they'd do?"
Hearing this, everyone else froze, while a sharp glint flashed in Asfi's eyes and she immediately understood.
"I see!" Asfi said, a little excited. "The Irregular happening on Floor 24 isn't a monster number surge at all, it's a mass monster migration!"
"Because this northern Pantry got blocked, the monsters that came here can't get in, can't ease their hunger or take in nutrition, so they migrate south as a group, causing something that looks like a surge in monster numbers!"
"The monster numbers haven't actually surged at all, they've just all headed south, and that's what gives the impression of a monster number surge!"
Of Floor 24's three Pantries, aside from the one to the north, the other two were both in the south.
With the northern Pantry blocked, all the monsters had to migrate south.
This mass migration naturally crowded them together, forming a monster surge.
The reason adventurers active on Floor 24 got trapped or harmed was that they had the bad luck to run into those starving monsters in the middle of the great migration.
To those monsters, these adventurers were practically food delivered right to their door.
They were starving, and meat came running over on its own, so how could they not pounce?
So what had made adventurers miserable these past few days wasn't an abnormal surge in monster numbers, but that the monsters wandering everywhere in search of food, traveling from the northern end of the floor to the southern end, crossed every path along the way. As a result even the regular routes adventurers usually took were packed solid with them, and that was what created the whole string of monster-number-surge phenomena.
"So that's what it was..."
Everyone came to a realization.
Only Ais, staring at that flesh wall, said one thing.
"Then this wall... how did it appear?"
The people who had just understood everything all fell silent again.
That question hit right at the crux of it.
"Who knows." Leo laughed offhandedly. "One thing's for sure, there's definitely nothing good behind it."
That one line filled the atmosphere on the scene with tension.
"Asfi." Lulune had gotten scared, and said in a small voice. "What do we do?"
"What else can we do?" Asfi sighed. "We can only press on. We know the reason the monster numbers went up abnormally, but we still haven't figured out why this flesh wall appeared or what's behind it."
The purpose of their trip wasn't only to uncover the truth, but also to deal with the source.
"Let's move." Asfi didn't mince words, saying bluntly. "Destroy this flesh wall."
Only then could they keep going.
Ais immediately gripped Desperate's hilt, took a few steps forward, and looked ready to draw her sword and hack at the wall.
"I'll do it."
Leo quickly grabbed the girl's shoulder, stopping her with a wry look, and extended a hand toward the flesh wall.
"Meteor Dance!"
Discarding the chant, he used the Magic's name directly as the trigger to activate this Magic.
With a roar and an explosion, a thick meteor blasted the flesh wall apart, wrecking the entire "door" section that served as the entrance and opening up a large hole.
"Go!"
Leo took the lead and walked in, Ais followed without hesitation, and then Asfi and the others walked into the flesh wall too, invading the other side of it very smoothly.
Once the last person had walked into the flesh wall, the green flesh wall suddenly let out a revolting squirming sound, and it actually began to heal itself.
Before long, the wall had completely healed, sealing off the entrance again.
But Leo and the others were in no mood to pay attention to this flesh wall anymore.
Their attention had already been drawn by the strange scene around them.
"D-did it all really turn into this disgusting state?!"
Lulune wailed, pinching her nose, and everyone else knitted their brows too.
It was because the corridor inside the wall had all turned green. Whether the walls, the ceiling, or even the floor, none was an exception, all of it replaced by green flesh and blood.
It gave everyone the illusion that they had walked into the body of some giant creature and come to its stomach tract, which was why the air was full of that reek of rot. To adventurers with keen noses, it was sheer hellish torment.
Leo took a glance around, then abruptly fixed his gaze on the walls and ceiling.
There, growing on them, were some withered flowers of gaudy colors glowing with a faint phosphorescence.
Ais walked forward a stretch and came upon a heap of dust scattered unnaturally across the ground.
"This is a monster's corpse, isn't it?"
Lulune followed after her, and seeing this, immediately spoke up in disbelief.
"Clearly, yes."
Asfi came forward too, poked around in the scattered dust a few times with the shortsword in her hand, and then found drop items like claws or fangs.
"Why would there be monster corpses in a place like this?"
Lulune looked a little uneasy, and everyone began to feel tense.
If monsters had been killed, that proved there was danger here enough to cost you your life.
...No magic stones.
What Ais paid attention to was different from the others.
She noticed that this dust only had drop items, no magic stones.
She knew very well what that meant.
To be so fixated on magic stones that contained Magic, yet disdain drop items, absolutely wasn't an adventurer's style. It could only be a monster that craved Magic.
The images of those gaudy-colored worms and Violas flashed through Ais's mind.
Just then, Leo suddenly spoke up.
"Here they come!"
His voice was so sudden that it instantly ignited the whole tense atmosphere.
Ais's head snapped up too, as if she had finally sensed something familiar, and she drew her sword in a flash.
"Wh-what's coming?!"
Lulune was thrown into a panic, but Asfi pressed a hand down on her.
"Everyone! On guard!"
At Asfi's shout, at the far end of the corridor ahead, abnormal movement finally appeared.
It was the sound of some colossal thing stirring.
They seemed to be jostling against one another, as if drawn over by something, emerging from the darkness.
Long, elongated bodies, gaudy-colored surfaces, front ends gaping open like oral cavities, dripping slime without pause, petals lined with sharp teeth.
"It's those Violas!"
Lulune let out a scream.
Almost at the same moment, the Violas emerging from the darkness let out cracked, grating cries.
Like long worms squeezing one after another through the passage, they bashed against the green flesh wall as they charged over with overwhelming force.
"Intercept! Intercept!"
Asfi loudly gave the order, and everyone drew their weapons, raised their shields, spread into formation, and met the Violas' assault.
Leo didn't draw his sword right away, but instead came to the side of Ais, who had already drawn hers.
"Looks like we didn't come to the wrong place."
Leo looked at those Violas ahead and said this.
"Mm."
Ais stared hard at those Violas, her hand on her sword tightening bit by bit.
Since there were Violas here, that proved the person controlling the Violas was here too.
That mysterious woman who had appeared on Floor 18 and called her "Aria" was right here.
It was as if a fire had ignited in Ais's heart.
"This time... I won't let her get away again."
The blonde swordswoman swore this to herself.
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