Meanwhile, Leo had just squeezed out through the slowly healing flesh wall, and immediately spotted Hermes Familia tangled up in a knot of Violas.
"Archers ready! Fire!"
Asfi hurled out a great volume of Burst Oil while giving orders to the rearguard, sending arrow after arrow flying.
The arrows weren't aimed at the Violas themselves, but at the Burst Oil vials flying toward them.
As the arrows struck home, the Burst Oil detonated on the spot.
Bursts of fire flared up all at once, blossoms of flame bursting open in midair and catching the onrushing Violas in the blast, wounding some and blowing others away, their shrieks rising into a single din.
Hermes Familia, until then hemmed in, seized the opening to break out, and with several burly Dwarves and Beast Humans clearing the way, they charged out of the encirclement.
As they broke through, Asfi and the other middle guards swung their blades at the surrounding Violas, slashing into their bodies and making the wails louder still.
Vanguards handled defense for the breakout, middle guards dealt damage, rearguards gave support, and the whole of Hermes Familia dealt with the incoming Violas in an orderly fashion, managing, unexpectedly, to hold for a while.
People did get hurt in the process, but Hermes Familia had brought more than enough potions and items for this trip, and Asfi arranged rotations from time to time, pulling anyone exhausted or wounded back to the rear to recover.
And so, the whole of Hermes Familia's adventurers adapted to this side of the battlefield at a surprising speed, adapting too to the strength and traits of the Violas, slowly beginning to turn things around and gaining the upper hand.
"Not bad at all."
Leo was a little surprised, but once he thought about Hermes Familia's background, it made sense.
They still fell short of the city's top-tier Familias, Loki Familia, Freya Familia, Ganesha Familia and the rest, but Hermes Familia was an adventurer team that had once reached Floor 37, capable of pushing into the Deep Floors.
A Hermes Familia like that had to be at least Familia rank B, possibly even A.
Add to that Asfi Al Andromeda, that rare master magic-item maker, whose various magic items let her put out combat power rivaling a Lv.5, and mere Violas with such an obvious weakness weren't enough to pose too great a threat to them.
Still...
"They're still too slow at clearing them."
Leo's form flickered, and he swept through like a storm.
Black sword-light flashed into being, turning into a swirl of pitch-black sword dance, cutting all around as his form flickered through like a gale, throwing up a spray of slicing sounds that cut every Viola in his path clean into pieces, dropping them to the ground as corpse-chunks then and there.
"Eligos!"
At the sight, Lulune, in the middle of skirmishing with a Viola, was overjoyed.
"Leo Eligos!"
"He's back!"
The others' eyes lit up too, spirits lifting.
"Just you?" Asfi first let out a breath of relief, then asked, "Where's the Sword Princess?"
"She's still on the other side." Leo flickered up to the very front of the team, facing down a large swarm of Violas, and said without turning his head, "There are enemies over there too, she's handling them. I came to back you up."
As he spoke, Leo unfolded a magic circle and shot out a swarm of dancing meteors, blasting into the Violas charging in as they charged in bellowing, flipping them over amid a roar of impacts.
Seeing the Viola army that she and her people had struggled so hard to handle get pinned down by firepower from Leo alone, Asfi couldn't help but click her tongue, but she still gave decisive orders, finally letting the rearguard Mages begin chanting their Magic.
Until now, because the Violas turned abnormally aggressive toward magic-power sources, the rearguard Mages had been fighting with bows the whole time to avoid being singled out.
But now, with Leo's powerful magic-power reaction up front drawing the Violas, the magic-power reaction the Hermes Familia Mages gave off while chanting counted for nothing by comparison, drawing no attention from the monsters at all.
And so, under the Mages' chants, countless spells took shape.
Flame, lightning, storm, ice and snow... attack Magic of every different attribute was unleashed, streaking across the air like a meteor shower and landing in the center of the Viola swarm.
Violent explosions came one after another, blasting the Violas head over heels.
Leo was likewise pouring out Magic, raising a hand and firing off Meteor Dance without its chant, and however strong the magic-power reaction it produced, the Violas couldn't react and attack under such conditions, pierced, blasted, and torn apart one by one by the thick meteors.
The black longsword split the air for who knew how many times over, cutting off the head of a Viola lunging in from the side and sending the headless length of it crashing to the ground.
"That's the last one."
Leo casually finished off this last remaining Viola, declaring the battle over.
Asfi and the others gathered around at once, coming to Leo's side.
"Are we going to back up the Sword Princess?"
Asfi asked Leo's opinion.
"No, leave that side to Ais." Leo shook his head. "We keep moving forward."
"Is that all right?" Lulune said, a little worried. "That woman's really strong, isn't she?!"
As someone who'd taken part in the Rivira raid, Lulune had witnessed Revis's strength with her own eyes.
Back then, even with Leo and Ais taking turns against her, they hadn't been able to put her down, and had even been overpowered by her, leaving Lulune unable to help worrying about Ais's safety.
"It's fine, the Ais now isn't the Ais from before."
Leo offered a word of reassurance.
And that was the truth.
The Ais now was already Lv.6, stronger than ten days ago by who knew how much, able to overpower Revis even without Ariel, let alone with Ariel as her trump card.
If she were pushed hard enough, made to use even the sealed Avenger the way she had on Floor 37 not long ago, then Revis would be in for a real time of it.
So Leo wasn't the least bit worried that the Ais now would come to harm, unless Revis had someone else helping her.
But would that hot-tempered woman ever let anyone help her deal with Ais?
Anyone could tell it was impossible.
Until she took Ais down with her own hands, Revis would never let the matter rest.
"We'd better hurry to the Pantry. Solving the source of all this matters more than anything else."
At that, Asfi nodded.
Since Leo, a comrade of the same Familia, had said as much, there was no reason for them to object.
Losing a Lv.6 main fighter left them a bit uneasy, but with Leo around, they wouldn't be too short on confidence.
"Then let's move out."
Asfi called out to the Familia members and, falling in behind Leo, they pressed on.
With Ais gone, Leo naturally became the team's top fighting strength, taking point at the very front to clear the way.
Along the way the Violas kept coming, sometimes many, sometimes few, but Leo drove them all back single-handed, and Hermes Familia's people scarcely got a chance to lift a finger.
As the intensity of the fighting climbed higher and the frequency grew greater, Leo had basically adapted to his current level of power, settling his mind and body so the condition of mind-body dissonance wouldn't set in.
That let him fight more and more smoothly, his display growing more and more impressive, until later he didn't even need Magic, cutting down the countless incoming Violas with a single sword like a driving storm, leaving Hermes Familia's people watching in terror and coming to think this rumored Monster Rookie all the more a freak of nature.
"Look up ahead!"
At one point Lulune, serving as scout, spoke up.
Everyone looked toward her voice, and then saw, far down the unbroken corridor ahead, a glow different from the faint phosphorescence given off by the withered flowers on the walls and ceiling.
The glow was blood-red, ominous to look at, yet also somehow beautiful.
"Is that the light of the quartz?"
Someone said this.
At the very edge of the Dungeon, in the Pantry, stood an enormous quartz pillar, and this great crystal column would seep out nutrient fluid to feed the monsters while giving off a mysterious light, forever illuminating that space.
And the light given off by that great red crystal pillar was exactly this red.
Which meant they'd reached their destination.
"Go!"
Leo narrowed his eyes, cut down a Viola with a single stroke, and led the charge through the green-walled maze, running down the flesh-walled corridor where the reek of rot grew ever thicker, into the far end of the passage bleeding red light.
The view before them opened up all at once, and the group made it smoothly into the Pantry, arriving at the destination of this operation.
But once inside the Pantry, everyone slowly came to a halt, struck speechless by the sight before their eyes.
This place, ordinarily used to feed countless monsters, had, like the passage before it, been eroded by the green flesh wall, turned into a vast space like some tumor.
There were none of the withered flowers that grew on the walls and ceiling of the corridors outside; instead, countless flower buds of every size hung down.
And in the deepest part of this huge cavern, coiled around a great red crystal pillar over thirty meters tall, were three enormous monsters.
The monsters' shapes closely resembled the Violas, but their flower-heads were garish to the point of stabbing the eyes, and their bodies were at least ten times larger than a Viola's, their huge frames clinging to the red crystal pillar like snakes, the vine-like tentacles growing from them crawling all over the surface of the great pillar as well, looking like so many blood vessels under the light of the red-glowing quartz, extremely lurid to behold.
If you listened closely, you could hear a throbbing sound like the beating of a pulse, and each time it came, some kind of substance seemed to be drawn away up the quartz pillar in a chain.
Those three huge monster-flowers were like parasites clinging to the red crystal pillar and sucking up its nourishment, slowly drawing away every drop of nutrient fluid seeping from the crystal, their tentacles crawling not only over the surface of the great stone pillar from the roots up, but stretching all the way to the walls, ceiling, and floor of the great cavern, forming the green flesh wall.
Seeing this, who among them could still fail to understand?
The culprit behind the mutation of Floor 24 was these very monsters.
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