The next day, the city was in an uproar.
The Guild had officially announced the news of Leo and the others leveling up, which raised the city's excitement another notch.
Thanks to that, the Loki Familia members who left the headquarters to handle the spoils brought back from the expedition drew even more attention and even warmer hospitality than the day before. Quite a few people even asked them about the Familia's leaders and executives.
Because today, none of the Familia's leaders or executives had shown their faces on the streets. They were all staying inside the headquarters.
"Come to the office for a meeting."
Finn had sent word to each of the executives early on, forcing everyone to put down what they were doing and head toward the captain's office in the north tower.
Leo, who had planned to test his skills a bit and work on the mind-body dissonance that had appeared after leveling up, had to put down Starlight too, give up morning training with Ais in the courtyard, and go with her to the captain's office.
By the time the two of them arrived, everyone else was already there.
"You two sure took your time. Sit down."
Loki, sitting on the desk with no dignity whatsoever, waved at her two treasures and had them take the chairs in the corner.
Yes, for this meeting, even Loki, their goddess, had come.
Finn sat behind the desk with Riveria standing at his side, Gareth sat in a chair off to the side, and beyond them were Tiona, Tione, and Bete.
Tione was pouring tea for Finn, fawning over him so obviously that Tiona turned to look the other way as if she couldn't stand the sight.
Bete had his arms crossed and leaned against the corner of the wall, looking impatient.
With Leo and Ais walking in, the upper ranks of Loki Familia were all present.
"I called you here to discuss the matter of the defiled Spirit."
Finn named the subject of the meeting without any preamble, and the air in the office grew heavier.
Ais, who had just sat down, straightened her back and turned her eyes to Finn.
Leo nodded, thinking that this was what he had expected.
The matter had been urgent from the start. Because of it, the entire force had been made to speed up its march home under Finn's orders on the return leg of the expedition, covering the whole road back in less than five days to bring the news up to the surface.
Yesterday had been the first day after their return. The exhaustion of the expedition had not fully worn off, no one had settled down yet, and with all the miscellaneous business on top of that, Finn and the others had deliberately not brought it up, letting everyone have one day to cut loose.
But it was only that one day.
A situation this urgent could not be put off any longer.
So today, they had to start dealing with it.
"A defiled Spirit, huh..."
Loki, sitting cross-legged on the desk, made a sound that could have been wonder or could have been annoyance, and spoke in a tone hard to read.
"To think that a Spirit sent down by us gods in the past to save the Human race would end up becoming the root of evil threatening the city. Anything really can happen in the lower world."
Even though Finn and the others had told her about this the moment they got back, Loki still found herself sighing over it today.
That kind of unknown, uncanny thing that not even the gods could predict was startling and thrilling, and at the same time left one genuinely at a loss.
Everyone thought back to that terrible monster on the 59th floor, and their faces tightened one after another.
In the end, it was Riveria who broke the silence first.
"At this point we can say with reasonable certainty that the existence the Creatures have repeatedly referred to as 'She' is, in truth, the defiled Spirit that reversed and fell in the Dungeon back in ancient times."
"The fallen Spirit wants to escape the Dungeon, leave the underground, and come to the surface. That is the root of all of it."
"To that end, 'She' created guards called Creatures, and the Creatures joined hands with the remnants of Evilus, who want to create chaos, and on top of that there is this god of unknown origin, Enyo. Several forces have united for the same purpose, moving in the shadows, seeking to destroy Babel, destroy Orario, and let 'Her' return to the surface."
Riveria had barely finished when Gareth picked up.
"To accomplish that goal, the enemy borrowed the defiled Spirit's power to create these so-called jeweled fetuses and transported them up here."
"They only need to use the nutrients produced in abundance in the Dungeon's Pantries to raise the fetuses and hatch them, then have a fetus parasitize a powerful monster and fuse with it. After that they can use gaudy monsters like Violas and worms as tentacles to gather and continuously take in magic stones, gaining further nutrients and power until it matures and emerges as a Spirit avatar, and with the overwhelming power of those beings they can destroy the city."
"So the enemy has only one objective: to summon a Spirit avatar on the surface."
A monster powerful enough to sweep aside the entire main force of Loki Familia on its own. Once one was summoned on the surface, and if there were several of them at that, hardly anyone in the Labyrinth City of Orario would be able to stand against them.
If even the city's strongest Familia could barely defeat a single one, then with a few of them appearing in the city, destroying the whole Labyrinth City of Orario would be no wild fantasy.
"This is no small matter. As members of this city, and more than that as children of the lower world, we can't stand by and do nothing."
Finn gave the conclusion.
"If Orario really is destroyed, the Dungeon will lose the fortress city that manages it and run completely wild. Countless monsters will pour up from underground with the seal gone and spread across the whole world in one go."
"When that happens, the age when the world was trampled by the monsters of the Dungeon, the age that the ancient heroes worked so hard to bring to an end, will come again, and we adventurers will lose our reason to exist. We won't be able to adventure anymore, we won't be able to explore the labyrinth anymore, and most of a Familia's reason for existing will be gone."
"Publicly and privately, this is something we cannot allow."
To that, no one could raise any objection.
As one corner of the city's strongest Familias, how could they tolerate anyone destroying the city they depended on to live?
Whether for the lower world, for Orario, or for the Familia itself, Loki Familia could not stand by and watch.
"We have to stop them."
Finn's gaze swept over each of them.
"The content of this meeting is to settle on our approach for dealing with these enemies."
Tiona was the first to raise her hand, looking like she wanted to ask something.
"Tiona, do you have a question?"
Riveria asked at once.
"Not a question, exactly." Tiona wasn't shy about it and said it straight out. "It's just, if we're going to deal with those Creatures, don't we have to find them first?"
"Otherwise, how are we supposed to deal with them?"
That question did put a finger on the key point.
No one had any objection to the decision to deal with the defiled Spirit and the rest of them.
It wasn't a matter of wanting to or not. Not dealing with them was not an option.
If these dangerous figures hiding in the shadows, eyeing Orario all this time, weren't taken care of, Orario could run into danger at any moment, and that was something nobody wanted to see.
Besides, as the city's strongest Familia, they were one of Orario's greatest fighting forces to begin with. If the enemy intended to move against Orario, they were bound to come after them.
The conflict between the two sides could no longer be reconciled. It had to be settled with life and death, to say nothing of the fact that the other side included remnants of Evilus.
After all, five years ago, Loki Familia had been the main force that put a definitive end to the city's Dark Age and wiped out a great many members of Evilus.
The two sides had long been enemies who would fight until one of them was dead. Now that they knew the others existed, were they supposed to just sit still and wait to be killed instead of dealing with them?
That made no sense.
On top of that, everyone present had lived through the fight with the defiled Spirit and knew how powerful and dangerous that fallen existence was. If they could strangle it before it came into its own, so much the better.
The problem was that the enemy was in the dark and they were in the light. How were they supposed to go after them?
They didn't even know where the enemy was.
Well, Leo did know where the enemy's base was.
He was Lv.6 now, and the enemy's true nature had already been exposed, so there was no more need to worry about this and that. They could take the main force straight to their door and put an end to the trouble for good.
Leo was just working out his lines, thinking about how to expose the location of the enemy's base naturally, when Loki spoke.
"On that point, I've got a lead already."
Loki's words drew everyone's eyes to her.
Leo looked over with some surprise too, only to find that Loki was looking at him.
"Come to think of it, we've got you to thank for the tip-off, kid."
Loki said it with feeling, which made everyone else curious.
Ais, sitting next to Leo, gave him a look that said "what did you do," and for a moment Leo couldn't quite keep up.
He tipped her off?
Tipped her off about what?
Could it be...
Just as a bit of a lead formed in Leo's mind, Loki gave the answer.
"Before you all went on the expedition, Leo told me he suspected Dionysus was connected to the 'Enyo' those Creatures keep mentioning, and said I'd better keep an eye on him and look into him properly."
Loki hadn't forgotten about it. She had set to work on it immediately while Leo and the others were away on the expedition.
Not only had she gone and probed him in person, she had also done as Leo suggested and gone to talk the matter over with that poor-god shorty she couldn't stand the sight of.
From that conversation, Loki had learned what Dionysus really was.
"That god, back in Heaven, once tried to get the gods slaughtering each other."
At those words, everyone present fell silent.
The gods slaughtering each other!
It was not an impossible thing.
The most recent example was right in front of them. Loki herself.
Never mind that she was now so protective of her own that her love for her children bordered on spoiling them, that she drank all day, chased women, and was about as improper and unreliable as it was possible to be. Back in Heaven, Loki had been called an Evil God.
She had once incited the gods in Heaven to slaughter one another and had personally engineered the catastrophe known as Ragnarok. She was an extraordinarily violent deity who never played by the rules and had destructive tendencies of thought, and for that she had even earned the ridiculous title of Heaven's Number One Imp.
After coming down to the lower world, Loki's personality had changed a great deal, but that did not mean other gods were the same.
If anything, that a deity as dangerous as Loki had become so law-abiding after coming to the lower world had astonished a great many gods who knew her.
As far as those gods who knew her were concerned, it would have been no surprise at all if Loki had been out there wreaking havoc in the lower world just like the Evil Gods of Evilus.
As eternal, undying beings, the gods' personalities were extremely distinct and very difficult to change in any obvious way.
So a god like Loki, with such a large shift in tendencies, was in fact a rare exception.
Most gods were unchanging, possessing a powerful divinity that would not be easily disturbed or influenced by outside factors.
Those Evil Gods who formed Evilus had, back in Heaven, mostly been lawless existences as well.
Taking that into account, Loki had finally developed a great deal of wariness and caution toward this god Dionysus, and had begun sending people to tail him.
And then...
"The people I sent to tail him got attacked by some mystery figure. All of them died."
That line of Loki's made everyone present unable to stay seated.
"Died?"
"Someone died?"
"Who?!"
Tiona, Tione, and Bete were all shocked and stood up straight.
"Relax, relax, they weren't our Familia's people." Loki put out a hand to calm them down and said with a wry smile, "I was scared of slipping up in front of that guy and getting caught out, so I put the tailing job out through black market channels. The ones who died were all shady lowlifes."
Only then did everyone let out a breath.
Leo included.
Thank goodness. Their goddess only looked unreliable. Her head worked as well as anyone's, and she had more tricks up her sleeve than anyone, and she was careful when care was called for. If some Familia members had been sacrificed over this, then as the one who had pushed for it, Leo would have felt guilty too.
"So you're saying Lord Dionysus is Enyo, then?"
Tione raised the question.
"Whether he's Enyo or not, I don't know, but there's definitely something wrong with him." Loki shrugged. "Once I confirmed that, I made a point of investigating him. Dug up everything down to what that bastard eats for all three meals."
"Burned through a lot of connections and a lot of coin, and I finally turned up one thing."
"Every so often that guy vanishes without a trace. Nobody knows where he goes."
"But every time before he disappears, he passes through one particular place."
Loki's finger pointed at a corner of a map that had been spread out on the desk all along.
It was a map of the Labyrinth City of Orario's layout.
The place Loki pointed to was a large residential district in the southeast section of the city.
"Hey, isn't this..."
Even Bete let out a startled sound once he saw what place it was.
Loki laughed, and named it.
"Daedalus Street."
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