But before Amid could think it over, the emerald figure who walked in through the doorway drew all her attention.
"Lady Nine Hell!"
The moment she saw Riveria, Amid instinctively glanced around, but the silver-haired figure who should have been there was nowhere to be seen.
In the time it took to blink, Riveria had reached the counter. Her gaze was distant as she looked down at the girl.
"Miss Amid, there's no need to look. He isn't here."
Coming to her senses, Amid looked at Riveria and pressed her lips together.
"I don't know what you mean, Lady Nine Hell. I wasn't looking for Mr. Noah."
Huh? Had Amid started calling Noah by his first name without me noticing?
A complicated feeling welled up inside Riveria, much like the shock of discovering that the stray cat she'd always fed was accepting food from someone else.
No, that had to be a false impression. Noah wasn't a cat!
"Miss Amid, I never said it was Noah."
Amid's eye twitched. She took a deep breath and lowered her gaze slightly, still managing to stay composed.
"I only mentioned Mr. Noah because he often appears with you. I didn't mean anything else."
Amid was an excellent actor for her age, but how could she possibly fool someone like Riveria, an old—young woman?
Just one look at Amid's soft, pale ears, faintly tinged red, was enough for Riveria to figure out what was going on. Her feelings immediately grew complicated.
Normally, if Riveria saw Noah lure away an outstanding member of another Familia—especially a genius like Amid—she would have been delighted...
The problem was that her own Familia had Ais!
Riveria didn't know when Noah and Ais had become so close, but what was done was done!
Ais had clearly set her heart on Noah. It had even manifested as a skill!
Oh, right. When Riveria saw that skill, she'd had a powerful urge to complain—
One was trying to surpass the other, while the other was trying to catch up.
Just as Ais caught up, Noah would surpass her again.
Then Ais would chase him, and Noah would keep pulling ahead...
Were those two planning to step on each other's feet and ascend to heaven on the spot?
Couldn't she get a handy, convenient skill like that too?
The Elf Royalty wanted to improve too, you know!
"So that's how it is?"
The Elf Royalty nodded thoughtfully, then suddenly spoke without warning.
"But Noah asked me to let you know he'd be taking the day off and wouldn't be coming in. Did he get it wrong?"
With that, Amid knew there was no point pretending anymore. Riveria clearly knew everything and had come over just to tease her.
What a sly woman!
Seeing the reproachful look on Amid's little face, Riveria felt especially pleased.
Teasing young people was so much fun!
The young ones could work things out among themselves. They were still young, after all.
Chapter 57: Darkness Stirs
Winter was fast approaching. After the first few snowfalls, word spread through Orario that a festival would be held.
When people thought of Orario's winter festivals, the first thing that came to mind was naturally the Holy Night Festival, when lights illuminated the white night amid swirling snow.
This time, though, it was only a small festival. Lanterns would be hung and stalls set up in the Central Plaza.
Even so, in these difficult times, the news still lifted people's spirits.
But before the people and adventurers of Orario could savor the approach of the festivities, another announcement from the Guild shocked them.
Loki Familia's rookie, level-one adventurer Noah Cipher, had soloed Goliath, the Floor Boss of the seventeenth floor.
The news swept through Orario like a massive storm, leaving the city momentarily silent.
It had been announced by the Loki Familia, one of the city's two great Familias, vouched for by the Astraea Familia, and approved by the Guild.
With all three backing it, even the adventurers most scornful of street gossip couldn't help falling silent.
Some veteran adventurers couldn't help remembering the days seven years ago, when the Zeus Familia and Hera Familia had ruled Orario.
Had a new monster been born?
If he grew strong enough, could he completely purge the layers of darkness and unrest currently hanging over Orario?
Countless people who had experienced sorrow and despair, and who hated and loathed the age of darkness, couldn't help but feel hope. Like the many lanterns hanging in the Central Plaza, a scattering of sparks had gathered into an ocean of light, illuminating the night.
Deep in a narrow, pitch-black corridor, faint, distorted lamplight flickered, illuminating a number of bloodthirsty faces.
"Hey, Valetta, are we really going to do this?"
A rough, brutal voice echoed through the darkness. It belonged to a gray-haired man with a merciless, vicious face.
"What's wrong, Oliwas? Are you scared?"
Valetta silently stroked her blood-red greatsword and gave her companion a sidelong glance.
Facing Valetta, the brains and leader of the Dark Faction, even Oliwas—known as the White-Haired Demon—didn't dare show his ferocity.
"Tch. The question is, is it worth all this trouble over some kid? Didn't Apathe say their experiment still needed more time to adjust? And who knows what those two lunatics from Alecto are up to?"
After laying out his reasons, he realized he still couldn't persuade Valetta. So Oliwas turned to the person beside him.
"Hey, Vitt, what do you think? Didn't your god say he was going outside the city to look for someone? Has there still been no word?"
The man had dark red hair and wore battle clothes resembling a priest's ceremonial robes.
"Well, the gods are chaotic and unpredictable. How could we possibly understand them? He never tells me anything. But as for this operation, I support it—"
Vitt's eyes narrowed like a fox's, and the false smile on his lips made him look like a clown.
But when his right eye, curved into a bow shape, opened slightly, the red iris revealed a crazed glint.
"—Those insects have been full of hope lately, haven't they? If we make them despair now, their blood will look all the more beautiful! A brand-new despair!"
"Tch. Then you can make the decision."
Seeing that Vitt didn't object either, Oliwas knew the plan was settled and said no more.
Mostly, he didn't want to provoke the two lunatics beside him.
Yes, Oliwas admitted he was evil—rotten to the core. But his evil was still within the bounds of what ordinary people could understand: he enjoyed slaughtering the weak, tormenting people, and reveling in the power to decide whether others lived or died.
But the madness of the two men beside him was enough to scare even Oliwas.
Perhaps being a coward who feared the strong and preyed on the weak—and who got scared when facing powerful enemies—was one way he was more normal than them.
"You've never fought him, so you don't understand how terrifying he is. We absolutely can't let him grow stronger! What if he levels up after joining the Loki Familia's expedition? We might not be able to beat him then!"
This had nothing to do with him tricking you and getting kneed in the groin, right?
Vitt and Oliwas exchanged a glance, but neither said it aloud.
They could feel the threat posed by that rookie from the Loki Familia too.
That day, they couldn't help remembering the terror of being dominated by the Hera and Zeus Familias, and the humiliation of having to hide underground, cut off from the light!
"In that case, it's settled. But, Valetta, what are you going to do?"
Vitt stroked the weapon in his hand: a short sword with no distinguishing feature beyond the bloodstains left by all the people it had cut down.
"Oliwas and I can probably only cause a disturbance on the surface to buy you time, and we can't keep it up for long. Once Finn figures out what we're doing, he'll send people into the Dungeon to help. Are you sure you can deal with him?"
"If I can't kill him, can't I kill the little girl beside him? If he saves her, he dies. If he doesn't, then the people of Orario can all see what kind of 'hero' they've been hoping for!"
Valetta raised her blood-red greatsword.
She stared at the reflection of her pupils in its blade, her eyes brimming with murderous fury.
"Noah! I want to see whether you really are the same kind of person as us. If I can stain you with a different color and turn you into a demon for Orario, then what does it matter if I die?"
Oliwas and Vitt exchanged a glance, then stood and left together.
Women were terrifying!
*
Five days later, in a cavern on the Dungeon's fifteenth floor.
Ais stood atop a raised platform, a huge backpack strapped to her back. She silently watched Noah struggle against a group of Minotaurs in the hall ahead.
In his usual state, Noah could take down a Minotaur with a single sword stroke. But today was different.
He wasn't using magic, wearing armor, or even carrying a weapon. Bare-chested, he was fighting the bulls with his bare hands.
After several days of fighting—or rather, one-sidedly slaughtering Dungeon monsters—most of Noah's abilities had risen rapidly and were nearing their limits. Only his endurance was improving very slowly.
Endurance was, to put it nicely, defense. In plain terms, it meant being tough enough to take a beating.
But the Dungeon's upper floors were home to monsters like the Horned Rabbit, the fastest creature there, along with terrifying bats, Hellhounds, and saber-toothed tigers. They could barely land a hit on Noah, so his endurance had little chance to grow.
No one was demanding that Noah raise every single one of his abilities. But after suffering from a body that wasn't sturdy enough, how could he pass up the chance to turn himself into a well-rounded fighter?
When Noah asked Riveria how to improve his endurance faster, her answer had been—fighting barehanded was a man's romance!
Only after smashing one Minotaur's arms and upper body to pieces with a punch did Noah end the battle and return to the platform.
He picked up a towel to wipe away the sweat and dust, then took a drink. Suddenly, he sensed something strange.
He turned and found Ais staring at him without moving.
More accurately, she was staring at his bare upper body, and her gaze made Noah feel a little afraid.
"Ais?"
Chapter 58: Before the Festival—Everyone Goes Their Own Way
Why did she want to touch him so badly?
At that moment, Ais could barely tear her eyes away from Noah's sharply defined upper-body muscles.
In the past, whenever she hit a bottleneck, Ais had searched for almost every way to improve herself.
Naturally, muscle training had been one of them. Riveria had asked Bara, an Amazonian veteran in the Familia, to be her instructor.
Back then, Ais had thought the muscles on Bara's body weren't firm enough. She figured she should train until she looked like Gareth or Noah.
Bara had laughed at her mercilessly.
"Little girl, men and women have different bodies, and each has its own kind of beauty. Besides, what's so nice about huge, ugly muscles like a dwarf's? Do you think beef tastes best when it's so old you can barely chew it? The most delicious muscles are the ones on a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boy—full of vigor and vitality!"
Vigor? Vitality? How could muscles have anything to do with that?
Only now could Ais understand what Bara had meant.
A sheen of sweat still covered the silver-haired boy in front of her, making the muscular curves that had swelled from his fierce battle even more eye-catching.
His build could be called lean and solid, though it still seemed a little slender.
And yet, even from a distance, Ais felt as though she could sense the heat rising beneath his skin as his blood rushed through him.
Like the warm sun on a winter morning, illuminating the darkness and driving away the cold, he made her feel full of life and warmth.
With a faint warmth rising behind her, Ais felt a rush of strange emotions she had never experienced before.
She felt restless, as if she'd swallowed a large gulp of strong liquor. Her chest burned, and her head felt a little dizzy.
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