“Isn’t this stat increase a little ridiculous?” In the pure white space at the depths of his consciousness, Artorias — back inside the Dungeon to have Tiamat update his status values — stared at the panel floating before him and nearly doubted his own eyes.
[Artorias (Artorias)] Affiliation: Tiamat Current Race: Goblin (LV1) Class: Apostle / Monster Ability Values: LV1 Strength: C627 – A844 Endurance: E432 – C610 Dexterity: D504 – B711 Agility: C651 – A894 Magic: I0 – E500 [Magic: Phasing] [- Chant: For this moment alone, I pledge this body as the blade of the Mother Goddess’s divine will, and with the strength of instinct I shall trample the enemy before me into ruin—] [- After activation, moderate correction to all attributes except Dexterity; attacks carry an additional dark-attribute effect.] [- Cero: Once per day, all values of Strength, Endurance, Agility and Magic may be converted and expelled as a Cero.
Phasing is released after use, and all attributes drop by one rank.
If Cero is not used, Phasing lasts twenty minutes and ability values do not drop afterward.] [- The usage limit and bonuses of Cero increase along with level.] Setting aside the Magic column, which had rocketed up from a zero that had sat there only because he had never learned any magic before — every other attribute had climbed by more than two hundred, and that Phasing magic dropped by the rare Enhanced Species he had killed, a spell that screamed of a certain shinigami setting at first glance, was visibly, absurdly overtuned.
“That’s because my little fawn worked so hard, isn’t it?
Both when he beat that special enhanced monster, and when he cleaned up those adventurers.” Tiamat’s voice echoed through the space the way it always did.
Yet somehow, Artorias felt that Tia-Mama today was subtly, distinctly cool toward him.
By long-standing habit, this child-doting Mother Goddess would coil around him the instant they met, expressing how much she had missed him with all the ample body language she possessed.
Today she simply stood there in the boundless sea, every motion held under some strange restraint.
When he asked for a status update, the woman who normally dawdled over it for a while got through the whole thing without a moment’s delay, brisk and efficient, as if handling official business.
And though his numbers had risen so dramatically — the sort of thing that would once have earned him her congratulations before he could even finish reading — Tiamat’s face now held an unnatural calm.
Something was clearly wrong.
“Um… Tia-Mama?
Are you angry?” Artorias ventured.
“Is it because I’ve been getting too close to Kaguya and those other adventurers?” “Not at all.
Mama doesn’t care about a little thing like that.” “After all, those humans have contributed plenty to my little fawn’s growth.” Tiamat drifted closer through the center of the ocean, yet that obvious distance between them did not shrink along with the space.
The Mother Goddess reached out as she always did and stroked Artorias’s cheek, but her fingertips felt cold as jade, without the faintest trace of warmth.
“However, there is one thing Mama must make clear to her little fawn first.” The space around them froze.
“We do not care if you take part in the slaughter between adventurers.
Cutting down the Dungeon’s monsters alongside them also falls within what is permitted.” “But—” “As the Apostle who carries out the will of the Dungeon, you must never show us any sign of betrayal.” The voice that was usually brimming with affection turned layered and hollow, as though countless voices spoke at once, and the sound shook Artorias’s very soul.
The divine pressure trembling through those words, that expression growing colder by the second — they left Artorias almost certain of one thing.
He had no idea what the reason was, but the something wearing Tiamat’s shape and speaking to him now was plainly an existence of a far higher order.
“Not the Tia-Mama in my memories… but divine will straight from the Dungeon itself?” That existence, still far beyond his reach, was borrowing the Mother Goddess’s mouth to convey the Dungeon’s will to its Apostle.
The moment he arrived at that answer, he caught something on the face of the Tiamat before him, whose figure had already begun to dissolve: a smile carrying a distinctly human sort of satisfaction.
“Do not overstep.” “Bear it in mind and never forget it.
This is a mother’s warning to you.” The words had barely faded when the mental space that had once let Artorias linger as he pleased shattered like a reflection on water.
… Crack.
Crack— Black rock split and crumbled.
Consciousness returned to his body.
Artorias tore himself free of the wall and snapped his eyes open.
“Never show rebellion against the divine will, huh?” He rolled his shoulders, still turning that last piece of advice from the Dungeon’s will over and over.
The word rebellion itself was slippery.
Did it mean he wasn’t allowed to help humans?
But It had turned a blind eye when he teamed up with Adi to deal with the members of the Evils faction.
Or did it mean he wasn’t allowed to lay a hand on special monsters like Floor Masters?
Except he couldn’t beat one anyway.
What kind of lunatic takes stats barely approaching LV2 and goes to fight a Floor Master?
“Whatever.
It’s not like I was planning to pull anything.
I’ll just treat it as a heads-up for the future.” Artorias shook his head and shoved the unanswerable questions aside.
For now he and the Dungeon had no conflict of interest.
You could even call it symbiosis.
Compared to vague, ominous warnings, he had something far more important to do.
The chant for Phasing surfaced in his mind.
His hands itched.
He wanted a fight.
His eyes swept across the whole of the tenth floor.
To suit his newly acquired magic, Artorias didn’t stay in his original stunted Goblin body.
Black mist surged.
Bones stretched.
Compared to a Goblin, whose strength lay in the agility of a small frame, this body — a War Shadow, with sound, elongated limbs and a hide black from head to toe — was without question a far better match for that spell.
Long claws glinted with cold light.
The streamlined black form looked like a ghost drifting through the deep night.
“All right.
Let’s begin—” Now a War Shadow, he closed his single pair of deep crimson slit-pupiled eyes.
A monster with no vocal organs swept one hand across its face, and words of divine will spilled from its mouth all the same: [For this moment alone, this body becomes the blade of the Mother Goddess’s divine will, and with the strength of instinct I shall trample the enemy before me into ruin—] As the incantation finished, a violent, frigid surge of magic power exploded outward.
White bone-matter condensed out of empty air, racing across his face until it hardened into a pale, snarling mask.
Black magic power burned like flame across the War Shadow’s slender frame, weaving itself into clothing and armor that wrapped protectively around Artorias.
“So this is… Phasing.” He looked down at the eerie dark flames coiling over his body.
When he opened his eyes again, his vision had gone unnaturally sharp, and a strength far beyond anything he had imagined rushed through him.
While he was still adjusting to the strangeness of every stat climbing at once — ROOOAR—!
Monsters bellowed somewhere in the surrounding mist.
Several huge Orcs and a few fluttering Imps had caught the scent of living prey, and they charged in swinging crude clubs hacked from this floor’s natural armory.
But the instant they saw that pitch-black figure in the white mask, those savage creatures felt something they rarely felt: fear, rising from pure instinct.
It was already too late.
A blur.
A black shape flashed past.
Artorias hadn’t used a single technique.
He had simply swung his claws, relying on nothing but stats that dwarfed everything he’d had before.
By the time he thought about taking a step forward, his hand was already slick with rank, stinking monster blood.
The fat and muscle an Orc took such pride in gave way like bean curd before that one swipe.
Three Orc heads flew skyward before any of them could scream.
The Imps hovering around them, the ones that hunted prey by weight of numbers, had been torn apart by the sheer wind pressure the moment he closed in.
Black mist wound around him, swallowing the ruined bodies and their magic stones together.
[Magic Devourer (monster eater) activated] [Abilities acquired: Kobold Transformation, Imp Transformation] [Development Ability progress +10%] “Too weak.
I really do need to push down to the lower floors.” Artorias surveyed the magic stones scattered across the ground, his voice emerging from beneath the mask with a faint electronic distortion and a hollow echo.
Compared to the fight with that enhanced Killer Ant, or with cleaning out the Evils faction, the native monsters of the tenth floor were far too feeble.
Was there anything down here that could make him take this state even slightly seriously?
The thought had barely formed before the Phasing-clad monster split open the mouth of his mask and let loose a shriek that rolled through the entire vastness of the tenth floor.
Roar (howl) — the instinct born into every high-tier monster, an unconditional screening device that cowed weaker monsters and adventurers alike.
Creatures on the level of Orcs and Imps froze in terror at the mere sound of it, flattening themselves to the ground, unable to move.
At the same time, a roar between monsters was also a clear declaration of war, a call demanding an opponent.
A broad expanse of amber scales came bursting up through the thick fog between the floors.
A long tail.
Sharp scaled claws.
A blood-red maw hanging open on countless fangs.
Four meters long and moving on all fours, the beast answered the intruder’s provocation, its rolling crimson eyes locked onto Artorias.
[Infant Dragon] This was a rare-species monster that normally appeared only on the eleventh and twelfth floors, and even then in very small numbers.
For adventurers working the upper floors, running into one usually meant the whole party died.
Which was why it had earned its title: the upper floors’ very own [Solitary King of the Labyrinth].
“A dragon species?
Perfect timing.” Looking at that magnificent Infant Dragon, the corners of Artorias’s mouth curved into something fevered beneath the mask.
The sweep of that long tail was dodged at godlike speed, and the tiny existence hovering in midair met the beast’s glare with one of open provocation.
The Infant Dragon had clearly been enraged by this little insect reeking of ill omen.
It opened its jaws wide, a mass of searing flame gathering in its throat.
Artorias did not dodge.
He tilted his head back slightly, and the white bone mask slowly parted, revealing the black-hole cavity beneath.
The magic power in the air began pouring wildly into his mouth.
Compressing.
Compressing again.
The red glow brightened and brightened until it deepened into a dark crimson.
“You’re the Solitary King of the Labyrinth, so I’ll bury you in a manner befitting the title.” He was faster than the flame gathering in the dragon’s throat.
Faster, and far deadlier.
[Cero—] BOOM—!!!
A beam of dark crimson magic power, thicker by far than the one the Killer Ant in his memory had used, erupted from Artorias’s mouth with an annihilating roar.
The dragon’s breath was swallowed whole the instant it touched that torrent.
The beam never slowed.
It punched clean through the hardened dragon scales the beast had been so proud of and blew its entire upper body — head, ribcage and all — into nothing.
The red light tore through the labyrinth’s fog, plowing a scorched furrow of unknowable depth across the ground, and blasted a gaping black hole through the wall beyond.
The glow faded.
All that remained of the Infant Dragon’s massive body was half a charred tail and its hind legs, still standing where they had been, the smoking cross-section seared black by impossible heat.
A single enormous magic stone dropped to the ground, the only proof that the upper floors’ overlord had ever existed at all.
“Whew…” With the Cero released, the white mask cracked and dissolved.
Phasing ended, a wave of crushing weakness rolled over him, and the side effect of every attribute dropping began to bite.
But looking at the result in front of him, Artorias felt only awe.
They had never actually traded blows, yet the presence he’d sensed from the Infant Dragon had been only a notch below that enhanced Killer Ant from the other day.
And the thing had been erased in an instant by a direct Cero, without the slightest chance to resist.
Thank god he’d chosen to give it a wide berth the moment he saw that Killer Ant charging up in its mouth — otherwise, with defenses obviously inferior to the Infant Dragon’s, he’d probably have melted on the spot.
“Still, whatever else, I’ve finally got a high-firepower trump card.” Pleased with the outcome, Artorias pushed himself up off the ground and started forward to collect the Infant Dragon’s spoils.
A hum— The magic stone lying where the dragon’s corpse had been suddenly split open, and the stable space around it twisted in an eerie ripple.
A chaotic black vortex, radiating something deeply wrong, appeared right in front of him out of nowhere.
“What is this?” Something stirred in Artorias.
As if guided by an unseen hand, he stretched out a hand and tried to touch the center of the vortex.
Crackle!
The instant his fingertip was about to make contact, a tremendous repulsive force detonated, hurling his hand back like a high-voltage shock.
“Access denied?” Artorias frowned at the scorched black mark on his fingertip.
The area ahead.
Come explore it another time?
For reasons he couldn’t explain, those words popped into his head in big bold letters.
Walnut-chan🔥👻 🔥 New history: DanMachi: