Descent of the Saintess of the Stars
The moment Simon and Lethe peered inside the Dungeon Lord's chamber, both of their expressions froze.
"……What is this?"
The room was empty. Completely bare. A dumbfounded sound popped out of Simon's mouth, tension draining from his face in an instant.
"Don't let your guard down. It could be hiding somewhere, it could."
Lethe said as she stepped inside. But even sweeping the room with Simon's Jet-Black detection and Lethe's divinity detection turned up not so much as the tip of the Dungeon Lord's nose. They left the chamber and searched the surrounding area — nothing there either.
A dungeon without its Dungeon Lord. This was a first, even for them.
"Hmm, isn't this a serious problem?"
Simon pressed a hand to his forehead, his face stiff.
"The dungeon only disappears once the Dungeon Lord is destroyed."
"I've never heard of or seen anything like this either. My brain's stopped working. Give me a moment to think."
The Dungeon Lord remains within the dungeon. That was the fundamental concept. A Dungeon Lord might send its monsters out into the world, but the Lord itself never abandoning the dungeon — that simply didn't happen. The very fact that the dungeon was still standing without its Lord inside was, on its face, absurd.
"Please, guys."
While Lethe sank deep into thought, Simon pulled the Corpse Spiders out of his subspace.
"Bring me anything that could be a clue."
-Kirik!
The spiders scattered in all at once, wiggling their abdomens as they burrowed into the bone piles, while others crawled across the ceiling and swept the walls. Barely a minute after receiving the scouting order, one of the Corpse Spiders came scuttling back to Simon.
"You found something?"
His face brightening, Simon's eyes went wide at what he saw — a bug clinging to the spider's foreleg.
-Kirik! Kirik!
The Corpse Spider hopped up and down as if convinced it had uncovered a treasure of immeasurable value. Simon just shook his head slowly.
-Kiri…….
The spider drooped low in dejection, popped the bug into its mouth, and turned its back on him.
Lethe, who had been quietly watching from behind, spoke up.
"What's it called again? That spider's kind of cute."
"Cute or not, it's still undead."
"Wicked little things."
"……?"
A short while later, another Corpse Spider came dragging something back. A woman's hair. And some old, worn clothing. Simon studied the items closely.
"Hey."
Lethe, who had given the Dungeon Lord's chamber one more sweep before returning, called out to him.
"There's no clever answer waiting for us here. Let's head back outside the dungeon. Something might have changed."
"Good call. That monster we caught earlier might actually be the Dungeon Lord."
The two of them took the dungeon gate they'd come through and emerged back outside. Hopeful as they were, the cave looked exactly as it had before. Nothing had changed.
Kuuwoong―!
Then a massive explosion echoed from beyond the dungeon. Simon reacted with razor sharpness.
"Someone's out there!"
"Let's go!"
The two of them sprinted out of the cave —
Whiiiiiing!
— and came face to face with a horde of grey-haired people encircling its entrance.
'The Mizzenaci!'
It was the Mizzenaci clan, the ruling class of Eskyle Village. And standing at their center was Nenia Mizzenaci, the village's chieftain.
"So you've finally found this place."
Nenia's eyes turned to ice.
"Had you pretended not to see anything and gone back down the mountain, you might have kept your lives."
The other Mizzenaci threw in their own barbs.
"To set foot in a sacred sanctuary!"
"You'll never leave here alive now!"
Crack!Chk!
They spread their palms and took aim at Simon and Lethe. Rippling across their open hands was pure elemental ice magic.
'I can't afford to be careless here.'
These mages had honed nothing but ice magic their entire lives, and the craft showed — the spells were polished to a mirror finish. It was enough to remind Simon of Meilin's Jet-Black frost.
"'Sacred sanctuary,' my ass."
Lethe summoned her divinity and walked forward, a dazzling white radiance coiling around her body.
"You'll tell me where you've hidden the Dungeon Lord, or we do this the hard way."
Nenia's brow twitched, but she gave no other response. Lethe smiled sweetly.
"Well, if that's how it is, no choice then. Guess I'll have to beat it out of—"
GWAAAAAANG―!
Another explosion, closer this time. Simon's eyes snapped toward the sound. The blast hadn't come from the Mizzenaci.
'That direction is…….'
Eskyle Village. The village was under attack. Given the use of what sounded like explosives, it couldn't be monsters. And the instant Simon narrowed the attackers down to fellow humans, something flashed through his mind.
-We haven't just been sitting here waiting for death, you know.
The voice of the Lord of Cula, glaring at the Mizzenaci village on the snow mountain with eyes full of hatred, resurfaced in his memory.
'The people of Cula, from the city below!'
WAAAAAAAH!
"Burn the village down! Capture the mages!"
"The cause of this deep freeze is right before our eyes!"
Relentless cold, catastrophic famine, and monster attacks on top of it all. Backed completely into a corner, Cula had exactly one choice left. The city's self-defense militia and its men were charging up the steep mountain slope toward Eskyle.
Shreeek! Swish!
The people of Eskyle, hidden behind their barricades, drew their bows.
"The filthy Cula dogs have shown their true ambitions!"
"First they stole our warm lands, and now they come for this village!"
"Defend Eskyle with your lives!"
Arrows flew in volleys. Cula's men dropped one after another into the snow, writhing and rolling. But Cula held an overwhelming advantage in numbers.
"CHARGE!"
The Lord of Cula bellowed, swatting arrows out of the air with his sword.
"Do not retreat! This endless winter ends here, today!"
Simon was watching the village. As the deep freeze lost its grip, Eskyle came into clear view. He couldn't tell exactly what was happening, but the palisade was on fire and explosions rang out one after another. His suspicion solidified into certainty — the people of Cula, pushed past their limit by the brutal cold, were attacking Eskyle.
"Shouldn't we head to the village?"
Lethe asked flatly, eyeing the Mizzenaci.
"You people are the village's greatest fighting force, no?"
Their own village was under siege, and still the Mizzenaci did not move. Nenia Mizzenaci simply raised her cane and struck it against the ground. An enormous ice magic circle was spreading beneath their feet.
"Eliminating you two — the witnesses — right here matters far more. That is the mission of the Mizzenaci."
There was no reasoning with these people. Simon turned his head.
"Lethe, you go to the village and stop the war."
"……And what about you?"
"This time, I'll take them alone. It'll be enough."
Lethe studied him with worried eyes for a moment, then squeezed them shut and nodded.
"I trust you."
"Yeah."
Tat!
Lethe took off down the snow mountain. Nenia Mizzenaci let out a shriek.
"Seize that woman!!"
The instant the Mizzenaci mages unleashed their ice magic in unison —
CRACKAAAAAOW!
Violet lightning crashed down on all sides of Lethe, wiping the ice spells out of existence without a trace.
"……!!"
"What was that?!"
The bewildered bolts of violet that had dyed the air chaos-colored snapped back in a flash, gathering into the hand of Simon as he soared into the sky.
Simon hurled the Chaos Spear again and again, slamming the violet spears into the ground right at the feet of the Mizzenaci who were chasing after Lethe. They recoiled in horror, stumbling to a halt.
'That bastard!'
Lethe glanced back over her shoulder and let out a hollow laugh.
'He's still hiding techniques like that?'
"Summon the golem! Stop her, whatever it takes!"
At Nenia's command, one of the mages raised an ice golem from the ground.
"No one passes—"
KRAKOOM! KA-BOOM!
At that very moment, two violet spears came screaming in and buried themselves in the golem's torso, detonating.
"I said no one passes."
Chk.
Simon descended with both feet planted on the shaft of a Chaos Spear jammed into the earth. In the meantime, Lethe had vaulted over the explosion and was racing down toward the village, breath ragged.
"I prepared these for a fight against the Dungeon Lord. Never thought I'd be using them on you people."
Simon's hand moved to the magic circle at his waist. Like a knight drawing a sword, three crackling violet spear-shafts rose up between his fingers.
"Who the hell are you?! Teacher Seon!!" Nenia Mizzenaci shrieked in desperation. "Who sent you?!"
"That's a difficult question to answer."
Simon flung the three shafts skyward. Violet lightning tore through the heavens in wildly unpredictable trajectories, flying everywhere like something gone mad.
"But if you're all so proud and righteous, you shouldn't need to worry about who sent me, should you?"
With a shriek of splitting air, the light of Chaos came crashing down on the Mizzenaci.
"FIRE! Keep firing!"
"Push in!"
The battlefield had boiled over. Eskyle and Cula alike — when years of accumulated fury between two peoples detonated all at once, nothing remained but hatred. Not a single soul on that field was capable of rational judgment anymore.
It was pure melee. The tide was impossible to call. Cula held an absolute advantage in numbers and training, but its men had climbed the snow mountain on empty stomachs through the killing frost, their strength and condition drained to the dregs. Eskyle, meanwhile, was hopelessly outnumbered, and its backbone — the Mizzenaci mages — was entirely absent. Neither side could claim the upper hand.
Arrows flew, and the metallic ring of blade striking blade rang across the slope. The Cula men set fire to bottles of rum and hurled them at the palisade, blazing the fence alight and tearing through the village barrier. With the barrier broken, the deadly cold and blizzard began seeping into Eskyle itself.
It was a catastrophe in the making. Whoever won this fight, in the end everyone would freeze to death together in the deep cold — total annihilation. And still, not one person thought to stop.
Until, right at that moment —
"EVERYONE, STOP!!"
— someone appeared who wanted it to end.
A white-haired girl was striding calmly straight across the blood-spattered battlefield.
"T-Teacher Lea!"
"My Lord! It's the priestess who saved our territory!"
Lethe walked unhurried through the very heart of the fighting. Stray arrows whistled past her now and then; she didn't so much as blink.
"Priestess!"
The Lord of Cula lunged forward in alarm.
"Get back! It's dangerous! We will handle—"
Grab!
Lethe seized the Lord by the collar without warning. And then —
SMACK!
She slapped him with all her might. The Lord, his cheek blazing red, rolled across the ground.
"M-My Lord!"
The horrified militiamen swung their swords toward Lethe. She glared back with burning eyes, and the men who had been about to charge flinched and froze in place.
"Oh, for god's sake!"
She spat out a curse and swung her arm toward the fallen Lord —
SNAP!
— but it wasn't an attack. She had caught, bare-handed, an arrow that had been flying straight for the prone Lord's head.
Creak!
She squeezed, and the arrow snapped clean in half.
"Didn't I just say stop, you bastards!!"
Then she grabbed hold of the choker at her throat — the seal binding away the Saintess's power — and shattered it.
The seal of the choker shatters — and light floods the night sky.
FWAAAAAAASH!
In that instant, the grip of the deep freeze weakened, the night sky blazed bright, the dark clouds scattered, and radiance poured down upon Lethe.
[My name is Lethe Shardena!]
[I am the Saintess of the Stars.]
A clear, unmistakable image of a star bloomed in both of her eyes.
Vuuuuuuuum!
As she raised her arm, the stars of the night sky rippled in response. Countless white meteors began to take shape, suspended in midair.
"A S-Saintess?"
"Teacher Lea is a Saintess?"
Both armies erupted into utter chaos.
[Choose.]
Her bloodshot eyes blazed as she roared.
[End this fight now — or die by my hand, every last one of you!]