And So They Spin Their Cruel Fate

The sound of bedrock being shattered rang out.

The huge form descended in a rain of rock and stone.

The terrific sound of that form ripping through the air was succeeded by that of it

crashing into the earth.

The whole floor shook.

Beyond the veil of smoke, a long bluish-white body writhed in the newly formed

depression.

It was a wormwell, that enormous serpent monster.

"—Aa!!"

The lambton raged.

Its multiple eyes crushed and bleeding, it flailed as if it was suffering the cruelest

torment imaginable. A red-streaked liquid spilled from its enormous jaws as its long

body floundered on the ground.

It looked precisely like a child who had eaten some foreign object guaranteed to cause

it a royal stomachache.

Suddenly, its body convulsed with a loud thump. It happened again and then again,

four times in total.

Each time, its cries grew more desperate. The bluish-white surface of its body glowed

pale pink, as if it were being illuminated from inside by a lamp. Finally, tremors

overtook its whole body, and the light of an electrifying flame pulsed forth.

Once, twice it pulsed, and still it did not stop.

A blazing column of electrical fire rose from the flank of the lambton's body.

With a roaring crash, the monster—burned open from the inside—rolled over sideways,

sapped of all strength.

And then, from the center of the beast's long form, a black knife burst through the skin.

It was as if a sword were growing from the inside of the wormwell's body. The

hieroglyphs engraved into the blade glowed with light. With a horrifying sound of

ripping flesh, it sawed ever downward.

A vertical slash appeared in the skin.

The monster's guts tumbled out with a gush of crimson water. They were followed by

a pair of hands, which grabbed the edges of the wound and pulled with all their might

to the right and left.

"Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…!"

A white-haired boy appeared.

Squinting, steam rising from his body, Bell screamed. He stumbled forward a few steps

from the prison of the lambton's body, then fell flat on his face into the puddle of

reddish liquid.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!"

His entire body was melting. His exposed skin and parts of his adventurer's gear

seemed to have dissolved, and his white hair was smoking. The only part of him that

was unharmed was the black scarf wrapped around his left hand and the weapon that

had been protected by its sheath.

He had been burned by the potent poisonous acid inside the stomach of the monster

that had swallowed him. As the cool air bathed his skin now that he had finally

escaped, a searing pain engulfed his whole body. And since he was lying facedown in

a pool of blood mixed with stomach acid, his skin was being burned all over again.

Despite the pain, he planted his hands on the ground and pushed his body up, then

stood unsteadily.

"Miss Lyu… Miss Lyuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu?!"

Prying open an eyelid that had been glued shut and looking around at the blurred

scene in front of him, he turned toward the monster. Then, with an earsplitting moan,

he plunged back into its stomach.

A moment later, he emerged again, an elf wrapped in his arms.

"Blehhhhhh!"

Had they been ordinary people, they would long ago have melted together into a single

amiable puddle in the monster's gut.

But they were not ordinary people. They were upper-class adventurers who had been

elevated three times to a higher level. They had been able to withstand the bath of

powerful stomach acid.

Bell dragged Lyu—who was half-sitting, half-standing, and entirely helpless—around

the puddle of blood and then collapsed onto the ground.

Lyu was completely drained of strength. Although Bell had protected her after they

were swallowed by holding her close to his body, her long cape and battle clothes were

partially dissolved. Her pliant elf's skin, too, was horribly marred by burns. Her eyes

were shut tight as if in eternal sleep.

A tear fell from Bell's eye. By now he was moving through pure effort of will. He knelt

beside her and lifted her body in his arms.

"Miss Lyu, Miss Lyu?! Please, please open your eyes…!"

With shaking hands and fingers that sloughed off skin, he gripped her shoulders.

Again and again, he called out her name, as if to tie her to the world of the living.

Whether in response to his pleading it was not clear, but the lashes of her tightly closed

eyes trembled.

"Miss Lyu…!"

But as soon as joy flooded his face—

A monster howled, crushing his hopes.

"—"

Yanked back to reality, Bell slowly raised his head.

They were in a vast room. It was inconceivably enormous. Just too huge.

Peering nervously around his dim surroundings, Bell tried to comfort himself with the

thought that he did not see any monsters nearby, but he could not feel at ease.

If we're attacked by a monster now, this will all end.

No, that's wrong.

Where are we?

What floor are we on?

He knew that wormwells could move between floors. He had been repeatedly jolted

back and forth in the pitch-black of its stomach and tossed about by the impact of its

digging. However, he had no way of knowing just how far the monster that now lay

dead beside him had burrowed.

Most likely, he was somewhere below the twenty-seventh floor.

As he dug his fingers into Lyu's shoulders and held her tightly to protect her from

harm, he tried to beat back the terror long enough to figure out what was going on.

The ground was made of dirt and stone. Far in the distance, he could see that the same

was true of the walls. The open space above his head was exceedingly high, so much

so that he could not see the ceiling even with his Level Four eyesight.

He was trapped in a vast darkness.

The only source of light was the luminescence glowing at even intervals along the

walls. The ground, the walls, and the floor itself were all cloudy white.

An icy draft blew past Bell, assaulting his neck as if to whisper, Finally figured it out,

have you?

The gloomy darkness that sat heavily on his shoulders began to laugh into his ears.

His heart was pounding deafeningly. He felt like it was going to burst through his ribs

and come flying out of his body.

It took him several seconds to realize that the continuous rasping sound, like someone

blowing a hoarse whistle, was actually his own uneven breath.

No way. No way. No. Way.

His instincts were screaming at him, but his rational mind wanted to deny the truth.

The knowledge he had stocked away in his memory during his time studying with Eina

told him that his current surroundings were a cruelly perfect fit for the description of

a certain floor.

The structure of the space was overwhelmingly gargantuan. The scale was so different

it made him want to cry.

This was not the scale of the upper levels, or the middle ones, or even the lower levels.

Despair gripped Bell's heart as he arrived at the answer to his own question.

The cruel identity of his current location was—the thirty-seventh floor.

His trembling lips shaped a whisper.

"The deep levels…"