“Because this man is dangerous. If we allow traitors in our midst, it will hinder the next emperor’s reign.”

This other person’s voice was familiar to Gadora—but he had trouble believing it. Perhaps, he thought, this was just a hallucination before he died.

“But this man is a close friend of His Majesty’s…”

Gadora’s consciousness was almost gone. Now he couldn’t even hear Kondo’s voice. All that awaited Gadora was an assured death.

Poisoned, too? They spared no precaution, I see. This, too, is my punishment for attempting to betray Emperor Ludora…? But…

He was guaranteed to die like this. So as the never-withering cherry blossoms danced in the air around him, Gadora made one final bet. He triggered a spell he had put in place beforehand—and then he blacked out.

CHAPTER 5

TOWARD THE OPENING OF BATTLE

So after sending Gadora off to the Empire, it was time for some interrogating. No, not for Shinji and his friends. For Ramiris.

She’d said a few things that I just couldn’t let slide, and given that she wasn’t afraid to play pranks on me, I was sure she was hiding other things as well.

“Huh? N-no… No way. I’m, uh, not hiding anything…”

Ramiris fidgeted a bit. Clearly suspicious. She obviously had a secret. But just as I threatened her with no cake for the rest of her life, she began talking a mile a minute.

“What—what do you want to know, Captain?!”

Captain? Whatever. Better let that go without comment. I moved on with my questions.

“So Adalmann’s gotten a hell of a lot stronger since I last saw him, but…all right. I can accept that. But what about the other dudes with him? I didn’t expect Alberto to whip Shinji’s party pretty much solo, and I never heard anything about a death dragon. You haven’t been messing around with any other floors, have you?”

Alberto was now much, much more than just kind of a strong monster. He had the physical skills of a special-A Death Paladin and the technical skills to make full use of them. He was already keeping up with Hakuro as a death knight, so how the hell strong was he now?

“Well, Alberto was teaching that kid Arnaud, I think, right? So now they’re back down in the deeper floors, testing their strength—”

“Stop!”

I hurriedly put an end to this. Alberto teaching Arnaud? What was up with that? Arnaud was a squad leader in the Crusaders—I wasn’t sure anyone could teach him much. So why was he the one undergoing training? I just had no idea what Ramiris was talking about.

“Okay, um, well, after Hinata got all angry at Arnaud and the other paladins, they licked their wounds and tried their hand at the Dungeon one more time. The Demon Colossus was still under development back then, so they made it past Floor 70.”

“All right. And then?”

“And then those kids lost again!”

“Kwah-ha-ha-ha! And what a sight it was!”

Ramiris was clearly enjoying this; Veldora was nodding and laughing with glee. I’m sure it must’ve been hilarious.

Report. A record of battle is available.

Whoa, really?! Nice one, Raphael! I’ll save that for later, but in the meantime, let’s focus on Ramiris.

“So how far did Arnaud’s team make it this time?”

Probably the dragon rooms between Floors 96 and 99, I figured. There’s a bunch of floor effects there as well, so I think they’d give a lot of trouble to human explorers.

“Um, I think it was—”

“They were destroyed by the next boss,” Veldora interrupted. “Seeing them cry their eyes out as they fled was simply a joy to watch!”

Wow. Tacky. But…the next boss?

“Huh? Was the Floor 80 boss that strong?”

“Oh? Why d’you ask?” said Ramiris.

“I mean, Arnaud’s one of the Ten Great Saints. He was as good as Clayman and the ex–demon lords, wasn’t he?”

I spotted the answer to my question as I asked it. If you think about it, even Adalmann or Alberto could probably beat a pre-awakened Clayman. Maybe even post-awakened, actually, if that crazy death dragon was along for the ride.

“U-umm…,” Ramiris mumbled.

If I recalled correctly, I named Zegion the guardian of Floor 80. Did he finally evolve from his pupal form and reach adulthood? Veldora mentioned he was training him, and I didn’t really get what he meant by that, either. How do you train an insect monster? Whatever the Veldora-Style Death Stance was meant to be, I had no idea how Zegion was supposed to harness it. I let Veldora have his way because he seemed to be having fun and all, but maybe I should’ve put some more serious thought into it.

Zegion had used my own cells to heal his wounds and coat his outer shell in magisteel. Perhaps thanks to that, he had high speed and mobility, and he could also apparently summon his family. Treyni had signed off on everything, so I had no complaints…but the whole concept behind that was to fluster challengers with a quick, nimble insectoid boss after all those slow-moving golems.

“Hey, so what’s up with Zegion right now?”

I attempted to further interrogate the panicking Ramiris, but Veldora spoke first.

“Ah, my apprentice Zegion has undergone his complete transformation. Now, with the skills he inherited from me, he is a warrior without compare!”

“…”

“And what’s more, Zegion didn’t even need to lift a feeler against Arnaud’s party! They were trounced by the floor guardian on Floor 79!”

Now the picture was growing clearer. Arnaud met his match against Apito, the queen wasp serving as the boss on Floor 79. Between her hyperspeed and ultimate venom, not even the well-honed swords of Arnaud’s Crusaders could touch her. Then, as they told me, the whole party got stung a zillion times by Apito’s hivemates, and they ran away screaming.

Crazy. Just pile it on, won’t you?

“Tell me this stuff! I got a job to do, you know!!” I said, exasperated.

“I know, but it wasn’t just us! My master was ‘training’ that insect, too!”

“Wh-why you…! Accursed traitor!”

“But it’s not fair, Master! You’re acting like you had no part of it!”

“Nnngh…”

Yeah, I’m sure Veldora got involved. Anyone would, once they realized how much fun this was. Still, though, I felt kind of betrayed. All these people, getting to goof around all day behind my back… Maybe it was a mistake to ever let them handle this stuff.

I felt a twinge of regret now—but something still bothered me.

“Y’know, I’ve been wondering, Veldora—when you say you trained Zegion, what do you mean, exactly?”

He’s a bug, right? By “complete transformation,” Veldora doesn’t mean he went humanoid or something, did he?

It turned out my hunch was absolutely correct.

“Heh-heh-heh… So you finally noticed? You’ve realized just how wrong you are? I was having fun seeing you do that, so I didn’t say anything!”

What did I ever do to deserve this, Veldora…? They sure got me this time.

Delving into the Dungeon records, I had Raphael show me a few images. He was right. Zegion was now humanoid, all slender and chiseled. And…basically, he was Razul, that insectoid Shion beat over in Lubelius. He looked so much like that insanely powerful Razul, and thanks to that, he just exuded powerhouse vibes.

This rather unusual evolution gave him a chance to learn more battle moves—and as it turned out, the same was true of Apito. She had a shapely, feminine form, and looking at her, it dawned on me: I should’ve realized something was up when Hinata started coaching her. I thought it was just some mock warfare, but she really was training her. And thanks to Hinata’s expert battle training, Apito was incredibly refined in her moves. She had been training with Zegion as well, and her technical skills were also just as polished up.

Arnaud’s plastering was ample evidence of that, I suppose.

“So then Arnaud’s party decided to reevaluate themselves a little, they said…”

Going back to square one, they tackled the Dungeon once more, this time from the very first level. But one of the paladins met his end in Floor 60—at the lands of Alberto the Death Paladin, servant of Adalmann the Immortal King and (a few centuries ago) the strongest of all paladin warriors.

“And ever since then, you know, they’ve had their asses thoroughly kicked by Alberto.”

After whipping their asses the first time, Alberto had taunted them, saying “Paladin? More like pala-don’t!” That apparently really set off Arnaud, but even after busting out his Ether Break finisher, nothing worked on Alberto. The combination of a lifetime of sword skills and his new monster-based stats made it impossible for Arnaud’s party to keep up. His undead body never grew tired, and even if whole body parts were sliced off, he could still recover. It was cheating, really; if you didn’t hit the right elemental weaknesses, you just couldn’t beat him. Even worse, Adalmann had that Holy-Evil Inversion skill, which only added to his invincibility.

Really, I thought, Arnaud couldn’t be blamed for this. With all the magicules Adalmann’s team absorbed in the labyrinth, they had simply evolved into upper-level monsters, and Arnaud happened to challenge them right then. Bad timing, really. But think about it the other way—getting to cross swords with the strongest knight of a centuries-old era was an incredibly lucky opportunity to have.

And now, under Alberto’s direction, the Crusaders under Arnaud were rotating in and out of the Dungeon to train.

So Floor 60 had turned into something of a death trap while I wasn’t paying attention, but…

“What about the other floors, then?”

I could see where this was going. Adalmann and Zegion couldn’t have been the only ones transforming like mad down there. And I was right. Now, apparently, there was a new group in the labyrinth, a team consisting of nothing but the ultimate titans. They called themselves the Ten Dungeon Marvels, and really, I think they could give my cabinet a run for their money.

Adalmann was on the team, of course, as was his assistant Alberto. Apito, with her new moniker of Insect Queen, had joined the Marvel ranks, and apparently Zegion was now the highest ranked among them. And then we had Kumara—evidently, by taking the magical beasts in her nine tails and infusing them into her body, she could assume the form of an adult woman.