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ArabicDanmachi: The Focalors Familia — Chapter 18
Chapter 18: Loki Familia
“I want to go too.” Ais stood perfectly still, her voice flat, but an unmistakable spark of determination burned within her golden eyes.
“I… I want to go with Miss Ais, too,” Lefiya murmured, stepping out from behind the Sword Princess. The young elf gathered her fractured courage, her voice trembling but resolute.
A heavy sigh slipped through the room. Riveria, who had trailed in last, pinched the bridge of her nose. She looked like a woman nursing a deep headache.
Finn surveyed the energetic cluster of his Familia members and let out a soft, amused chuckle. “You all arrived at the perfect time.”
He lifted the parchment request form from his desk, scanning the ink. “In that case, the lot of you can handle this. The Guild’s mission is to investigate the new breed of monsters spawning across the first five floors of the Dungeon. We need detailed intelligence on their combat capabilities.”
He had already weighed the risks; for a vanguard of First-Class Adventurers sitting at Level 5 and above, the upper floors offered absolutely zero threat.
“Yay! Long live the Captain!” Tiona threw her arms in the air, practically vibrating with the prospect of a good fight and a change of scenery.
“I’ll go too,” a sharp, impatient voice cut in. Bete Loga leaned against the doorframe, his expression as sour as ever.
Riveria pressed her fingers harder against her throbbing temples. There was simply no way she could sleep soundly knowing this chaotic band of problem children, Ais included, were wandering the Dungeon unsupervised. “I will accompany them.”
“Oh my? Isn’t that wonderful!” Loki flashed a wide, teasing grin, her eyes curving into crescent moons. “With our dear Mama-san tagging along, I can rest easy!”
Riveria shot her goddess a beautifully elegant eyeroll, radiating an aura of absolute exhaustion that clearly stated she didn’t have the energy to entertain the joke.
It didn’t take long for Orario’s most formidable temporary investigation squad to assemble. The six of them, Riveria, Ais, Tiona, Tione, Lefiya, and a perpetually scowling Bete, strode out of the gates of Twilight Manor, their sights set straight on the towering spire of Babel.
Meanwhile, deep within the gloomy, phosphor-lit expanse of the Dungeon’s second floor.
Clang!
The dull, jarring impact of metal biting into dense wood echoed down the narrow stone corridor.
Noah pivoted on his heel, narrowly evading a brutal, sweeping strike. The longsword in his grip, a blade of supposedly high quality, let out a metallic whine of distress as it parried the crude, splintered club of a Hilichurl.
He was entirely boxed in. Five of the bizarre creatures surrounded him.
Hilichurls were anomalies. Standing roughly four to five feet tall, they possessed stocky, muscular frames and grayish-black skin. Simple, painted totem masks obscured their faces, framed by sparse manes of brown hair and long, pitch-black ears that twitched with every movement. They were creatures that had absolutely no right to exist within the Dungeon, dragged into this world entirely by the pull of Noah’s unique skill.
Two vanguard Hilichurls, both wielding heavy wooden clubs, roared in guttural unison as they launched an oppressive, synchronized assault. A third, armed with a jagged wooden sword, proved far more cunning, constantly strafing the perimeter to exploit any blind spots in Noah’s guard. Worse still, perched atop a jagged rock outcropping just behind the melee, two archers kept their crude bows drawn taut, raining down deadly, unpredictable arrows.
“Haa…” Noah’s breaths came in short, rapid bursts. A sheen of cold sweat gathered on his brow.
He used the uneven, jagged walls of the corridor to his advantage, weaving through the claustrophobic space.
Pushing off the stone with the tip of his boot, his body glided horizontally, defying gravity just long enough to let a whistling arrow streak past his spine.
His blade danced through the dim light, leaving ribbons of silver afterimages in its wake as he precisely deflected the onslaught.
But every jarring collision sent a shockwave of numbness through the webbing of his hand. The edge of his sword was dulling rapidly.
The raw physical strength and durability of these creatures vastly eclipsed the Goblins native to the first floor.
Just as the three melee fighters pinned him down, restricting his footwork, one of the archers in the rear found its opening. The bowstring groaned as it was drawn to its absolute limit.
“Echo!”
A cool, melodic, yet commanding chant sliced through the chaos the exact moment the arrow left the string.
Robin stood poised at the edge of the skirmish. Her lake-green eyes were pools of absolute calm, having analyzed the shifting geometry of the battlefield without a shred of panic.
She hadn’t rushed; she had simply waited for the perfect, fatal opening.
Now, the tempo was hers.
An invisible, razor-sharp shockwave of sound erupted from the tip of her staff. It surged past Noah, intercepting the wooden projectile in mid-air.
With a piercing, high-frequency hum, the arrow violently splintered into sawdust.
The acoustic wave didn’t stop. It slammed directly into the archer.
The creature let out a garbled shriek of agony, dropping its bow to claw at its ringing ears, entirely incapacitated.
The passive effect of Drunken Overture activated in the background. A soothing, warm current trickled back into Robin’s mental reservoir, effortlessly refunding a portion of the magic power she had just expended.
It was a rhythm of perfect efficiency, allowing her to anchor the battlefield indefinitely.
Noah didn’t waste the fraction of a second she bought him.
He abandoned his defensive posture, driving all his weight into his leading foot. He lunged forward, his longsword blurring into a lethal arc of light. He knocked a descending club aside with a rising parry, letting the momentum carry the tip of his blade upward to cleanly puncture the Hilichurl’s exposed throat.
He didn’t pause to watch it fall. Twisting his wrist, he ripped the bloodied steel free in a wide horizontal sweep, forcing the remaining two vanguard fighters to scramble backward. At the same time, riding the kinetic momentum of his spin, Noah launched himself at the stunned archer.
The creature panicked, stumbling backward in a desperate bid to retreat, but Noah was already a phantom in its vision.
A flash of cold silver illuminated the gloom, and the monster’s masked head spun into the air.
Two down in the blink of an eye.
The surviving three Hilichurls erupted into frenzied, bloodthirsty roars, their attacks losing all structure in favor of sheer, rabid violence.
Noah drew a sharp breath, steadying his core, and met their charge head-on.
The ensuing clash was a brutal, breathless exchange. It cost him a glancing blow to his left forearm, the rough wood leaving a stinging, angry bruise, but his blade ultimately found its mark, carving through the final monster’s chest.
As the last Hilichurl dissolved into a cloud of coarse black ash, Noah planted the tip of his sword into the stone floor, leaning heavily against the hilt. His chest heaved as he dragged oxygen back into his burning lungs.
Robin stepped forward, her movements graceful and unhurried. She knelt to collect the scattering of magic stones and a single, crude totem mask left behind in the ash, stowing them neatly into her pack.
She looked up, her gaze softening as she took in Noah’s exhausted posture and the state of his weapon. The blade was littered with jagged nicks and possessed a distinct, unnatural bend.
“We should head back,” she said softly, her voice a soothing contrast to the damp chill of the Dungeon.
Noah nodded, a wry, bitter smile touching his lips.
It was definitely time to retreat.
With his current Level 1 parameters, carving his way down to the fifth floor against standard Dungeon fauna would have been a walk in the park.
But his passive skill had completely warped the ecosystem. The entities it spawned completely shattered the established difficulty scaling of the upper floors.
From the Pyro Slimes and Cryo Slimes on the first floor, to the Electro Slimes and Anemo Slimes on the second, and now these Hilichurls that possessed actual tactical coordination… their lethality was leagues above the mindless Goblins and Dungeon Lizards.
This drained his stamina at an exponential rate.
And the most critical bottleneck was his gear.
After a mere half-day of combat, this premium longsword, forged by the prestigious Hephaestus Familia, was screaming its last rites.
One more intense skirmish, and the steel would likely shatter mid-swing.
Robin approached, retrieving half of the magic stones they had harvested over the morning, and pressed them into Noah’s waiting palm.
Noah closed his fingers over the jagged crystals. With a single, focused thought, he offered the entire handful of magic stones into the depths of his mind, feeding them directly into the Intertwined Fate System.