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Cass wanted to wash up. She liked the feeling of water against her bare skin, and she knew that as they went deeper into the Dungeon, they would lose ready access to water for bathing purposes. She decided to take a bath while most of the rest of the group was asleep - only her and Drake slept in the new way where they only slept a couple of hours. She found her way to the oasis near Rivira, stripped herself bare, and dove in, enjoying the cool feeling of water on her skin, stripping away the stain of sweat. She went beneath the water and just held her breath, loving the feeling of weightlessness, of floating.

It reminded her of that freedom she felt, when she had almost died. Her hand opened and closed at that thought, and she shook her head, short dark hair flowing around her features in the process. She couldn't die. She had Drake, who loved her, and the rest of her family, who cared about her.

After several minutes of idly swimming beneath the surface, her lungs able to handle not breathing for what felt like forever, now that she was a Level Six - she had been able to go without breathing for eight minutes when she'd run away from her father, and now she could get to eight minutes and not even feel the burn - she burst her head up over the water line, quietly breathing through her nose as she surveyed the landscape. Then she spotted a young woman with short red hair in the tree line.

Revis. Or was it Alise? Drake said it was complicated.

Revis moved unnaturally, whenever Cass watched her. Her body was too still. It made her difficult to read. If she intended some physical action, Cass could see that written out in her body language, as one movement flowed naturally into the next, into the next... but if it was trying to see her feelings beyond that, there were only the vaguest, weakest signs. This movement of her shoulders was possibly her being afraid; this shift of her feet was maybe anger... it was like trying to understand someone's voice when you were underwater and they were mumbling.

Drake said it was probably because Revis was 'dead.' She had died, and come back, but not in the way that Cass had.

Cass dove beneath the water line, and swam at an inhuman pace to the shore, headed right for where she'd spotted Revis, only bursting forth from beneath the water once she arrived at the shore, landing on the ground not so far from Revis, her body dripping wet as she stood there, nude. "Revis?" She asked the young woman.

Revis swiveled her head Cass's way, her green eyes narrowing. After a few seconds' thought, she leapt out of the trees, landing in front of Cass. Annoyed to be interrupted. "What?"

"Why are you... here?" Cass asked.

Revis shrugged, a casual movement, accompanied by none of the smaller movements that might otherwise have revealed her intent. "I live here." Her gaze flicked down to Cass's body for just a moment, something momentarily written on her face that Cass couldn't properly identify.

Sexual interest, like when Drake looked at her... but not quite that? Something off. Cass didn't mind when other women thought she was attractive, but she did feel somewhat exposed, given her clothes were elsewhere on the shore. "Oh..." She should try to keep up her end of the conversation - but Cass had never been much of one for talking. She didn't know what to say, really.

"Why are you here?" Revis countered, giving her a sharp glare.

"I'm... with the rest... we're going deep..." Even though she was fumbling for the right words, Revis nodded in response, seeming to understand.

"How deep?"

"Deep... fifty... um..." She had no idea how deep. Numbers weren't a thing she was good at. Drake was good at numbers. "Fifty... something..." she said. "Or sixty?"

"Mm..." Revis nodded. Her gaze once more dipped down towards Cass's naked body, an expression running across her face that wasn't accompanied by any movement of her body. "I see. Thank you." She leapt back into the trees again, a few momentary whispers of branches and leaves being the only sounds that reached Cass from her location on the ground. Cass didn't follow after her... she didn't know what she was supposed to say, even, if Revis had stayed. So she went back into the water, swimming back to her clothes, drying off and getting dressed.

When she returned to the camp, she found Drake, quietly flipping through a book. His gaze went up to her, a smile appearing on his lips. "Did you have a nice bath?" He asked.

She nodded, sitting down next to him; he stretched one arm around her softly, sliding along her hip. She leaned her head into his shoulder, just enjoying being close to him. "I saw Revis..." she said.

"Huh." Drake paused his reading, closing the book after a moment. "What's she doing here?" He asked, tilting his head towards the tree line.

"She lives here," Cass said.

"Ah. I guess it's better than most of the Dungeon, as places to live go." Drake's head tilted into hers, his cheek nuzzling against the top of her head, and she just enjoyed the gentle glow of closeness that came with his touch.

* * *

A trip that deep into the Dungeon was a long one - we had provisions for two months of food, plus additional plans to supplement our supplies at the monster pantry on the 24th floor. By extension, as we fought our way down, time was passing aboveground.

Setsuko's birth of Noriko had been a painless, easy one, owing to the fact that for Hentalians, birth was as simple as could be. The same was true of her second child, a boy that we wound up naming Tatsuki after some discussion.

"I am very happy that Drake has given you a baby," Noriko said, looking at her mother holding Tatsuki in her arms even then. "I am also happy that your breasts have not become even larger, as I am inheriting your post-pregnancy tendency to become busty, but if my breasts expanded every time we had a child, then I would quickly become obscenely large-breasted, which would be bad, as while it might be erotic, it would make it difficult to walk around."

Setsuko just giggled at that. "You're right, Noriko. Plus, Drake likes my breasts at this size, doesn't he?" She teased, glancing up at me with a wry smile to her lips.

"I do," I told her, gently taking hold of her hand and giving it a squeeze. I leaned down to kiss the forehead of little Tatsuki, the boy in question remarkably well-behaved for an infant, just quietly curled into his mother's breast. Hentalian babies were very easy to deal with, after all. "And I like the woman they're attached to even more," I teased, kissing her cheek, making her flush scarlet.

"A-ah, thank you, Drake, I love you too," she replied, still not used to such open shows of affection thanks to her late husband.

The door opened at that point, Hephaistos standing in it, catching me halfway cuddling with Setsuko. Tsubake leaned around the goddess to get a good look at what was going on. "Sorry about not coming earlier, Setsuko," Hephaistos said, grabbing a chair and dragging it up next to her. "It's been a while since you last gave birth, and the familia's only gotten bigger."

"Oh, it's alright, Hephaistos-sama," Setsuko said. She made a small movement with the hand I was holding, like she was trying to wave the woman off. "I'm just happy to see you again."

"And I'm happy to see you had another easy birth - I heard that you'd started less than ten minutes ago, and apparently the little one's already done crying."

"Oh, he's just like Noriko that way," Setsuko said, gently cuddling the boy against her breast. "Such a well-behaved baby."

"You're definitely lucky on that front," Hephaistos said. "I've seen a lot of babies in my time in the lower world, and Noriko is the only one to reliably sleep through the night."

"Hopefully my babies are also very well-behaved and do not cry through the night, as when Amaranth does so, it is very annoying."

I snorted at that. "Hopefully," I agreed, giving her a wink. "Amaranth is Lena's child," I added, more to Tsubake than anyone else.

"Ehh... guess you're really having a lot of kids, huh?" Tsubake asked.

"I guess I am," I said. I spared a glance over at Naomi, who was just sort of pouting in a corner as all this went on. "But I'll care for all of them."

"You had better," Hephaistos said, though it was more good natured - her playing the mother-in-law rather than anything more serious. If she was the mother-in-law, then she was certainly the sort who was on good terms with her son-in-law.

"Here!" Hestia proclaimed, as she burst in through the door, carrying a large basket loaded up with food. "For the mother and the child!" She proclaimed, hefting it up onto the bed and letting it plop down. It was full of things like store bought bread and sausages, as well as a few bottles of milk, a big smile on Hestia's lips. "Heh. This is what a familia's income is for," she declared. "Obviously, I wouldn't waste it on personal crap like Loki!"

"I... don't think Loki actually wastes it on personal crap." I guess there were a few portraits of her around the house, but her actual room was pretty sparse. Maybe her drinking? Certainly, she wasn't able to spend the war chest on drinking. That was just too much.

"Of course you'd say that, you're in love with her," Hestia huffed, flipping one ponytail behind her shoulder. "Anyway! Eat up, Setsuko! That food's gonna become food for the baby! Did you pick a name yet?"

"Tatsuki," Setsuko said, smiling as she took a bit of bread and started to eat it. I took one of the bottles of milk, removing the cork and offering it to Setsuko so she could keep one hand on the bed. "It's Far Eastern for 'brilliant dragon.'"

"Oh really?" Hestia said, her expression flat. "I wonder where she got that idea for a name," she said, quietly glaring at me.

"I-is the baby okay?" Bella squeaked out, glancing into the bedroom - well, she would be, if she wasn't peeking between her fingers. "There's nothing nasty, right?"

"It's fine, Bella," Setsuko said. "Come on inside. You can meet Tatsuki."

Bella approached the bed fairly quickly, driven more by curiosity than anything else. "Hi," she said to Tatsuki, giving him one of those finger-wiggling waves. "He has your hair, I think, Drake," she said.

"Yeah. Darker hair tends to dominate, when you have a child with someone with lighter hair," I explained, idly stroking Setsuko's hair.

"So if we had a baby..." Bella mumbled to herself. I pretended not to hear it, just to spare her the embarrassment, but unfortunately Noriko was not nearly so kind.

"Then it is likely that the child would have dark hair, like Drake, rather than white hair, like yourself."

"A-a-ah," Bella sputtered out, eyes turning big, cheeks turning red as a tomato - then she ran off at lightning speed, not even bothering to defend herself.

Hephaistos chuckled softly as she watched her go. "That's a cute child there, Hestia," she said.

"Yeah... cute..." Hestia said, glaring at me, as if I was responsible for chasing off Bella.

"Oh, don't blame Drake. Girls like that are just girls like that," Hephaistos said, planting one hand atop Hestia's head. "That sort of anxiety's about yourself, not the world."

"Yeah! Because he's taking advantage of a young girl!"

"I haven't even done anything to her," I said.

"Not yet!" Hestia replied, pointing one finger at me accusingly. "But when you do-! I'll-!"

"Hestia, it's best not to make pointless threats," Hephaistos said, with a companionable smile on her lips. "Let me take Hestia off your hands for a moment, Setsuko, Drake, if you don't mind?"

"No, go ahead," I said.

"Yes, it's fine with me too," Setsuko added a moment later.

"What about my-" was as far as Hestia got before Hephaistos yanked on one of her pigtails, pulling her along out of the bedroom to have whatever conversation she was about to have.

* * *

Hephaistos had plopped Hestia down on her bed, and the petite younger goddess was pouting and crossing her arms, glaring up at her angrily. "Hestia. Why are you so angry about Drake... existing?"

"He's taking advantage of Setsuko! She's super nice and sweet, so she doesn't even complain that he's married like sixteen times! But he's just taking advantage of her! And she's my first child!"

"I've known Setsuko for much longer than you, Hestia. And I can tell you that Setsuko has been the happiest that I've ever seen her, since she married Drake. In fact..." Hephaistos plopped down on the bed next to Hestia. "She's had a bit of a complex about her breasts her whole life."

"Wha- what the heck kinda complex can she have? Complexes about your breasts are for flatties like Loki No Boobs! If you've got big boobs like her, you should be proud!" Hestia rose from the bed, and Hephaistos had to grab her shoulder and pull her back down to the bed.

"Well, apparently Goro preferred her flat. She was as petite as... well, as Loki, before she got pregnant with Noriko. He gave her quite the complex about it. But now, some of her clothes actually show her cleavage."

"Yeah, so that pervert can leer at them!" Hestia yelled.

"Women like it when the man they like looks at them, Hestia," she explained to her old friend.

"I know that! I'm a virgin, not an idiot!"

"Then what has you so mad about Drake?"

"Ugh! He's a cad! He has like sixteen wives or something! And that's even more than when I met him, because he just keeps adding them on!"

"He would be a cad if he lied to her about it. I'd probably kill him myself. But Setsuko knows all about that, and married him anyway, and she's quite happy with it, from what I've seen. Have you seen different?"

"...no," Hestia admitted.

"Then...?"

"He's seduced Bella too! He's super-ultra-mega-seduced her, in fact! She has crazy super stat growth..." Hestia quietly mumbled.

"Isn't that the case for all his wives?" Hephaistos asked. "I mean, one can't help but notice that almost all his wives would be Record Breakers by the standards of a year ago."

"No! Even worse! She's getting stats faster than Setsuko, because she has a special skill! It's total BS! He's just a scumbag perv, why would anybody like him?! I don't get it!"

"He's actually, as I mentioned, very sweet." She tilted her head contemplatively. "Hm. Hestia, are you perhaps just being tsundere?"

Hestia sputtered. "Ts-tsundere?! How dare you! I'm not tsundere! And I know that just makes me sound more tsundere, but there's no dere, just tsun! Got it?! I'm a virgin, and I'm going to stay a virgin until I find the right guy, who isn't Drake!"

"Are you sure?" Hephaistos teased, a light smile on her face.

"Yes! You're the one with the crush on him!" Hestia said, pointing at Hephaistos accusingly.

Hephaistos smile softened as she halted in thought. Did she...? Certainly, she liked that he had looked her right in the eyes. That he was proving so competent a blacksmith. He was also very physically appealing, something he showed off in the forge when he'd pop a couple buttons to deal with the heat...

"No! I was kidding! I was kiddinnnnng!" Hestia whined. "Noooo!"

* * *

Revis had thought about how best to get her hands on Ais. Cass obviously didn't know the number of floors they would be going to that well - but she knew it would be higher than Floor 50. The Fiftieth Floor was a safe floor, so they wouldn't stop there permanently - but they would set up camp there.

The monsters half-understood what she was. Sometimes they would attack her, and she'd have to kill them, but other times, she could make them submit much more easily than a normal person could...

She thought.

Why did she think that? She didn't know how easily a normal person could train them... was it some leftover bit of Alise, still bouncing through her head? She'd heard so much about her from Ryu... a friendly, kind, self-assured young woman with long red hair. Her fingers reached to her own short hair, which felt crisp and dead to the touch. She'd seen Alise with her own eyes, speaking to her, arguing with her, telling her about herself, her goals, her personality...

Was it Alise who gave her those strange flickers of alien emotion, looking at Cass's naked body? What did they mean?

Moi moi! A pretty girl like that? Naked and fresh out of the bath, just standing there with confidence?! It's practically an invitation!

An invitation to what? She shook her head. She had to collect Ais, for Her. She had to. Her palm went to her forehead, fingers scraping along her scalp as she tried to refocus her mental energies. She had to do this. She had to, for Her. The thoughts throbbed inside her skull, electricity lacing along dead meat, the only thing animating her at this point. She took in a deep breath, trembled, and shook her head.

Further down. Further down, She lived, and She would help her, once Revis explained her plan to Her.

I can't believe you didn't...

She didn't-? Didn't what? Revis shook her head, trying to dismiss the old thoughts of Alise, the last sparks of a dead woman, at least for the moment. She could figure it out later. For now, she had to obey Her will.

* * *

We'd set up camp on the fiftieth floor, a space full of gray trees, stretching across the whole area, the ceiling lit by glowing crystals just like Rivira. We'd set up camp, and now Finn had gathered everyone in the center.

"The Fifty-First Floor is a labyrinth," he explained. "For some of you, this will be the most dangerous floor you have ever been to," he said, looking particularly at me. "Remain calm and stay with the group. If you separate, the Dungeon will kill you. If you break formation, the Dungeon will use that to its advantage. Monsters from here on out will be as strong as some of the Monster Rexes on the upper floors. And we aren't planning to stop on the fifty-first - we're planning to go all the way down to the Fifty-Ninth Floor, which hasn't been visited since the Zeus and Hera familias last ruled Orario! This will prove our familia able to seize their mantle," he declared.

There was some cheering at that, though, having not lived here back when Zeus or Hera were dominant, it meant little to me.

"Now, we do have maps of the Fifty-First Floor, but the labyrinth is designed - if we consider the Dungeon a designer - to look all the same. If we get lost, it will become extremely hard to find our way again. Before this mission, these maps were copied many times over, thanks to the hard efforts of Line and Orba, and you will all be given one, just in case you become separated from the group." He looked at us all, his expression cold. "I will be frank. If you do get separated from the group, I will assume you are dead, because that is the most likely case. If you can, make it back here, to the Fiftieth Floor, and we will reunite on our way back to the surface - but if you can't, you'll be presumed dead. Everyone needs to stay with the group." There was a long silence. "Is that understood?" He called out.

"Yes, General!" Tione was the first to shout out her agreement, and everybody else joined in a moment later.

* * *

The labyrinth itself wasn't too difficult to navigate - the Zeus and Hera familias had mapped much of them, so we had a good idea of where everything was, even if it was definitely designed to make you get lost. Every four way intersection looked identical; every long straightaway had a faint serpentine curve to it, so you couldn't see that far ahead. The further in we got, the more clear it became that getting separated from the group probably would result in my untimely death, so I had another body draw out the path that we were taking, just so I could consult it later to figure out where I was, exactly.

The monsters on the Fifty-First were no slouches either: bipedal rhinos that loomed overhead, strong enough to pulp bone if it managed to ram you with its horns and a gargantuan red-and-purple spider creature that skittered across the walls were the mainstays.

Of course, the Dungeon didn't stop at those. After a few probing attacks with limited forces, there was a momentary lull, during which Finn pushed us to make a better pace. The Dungeon was malicious, and while it clearly had some limitations on what it could do, it wasn't an inert antagonist. It was smart, and it was adaptive. If one strategy didn't work, it switched to another one.

During one long straightaway, the walls on either side of the center of the party exploded, and a dozen Deformis Spiders burst forth, fanged maws trying to target the supporters and weaker members of the party. Some of the strong members stayed near the center for exactly that purpose, and I was one of them, given the crowd control abilities I could bring to bear. I threw a half-dozen knives at the spiders, hitting some and missing others, then yanking them back to hurl them all out again. There was a roar from the front of the caravan, and I had to trust in Finn and Tione and the rest up front to handle it. As I moved and dodged around the spiders, smashing them into one another and slamming knives into their eyes or necks (okay, the connection between the abdomen and the cephalothorax, happy?) or limbs.

As I managed to kill the last of the spiders, though - I saw that the rear was also being attacked, and not by monsters we would have expected on this level. Silver serpents, each as thick around as a man's torso and very, very long, snapped and bit at the back, where Ais and Cass were fighting with them - poorly. Cass's body reading abilities didn't help nearly so much with such an inhuman physiology, and Ais had actually gotten bitten by one of the snakes, gauging by the circular mark on her shoulder. It looked like it was poisonous or strength-sapping or something, so I moved in to help.

It was then that Revis revealed herself, rushing forward at lightning speed, green eyes moving across the group with alacrity before settling on Ais. Ais's mouth opened for just a moment in surprise, then Revis's boots hit Ais in the chest and she kicked off her, sending Ais to the ground from the sheer force, Revis snapping against the ceiling, a long, sharp blade in her hand, eyes running across the group of us as the energy of her leap was dispersed by her bending her legs.

As a Level Five myself, the movements seemed to transpire in slow motion, my focus on the moment. I ran through my thoughts of what to do, while elsewhere, the body that had been fucking three Reis into the bed, hurriedly released the strand of Fate to let them all recover, starting to inform them of the situation.

When Revis drew up her sword, pointing it towards Ais and not the group of serpents, I had a pretty good guess as to what was happening. She leapt off the ceiling, and in the heartbeat of space I had, I managed to catch Ais's shoulder and yank her along the ground, Revis's blade stabbing into the ground as Ais hurriedly got to her feet. The only reason that I was able to pull that off was that she'd been unable to move in midair - her reaction times were a god's compared to mine.

I activated You and Yours Stance. "Stop, Revis," I told her, and she glared at me for a moment. "Stop. Don't do this." The Reis were telling me everything they knew about why Revis might do this, what abilities she had that were relevant, and I was buying time. "Stop, Revis."

"Shut up, shut up!" Revis's attention snapped from Ais to me. "Shut up!" She rushed me, sword pointed right at my chest. She flew through me, ramming into one of the carts in the caravan, upsetting it and sending things flying around, the people who had been riding inside hurriedly running out as the sheer force pretty much shattered the object, sending wood splinters everywhere. "I have to do this, shut up! Shut the fuck up!" She was just screaming in a confused mania, her green eyes wheeling around on me with nothing but pure hate, and she leapt for me, blade pointed at my chest once more.

Cass interposed herself between me and Revis, managing to catch the other woman's blade in her gauntleted hands. She gripped and broke it in half, the gauntlets that Syr had given her still being obscenely high quality. For a moment, Revis blinked, staring at the damaged sword, then she looked over at Ais. "Tempest," Ais said, her voice quiet as she stabbed out with Desperate at Revis.

Revis weaved to one side, but not all the way - her right arm was pierced straight through by the force, almost ripped off altogether, grey muscle being exposed where it was half-torn out of its socket. Before Ais could do anything from that, though, her right hand snapped up to grip the blade near the hilt, digging in deep as she locked eyes with her. The muscle knit itself together, and flesh bloomed around the blade, seeming to twist and twine and grip it.

"Stop it, Revis, stop attacking Ais," I said, having picked up that that was almost certainly her motivation.

Revis just roared, leaping into the air, Ais getting dragged up by the sword with her. "Tempest," Ais said, ramming her body forward in the process, practically smashing Desperate into the ceiling as the pair went upwards. Revis's left hand snapped out for Ais's throat at that point, gripping it tight. I hurled knives up at her, trying to avoid hitting Ais, but Revis simply leaned left and right, dodging with seeming effortlessness, even as I flicked my wrist to alter their trajectories slightly.

"...freezing land. Blizzard, the three severe winters - my name is Alf!" came a shout from the caravan itself, and a moment later, ice burst forward from it. Revis leapt again, but she wasn't fast enough, her legs getting caught in the massive plume of ice. Ais was, by that point, limp in her grip. Revis yanked free the arm that had been impaled with Desperate, making a single swift movement across her thighs, simply cutting off her legs and falling the rest of the way to the ground.

"Revis, stop," I shouted at her again, and she just growled, shifting her body, keeping a grip on Ais's throat. She was moving like she was ready to crawl her way out of this fight, but instead, her legs suddenly regrew, and she started just running with Ais in hand. I lashed out, not with knives - she could see and dodge those - but instead with thin strands of Fate, grabbing at Ais with them. I managed to snag onto her legs, but I wasn't stronger than Revis - I got dragged along instead. "Revis, please!" I shouted at her. "Is this what Ryu would want? What Alise would want? What you want?" I was separated from the party by this point, and hurriedly scribbling out which directions we were going through the maze with another body so I could find my way back.

"I have to do this! Shut up!" Revis threw Desperate right at my head, and I Ducked Fate again, a warm sapphire light instantly lighting up the darkness of the Dungeon as the three of us careened around from her sheer velocity. We were getting further and further from the party, and the further we got, the less my chances of rescuing Ais.

There was one thing I could do, though. "Dungeon, attack the redhead!" I shouted out.

Monsters instantly burst forth from every direction of the hall, spiders and rhinos and some type of dragon emerging, blocking Revis's way forward, forcing her to a stop.

* * *

Revis contemplated the monsters in front of her. She had thrown Desperate at Alise. One of her hands was occupied, keeping a blood choke on Ais so the blonde couldn't wake up and cause problems. Her own blade had been crushed by Cass. And now Alise had somehow summoned a bunch of monsters.

"Oh? Are you really going to lose to monsters like this? That's sad, if so. This sort of thing would have been a Tuesday for me," Alise called out from behind her.

"Don't worry. I'm the best."

Revis hurled Ais's body into the swarm of monsters, making Alise yell in panic from behind her. She rushed forward now that both her hands were free, snapping off the leg of a Deformis Spider to use as an impromptu spear, then slamming it into the eye of the Cadmus. Ais's body somehow turned its course, flipping from flying forward to coming towards her. For a moment, she thought Ais had woken up, but no, she was still unconscious. With one hand, she snapped out to grab her, and got turned off course, losing her grip on the spider's leg in the process.

She hit the ground, skidding across it for a moment, before she snapped out a leg, kicking herself up to her feet, and just grabbed the horn of a Black Rhinos, using it to push the momentum away, back towards Alise. She glowered at her old self, trying to stop her from doing the one thing that she had to do. She smashed one hand straight through the Black Rhinos, collecting its magic stone and swallowing it whole for the energy boost it could provide, before kicking off again, following the line of momentum. Her hand went for the old Alise's face, planning to slam right into it, and the girl in question simply ducked, letting Revis fly past her, Ais still in hand.

She glanced behind her - and the monsters seemed to avoid Alise, curving around her to surround Revis.

"Tempest," her captive shouted, and the two of them careened up towards the ceiling again, her getting smashed on her back against it. A moment later, she was getting yanked away again, and without any good surface to grip, Revis had to either follow her into the swarm of angry monsters, unarmed and unprepared, or let go.

She let go. Alise took hold of Ais and just ran, while the monsters swarmed her, the one-eyed Cadmus roaring at her as they tried to kill her.

* * *

I'd initially considered running back to the caravan, but that wasn't the plan, and now there were a bunch of high Level monsters and an angry Revis between me and the way back, so I pulled out my map, using it and my other body's markings of the paths I'd been taking to rush back up to the Fiftieth Floor.

"Desperate," Ais said, the word simple yet needy.

"I marked where it should be," I reassured her, carrying her bridal style as I just ran through the air. The Dungeon's attempts to summon monsters to kill me were haphazard, but there was no reason to make it easy.

"Okay, Mama," Ais said. Right. I was still in You and Yours Stance. I made a mental note to turn it off once we were safe...

Of course, what was safe when you were being chased by a psychotically dangerous and focused adventurer-turned-monster... and were currently glowing blue...

It wasn't a good situation.

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