The Ballad of Barbatos in the Dungeon City

Ganesha's heavy footsteps, clad in steel boots, echoed down the cold stone corridor. Behind him, Dina and Vena stepped silently, as if their feet never truly touched the floor. The deeper they descended beneath the Guild headquarters, the more oppressive and damp the air felt, filled with a suffocating aura of silence.

This was the Guild's top-secret, high-security detention facility. This place was never recorded on the official blueprints of any building in Orario.

Ganesha's steps finally halted at the end of a dead-end corridor that possessed only one giant, solid iron door. Two top-tier adventurers from the Ganesha Familia, serving as the final layer of guards, stood tall and immediately saluted as their god arrived.

Ganesha turned to Dina and Vena. His heavy authority as the enforcer of justice once again cloaked his body, covering all remnants of his silly sobbing in the office earlier.

"You two, wait out here for a moment," Ganesha ordered in a low tone. "I will go in first to ensure the procedure."

Dina and Vena nodded in unison, folding their arms in front of their cloaks with perfectly calm posture.

Ganesha gestured to his two loyal guards. The thick iron door was opened with a heavy, mechanical creak. The god of justice stepped inside the isolation cell along with his guards, leaving the Elf sisters waiting in the silence of the corridor.

The condition inside the detention cell was far from disgusting, but purely described despair. Because gods and goddesses in the lower world (Gekai) possessed fragile physiques like mortal humans, this cell was not equipped with physical torture devices or barbed chains. There was only a stone bed with a thin mattress, a small table, and dim lighting from a magic stone crystal in the corner of the room.

Upon that stone bed sat a goddess who was once the nightmare for half of Orario. Goddess Alecto.

Her dark hair looked dull and unkempt. Her luxurious dress, which once symbolized the glory of the Evilus faction, was now shabby and faded. Yet, despite her pathetic state, a sickening aura of madness and cunning still radiated strongly from her eyes.

Hearing Ganesha's footsteps, Alecto slowly raised her head. Her sunken eyes stared at the red elephant mask.

"Are you ready to return to Tenkai, Alecto?" Ganesha asked point-blank, his voice echoing off the narrow cell walls.

Alecto fell silent for a moment, then the corners of her lips curled upward, forming an incredibly wide, mocking smile. A dry laugh emanated from her throat.

"How many times have I heard that stupid question come out of your mouth, Ganesha?" Alecto sneered, her voice hoarse yet full of a condescending tone. "Has the Guild finally given up because they couldn't extract a single secret from me?"

"Your time in the lower world is up," Ganesha replied coldly, unprovoked by the taunt. "There is no stage of madness left for you in Orario."

Alecto laughed even harder, her laughter bouncing horrifyingly off the stone walls. "Do you think the threat of repatriation scares me? Know this, Foolish God... if I wanted to, I could have ended my own life years ago by slitting my wrists in the corner of this room. I could have laughed while returning to Tenkai, leaving you all in the dark!"

The goddess of darkness leaned forward, her eyes radiating pure madness. "But do you know why I didn't? Because Tenkai is incredibly boring! There is no blood, no despair, no mortals crying and begging for mercy! The heaven of the gods is a hell of boredom for me. So, even if I rot inside this narrow cell... this place is still much better and more entertaining than having to go back up there!"

Ganesha looked at the goddess, whose sanity was beyond saving, with a gaze full of pity yet absolute firmness. He knew words would never reach this mad goddess.

So, Ganesha turned his head slightly toward the partially open iron door.

"Enter," Ganesha commanded suddenly.

That single word cut off Alecto's laughter instantly. The goddess frowned, feeling annoyed by the interruption.

From behind the shadow of the door, two silhouettes slowly stepped inside the dim isolation cell. The light of the magic crystal slowly illuminated their faces—a pure white-skinned Elf girl with blonde hair and green eyes, and a dark-skinned Dark Elf girl with white hair and exotic red eyes. Both stared at Alecto with gazes as cold as glaciers.

Alecto's eyes widened immensely. Her mouth fell slightly open, her breath caught in her throat.

For a moment, the goddess of darkness thought she was seeing ghosts. Her logic clashed violently with the sight before her. She knew for certain, one hundred percent, that Dina and Vena—the Dis Sisters, her beloved ultimate weapons—had been killed in the era of The Great Feud.

However, that face, that posture, and their identical eyes radiating an aura of death... there was no doubt anymore that it was them.

After a few seconds of freezing in shock, Alecto's expression changed drastically. The shock melted, replaced by an explosion of laughter much louder and shriller than before. She laughed uproariously until she held her stomach.

"Ahahaha! Good! Very good!" Alecto roared amidst her laughter, her eyes sparkling with insane pride. She pointed at the two girls with a trembling finger. "You're still alive apparently! My precious murder puppets! Oh, I knew you wouldn't die that easily!"

Alecto jumped down from her stone bed, completely ignoring the presence of Ganesha and the guards. She spread her arms arrogantly toward Dina and Vena.

"Now, what are you waiting for, my sweet slaves?" Alecto ordered with the absolute tone of an arrogant master. "Free me! Kill this stupid god and his dogs, then get me out of this prison! We will rebuild Evilus and paint Orario with blood once again!"

The room was silent. Not a single guard moved because Ganesha had given a hand signal to remain still.

Dina and Vena stood frozen in their spots. Staring at the face of the goddess who had been the source of all the nightmares, torture, and madness that ruined them in this timeline. However, instead of being overwhelmed by anger or trauma, the hearts of the two Elf girls actually felt very calm. They realized how pathetic and pitiful the figure of the goddess before them was.

Dina took a step forward, followed by Vena.

"Goodbye, Goddess Alecto," Dina said with a voice that was extremely flat, clear, and absolutely devoid of any emotion.

"The Goddess who has made both of us suffer," Vena added, her voice resonating perfectly with her sister's, creating a bone-piercing echo.

Alecto frowned, feeling something was wrong with the tone of her puppets' voices. "What are you talking about? This is an order! Quickly kill th—"

The goddess's words were cut off forever.

Without needing to chant a single word of an incantation, Dina and Vena triggered the wind miracle from their Anemo Calyx. An extremely dense golden-green light suddenly burst in their palms, condensing in less than a millisecond into two incredibly sharp, short wind sword blades.

With movements that surpassed the speed of sound, Dina and Vena darted forward.

SRAASH!

The two wind sword blades pierced Alecto's chest simultaneously, destroying the vital organs of the goddess's mortal vessel without any resistance whatsoever. There was no excessive splashing of blood, only the perfect and absolute precision of assassination.

Alecto coughed, fresh blood flowing from the corner of her lips. Her body instantly went stiff. The pain she had never felt during her time in the Gekai finally spread, shattering all her arrogance.

She looked down, staring at the two magic wind swords piercing her chest, then slowly raised her gaze to look into Dina and Vena's eyes from an extremely close distance.

In the final second of her life, as her eyes locked with the Elf sisters', a horrifying epiphany struck Alecto's mind. Those eyes... those eyes were not the eyes of murder puppets whose brains she had washed until they broke. Those eyes were too pure, too rational.

"You..." Alecto choked on her own blood, her eyes widening, filled with absolute fear and confusion. "...you are not... my puppets..."

That was the last sentence that left her lips. The mortal vessel of Goddess Alecto finally met its end.

Instantly, the absolute laws of the lower world responded to the death of the divine vessel. An incredibly bright explosion of dark bluish-white light spewed from Alecto's body. The light surged upward with a conceptual force that could not be contained by any physical material. It pierced through the prison ceiling, tore through the foundation of the Guild headquarters, and shot straight up, cleaving the Orario morning sky.

On the surface, the morning in Orario had just begun with its busy routine. However, everything came to a halt when a giant pillar of light suddenly erupted from the city center, burning the horizon with a glow of colors that was both mesmerizing and terrifying.

In the courtyard of Hearth Manor, Bell Cranel, who was doing his morning stretches, stopped his movements. He looked up, his ruby-red eyes reflecting the light of the pillar.

From inside the main door, Goddess Hestia ran out with a panicked face, followed by Ryuu Lion, Liliruca Arde, Welf Crozzo, Yamato Mikoto, and Sanjouno Haruhime.

"Oh my! A repatriation pillar at the crack of dawn?!" exclaimed Hestia, clutching the blue ribbon on her chest. "Which god or goddess is being forcibly sent back to Tenkai this time?"

"It's coming from the direction of the city center... specifically around the Guild headquarters," Ryuu analyzed quickly, her eyes narrowing against the glare. The green-haired Elf's hand reflexively reached for the hilt of her wooden sword. "It's very rare for a god to be sent back from the city center without any prior reports of a major battle."

Welf whistled softly, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "The chaos never stops in this city, huh? The Orariopiad just ended yesterday, now a god has returned to Tenkai."

"Is... is this a sign of a new danger, Master Bell?" asked Haruhime with a trembling voice, squeezing the edge of her sleeve.

Bell remained silent, continuing to stare at the pillar of light. But oddly, he didn't feel a bad premonition.

Elsewhere, from the roof of a multi-story inn in the commercial district, a pair of sharp, cunning eyes also stared at the pillar of light. God Hermes stood near the edge of the roof, holding a teacup whose contents were nearly spilling.

"The color of the light... deep blue fading into absolute white," Hermes muttered, his brain spinning at maximum speed. "This spectrum pattern is very specific. This is from Alecto."

Behind him, Asfi Al Andromeda emerged from the shadow of the door, adjusting the glasses on her face. "Goddess Alecto of Evilus? Didn't the official Guild report state that she had disappeared or died during the major incident years ago?"

"That's what all of Orario thought, Asfi," Hermes's smile turned into a meaningful smirk. "Royman Mardeel, that old elf really hid a trump card very well. Locking up one of the mastermind gods of Evilus right under all of our noses all this time. But the question now is..."

Hermes turned around, looking at Asfi with a sharp gaze. "Who executed her this morning? Alecto was locked in the Guild's secret prison. No one could infiltrate it, and no ordinary adventurer knows its location. This execution... was too clean, too neat."

Meanwhile, in her private office in Twilight Manor, Goddess Loki looked at the pillar of light from her window with her narrowed eyes suddenly opening wide.

"Alecto, huh..." A smirk formed on Loki's lips.

Two days later.

Deep underground, in the depths of Orario's labyrinth hell.

Floor 70.

This was a territory that was purely a myth for this era. Even the Loki Familia and Freya Familia, the two strongest factions in Orario currently, had just breached the limits of Floor 60 with sacrifices that nearly claimed the lives of all their elites. The area below Floor 60 was considered an absolute death zone that had never been mapped by any human in Bell Cranel's timeline.

The environment on Floor 70 was a horrifying primordial landscape. Its entire surface consisted of toxic black crystals, seas of magma that did not radiate heat but rather absolute freezing temperatures, and cave ceilings filled with living flesh tentacles from the Dungeon itself.

Amidst that sea of despair, a heavily muscled man stepped with steady breaths.

Zald walked past piles of giant monster carcasses that had no name in any Guild bestiary. He had been diving non-stop for two days and two nights. Without a party, without supporters, without resting supplies. He only relied on the meat of the monsters he killed as fuel for his Deus Ambrosia magic.

His armor was severely torn, and his body was covered in slash wounds that quickly closed due to the regeneration from the high-quality monster meat he constantly consumed. In his right hand, he held the pure black steel greatsword he had temporarily bought from the Goibniu Familia.

The sword, even though it was a tough high-class masterpiece, was now in a very pathetic condition. The blade was full of deep cracks, and part of the tip had broken off from continuous clashes against the diamond-hard shells of deep-level monsters. He had harvested quite a lot of rare steel core material from monster bones to take back to Goibniu, but his hunt was far from over.

Zald stopped his steps in the middle of a vast crystal plain. He felt something strange.

The atmosphere around him suddenly went silent. The monsters that usually crawled out from the labyrinth's flesh walls abruptly stopped appearing. A strange vibration began to travel through the soles of his feet, causing the black crystals around him to crackle softly.

The labyrinth was crying. The Dungeon sensed an existential threat too great from this lone intruder—a mortal human who was destroying the ecosystem balance of Floor 70 at an intolerable speed. As an absolute defensive response, the Dungeon began to tear apart the walls of its own chamber.

In front of Zald, about a hundred meters away, a giant crystal shattered. From within the crack in the labyrinth's flesh, a roar that did not resemble any animal's sound exploded, deafening the ears.

A monster was born from the darkness. Its form resembled a bipedal dinosaur made of bone coated in dark volcanic metal, with four sharp arms that could cleave high-level magic like paper, and a protective shell immune to all forms of conventional magical attacks.

It was a Juggernaut. But not an ordinary Juggernaut born on the middle floors like the ones that had appeared in the past. This was a pure Juggernaut birthed specifically by the immune system of Floor 70, possessing speed and destructive specifications designed to kill Level 8 adventurers and above.

Zald looked at the apocalypse-bringing monster with calm eyes. There was not a glimmer of fear on his hardened face, only the flash of anticipation of a warrior longing for the brink of death.

He raised his chipped and cracked black greatsword, letting the black fire of Deus Ambrosia begin to creep up and coat the remaining steel blade.

"So... in this era and timeline, not a single Orario adventurer has dared to touch the soil of Floor 70 yet," Zald muttered, his voice echoing low, breaking the silence of the labyrinth.

He smiled faintly, a feral smile that showed his fangs.

"What a shame. The current generation is too slow. I have no choice, I must be the one to clear the red carpet for you."

The Floor 70 Juggernaut roared, disappearing from sight in the blink of an eye due to its pure speed that surpassed sound, darting straight for Zald's neck.

But Zald didn't blink. He only stepped his left foot forward, tightened his grip on the sword hilt, and welcomed the angel of death of the labyrinth with a black fire slash ready to cleave hell. The absolute evolutionary stage of the Gluttony toward Level 8 had just begun.

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