Chapter 42: The Witch of Loneliness and the Symphony of Blood
Location: Frontierra Nation - Cyanis Hollows Dungeon, Floor 50
The massive bronze doors slammed shut behind them, sealing the expedition inside the anomalous, sunlit forest.
Shiori blinked violently. A sudden, violent wave of vertigo washed over her, making the vibrant emerald canopy above spin. She staggered half a step, pressing a hand to her temple. Something was profoundly wrong. The scent of pine and morning dew felt entirely artificial, like a thin veil draped over a slaughterhouse.
She glanced to her left and caught Gareth ‘Ironhide’ doing the exact same thing. The massive, scarred vanguard dropped his tower shield an inch, his eyes darting frantically across the tree line, his breathing shallow and uneven. He caught Shiori’s gaze, and in his eyes, she saw the undeniable reflection of her own creeping dread.
Yet, looking at the rest of the party—Saintess Evelyn, Yua, Mei, Kazura, Shota, Yoshi, Elara, and Boran—they were completely composed, merely marveling at the unnatural beauty of the Floor 50 boss room. They had no idea.
What just happened? Shiori’s mind raced, clawing at the edges of a blurry, suffocating memory. The harder she tried to remember, the more her head throbbed, a sharp, blinding spike of pain echoing behind her eyes. But one distinct detail pierced through the fog of her fractured consciousness: the music.
"Saintess Evelyn," Shiori barked, her voice sharper and more urgent than she intended.
The beautiful Cleric, draped in the white and gold vestments of the Frontierra Church, turned with a gentle, questioning look. "Yes, Lady Shiori?"
"Cast your highest-tier anti-acoustic barrier on the entire party. Now. A spell that completely nullifies external sound waves," Shiori commanded.
Evelyn didn't question the sudden, bizarre order. Recognizing the absolute authority of the Summoned Hero, she immediately raised her holy staff. A soft, golden dome of mana cascaded over the group, sealing their ears from the ambient chirping of the forest.
"We go right," Shiori declared, abandoning their previous forward trajectory.
They marched through the dense undergrowth for several tense minutes. Then, the illusion began to crack. The artificial morning sun was abruptly swallowed by bruised, charcoal clouds. The temperature plummeted.
And then, it bled through the golden magical barrier as if the holy spell didn't even exist.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
The haunting, melancholic triplets of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata: Adagio sostenuto drifted through the darkening woods.
"Don't listen to it!" Shiori screamed, her voice barely audible over the sudden, oppressive weight crushing their minds. "Cover your ears! It will kill us!"
But human hands and holy magic were useless against a conceptual attack. The sound wave bypassed their eardrums entirely, echoing directly within their skulls. An overwhelming tsunami of emotional impact struck the party. Unfathomable sadness, crushing loneliness, and a dreamful, paralytic apathy seized their nervous systems. Shota fell to his knees, weeping silently. Elara dropped her bow, staring blankly into the dark woods.
The music swelled, the melancholic notes turning sharp, violent, and deafeningly loud. The pressure inside Shiori's skull expanded exponentially.
CRACK.
It sounded like a hundred porcelain vases shattering at once. Before Shiori could even process the horror, Boran’s head simply detonated. Then Elara’s. Then Shota’s. The forest was instantly painted in a gruesome, 360-degree spray of crimson mist.
Shiori felt her own eyes bulge, the pressure reaching a fatal apex—
[Temporal Reversion Initiated. Save Point: Floor 50 Entrance.]
The bronze doors slammed shut. The morning sun shone brightly.
Shiori immediately collapsed onto her hands and knees in the soft grass. She clutched her throat, gagging violently, dry-heaving as the phantom sensation of her brain exploding echoed through her nerve endings. Tears of absolute agony streamed down her cheeks.
A loud, metallic crash echoed beside her. Gareth had dropped his massive tower shield, his knees buckling as he fell backward onto the dirt. The veteran A-Rank adventurer, a man who had stared down dragons, was hyperventilating, his eyes blown wide with sheer, unadulterated terror.
The psychological breakdown of the time loop was actively filtering the weak from the strong. Only Shiori and Gareth—the two highest-leveled individuals in the room—possessed the cognitive stats required to retain the memories of their gruesome deaths.
"Lady Shiori! Lord Gareth!" Saintess Evelyn cried out, rushing forward, her holy staff glowing as she tried to cast healing magic on them. "What is wrong? What just happened?"
Shiori took a shuddering, gasping breath. She looked at Evelyn, opening her mouth to scream the truth: We just died! Our heads exploded! We are trapped in a time loop!
But no sound came out. Her vocal cords completely seized, magically paralyzed by the dungeon's absolute laws. The secret of the loop could not be spoken.
Shiori forced herself to her feet, her legs trembling so violently she nearly fell again. She wiped the bile from her mouth and looked at her bewildered classmates.
"We do not have a single minute to waste," Shiori said, her voice hollow, devoid of its usual commanding warmth. "We have to hurry up and find the Dungeon Boss."
Gareth looked up at her, his face ashen, sweat pouring down his scarred cheeks. He slowly nodded, his voice a broken rasp. "Aye... she's right. Move."
"But... why the sudden rush?" Shota asked, holding his dual daggers nervously. He looked at Shiori's traumatized face and felt a deep chill run down his spine.
"As of right now," Shiori stated, her glowing eyes locking onto an invisible, ticking clock only she could feel, "we have exactly sixty minutes and fifty-two seconds before the piano starts. We have sixty minutes before we die."
A stunned silence fell over the party. Evelyn covered her mouth in shock. Yoshi and Kazura exchanged terrified glances. She can see the future, they realized.
"Move!" Shiori ordered.
They sprinted through the illusionary forest, abandoning stealth entirely. They tore through bushes and leapt over streams, driven purely by the manic desperation radiating from their leaders.
After thirty minutes of grueling, frantic searching, the dense woods opened up into a massive, circular clearing. In the center stood a colossal tree, its trunk as wide as a fortress tower, its weeping-willow branches draped in thick, glowing blue moss.
"Twenty minutes and fifteen seconds left," Shiori panted, gripping her broadsword tightly. "Search everywhere. Find the Boss before the music starts!"
But they didn't have to search.
From the highest, darkest branches of the colossal tree, something began to descend.
"Above us!" Gareth roared, finally retrieving his courage as he hoisted his shield.
Slowly, defying all laws of gravity, a grand piano floated down from the canopy. It was carved from pitch-black obsidian, laced with glowing, crystalline blue veins that pulsed like a living heartbeat.
And sitting upon the velvet bench was the Floor 50 Boss.
It was a little girl.
She could not have been older than ten in physical appearance, yet her aura was profoundly, terrifyingly mature. She possessed a haunting, porcelain-doll complexion, starkly contrasted by deep, dark bags under her empty, silver eyes. She wore a tattered, intricate Victorian mourning dress made of black lace and faded velvet, her bare, pale feet dangling far above the piano pedals. Long, silvery-white hair cascaded down her back, pooling across the black and white keys of the instrument.
She landed softly in the center of the clearing. The silence was absolute.
The little girl slowly lifted her small, delicate hands, hovering her fingers over the keys. She didn't look at the adventurers. She merely stared at the ivory.
"Be ready," the little girl spoke. Her voice was not a child's chirp, but an echoing, multi-layered whisper that sounded like a choir of grieving widows. "To enjoy my playing. The Moonlight Sonata."
"Do not let her strike a key!" Shiori screamed, instantly thrusting her hand forward. A massive torrent of destructive blue fire erupted from her palm, spiraling directly toward the child.
The inferno struck an invisible dome three feet away from the piano, splashing harmlessly against it before evaporating into thin air.
The little girl slowly turned her head, her dead, silver eyes locking onto Shiori.
"That is rude, big sister," she whispered.
"Attack! All at once!" Gareth bellowed, charging forward with his shield raised.
Elara, despite her initial hesitation at aiming her bow at a child, gritted her teeth and unleashed a volley of armor-piercing magical arrows. The moment the glowing shafts touched the invisible barrier, they melted into harmless puddles of silver liquid.
"Focus fire!" Shota yelled, rushing in with Kazura and Yoshi, their blades glowing with ultimate skills. Yua and Mei chanted frantically from the rear, launching a barrage of holy light and lightning strikes. Saintess Evelyn slammed her staff into the dirt, casting [Aura of the Vanguard], drastically boosting everyone’s physical and magical stats.
The combined assault of S-Rank heroes and A-Rank adventurers crashed onto the small space occupied by the little girl. The ground shattered, dust exploded into the air, and the shockwave flattened the surrounding trees.
But as the dust cleared, the little girl was completely untouched, still sitting comfortably on her velvet bench.
She didn't dodge. She didn't cast a shield. She simply pressed a single piano key.
Plink.
A deep, resonating D-sharp rang out.
Instantly, all motion in the clearing ceased. Gareth, frozen mid-swing with his battleaxe, hung suspended in the air. Shota, mid-leap, was locked in zero gravity. The magical lightning bolts fired by Mei froze mid-strike, suspended like jagged glass sculptures.
Shiori’s eyes widened in sheer horror. She couldn't move a single muscle. Her heartbeat slowed to a crawl. The little girl had used a single note to completely pause their temporal and spatial coordinates.
The Witch of Loneliness looked at the frozen, struggling statues of the heroes. A sad, empty smile touched her pale lips.
"Try again, and again, and again," the little girl whispered, her voice echoing in their paralyzed minds. "Or forever keep me company... and listen to my playing."
She pressed a second key.
Plunk.
An invisible, razor-thin wave of acoustic pressure expanded outward at the speed of sound.
In perfect unison, the heads of every single person in the clearing separated from their shoulders. As Shiori's vision tumbled backward toward the grass, a translucent, blood-spattered holographic screen flickered to life in her fading periphery.
[Dungeon Boss Discovered]
Name: Witch of Loneliness
Rank: SS (Anomaly)
Level: 201
HP: 18,500,000 / 18,500,000
Skills: [HIDDEN] [HIDDEN] [HIDDEN]
[Temporal Reversion Initiated. Save Point: Floor 50 Entrance.]
The bronze doors slammed shut. The morning sun shone brightly.
Shiori did not stand up. She lay on the soft, dewy grass, staring blankly at the artificial blue sky. Her mind was actively fracturing. The crushing, inescapable futility of the fight settled into her bones. A Level 201 anomaly with eighteen million hit points that could decapitate them with a single piano key. There was no tactic. There was no strategy. It was an execution chamber.
Gareth didn't even drop his shield this time. He just slowly sat down against the cold bronze door, pulling his knees to his chest, burying his scarred face in his hands as a broken, pathetic sob escaped his lips. The mighty vanguard had given up.
But something else had changed.
Saintess Evelyn did not ask what was wrong. The beautiful Cleric stood frozen, her healing staff trembling violently in her grip. Her face was deathly pale, and her eyes were wide with a creeping, visceral terror as she stared at the beautiful forest.
The immense psychological trauma of the brutal, repeated deaths was beginning to leak through the time loop's memory filter. The Saintess was starting to remember. And the clock was ticking once again.
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