Chapter 269

Chapter 269: Chapter 269

Eight days after Valletta died beneath Orario, Rayleigh finally managed to spend an entire morning outside a hospital bed without Airmid appearing from nowhere to threaten him.

His body still reminded him exactly what had Benihime cost.

The deeper wounds had closed, but whenever he pushed too much spiritual pressure through his arms, a dull ache spread from his shoulders into his hands.

Airmid had cleared him for normal daily activity and light forging, though she had followed that permission with such a long list of strict restrictions that Rayleigh suspected she had deliberately made the word "normal" meaningless.

Alfia agreed with her completely.

She sat across from him at breakfast with a book open beside her plate, calmly drinking tea while Rayleigh tested the strength in his right hand by repeatedly opening and closing his fingers.

"You are doing it again," Alfia noted, not looking up from her book.

Rayleigh paused. "Doing what?"

"Checking whether your hand has recovered enough to hold a sword."

"I was checking whether it recovered enough to hold a hammer," he corrected gently.

"That is the exact same problem wearing different clothes."

Rayleigh considered that for a moment. ’She isn’t wrong,’ he thought.

"Fair."

Alfia took another slow sip of her tea.

The soul thread connecting them remained quiet, but he could feel her heavy attention resting on him even when her eyes returned to the pages.

She had been like this ever since Knossos.

She never explicitly mentioned the terrifying few seconds when their connection had gone completely silent—unless something directly reminded her of it—but Rayleigh could feel the phantom spike of fear whenever he exhausted himself too quickly.

Before he could say anything to ease the tension, someone knocked frantically at the front door.

Alfia’s entire presence changed.

The relaxed woman at the breakfast table disappeared almost instantly as she rose, collected her book, and headed upstairs without making a single sound.

Rayleigh waited until he felt her Reiatsu withdraw securely into the heavily soundproofed third floor before approaching the entrance.

He opened the door only far enough to look outside.

A young Hephaestus Familia smith stood on the step, breathing hard enough to suggest he had sprinted most of the way.

"Rayleigh-san," the young man panted. "Captain Tsubaki wants you at headquarters immediately. Goddess Hephaestus is there too."

Rayleigh’s expression sharpened. "What happened?"

"I don’t know the full story. Hermes Familia brought the report, and somebody mentioned a missing expedition."

That was all Rayleigh needed to hear. "I’ll be right there."

The messenger nodded in relief and hurried away.

Rayleigh closed the door, and the lock clicked into place. Only then did Alfia descend from the stairs.

"A missing expedition?" she asked quietly.

Rayleigh raised an eyebrow. "You heard that?"

"The house is soundproofed against the outside. It is not soundproofed against me."

"Right." Rayleigh walked over to the weapon rack and collected Benihime.

Alfia’s eyes immediately narrowed. "You do not even know what happened yet."

"That is why I’m going to headquarters instead of straight into the Dungeon."

"And after you hear what happened?"

Rayleigh didn’t answer immediately, picking up Senbonzakura instead.

Alfia stared at him.

"I’ll find out first."

"That was an impressively evasive refusal to answer," Alfia observed dryly.

Rayleigh secured the final sword. "If it’s something Tsubaki, Hephaestus, and Hermes Familia all think I need to hear immediately, there’s a decent chance it involves Zanpakutō."

Alfia did not disagree.

That was exactly the problem.

She walked closer, pressing two delicate fingers against his chest, directly over the point where their soul connection felt the strongest.

"If you enter the Dungeon, do not use Bankai."

"I wasn’t planning to."

"You were not planning to use it beneath Knossos either," she reminded him sharply.

"That situation became unreasonable."

"You have a remarkable talent for finding unreasonable situations, Rayleigh."

Rayleigh smiled faintly. "I’ll be careful."

"I have learned that those words mean very little when they come from you."

The irritation in her voice was real, but the soul thread carried something much quieter and much more fragile beneath it.

Rayleigh covered her hand gently with his own. "If my spiritual pressure starts dropping badly, I come back. No trying to push through it. Promise."

Alfia studied his face searchingly. "And if the connection disappears?"

"You have permission to yell at me for the rest of the month."

"I do not need your permission to do that."

"That’s also fair."

She slowly withdrew her hand. "Go."

Rayleigh reached the door and pulled it open.

"Rayleigh," Alfia called out. He looked back to see her standing beside the table, her expression perfectly composed once again.

"Come home."

"I will."

He stepped outside into the morning air and locked the door behind him.

...

The tense atmosphere inside the Hephaestus Familia headquarters told him instantly that this was much more serious than an ordinary rescue request.

Tsubaki was already fully dressed for the Dungeon, Tobiume hanging at her side right next to her normal heavy equipment.

Hephaestus stood near a large wooden table covered by a sprawling, detailed map of the lower floors.

Two members of the Hermes Familia were with her.

Rayleigh recognized Asfi immediately.

The other woman, however, was much harder to mistake.

Long blonde hair, an elegant figure, and the relaxed confidence of someone who seemed perfectly comfortable standing in another Familia’s headquarters while everyone else hurried anxiously around her.

Lidith Caverna.

Captain of the Hermes Familia.

She smiled warmly when she saw him. "There he is. You look considerably less dead than the rumors suggested."

Rayleigh stopped beside the map table. "Good to see you too, Lidith."

Lidith’s smile widened slightly.

Beside her, Asfi adjusted her glasses and deliberately looked away, wearing an expression that suggested she actively did not want to know why those two sounded so familiar with each other.

Tsubaki slapped one heavy hand against the map, breaking the moment.

"Save the flirting. We’ve got people missing."

Lidith looked mock-offended. "I was just being polite."

"You’re terrible at being polite," Tsubaki snorted.

"I have many talents. That simply isn’t one of them."

Hephaestus sighed wearily. "Enough. Asfi, brief him."

Asfi immediately focused, her posture straightening.

"A Loki Familia expedition entered the thirty-eighth floor yesterday morning. Raul Nord and Anakitty Autumn were with the main group, along with several supporters and specialists from other Familias." She pointed to three specific marks on the map.

"Four Hephaestus Familia smiths joined them to inspect a newly exposed mineral vein. Hermes Familia contributed three scouts, including Lulune."

Rayleigh’s attention locked onto that name.

He knew Lulune.

She was irritating, highly capable, and nosy enough to willingly walk into extreme danger just because something interesting might be hidden there.

She was also one of Hermes Familia’s best scouts.

"What happened?" Rayleigh asked.

Asfi placed a cracked, faintly glowing communication crystal onto the table. "The expedition encountered an abnormal concentration of monster corpses shortly after entering an unexplored side route. All of the bodies had been surgically opened and their magic stones removed."

"Adventurers harvesting them?"

"That was their first assumption."

Lidith’s expression completely lost its humor. "Then they found the adventurers."

Rayleigh looked at her, his stomach tightening. "Dead?"

"Some of them."

That answer was somehow worse.

Lidith continued, her voice grim. "Others had been severely wounded and dragged away. The tracks led deeper into the floor."

Asfi touched the communication crystal. "The expedition followed the tracks. Shortly afterward, they encountered what they believed was an Enhanced Species."

The crystal produced a loud, grating burst of static before a strained male voice became audible.

"—don’t let it keep watching! Aki, move! MOVE!"

Heavy metal crashed somewhere in the background of the recording. Another voice shouted frantically from farther away.

"It changed its stance again!"

The transmission became heavily distorted. Then, Lulune’s desperate voice broke through the chaos.

"Captain, these things aren’t just eating magic stones! They’re—"

A violent, guttural roar completely drowned her out. The next sentence came through only in terrifying fragments.

"—watching us—"

"—learning—"

The recording abruptly ended in dead silence.

Rayleigh stared hard at the cracked crystal.

Tsubaki folded her arms, her jaw tight. "That’s the last clear message we received."

"When?"

"Seventeen hours ago."

Rayleigh looked up at Hephaestus. "Why hasn’t Loki Familia already sent Finn to handle this?"

"They have," Hephaestus answered, tapping another section of the map. "Finn, Riveria, and Gareth are currently approaching from the main route with a much larger rescue force. The problem is that the cave-in separating Raul’s group destroyed the normal structural connection between the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth floors in that specific area."

Asfi took over the explanation. "The Hermes scouts managed to identify another route before communication completely failed. It is much narrower and considerably more dangerous, but a small, elite group can reach Raul much faster through it."

Rayleigh understood the tactical play perfectly. "And you want a small group because if these monsters are genuinely learning from adventurers, throwing fifty people at them could just make the problem exponentially worse."

Lidith nodded. "Exactly."

Tsubaki rested one hand heavily on Tobiume’s hilt. "And four of my idiots are trapped down there."

Asfi looked at her critically. "Your Familia members are not idiots merely because they accepted a dangerous expedition."

"They’re smiths who saw a mysterious mineral vein on the thirty-eighth floor and immediately volunteered to crawl into it," Tsubaki countered deadpan. She paused, a fierce loyalty bleeding into her tone.

"They’re my kind of idiots."

Rayleigh looked around the room, making his decision. "Who’s going?"

...

The answer was waiting for him beneath Babel.

Ais stood quietly near the massive Dungeon entrance, Gonryōmaru resting securely at her hip.

Ardi had Nejibana strapped tightly across her back, while Lyra was busy double-checking the sealed form of Arachne.

Asfi, meanwhile, carried enough pouches, belts, and weapon cases to supply a small siege engine.

Tsubaki arrived beside Rayleigh and quickly looked over the assembled group. "Six."

"Seven," Asfi corrected her smoothly.

Tsubaki frowned, counting again. "Right. I forgot you because you don’t have a Zanpakutō."

Asfi slowly turned her head toward the blacksmith. "I possess multiple explosives capable of entirely removing part of this tower."

Tsubaki grinned. "Seven."

Rayleigh turned his attention to Ais. "Finn actually agreed to this?"

"He told me not to chase anything alone," she answered simply.

"That isn’t the same as agreeing, Ais."

Ais thought about it for a second.

"No."

Lyra rubbed her forehead, groaning. "Excellent. We’ve been assembled for less than a minute and we already have a disciplinary problem."

Ardi smiled warmly at the Sword Princess. "Then we’ll just make sure nobody runs off alone."

Ais nodded seriously. "I’ll run with someone."

Lyra stared at her in disbelief. "That is absolutely not what I meant."

Rayleigh started toward the sprawling stairs leading down into the abyss. "Save the arguments for the walk. Seventeen hours is already too long."

Together, they entered the Dungeon.