Chapter 430 - 430 - The Lower Floors, the difficulty starts ramping up!

Laurier stared open-mouthed at the ice clones strafing like madmen and the biting Blizzard blanketing the entire battlefield, her scalp prickling. She was completely thrown.

She sucked in a breath. "That clearing rate..."

Still marveling, she fell back to join Kureha, the two of them standing back to back. Keeping watch on the monsters eyeing them from all sides, she muttered in envy:

"No matter how many times I see it, the way Mr. Leon fights is just... not fair."

"If the Mages of other Familia saw this, how would any of them ever hold their heads up again?"

Thinking about those Mages struggling through an endless mouthful of Chanting only to squeeze out a fireball the size of a human head, Laurier almost laughed out loud. She could imagine the looks on their faces, and they would be priceless.

Kureha pressed her lips together. For a moment, something wavered in her too.

Maybe I should try studying some magic theory? Would I awaken a wide-area annihilation magic too?

The Holy Sword is powerful, sure, but when it comes to killing efficiency, wide-area annihilation magic really is more...

The thought surfaced for an instant before she stamped it out hard.

No, Kureha! You're the Sword Saint!

She shook her head, throwing the stray thoughts out of her mind, then took out two Potions, bit the corks open and held them in her mouth, ready to drink the moment she took a wound or burned through half her stamina.

"Laurier, take the left side, and cover Margaret while you're at it."

"I'll take the right. There are a few Lv.4s hiding over there and I'll deal with them."

"Got it, Kureha!"

After the brief exchange, the two shot off like arrows from a bowstring and plunged back into the monster horde.

At the very front of the party's formation, Jeanne and Rose each held their own role. Jeanne kept glancing toward Leon, but most of her attention stayed locked on the battlefield. As commander, she had to be the first to notice any change and relay it to everyone.

Rose focused on guarding Margaret and Iri.

She counted silently in her head, tracking how much time the two had left at full burst, while watching every direction, ready to step in the instant they ran dry.

And so the party met its first large-scale battle in the Lower Floors.

Time flew by, and well over half an hour passed.

At Lv.4 with real Basic Abilities rivaling a Lv.5, and Instant Cast on top of that, Leon could now declare it without an ounce of modesty: he was close to his complete form. The ordinary monsters of the Dungeon were just throwing their lives away in front of him, however many of them came.

Even if the elites swarmed him together, what could they do?

At a clearing rate like mowing grass, everything that came was just Excelia.

He tipped his head back and downed a Potion in one go. As his stamina began to recover, Leon rallied himself and cranked the rain of Ice Lances, which had been flagging a little, back up to full strength.

After the Blue Crabs came Raider Fish filling the sky. Whether they came from the ground or the air, none of it mattered inside that hair-raising net of magical firepower, and they were battered down one after another.

"Muda muda muda muda muda muda muda muda muda muda!!!"

"Weak, so weak!"

"Hahahahaha!"

His main body howled with laughter while the ice clones kept their cold, expressionless faces, not a hitch in their movements. The mix of icy detachment and raving madness made for a sharp contrast that hit everyone present hard.

"Here we go again..."

Rose put a hand to her forehead, her tone resigned.

But her movements did not slow at all, because on the other side, Margaret, going all out, had nearly run her Magic dry.

Margaret was bent over and panting hard, her delicate face screwed up in pain, veins faintly throbbing on her smooth forehead, a few sweat-soaked strands of hair stuck to her skin, leaving her looking disheveled and struggling.

"Is that... Mind Down?"

"My head... it hurts so much..."

It was the first time she had truly tasted Mind Down. In everyday training she rarely got this far, and even when she collapsed from the high-intensity clashes of the Baptism, her surroundings were absolutely safe, because in the end that was only training.

This was the cruelest difference between real combat and training.

Right now Margaret's Mind had hit bottom, and the monsters around her were packed thick.

She bit her lip until it bled, forcing herself back up through the pain, straining her eyes wide open and raising her wand again with trembling hands.

"Heavenly Maiden! Cover me!"

"Fla..."

Before she could finish, Rose swept past like the wind, shield and sword already in hand, planting herself in front of Margaret, whose legs had gone soft. She tilted the shield face up, calmly catching the ambush of a Lv.4 Light Quartz, then triggered a skill and struck back with a single sword stroke like a flash of lightning, shattering it.

The powdered crystal scattered through the air, forming a faint rainbow.

Margaret looked at the back in front of her, with its blue braid, and in that moment she felt nothing but safe.

"Th, thank you... Rose..."

With that, before Rose could answer, Margaret's eyes rolled back and her body went limp, dropping straight toward the ground.

Rose's hand shot out and caught her around the waist. She glanced down at Margaret, who had passed out cold, and shook her head slightly.

"You pushed too hard. You knew the monsters here are all Lv.3, and you still went full power with your limiter off..."

"Persephone, she's yours!"

"Right."

Handing Margaret over to Persephone, who had been guarding Irisviel the whole time, Rose looked up at the monsters gathering in front of her, and a flicker of excitement crossed her flawless face.

"Oh my... it's finally my turn."

As she spoke, the one-handed sword in her hand seemed to swing once, but when you looked closely, it seemed not to have moved at all.

And yet the Blue Crab in front of Rose split into two halves for no apparent reason.

Only when the body of one of their own hit the ground did the surrounding monsters catch on: in that instant, this human woman had killed one of them right in front of them, in a way they could not begin to comprehend.

With a chorus of hisses and roars, the monsters went berserk.

"Oh my, so you're upset?"

Rose licked her sensual lips, flicked her braid back over her shoulder, dropped low and set her shield in a guard, and the one-handed sword in her right hand swung into an afterimage.

Her blade tore through the monsters in front of her in a rapid string of wet impacts.