6 The Loki Familia

A.N. I've been receiving concerns that my fic here is a copy of 'Minecrafter of Orario', written by someone called 'Lord-of-Divine' on Webnovel, or 'Lord-of-Tuna' on Wattpad.

Let me say it is NOT. Yes, the Mc's name is the same and he has Minecraft powers too. But I've put a backstory to this and I have a VISION for this. Every word here is typed by my own hand and I spend two to three hours everyday dedicated solely to writing 3k-6k words for a chapter and I regularly engage with my readers, allowing them to correct my mistakes and some have even suggested edits to these stories which have been manipulated.

(Shameless plugin here, I have a Discord now where you can do that even better. Link is at the bottom.)

'That' author however does not do the same. He is plagiarizing, WORD by WORD, from a Skyrim/Danmachi fanfic on ff.net written by CyberBirb.

By the way, go read it. It's a brilliant fic, ten times better than any of mine.

It's called 'Hearthfire' by CyberBirb.

Lord Tuna however continues to copy that story, the only changes he's making is really the names and Bell's gender. He has been told multiple times to stop copying or to credit the guy who he's copying. But he's still continuing.

I draw NO inspiration from Tuna. I write my own stuff. People are PAYING me to write stuff, so why would I just copy-paste stuff when I know they could find out? I wouldn't do it anyway.

This is not even my main story. It's a commission story which also provides me with relief from my brainstorms of the main one.

So please stop drawing connections where there aren't any and please be civil even when you have concerns.

Thank you

VZ

---

Shoutout to my new patron:

Sallvos

You are a legend!

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(General POV)

Steve stood still as a Minotaur crazily swung it's sword around, hitting him on every part of the body it thought it had missed. But despite the fact that each swing was powerful in it's own right, the air pressure created with each swing as a testament to that fact, it didn't even so much as nudge Steve who for experimental purposes unequipped all his armour and stood still to tank the blow.

He had the /gamemode command at the ready to switch into Creative if he believed that he was in danger and the attacks were fatal. But as he stood, looking at his hearts on his UI not even flickering because he was taking no damage, he sighed in disappointment. He had expected that a Minotaur in the 14th floor would at least make some small difference in his HP, but apparently he was too strong even without his protective gear for the minotaur to even tickle him.

Literally Steve was feeling nothing at all. It was like he was just standing there with a Resistance 5 potion effect. For those who don't understand, for each degree of Resistance effect there is, 20% of damage is reduced. So Resistance 5 takes away 100% of damage, basically making you invulnerable to damage.

It was still taking time for Steve to note down all the differences from the game. In the game, no matter how strong your attack power would be, unless you were protected by gear or potions you were just as vulnerable as a fresh player in a new world.

Here in Danmachi though, you actually had raised Endurance not to mention all your fundamental physical abilities were greatly enhanced. For Steve though, this fact would apply with even greater affect.

Look at it from this perspective.

Steve had accumulated 71,955 levels in XP before the Falna converted it all into Stat points across every Stat category. Bear in mind that a stat point of level 1 is not the same as a stat point of level 2 because the latter would be harder to obtain. This correlated with how much harder it became to gain levels in Minecraft as you played more and more. The higher a level in the Falna, the more potent and unattainable its stat point would be.

From the looks of his stat sheet, it appeared that his hard limit was 1599 stat points in each of the 5 stats. Whether or not he could break this hard limit like Bell did or it was already a broken limit was yet to be determined.

So using simple math, his 71,955 levels had been divided by 45 into 45 sets of 1599. There would be 5 sets in each level, so 45 divided by 5 was 8.

Steve had levelled up a total of 8 times with a total of 7,995 stats in each level. Obviously that added up to 71, 955 total stat points overall.

Now let's compare this to Ottar, the 'King' of Orario hailed as the strongest adventurer in the current time who was a level 7.

From what Steve knew, Ottar had maxed out his stats at S rank, which was 999 stat points in category approximately. Let's be generous and say this was the case for Ottar in all his level-ups.

Which means at every level up, Ottar had a total of 4,995 stats points before each level up and the man had levelled up 6 times with yet another level up due, so he had seven sets of stats. So that meant Ottar had a overall stat point of 34,965, which is still being generous.

Steve had a little over twice more Stat points than Ottar did in theory despite being only two levels higher. That did not mean Steve was twice as strong as Ottar because remember, a stat point of a higher level is stronger than that of a lower one. In reality, Steve would be even stronger than that.

Ottar had the total stats of an S rank level 7, while Steve had the total stats of a theoretical level 14.

The maths is a bit daunting but this just illustrated how much Steve was above the strongest adventurer in Stats alone. 

That did not include factors which enhanced such power even more like the 'Strong body' Developmental ability, in which Steve was above Ottar by ten levels at SSS while Ottar was down below at G.

Even more so when you factored in things like magic, and although Steve didn't have any 'magic' mods on at the moment as the citizens would understand it, what he did have in place was being able to create natural disasters since offensive magic in this world seemed to almost be purely elemental.

He very much doubted the people here could throw around hurricanes, sink continents beneath the waves or cave the land in on itself through the use of earthquakes. Nor did he think they could summon meteorites and asteroids of various sizes to fall upon the Earth. 

Even more so when you took into account his commands, world edit and Creative mode, as well as his countless destructive summons and his mods and all the different mods that could give him godlike powers which could easily destroy the gods of this world.

Yes, surprisingly he'd been allowed to keep those but they would make the game way too easy and so he left them off. He'd use them though in case the gods turned against him in aggression. Or he may not even need to since even without his Falna, he could just become invincible. What power Ptah had over Steve was only because the Minecrafter had allowed it. He could break free at any time.

...

Which kind of made him feel stupid now that he'd expected a normal minotaur do any damage to him.

"I really am an idiot." He muttered before lightly nudging the minotaur in the stomach. Just that alone exerted enough pressure that the monster's body was folded mid-air, the audible sound of a spine shattering as it rocketed towards a wall where it impacted the rock so hard, it didn't turn into any visible body parts.

It exploded into a shower of MIST. A mist of blood, organs and powdered bones before they seemed to dissipate into the black smoke indicative of a monster's death. Bathsheba who was sitting to a side, in a bad mood because her Papa had forbidden her from intervening, snorted in mockery at the scene.

"It was for experiment's sake, sweetheart." Steve said as he took out a book and jotted a few notes down. "Until it is disproven, we must adhere to the theory that my 'Invincible' skill is only in effect when an opponent of a lower level is fighting me." He snapped the book closed and observed as she licked blood from around her lips.

"You really like minotaur meat don't you?" 

Bathsheba vehemently nodded as she walked forwards and nudged his cheek with her nose. The smell of monster guts hit Steve in the face but he refrained from gagging.

"I'll see if I can find a way of harvesting it for you then. Or maybe you'll find something more tasty as we go along? How about that?"

Bathsheba yapped as she wagged her tail.

"Okay." Steve said as he equipped his armour again and mounted her. "Let's get going. I want to see what the famous Goliath is capable of."

He looked behind him for a moment to see a bunch of Allays he'd spawned in come up to him with bunches of monster cores in their arms. One of the things that had changed about the game was that he was able to give them vocal orders and they would obey him. In this case he'd ordered them to go about picking up any monster cores that dropped from his kills. More than that, they were also able to interact with his storage facilities, meaning he just needed to place his shulker box down, and they would fill it up for him. Although he was growing concerned that he may be running out of them at this point.

...Oh what was he bothered about? He didn't even need to go into creative. All he needed to do was use /give and he was sorted.

Bathsheba responded by blitzing away at great speed which would have not normally been capable of her. When Steve had first tamed her, he'd used custom commands to raise her base stats quite high. A secret he'd kept from his friends, which frustrated them to no end as they couldn't understand why his Warg was better and stronger than theirs. They'd actually believed that her colour was indicative of her special status and strength, and so they'd tried their damn hardest to find another like her.

Now that he thought about, he wondered if it was coincidental. In Danmachi it was always shown the black variant monsters were way stronger and better than normal monsters. Bathsheba was a black Warg and even though he manipulated her stats, she was still monstrously more powerful even amongst other Matriarchs. 

The amount of coincidences never seemed to tire of increasing itself.

---

The Loki Familia were no strangers to odd happenings in the Dungeon. In fact, because they were an S rank Familia with plenty of extremely powerful members who were exploration based, they tended to encounter more oddities than others. It couldn't really be told if it was the same for the Freya Familia as they did not conduct expeditions as frequently as Loki's children did.

But strange oddities always more or less included monsters...

Alive monsters that is. For once however, it seemed that the oddity was NO monsters at all. Instead what greeted them as they began one of their usual deep dives into the Dungeon was all the floors seeming devoid of any monsters or creatures. In place of them were marks of battle like a natural disaster had come through and ripped everything apart.

Parts of the cave walls had been knocked down completely, with slash marks and what looked like claw marks as well cutting deep into the rock as there were patches of the ground and walls here and there that had been melted by what Riveria Ljos Alf, the leading mage of the Familia assumed was fire magic.

An extremely accomplished sorceress within her Familia and throughout the world now that she was no longer under the shadow of the Zeus and Hera Familia, it was difficult even for her to assess the strength level of the caster who did this as the areas of damage were different in size and degree which did not provide her an average estimate. 

That was assuming it was one caster but as they went on, that theory became more plausible as they came across more and more evidence.

Finn Deimne, the captain of the Loki Familia knelt on the ground as he inspected a set of footprints that led right through the carnage.

There were deep indents in the ground of what appeared to be human sized footprints. Dwarven feet were much larger and the feet of elves were a little more elegant and on the thin side. And of course Pallums were out of the question which narrowed down potential identities to either humans or beast-men.

But these footprints had been clearly done by armour as they were too clear-cut to have been done by regular cobbled boots. And it was a little known fact about beast-men but they had a slight aversion to armour. It was not that they outright hated it but they liked to have confidence in their own skin and therefore did not wear armour anywhere unnecessary or that was not somewhere vital.

So you'd almost never catch them wearing armoured boots unless they were dedicated kick fighters like Bete Loga, another of their executives. Humans however wore armour all the time and armoured boots was common for them as their feet were more sensitive and susceptible to ache than other races due to on average being heavier than Elves and Pallums, having weaker ankles than Dwarves and softer soles than Beast-men.

At least, that was Finn's theory. It didn't provide them any clues as to the exact identity of the perpetrator though.

"Riveria. Would the Freya Familia happen to be down here as well?" He asked his vice-captain.

"I'm quite certain they aren't." The self-exiled elf princess replied. "We chose this date specifically because we knew they would not be down here, taking all the monsters from us."

"And yet it's still happening!" Yelled Bete as he pulled an iron sword out of a wall. "What the hell is going on here?! What is with all this crap lying around?"

Another part of the bizarre situation they were confronted with was that there strange objects lying around everywhere. Weapons of all kinds were embedded in the walls here and there, all of varying quality but seemingly generic iron and steel weapons.

"Stop shouting you stupid mutt!" Grumbled Tione, the elder of the Hiryute twins. "Why don't you just tell us who this person is with your nose? Isn't that all you're good for anyway?"

"The hell you say to me you stupid cow?!" Bete yelled even louder to spite her.

"I second that question as well." Finn interjected before another bickering match could escalate from this. This served to make Tione gain hearts in her eyes as she saw the love-of-her-life supposedly 'stand' with her in her curiosity. The Pallum, while painfully aware of this, opted to ignore this as he focused on Bete's answer.

"Tch! I don't know!" Bete exclaimed as he kicked an iron axe away. "It's because of whatever this thing is! It's mixing and ruining the scent, so I can't tell what race this person is!"

He pointed to the other set of the pair of tracks they'd stumbled across. By their observation, they were pawprints similar to that of a Hellhound, but several times larger and judging by the prints, it would be the same creature responsible for all the claw-marks and slashes they could see on the wall.

"What creature is that?" Finn questioned as he put a hand on his chin and desperately tried to think of any monster, rare or common, that could leave an imprint like these ones.

"M-maybe a member of the Ganesha Familia brought one of their tamed monsters down here to fight with t-them?" Offered a nervous Lefiya Viridis. Often referred to as Riveria's successor in the Familia, she was another accomplished mage who revered her teacher's lessons and trained hard to become stronger and better at her spells, despite already having quite a large accomplishment.

The young elf had an extremely valuable skill that allowed her to learn the spells of other elves, which broke the cap of the usual three spell limit imposed on mortals. It gave her the potential to even surpass the number of spells her teacher Riveria had, who was able to cast three variations of her three spells, totalling to nine different spells altogether which gave Riveria the alias 'Nine-Hell'. The potential of Lefiya's skill could theoretically enable her to learn a thousand spells and beyond hence why she was given the alias 'Thousand Elf'.

"A sensible suggestion Lefiya." Finn said as he observed both prints more. "But the Ganesha Familia do not use their monsters for purposes like that. Moreover, I'm certain a practice like that is not allowed. If it was possible even."

"Do you think maybe this person was having a fight with whatever made these prints and the monsters around were collateral damage?" Tiona asked. She was the younger of the Hiryute twins and in stark contrast to her sister, was not endowed much in her feminine hallmarks.

"Unlikely." Grunted Gareth who heaved his axe over to a wall. Gareth was the leading Dwarf of the dwarven faction in the Familia and he was a top executive as well as possibly the strongest individual member despite Finn being captain. He was known as a Tank type, who with his shield and his dwarven men of shielders, tanked monster waves to buy time for the vanguard to either take a breather or to launch a large scale assault. He was also a prominent father figure for a lot of the young 'whipper-snappers' in the Familia.

"The tracks are mingled but not against one another." Gareth continued while still looking at something in the wall, this action attracting the eyes of his fellow Familia members. "There is no sign of struggle between these two tracks, and any adventurer who could cause this much collateral would have to be powerful, and well-off to waste so many good weapons like this. I'd have assumed it was a large group of people that came through here but there is only one pair of human tracks."

He leaned forwards and put his hands around something buried deep in the wall. "I'm more interested in the explanation behind these!" Gareth yanked something out of the wall and turned around to present it for all present to see. A block of metal, a perfect cube of 1 metre squared, seemingly made out metal. After closer inspection, it turned out to be a solid block of iron. "Who the hell is throwing something like this hard enough for it to swim in these walls? Why would you even make something like this? It does no good as a projectile and it's a disgraceful waste."

"Indeed." Finn commented. "I'd imagine something like that would be worth a bit in valis. It's pure resource after all." After looking around at the items strewn around everywhere, he came to a decision. Looking over to the second string group as well as the people pulling the wagons he commanded. "Gather up all these items and weapons. It's clear they've been abandoned by intent. perhaps we can sell them off in Rivira to needy residents as extra profit." The Loki Familia were infamous for never making their money's worth of the monsters they killed because they always had to leave something behind due to not being able to take them to the surface. Therefore Finn sought to make as much on the side as he could before the Familia suffered another near-tumble into bankruptcy.

"Do we have time for that?" Riveria questioned. 

"More than enough." Finn replied. "The good thing about these strange events is that there are no monsters present to slow us down and as such, we've practically flown through these floors. We'll make camp in the 18th floor well ahead of schedule."

"Still though, it makes you wonder how powerful this individual is, for the monsters to still not spawn yet." Riveria said in a grave tone. Finn shared in the sentiment.

When an adventurer passed a point in the dungeon where he killed monsters, it would be some time before the Dungeon spawned monsters in the same spot again. The more powerful and adventurer was, the longer it took for the spawn time to take place once again. It was one of the Dungeon's ways of conserving power in its floors. Only one adventurer was currently powerful enough that he would leave entire floors behind unable to spawn any monsters for this amount of time. And they knew for a fact he was not in the dungeon.

But even for him, a feat like this was (terrifyingly) impressive. To leave the Dungeon devoid from the 16th floor all the way back to the first floor? Finn had a hard time believing Ottar was capable of this kind of effect, no matter how insanely powerful the Boaz was.

A golden-blonde haired girl with a serene expression walked forward away from the vanguard, deeper into the place of utter vandalism of the Dungeon. She looked around at all the evidence there before her, particularly at the marks that were obviously done by a sword.

Ais Wallenstein. The prodigy and pride of the Loki Familia and one of the most beautiful girls in Orario as well as the famed 'Sword Princess' or 'War Princess'. A girl burdened by many secrets of her past, bottling a hidden thirst for revenge and openly expressing an obsessive desire for strength, the girl was notorious for finding any way of making herself more powerful. That included observing, meeting and challenging strong characters.

The destruction demonstrated on this floor pointed towards an individual who was in their own right quite strong too. Ais was well capable of exterminating monsters easily in these floors, but not with so much nonchalant desecration. However, the fact remained she still could and this person would have to be close to her level or at her level at minimum to do this.

It didn't matter even if the individual was weaker than her, as long as they had an easier way of becoming strong without having to fruitlessly run through the dungeon and yet never improve their stats like she'd been doing for quite some time now. 

With this mindset in place, it was natural that an individual like this caught her interests and she expressed a desire to meet them in person.

"Are you okay Ais?" Tiona asked, tilting her head in concern for her friend.

"This person. He's strong." Ais monotonously replied.

"And yet an unknown." Finn added. "I can't think of anyone in the upper class of adventurers who could do this. Some of these damages look fairly recent, so they can't be far from us."

Right as he said that, like the universe was answering his question, a large sound like a thunderclap sounded from ahead of them, coming from the stairs that led to the 17th floor. This was followed by a rumble and then a literal earthquake as the floor they were on shook from whatever the sound was. Dust fell from the ceiling and a few supplies dropped from the wagons.

"That felt like it came from the boss room." Bete said, his forehead scrunched in a heavy frown. "Did Goliath spawn? Everyone knows we're supposed to be down here to deal with it, so who's fighting it?"

"That did not feel like a regular spawning." Finn said as he righted himself by his Fortia spear. "An irregular Variant?"

As soon as he said this, each younger member of the vanguard began to feel their hearts pumping faster. Goliath was fairly easy for them to handle at this point but it was mythologically rare for an Irregular to spawn. The older trio could count on their fingers the amount of times they'd even heard of one spawning, let alone actually fighting one. In this situation, a high ranking Familia was needed to exterminate it, which was why Finn ordered the core members to get to the boss room at full sprint.

...

They eventually reached the latter part of the 17th floor which was one giant hallway of bedrock out of which monsters in their hordes spawned. And it was there that the Loki Familia were forced to stop for a second as they took in yet another strange sight. There were no discarded weapons or strange blocks of metal this time.

Instead there was blood all over the place with monster cores and drops scattered everywhere. In the middle of it all, they could see what appeared to be a giant black Hellhound. Finn would have chalked it up to be a Variant Hellhound but none of them could ever grow that big. Plus it didn't behave like a monster. Here in the upper middle floors, monster rarely ever fought each other when adventurers were nearby as they were programmed to group together and swarm the invaders from the surface.

But the opposite was happening here and moreover, the giant wolf was the target. The black wolf stood on powerful legs and even from here, Riveria could see the bulging muscles in it legs. It's heckles were raised so much, it looked like you could impale yourself on the fur because of how sharp and ram-rod straight it was.

Right in front of the corridor that led to the hallway entering the boss room, this wolf was mercilessly tearing minotaurs and Liger Fangs apart in its powerful jaws. Its deadly sharp teeth would sink into the flesh of a monster and violently tear the chunk out while its claws cut the other monsters to ribbons. All the while it jumped around and weaved under opposing weapons and claws, ricocheting off the walls and ambushing her enemies from behind.

The foreign monster paired with it's merciless slaughter and it's dark beauty made the Loki Familia executives stand and stare in wonder and awe at such a graceful yet deadly Beast of War. With the exception of Bete, who as a werewolf felt an instinctual rivalry with this other wolf and judging by the scent, this other wolf looked to be female, which agitated him even more. He widened his eyes before sniffing again and then pointing to Bathsheba.

"That's her! That's the creature I smelt earlier and the one who made those paw prints!" He exclaimed.

"Really?" Gareth whistled. "I can see now why we saw what we did upstairs. She's ferocious. Look at the way she's tearing into them!"

"It's effortless on her end." Finn said before looking around at his companions. "Does anyone know what monster, or what animal this even is?"

""Nope."" Was the collective response. Ais grabbed the hilt of her sword, Desperate, and drew it.

"It's still a monster in the Dungeon." She said. "It has to die. I should be able to take it."

"Wait, Ais." Riveria ordered. "If this is the beast that made those tracks from earlier, then who made the footprints? Where are they?"

Finn looked high and low for any sign of the adventurer whose prints came alongside this wolf's. Suddenly, another loud 'BOOM!' was heard from the boss room and the ground trembled. During their way here, they'd been hearing this non-stop and the tremors got louder and stronger the closer they came. Finn raised his brows in realization.

"They must be fighting Goliath." He surmised.

"By themselves?" Gareth questioned. "A Variant no less? Then someone in the Freya Familia must be here and we just didn't know. Who else could solo Goliath at this point in time?"

"We're going to have to find out." Tione said excitedly as she pulled out her knives. "First we're going to have to get rid of that puppy if we want to see who is taking our monster rex from us."

As if the universe wanted to deliver instances of great timing today at a constant, Bathsheba killed the last monster and swivelled around to face the group, her eyes wide and sharp, he muzzle pulled back in a vicious sneer as blood dripped in rivers from her fangs. Her heckles stood even more straight as the Warg Matriarch sensed a great danger from each and every individual there. But she was a proud warrior queen, and she would hold her ground against these people who dared come to interfere with her papa's battle.

The Loki Familia made for a pre-emptive and charged forwards trying to race each other for the first poke at this new monster. But in yet another example of great time, the doorway to the boss room exploded and out came sailing a great Goliath. This one and irregular, its skin was deep hue of crimson and it's red eyes were mad with pain. Bathsheba looked up and scurried out of the way and the brute landed on his back, shaking the whole floor with his weight.

On closer inspection, the Loki Familia could see that it was covered in cuts, wounds and some of its skin had been ripped off in patches as it bled profusely. Goliath saw them and scrambled to its feet in surprise at seeing them. Finn believed it was about to attack and the order to charge was on the tip of his tongue when something came flying out of the room. The only reason he knew something did so was because the same thunderclap from earlier was heard.

However, it moved at such ballistic speed, Finn couldn't see what it was even with his enhanced senses pushed to the max. What he could only just make out, were sonic ring shockwaves that told him the direction of whatever the object was headed in. The object had timed it's trajectory as it caught Goliath in the face as the monster's head was turning.

Even then the thing was too fast as Finn still didn't see it, instead only seeing the Irregular Goliath's cheek ballooning inwards, it's tongue lolling out as it's head jerked violently and it smashed into the wall, unleashing an avalanche of debris from the impact. The object flow over them, but in the same split second came rushing back as it hit the Irregular in the stomach and ploughed a massive hole right through the creature's abdominals and disappeared back into the boss room.

Goliath howled in a pained cry that had the strain of death in it, a sign that it was on Death's door.

The object came back into the room at a more observable speed as all the Loki Familia could see 'something' moving around. It however bounced between the walls like a ball, traveling upwards before hitting the ceiling above Goliath's head and launching downwards at its skull. That proved to be the end of the monster as the instant the object touched its head and continued to travel downwards, Goliath's body imploded before exploding in a shower of bone fragments, blood and scattered entrails.

Riveria luckily had had the foresight to immediately start chanting the moment the object appeared and just as the Goliath had become a blood bomb, a magical shield was put up over the Loki Familia and protected them against the shower of nastiness.

But it didn't appear to be enough however as when the objected impacted the ground, another explosion happened. This time, dust and debris pelted the shield before the shockwave of the impact hit. The moment it did so, the shield shattered and the Loki Familia was enveloped in a raging gale of the residual shockwaves dampened by the now destroyed barrier which tore Lefiya off her feet and sent her sliding along her back. Gareth buried his feet into the ground as he used his great lower-body strength to keep himself rooted while the rest stuck their weapons into the ground to prevent themselves being blown away.

When it all subsided, all they could see was a huge smokescreen. For a few seconds it lingered before it was blown way from the inside by the swing of a magnificent purple sword and the content of the now giant crater in the room was revealed.

The Loki Familia stared in both alarm and amazement at a person who was standing in the middle of it with his arm holding his sword at the end of a backwards slash, which was what had blown the dust cloud away. He had his back to them at an angle where they could see most of the details. 

Around him were fragments of the Goliath core. He stood at about 6'4 tall with armour made out of some weird purple metal, the same as his sword. In his other hand was a tall shield that looked to be made out the same metal. What made both armour and weapons weird though was that they were covered in some sort of purple magical glow, like a smoky, wispy layer of magical skin over the armour. They realised then that they were enchanted gear, which raised a lot of questions in their mind but they paid no heed to them at the present moment as they took in the rest of him. 

He was covered from head to toe in the armour. Even his arms and hands were covered in armour, his palms covered by some sort of under-suit, and billowing out behind him in the wind was a magnificent, flowing, shining black cape that reminded Tiona of the heroes in the stories that she read. An image of a terrifying dragon's face, it's eyes glowing purple and a glowing purple light coming from the deep recesses of it's throat almost prompted Ais's 'Avenger' skill to activate.

This was what they took in at first glance before their more important senses caught up and they sucked in a breath as they tensed up from what they felt, from what had just so suddenly landed into their lives and assaulted their senses.

The pressure this armoured man was giving off was immense...so much so that the air of the entire room felt heavy under the burden of power this adventurer possessed. The adventurer sheathed his sword with a metallic click and the giant black wolf they'd all momentarily forgotten about bounded down rocks jutting out of the wall, using them as stairs. Somehow she'd scurried up the wall to avoid the destruction.

Lefiya in her innocence felt compelled to warn the adventurer of what was approaching him from above but what happened next shocked them even more.

The wolf landed next to the adventurer and began nudging him with its forehead. The man reached up and scratched the wolf's forehead and neck, eliciting a pleasured squeal from the giant wolf as she began repeatedly tapping her hind leg and panted happily after he was finished.

Finally he seemed to look back and realize they were there. He began pacing towards them and immediately the pressure in the air vanished as the only audible sound they heard was the heavy clinking of his armour. As he came closer, they saw through the slits in his helmet that it was not so much a man but a young adult, somebody still in their teens although they still could not make out his face.

"Are you okay?" he said. His voice confirmed their assumptions. It was far too soft to be a mature adult man's although all elements of childishness was not in it either. It was the voice of someone on the cusp of completing his maturity but just had a couple of years left to grow. They did say that men fully stopped growing and transitioning at the ages of 21-23. "Are you all alright? Did I hurt anybody?"

The bizarre nature of the past few mins had left them all speechless, even the elder trio who could only shake their heads in answer as they retained more than anybody else the feeling of power this...'boy' had been radiating.

"No? I'm glad then." The boy looked back at the Goliath core fragments before turning back to them. "You can have the stones as compensation for your troubles." He looked past them. "And those other cores and drop items too. Sorry to bother you." He turned around with an unintended flourish of his cape as he waved his hand forward. "Come along Bathsheba. We need to make camp." He said.

The giant wolf who had until now been sitting on its backside observing the exchange got up and yapped before happily following it's master with a brisk trot and a wag of its tail as they both disappeared down the entrance to the 18th floor.

The Loki Familia stared for a few moments before looking at one another.

"Who the hell was that?!" Bete asked, his skin still prickling from the shockwave earlier.

"I don't know." Finn replied. "I've never seen him before. Riveria?"

"I don't know either. I think I'd remember someone that powerful if I'd met them before."

"HE...WAS SO...AWESOME!!!" Tiona the ever cheerful optimist in the group pumped the air. "DID YOU SEE HIS DRAMATIC ENTRANCE?! HE ABSOLUTLEY 'NAILED' IT. HAHAHA, IT'S JUST LIKE IT WAS IN THE BOOKS."

"He was impressive." Tione mumbled before mumbling even quieter. "I bet the Captain could defeat him though."

"I don't know who the lad is." Gareth said as he climbed out of the ground. "But he's strong business if I ever saw them. Bad business if he's with the wrong people."

"Yeah! What was with that wolf?!" Bete yelled. "She was kissing up to the asshole and everything."

"Maybe she's his pet?" Offered Lefiya who had shakily gotten to her feet and re-joined the group. The only reason Steve hadn't seen here was because she'd been buried under small heaps of rubble. Even now, there was bits of dirt and pebbles stuck to her shawl and her dress.

"A pet. Or maybe..." Tiona slammed her palms down on the ground, stars in her yes. "...SHE'S HIS MOUNT. YOU KNOW, INTSEAD OF A NOBLE STEED, HE'S A NIGHT ASTRIDE A FEARSOME WOLF OF THE NIGHT." Tiona clasped her hands together as she picture the scene in her head. The knight in glowing enchanted armour, riding across the land atop a galloping wolf whose fur blended in with the night but was distinguished by the stars and the moon rising behind them. "IT'S JUST PERFECT!"

In all this time, Ais was just staring after where the knight had had gone, having not even looked back at her Familia members. Her eyes were transfixed on the entrance to the 18th floor. Her senses were still overloaded, intoxicated by the overwhelming sense of power she felt from the boy before he notice them. Who was he? What was he? Where was he from?

"Strong!" She said in a tone that caught the attention of her teammates. 

"Ais? What are you doing?"

How did he become so strong? Could he show her? Could he help her grow stronger? She had to know!

Without another word or a care for the state she was in, she rushed towards the slope and dived right in, ignoring the shouts of her team to come back or hold on and wait for them.

"Oh well, now I guess we're going to have to follow her." Finn said as he got up and followed after the girl, the rest of the vanguard tailing close behind him at his order. He didn't need to worry about the rest of the Familia with the wagons. They were already trained and experienced enough to bring the supplies down to the 18th floor themselves. Right now, he was preoccupied with his own concerns.

He too desired answers.

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