Riveria's most powerful defensive magic — [Dimensional Severance] — was, in theory, a barrier spell that cut off everything tangible and intangible alike.
And so, for any adventurer, passing through it from the outside should have been impossible.
At least by Riveria's own reckoning, the barrier was strong enough to withstand a full-force strike from Finn himself — a fellow Level 6 — provided he wasn't using that particular magic of his.
And yet Alfia had slipped through it with ease. The reason was her second spell: [Garden of Silence].
"Stillness of the soul."
Another impossibly short incantation — a murmur that vanished into the night air almost before it had been spoken.
An invisible domain spread outward from the woman's body, and in an instant, it nullified all "magic" in the surrounding space. That was why she had passed through the barrier without resistance — because in that moment, within Alfia's immediate vicinity, mana itself had ceased to exist.
And now, having closed the distance to stand before all of them, that voice that chilled the blood to hear rang out once more, soft and unhurried as ever.
"Evangelium."
For Alfia, mana truly did not exist — not even her own. Any magic she released would be swallowed by the vacuum she created around herself. And yet, strangely, she retained full control over the range of that nullification.
In practical terms: unless someone was pressed so close they were nearly touching her, mana did not exist within her field — but beyond that boundary, mana functioned normally.
To put it simply: at this moment, she alone could use magic, and she alone could produce magic with any actual effect.
Cheating. Absolute, unmitigated cheating.
A violent shockwave detonated outward from the woman at its center.
Boom. Tremor.
The little old chapel could never hope to bear the assault of a Level 7 mage, and in that instant, Ryuu found her mind drifting back to the night she had first encountered this woman.
It had been in this very same small, ancient church.
Back then, smugglers of the Dark Familia had been conducting a transaction here, and Astrea Familia had been lying in ambush, waiting to take them down.
What none of them had anticipated was that Alfia was also present.
With a single spell — smugglers and all — the woman had put every last person in that building flat on the floor.
She had held back.
Looking back on it now, the reason that Ryuu herself — who had only been Level 3 at the time — and Alise and the others had survived at all was almost certainly because Alfia had been extraordinarily careful not to damage the church in any way. Even in its decrepit, long-abandoned state, she had protected it.
This place mattered to her. Deeply.
But now, she had no such consideration to worry about. The chapel before her was a structure born of the Dungeon's own power — its durability was on an entirely different level from any ordinary building, and beyond that, it would repair itself.
Walls, floor, ceiling —
Everything cracked, buckled, and crumbled into dust — only to knit itself back together and restore itself an instant later.
The Dungeon was clearly exerting enormous effort to keep this boss arena intact.
Absurd.
And it was also at this moment that Isagi and the girls finally grasped the little trick this place was playing on them: sound echoes indoors.
"——!!"
Invisible forces of mana began crashing into one another inside the chapel, filling the air with a shattering, ear-splitting shriek.
The interior of the old church was not large — cramped enough that a few dozen people would already be pushing its limit. In those conditions, it functioned like a sealed box, and the sound-based magic Alfia unleashed kept bouncing endlessly back and forth within its walls, without pause, without end.
Even with Isagi holding a greatshield in each hand and another strapped to his back — essentially in full-coverage defensive formation — he still couldn't protect himself from every angle.
Because at minimum — the invisible attacks raining down from above and surging up from below, top and bottom simultaneously — how was he supposed to block those?!
Fortunately.
This, too, was within Isagi's predictions.
"——Gather, breath of the earth — O wood-spirits, grant my wish, O garment of the forest — for I am Alf!"
"[Gossamer Breath]!"
The very instant Alfia broke through Riveria's spell, Riveria and Lefiya's second-layer defensive magic completed simultaneously.
A translucent emerald mist condensed over everyone's bodies — a "mana mantle" that bolstered both physical and magical resistance at once, with a baseline restorative property woven through it besides.
At the same time, Miss Heith had completed her own group-wide healing magic right on cue.
"I am Gold. I swear never to corrode — arm of the goddess, thrice burned in the forge, pierced again and again without end. Held captive by spears of flame, yet from that suffering, radiance is born, to quench the burning of death —"
"[Spirit · Gullveig]!"
A golden magic circle blazed into being and swallowed the entire chapel whole.
From the perspective of Isagi and the girls, it felt like this: one moment, a brutal impact was slamming into them — organs lurching, qi and blood churning and twisting, the body crying out in agony — and then, in that very instant, an overwhelmingly warm force swept through and smoothed every last trace of pain away, simultaneously neutralizing the blow they had just taken.
Everything was cancelled out, invisibly, in the space of a breath.
The clash of magical forces continued without letup inside the cramped space.
But it still wasn't enough.
Because Alfia was not some stationary artillery platform who stood in place and lobbed spells. If anything, it was her close-combat ability that inspired the deeper fear — as an adventurer who had fought on the front lines of the deep floors for years, she could learn any technique by watching it just once and immediately apply it herself.
She had even been praised by numerous battle-gods throughout the city as the singular greatest.
Rumor had it that in terms of pure technique alone, she was capable of going toe-to-toe with [Empress] — the Level 9 of her own Familia — and holding her own without losing ground. And that was without drawing on her own full power.
And so —
Alfia carried no weapon.
The black dress she wore could scarcely be called battle attire. With her air of poised, elegant beauty, she looked far less like an adventurer and far more like a noblewoman attending some high-society soirée.
And yet.
The moment she drew close, both Ais and Tiona felt it — a kind of fear unlike anything they had ever encountered before.
It was the instinct of warriors.
In situations where Isagi wasn't serving as vanguard, it was usually Ais and Tiona who anchored the front line, and over time, the two of them had built a formidable rapport with each other. Whether the enemy was a massive inhuman monster or something that walked in humanoid form, they had developed a battle rhythm together that accounted for both.
Right now, no matter how loudly the voice deep inside screamed — danger danger danger! — the duty of an adventurer was to charge into that danger head-on and never take a step back.
Both girls' nerves stretched to some absolute limit.
And then.
Their fighting spirit exploded outward.
An invisible wind swept through in the same instant, twisting and warping it, attempting to wrap Alfia completely inside and bind her there.
Simultaneously, that spirit blazed hotter and hotter — scorching, molten, dense as magma — on the very cusp of erupting.
With the surging gale came a colossal resistance that pressed in from all sides, pinning Alfia's entire body in place — a resistance so heavy that no matter what she tried to do, even if all she wanted was to blink, she would feel it pushing back against her.
But.
Still, it wasn't enough.
The silent emptiness manifested again, radiating outward from the woman's body.
Alfia could manipulate the range of [Garden of Silence] freely. When she extended it to draw both Ais and Tiona fully within its scope, the sound-based magic that had been working against the two girls was dramatically weakened.
But at the same moment.
The protective magic from Lefiya and Riveria —
Ais's personal supplementary magic [Ariel Rush], the ability that let her take flight — though it didn't appear as a panel stat and existed only as a secret art, its fundamental mechanism still ran on mana — and Tiona's blazing fighting spirit —
And.
Haruhime's enhancement magic [Uchide's Mallet] —
All of it. Every last spell. Blinked out of existence in the same instant.
Ais dropped from mid-air.
But even as she fell, the [Desperate] sword in her hand and the great double-blade in Tiona's crossed in a simultaneous slash aimed straight at Alfia.
The speed of both girls was nothing short of meteoric.
What followed was pure, unembellished combat — the raw individual capability of two Level 6 adventurers laid bare, nothing more and nothing less.
No flash, no flourish. Just movement pushed to an extreme — afterimages streaking through the air, blade-gleam sharp with killing intent, attack after attack launched at the woman in an unbroken chain.
But it wasn't enough!
Both Ais and Tiona felt it at once.
Their speed was not enough!!
Every sword swing, every movement, every command the brain issued to the body, even the forward-predictions their minds were making about what Alfia would do next —
All of it was slow!
One step behind, and then every step behind!!
They simply could not keep pace with Alfia. Wherever the woman was, she was always just slightly too far away — beyond reach, in a way that felt almost metaphysical.
And so.
In those circumstances, the very moment they engaged, both girls had already acknowledged a single fact in their hearts.
[We cannot win.]
That was an inevitable truth.
But it was also a truth that the two of them — no, that everyone present — had already known from the start. That was precisely why Ais and Tiona's mission had never been to win. It was to buy time.
Two Level 6 adventurers, fighting a Level 7 mage in close quarters.
With delaying as their strategy from the outset — throwing everything they had into disrupting and deflecting her, nothing held back — how long could the battle last?
The answer was three minutes.
The two girls were launched one after the other and crashed hard into one side wall of the ancient chapel, punching enormous craters into the stone.
The moment they hit, both of them moved with practiced efficiency despite everything — barely managing to pull out a [Panacea] each and drink it down.
Their bodies began recovering at a rapid rate.
At the same time, Miss Heith's healing magic activated again, and golden radiance swept over them both, accelerating the mending of their wounds.
"Take it easy for a bit."
From somewhere across the room came Isagi's voice — steady, reassuring.
Three minutes had been more than enough time for the boy and his remaining companions to accomplish a great deal. Most importantly of all: the construction of their battle formation — the fortification of the battlefield — was now complete.
Alfia was an extraordinarily difficult opponent.
And in a way that was fundamentally different from Zard, whom Isagi had defeated before.
Both were Level 7. Both had been the most talented newcomers and the most powerful members of what had once been their city's strongest Familia. Both had completed the Three Great Quests, personally slaying ancient monsters that had endured for untold thousands of years.
But Isagi understood.
The reason Zard had lost to him was because the man had already been at his limit. Even after unleashing the power of 「Behemoth」 at the end, his body had been a wreck long before that — no matter how tremendous the power coursing through it, a frame riddled with that many holes simply wasn't capable of sustaining a real fight.
So while the battle against Zard had carried a genuine killing intent, that killing intent had never once posed a real threat. It had been bluster. Zard himself had known it too, somewhere inside — that what he was doing wasn't truly a fight waged at full force; that it could only proceed as something more like a 「trial,」 a test of endurance.
But the Alfia before him now was something else entirely.
Revived by the Dungeon, she should be in peak condition — stronger, in fact, than she had been at any point during her life.
That was because of her skill, [Calamitous Compensation]. In life, it had functioned by inflicting a variety of abnormal statuses on her own body in exchange for dramatically amplifying her parameters.
Which meant that the living Alfia had always been weakened to some degree — every moment of every day — and had never once known a true peak.
But not anymore.
The Alfia standing before him now bore no trace of any abnormal status. She was, without question, reaping the full, enormous bonus of her skill — without paying any price for it whatsoever.
And beyond even that.
Her full name, as she existed now, was [Absolute Evil · "Silence" Alfia] ——
Isagi's strategy was the shield wall.
Somewhere in the city stood a building identical in every way to this ancient chapel — the original, replicated by the Dungeon, the place Alfia cherished most deeply. It stood not far from the abandoned bell tower off West Main Street. Time flowed quietly past it; the old church bathed in starlight and moonlight, long since left without a single soul within.
Isagi had been there. And he had stood inside it for a long time, thinking — running simulations of the battle against Alfia in his head — until he arrived at the conclusion he now held.
Use a shield wall capable of deflecting her magic to form a physical "box" around her. Compress her room to move as much as possible.
Greatshield after greatshield was stacked into place.
Within a few minutes, with almost casual efficiency, Alfia had been encircled and her space of movement steadily closed in.
She would inevitably try to break out.
But Isagi and the girls were faster.
Between each pair of custom-made shields, where they overlapped and interlocked, a small semicircular gap had been deliberately left — just the right size for a black gun barrel to protrude through.
And then ——
"Fire!"
The thunder of cannon roared again. The proud, ringing song of steel and gunpowder rang out together.
He had no intention of trying to outmatch her in magic.
He had no intention of trying to beat her in close quarters either.
Isagi understood clearly: whichever of those two options he chose, the odds of actually defeating Alfia in a straight confrontation were low.
Her abilities were simply too broken.
Magic? She could render your mana completely inert while still casting spells herself. Close combat? Even Isagi himself, purely by the numbers, could barely match her speed.
So don't compete on either front. The right way to fight is to maximize your own strengths — and only your own strengths.
Amid the cannon's roar, crisscrossing fire began a relentless, unending bombardment inside the sealed space. There was not so much as a sliver of room to evade.
So then.
Miss Alfia — the times have changed.
____
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