Volume 7, Chapter 71 – The Hellfire Will Be Extinguished

“The water… the water is rising.”

“What is that… a giant…?”

“How can there be a giant like that? Hahaha, we must be seeing things. At most, it’s just white mist from the water evaporating.”

It was originally a dry laugh meant to ease the tension, but appearing in the deathly silent plaza, the laughter became a horrifying background noise.

Just as Laxy was preparing to jump down from the eaves, the water that had accumulated in the labyrinth finally reached the surface. Although the water made a sizzling sound as it came into contact with the still-hot lava, and a large amount of steam shot up into the sky, it was undeniable that the water from the labyrinth was still spreading outwards. If it were just that, it would have been a blessing for the water-starved city of Gota. But the terrifying thing was that, along with the water, countless, tens of thousands of light green slimes were also spreading onto the surface.

These slimes formed one monster after another, nearly ten stories tall. With every step they took, the ground trembled. Through their light green bodies, the partially digested monsters within them could be seen. The reason the monsters in the labyrinth had been desperately climbing towards the surface was not only because they needed fresh air and sunlight, but more importantly, they were being driven out. If they did not escape the labyrinth, they would be devoured by the slimes in the water. The shrill screams of their companions being corroded by the strong acid were enough to become a lifelong shadow for the monsters.

“One wave after another…”

Laxy, who had also caught sight of the slime giants, took a step back. There were far more of them on the ruins than she had seen in the Water Tree lake. Judging by their size, they were even more difficult to deal with than the giants she had encountered in the Water Tree. In her current state, retreat was her only option.

“No, if I use the Source of Mana, as long as I have enough time, I can win by wearing them down slowly.”

The problem was that she had to use the Source of Mana.

Although the magic power provided by a Source of Mana was usually very little, the one on her body could be called a special existence. The amount of magic it provided was several times more than a normal one, and it could even support [Sacred Fire] indefinitely. In other words, as long as she enveloped her entire body in [Sacred Fire] and continuously approached the slime giants, she could purify the demons.

Should I use the Source of Mana here?

As she hesitated, a commotion broke out among the army below the roof.

“Gentlemen, do not panic! Our mission is not to subjugate the monsters, but to buy time for the residents of Gota, for your families and friends! Most of the people have already left the city. We just need to buy a little more time, just a little more time! I, Dominic Taris, second son of the House of Marquis Taris, will fight alongside you all and will not retreat a single step!”

“And me!”

“The Gota adventurer’s guild will not stand idly by either!”

Following closely behind Dominic, a group of nearly five hundred adventurers in various strange outfits also rushed into the street. Among them, Laxy also spotted a few very skilled adventurers.

But they alone were not enough. She still had to act.

“With these adventurers attracting attention, no one should be able to notice me. In any case, I’ll go down and join them first.”

With a barely perceptible somber expression, Laxy jumped down from the roof.

◇

After entrusting the task of rescuing the adventurers to Sandra, Yisi, moving against the current, quickly found the source of the labyrinth’s collapse—the tunnel connecting the Water Tree lake and the ninth floor of the labyrinth.

“This is really… a waste of time.”

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There were several kilometers between the Water Tree and the labyrinth, and this tunnel not only connected the two, but was also wide enough for two carriages to pass side-by-side. Recalling the pit she had filled near the Water Tree a week ago and the diameter of this tunnel, Yisi could roughly guess who had dug it.

The people of the Divine Religion.

Only they, with their ‘Excavators’, could have done such a thing in such a short time.

“Although I don’t know what your purpose is, this alone is enough to drop my favorability of you to zero.”

I completely don’t understand why the Divine Religion would do this.

Using [Absolute Zero] to freeze the water in the tunnel—if she didn’t, she would have been swept away—Yisi suddenly thought of something else.

“By the way, in the courtyard, Laxy said that someone had asked her to meet on the ninth floor of the labyrinth. Could it be related to this tunnel? The letter Laxy received more than half a month ago asking her to go to the east district of Gota, and the initial words of the Divine Religion saying they would let the adventurers go if she was handed over… I see. The Divine Religion desperately needs an angel, so to get Laxy, they tried everything. When both force and the lure of a power core failed, they finally thought of using the lives of the entire city as a price to threaten her into submission? It does fit the letter Laxy showed me just now, “If you do not come to the appointment, the residents of Gota will suffer a catastrophic disaster”.”

It felt like all the clues were being connected. Yisi let out a light breath.

If it had dragged on until the time of Laxy’s appointment, she might have really agreed to go with the Divine Religion for the safety of the residents and her duty as an angel. Of course, from the very beginning, I had no intention of letting her go on an adventure alone. Although I had agreed on the surface to let her go alone, I was planning to secretly follow behind her with concealment magic to prevent her from encountering danger.

“But from the looks of it now, even the Divine Religion themselves couldn’t control the force of the excavation. Before Laxy could even arrive, the tunnel was already full of water—speaking of which, a week has passed. These slimes should have been eliminated by the dryad by now.”

Yisi opened the [Omniscient Map].

“The dryad’s condition is normal, and there are no signs of life in the tunnel. Huh?”

[Absolute Defense]

Without hesitation, Yisi reflexively used the skill that could only be used four times a day.

CLANG!

Like a fist hitting an iron plate, an ear-piercing sound penetrated her brain.

The attack wasn’t very strong.

Making that judgment, Yisi attached a magic blade to her entire right arm and counterattacked the ‘thing’ that had ambushed her with a hand-chop.

Crack.

The sound of a sharp blade cutting through a watermelon.

When she came to her senses, the high-ranking demon that had ambushed her had already been turned into a pile of mud.

Kneeling down to examine the corpse, Yisi frowned while holding her nose.

“It was clearly shown as a high-ranking demon, but its strength was only at this level… No, this is only natural, since even the Fallen Angels are like that,” the image of the gluttonous Sandra couldn’t help but appear in her mind. “Its shape is just a ball. Can this be called a high-ranking demon? At the very least, they should have sent a monster with three heads and six arms, horns on its head, muscles all over, and the ability to attack with tentacles.”

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Like the kind of creature that is a friend to magical girls.

Putting the high-ranking demon’s corpse into her inventory, Yisi stood up and clapped her hands.

“Well, if I’m not mistaken, those slimes appeared because of this high-ranking demon. As for which Demon Lord’s camp this demon belongs to…”

Before she could finish, Yisi froze in embarrassment.

I hit it too hard. I didn’t even leave a chance for interrogation.

“It’s not my fault… If it hadn’t ambushed me but attacked me head-on, I wouldn’t have been so nervous.”

When I saw a red dot rapidly approaching me on the [Omniscient Map], I thought it was the Demon Lord Tartaros himself, which was why I used the skill that granted absolute invincibility for 0.3 seconds.

“I’ll just hand the corpse over to Sandra and let her identify it—I really want to meet that Tartaros guy soon and give him a good beating.”

It would be best to beat him until he cries, begging me to let him go while hugging my leg—no, the impression of a Demon Lord is that they are dirty. It would be bad if my skirt got a beastly smell on it. It would be better to hang a sign around his neck that says “I was wrong”, then tie him up like a bug and hang him on the city gate for public display.

Her expression unconsciously turning into that of a little devil, Yisi waved her hand and once again used [Rock Creation] to fill the tunnel, preventing the water from flooding the labyrinth.

But that alone would not solve the problem. If the water in the labyrinth was not cleaned up, the trapped monsters would still continue to climb to the surface. In addition, the numerous slimes in the water were also a big problem. They could condense into giant-like monsters and were an undeniable threat to the adventurers.

[Storage]

Imitating how she had once stored the snowdrifts of Mount Hermion, Yisi tried to store the water in her inventory.

It failed.

Yisi tilted her head in confusion.

Why?

My inventory just can’t store living beings. Things like water, I’ve stored them countless times.

Could it be because of the slimes all around?

Yisi, who was deep underwater, looked up at the surface, where dots of sunlight shone down—tens of thousands of slug-like slimes were swimming in the water, to the point where there were almost no gaps.

“Is it because the density of the slimes is too high, so the water is also judged as a living being? In that case, I’ll deal with these slimes first.”

[Hellfire]

No longer just covering her body with the black flames, Yisi spread the fire to the entire body of water. As if igniting gasoline, in just a few breaths, the black flames turned the underwater world into a paradise of fire. The slugs, their lives threatened, desperately fled towards the surface. But even so, more than ninety percent of them withered and died. In addition, because [Hellfire] used the target’s life force as fuel and did not produce heat, there would be no incident of un-dissipatable steam blowing up the labyrinth.

“Although some escaped, the number is not too large. Now, let’s put the water in the inventory.”

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Once again, Yisi used her inventory to store the water. Just as she had guessed, this time the water was successfully stored. The previous failure was just because there were too many slimes in the water, so the inventory had judged the water as a part of a living being, just like how she couldn’t store the blood still flowing in someone else’s body.

With Yisi at its center, the water in the giant pit turned into a rapidly rotating vortex. In less than five minutes, all the accumulated water in the labyrinth was gone.

Satisfied with the result, Yisi nodded.

“Now then, time to go to the surface.”

According to Laxy, her companions were now only one unprotected battle away from reaching level 20. Although she was unwilling to let them get hurt, considering that the vast majority of even those called capable could not cross the level 20 threshold, and that always having them train under her wing would make it difficult for them to have a real sense of battle—the reason she had let them level up was, one, to simply make them stronger, and two, to give them a certain degree of self-protection even when she was not by their side. That was why she had let them participate in protecting the defensive line.

[Blink]

Her vision changed from the narrow bottom of a well to the open sky. Yisi looked down at the ruined labyrinth plaza.

“It’s become ruins? This is already the power of a fourth-tier, almost fifth-tier spell. There’s a very strong concentration of light element in the air. Was it Laxy?”

Finding Laxy’s figure on the [Omniscient Map], and noticing her fluctuating but undiminishing magic power value, Yisi raised her eyebrows slightly.

Is Laxy’s magic power recovery speed that fast?

Laxy’s magic power had been constantly maintained between 0 and 6. After deducting 6 points in one second, it would quickly recover in the next. Although it was much slower than her own recovery speed of one hundred points per second, it was definitely the fastest she had ever seen.

“If I remember correctly, Laxy’s magic power recovery speed should be three points, and she would fall into a deep sleep when her magic power was depleted. But now she doesn’t look tired at all… Is there something wrong with her power core?”

If this was the effect of over-stimulating the power core, then the side effects would surely be quite strong. No matter what she was fighting for, Yisi did not want Laxy to over-exert herself. There were no longer any First-Rank Angels on this continent. In other words, the current Laxy, just like any other human, was a unique and irreplaceable existence.

“Lord Dominic, we can’t hold them back!”

“Have the people on the city walls deploy the magic barrier!”

“But that will also prevent the ordinary people who haven’t had time to retreat from escaping!”

“Damn it, can’t we use something to hurt them and distract them!”

“We’ve used everything we can, Lord Dominic. We can only delay for time now and let the angel lady annihilate the monsters!”

“Damn it.”

Stabbing his longsword into the slime giant’s ankle again, with a sizzling sound of corrosion, the sword in Dominic’s hand was soon left with only a hilt, and the slime giant took a step to a place he could no longer reach.

When he had first seen this group of slime giants, Dominic had thought that he would be facing a life-or-death battle. He had even prepared himself and his companions for sacrifice. But to his both relief and terror, the first thing the slime giants did after appearing in the labyrinth plaza was not to attack the adventurers and soldiers, but to scramble in all directions as if something extremely terrifying were chasing them from behind. No matter how much Dominic and the soldiers provoked and enraged them—magic, throwing firebombs, shooting arrows, even the magic cannon had been used—the slime giants showed no intention of stopping, but simply fled.

Gritting his teeth, Dominic, on horseback, looked up at the giant that was desperately running towards the city wall. There were still a large number of residents who had not escaped at the city gate. With the corrosiveness of the slime giant, if it were to fall into the crowd, it would definitely cause a huge number of casualties. For a moment, Dominic’s black eyes were filled with anxiety. In his desperation, he could only curse with a roar full of malice and helplessness.

“They’re crazy, crazy, they’re all crazy! What on earth is in the labyrinth! For even a monster like this to be so scared! Damn it, how on earth can I make it stop—uh!?”

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Before Dominic could finish his sentence, the slime giant that had been so helpless against him was enveloped in a ball of black flame. Its light green, massive body rapidly withered at a visible rate. In just a few seconds, the unstoppable slime giant was turned to ash and disappeared.

“Uh… wh-what was that!”

Thump, thump, thump.

The only answer Dominic received was a series of exceptionally rapid footsteps, the sound of which alone could convey a sense of anxiety and fear.

These footsteps came from the slime giants that were fleeing in all directions. The death of the one just now had now become the driving force for their escape—no, a more accurate description would be as if a mad dog were chasing them from behind. All the slime giants were fleeing with all their might, afraid of becoming the next sacrifice to buy time for their companions.

But such efforts were futile. The black flames, like a spreading plague, always accurately appeared on the fleeing slime giants. If one were to look down from high above, they would find that black embers were left in every direction of Gota, like the mark of the grim reaper.

Absurd, yet exhilarating. Terrifying, yet reassuring.

With his mouth slightly agape, Dominic stared blankly at the scene unfolding before him. If it weren’t for his trembling hands from overexertion and the fatigue that filled his entire body, he would have even thought that this was just a dream.

“What… on earth happened?”

“I just killed some ants. You must be the city lord here, right?”

A pureblood, shrouded in a black cloak and wearing a hood and a silver mask, appeared before Dominic.

Recognizing the other party’s identity, Dominic’s eyes widened.

“Uh, you-you’re the one who saved us in the labyrinth before…”

“Shh.”

The pureblood made a hushing gesture. Dominic, who was extremely disheveled from the battle, quickly lowered his voice, his expression a mixture of pleasant surprise and mystery.

“Ahem, may I ask your name—?”

Should I tell him my name?

If he were to make wild guesses because I didn’t tell him, it would cause unnecessary trouble for others. Yisi, hidden under the mask, nodded slightly.

“My name is Viel, that’s all. The monsters in the city have been eliminated by me. With this, my mission is also over.”

Not speaking with Dominic any further—mainly because she was worried that he would notice her physical features, which was completely different from the dimly lit guardian room; it was now daytime—Yisi waved her hand.

“Farewell.”

[Short-Distance Teleportation]