***

  "What is the meaning of this?" the leader of the Delvers asked the leader of the Beasts. The question was asked in anger and confusion. There was no time to waste, yet for some reason, the Beasts seemed to have betrayed them—pulling back from the attack and even seemingly attacking the Pixies' dungeons.

  Two leaders of the Masters were also in attendance, but they looked weary as they had taken the most casualties during this war. All attacks against the dungeon on the surface had stopped. They now only held the land they had claimed.

  The dungeon forces sometimes still tested those lines but mainly they also focused on holding the lines. The attackers could sense that there were far fewer protectors up here than before as all that could be taken away were to fight on the core floor.

  The Beasts had even stopped their support in the underground battle. While the rest were still pushing forward, they were doing so slowly. Because of the actions of the Beasts, the war effort was wavering, and none of them could understand the reason for it. This dungeon was simply too dangerous in their eyes, yet they could all see that the Pixies had greater things in mind.

  "It seems like you all don't do enough spy work. I thought you Masters had the greatest assassin and spy on your side, but I haven’t seen him in quite a while, and he doesn't seem to have been keeping up on gathering information."

  The two Masters were incensed by those words, but only for a moment.

  "We do not know where he is. Off doing his own thing, as he usually is. Now tell us what you have learned."

  The Beast leader took a deep breath in. He was still having a hard time understanding how the Masters had fallen so far, but he could excuse the Delvers for not knowing, as they were far from land and the business of the other three great powers.

  So, the leader of the Beasts didn’t hold anything back. He told them what he knew about this dungeon—that it didn’t care about winning this race, at least not in the way they did. Then he told them about the Pixies and what he had learned about their plans.

  At first, his audience was skeptical, but he had proof of many things. While he didn't know the grand plan or the full horrors of it, the things he did know were enough to make it clear—the Pixies were an enemy to everyone.

  “This is all of it, and right now is the perfect time. If we all work together and unite, not just on paper but fully, we could fight the Pixies right now and deliver them a big enough blow that they can't recover—no matter what happens to this dungeon. In the end, I think it won’t matter what happens to it. It can be reasoned with, I know that, and if we help it now, even if we’re only helping ourselves, it will not continue attacking us or this world if we just leave it alone.”

  “Then what about the wish? Who gets that?” one of the Masters asked.

  “If this dungeon survives, I guess one of its adventurers gets it, but I think it won't change this world to our disadvantage. At the heart of it, this dungeon—like its name suggests—will only change this world so we can rise ever higher. And I do not think any of you have any special wish. Unlike the Pixies, we do not wish for anything too special and would happily agree that using the wish to make the next world better for everyone would be the best.”

  There was a proper pause after that—even for regular people, but for those at the very peak of diamond rank, it was truly a significant amount of time before the leader of the Delvers spoke up.

  “We have no grand wish that we are pursuing, and the ones we were planning are not that important in the long run. You are also correct that if we strike against the Pixies at this moment, we would have the best chance at winning.”

  “The evidence you have shown is beyond what we expected, and while I cannot truly trust it, the evidence I know to be true—the evidence we have gathered ourselves—hints at this.” He then looked towards the Masters. “It is up to you to decide. If the three of us don’t unite, there is no point in moving forward.”

  The two Masters were in an awkward position. Unlike the leaders of the Beasts and Delvers, they didn't have unilateral decision-making power for their entire faction. Yet, the evidence here and the chance at a truly united world was something they could not easily dismiss, even if there would be trouble afterward.

  "This might end our career," one of them said, waiting for the other, who hesitated longer but finally gave a small nod.

  "The masters agree. But as you said, we need to start eliminating their dungeons. We have some forces we can deploy immediately, but I think a more coordinated attack would be better. However, we don't have much time to strike. Knowing this dungeon, it will hold up longer than even the Pixies predict, but I do not know if it can hold against so many diamonds for the remaining time it has in its advancement."

  What followed was a furious planning session. While the beasts were already at odds with the Pixies on the surface and even attacking some of their dungeons far from ETG, the battle between them was not fully escalated just yet.

  That changed quickly—the beasts launched a full-on attack, not just on the surface but in the underground battles as well. Dungeons that were allied before now started attacking each other's territory, and monsters quickly changed targets.

  The Pixies were furious about this. While their forces were at a disadvantage on the surface, they still fully committed. In the underground battle, the Pixies had a clear advantage and immediately started pushing back.

  It was at this moment, when their backs were turned, that the Delvers and Masters attacked. Even with three great powers on one side, the underground battle was still quite even. That was until ETG forces joined the battle.

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  On the surface, the Pixies were greatly outnumbered, as most of their strongest were on the core floor. The United Powers, as the three great powers started to call themselves, quickly made contact with the dungeon forces to explain their position. They pulled back their forces from the surface after three days of battle, which left the Pixie forces decimated and on the run.

  Agreements of non-hostility were made between the United Powers and ETG forces. These agreements were nothing more than handshake promises not to attack each other, but both sides planned to keep them.

  This allowed the United Powers to withdraw from the outer defenses, and while most of their army stayed—simply because they couldn't be used elsewhere and might need to protect themselves against the Pixies if they emerged victorious—many left to help fight the Pixie dungeons.

  Soon, the underground battle around ETG ended as the 21 dungeons exhausted their forces and needed to start focusing on other areas closer to their main territories. This meant that the only place where true fighting was still going on was on the core floor in the labyrinth, where the forces of the Pixies were pushing forward. They were surrounded on all sides, constantly having to defend against an unending crush of monsters and creatures.

  The Pixies had lost many—almost a quarter of their forces—but that cost had gotten them two-thirds through the labyrinth. The leader of the Pixies was barely able to keep his sanity, as with every report, he could see the grand plan crumbling.

  This labyrinth, even while they were cutting through it, was filled with horrors that would give them nightmares for years to come. They would soon come to wish they had never pushed through the last third of the labyrinth.

  It happened with another beam spell. Multiple walls were destroyed, the last of the beams cutting through a wall that looked like any other, but as soon as it stopped, something started to ooze through.

  At first, the Pixies were confused, but then the ooze started to surge toward them. They recognized the pattern as being from a slime, and they laughed at their skittishness before starting to use fire spells—only to realize that it was barely doing anything.

  Then, one of the Pixies was caught by the slime. She tried to rip it off, but it was holding on surprisingly powerful. The strength of it, as more of it got onto the Pixie, managed to even crack her leg.

  It didn’t take long for the slime to fully engulf the Pixie, and no matter what the others did, they could not free her. Defensive spells worked to keep the slime away, but they needed to put a surprising amount of mana into them.

  Then, one of the Pixies finally whispered, “Oh no... it’s diamond-ranked.”

  At that whisper, the entire slime started to vibrate like it was laughing. Then, as it morphed, it started to surge out of the hole, and for the first time during this battle, the Pixies needed to retreat.

  There were many diamond-ranked slimes, yet only a few were in the labyrinth. They could control their lesser selves, which gave them more mass. When they became diamond rank, they lost most of it, returning more to their original selves. The interesting fact was that even though they used to consume everything, diamond-ranked slimes were almost universally pacifists.

  There were only a few exceptions, and those exceptions were happy enough to put their lives on the line inside the labyrinth if it meant protecting their Father. Still, even they were not too happy to kill—it was just something that went against their very being, but protecting Father was more important. The Pixies were finally halted in their advance, and already nine days had passed since ETG entered his breakthrough.

  It took the Pixies a precious two days to finally find a way to effectively fight against the slimes and to finally push forward, losing another 300 Pixies in the process. They were ever closer to the 1,000 mark, meaning that they would have lost half of their forces, and they weren’t even at the core yet.

  Over the next two days, the Pixies pushed themselves brutally against diamond-ranked creatures, even elementals, but each one they successfully pushed back allowed them to continue advancing.

  Their losses continued to mount, and near the end of the 14th day, they finally pushed through the labyrinth, ending up in a large open space where, in the center, a stairway led down. Just underneath it, they could sense the core. This room, however, was something that was hard to describe, even while witnessing it.

  Usually, elementals of different types, when put together, would start to tear each other apart, even if they didn’t want to. So, to see a room filled with diamond-ranked elementals of all different kinds tearing each other apart but still happily together, surging towards the Pixies even while they were destroying each other, was something truly hard to comprehend.

  Sometimes the storms mixed, turning sand and fire into something even more deadly. Sometimes they clashed, nearly negating one another completely. The air was sometimes breathable, sometimes it would burn you to ash—it was just so unpredictable. Yet, a large bubble appeared around the Pixies. They started to use spells that they knew could actually hurt and kill elementals.

  The battle was brutal, and while none of the Pixies directly died from the attacks or the environment they were in, they still died by the dozens simply from mana overuse while trying to keep the shield around them from collapsing. Meanwhile, other Pixies continued to attack and, one by one, kill or drive off the elementals around them.

  The last few elementals rushed out of their room when they were barely alive. They had held back the Pixies for another four days and reduced their number to around 800. It was still an incredible force, but all of them were exhausted.

  When the dust cleared and their protective bubble finally dropped, the Pixies expected to find no one in their way. Instead, they found themselves up against a force of nearly 500 diamond ranks.

  Many of the Pixies recognized some of them from the labyrinth or from their fights on the outer defenses. There was no grand signal—the two sides simply reacted at the same time, rushing at one another.

  Two Dragons quickly took flight along with many other flying diamond-ranked creatures. Immediately, they were attacked by spells and projectiles, which they weaved around or simply tanked thanks to their superior defenses. The battle on the ground quickly devolved into chaotic melee. Many of the Pixies tried to get through the defenders to reach the stairway and the core below, but they paid dearly every time they tried.

  Like so, the fighting continued, with many on both sides dying, left forgotten as the survivors continued the desperate fight. Minutes turned into hours, hours turned into days, but the end was in sight. No one could miss the brightening of the core—it was so close to reaching the proper brightness for a diamond rank.

  "Enough of this," the leader of the Pixies yelled, and around him, his honor guard readied for a defense. The leader of the Pixies started preparing his most famous spell. The defenders immediately knew what would follow, and from the Pixie's position, they knew that the beam spell would be aimed directly at the core.

  They all tried to converge on the Pixie leader, but they paid dearly for their inattention as the surviving Pixies capitalized on their distractions. Quicker than anyone expected, the spell was formed. Rafe, already having changed his scales to more closely resemble Vix shell and pumping around two dozen skills through them, knew that he could defend against the beam long enough.

  The leader of the Pixies, however, knew that fact. During this fight, he had seen how defensive Rafe could be, so many spells hit him at once, slowing him down enough that he didn’t make it to the beam in time.

  Everything died in its path when it exploded from the hands of the Pixie leader. The ones who could, threw their bodies in front of it, but they barely even slowed it down. It was going to carve through the dungeon stone with relative ease, but just before it hit the floor—at just the right point where it would only take another second to reach the core—it was blocked by an adventurer who changed from his human self to the form of a giant beetle.

  This beetle was not ordinary, as it was changed by the diamond-ranked talent this individual had gained. The bug guy took the beam head-on, and for the first time, it was stopped. Yet, no matter how many defensive skills he used and how good the exoskeleton of this form was, the beam had already started melting through it.

  He only had a few seconds of life left, and the beam was even pushing him back. He was barely able to hold on—if he were to let go, the beam would push him away, saving his life, but it would mean the end of the dungeon.

  The beam cracked through the exoskeleton. The pain was so great that he lost consciousness immediately, being thrown away. The beam hitting the floor immediately afterward. Yet, it was only able to burn through a meter of dungeon stone before it was once again stopped. Rafe had finally reached the beam and stopped it cold. He would still not be able to hold on forever, but he didn’t need to.

  The defenses of the honor guard were too great to get any attack past them to disrupt the leader of the Pixies. But there was another way to interrupt the leader of the Pixies—something suicidal for everyone else besides Ismael, who had a bit of a better chance at survival. Instead of continuing with his breath attacks or with spells, he simply dived.

  Ismael’s acceleration was incredible, leaving only enough time for the honor guard to brace themselves. Not that it helped them. Their lines were broken, and the leader of the Pixies’ spell was interrupted. This attack, however, didn’t achieve anything more than that, as the honor guard quickly retaliated, and the Pixie leader once again started to weave his spell—only for everyone to feel the pulse.

  Another diamond-ranked dungeon had awakened in this world.