Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

Carried by the winds, Alice swiftly travelled through the forest. She appeared on top of a tree above the spot where the unaware adventurers were.

"Hello~ Miss me?"

Her casual words of greetings immediately alerted the adventurers. They hurriedly jumped away from their hiding place and looked at Alice with an expression that was a mixture of shock and fear.

They thought that they had opened quite a gap and lost the girl, but the latter had already found them in less than a minute. What sort of tracking ability did the girl use?

They weren't able to recover much of their strength, how should they fight her in this condition?

"There is no other way, let's trust Guild Master Arven and put our hopes in his plan"

The two guild leaders with the warrior class looked at each other before rushing towards Alice. They rammed down the tree that she was on before using all of their skill and abilities on her.

The plan these three guild leaders cooked up was very simple, the two of them who had the warrior class, would stop the little girl. While they were holding all of her attention to them, Arven would start conjuring his most powerful magic from the distance and signal them when it was completed.

They would then timely back away and the enemy would get caught up in the magic. Simple and precise, for these guild leaders who had never worked with each other, it was the best plan they would come up with at that instant.

However, little did they know that they were just being used as baits, Arven never had any plans to attack.

While the two guild leaders were stopping Alice, he used this chance to get away from her. He thought that if he could join with Brutus and the others then perhaps they stood a chance against the little girl.

"She must be the strongest entity in this dungeon; there is no shame in running. Yes, I did the right thing. I must survive and gather others to fight her. An absurdly strong being like her is a huge threat to our expedition force"

Thinking so, Arven flew through the forest.  But even he was mistaken about one thing, the teammates he wanted to join up with, were all fighting against absurdly strong beings like the he was facing.

Whatever scenario he had in mind, never existed in the first place. Even if he flew out of the forest, no backup was waiting for him.

But who said he could even get out of the forest? Arven who was marked by Alice, never stood a chance of getting out of the forest. There was no escape from her [Hawk Eyes] and her range that seemingly covered the entire floor itself.

"Hm.. Hm… Hmm~" Alice hummed as she notched another arrow from her seemingly infinite quiver and locked onto her target.

Anyone marked by her skill [Mark] even if they run off to a place she cannot see, or hide in a place she cannot reach, they would still be unable to escape her.

Alice was a Valkyrie created by Simon to snipe opponents from extremely long distances. An expert marksman who never missed her shot. Two bodies that lay motionless beside her, were the perfect example of that.

The bodies of the guild leaders had a hole in their heads right between their brows. There was not even a millimetre of difference between the two wounds. They were both shot in the exact same place.

"Hmm? Would it be the twelfth time I'm firing today? Ahaha… gotta be careful or else Master, big sister and the others will scold me"

Alice stuck out her tongue. It was very important that she counted the number of times she had fired today as it had a direct relation to her strength.

If asked who amongst the Valkyries had the highest firepower, that achievement would no doubt go to Alice. The reason for that was her inherent skill [Combo Fire] which increases the destructiveness of her consecutive attacks by 30% every time.

That is to say, if her first arrows dealt X amount of damage, the second arrow would deal 30 percent more damage than the first and the next arrow would have an added 30 percent more power to that and so and so forth. The power kept on stacking.

The destructiveness of her attacks kept on increasing the more she fired in succession making her a fearsome opponent to face.

However, It needs to be noted that the [Combo Fire] can only be used till a certain number of times before Alice ran out of mana. Plus, any attack that surpassed her mana limits would break the combo.

Similarly, her attacks have to be uninterrupted for the [Combo Fire] to work.

The skill had quite a few drawbacks; nevertheless, the existence of [Combo Fire] and many other skills was what placed Alice at the top of the Valkyries in terms of firepower.

RUMBLE… the twelfth arrow buffed by [Combo Fire] was notched into the bow causing the very space around Alice to wrap and distort. The power bestowed inside that arrow was so great that the very forest trembled in fear of it.

"Lock on… Fire" her irises that was like scope lenses, locked onto her target's before she released the arrow.

WHOOSH… the arrow immediately took the form of a unique coloured fiery bird that bypassed every barrier and sped towards its target.

SHINE… Arven who was flying low and crisscrossed around the tees to avoid the enemy's attacks, felt his back suddenly heat up. When he touched it with his hands, he soon realised that there was some kind of a glowing mark on his back.

"What is this?"

Before he even had the time to think, Arven's eyes saw a fiery bird with a terrifying amount of power, fly through the forest and reach him in the blink of an eye.

The bird penetrated through his body before flying up and crashing into the ceiling creating an enormous hole in the process. Although it did not breach the ceiling, it was very close.

As for the guild leader of the crimson demolition guild, he did not even have the chance to create any barrier to defend himself before dying. Three powerful guild leaders whose names shook the kingdom, died just like that.

And the person responsible for their death was a little girl who looked no more than fourteen years old.

"I wonder how Elder Sister Annette and Bianca are doing?" Alice muttered reverting back to her normal form.

Dozens of kilometres away from the forest, towards the north-western direction, was a place that was completely devastated until the very topography around here had changed. The land around here had turned into a desert, a telltale of the fierce battle that occurred here.

A couple of figures could be seen laying on the sand with severe injuries on their bodies and breathing heavily. Many among them had died, their bodies beaten so brutally that one cannot even recognise them anymore.

Some were scorched until they were black cinders, some missing all their limbs and some squashed until they were just pieces of flesh.

Those that were still alive, were barely hanging on to their last breaths. Their eyes staring at their opponents with a mixture of shock, despair and loss. Who would have expected the lineup comprising of the most powerful guild leaders of the kingdom, to be beaten so thoroughly and by only two opponents?

They had lost, defeated and crushed utterly by the overwhelming powers of the two maids who were coldly looking down at them from the skies.

One was covered entirely in Adamantium while the other was a spiritual body. They slowly landed on the ground and approached the guild leaders who did not have the slightest strength to even move their bodies.

"Gugh.. bwargh… We give up… please at least spare our guilds"

Brutus who could still somewhat talk mustered up all of his energy and spoke. He realised that conquering this dungeon was impossible, with these beings guarding it, there was no way it would fall.

Unless it's party comprised entirely of Rankers, it would be foolish to even think about conquering a dungeon like this. On that note, they could be considered fools for thinking exactly that.

Lying on the floor powerless and defeated, it faintly dawned on them how stupid and ignorant they were. The dungeon cleverly hid its fangs, it never gave them even the slightest inklings of what it was capable of.

It lured its unaware prey closer and bared its fangs the moment it was ready. The true dangers of this dungeon far surpassed even their wildest of dreams and anything they had ever encountered.

It could also be said that they were largely at fault for underestimating the dungeon but who would have ever thought that a low ranking dungeon would be this terrifying? It not only deviated from all pre-established notions, but it broke all common sense and knowledge the adventurers had of the dungeon.

It wouldn't be wrong to say that this place was no dungeon, it was a maw of a fiend. Only death awaited those that entered it.

Escape? That was impossible too. The return scroll did not work, and even if it did there was no way their opponent would just sit still and let them use it. There was no way out of this dungeon. The reality was harsh but it was the truth.

Brutus at least wanted the members of his guild to live. As long as his son was alive, the Savannah Beast Guild had infinite possibilities to get back on his feet again. But his final hope, the only thing preventing him from losing consciousness was brutally smashed apart by the words that came out of the maid next.