The Abyss of the End

—

Holanda Town. The town where the Abyss of the End dungeon was located. The adventure party, Shadowflame Variation, who had just been promoted to “S5” rank—the threshold for S-rank—was holding another “temporary combat meeting” at the entrance to the 69th floor.

“Listen up,” Wald, the captain of Shadowflame Variation, said with a serious expression. “Before us, another newly promoted S5 team, Cradle, has already launched an assault on the 70th floor. It’s very likely they’re the ones clearing this dungeon.”

“Although we didn’t do any tactical planning yesterday, and never intended to clear the 70th floor from the start. But… Cradle is a team ranked just ten spots behind us. Hunter, you’ve been tracking the rankings, tell us what it means if they clear this dungeon?”

Hunter, somewhat gloomy and looking like a recently graduated magic academy student, was forcibly called out from the crowd. He scratched his head.

“It means… we’ll likely drop off the first two pages of the rankings.”

“Can you stand by while others get ahead of us?! And we’re a team famous for fire magic!” The more he spoke, the more agitated he became, his face even turning red with excitement.

“At the start of the year, with the Adventurer’s Guild reforms, we barely made it to S5. You all need to understand, the competition for S5 rank is fierce right now; our point rankings can drop if we’re not careful!” He gesticulated wildly, like a leader passionately promising great things to his subordinates.

“If we drop, our sponsorships will decrease, and our equipment and potions will be reduced. And we all know that if we successfully challenge the Ice Demon of the Abyss of the End, it will give our team and each person five hundred points! We could even leap to S4!” He even raised his hand, trying to cheer on his team members.

But… no one seemed to perk up because of his words. Everyone’s expressions were exceptionally serious, even more than just serious; they carried a hint of fear.

“Captain, frankly, we never intended to defeat the 70th floor—that’s the final BOSS floor where the Empress resides. Making it to 69 is already good.” It was Hunter again. As a “new recruit” who had only joined half a year after graduation, he was perhaps the only one who dared to openly defy the leader.

“Although our team’s mages specialize in fire-attribute magic. We also have many large-scale magic constructs, but… the Snow Woman of the Abyss of the End is exceptionally strong defensively.” His speech carried the bookishness that practical adventurers hated most—using various data and monster information to refute adventurers’ “experience.”

“We calculated before, based on data from pioneering adventurers, that we can’t break through the Snow Woman’s first ice wall at all. If we can’t break her ice wall, all our subsequent attacks will be useless.”

“Bullshit!” Wald stomped his foot. His red hair, dyed specifically to match his fire magic, stood out exceptionally dazzlingly in the dungeon made of multiple layers of ice.

“How would we know without trying?!”

“But… Captain, you must know, right? Cradle spent a fortune to invite a witch extremely skilled in fire magic.” The moment Hunter said this, his teammates began to whisper among themselves.

Because after he said that, even Wald couldn’t find a way to refute him.

“…A witch?!”

“I’ve heard about her. She’s a very crazy witch. Her payment is the heart of this dungeon’s Snow Woman.”

“How crazy?”

“She came to the Abyss of the End just to do experiments! Did you see how strange several of the floors on the way here were?”

“Oh, you mean those floors where there wasn’t a single bit of ice left, and there were charred black monsters everywhere, an ice-attribute dungeon made to look like a fire-attribute dungeon. She burned all of that every day after moving here!”

“Why did she burn all that?”

“I heard it was just to do experiments! Nothing else!”

…The murmuring voices, it was as if they had already “predicted” that Cradle, currently on the 70th floor, would surely surpass them and win.

Wald angrily kicked the door.

“Don’t surrender before fighting! We’ll know what’s going on once we go in and fight, won’t we? This is our first time on the 70th floor too!?”

Slam. As if on a dare, he directly opened the door.

And then… behind the door, he, and everyone in the Shadowflame Variation team, saw a scene that was both “a hell” and “despair”—

A witch wearing a large hat, holding a metal staff, and dressed in a long mage’s robe, flew past their eyes in an instant.

Behind her, as she flew past, was the Abyss of the End’s Empress’s famous “Solid Ice Defense” castle—a castle made of stacked ice, snow, and frost, covering an area almost half the size of Entark’s capital city, with its very first wall being ten meters high, like a clock tower.

And it also had countless layers of resistance to fire magic. It nearly deterred all adventurers, making them sigh as they looked up.

“Hmph, is that all?!”

Except for that witch.

She drove her flying magic without any flight tools, bombing the castle’s first wall from high altitude. The moment she flew past, extremely cold ice blades rapidly fell from the castle, almost completely annihilating Shadowflame Variation, who had just joined the battle, if Hunter hadn’t already prepared and activated a fire barrier.

She shot out Blazing Meteor, which outsiders who didn’t understand witches considered “the strongest fire magic,” one by one from her staff, like ordinary fireballs.

She was so beautiful.

Her dazzling golden twin-tails streaked through the fire and ice blades, the gradient color, slightly reddish at the tips, blending seamlessly with the constantly flaring flames.

The smile on her lips never faded.

A battle between a witch who perfectly fit every adventurer’s imagination of a “fire magic specialist” and what was perhaps the strongest ice-attribute defensive fortress to date was now playing out before their very eyes—

“Damn it. Can’t you just be quiet so I can properly chant and unleash one big blast?!” The witch yelled at the Snow Woman on the castle as she flew.

“So annoying. You’re the ones disturbing my rest.”

“This is your job, you know. It’s work time now, Empress—”

The witch smiled, seemingly pulling out even more magic from her ring, aiming it at the support structure of the turrets in front of the castle gate.

“Pointless.” The Snow Woman seemed a bit lazy, yawning.

As for why… a “70th floor BOSS raid,” a battle that should have been a multi-person raid, was now a one-on-one duel between the witch and the Snow Woman, with them even yelling at each other.

That was because… everyone else from Cradle had already fallen in this battle.

They lay scattered, some horizontally, some vertically, with half-frozen arms or entire thighs completely encased in ice. There were even some with their entire leg and body hanging upside down from nearby ice trees. From the way they had fallen, it was highly likely they had just walked in and were wiped out in one go, without even much time to defend.

But… the witch they had hired, the only conscious person remaining, didn’t seem to care about her teammates’ “life or death.”

—