"Haa, haa, haa, haa..."
"Zeh, zeh, zeh, zeh..."
Only the sound of ragged breathing echoed throughout the room.
It spilled from the mouths of Rei, who had released Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor, as well as Elk and Ara. Similarly, Elena, standing apart with Mirage still in hand, was gasping for breath after channeling an extreme amount of magic power.
Marina and Min, unable to find any words, could only stare at the Silver Lion collapsed on the floor.
A death struggle. It was truly a battle worthy of that description. Even for Min, who had fought countless formidable enemies as part of an A-Rank party, and for Marina, who had endured numerous battles over her long adventurer career, a fight this intense was a first in their lives.
Even so, they had won against an S-Rank monster.
The moment that realization set in, joy welled up from within— an explosive, overwhelming joy.
With this, they might be able to restore Vihera's and Rhodos's consciousness.
The fact that such a thought had crossed their minds was undeniably true.
"Haa..."
His breathing finally settling, Rei leaned back against the corpse of the Silver Lion he had just slain and surveyed his surroundings.
Behind him was its silver body.
Given the Silver Lion's massive six-meter frame, its body—pressed against Rei's back as he sat on the floor—felt almost like a wall.
Shifting his gaze, the next thing to catch his eye was the Silver Lion's face.
From its mouth protruded the handle of Death Scythe, and from its eyeball jutted the shaft of the Twilight Spear.
Its enormous face still looked as though it might be alive. That thought lingered in Rei's mind.
But blood tears flowed from the eye pierced by the Twilight Spear as well as from the other intact eye, and its tongue had lolled out onto the floor.
Seeing that, the Silver Lion was unquestionably dead.
"Ow!"
Rei had finally accepted the Silver Lion's death by examining its head, but the break in concentration must have been the trigger.
All at once, his entire body cried out in pain.
Moreover, there were multiple wounds on his face and head, and blood streaming from his forehead was flowing into his right eye, dyeing his vision crimson.
"Gurururu."
Set, worried by Rei's pained voice, approached with a look that seemed to ask if he was all right. But Set was almost as badly injured as Rei— no, compared to Rei, who wore the Dragon Robe, Set's body bore even more slash wounds.
These were injuries sustained when Set had charged through the Silver Lion's last-ditch barrier of tail strikes to save Rei.
Despite having more wounds than Rei and bleeding more heavily, Set purred and gazed at him with concern.
"I'm fine. We took down the Silver Lion, after all. ...But honestly, this is the first time I've been hurt this badly in a fight."
Rei had experienced countless battles.
The sheer density of combat he endured was on an entirely different level from that of an ordinary adventurer.
Even so, the number of times Rei had actually been injured in battle was remarkably few.
The worst injury he had suffered was likely during the Bestia Empire's civil war, in his fight against the S-Rank Adventurer, Noise the Immovable.
(An S-Rank Adventurer and an S-Rank monster... Could it be that if Noise had fought me seriously back then, I would've been hurt just as badly? No, this time the victory came thanks to support from multiple people. Who knows what would've happened if he'd gone all out.)
Rei turned his gaze back to the Silver Lion as he endured the pain of his wounds, but that line of thinking was slightly off the mark.
While everything above A-Rank was lumped together under the S-Rank classification, strictly speaking, S-Rank was a broad umbrella.
This held true for both adventurers and monsters. Among S-Rank monsters, the weaker ones could potentially be defeated by a single A-Rank adventurer, while a powerful S-Rank monster couldn't be beaten even by a hundred.
Even within the same S-Rank, that was how vast the gap could be.
Furthermore, the Silver Lion was a monster that excelled in defense thanks to its fur, even among S-Rank monsters, so it was only inevitable that it had been such a struggle to take down.
In particular, the slashing and thrusting attacks Rei excelled at were almost entirely nullified, making it an extremely poor matchup.
On the flip side, the fact that it specialized in defense meant its attack power wasn't particularly high— which was fortunate for Rei and his party. ...And yet, Rei had still sustained what could safely be called the worst injuries he had suffered since arriving in Elgin.
"Rei, are you all right?!"
"Rei, are you okay?!"
Elena and Marina rushed over to where Rei leaned against the Silver Lion's corpse.
Seeing that his face was badly swollen, bleeding from multiple places, and that one eye was sealed shut with dried blood, they panicked and hurried back outside the room.
They grabbed the potions that had been placed there...
"Miss Elena? And Mar... Guild Master, too?"
A voice called out to them unexpectedly.
Of course, Elena and the others understood that they were in a Dungeon. But in their frantic rush to treat Rei as quickly as possible, they hadn't noticed the owner of that voice.
When they turned toward the source, they found one of Yohanna's companions standing there.
"Why are you here?"
"Well, the Silver Lion's cries we'd been hearing suddenly stopped, so I came to check what happened."
The man gave a brief reply to Marina's question.
Honestly, he had absolutely no desire to approach a place where an S-Rank monster might be lurking.
But he had reasoned that if the Silver Lion had been defeated, it would be better to bring Vihera and Rhodos along sooner rather than later, and so he had come to check.
Perhaps understanding the man's feelings— and those of Yohanna, who had likely given the order— Elena and Marina breathed small sighs of relief.
At the same time, the sight of Rei's blood-covered state had thrown them into confusion, but now they regained their composure. They exchanged glances, nodded to each other, and Marina addressed the man.
"I see. We're sorry for making you worry. But rest assured— the Silver Lion has already been defeated."
"!?!? ...I thought so. The fact that you two are out here told me as much. Not to mention that corpse in there. ...Still, truly... as expected of Captain Rei."
The surprise must have been overwhelming.
Without even noticing that he had reverted to calling Rei "Captain" as he once had, the man stared blankly toward the entrance of the room where the Silver Lion had presumably been.
"However, quite a few people were injured. We're going to treat them, so could you bring Vihera and Rhodos here in the meantime?"
"Huh? Ah, yes! I'll bring them right away!"
Nodding at Marina's words, the man hurried back the way he had come.
After seeing his retreating figure off, Elena and Marina returned to the room, high-potency potions in hand.
"It seems a bit pointless to say this after coming all the way out here to fetch potions, but come to think of it, couldn't we have just used the ones inside Rei's Item Box?"
"That just shows how confused we were. Anyway, let's get back to Rei. Since we came out here, we need to bring these potions back with us anyway."
Leaving ultra-precious items like World Tree potions sitting outside the room was nerve-wracking for Marina in more ways than one.
Of course, she didn't suspect Yohanna's group of stealing them. But if someone else— some adventurer who had reached this Deepest Layer for whatever reason— happened upon them, she worried they might seize the opportunity and snatch the potions lying on the floor.
(In that sense, it was a good thing we were able to recover the potions so quickly after the battle ended.)
Thinking this, she stepped into the room where the Silver Lion lay.
Once inside, she was struck anew by the sheer enormity of the beast.
Even compared to Set, the largest among their group, the difference in size was staggering.
Rei, leaning against the Silver Lion's body, looked small purely in contrast to its massive frame.
(And yet... without Rei, defeating the Silver Lion would have been impossible. That's a fact.)
Their support— and the combat power that Elk, Ara, and the others had provided— had undoubtedly been effective in bringing down the beast.
But if asked whether they could have fought and won against the Silver Lion without Rei and Set, Marina would have shaken her head.
In the end, the one who ultimately claimed the Silver Lion's life was Rei.
Its fur possessed powerful defensive strength against both magic and physical attacks, but its eyeballs and the inside of its mouth did not share that same level of protection.
...Even so, it had enough defensive resilience to emerge completely unscathed when Rei's Deep Flame adhered to its face.
Regardless, shoving a weapon into the Silver Lion's mouth like that was not something an ordinary person could do.
Elk might have been able to manage it, but unfortunately, the Axe of the Thunder God would have only managed to slightly scorch and slash the inside of its mouth.
It was precisely because it was Death Scythe— a massive weapon with a handle roughly two meters long and a blade about one meter in length— and because the Twilight Spear was there to pierce the eyeball, that they were able to destroy the Silver Lion's brain.
Not many people wielded polearms of that length.
(Ah, but could Elena have managed it somehow?)
Recalling the astounding power Mirage had displayed in the final stages of the battle, Marina smiled.
If it had been Mirage's blade in whip form... and if a strike of that magnitude could be unleashed, then perhaps Elena might have been able to bring down the Silver Lion.
Marina cast a brief glance at Elena beside her, but decided that treating Rei's injuries took priority for now.
"Rei, um... are you all right?"
"Ah... well, the wounds aren't as bad as they look. I mean, they hurt, obviously. But I'm not going to die anytime soon, so I'm fine."
His face was stained bright red with his own blood and— above all— the Silver Lion's.
If someone with no context saw Rei right now, it wouldn't be strange for them to faint dead away.
"First, we need to wash the blood off your face before applying potions. ...Could you take out the Dagger of Flowing Water?"
"Yeah."
True to his word, Rei's wounds probably weren't as severe as they appeared.
At the very least, the fact that he wasn't so incapacitated that he couldn't move was evident enough as he retrieved the Dagger of Flowing Water from his Misty Ring.
...Though it was certain that a dull pain shot through the inside of his body as he did so, and he frowned faintly.
Marina channeled magic power into the Dagger of Flowing Water she took from him to produce water, and Elena soaked a cloth she had brought out and began wiping Rei's face.
Most of the blood covering his features came away easily under the damp cloth.
This was likely because not much time had passed since the Silver Lion's death.
But at the same time, wiping away the blood in some places only caused fresh blood to well up from the wounds beneath.
The gash on his forehead in particular was fairly deep, and the bleeding showed no sign of stopping.
"That one's from the Silver Lion's fang."
Rei murmured pensively. But it was a wound that, with one misstep, could have crushed his skull or gouged out an eyeball.
If things had gone poorly— no, even without things going poorly— it could have been a life-threatening injury.
"Really... always doing such reckless things..."
Murmuring softly, Elena gently dabbed the wound and applied potion.
Fortunately, though the gash itself was fairly deep, it vanished without leaving a scar.
A cheap potion might have left a mark, but the one Elena had just used, while not quite a World Tree potion, was of a fairly high grade.
She wiped the blood from Rei's face, applied potion, and watched the wounds fade away.
Fortunately, most of the cuts on his face had been inflicted by the Silver Lion's tail and were not particularly deep.
Seeing that no scars remained on Rei's face, Elena and Marina both breathed sighs of relief.
The potions the two had brought were put to use on the others as well.
Ara tended to Set, and Min to Elk.
Ara, who was applying potions to Set, had sustained some injuries herself, but fortunately, she had only joined the battle in the latter half.
Thanks to that, she was not as badly wounded as the others.
She wasn't entirely unscathed, of course. Even so, her wounds were mostly healed with just a light application of potion.
"Gururururu."
The next most seriously injured after Rei was undoubtedly Set.
Given its larger body, the Silver Lion's tail attacks had left multiple wounds across its frame.
Even so, the tail strikes were essentially whip-like in nature, so none of the gashes were particularly deep.
Set's body was covered in such wounds, but it didn't appear to be especially bothered by them.
This was likely the resilience of a gryphon— a High-Rank Monster.
Even in that state, having potions applied and watching the wounds heal apparently felt good.
Set purred happily...
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Set-chan, you're covered in wounds!"
A voice like a shriek resounded throughout the room.