When the vengeful spirits of the Nomadic Merchants all clasped Lloyd's hand, the Dungeon came to an end.
But the matter of the Great Caravan itself was far from over.
Through the dungeon's events, Lloyd had managed to restore the nearly fossilized souls that had been buried for ages and, within that recreated world, dissolve the resentment festering within them.
Yet because they had been dead for so long—and because their revival would inevitably ripple across the Lands Between—there remained countless practical issues to handle: their reintegration, their placement, their standing among the living.
Lloyd, however, had no intention of handling any of that personally.
He could, of course, if he wished. But who would willingly work overtime when there was a chance to hand off the job?
No, this wasn't slacking—it was effective delegation.
And as for who to entrust with the task...
After a moment's thought, Lloyd decided on the most fitting person.
"There's an old saying from my homeland," he said. "Something like 'Great men make use of great resources'—oh, wait, no, that's not it."
In Marika's chamber, he looked at the stunned goddess before him and said seriously, "It's 'He who tied the bell must untie it.'
"So, I'll leave this matter to you."
Marika froze.
Though she'd long heard from every direction about Lloyd's uncanny intellect—his tendency to do things far beyond mortal understanding—and had even personally witnessed events that once shook her very soul, such as that incident involving a certain Alice, those had been exceptions.
As the self-made Golden Goddess, Marika had seen much in her time. Though Lloyd's antics were often strange, only that one—perhaps two, if one counted Chaos—had truly shaken her.
After accepting Lloyd's existence as a fixed point of absurdity, she had thought to herself: If he can pull something like the Greater Will into reality, then no matter what he does after this, it won't scramble my brain again.
She had, as it turned out, overestimated herself—and underestimated him.
In some ways, this was an even greater shock than Alice's revelation.
After all, no matter how powerful the Greater Will was, it remained a distant, incomprehensible divinity—something even a Golden Goddess could barely approach. Alice, too, rarely interacted with anyone other than Lloyd, her aloofness making the whole ordeal easier to compartmentalize.
But the Great Caravan...
You knew what that meant. That was the Great Caravan.
The Numen Village tragedy she could explain away as the sorrow of her own kin—a wound people generally avoided reopening. But the Great Caravan? That was pure, unfiltered black history—a dead end with no possible redemption.
Even knowing Lloyd's capabilities, she had never once asked him to intervene in that matter.
It wasn't because she felt no guilt—she did. It was because she knew the Great Caravan's fall wasn't something that could simply be "fixed." If someone actually tried to, they would probably make things worse.
So when Lloyd suddenly brought up the subject, she'd assumed he, too, would let it drop.
But instead—he left for a short while, returned not long after, casually solved what she had believed to be an impossible problem... and then told her to handle the aftermath.
That was...
"What? You don't want to?"
"I…"
Marika opened her mouth, then sighed deeply.
"I'm willing," she said quietly. "But… will they be?"
Strictly speaking, the tragedy of the Great Caravan wasn't solely her fault. Those enigmatic merchants bore plenty of responsibility themselves.
But in the end, they were the ones buried alive—and she was the one who gave the order.
Even so, wanting to make things right, she accepted the task despite her unease. But still...
"Oh, they don't mind," Lloyd said offhandedly. Then he casually summoned forth a representative of the Nomadic Merchants.
In truth, before coming to Marika, Lloyd had already spoken with them. He'd been direct:
Even as Elden Lord, he told them, they couldn't keep avoiding Marika and the Golden Order forever. So long as that wall stood between them, the wound would never heal. It could even repeat the same tragedy.
So rather than clinging to hatred and confusion, it was better to face it head-on—only then could anything change.
And so, they had agreed.
Thus, Lloyd plucked out one merchant to serve as their representative.
And thus, the atmosphere in the room became unbearably awkward.
Marika's discomfort was obvious—already guilt-ridden, unprepared, and suddenly confronted with those she had once condemned.
As for the merchant, though he should have despised her, after everything that had happened within the dungeon, he knew the truth. He understood that Marika wasn't solely to blame, that their own silence and strange behavior had played a major part.
Putting himself in her place, he couldn't deny it: if a newly founded dynasty encountered a group of merchants whose eyes blazed with Frenzied Flame, who offered no explanations and insisted on wandering the Lands Between— even approaching the capital itself—he, too, wouldn't have trusted them.
So the merchant who should have greeted Marika with curses—or at least shouted in outrage—stood there frozen, unsure how to speak, guilt rising in his chest.
Lloyd waited a while, watching both sides stammer and avoid eye contact, then decided nothing useful would come of it soon. Quietly, he slipped away.
After leaving, he sought out Kalé, explained the situation, and thanked him for the merchant's token he'd once given.
At which point, Kalé's mind practically exploded.
Forget the Great Caravan—he'd been so busy searching the Royal Capital for any trace of it, cut off from most company, that he hadn't even heard Lloyd had become Elden Lord. In fact, after so long without contact, he'd even worried Lloyd might be dead.
And now, in the blink of an eye...
That same clueless man who had once sat with him in a ruined church, asking endless questions about the Lands Between—someone who hadn't seemed all that bright at all.
Not only had he become the Elden Lord, but also the savior of their entire people.
The revelation hit Kalé so hard that his mind blanked completely. Even after regaining awareness, his first thought wasn't that Lloyd was joking—it was whether he'd eaten some strange mushrooms yesterday, or perhaps simply hadn't woken up properly...
Because this level of absurdity was far beyond what any joke could explain.
Since Lloyd had other matters to attend to, and Kalé himself admitted he needed some time alone to calm down, Lloyd didn't linger. After chatting briefly, he departed once more.
Then he headed toward a Divine Tower—the Divine Tower of West Altus.
Though the Lands Between had been cleared and countless dungeons conquered, Lloyd still possessed several unused fragments.
Among them was a particularly large one obtained from Rykard during his first phase.
But with everything that had happened since—and without having located Rykard's Divine Tower—Lloyd had never activated that particular fragment.
Now, with most other dungeons cleared and no urgent business left, he decided it was finally time to investigate the remaining ones.
...
The familiar fragment unfolded.
The familiar haze fell over him.
And the familiar scene returned.
[Chaos City · Volcano Manor]
As expected, the fragment embedded within Rykard's serpentine—or rather, within Evelyn's—body pertained to Chaos.
Of course, not the "chaos" associated with those four mischievous gods, but the Chaos Flame—the one birthed when the witches, seeking to extend the world's life, tried to recreate the First Flame and instead spawned the Flame of Chaos.
But that wasn't the point right now.
What mattered was the dungeon's mechanics.
[Chaos City · Volcano Manor]
[Special Domain: Incubator Spread]
[Incubator Spread: The roots of the Incubator have spread everywhere. All scenes, monsters, and items have transformed, becoming more 'chaotic.' Defeating them now requires specific rules.]
[Or, to phrase it in a way you'd understand:]
[The map has become a sprawling labyrinth full of puzzles. All monsters ignore attributes and fight purely through mechanical rules. The terrain also includes areas requiring special items to cross—like molten lava…]
Lloyd's face turned green.
The last time something had made him react like this was Seath's "delayed mutation."
That mechanic hadn't affected anyone else, but it had disgusted him enough for a lifetime. Even now, recalling that dungeon gave him the same uneasy nausea as eating "supreme chocolate."
And though this wasn't the same time or place, he could already feel that same creeping dread.
He didn't even need to fight—just reading the description was enough to fill him with an overwhelming sense of doom.
Even the name alone made his temples throb.
Chaos Bed.
While others might argue about which boss had the most broken attacks, the most infuriating chase mechanics, or the most unpredictable hit patterns—each one claiming their own "worst boss ever"—there was always that one entity, sitting proudly on the champion's throne, gazing down upon the masses in silence, smiling faintly.
Even the so-called "Lightning Slash" could only be dismissed as "a mere mortal born in an era without me."
And now, not just the bosses—but the maps, the mobs, and even the items—had all become Chaos Bedified.
Lloyd's head started to ache.
After stepping outside and testing himself against a few monsters, he quickly realized—
It was even worse than he'd imagined.
The terrain twisted and tangled endlessly, with no sense of direction and a maddeningly complex vertical layout. Every path had at least three locked doors, half a dozen ambushers lurking around corners, and enough traps and puzzles to fill a tome.
And the mobs? They were straight from hell.
Invulnerability phases. Mechanic-only kills. Enemies abusing terrain glitches. Others that stayed immortal until specific puzzles were solved—puzzles so convoluted they bordered on sadism. Some even had instant-death triggers, killing him on contact.
He knew, logically, this dungeon represented the process of restructuring the mountain of "corrupted code" within him—the most critical and difficult part of his entire system. The design made sense.
But that didn't stop him from thinking this configuration was absurdly broken.
He even began to wonder if the inside of his own body was really this much of a mess.
...
[In truth, the state within you is far worse than this.]
[Don't forget—you're still only in Phase One.]
Lloyd stared at the message on the ground for a long while. Then he sighed.
And decided to call for backup.
As for who...
Since this dungeon was purely mechanics-based—testing intellect rather than brute strength—the warrior types could be ruled out immediately.
Among those remaining, Melina wasn't good at solving puzzles, Ranni's time flow hadn't yet stabilized, Renna's research had reached a crucial stage, and the Queen of the Full Moon still hadn't sworn an oath with him...
Plus, this was the Chaos Dungeon—chaos, witches, and teachers...
That left only one answer.
A burst of blue light flared to life.
The former Primeval Witch—now the Insurance Witch—Sellen appeared within the space.
When she opened her eyes, she smiled teasingly at her foolish disciple standing before her.
"It seems my foolish disciple has gotten himself into—"
Her words stopped short.
Before she could finish, Lloyd moved in, sealing her lips with his and pouring his soul energy into her.
Sellen froze, startled, then tried weakly to resist.
"You idiot... what are you..."
But it wasn't much of a struggle—more symbolic than sincere, her resistance barely even forceful.
Soon her movements softened, her breathing unsteady, and as she began to respond to him, her face grew increasingly red.
Finally, Lloyd lifted his head and spoke.
"Sorry. The order here is extremely unstable. If I don't inject some of my essence into you, something unpredictable might happen."
At his words, the delicate body in his arms stiffened slightly. She turned her head away and murmured faintly,
"Oh... I see..."
She loosened her hold on him and tried to compose herself, adjusting her clothes.
But the next moment, he pulled her close again.
His voice came once more.
"But if you want, Teacher... I can do more."
Lloyd gently lifted Sellen's face, meeting her eyes with complete seriousness.
"It's entirely possible.
And it would help stabilize things even further."
"Do you want to?"
Silence.
A long silence.
Her flushed face trembled, struggling for words. Finally, she turned her head aside and whispered,
"No... there's no need..."
"The situation here looks bad enough. We should just..."
She paused, then forced the words out softly.
"We should take care of business first."