24. Snatching Someone Else's Fortuitous Encounter First — That's The Real Flavor (4)

The blessing flung the unholy energy back, and the shock carved a crack into the mask. The Masked Demon-Beast’s focus wavered, and the purple glow cut out for an instant.

“Fafnir. Charge it head-on.”

— You sure about that? The Masked Demon-Beast might come for you instead.

“That’s what these guys are for.”

An Armored Zombie reinforced with bone plating could weather the ray of ruin to some degree. Seven of them had already been destroyed, swept up in the reconstructing shrine.

If they can just hold the line, I can keep my losses to a minimum.

Position them as close to the Masked Demon-Beast as possible, then sync their movements to the thing’s. That was the best play.

— Master. Don’t go dying a pointless death.

“I’ll block the Masked Demon-Beast’s curse. You focus on the attack.”

— Heh heh heh. Then I leave it to you.

“Uuugh. Little prey. So annoying.”

The Masked Demon-Beast’s eye whites flooded purple once again.

— Kwakwakwakwa!

The purple glow surged forth once more, exploding toward Fafnir as if to swallow him whole.

The pitch-black current coiled around Fafnir’s legs condensed, then discharged into the ground. The great gust the Dark Fighting-Aura kicked up tossed Yujin’s hair about. Racing in a straight line at several times his usual speed, Fafnir rapidly closed the distance to the Masked Demon-Beast.

“Big prey. Won’t let it get away.”

The huge pupil resembling a Demon’s Eye chased after Fafnir a beat too late, but the ray didn’t bend nearly as fast as one might think. Mana discharged toward wherever the gaze pointed. The mana-ray reaches its target in an instant, true, but to correct its path, all the mana concentrated in the eye has to be shifted, and that naturally slows it down.

— So you saw this far ahead.

Charging in on Yujin’s order, Fafnir drove his fist out with a sound of admiration, the Dark Fighting-Aura freighted with his intent. Skin tougher than steel tore open, and hundreds of twisted layers of muscle fiber gave way.

— Thud.

The Masked Demon-Beast lost its footing and flailed both arms. The instant it withdrew the killing ray, its pupil fixed on Fafnir.

Negative-dimension mana loosed poison into Fafnir’s soul, and blue bubbles came frothing up across the Draconian’s skin.

“I knew you’d do that.”

The moment all manner of curses moved to erode Fafnir, Yujin, who had drawn up holy power in advance, unfolded a holy spell.

Holy power and curses are mutually opposed. The Masked Demon-Beast’s mana pool was overwhelmingly larger, but Unholy Blessing was more efficient on a dead man like Fafnir. The holy spell seeped in before the curse could so much as spread.

Once again, the recoil of a canceled spell blew apart part of the mask covering the beast’s face.

— Crrk—!

— Just like my master.

He’d shown off this body-art during the sparring.

Fafnir’s tightly clenched fists hammered the Masked Demon-Beast’s thigh in alternation. Skin hard enough that even a steel sword couldn’t pierce it tore open, blood sprayed from the burst muscle, and at last the leg bone, thick as the base of a tree, snapped with a sharp, vivid crack. The bone jutted out.

A wound like that would have left a human screaming until they passed out, but the Masked Demon-Beast converted the pain into rage.

“It hurts! You. I kill!”

An arm as thick as one of the pillars propping up the shrine drew back, then shot forward.

— I can see exactly where you’re aiming. As if it’d land.

Fafnir’s stats were at the tail end of 3rd Rank. Every stat had risen 20% from the Unholy Blessing, and since the hunt had been underway for a while, the Wedge of Retribution had stacked to its maximum, too. The Masked Demon-Beast was abnormally strong for the boss of a 2nd-Rank gate, but met head-on, Fafnir held his ground.

— Well, no reason to deliberately dodge what’s right in front of my eyes, either.

The Masked Demon-Beast’s fist sliced through empty air. Bubbles welled up from the spot it had just struck, and along with an acrid stench the torn muscle began to knit back together.

— Its regeneration rivals a troll’s.

“That’s Chaotic Frenzy — it reverses injury by shaving off the target’s own life force.”

It’s a spell that burns through a huge amount of life force, so it’s prone to side effects like aging. The proof: fine wrinkles had crept across the Masked Demon-Beast’s skin.

“Nothing in this world comes free.”

A Cursed Fang burrowed into the wound that was just closing and tore it wide open.

— Splat!

A chunk of flesh caught on the blade’s keen tip dropped to the floor.

“Little prey. I kill!!”

The Masked Demon-Beast loosed all at once the curse power it had stored in the white mask.

The power builds each time a curse is used, and though it deals no physical damage, it’s a bizarre wavelength that repels anything, formed or formless alike.

— Khh. I can’t hold against it.

Fafnir, trying to resist the Wave of Darkness, was driven back dozens of meters, and the Masked Demon-Beast glared at Yujin, concentrating mana in its eyes. Its curse broken, its wounds torn open from a distance no less, it had every reason to be furious.

“Block it.”

“Graaah.”

An Armored Zombie threw itself between the Masked Demon-Beast and Yujin, and the ray, fired a beat late, scorched the bone plating. An acrid smoke rose from the point of impact.

Yujin reinforced the bone with spirit-energy as fast as it was shaved away. Unable to bleed off the energy packed into the killing ray, the Armored Zombie took it square in the body.

“Grrgh…”

Even reinforced with Bone Armor, it held for about four seconds before charring black and toppling to the ground.

— Looking away from me, are you?

Fafnir, knocked back by the shockwave, closed in again in a flash and carved a long gash into the Masked Demon-Beast’s flank.

“Big prey. Don’t interfere!!”

The Masked Demon-Beast spat out a rage-laced shriek.

The Masked Demon-Beast was no easy opponent. He left the attacking to Fafnir and busied himself undoing the thing’s curses, harrying it with the magical armament, holding the line with the Armored Zombies, and yet…

— Kwakwakwakwa!

“Grrgh…”

An Armored Zombie burned away more than halfway.

If I sent the rest of my minions in across the board, I’d seize the upper hand fast enough—

Yujin pressed the fight carefully.

The frightening thing about the Masked Demon-Beast was that it could answer at both close and long range.

Drafting the magical armament for defense is a stopgap.

The Demon’s Eye’s attacks were manageable enough to block, but the Masked Demon-Beast, with its uncommon mana pool, fired the killing ray at far greater output. He’d poured real effort into making the Cursed Fang, and he couldn’t afford to lose an armament for nothing in a place like this, so he kept every move careful.

“Little prey. Big prey. Hate both.”

The Masked Demon-Beast looked a far cry from before, too. The wrinkles on its skin had visibly multiplied, and some wounds no longer regenerated, blood trickling down in drips. The largest mark carved into its body was the fracture Fafnir had first made: the wound itself had healed, but a broken bone won’t regrow, so the thing limped with every step.

— At this rate, there’ll be no end to it.

“Fafnir. How much strength do you have left?”

— Enough to unfold Dark Fighting-Aura once or twice.

“Then let’s wrap it up soon.”

That was plenty to finish the thing off.

“Slip in, and I’ll make the opening for you myself.”

— I’ll follow your lead.

Fafnir closed the gap with the Masked Demon-Beast once more. The instant the thing flailed its arm in something like desperation…

The impact stacks piled up over the drawn-out fight discharged all at once, striking the Masked Demon-Beast’s good leg and rocking its whole body hard. Even as it lost its center of gravity, the thing didn’t pull a shred of force from its fist. There was tenacity in that.

— A fight isn’t won on will alone.

Fafnir, who hadn’t let a single moment of the Masked Demon-Beast’s movement escape him, bent slightly at the waist. The fist grazed past over his back. It carried enough force to raise a wind-blast, but it never reached Fafnir.

— A strong attack’s useless if it doesn’t land.

The Masked Demon-Beast had swung its arm even as it half-toppled. Its upper body lay exposed to Fafnir.

Concentrating every scrap of energy save the bare minimum spirit-energy holding his body together, he gave it form as Dark Fighting-Aura and struck the Masked Demon-Beast’s wide-open upper body for all he was worth.

— Crrrunch!

Its ribs broke, and the impact, driving deeper still, reached the heart.

“Khk.”

The Masked Demon-Beast pitched forward with a single cry.

“Wow.”

The moment the Masked Demon-Beast fell, his level jumped by two, the kind of haul that would otherwise have cost him a day or two of grinding. Maybe that was down to its being a tail-end-of-2nd-Rank boss monster. The experience climbed higher than he’d expected, and a smile spread across his face on its own.

“For an appetizer, that wasn’t half bad.”

— And the main course?

“The altar behind the thing. Figured there’d be something on it.”

Yujin spoke of what he’d heard in his past life, calm as you please.

Deep inside the underground cavern, on an altar worthy of the name ‘shrine,’ sat a suit of armor with a silvery sheen.

— Ho-oh. That’s no ordinary piece of armor by the look of it.

“You said it.”

Climbing onto the altar, Yujin examined the armor slowly.

A little different in form from what I saw back then.

Back then, the Dragon-Scale Armor the Phoenix guildmaster had worn had been full plate mail covering the entire body, gleaming a brilliant gold. The armor on the altar, by contrast, was a breastplate guarding only the torso, far smaller, small enough that he had to wonder whether it would even fit him.

As expected, an artifact really is something else.

Still, Yujin wasn’t fazed that the Dragon-Scale Armor looked different from his memory. Shape-shifting is an option often attached to famous artifacts and master-crafted gear.

Just as he’d thought. Only the appearance had changed; this was the very artifact Yujin remembered.

A shape-shifting option, huh. There’ll be no end of ways to use it.

The instant he laid a hand on the Dragon-Scale Armor…

— Zzzt!

Yujin’s mana flowed through the point of contact and into the armor.

Look at this thing.

Yujin didn’t stop the mana from leaking out, and the armor gradually darkened to black.

“It’s not just mana you should be taking in.”

The armor was mid-synchronization with its user. What would it do if he poured holy power in on top of that? A white ripple-pattern surfaced across the Dragon-Scale Armor, which looked cast from a single block of iron.

When the armor had soaked through to complete darkness…

— Chrrrak!

The Dragon-Scale Armor unfurled into dozens of strands and, mutating into a chain form, wound around Yujin’s torso. At a glance it felt as though it were turning against him, but Yujin, recognizing that the mana and holy power steeped into the armor hadn’t slipped his control, watched the change calmly.

— Chk-chak! Chk-chak!

The Dragon-Scale Armor became a top etched with a scale-like ripple pattern.

“Look at that. It’s more of a find than I thought.”

A broad grin spread across Yujin’s face.

He’d completely mistaken the Dragon-Scale Armor’s function. It worked as an amplifier, one that changed to match the user’s will and boosted its output in response to its owner’s mana. As for why it had taken the shape of casual wear, the answer was simple: Yujin had been dressed in casual wear right before he breathed mana into it.

The defense was as flimsy as the outfit warranted. In exchange, he got an extra boost to his mobility.

If I picture a different image—

— Chrrring!

The metallic clang of chains striking one another rang out, and the Dragon-Scale Armor, light as casual wear a moment ago, transformed into heavy armor that concealed every exposed part but the eyes.

The form the Phoenix guildmaster took was close to this.

Checking the options, he found defense had shot up sharply, but a penalty had attached to agility.

Boundless in its usefulness.

“It’s a growing artifact.”

Transform it into full plate as it stood now, and it was no better than a Rare-grade defensive piece for the moment, but since an artifact grows in proportion to its user’s strength, time would take care of that.

— Ho-oh. All the more useful for you, then, master.

“For me?”

— I mean spearmanship. I left it alone in real combat since you’re not used to it, but now that you’ve gotten a fine piece of armor, you can put it through its paces properly, can’t you.

He had a knack for saying horrifying things with a smile.

Still.

“There’s no experience like the real thing.”

Yujin didn’t deny Fafnir’s words.

— Pajijijik!

A blue fissure formed over the altar. The boss monster managing the gate’s core had vanished, and an exit had appeared.

— Let’s head back now.

“Got to collect the boss monster’s corpse.”

The moment he stuffed the Masked Demon-Beast into the Ring of Black Darkness…

— Tang.

The mask that had covered its face, along with a single book, dropped to the floor.