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The blade in the dark surged in.
Right from behind.
Dr. O’Neill never even imagined an attacker standing close enough for breath to reach. He simply kept picking up and poring over all manner of complicated-looking academic texts at once with his centipede-like arms.
Kwajik!
“—!”
The Ghost Whale bone blade shot between Dr. O’Neill’s fused bodies. Through the gaps between the countless fused masses and limbs stuck on like tumors, straight toward the point that undeniably led to a “vital spot.”
Chwaaak!
It connected. The strike slid in so smoothly it felt familiar enough to send chills. Flesh, blood, bone, every kind of tissue that made up living life, and among all those seams, Solomon’s blade tip slipped instinctively as if it were aiming for the ‘gap.’
Deeper, even deeper.
The blade ran on as if there were no end. He could tell. The sensation of it ripping life’s shell and drawing closer to the core beyond it. How deep could he drive it like this, how far in? He didn’t know. He wanted to know.
So Solomon’s blade tip didn’t stop. It sprinted, and sprinted again.
—Blood burst out. ‘Blood burst out’ wasn’t enough to describe it. Even though he had been fused with countless corpses, those corpses, moving while linked to O’Neill’s living body, were not dead by any means. That was why all their flesh was alive, and Solomon had driven that strike into the Corpse Fuser himself.
Blood surged up. Whether you said it sprayed like a fountain, or blasted like a fire hose, no words could fully capture it.
It was an explosion.
By the time he realized it, the entire underground crypt was plastered red— and that wasn’t all. Blood sloshed across the floor until it looked like a shallow stream.
But Solomon didn’t stop there. He still had his ‘trump card.’
‘
Four Level 1 spell slots left, one Level 2 spell slot.
He used one Level 1 spell.
Shadow Mimic, as its name implied, could mimic and imitate the caster’s actions exactly.
Even the strike he had just driven in, the critical-hit ambush, was no exception.
Right after the critical-hit ambush landed, a shadow rose and mimicked Solomon’s actions. Even as the shadow copied his movement and drove in another critical-hit ambush, Dr. O’Neill couldn’t respond at all.
‘Double ambush.’
At that moment, Solomon’s thinking turned colder than ever.
Of course, since it only mimicked the same action from the duplicate’s position, he couldn’t expect the same level of precision and accuracy needed to strike the exact same vital point. It only mimicked a blow of the same power.
Besides, Shadow Mimic can only be activated one at a time.
Spell slots remaining at this point.
───Available spell slots: Level 1 spell slots 3 uses (⚀⚀⚀■■): Level 2 spell slots 1 use (⚁■)───
‘Should I use invisibility again and drive in another ambush like this?’
He had one Level 2 spell slot left. After thinking it over, Solomon shook his head.
‘No. It’s better to look further ahead.’
───「Veil of Darkness」Tag — Level 2 spell, Shadow attribute, Enhanced Attunement (Lord of the Veil): Unfurls a veil of darkness, treating all of the caster’s attacks within the area as Lesser Ambush: Within the veil, the caster’s Defense and Evasion increase, while the enemy’s Accuracy decreases───
Even if ambushes dealt within
The purpose was the accumulated advantage that built as the fight dragged on, like lowering the enemy’s accuracy in the area while raising his own evasion.
“
After thinking it through, he recited the spell.
“Aaaaaaagh! It hurts, it hurts aaaaaah!”
The sight of Dr. O’Neill’s shrieking, and raving only made it clearer. Even while screaming in pain, his movements were not those of someone dying. If anything, it looked like he was convulsively craving life more than ever.
Anyone could tell that this would be a long fight.
“S-so you’ve come, City Council bastards…! Filthy b-bourgeois bastards! T-to shut my mouth…!”
Solomon didn’t answer. He was, to the end, only a cleaner from Hotel Snark.
Hwoooong!
In the darkness that had settled over the area, Solomon moved without a word. Along with the Ghost Whale bone blade, he pulled out the modified Nightfall automatic crossbow he had stored in his Quick-Load Belt.
Ttak, kkiririk.
He slid his finger and pulled the multi-shot slider beside the trigger to its maximum—
Taang!
He pulled the trigger. Ten bolts fired at once. And it wasn’t wild spraying fire. Each bolt had an auto-guidance function engraved into it after a Type-A modification by the Deadlock Workshop.
Like guided missiles correcting their paths toward a target, the ten bolts drove down toward Dr. O’Neill’s body.
At the same time, corrosive poison infused into the bolts began to flow out. Solomon didn’t care and pulled the trigger again. Ten bolts, ten bolts, and ten more. A barrage of corrosive bolts fired in multishot volleys. The shots poured out again, and again, as if he meant to riddle a beehive with holes.
“!”
Under the one-sided hail of fire, Dr. O’Neill moved. He charged as if sprinting toward Solomon. Even with countless bolts and corrosive poison piercing him, even with the critical-hit ambush, he didn’t care.
The distance closed. As it did, Dr. O’Neill’s countless centipede-like arms moved, to seize Solomon and tear him to shreds.
Even so, Solomon avoided it without much trouble and took his back again..
Not with the modified Nightfall crossbow. The Ghost Whale bone blade. With that blade, he drove in another strike from behind like before.
Chwaaak!
All attacks dealt within the veil were treated as ambushes. Strictly speaking, it was “Lesser Ambush,” relatively less efficient than a normal ambush. Even so, he didn’t care.
In the end, attacks within the veil, on top of the benefits of Lesser Ambush, would also gain the damage increases granted by the 「Glass Cannon」 and 「Master of Ambush」 traits.
Once again, the blade pierced and tore his flesh. Blood burst out. Along with the scream, Solomon could feel the ‘life force’ embedded in Dr. O’Neill’s body decreasing.
‘Soon.’
He wasn’t as difficult an opponent as expected. Or maybe Solomon had grown stronger than he thought. Either way was fine.
A cleaner simply removed problems cleanly. The target in front of him was a problem he had to remove.
‘I’ll cut off his breath like this.’
Within the veil, Solomon calmly pulled back and poured fire from the modified Nightfall crossbow. He whittled down his life bit by bit, then intermittently closed the distance in sudden ambushes, driving in fatal strikes with the Ghost Whale bone blade.
When he realized it, Solomon was toying with his opponent one-sidedly.
Graham’s body which was attached to him, Dr. O’Neill himself, those centipede-like arms, none of it mattered. The certainty that Solomon had the advantage was carved into the blade tip. It felt the same each time he pulled the trigger.
Before long, he could feel Dr. O’Neill being pushed right to the brink of death.
‘It’ll be over soon.’
Calmly, without getting impatient, Solomon moved with cold precision. In that waiting, the moment came.
The final blow. A chance to drive the wedge in.
Solomon wouldn’t miss that chance.
‘Now…!’
In the darkness, the distance closed. Solomon adjusted his grip on the hilt. All he had to do was drive the blade tip down.
That would kill the target, and the contract would end. Smooth as could be.
—Right then.
“γενηθήτω φῶς (Let there be light).”
A voice was heard. By the time he heard it, it was already over. Not Solomon’s contract. The spell.
“…!”
The veil of darkness was swept away, and blinding light swallowed the area— a flash streaked forward.
A single flash (一閃).
Between Solomon and Dr. O’Neill, as if blocking the very path Solomon’s blade tip had to run through.
He could have ignored a mere flash and driven in the finishing strike.
And yet the moment he saw that beam streaking right in front of him, he could tell by instinct.
The fact that this wasn’t an ordinary beam of light.
The fact that if he touched that light, he would never survive.
[Spell Resistance failed!]
‘What the fuck…!’
In fact, in the radiance scattered by that beam of light, the Level 2 spell
So he retreated. Dr. O’Neill, who had somehow escaped the final blow, survived and panted. But Solomon was no longer looking at Dr. O’Neill. This wasn’t the time to be looking that way.
“Ah, as expected.”
A voice that came out of nowhere. There had been no presence at all. Because by the time he realized it, the man was already there.
“I knew you would come.”
It was a gentle man’s voice.
The man, was there. In the very passage Solomon had entered through.
What stood out most was the man’s clothing. It wasn’t an expensive suit or casual wear like those the successful types from Downtown wore, nor was it a work uniform or coat.
Far too old-fashioned and archaic… a blood-red robe. He knew at a glance. He couldn’t not know.
“An Uptown mage….”
“Oh, my introduction was late.”
A handsome blond man in an archaic robe. He answered while offering a meticulous salute.
“I am one granted the name of the proud Five Great Houses, House Arrowhead… Christophe F. Arrowhead.”
He adopted the proper posture, following noble dignity and etiquette that couldn’t be hidden.
At that name, Solomon couldn’t say a word.
The Five Great Houses that ruled this city.
One of those Five Great Houses, Arrowhead.
The blood of a Five Great House flowed in Solomon too. House Bale, the blood of the Shadow Binder. But for him, it still only amounted to ‘blood flowing.’
The man before him was different. A mage of the Five Great Houses, born an Uptown noble from birth and formally educated. One of those who devoted their entire lives to drawing out the talent embedded in that blood.
So Solomon spoke it without meaning to.
One of the Five Great Houses. Another epithet for House Arrowhead—
“「Spectral Spear Mage」….”
House Bale, Shadow Binder.
House Arrowhead, Spectral Spear Mage.
His heart dropped. Without thinking, the necromancers’ earlier conversation came back to him.
「That bastard, Dr. O’Neill. Not just him. In the heads of the corpses fused with him… they’ve got some ridiculous information in there.」
「W-wait… then that makes this even more dangerous!’」
「No matter how crazy they are, with the Sword Watch’s “Swordsman” glaring like that, the Necropolis Guild must have a plan, unless they’re insane.」
‘Tch… I’m about to say something nasty.’
Just like they said, there was a plan. Even a massive guild had something to rely on, enough to dare act bold against Downtown’s ruler.
The Five Great Houses of Uptown. Rulers among rulers who sat at the pinnacle of Guild City.
“We have shown a great deal of respect toward this city’s bourgeois.”
One of those rulers, a mage of the Five Great Houses, spoke.
“We believed in the potential they showed. We willingly endured their crude rudeness. We upheld noble virtue and lived by noblesse oblige.”
“…What are you trying to say?”
“The bourgeois’ ‘rudeness’ has crossed the line.”
The noble before him said. Toward the name that, in the world Solomon knew, was treated like a symbol of nobility, “bourgeois”, he spat contempt, as a ‘true noble’ who couldn’t bear to watch it.
“And well, this is what happened. Beyond this, it’s a story you neither need to know, nor can know.”
“…So what are you going to do?”
“Hm. Say that there is an insect crawling on your skin, making you itch.”
House Arrowhead, the Spectral Spear Mage. The mage of that very house spoke.
“What would you do?”
“I’d catch it carefully so it doesn’t get hurt, then safely flick it out the window.”
Solomon answered.
“Only some lowlife would slap it to death just because a bug stuck to them.”
“Haha, that’s an amusing joke.”
[Taunt Success]
The mage laughed. Solomon didn’t.
The opponent before him was not someone he could ever defeat in a fight. Talking about odds was meaningless. That was why Solomon had chosen ‘Five Great Houses” as his bloodline in the first place.
Even amid the colorless megacorp buildings, filled with steam-belching pipes and gears, or even in structures that had neither steam nor clockwork at all, there were beings whose radiance never dimmed. That was the opponent standing before Solomon right now.
“What a trashy sense of humor.”
That was when it happened. Another voice followed. A familiar piece of venom.
“A joke that sounds like it’d come out of a birdbrain’s mouth, and the bastard laughing at it.”
“Oh, I thought you’d come.”
“Violet…!”
The Arrowhead mage didn’t panic. Even with the woman in a suit, a Sword Watch’s First-Class Swordsman right in front of him.
“This is even better.”
He only shrugged and smiled.
“If the trash that needs to be thrown out gathers on its own, there’s no reason to refuse.”
Violet didn’t answer.
Seureung.
She simply, silently, drew one of the three swords fixed to her sword belt.
At that sight, Solomon didn’t hesitate either.
His Level 2 spell slots were all bottomed out. He had three Level 1 spells left. Even so, he silently adjusted his grip on the modified Nightfall crossbow and the Ghost Whale bone blade.
The Spectral Spear Mage also took a stance.
Splitting and scattering the magical power wavering at his fingertips into countless colored wavelengths, as if passing it through a spectroscope—
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