19. The Trial Of Arms (3)

— KA-BOOOOM!

It was a hair’s breadth. The patch of floor I’d been standing on a moment earlier blew to pieces with a thunderous crash, and not in any ordinary way, either.

…The rock got turned into powder?

The trail the dark-red mana had swept through was ghastly. Solid marble had crumbled away as if acid had eaten it, so this wasn’t simple physical impact. It was a vicious kind of mana, the kind that left its pain lingering in whatever space it struck.

I swallowed dry without meaning to, because I’d seen this countless times in the game. Once a target’s DV stat crossed the critical threshold, its attacks picked up two more attributes: corrosion and curse.

That was why I’d set myself ironclad rules.

1. At the first sign of demonification, kill on sight.

2. If it’s too late for that, pour in every ounce of firepower and annihilate it before it fully adapts to that power.

Because a demon that had fully adapted was no longer the being it had been in life. It was a killing machine that wouldn’t blink if you tore its family apart in front of it.

“Grrrrrr…”

The red glare leaking through the slits of the hero’s visor swept over me. I caught myself taking an involuntary step back, and just then —

Eve’s voice, bracing me.

“…”

Her face was full of conviction, and when my partner was this sure, who was I to stand there trembling? I pulled myself together and drew my sword.

“There’s no way I’m dying to a trash mob like this.”

Only then did Eve finally smile.

The fight started up again with her shout.

— Krrrrunch, KA-BOOM!

A thick stone pillar behind me was sliced clean through like tofu, and a cold gust grazed the top of my head and scattered shorn strands of my hair through the air.

“Hup!”

I rolled across the floor and out of the hero’s reach. All the while I was escaping, Eve flashed up what she’d predicted, and I read it and learned. I’d put my life entirely in her commands, and though there was a slight delay, my body followed her orders without too much trouble.

Think.

The sound of torn air hammered at my ears. One slip against any of these attacks and my body would have been shredded. Once, twice, three times. But as I kept dodging, a strange thing started happening.

…I can see it.

The longer it went on, the more I could predict the hero’s movements before Eve called them out. Before Eve’s voice — [Horizontal slash!] — could reach my ear, I’d already caught the tiny twitch of the hero’s right shoulder. Before the chat [Thrust pattern next!] popped up, my body had already started moving to counter it.

The sparring with Seraphina had been far harder. Next to that, this was nothing.

— Crash!

Once again its attack carved through empty air and shattered a boulder.

Now that the pattern was growing familiar, the fear drained away and cold calculation filled my head.

Impossible.

Depending on whose hand held it, a sword could be a hero’s holy sword or the blade of a Demon Lord set on the world’s destruction. But the sword Seraphina had given me, top-grade though it certainly was, was nothing but a harmless, laughable little stick in front of that boss. That was how feeble my body was.

Against a human I could somehow have wedged open a gap and killed it with a desperate stab to a vital point, but this thing was a past hero whose demonification had progressed. Could a swing from these pitiful muscles even punch through that armor? And even if it did, could it deal a fatal wound? The odds of success were slim, and the cost of failure was my head flying off. High-risk play.

“Help me lure it toward three o’clock!”

“No time to explain. Right now!”

There really was no room to explain my reasoning or anything else, and Eve reacted instantly to the urgency in my shout.

I bit down on my lip and threw my body forward. The plan only needed to exist inside my head. For now, the priority was just getting in front of that pillar alive.

The hero charged at me with a beast-like roar.

— Thud, thud, thud!

Tremors that shook the very ground chased close at my back.

Now!

Right next to the stone pillar, I dove and rolled across the floor.

— KU-KU-KU-KU-KOOM!

The hero’s fist cleaved through empty space, and the inertia it couldn’t stop slammed it straight into the pillar.

— KA-BOOM!

The pillar snapped at the waist, and the ceiling, robbed of its support, came screaming down. Massive chunks of stone poured down like a waterfall. The hero couldn’t even think of dodging, so it was pinned right there under that crushing weight.

— KU-GU-GU-GUNG!

A thick cloud of dust blanketed the training hall. Coughing, I pushed myself up onto my elbows.

“That did it.”

The hero lay buried under the rubble. He might have been a hero once, but nobody took dozens of tons of rock on top of them and walked away.

“All thanks to you buying me the time.”

I really had trusted her and thrown myself wholly into working out how to take it down. In effect, I’d handed the entire evasion side over to her.

Eve let out a cheer, and the tension was just about to drain out of my legs and leave them slack —

— Vwoooom.

From a gap in the rubble, a strange, off-key vibration came droning out.

— KA-BOOM!

The pile of stones blew outward in every direction as though it had detonated, and I hurriedly threw myself flat against the floor. A wavering shadow walked out of the dust storm.

“Right. There was no way this was ending in Phase 1.”

A black haze swirled around the hero’s body. I was still observing whatever change was happening to it when —

— Whish!

Like a pitcher going through his windup, it cocked back and thrust one arm straight forward. In an instant the haze swirling around its body condensed to a point and took the shape of a throwing star, hurtling at me.

I hastily slashed down at the star, but it turned back into haze and began coiling around my blade, and the instant I saw that, I let go of the sword.

“…That was borrowed, you know.”

I put some distance between us and watched the haze devour the blade in a heartbeat. Then, instead of a throwing star, it took on the exact shape of the sword that had just been in my hand.

Weaponless now, I kicked at the floor to throw up a cloud of dirt, hid myself in it and ducked behind a boulder.

Eve looked thoroughly thrown.

— Crash! Crash! Crash!

Meanwhile the haze had started smashing every boulder in the vicinity to pieces, hunting for me.

“Can you analyze it?”

Eve’s face was full of anxiety, so I told her —

“Let’s switch roles. You just find the strategy. Don’t worry, I’ll stay alive somehow till then.”

Before, Eve had handled the dodging while I focused on the strategy. Now I was proposing the opposite split, since the evasion side carried more of the pressure, after all.

I nodded, drew one big breath and hurled myself out from behind the boulder.

— Shiiing!

As if it had been waiting for this, the sword came rushing at me, and the instant the boulder shattered, I sprinted straight ahead.

Defenseless.

All the while it had been making ranged attacks at me, the main body hadn’t moved. That settled the target. But the sword was closer to the main body than I was, and it rushed at me again. I snapped my upper body back hard right before it reached me, and it grazed the bridge of my nose by a whisker, but it U-turned at once and came tracking after me.

I ran like a madman, until the thing standing perfectly still came into my line of sight.

“What?”

Its legs were spread wide, locked in the recoil from that pitcher’s throw, so I did as Eve said and slid between them.

— Shunk!

The sword, unable to control its own recoil along that same line, plunged straight into its body.

— Thoom.

One of its knees buckled.

“…Haah. Haah.”

I was just as out of breath, barely able to draw air. But as if to say no boss was getting cleared from a single successful hit, the haze coiled around its body again. It seemed to have realized this method wasn’t going to catch me.

“I’m borrowing this.”

In the brief gap while its attacks were paused, I made my way over to the fallen Bato and picked up his sword. He still didn’t appear to have regained consciousness.

“…This isn’t going to work.”

Borrowing the sword brought one problem with it: Bato was a greatsword-wielding knight. I could barely hold the thing up in both hands, but I pulled back and put distance between myself and him again, because I couldn’t afford to leave him there to get hurt further as collateral in the fight.

Meanwhile the thing had started moving again, as good as new. Having given up on ranged attacks, it manifested a massive spear out of the haze, directly in its hand.

“That’s just cheating.”

In the end I abandoned any thought of meeting it head-on and went back to rolling, leaping, twisting my body. Dopamine had my brain burning hot, and my senses sharpened to a peak until the whole world was moving in slow motion. The tremor of its muscles. Even the flow of the air. At this rate, the clear didn’t seem entirely impossible after all.

“Hck—!?”

But all of a sudden my body locked up as though it had hit a lag spike. Overload. That was the price of running my body on forced dopamine, and the thing did not miss the split-second opening I’d just shown.

.

.

.

“Kuh, uugh…”

I couldn’t get up. Its spear had punched through my flank, and the pain of a broken rib stabbing into my lung wouldn’t even let me breathe. A picture of certain death.

In lieu of an answer, I coughed up a fistful of blood clots. I was completely drained, unable to twitch a single finger, and the thing approached and leveled its spear at my heart.

Ah, damn it.

To think I was going to retire here, just like this.

In the instant death came plunging down, a furious data stream poured across my eyes.

Through the red warning text, I heard Eve’s voice.

“…E…ve?”

Her form shattered into shards of blue light, and the shards rushed into my chest.

“GRAAAAAAH!”

A searing pain came together with a chill like ice being shoved into my spine. It felt as if someone had grabbed my severed nerve fibers and was forcibly tying them back together.

The red warning windows in front of me shattered with a crash, and a blue system window rose up in their place.

The pain vanished as if by miracle. The agony of the rib stabbing into my lung, the bursting throb of my heart, all of it gone. Instead, a cold, mechanical sense of omnipotence wrapped around every inch of me, as though this body weren’t mine.

The moment before the black spear could punch through my heart —

— Thwock!

My right hand moved of its own accord and braced against the floor, and at the same instant my body sprang up like a coiled spring. But this wasn’t my will.

With those words, a red countdown timer started ticking down in one corner of my vision, while warning messages scrolled up beside it like mad.

I gripped Bato’s greatsword lying sprawled there, and for some reason the slab of iron I hadn’t even been able to drag along earlier lifted as light as a feather.

— Krrnch.

The sound of grinding bone ran up from the wrist gripping it, but there was no pain.

— Shiiing!

The black spear came rushing at me again. I took the greatsword in a reverse grip and drove it straight down at the front of the charging shadow.

— BOOM!

An enormous shockwave drove the thing backward, and it wasn’t just driven back, either. The black haze cloaking it ripped open for a moment, and the core hidden inside was laid bare.

But at the same time —

— Krunch!

My right shoulder twisted out at a grotesque angle. The joint, unable to absorb the recoil, had dislocated.

“Kuh—!”

The Pain Suppression cut out, and ghastly agony came surging in. A single exchange. That alone, and my body was already at its limit.

“GRAAAAAAH!”

The thing roared as it righted its stance. I was barely propped up on the greatsword, unable to move any further, and the strength inside me was fading bit by bit.

— KA-BOOM!

A tremendous chill barred the way in front of me. But this chill wasn’t cold. A blue butterfly fluttered its wings and settled gently on my right shoulder.

“…You’re way too late.”