29. Evil (3)

Beron, who’d tossed me the dagger, hurried off to call for reinforcements.

The Blood Lord couldn’t have cared less either way.

“Like more bugs would matter — they’re still just bugs.”

The words came out in the language of humans.

“You call them bugs, but you’re using the bugs’ language to do it?”

I needled him on purpose, jabbing at his temper. Riling an opponent up to cloud his judgment is a legitimate strategy, sure. But it’s the kind you save for serious enemies, and this guy didn’t qualify.

“You wish to die!”

The Blood Lord lifted Astraea’s sword almost lazily and brought it slamming straight down.

Crash!

The red mana riding the blade erupted and tore the ground open in a heave.

Eve shrieked and threw a red warning panel up across my vision.

Even with her warning, I didn’t move a single step.

Shoom—!

The shockwave brushed the bridge of my nose and split cleanly past on both sides of me.

“See, this is the gimmick where if you chicken out and start running around, that’s when it actually hits you.”

“…Hoh?”

The Blood Lord’s red eyes narrowed. He looked genuinely intrigued to find me still standing in the middle of the dust crater, perfectly fine.

“A lucky little rat.”

“Loser types always blame it on luck.”

I brushed the dust off and grinned wide.

“Your hit-detection just sucks, my dude. You swing with all that bulk and no precision, so you leave gaps.”

“Hit… detection…?”

He clearly didn’t catch a word of it, but the displeasure on his face came through loud and clear.

“You don’t know your place. I’ll grind you into paste.”

He turned his sword flat on its side. The massive blade ripped through the air, scything toward my waist.

Her warning was urgent, and she wasn’t wrong. The textbook answer to this pattern is to drop flat and let it slide past.

But instead, I planted my foot boldly toward his chest and stepped in.

“Why you little—!”

His eyes wavered, caught off guard. And no wonder. This attack wasn’t a one-and-done; it was a combo move, and a combo move locks the user’s actions into the animation while it plays out.

He forced his arm back for the follow-up, wrenching it into position, and the blade-aura twisted its trajectory and came down again.

This time I dropped low and flattened against the ground.

Whoosh!

A razor-sharp whistle of cut air grazed the tips of my hair. His attack count was down to a single swing now, but by then I’d already wormed inside his guard like a flea, and there was no angle left for him to hit me from.

I gripped the dagger in a reverse hold and drove it straight into his neck.

Shhk! Shhk!

“Khh—!”

The Blood Lord spat a forward arc of blood and staggered back. I’d already darted clear, opening distance between us.

“You insolent rat—!”

“How’s it feel to get knifed by a rat?”

“I’ll kill you!”

His eyes glistened red. He spread both arms, and the blood pooled thick across the floor began to writhe like living snakes.

Gluuurg—.

The blood seeped fast into the cracks between the stones, and the plain underground floor was carved into red-lined squares, transforming into an enormous, vividly marked chessboard.

Krrrrumble!

Soon the spikes waiting to erupt began to stir, and the glowing-red tiles and the blank ones shuffled themselves into a dizzying scramble. To an ordinary pair of eyes it would have looked like nothing but a sea of blood churning in chaos. To me, it was like someone laying the answer key out on the desk.

“Two, five, seven, nine.”

I murmured the numbers and stepped through them like a dance, sliding my foot to the spot I’d arbitrarily flagged in my head as tile two.

At the same instant, from exactly where I’d been standing, a razor-sharp spike of blood erupted upward as if to punch through the ceiling.

Skrrch—!

A hair slower and I’d have been a skewer. But I didn’t stop.

“Four, three, one, five, six.”

Back-left, forward, diagonal-right, hop two squares over and land, then to the left of that. Like waltzing with an invisible partner, I glided across the red-glowing chessboard. The spikes plucked at my coat hem here and there, but not one so much as scratched me.

“How is a mere human dodging it?!”

“I was kind of good at rhythm games.”

The instant the final tile’s spike shot up, I kicked off the floor and closed the distance to his face. The Blood Lord scrambled to pull his arm back, but I was faster. He’d just unloaded a large-scale AoE, and the recovery animation had him locked up stiff.

Dump phase.

I slipped right under his chin and drove the dagger into the wound I’d opened in his neck earlier, one more time.

Shhk!

The cold blade punched through thick hide and muscle and sank deep.

Just as she’d warned, a simple stab wasn’t doing enough damage to count. So with the blade buried in his neck, I gripped the handle in both hands and wrenched it sideways with everything I had.

“GRAAAAGH!!”

A ghastly scream that nearly split my eardrums tore out of his mouth. A geyser of dark-red blood shot up and drenched my face. Writhing in pain, the Blood Lord looked down at me with bloodshot, disbelieving eyes.

“This… cannot… be…”

Instead of answering, I bore down with all my strength to saw through his neck.

“Hnnggh…!”

Another groan tore from him.

“Surely… That One… told me…”

I wasn’t about to waste effort figuring out how he could still talk with a dagger buried in his throat. But one phrase snagged at me. That One?

That’s a line I’ve never heard before.

“That the humans of this world… could never withstand this power!”

KABOOM—!

I was moving in to finish him when an enormous burst of mana detonated out of the center of his body, and a violent shockwave slammed into me. The blast hurled me all the way back into the wall behind me.

BAM!

“Gakh—!”

I slammed into the wall and crumpled face-down on the floor. Dust rolled up in waves and my vision went hazy.

When the haze cleared, the blood pooled thick across the floor was crawling up his legs like caterpillars.

“Second phase.”

Raid bosses all share one tiresome trait. The moment the players think they’ve won, the boss evolves into a stronger form.

I pushed myself up. My back stung, but not enough to throw off my movement.

Unlike Arden’s body, this one’s solidly built — I really lucked out on the possession.

At Eve’s words I cut my gaze back to the Blood Lord. The blood that had crawled up like caterpillars was sliding over his skin, sealing the wound and wrapping his whole body in a hardened shell.

“It’s a little different from that.”

“That one covered only his neck — this one covers his entire body now. That’s the difference.”

Blood Lord Phase 2 meant he was decked out in blood-armor. And that stuff swallowed physical strikes like a swamp; in theory, it was a hundred-percent physical immunity.

Which is why a Blood Lord raid is easier when you bring magic.

The problem was, the body I was possessing didn’t have a shred of magic talent, exactly like Arden.

“I will no longer dignify you with this clumsy slab of metal.”

He tossed Astraea’s sword aside, letting it clatter to the floor.

“I will show you my true power.”

With a wet sloshing sound, the blood swallowed his entire right arm and quickly took the shape of a chillingly massive red greatsword. Commonly known as Bloodblade Mode. As a status effect, it inflicts wounds that rot inward and bleeding that won’t stop.

“…It does look pretty cool, though.”

I scooped up the dagger that had fallen to the floor. The Blood Lord didn’t let the opening slip.

BAM!

The bloodblade slammed into the floor where I’d just been standing. The ground heaved and burst with a POP!, and a geyser of blood erupted.

“Power’s still no joke, huh.”

Even seeing it again after all this time, it really was a terrifying insta-kill move. I just barely slipped the bloodblade’s follow-up swings.

Every raid boss has a counter-strategy somewhere.

“That armor — it looks invincible at a glance, but it’s not.”

It was time to share that with Eve, whose analysis still wasn’t perfect.

“That thing is just an intelligent fluid-defense layer.”

I leveled the tip of my dagger at him and finished the calculation.

“The principle’s simple. It detects the strike point and rushes blood to that spot to crank up the defense there. But the key is — the total amount is fixed.”

The blood didn’t pour out infinitely. The shield wrapping his body was limited in total volume. Which meant that if you forced the defense on one side to its absolute maximum?

“Then the other side absolutely has to thin out.”

“What are you muttering about over there?!”

The Blood Lord raised his bloodblade and rushed in.

“So all you’ve got to do is hit him with a big enough strike that he’s forced to pour every drop he’s got into blocking it.”

The combination of bloodblade plus armor looked like an impregnable fortress.

Kraaa-BOOM!

But it had a weakness, too: for all its firepower, it was on the slow side. That said, my own stamina was draining fast, so that weakness wasn’t going to count for much in practice.

“…Khh.”

In the end, the trailing edge of the bloodblade grazed my flank. Pain like my whole side had been torn clean off slammed through me.

“Let’s end this.”

“…Whoo.”

Instead of answering, I drew a long, deep breath.

“RAAAAAAGH!”

And then, screaming so the pain wouldn’t knock me out, I charged him.

“You idiot.”

The Blood Lord sneered and reinforced the defense over his chest.

Glug, glug—.

The red liquid sheathing his legs, back, and shoulders rushed at insane speed toward his chest. A barrier of blood thick as a stack of shield-slabs sealed off the space in front of his heart.

When I didn’t slow down even with his wall up, he was certain of his victory and crowed,

“You’re done!”

But I’d never been running at the Blood Lord. From the start, my target had been Astraea’s sword, the one he’d flung aside earlier. I scooped it up with my instep like a soccer ball, then drove my foot into the pommel with everything I had.

BAM!

With a heavy thud, the longsword crashed into his wall.

“Cheap parlor tricks!”

I’d never expected the longsword itself to do any damage. Its only job was to pull his nerves and his defensive instinct toward absorbing one heavy hit. With ninety-nine percent of his armor diverted to his chest, the film of blood over his neck had been left paper-thin, pale skin showing dimly through.

I slid up to him like a snake and whispered right beside his ear.

“Found the empty house.”

Shhhk—!

The dagger punched through the thin film over his skin, and the keen edge sliced cleanly into his carotid artery.

“GRAAAAGH!!”

I drove the dagger into his throat over and over, listening to him scream.

“Khurgk…!”

The Blood Lord coughed up blood and dropped to his knees. As my hands twisted the dagger, dark-red blood gushed from his neck like a dam giving way. He no longer had the strength to resist me.

“Through my death… That One will become aware of your existence.”

That One, again. The nameless unknown. I was about to ask him one last question.

Who is he?

But instead of answering, he twisted the corners of his mouth into a grotesque shape.

“You will… surely… be eliminated…”

Bzzt—.

His voice cut out abruptly. As though a radio had slipped its frequency, his whole form began to ripple violently.

“What the?”

I flinched back a step, and in that instant…

Pfft—.

His massive body didn’t scatter into dust. Pixel by pixel, in tiny blue squares, it broke apart and dissolved into the air. No blood, no scraps of flesh, nothing left behind.

It was less death than someone hitting a [Delete] button on him. Just like that, the Blood Lord evaporated into thin air.

Only the dagger that had been twisting in his throat clattered, ringing, to the floor.

“…”

I stared blankly into the empty space. No matter how long I waited, no system window popped up, and not a single coin hit the ground.

In that instant, indignation came surging up from somewhere deep inside me.

“What kind of raid boss disappears without dropping any loot?!”

I was jabbing an accusing finger at empty air before I could stop myself.

Of course I knew better. This was inside a book; whether anything from in here could even be carried back to reality was anyone’s guess. And that nasty bloodblade he’d been swinging? I wouldn’t have taken it if he’d handed it over.

But this was a question of raider’s honor.

You take down a raid boss, you should at least get a fanfare, or at the very least the game coughs up some junk-loot shells. That’s the unwritten law, isn’t it?

“You make me work my ass off, then wipe your mouth and bolt?”

I was so worked up I was about to lose it.

“Are you kidding me, dev team?!”

I guess my heartfelt complaint reached the heavens.

Wuvvvvm—!

The space rang, and a red light began to draw itself into shape in front of my eyes.

I sprinted over to the magic circle, thrilled.

At Eve’s words I screeched to a halt and looked again. Yeah, it was the same return magic circle Rose had shown us back at the very start.

“You bastards on the dev team!!”