59. The Arena (3)

I’d never once doubted that Seraphina would win overwhelmingly, but the real game was always going to be decided by how Elli and I performed.

That hulking shield-soldier she’d just smashed to pieces was an opponent I could have subdued well enough myself. It would only have taken me a little more time. Yet there was one reason I’d sent Seraphina out first anyway, and it was that arming Elli’s mind mattered more.

No matter how strong you are, if you lose, you die.

The fragments of the shattered shield-soldier were a warning more vivid than any words could be, and Elli had to have grasped it by now. This was no training ground and no sparring yard. This was a true field of death, where defeat led straight into eternal rest.

I turned and made my way slowly toward the red, rippling barrier for the next challenge, and I could feel Elli’s gaze clinging stubbornly to my back. She’d already realized that the second turn in this string of duels was mine and, on top of that, that she had to stand at the very last. Her trembling breath carried to me through the silence.

So to clear the air I spoke up, putting on a deliberately light tone.

“When Sister went out there, you made such a fuss over what was going to happen to you. What, I’m not as dependable as Sister?”

Her own turn was still a long way off, yet Elli’s complexion was wretchedly drawn. Half of that was worry over me, I supposed, and the other half was the pressure of having to face these absurdly powerful opponents herself. The overwhelming firepower Seraphina had shown was a hope, but it was also a towering wall for those left standing behind her, and it only fed their sense of inadequacy.

“…No. I believe in you, Young Master.”

She answered as though wringing the words out.

“Loosen up a little. Sister got us the upper hand, so all we have to do is ride that momentum.”
“…Yes.”

Elli was still forcing a smile, so I decided to flip her thinking by throwing out something more practical.

“Elli, what kind of soldier do you think comes after the shield-soldier?”
“Huh?”

The question had come out of nowhere, and it left her puzzled.

“If it were up to you, who’d you send out?”

I’d prodded her twice now, so Elli sank into thought, and then she answered.

“After a shield-soldier… probably a spearman with a long lance?”
“Correct. And what does that mean?”
“…It means you’ll be the one fighting the spearman, Young Master.”
“That’s right. So who’s your opponent, going last?”
“…A mage, then.”

I nodded, satisfied.

The way Seraphina had just handled a shield-soldier was a live demonstration of sorts. Call this a strategy meeting of sorts, then, meant to give Elli time to work out for herself how she, as a shield-soldier, ought to strike at a mage’s openings from the opposite side of that matchup.

Just before passing through the red barrier, I stopped and looked back at her.

“I already told you the whole strategy earlier. While I’m fighting, don’t just stand there gawking — picture your own fight, run it through your head like it’s the real thing. Got it?”

Elli nodded gravely at my advice. The vague unease that had hardened in her chest hadn’t been fully washed away, but at least the goal she had to focus on right now seemed to have become clear.

“Yes, Young Master. I’ll never forget it.”
“Hey now, it’s not like you’re marching off to die. Aren’t you taking this a little too seriously?”
“…You think so?”
“Yeah. So loosen up a little.”

Elli mulled that over, then looked at me.

“Hehe.”

And before long she gave a foolish, childlike laugh. With that artless smile, I stepped beyond the red barrier.

As I advanced toward the center of the battlefield, the robed man fell in soundlessly at my side. Elli’s hand had cut through nothing but empty air when she reached out for him, and he still gave off that ghostly air of something that didn’t borrow the breath of the real world.

Looks like he’s a ghost-type NPC, all right.

I guessed he was the soul of some past caretaker who had died managing the arena, a being who still believed himself alive and went on carrying out his appointed role in Eligos’s arena even in death.

There was never an NPC with this kind of concept in the arena, though.

As a rule, neutral NPCs like this take no one’s side.

Working even after you’re dead. How pitiful.

I found myself feeling oddly sorry for him.

When I reached the center with him still at my side, the man opened his mouth.

“Your next opponent has been changed.”
“What? The opponent’s been switched? You can’t just do that!”
“All the rules of this arena are set by the master’s whim. I have merely relayed the message.”

Leaving only that riddle behind, he scattered like smoke and vanished, and the sheer absurdity of it left me speechless. What was this, some omakase restaurant that served whatever the owner felt like?

No way. Eligos’s arena has never once broken its own rules.

I hadn’t slacked on gathering information useful for clearing it, because pulling together the reviews of countless users and compiling the data was no difficult task.

When three challengers took on the arena, there was never a single record of anything but a spearman showing up in the second round.

To put it in an analogy, the situation was something like this. I’d gone in dead certain it was a fire-element dungeon, blown my entire fortune to plaster my whole body in fire-resistance gear, and out popped an electric eel spitting lightning.

— THUD, THUD, THUD!

What broke through the darkness and revealed itself, just as foretold, was no spear-wielding knight. It had a body as big as a house, pitch-black fur, and three heads, each glaring in a different direction.

“…Cerberus?”

I couldn’t hide my bewilderment, and I let out a dry laugh. By rights this thing shouldn’t appear here at all, because it was supposed to be deployed as the mid-boss of the Abyss’s second gate.

Cerberus’s three heads each opened their mouths. From the left came a blue-white chill that seemed about to freeze everything around it. From the right came a yellow-red flame that seemed about to burn everything to ash. And from the center rose a purple poison mist that would sever a living thing’s breath in a single instant.

Along with Eve’s urgent warning, all three heads roared at me at once.

— KRRRAAAAGH—!

I tossed my simulation of striking at the spearman’s weak point straight into the trash without a backward glance and focused on dodging.

First, the blue-white chill shot out from the left head. It wasn’t aimed at freezing me directly, though. It deliberately froze the floor to limit my range of movement and cut off my line of retreat, forcing me toward the side opposite the cold. And the instant I twisted my body the way I’d been herded, the second attack came flying, as if it had been lying in wait.

— FWSHHH—!

What filled my vision was a purple poison fog, a mist that rotted the body the moment it touched. For a beast, this was a viciously clever chain of attacks.

The floor was frozen over and I had no proper room to push off my feet, so I drew the sword at my waist.

— SHHK—!

Sword-energy split the empty space with a sharp keening of cleaved air, and the strong gust of sword-wind that erupted in that instant cut the poison fog before me clean in half, carving a transparent path through it. I didn’t miss that split-second gap. I followed the path and kicked off the ground, and my body bored in all the way to beneath Cerberus’s feet, so the flame it spewed out by reflex crash-landed on an empty patch of ground with nothing there.

I’d dodged all three attacks with ease, but that didn’t mean the fight was over. Cerberus raised one of its massive forepaws and tried to crush me flat, and I felt the overwhelming weight bearing down from overhead. But I had already read its trajectory and was moving without a single second’s rest.

— WHAM!

By a hair’s breadth I twisted my body and slipped between the slamming forepaws like water. The huge forepaw drove into the ground, and the arena’s sand kicked up like a storm. Cutting through the hazy cloud of dust, I thought for a moment.

If it had been Seraphina standing here instead of me, how would it have turned out?

She’d have butchered Cerberus with overwhelming force, of course. That conclusion wasn’t even worth deliberating over. And that was exactly why I’d stubbornly insisted before that I’d risk my life and step in myself.

Hiding behind someone’s back and getting carried doesn’t suit my temperament.

Cerberus’s chill would lock down movement, and the poison fog slipping in through the gaps would have withered Lillian’s summoned plants to nothing. In the end, the picture would’ve finished with Seraphina, unable to watch us struggle against the matchup disadvantage, stepping in to clean it up.

Following the instruction, my sword bored into the blind spot and, as it passed, sliced deep across the tenderest flesh on the inside of Cerberus’s left foreleg. From near the wound my blade had carved, hot, fishy-smelling red blood gushed up like a fountain.

“There’s an old saying — a dog that bites people can’t be taught, no matter what you do.”

The sensation of the fresh blood sliding along the blade ran up my wrist with a thrilling jolt.

“How about you, though?”

Maybe it understood my taunt, because Cerberus, unable to master its fury, kicked off the ground with its hind legs and leapt into the air. That enormous bulk crossing the empty air in defiance of gravity was more than the word “overwhelming” could cover.

My gaze turned to the patch of ground the left head had spat on earlier, now frozen solid, and the image of Seraphina driving Lillian back came suddenly to mind. Amid the dozens of vines raining down, her footwork had flowed smoothly along the ground, an uncanny movement that glided and swam over the ice as if it were her own front yard. I’d watched that footwork carefully back then, thinking the day would come when I’d put it to use.

Didn’t think it’d come this soon.

Without hesitation, I threw myself onto the sheet of ice.

— FWOOSH—!

The massive clusters of flame pouring down from above swept over my back. The scorching heat trying to sear my flesh grazed the hem of my cloak, and the flame that meant to swallow me whole missed my heels by a mere few centimeters.

This is fun!

It might sound insane, but in the midst of a deadly crisis, I was feeling joy. Even I found myself absurd, yet the adrenaline of this tightrope walk, decided by a tenth of a second, was sweeter than anything.

— Schoom—.

The flames that had sniped at me touched the cold ice sheet, and the moment flame and ice met —

— TSSSSSSS—!

The fierce heat and the cold chill collided head-on, and a milky-white vapor erupted upward like an explosion, blocking the view in an instant. The battlefield turned into a fog where you couldn’t see an inch ahead.

With its vision cut off, Cerberus began blindly loosing attacks at random. Chill scraped the floor and poison fog churned the air, but not a single attack so much as grazed me. An attack that couldn’t land even when its eyes saw fine had no chance of miraculously running me through now.

— THUD!

It wasn’t as though Cerberus had wings. Its leap had only been so absurdly high that it stayed airborne a long while, and in the end it couldn’t beat gravity and plummeted headfirst to the ground.

And this was the moment I’d been waiting for. The opening a boss inevitably shows after a powerful area-of-effect attack. What you’d call the DPS window. Whether I could cram in damage well right now would decide success or failure.

I kept the momentum I’d gained from the ice and ran toward a wall near Cerberus. Just before I hit it, I copied the very principle of force Cerberus had used to leap, and kicked off the ground with my back foot.

— CRACK!

I sprang into the air and kicked off the wall hard enough to smash it, bending my trajectory and leaping higher still. As I traced a parabola through the air, I could see Cerberus’s heads below me, drooping limp and dizzy from the aftereffects of the fall. All three wavered, dazed and out of focus.

“One for starters.”

My shadow fell over its head.

— SHUNK—!

The blade punched through its thick hide and drove in deep. Then, along with the sound of bone crumbling, the windpipe that had been seething with flame was severed in a single stroke.

— SHHK—!

Hot blood gushed up like a fountain and drenched my whole body.

— THUD—!

Without even time to scream, one of Cerberus’s heads dropped to the floor with a dull thud and rolled.

Drenched in blood, I shifted my grip on the sword toward the two remaining heads.

“So — have you learned your lesson yet?”