70. Giving It Everything

“Sis!”

Lillian screamed and ran to Seraphina, who stood there battered and broken. She tried to brace her by the shoulder, but Seraphina knocked her hand away.

“…Move aside.”

Seraphina braced her trembling legs against the ground, and with a blood-caked hand she barely managed to close her grip around the hilt of her sword.

“Don’t be so stubborn! You need treatment, Sis — right now!”

But the two sisters couldn’t keep their exchange going for long.

“Woo-hyo, there’s another pretty one over here?”

Red light gleamed through the slit of Eligos’s helm as his gaze raked over Lillian.

“Blonde ponytail — so that makes you Lillian, does it now!?”

At that blatant, repulsive stare, Lillian planted herself in front of Seraphina and snapped back.

“You’re the one who did this to my sis?”

“Woo-hyo-hyo-hyo! Yes, that’s right! I’m the one who did it! Now then — after your sister, I’ll make a fine, splendid mess out of you too!”

Eligos snapped the reins, and the black horse charged straight at Lillian, snorting ragged breaths. Seated high on its back, he drove the enormous black spear viciously forward. The spearhead looked set to run Lillian through the chest at any instant, and then, in the space of a heartbeat, its path warped.

“Hiiiiiiieee—!”

The horse seized up all at once, reared onto its hind legs, and shrieked. Eligos hauled hard on the reins and vaulted clean over our heads, as if leaping straight across them. By the time he wheeled around and came down at the far end of the arena, I’d already clicked my tongue and muttered under my breath.

“Shame.”

From the moment he’d appeared, the bastard had treated me as utterly invisible. For whatever reason, he was so fixated on Seraphina and Lillian that he didn’t spare a single thought for my existence. But just now, the one time I’d genuinely gone for the black horse’s legs, even he hadn’t been able to help reacting.

“You should’ve just kept on ignoring me, huh?”

At my sneering jab, Eligos raised a hand and clawed at his helm in irritation. Sensing an attack coming, I reset my stance on instinct. But none came.

“Talking with a man is one of the things I loathe most in this whole world. Would you please shut that filthy mouth of yours? Just hearing your voice makes me want to throw up.”

The way he gripped his helm made him look like a man pinching his nose shut against a reeking gutter.

I knew he was no ordinary lunatic, but…

He was a sadist to the core, a man who loathed his own sex and seemed to take his pleasure in defiling beautiful women. This guy was the “real deal” among “real deals.”

“So you’re that worm — Arden, was it? Granting that bastard’s favor is a genuinely revolting business, but it seems I won’t feel at ease until I’ve torn you apart first.”

“‘That bastard’?”

“Shut up!!”

Just as Gamma had said, Eligos seemed to be under the thumb of one of his comrades. The Eligos I remembered had never once shown a psychopathic streak like this. The whole reason he ran the arena on one-on-one rules was that, as a true warrior, he prized a fair and square contest above all else.

Back in the game’s boss fight, Eligos had welcomed me warmly when I took on the arena alone. And that was after I’d cut down every last one of his minions and come to kill him, no less.

There was a good reason for the welcome. If players broke into the third gate and beat the arena’s minions one by one, they were given a single choice:

Naturally, to shave off even a sliver of time, players picked the second and ganged up on him. Clearing the arena’s minions one at a time had already eaten up more than enough time as it was. Either way, the Eligos I remembered was absolutely nothing like this arrogant, insufferable creature.

“This ‘favor’ from that bastard — you mean the man I killed earlier?”

I pointed at Gamma’s corpse. Eligos clapped a hand to the brow of his helm and clutched his head.

“Aaargh, damn it! That brainless idiot! I told him over and over, like a broken record, never to leak information — and he went and blabbed it all and got himself killed anyway? Honestly, it’s so pathetic I can’t stand it. This is exactly why I hate that man.”

“Fair enough. He wasn’t exactly the likable type.”

When I slyly played along, Eligos cocked his head to one side and spoke.

“My name is Beta. The second servant of That One.”

“You just said leaking information makes a man an idiot. So you’re allowed to talk, are you?”

“What are you on about? I never revealed my name today.”

The meaning behind his words was crystal clear.

“Every one of you is already as good as dead — so how, exactly, could any information leak?”

With that, the bastard thrust his spear.

“You know something? Gamma, and now you — neither of you is exactly the likable type.”

“Hmph! I’ve no need for the opinion of a man who’ll be dead soon enough anyway!”

The black horse wound up, then came barreling at me.

“Through thorough analysis and endless repeated simulation, I have learned to control this body to perfection and wring a hundred and twenty percent of its potential out of it! I will be nothing like Gamma!”

I spun aside as the black horse came at me in a dead-straight line. An instant before it could slam into the arena wall, it reared on its forelegs and sprang into the air.

“Mwahahaha! I’ll stomp that precious little thing between your legs flat!”

The black horse changed direction and came at me far faster than before.

“Arden!”

An instant before it could crash into me, Lillian’s vines seized the horse’s legs.

I put a question to the bastard, now right up in my face.

“How is it you lot can possess bodies here in the real world?”

“That One’s influence has lain scattered all across this world for a very long time! And thaaat’s all I’m going to tell you, nyeh!”

The bastard slashed through the vines with his spear. I brought my sword up and caught the black horse’s hoof as it came down to crush my face.

“…Haaap!”

I overpowered the horse and swung my sword, but it had already kicked off the ground with its hind legs and broken away into the air.

“Hmm. So there was a reason that one failed recently, after all.”

I steadied my breathing and answered.

“…By ‘that one,’ you mean the puppeteer?”

“Indeed! Thanks to that idiot, a snag was thrown into the grand scenario That One designed! House Arne is a vital chess piece for the end of this world — you couldn’t even begin to imagine how furious That One was!”

“Hiiiiieee—!”

The black horse shrieked and shattered the arena floor.

“I screamed at the one who failed his mission, demanding to know just why he’d failed. And he said only one thing in reply… to beware Arden Arne.”

Beta took a long grip on his spear. This time he seemed to mean to strike alongside the horse.

“It was so absurd I couldn’t even laugh! Beware? Be wary? Of a mere resident of this world, no less! A scrap of refuse whose only job is to move according to the script we wrote — and yet the gall of it! Beware!? You are nothing but a clown standing upon our stage!”

Beta’s black spear struck down into the ground, and a black shimmer began to rise around it.

To break the bastard’s concentration, I hurriedly blurted out whatever came to mind.

“Why do you hate men so much?”

He kept harping on about how much he hated men, and yet his own voice was a deep, thick rumble anyone could tell belonged to a man. I was honestly curious about it myself, so I asked. But I regretted it almost at once. The voice that rang in my ears was steeped in a vicious inferiority and hatred, on a wholly different level from the mere irritation of a moment before.

“All because! Their eyes and nose and mouth sit just a little more neatly arranged than mine! Because they look down on me as if they were on a wholly different level from me! Because just being handsome makes living in this world so much easier for them! That is why I hate men! Scum like you are the most revolting things in all the world!!”

“…Hm.”

“I’ll tear every last one of you to pieces!!!”

Still raving, Beta drove the black horse on. Spewing pitch-dark energy, it shattered the ground as it surged at me in a dead-straight line.

“Arden!”

Lillian conjured another massive thornvine.

“Out of my way!”

But Beta’s short, barked command sent the black spear sweeping through, shredding the vines to ribbons like so much dry paper.

If I dodge, Lillian’s the one in danger.

Given the bastard’s trajectory, dodging would only carry the attack straight on into Lillian. So I gritted my teeth and braced to take the monstrous charge head-on, with my whole body.

— Shaaaaak—!

Slicing through the air high above the arena, dozens of arrows and mana bolts came pouring down over Beta’s head.

“These mad fools!”

Beta swung his spear and batted the attacks aside, irritation and bewilderment bleeding into the motion as he knocked the volley away. Dozens of mana bolts burst crackling against his armor, and arrowheads struck his helm and threw off sparks. But none of it killed the momentum of the black horse, which barreled on with terrifying force.

I turned and looked behind me. There stood Sylvia, staff raised high, biting down on her lip as she wrung out every last drop of her mana.

“Don’t stop! Squeeze out every last drop left inside your bodies! Archers — keep those arms moving, no resting!”

As if in answer to her command, the zombie archers drew their bows until their quivers ran dry, and the mages traced magic circles without pause.

“So every one of these things has a death wish, then!”

His speed had dropped, but Beta pressed on as fiercely as ever. The mages who’d fought one hard battle against me earlier hadn’t fully recovered their mana, and the archers’ arrows would not last forever. And so, before long, the hail of mana bolts and arrows sputtered to a stop.

“Young Master Arden.”

Sylvia had come up beside me at some point. She looked at me and spoke.

“This is the first death we offer to you.”

In the same moment, Sylvia threw up a hand, and from somewhere a chorus of wild cries began to rise.

“Uwaaaah! For Lady Lillian!”

“For our sun! This one body, I offer up!”

The madness-soaked spearmen of the Cult of Lillian flung their own bodies beneath the black horse’s hooves without a moment’s hesitation.

“Our little Red’s a sight prettier than that swarthy nag of yours!”

Led by the cavalryman atop his crimson Red Hare, the riders charged with their beloved mounts at the fore.

“Uoooaaaaaargh!”

The archers, out of arrows and unable to shed their zombie forms, charged screaming wild battle cries. Sensing they meant to hurl their bare bodies against the black horse, I moved to leap in alongside them. But Sylvia darted out a step ahead of me and caught me by the shoulder.

“Young Master, do not let our deaths be in vain.”

And with a sharp whish!, she shoved me backward.

“Oh — and calling someone so much greener and younger than me ‘master’ just doesn’t sit right with me, no matter how I look at it. So I’ll call you Young Master instead. That’s alright, isn’t it?”

Without even waiting for my answer, Sylvia turned her back on me again and sprinted off.

“These vermin have all lost their minds at once! Fine — if that’s what you want, I’ll grind every last one of you up together!”

Beta’s fury broke past its critical point. He swung the black spear in a long horizontal arc, and the spearhead, black killing intent condensed along its edge, carved a half-circle through the air of the arena.

“No!”

— Kwaaang—!

That single swing reduced dozens of minions to clots of gore before they could so much as scream, scattering them in every direction. Fresh blood, still warm, pooled at the black horse’s feet, and in an instant the raw stench of it hung thick over the arena.

“How awful! These maggots got their filthy blood all over me! Blegheeagh! Foul! Hideous! This is the worst I’ve ever felt in my life!”

Beta convulsed as if some ghastly filth had been smeared across him, scraping the blood off his armor with the tip of his spear.

Watching the bastard throw his deranged tantrum, my head ran far too hot. Hot enough that I half-expected my skull to melt clean away.

Eve’s sharp cry snapped me back to my senses.

They’d promised me they wouldn’t throw their lives away for nothing. They’d sworn that, once free of this arena, they would live giving it everything they had.

Then shouldn’t I do the very same?