Din's Side
"Merlin, shouldn't we pull back to the upper floor for now and let the Golems handle things for a while?"
Jin shouted that as he scattered several approaching Skeletons with a sweeping kick.
Jin had a point. Even though the Skeletons and Rotten Flesh Golems were weak Monsters, we were conserving our Magic Power as we fought. If they kept surging up from the dungeon below at the same rate we were defeating them—or even faster—we'd eventually burn through all our stamina. To prevent that, Jin was suggesting we let the Golems hold the line while we rested, but—
"Jin, this is where we have to hold steady! The fact that Skeletons and Rotten Flesh Golems are increasing up here means something definitely happened below. I believe it's because that woman came up. If she returns to this spot while we're on standby, we could end up playing catch-up. I'll increase the number of Golems, so hang in there a little longer!"
"Roger that! Slarin! Help me collect the bones and junk around here!"
Jin quickly shifted gears and asked Slarin to gather up the bones and rotting flesh fragments piling at his feet. The Monsters appearing here were weak enough to handle one-handed, but there were two things that made them annoying. One was the sheer number of them—endless and impossible to tell when they'd stop—and the other was what remained after they were defeated—
Materials.
—that was the second.
We still had plenty of stamina, so being overwhelmed by sheer numbers right now wasn't a concern. But after each kill, piles of bones and rotten flesh were left behind, and if left as they were, the floor space would gradually vanish.
It hadn't caused much of a problem yet, but if that woman showed up while our footing was severely limited, we'd be unable to mount any real resistance and would likely be cut down without a fight.
That was why Slarin had been assigned to handle the garbage duty after the fodder was taken out. Of course, several Golems were also put on cleanup detail, but Slarin processed everything with a speed and precision that put those clumsy Golems to shame, so it was easy to end up relying on Slarin.
Slarin, currently enlarged beyond their usual size, was collecting the bones and rotting flesh scattered around Jin's feet. Along the way, they also scooped up any Skeletons that came charging straight at them, picking them up along with the rest of the debris without a fight. Between defeating enemies and clearing the remains, Slarin was probably in the most critical position of anyone on the field.
Shiromaru, on the other hand... was moving more sluggishly than usual, perhaps due to the stench of the Rotten Flesh Golems. On top of that, the sheer number of enemies meant he couldn't make full use of his usual speed. As a result, Merlin had apparently decided now wasn't the time to push Shiromaru too hard, and Shiromaru was thinning out Skeletons while hopping between the Golems as footholds.
"Merlin! The enemies' movements are off!"
Hearing that, Merlin and I turned our gaze toward where Jin was pointing. There, the hole leading down to the lower dungeon—which until moments ago had been spewing Skeletons and Rotten Flesh Golems in a frantic rush—now saw only one or two emerging at a time.
"Looks like we're finally seeing the bottom?"
"I wish that were the case... but I doubt it. I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Yeah... I've had a nasty chill running down my back for a while now. I feel like we should get out of here as soon as we can."
The long-standing adventurer's instincts of Merlin and Jin are warning about the danger of being in this place. Even as I say that, I feel like I want to flee from here as well if possible.
"They're coming! Everyone, tighten up your focus!"
The moment Merlin said that, the woman revealed herself from the hole.
Din Side
Merlin Side
At this close range, you couldn't help but realize how monstrously beyond the norm that woman was. I thought it was impressive that Tenma was able to fight her head-on.
"Slarin. Tenma is still trapped inside her, isn't he?"
When I confirmed with Slarin, she said she could still sense Tenma's presence from within.
"Din, Jin, Shiromaru! We're rescuing Tenma!"
"Alright!"
My voice caused the woman to react and turn toward us, but in the very next instant, she was struck by Shiromaru's full-force body blow and slammed into the rock behind her.
"I don't know what happened, but she doesn't seem to be in peak condition! Attack with everything you've got from the start!"
As I gave that order, Din threw the tattered sword he'd found at the woman, and Jin closed the distance at full speed, driving his sword down. However, even while being slammed into the rock, the woman knocked Din's thrown sword aside with her arm and dodged Jin's attack by springing away from the spot.
"Merlin! That woman's recovery ability seems to be reduced!"
It seemed Din judged immediately that the woman's strength was diminished, having seen that the arm she'd used to deflect the sword was bent at an odd angle. Indeed, if she were the same as before, she'd have healed something like a broken arm in the time it took to dodge Jin's attack.
"As I thought, something must have happened in the underground dungeon. And in a direction favorable to us."
Though I didn't know the reason, if the enemy was weakened, now was the time to strike. Not that I needed to say it—Din and Jin wouldn't miss this opportunity, and they, together with Shiromaru, launched a relentless assault like a tidal wave.
As for me, while Din and his group were attacking, I was in the process of dealing with the skeletons and flesh golems in the vicinity.
Just before and just after the woman appeared, hardly any of the small fry emerged from the hole leading to the underground dungeon, but now they were gradually returning to their original numbers.
Therefore, I, who could annihilate a wide area in one fell swoop, took on the role of mowing down the surrounding small fry and plugging that hole. Moreover, if the woman could absorb power from the skeletons and flesh golems to recover, this would prevent that. Well, given that her arm didn't immediately revert, the possibility was low, but either way, it was necessary to reduce the number of hindrances.
"Looks like we've taken out about all of them. Now we need to deal with the hole."
I had finished mowing down nearly all the skeletons that had come outside, except for those around Din's group, so I tossed about ten Golem cores into the hole and ordered them to keep destroying the small fry while sealing the hole with Golems. Now I could fight alongside Din.
"Din, Jin! Get away from there! Fireball!"
I shouted toward Din and cast the spell at the same time. A heartbeat after the two of them dodged — Shiromaru had already moved out of the way without needing to be told — the woman tried to flee as well. But her foot was caught by one of Slarin's tentacles, and before she could tear free, she took the Fireball head-on.
To be honest, I wasn't sure whether this spell would be effective, and to make sure I didn't accidentally hit Tenma, I had used Ball, which had less power and penetration than Blitz. But the woman's weakening was far more severe than I had expected, and it seemed I had dealt more damage than I had hoped for.
"Slarin, how's Tenma?"
The spell had worked so well that I reflexively asked Slarin whether Tenma was all right, but apparently there was no significant change in Tenma's presence.
"So as long as it's that level of magic, there's no harm to Tenma!"
If I went ahead and finished her off, I might not be able to save Tenma. But if a spell of that level could still hurt her, I should be able to weaken the woman at least to a certain point.
"Both of you — I'll provide support, so even if you have to cut off her limbs, stop her from moving! Whatever you do, don't kill her!"
The method we had discovered before — using the Magic Bag Tenma had found and linking it to another Magic Bag to extract the contents — if we adapted that approach, it should be entirely possible to rescue Tenma from inside that woman. However, pulling it off against a moving target would be difficult. But if the target was unable to move, we could attempt it two or three times if necessary.
For that reason, we had to immobilize the woman. Against an ordinary human, cutting off their limbs would be far too cruel to even consider. But our opponent was not human — she was a genuine monster. There was absolutely no need to hold back.
"Understood!"
"Roger that!"
Din and Jin attacked the woman in a constantly shifting pattern that exploited her blind spots. Shiromaru lunged whenever she tried to fly away. If the woman managed to dodge even Shiromaru's attacks and attempted to flee, Slarin would extend a tentacle to obstruct her, buying enough time for the others to close in. During all of this, I disrupted any attempt she made to cast magic, keeping the battle in our favor. To be honest, though she was stronger than before, I still found it puzzling why Tenma had lost to this creature in the first place. But if something that happened in the underground dungeon had been involved, then for now I should be grateful for our good fortune.
Thinking that, I was about to press the attack further when — the ground exploded.
"Wh-what the hell?!"
The area around the explosion was obscured by clouds of dust, but that spot was almost certainly where the passage leading down to the underground dungeon was located. In other words, that explosion was very likely bad news for us.
"Damn it! The front — gah!"
"Guah!"
The dust cloud spread wider, and the instant Jin was enveloped by the smoke, Shiromaru forced him to move from that spot by body-checking him out of the way. A few heartbeats later, something as thick as a tree trunk crashed down exactly where Jin had been standing. If Shiromaru hadn't intervened, Jin would have been crushed right then and there.
"Jin! Shiromaru! Are you okay... damn it!"
Din started to call out to them immediately, but an object of the same massive size came hurtling down toward him as well.
"Why is there a tree here?"
"Lord Merlin! That's not a tree! It's moving!"
Following Din's words, I narrowed my eyes and looked more carefully. Sure enough, what I had taken for a tree trunk was moving — slowly, but moving all the same.
"What in the world is that... wait — Din! Where did that woman go?"
With the sudden intrusion, we had been careless enough to take our eyes off the woman. I scanned the area looking for her, but she was no longer where she had been just moments ago.
"Merlin! Over there! She's standing next to where the thing that fell on me landed!"
Looking where Jin pointed, the dust had thinned considerably, and I could now make out the shape of what I had mistaken for a tree. Near where the first object had landed, the one that had fallen toward Din had also moved, and the woman was standing roughly halfway between their two tips.
"'Fireball'! Din, Jin! Just attack her — anything!"
Rather than figuring out why she was standing there, the bigger problem was that she had managed to recover enough to move all the way to that position without us noticing.
Trying to shake off the ominous feeling gnawing at me, the three of us launched our magic at her (Jin's spells were on the weaker side with poor accuracy since magic wasn't his forte, but he unleashed them without hesitation anyway)... but our efforts were in vain — our spells were nullified by hers.
"One more time — guh!"
I had given her time to recover, but we still had plenty of fight left in us. I tried to weaken her once more, but her spell was faster than ours.
"Guah!"
As I weathered her attack, a sudden scream rang out from Jin. I looked over and saw that his left leg had been severed below the knee, blood pouring out in a steady stream.
"Din! Slarin! Treat Jin's leg immediately! I'll hold the line!"
I stepped in front of Jin, countering the woman's spells with my own, nullifying them one after another. In the meantime, Din tied off the area above Jin's knee to stop the bleeding, and Slarin sprinkled healing potion over the wound. On top of that, Slarin seemed to have done some actual wound treatment — the bleeding had mostly stopped, but there was no way to reattach the limb. In a safe place with plenty of time, I could probably manage it, but the only person in the entire kingdom who could flawlessly reattach a severed leg on the battlefield in the middle of combat would be Tenma.
Slarin and Din seemed to have finished treating Jin as best they could, but with our fighting strength diminished, we were now barely managing to defend against the woman's attacks.
What I was able to piece together was that what I'd taken for a tree was actually the corpse of the giant serpent from the deepest room of the underground dungeon — the one mentioned in Tenma's report. The woman had reanimated it as a zombie, made it her minion, and sent it to the surface. The moment it emerged from the dungeon, it attacked us, and the woman used the giant serpent zombie as a sacrifice to restore herself.
That woman should have only partially recovered after sacrificing two giant serpent zombies, yet for a while now she'd been using magic that—
surpasses
my
power
by
some
slight
but
definite margin.
And she had been sustaining it the entire time.
If I'd been in peak condition, I might have been slow to notice, but I was already heavily fatigued, and my magic power was steadily declining from continuous use — yet that woman consistently maintained a level just above mine. There was no way to interpret this as anything other than her toying with us.
"Din, how are you all holding up?"
"Sorry — my right eye got crushed. Jin doesn't have any major injuries besides his leg, but he's lost so much blood he's completely drained. Slarin and Shiromaru are hurt too — they got injured shielding me and Jin."
We'd been backed into a worse situation than I'd imagined. And as if to twist the knife, more skeletons and rotting-flesh Golems began pouring out of the hole leading to the underground dungeon.
"The Golems we sent into the hole — looks like the giant serpent zombie took them out..."
I wanted to deploy more Golems, but the woman wasn't giving us even that opening.
Even as I thought that, the skeletons and rotting-flesh Golems were closing in on us. Those that got too close were caught in the woman's magic and blown to pieces, but they were multiplying faster than we could cut them down.
I needed to find some way to exploit an opening in that woman's defenses, but at this rate, our stamina would give out first.
"Merlin!"
Just as I was thinking that, the woman's magic grazed my body, and I involuntarily dropped to one knee. Din, worried about me, handed Jin over to Shiromaru and rushed over.
"I'm all right... The wound isn't as bad as it looks. I can still move. More importantly, Din — it looks like she's finally let her guard down."
I whispered to Din, who was fussing over my injury, and he too seemed to notice the shift happening on the battlefield.
"She was firing off spells left and right just moments ago, and now she's stopped completely. She must think we're not even worth worrying about..."
The woman hadn't completely turned her attention away from us, but she was also watching the Skeletons closing in on our position, so she was probably torn about how to deal with us.
In the middle of all that—
"GYAAH!"
"Shiromaru!"
Whether the tension had become too much for him or he'd spotted the woman's stillness as an opening, Shiromaru lunged at her — only to be sent flying backward. Worse still, perhaps weakened by the damage he'd taken earlier, Shiromaru struggled to get back on his feet.
Fortunately, the area where he'd been knocked back was clear of Skeletons, so he wouldn't be immediately attacked in his defenseless state — but it was only a matter of time.
However, when the woman saw that Shiromaru still showed no sign of standing up, she apparently decided we no longer had any fight left in us. She turned her back on us and began making her way up toward the surface.
"Now!"
I was the first to unleash a volley of spells, and Din charged in after her with movements that betrayed not the slightest effect from his crushed eye. The woman, of course, noticed the magic headed her way and tried to counter — but Jin hurled his sword at her, disrupting her spell mid-cast.
The woman rose into the air to put some distance between them, but... Slarin latched a tentacle around one of her legs, halting her ascent, and then Shiromaru — who had been silent until now — sank his teeth into the other.
Dragged back down to the ground, the woman was met with Din's full-power strike... but that blow failed to sever her neck, stopping after leaving only a shallow wound.
The woman seized Din's sword, her face twisted with fury, and flung it aside. But the moment she threw the sword, Din had already cartwheeled behind her like an acrobat and was attempting to lock her in a chokehold. And then—
"Merlin! Now!"
I gripped Kogarumaru and charged, driving the blade into the woman's chest.
The instant the blade sank in, Din leaped away from the woman, so he was probably unharmed... but the expression she wore at that moment struck me as strange. And the feeling of the blade penetrating her flesh at the moment of impact was... off.
But with momentum carrying me forward, there was no stopping midway. I plunged Kogarumaru in to the hilt on pure momentum... and Kogarumaru didn't stop even after reaching the hilt — it continued past, straight into my
Up
to
near
the
elbow,
it was
swallowed into the woman's chest.
Only then was I finally able to realize.
We thought we had exploited an opening, but in reality, she
had
deliberately
created
the
opening
for
us —
we had been made to walk right into her trap. And that expression Din showed after leaping away—it was because the tip of Kogarumaru, which should have been driven in, had failed to pierce through the woman's back.
By the time I realized this, I had already been kicked into the air by the woman, and Kogarumaru, along with my severed arm, had been swallowed into her body.
— Merlin's Side — End —