Chapter 34 - Warrior (2)

“Bjorn.”

The moment Aynar called my name, the sun hidden behind the red clouds slipped completely below the ridgeline. At the same time, a pale-skinned man appeared beneath the crimson moonlight.

“Strange. Most strange...”

He swept his gaze across the ruined city before fixing it on us.

“When I look at you, a murderous urge wells up inside me, beyond all restraint. Might you know why?”

Why? Well...

How the hell would I know? I wasn't particularly interested in finding out, either.

I answered without missing a beat.

“Give me a little time to think, and I might remember.”

I figured I would buy us time, even if it was only a minute.

But his eyes gleamed the instant I answered.

“For that... this urge is far too difficult to resist. Heh heh heh.”

Honestly, I was a little dumbfounded.

I hadn't expected the vampire bastard to ask a question when he'd already decided on the answer.

“Heh heh, heh! Hahahahaha!”

The vampire stood there in front of us, giggling as if possessed, until his expression suddenly went blank...

“SKREEEE!”

And he let out a roar that sounded like something an alien life-form would make.

SHING!

His claws, a vampire's primary weapons, had already extended with a sharp metallic ring. At some point, madness had become the only thing left in his eyes, which now shone a blood-red light.

'Of course this part is exactly like the game.'

Thinking back, it had been the same there, too. No matter how intelligent a monster was, or how capable of communicating, any actual conversation amounted to a few introductory exchanges.

“I'm used to this much Fear.”

The murderous intent radiating from the rank-5 monster made my skin tingle, but surprisingly, the dwarf was perfectly fine.

“Everyone, fall back!”

Even I was a little impressed.

He'd been pathetic against the Corpse Golem, but I supposed he really was a third-year explorer.

The instant the vampire vanished, the dwarf stepped forward and raised his buckler.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

A deafening crash sent a whirlwind of dust sweeping outward. I could feel its force even from several paces away, but...

“Hahaha! Packs quite a punch, just as I thought!”

The dwarf hadn't been pushed back a single step.

It wasn't that his stats overwhelmed the vampire's or anything...

It was all thanks to his Essences.

「Hikurod Murad has cast [Weight Balance].」

An Ability belonging to the rank-7 monster Ayantro. It was a knockback-immunity skill that prevented the user from being knocked over or pushed back as long as their feet remained on the ground.

It also came with shock absorption.

“Tarjin, stay back!”

I issued an order as the battle began, but no answer came.

A sideways glance revealed that the porter was already far away, cradling the mage.

He'd clearly done the right thing, so why did it piss me off?

Leaving that feeling for later consideration, I shouted.

“Aynar!”

“I'll take the right!”

We'd fought together so much that a glance was enough to get the message across.

I gave a brief nod, moved to the vampire's left, and charged at the same time as Aynar.

“SKREE!”

Apparently retaining his combat intelligence, the vampire backed away. At the same time, the dwarf's half-crumpled buckler returned to its original shape as though time were running backward.

That wasn't a feature of the buckler...

「Hikurod Murad has cast [Emergency Restoration].」

It was a Living Armor's Ability.

A useful skill that not only saved on equipment costs, but became vastly more effective once the user equipped magical items later on.

His repairs completed in an instant, the dwarf shouted.

“I'll take him head-on! You two support me from the sides!”

I had no objections.

Only someone of the dwarf's caliber could have held out for even those few seconds. To be brutally honest, I was the least useful one here.

At least Aynar had absorbed an Essence this time. Apart from the Immortal's engravings I'd bought with cash, I had jack shit.

Well, I could still help as a meat shield.

“SKREEEE!”

Just then, the vampire watching us from a distance split into hundreds of crows. Their wings beating, the flock sped toward us.

“Spread out as far as you can!”

The incoming crows plunged headfirst into the ground and exploded.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-BOOM!

The explosions themselves weren't very powerful. Avoiding the blood spraying in every direction, however, was beyond us.

'Damn it.'

Sure, the blood wasn't acidic like the Corpse Golem's, but considering the follow-up combo, this was even more troublesome.

“B-Bjorn! What in the world is this?!”

Red markings appeared on our blood-soaked foreheads, shedding a vivid light.

「The character has been designated as a sacrifice.」

「Vampire Duke Cambormir's physical capabilities temporarily increase in proportion to the number of sacrifices within a 100m radius.」

Ignoring the game logs that came to mind for some reason, I gritted my teeth.

The vampire was slowly re-forming amid the pools of blood left by the exploding crows.

Now that he was buffed, he would be even harder to handle.

'Has it been three minutes yet?'

We still had a long way to go before everything was ready.

Could we really hold out until then?

I shook my head. There was no point wondering whether we could.

“VEHELLLAAAAAA!!”

We had to hold out.

With sheer, stubborn barbarian grit.

* * *

Sacrificial Seal, a buff skill.

Immortal, which drastically increased regeneration in proportion to lost health.

Owner of Blood, which absorbed a portion of a target's capabilities when the user drank their blood directly.

Every one of the vampire's three active skills demonstrated tremendous power in close combat.

The problem, of course, was that those weren't all he had.

This insatiable bastard also used all kinds of dark magic on top of them.

“Bjorn, more crows are coming!”

Turning into crows and exploding, turning into smoke to evade a sword, using spilled blood to summon monsters...

The vampire bastard was giving us a personal demonstration of just how overpowered high-rank monsters were.

'No wonder everyone quits before even reaching the sixth floor.'

Feeling the insane difficulty of [Dungeon and Stone] all over again, I raised my shield.

His claws had already torn and gouged it until it was little more than scrap metal, but it was better than nothing.

SKRRAAANG!

I let the impact throw me backward, absorbing as much of the shock as possible.

Strength, speed, skills.

It was a little trick I'd naturally picked up while fighting an enemy who outclassed me in every way.

[“Please hold out for just five more minutes!”]

Raven's voice rang inside my head.

I couldn't help wondering whether saving the mana she'd used to send that whisper might have shortened the wait a little...

Still, the hopeful news did lift my spir—

“Hikurod's down!”

—its, my ass.

The dwarf, who'd been sticking close to the vampire with all the experience of a third-year explorer, had fallen.

Aynar rushed in from nearby and stopped the vampire from drinking his blood, but...

「Hikurod Murad has become [Incapacitated].」

The tide turned against us in an instant.

Aynar and I were already battered all over. Without the dwarf, who'd been doing more than half the work, holding the vampire back with just the two of us was all but impossible.

'In that case, I'd rather... '

I made a quick decision.

“Aynar! Take Murad and fall back!”

“But...”

“I'll hold this bastard off!”

“A-All right!”

The moment Aynar slung Murad over her shoulder, I dashed forward and swung my mace.

THUD!

My first solid hit in a while.

“Aaagh!”

The backlash from landing the blow made my brain throb. All because this crazy bastard was an Advanced Mutant variety.

「Vampire Duke Cambormir has cast [Pain Sharing].」

Worse, he fully healed his injury simply by stepping back and taking a breather.

Damn it, I was still in pain.

What kind of fucking bullshit was this?

“SKREEEEEE!”

Still, I'd drawn his aggro as intended.

Out of habit, I checked once more that the item hidden in my boot was still there.

Its name was Goddess' Tears.

Simply put, it was a holy relic. A single-use item that could heal, or serve as a weapon against evil-aligned monsters.

'... Should I use it now?'

It wasn't that I minded using it up. Its potency warranted at least a “superior-grade” label, but it was a special item usable only within the Blood-Tinted Castle anyway.

Using it on the dwarf would immediately restore our fighting strength. Using it on the vampire would deal considerable damage.

But...

'No.'

I put an end to that pointless deliberation.

Why had we stubbornly held out on defense all this time?

Because a single attack would be enough.

No, any more than that would actually work against us.

We had only one chance.

We had to pour everything into that single moment.

It was the only way the five of us could bring down a rank-5 monster.

CLICK.

I pulled a potion from my belt and uncorked it.

Watching the vampire charge toward me, I poured it into my mouth.

HISSSSS!

The countless minor injuries I'd accumulated during the battle healed, and pain surged over me like a tidal wave.

All strength drained from my hands. I wanted to collapse on the spot. As expected, fighting after drinking a potion was close to impossible, but...

'That shouldn't matter.'

What I was about to do wasn't fighting.

SHUNK!

The vampire's claws sank into my abdomen. Deep, as though plate armor of this quality might as well not have existed.

“...!”

Sensing a threat to my life, my nerves frantically transmitted pain signals to my brain.

My mind went blank, as if overloaded.

'Fuck, if I'd known this would happen, I'd have just absorbed the Corpse Golem Essence back then.'

Pushing aside that belated regret, I poured another potion into my mouth.

HISSSSS!

The healing effects of the potion and the Immortal's engravings stacked, rapidly repairing my wounds.

“Skree—”

As the vampire bastard flinched, seemingly unable to understand what was happening, I muttered.

To be honest, the pain felt like it would fucking kill me, but...

“VEHELLLAAAAAA, you son of a bitch...”

Pain couldn't kill me.

The fact that I was still alive was proof.

* * *

“What in the world is he doing...!”

Watching from behind some distant rubble, Raven couldn't contain her horror.

She'd read about all sorts of explorers' outlandish strategies and hunting methods in books, but none had been like this.

He intended to hold out simply by drinking potions?

“Th-That can't possibly work. H-He's going to die!”

It defied common sense.

She knew, having drunk potions herself a few times. The pain was beyond imagination, and the worse the injury, the worse the pain.

Yet what was happening to that barbarian now?

HISSSSSS!

It wasn't just bubbling and steaming. Smoke was billowing off his body.

Even she had never seen anything like it.

In that condition, it would be no surprise if shock killed him before his injuries did. Deaths from potion consumption were common enough that examples weren't hard to find.

“Huh?”

As she shifted anxiously from foot to foot, her eyes widened.

She couldn't begin to imagine the pain that barbarian must be feeling. But one thing was certain.

He shouldn't even have been able to move in that state.

So what in the world was this?

SKRRAAANG!

He'd blocked it.

Lying on the ground, with a shield now reduced to a lump of scrap, the barbarian had blocked the vampire's downward-thrusting claws.

And as if to prove it wasn't a lucky fluke amid his struggles...

SKRRAAANG!

He did it again and again.

Of course, he wasn't blocking every attack. Even now, the indiscriminately swinging claws were slashing his entire body to ribbons.

But...

SKRRAANG!

Whenever an attack aimed for a critical spot like his head or heart, he thrust his shield in the way with uncanny precision.

'Is this even possible...?'

She couldn't tell whether he was evading so precisely through the pain with superhuman concentration, or whether his body's lingering combat instincts made it possible.

But something she'd read long ago suddenly came to mind.

A barbarian's true worth lay not in their extraordinary physical capabilities, but in their mental fortitude. Wasn't that what it said?

'I think I'm starting to understand what that means... '

“Lady Raven, I believe it would be best to leave this place while we still can.”

Tarjin, who'd been watching the fight with her, spoke in a grave voice.

He said “leave,” but what he really meant was to abandon the others and flee.

“If we remain here, I cannot be certain I can protect you. That is how dangerous this place is.”

She was utterly incredulous.

'Does he think I'm staying because I don't know that?'

She would have done so already if she could. People often said she was softhearted for a mage, but even she wasn't naive enough to risk her life for explorers she'd only just met.

But...

“Are you out of your mind? Leave? Where exactly would we go?”

There was nowhere to run.

The only way out of a rupture was to defeat the Guardian and leave through the portal.

'... He must be fighting so desperately because he knows that, too.'

It brought her sharply to her senses.

Even a barbarian who'd only just completed his coming-of-age ceremony was judging the situation calmly and doing the best thing he could under the circumstances...

What was she, a mage, doing right now?

“If Mr. Bjorn dies, it's over. We have to keep him alive, no matter what.”

A mage wasn't merely someone who stood in the back firing off powerful spells.

Analyzing a situation coolly through knowledge of diverse fields and guiding the team toward the most efficient course was also part of a mage's job.

“...”

Raven assessed the situation once more.

The third-year dwarf warrior was incapacitated.

The female barbarian was helping him recover by giving him potions.

There was nothing wrong with that, but...

She, the mage, was hiding while she waited for her mana to recover, with a human swordsman guarding her.

On reconsideration, that was quite wasteful.

“Tarjin, go to Mr. Murad.”

“Pardon?”

“I'll be fine. At least go over there so that barbarian woman can join the fight.”

“... Understood.”

“And leave the backpack here.”

At her somewhat irritable tone, Tarjin obeyed without so much as a question.

Without even watching him leave, she immediately reached into the subspace backpack.

'The Corpse Golem Essence.'

The instant she pictured it clearly, a test tube settled snugly into her hand.

'It's a bit... No, it's a terrible waste, but it doesn't compare to my life.'

Raven slowly drew up her mana, constructing the spell formulas one by one.

WHOOOM!

Aim Assist.

Projectile Range Assist.

Automatic Trajectory Adjustment.

Adding a few more formulas would spare her even the need to move her arm, but...

'I need to save every bit of mana I can.'

Having completed the formulas, she threw the test tube in her hand with all her strength.

And then...

CRASH!

The test tube sailed into the distance in a gentle arc, struck its target, and shattered in a burst of light.

...「[ Corpse Golem Essence] permeates the character's soul.」

「Pain Tolerance increases by +70.」

「Strength increases by +15.」

「Bone Hardness...」

「...」

「...」

「Bjorn Jandel」

Level: 2

Physical: 111.4 (New +45.4) / Mental: 95.3 (New +55.3) / Ability: 23 (New +13)

Item Level: 218

Overall Combat Index: 284.2 (New +112.7)

Obtained Essences: Corpse Golem - Rank 7 (New)