Chapter 65
Pshhhhh─.
Fog rose in the cave.
Fog made from my mana, at that.
─Freeze!
I could practically feel the beast stop attacking, confused. I watched from inside the fog, adjusting its density to hide myself.
─Crunch!
I rolled up my sleeve and bit into it with my enhanced jaw. Hearing the sound, the beast tried to attack. I wasn’t about to get hit by some blind swing.
─Slash!
I splashed blood across the cave floor, masking the scent of the blood on my body. As the dizzying smell of blood wafted up, the beast’s confusion intensified.
‘As I thought.’
What was the principle behind that bastard pinpointing people’s locations?
Smell? Hearing? Both were right, but that alone wouldn’t earn a perfect score. Fortunately, I’d experienced firsthand the ‘hypothesis’ that would let me write down a hundred-out-of-a-hundred answer.
Think back. To when I massacred the bandits in this place.
How had I noticed the bandit leader trying to escape?
My sense of smell and hearing had been enhanced quite a bit, too. So had I been focusing on my five senses back then? Bullshit. I’d been busy playing a requiem.
And yet I’d sensed the leader’s presence. What had I used?
‘──Mana.’
That was the one and only answer.
Smell and hearing, sure, those were useful. But had someone whose body and constitution had changed through a mutation spell already adapted to them? The beast had been a perfectly normal human just minutes ago. It hadn’t spent over ten years blind, either.
So there was only one answer: ‘mana.’
Just like the spiritual intuition that had let Nefertiti accurately discern where I was hiding during the ruins-guarding request──a sixth sense!!
Pshhhhh────!
The fog grew thick. It seemed the beast couldn’t distinguish me from the fog, now saturated with my mana. It froze in place, claws extended.
I clicked my tongue at the sight.
‘This is bad! I can’t move without making a sound, either!’
The effect of Breeze Walk was still active, but it wouldn’t silence me completely. Hadn’t that bastard noticed me charging at it even while it was human?!
‘How many steps until I’m close enough to attack?’
Three meters? Four?
Run that distance without making a sound? No way!
If I made so much as a footstep along the way, that bastard would be ready to counterattack on the spot! This was bad! I’d made it all the way to the end, only to be missing the final move!
“……<Ice, Arrow>.”
Someone chanted an incantation from inside the fog. I knew who it was immediately. Tirsi was forcing out the last of her strength.
─Kagagagagagak!!!
It was a complete mess of a spell formula. The Ice Arrow barely managed to form its arrowhead before crumbling uselessly.
‘No, that was enough!!’
Perfect. The best support ever, Tirsi!
─Kagagagagagak!!!
─Thududududuk!
The arrowhead struck the ceiling and fell like hail, unable to turn into cold. The clatter of falling ice shards filled the cave with noise.
Tirsi had understood what I was trying to do and reinforced that final move for me!!
At the end of a bridge I’d been unable to cross for fear it would collapse, Tirsi had laid one more brick with her own hands. I was glad I’d come with her. If I’d been alone, I’d surely have gotten stuck here and died.
─Kagagagagagak!!!
─Thududududuk!
I started counting. Ten, nine, eight……
The beast focused all its attention on its hearing. Seven, six, five……
Tirsi’s magic grew weaker by the moment. Four, three, two……
And then──one.
‘──Now.’
─Tat-tat!
I ran with everything I had.
My footsteps were drowned out in 0.1 seconds by the noise of breaking ice.
“──KryyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!"
And yet the beast reacted.
In a split second, a fraction of a moment dozens of decimal places below zero, it picked up my footsteps and dashed straight toward me. Its claws, without the slightest hesitation, flew in to rip open my torso──
─Whoom!!!
──And slashed through empty space.
“────k.”
It missed.
No, I ‘made it miss.’
Amid the noise, the beast was pushing its enhanced hearing to the limit. Tirsi had helped, but I simply couldn’t trust myself to cover that distance without making a sound.
Hadn’t Tabula said it himself?
I wasn’t a skilled warrior──I was a scholar.
“──Thanks for charging at me.”
I whispered as I drew back my fist. The footsteps I’d just made hadn’t been the sound of me charging forward. They were the sound of me ‘leaping sideways to dodge.’
I’d trusted that, upon hearing my footsteps, the beast would rush at me ‘to kill me first,’ and I’d ‘dodged from the start.’
A beast made impatient and distracted by the noise Tirsi had created
was bound to rely on its senses instead of its reason when it attacked.
Using a plan based on reason, I’d seized the advantage. At the sound of my deliberately made footsteps, the beast had chosen to attack first instead of countering──and so it had presented its heart to me.
─Thoom!
The beast froze in shock and confusion for one second. I used that moment to plant my foot for an attack. I stepped forward with my fist as I drew my foot back.
I thought about how I could kill it with my punch.
I wasn’t a warrior. I was a scholar. An Earthling from a world where science had advanced.
Recall the properties of air. Ruminate on what you know about convection. Air moves from warm places to cold, from high to low, from high density to low density.
Clouds worked the same way. Gas that had been compressed and then released burst outward, creating air pressure. That was the force that made a steam engine pull a train weighing several tons.
“──<Cloud Summoning>.”
Shwaaaaaaaaaak!!
Using <Cloud Summoning>, I created all the steam behind my elbow, ‘stacking’ it at a single point.
The steam compressed in one place broke free of the spell’s control and ran wild like an unbridled colt!
Don’t try to control this pressure! I’m only lending a hand to the air pressure it creates!!
If my strength and my allies’ strength aren’t enough──draw on the laws of nature, too, and devise a killing technique!!
Combine the spell formulas! Overlay Beast Regression on <Cloud Summoning>!!
Control the steam blasting out with enhanced output!!! Give it direction and push it backward!!!! Add thrust to the punch!!!!!
Turn this fist into a bullet and fire it──!!!!!!
‘Please lend me your strength, Mr. Watt.’
“Puff-puff──!!!!!!!”
I prayed to the founder of the steam engine and drove my fist forward.
“──Gun!!!!!!!!”
─Thwak!
Propelled by the steam, my fist shot through and shattered the beast’s heart.
Rattatat─.
Where my fist landed, it left a huge hole big enough to fit a watermelon through. A red smear of blood sprayed across the back of the beast’s chest, like a giant had doused it with a paint sprayer.
Graffiti made of blood (graffiti).
Is this the Internationale?
“Guhk……”
The recoil from that reckless technique left my arm hanging limp as I dropped to one knee. I tried to stay upright, but I couldn’t.
“Mana’s all out, rehu……”
A sound that barely resembled human speech slipped out of my mouth. I couldn’t even tell what I was saying. It was far more brutal and exhausting than when I’d first used Beast Regression.
Well, I’d overdosed on a stimpack and pulled a whole circus act with my body beaten to hell, so of course it was.
“Ptooey.”
I spat out blood-flecked saliva and looked at the beast. Why wasn’t this bastard falling? If the werewolf knockoff got a refill on its chest meat, I’d really be out of options.
Sssshk─.
Only when I looked at it did the beast finally topple over──no, fuck, why was it falling this way?!
“It’s rolling!!”
I desperately tried to roll sideways. The only one allowed on top of me was Fran!!
─Flump!
The beast fell forward. A tremendous amount of blood gushed from the hole. It was like a bright red carpet was being laid out. Wait. Had this bastard’s blood been red to begin with? Wasn’t it black?
But more importantly, the beast wasn’t what mattered. Worried about Tirsi’s condition, I crawled over to her.
“Ash. Are you all right?”
“……Ar, thur.”
Tirsi was lying face down, but she seemed conscious enough to look at me. My face was completely exposed, and she was still calling me Arthur.
Or maybe that idiot named Nord had been erased from her memory. What a dim-witted meathead.
Anyway, thank goodness. If Tirsi had died, I really would’ve been unable to sleep for half a year from the guilt.
“Do you have any potions?”
“In my bag……”
“Excuse me for a moment.”
I took a red healing potion from the bag. I settled Tirsi on my lap, lifted her head, and helped her drink. After taking a few sips from the bottle at her lips, Tirsi smiled.
“Somehow, cough, I feel embarrassed, like I’ve become a baby. Cough, cough.”
“You’re cute, so don’t worry.”
“I said I was embarrassed……”
I gently moved a strand of hair away from Tirsi’s lips as she smiled weakly. Ah, but fuck, I wanted a potion too. This was all that was left in the bag.
“Is this all the wound-healing potion you have?”
“I brought one more…… Did it break?”
“Looks like it.”
The inside of the bag reeked of medicine. Even though potion bottles were supposed to be sturdy, they’d been smashed to hell. Fuck, that beast really was absurdly strong.
“Cough, cough. Anyway, we won, right?”
Tirsi asked me, coughing with potion mixed in. I looked toward the fallen beast at her question.
“I don’t know. I don’t have the strength left to make sure it’s dead.”
“I’m sorry, but neither do I.”
“I’ll check if it’s still alive. Wait here.”
“What? W-wait! It might be dangerous… Kehk, cough!”
I laid Tirsi down, since she didn’t have the strength to stand, and tipped the little potion left at the bottom of the bottle into my mouth.
“Cough, kgh, keh?!”
Maybe because it was an indirect kiss, Tirsi looked flustered. Still, this was an emergency, so I hoped she’d understand.
I might’ve recovered a little after drinking the potion, or maybe not. Even if it was just a placebo effect, some strength returned to my legs, so I stood up on both feet.
I approached the beast, which was lying there bleeding.
‘This bastard. The magic wore off.’
Was that why its blood had turned from black to red? Even the blood flowing from its eyes had turned red. The black mana had disappeared without a trace, so my guess was probably right.
Even so, it still looked like a half-werehuman, a side effect of the mutation spell.
“──Cough.”
Just then, the beast coughed up blood. It seemed to have regained consciousness.
“Whe-re am I……”
The dying beast spoke. It was Tabula’s voice. Tabula moved those empty eyes, as if expecting to see something, then turned and noticed me.
“I──did I…… lose?”
“Yeah, you bastard. Please just lie there and die quietly.”
I didn’t have the strength to make sure Tabula was dead. If the bastard decided the match was over, stood up, and hit me, I’d just take it and die.
Beast Regression was still active, but all that remained was a dim glow, like fluorescent paint left abandoned for almost a year.
“K, keh-heh. Even after falling into a beast, I still lost. Then I have no regrets.”
Tabula had regained his reason, but hadn’t recovered. I mean, fuck, a boss with magic resistance using a healing phase too would be cheating. He wasn’t even a raid boss.
While keeping my guard up but feeling relieved inside, I listened as Tabula spoke in a weighty voice.
“You’re only the second person to make me use this technique……”
“I can tell just by looking, you asshole.”
Humans only had two eyeballs. Who the hell wouldn’t know that, idiot?
Or is your old man Tien Shinhan or something? You get to use an eye-popping skill three times? What kind of bullshit is that? You’re pissing me off.
The great general Xiahou Dun was said to have eaten the eye pierced by an arrow, saying that his body came from his parents. This bastard had pulled out his own eyeball and crushed it.
“You fatherless, motherless little bastard. You’re not even as good as Lü Bu.”
“Lü Bu…? Heh. I don’t know what my parents looked like, either.”
This asshole had maximum resistance to family insults. As I put my brain into overdrive at 3000% to come up with a fresh insult, Tabula started laughing.
“Kahahaha. You…… have received that much of the Nine Gods’ mana into your body, and you still have your reason?”
“No, fuck, how many times do I have to say I’m not religious?”
I didn’t know anything about the Nine Gods or the Nine-Tailed Foxes. No matter how sharply I told him that, Tabula showed the otherworlders’ trademark and only said what he wanted to say.
“They say: the berserker who does not fall into the beast, one who is not consumed by wildness and rage, but a king who grants rest to fallen beasts. Then surely you are the one in the prophecy……”
“Your mom. Are you deaf?”
Why the hell did it feel like I was using basic attacks on a boss cutscene? Were Tabula and I even speaking the same language?
“Ooooooh…! This radiance…! Heavenly Valkyrie…! Have you come to take me, Tabula……!!”
This idiot had finally reached the point where he was mumbling to himself with his arms stretched toward the ceiling. Maybe the sparks of bioelectricity people supposedly saw when they were dying looked like angels to him.
“Great Madness who dwells in the heavens…… another one of your Einheri…… to glorious Valhalla……”
─Keck.
Tabula died in a way that suited that sound effect. His arms dropped with a heavy thud, and his breathing stopped.
“Oh, you fucking bastard.”
He’d gone to his grave without even telling me what kind of guy he was, after doing nothing but preach his religion. I’d had a lot of questions for him.
I was so annoyed that I nearly kicked his head, but stopped myself. T-bagging a corpse without showing it proper respect violates the Geneva Convention. Probably.
Just as I gave up and turned my back, it happened.
Shwaaaaaaaaaak─!
“Deh?”
Something seeped out of Tabula’s corpse.