Chapter 88
“Hup!”
Flash—!
I was certain I had leaped one step ahead of the dullahan’s sword as it cut through the air.
But the instant I landed, a rainbow-colored flash burst from the windbreaker over my chest.
‘I was cut.’
A chill.
It was fast.
Both the warhorse beneath the dullahan and the dullahan’s sword.
They were moving too fast to react to just by seeing them and moving.
Fortunately, the armor kept my body from being severed, but the spot where its sword grazed me was burning.
Kwoong-!
I could hear the sound of the ghoul soldiers fighting behind me, but I didn’t even have time to look back.
The remaining ghoul soldiers would be handled by the dwarves, elves, and survivors.
The only thing I needed to worry about now was that one headless knight with a head tucked under its arm.
“Prrr—!”
The warhorse beneath the dullahan snorted and scraped at the ground.
It was two or three times larger than an ordinary horse.
When it began moving again, I felt a vibration that seemed to shake the earth.
‘Fast!’
The force of the horse rushing toward me and reaching me in an instant sent a chill down my spine.
The cooldown on my Jump skill was just about to end.
I instinctively rolled across the ground to escape its path.
The instant I thought I had barely avoided it while covered in dust, I realized I had made a fatal mistake.
I wasn’t fighting a single warhorse.
Slash—! Flash!
“Agh!”
Just as I thought I had passed by the side of the charging horse, rainbow-colored LED lights burst from behind me once again.
I had avoided the horse’s charge, but the dullahan riding it had struck me squarely in the back with its sword.
A dull impact came from behind me.
The impact felt as though I had been hit by a hammer, and all the air rushed out of my lungs at once.
If it hadn’t been for the windbreaker, that blow would have split my spine in two.
My back throbbed and a scream escaped me, but I gritted my teeth and tightened my grip on the spear shaft.
‘If I take one hit, I have to return one.’
“Prrr!”
“Now!”
I leaped onto the warhorse itself at the instant it stamped its feet and exhaled before charging again.
Activating Jump, I tried to thrust the spear straight into the gap between the dullahan’s empty neck and its torso.
But at that moment, it violently yanked on the warhorse’s reins.
Ssshhk—!
The enormous warhorse twisted its body and drifted across the ground like a sports car.
The tip of my spear merely brushed against the hem of its armor.
“Damn...!”
It was absurd.
A horse could drift too.
Just as I was about to land, the dullahan’s sword snaked upward beneath me.
Slash—!
“Ugh!”
Hot pain rose from my unprotected left leg.
The part touched by the sword this time
was an area the windbreaker couldn’t cover.
The cut wasn’t deep, but my knee trembled whenever I put weight on it.
‘...Come to think of it, is this my first injury like this?’
I had to admit that I’d been incredibly lucky because of the train.
I slowly stood up, realizing just how grueling it was outside the train.
The situation was bad.
The Jump skill I used most often, and which created the greatest variables, was as good as sealed.
‘What do I do? At this rate, on the next charge...’
Just as I was racking my brain and breaking into a cold sweat—
Creak, tap-tap.
The golem, which had approached without my noticing, lightly tapped my waist with its cold pincers.
It tapped the back of its flat head and looked up at me.
‘...You want me to ride?’
I swallowed a hollow laugh at the gesture.
But thinking about it carefully, it was a good method.
My leg was in poor condition, after all. It seemed safer to ride on the golem’s back.
I wasn’t in a position to be picky.
“All right. Take care of me.”
I hopped onto the golem’s back.
It was made of steel, so the ride was hard and even a little cold, but fortunately, my small frame fit the golem perfectly.
There were no handholds, but thanks to the golem’s consideration, I didn’t feel particularly uneasy.
Rumble—!
As soon as I settled onto its back, the golem moved its four legs flexibly and faced off against the dullahan.
“Good.”
I had only glanced at it, but there was a message saying that the Constellations were laughing at me again.
Some of them were worried about me, while others said I would lose.
The golem and I were serious, but viewed from the side, it certainly must have been a rather hilarious sight.
A headless knight and warhorse facing off against a four-legged golem carrying a human in a rainbow-colored windbreaker.
Clatter—!
Kaaang—!!
The dullahan used the horse’s acceleration to rush toward us in an instant and swung its enormous greatsword horizontally. But despite its heavy appearance, the golem had tremendous instantaneous acceleration.
It bent and sprang its legs, narrowly dodging the dullahan’s sword strike, then used its sturdy shell to block the fragments flying toward me.
I couldn’t fire the cannons with me sitting on its back, but that alone was enough.
I could handle the counterattack myself.
“Hup!”
Relying on the golem’s mobility, this time I persistently targeted the warhorse beneath the dullahan rather than the dullahan itself.
Thrust! Slash—!
Compared to the dullahan riding atop it, the warhorse was much easier to attack.
Whenever the golem slipped into a blind spot or dodged an attack, the tip of my spear tore into the warhorse’s thighs and flanks.
The beast’s blood splattered, and its movements began to grow noticeably sluggish as the damage accumulated.
‘If I whittle it down like this, we have a chance.’
That was when I began to back away to create some distance.
Thud-!
The golem’s retreating leg was suddenly blocked by a huge chunk of concrete rubble.
I flinched and looked around.
Before I knew it, we had been driven into a dead-end alley blocked by the outer wall of a collapsed building and the remains of the barricade.
‘...Did it deliberately lure us this way?’
Come to think of it, I had thought its earlier strike had landed unusually well.
If that had been to drive us into this place—
As I stared in horror, an unpleasant ash-gray mist began swirling explosively around the dullahan’s greatsword.
Something felt wrong.
It was obvious that it was staking a great deal on this attack.
Swoooosh-!
The greatsword wrapped in mist tore through the air and came flying toward us.
That was impossible to block or deflect.
I had to dodge.
“Golem! Climb up the wall!”
At my command, the golem bent its legs once and sprang upward with tremendous force.
Then it thrust its legs against the wall—
Krrrrrk-!
Its steel legs crudely dug into the vertical concrete wall of the dead-end alley.
The golem literally defied gravity and crawled up the wall like a spider, letting the dullahan’s gray slash pass just beneath its feet by a hair’s breadth.
Slash-!
The dullahan’s slash cut through the concrete wall like tofu.
“Hup!”
I had avoided the slash, but I still had to cling tightly to the golem’s side to hold on.
There was nothing I could do, since it was riding vertically up the wall.
“Good, now jump down...!”
The moment the golem kicked off the wall and leaped into the air.
What entered my sight was the dullahan, which had already calculated our falling trajectory and was holding its sword in a reverse grip.
‘It’s holding the sword in reverse...!’
There was no way to dodge while suspended in midair.
It had even calculated my falling speed and swung the sword to strike at the exact moment it would split my body in two.
But the dullahan didn’t know.
This golem had originally been created while I was making drones.
I was using that function in actual combat for the first time.
“Glide!”
Pshuuuuuk!
When the golem flapped its four legs, the descent of the golem and me, which had been dropping like a stone, slowed unbelievably, as though a parachute had opened.
Shwoosh-!
The dullahan’s attack, intended to split me in half, missed below my toes with a futile, mistimed swing in midair.
At the instant its perfect timing was thrown off and its posture collapsed,
I slowly glided down through the air, gripping the rainbow-glowing spear shaft tightly in both hands and looking down at the dullahan.
My gaze was fixed on its head.
The severed head it was clutching protectively beneath its arm.
“Hold your head still.”
I poured all the windbreaker’s energy into the tip of the spear.
Then I leaped off the golem.
Whoosh-!
I drove the spear straight down toward the dullahan’s head, whose glowing eyes were shaking after its attack missed.
Crunch-!
The spear tip pierced through the dullahan’s helmet like a sheet of paper.
“ㅡㅡ!”
A shriek that sounded as though it were being torn apart erupted from the head tucked under its arm.
Blinding blue light exploded through the gaps in the helmet, and then the dullahan began to scatter like smoke.
The enormous warhorse and the armored body both crumbled to the ground as ash blown away by the wind.
All that remained there was a beautifully glowing high-grade mana stone and an old helmet.
Thud-!
“Haa, tsk...”
Using my spear as a cane, I stepped down onto the ground and drew ragged breaths.
As the adrenaline drained away, the leg that had been cut by the dullahan’s greatsword earlier suddenly flared with burning pain.
“Conductor!”
“Are you all right!”
The Awakened and demi-humans who had cleanly dealt with the remaining ghoul soldiers came running over.
Haneul and the dwarf quickly supported me by both arms.
Rather than supporting me, the dwarf quickly wedged his enormous hammer between my armpit and the ground like a crutch, but it helped a great deal.
It happened to be exactly the right height for a crutch.
“Bring some bandages and hemostatic agent!”
The dwarf shouted, and some of the survivors who had been watching us worriedly from a distance went inside the bank.
They must have gone to find bandages and a hemostatic agent.
As people murmured and examined my wounds,
someone pushed through the Awakened and the dwarf and approached quickly.
@%#$!
“...Huh? Uh...”
The one who pushed the dwarf aside and approached was an elf.
She approached with her usual elegant bearing, but when she saw the blood-red wound exposed through my torn pants, she slightly furrowed her brow.
‘Is she trying to do something...?’
I swallowed nervously, expecting holy green light or warm mana to pour from the elf’s fingertips.
It would be a lie to say I wasn’t hoping for something like healing in a game.
But instead of chanting a spell, the elf did something strange.
She slipped her tongue slightly between her lips, lightly licked her index finger, and coated it with saliva.
Then she began rubbing the moistened finger over my torn wound.
“...Huh?”
I froze in confusion.
The bewilderment was greater than the pain.
I hadn’t known that elves also believed in the folk remedy that saliva could heal wounds.
The wound even began to grow hot.
‘I didn’t know a cut could hurt this much. No, it really feels like it’s getting hotter and hotter—’
It was at that very moment, as I tried to pull my leg away in pain.
Sizzle-!
A faint smoke and a gentle pale-green light emanated from the wound covered in the elf’s saliva.
“Huh?”
The elf gave me a slight smile.