Chapter 47
If I can just squeeze my way through, I might be able to get out.
I readjusted my grip on the magic sword.
My stamina was topped off.
I was still, in theory, standing in the realm of the strongest.
I just had to avoid getting hit.
I had been hit, but I was still fine for now.
"Ptooey."
As I spat blood, I burned the mana I had absorbed by cutting down the monsters with the magic sword.
Even the sight of mana blazing that intensely did not make the monsters hesitate at all.
They were all far too formidable to be frightened by something like this. Every one of them was boss-tier.
Even as I clicked my tongue, a smile spread across my lips.
Shrrk.
Just then, vines grew from the ground.
I rolled to the side and sprang up as though leaping to my feet.
The rock thrown by the ogre came crashing down.
The ground surged upward, and the cliff collapsed.
Dodging the dirt and stones raining down like a shower, I charged toward the monsters.
The ogre picked up a Stone Turtle and hurled it at me.
The massive Stone Turtle bounced across the ground and rolled all the way to the cliff.
I dove beneath it, squeezed between the ogre's legs, raised the blade between them, and straightened my tucked legs.
The ogre split in half.
Just then, a snake tail stabbed toward me.
Before my feet even touched the ground, I caught the flying snake tail with the magic sword.
"Guh...!"
My stomach gurgled as blood pooled inside it.
I vomited up the blood that had refluxed into my esophagus.
"Ptooey. Fuck."
Basilisk.
The monster closest to S rank among all the mobs gathered here.
There were tiers even among A-rank monsters.
Its scales were lighter and tougher than mithril, and their powerful anti-magic properties made them difficult to cut even with Lion Slash.
If the ogre was a mob with an irregular pattern that used tools,
the Basilisk was a true boss monster covered in every kind of resistance and endowed with monstrous physical durability. It was like a preview of a raid boss battle.
I pulled a doll from inside my clothes.
A ball-jointed doll dressed in gothic lolita attire.
A decoy containing a sealed evil spirit.
"Eat this."
I threw the doll into the middle of the monster horde.
The monsters' gazes were drawn to the arc of the doll's flight.
At most, it bought me a few dozen seconds.
While the monsters were distracted by the doll, I threw myself sideways and ran.
'Yeah, you won't fall for it.'
Only the Basilisk glared at me.
It didn't matter.
It would be easier to deal with once the trash mobs were out of the way.
When I burst forward, the Basilisk chased me, swaying its long, massive body from side to side as it accelerated to keep up.
I wrapped mana around my legs and ran at full speed.
The Basilisk overtook me and blocked my path.
A chill of killing intent rose at the nape of my neck, and its tail drove into the spot where I had been standing.
The tip of the snake tail sharpened like a spear and sliced through the air.
Snake-Tail Thrust.
Footwork alone could not evade it completely, so I raised the magic sword and deflected it.
The tail caught on the side of my sword, and sparks flew whenever its scales scraped against the magic sword.
I ran along the side of the tail.
Then the snake tail swayed up and down, rose above my head, and slammed into the ground.
The snake tail gouged deeply into the earth.
Then it swung horizontally.
The massive body brutally snapped the trees of the forest like matchsticks.
"...."
Having evaded the snake tail's one-sided barrage, I absorbed the mana wavering around the magic sword into my body and replenished what I had spent.
Basilisk.
A monster among the highest tier of A rank, combining overwhelming size with powerful resistances.
Anyone who knew nothing about it would be overwhelmed by its enormous body and the predator's aura it radiated.
Hiss!
The massive snake tail whipped through the air like a lash.
I sprinted hard and evaded the snake tail.
As I dodged, I cut into the snake tail with the magic sword.
Clang!
A groove opened in the scales, creating a gap.
The mana-draining magic sword.
The legendary magic sword ignored its resistances and left a wound in the scales.
That's the terrifying thing about relying on equipment.
The Basilisk opened its mouth to swallow me whole, and a foul stench came rushing out.
I ran sideways to avoid being swallowed, twisted my body, and raised the tip of the magic sword into a thrusting stance.
Maximum mana output.
Lion Slash.
By increasing the damage, however slightly, I pierced through the scales and carved a deep wound into its neck.
"Kshaaaaaaak!!"
The Basilisk let out a scream and stretched its neck far backward.
Purple liquid bubbled and boiled inside its mouth.
Splat!
It whipped its head around and sprayed the liquid it had held in its mouth all around it.
The purplish, viscous fluid spread out in a fan.
Petrifying poison.
A deadly toxin that hardened the body into stone upon contact with the skin.
The most vicious power possessed by the Basilisk.
But there was no way I would fail to anticipate that.
I immediately grabbed the edge of the cape draped over my shoulders and covered my exposed skin.
The venom poured down over my head like a sudden shower.
Jelly-soft blobs bounced off the cape.
I could feel the Basilisk glaring at me as venom dripped from its mouth.
The sound of a snake's body scraping along the ground.
'Now.'
I infused the magic sword with mana.
Lion Slash.
I dodged the Basilisk's jaws, and the magic sword dug into its wound once more.
Beneath the ironclad scales was soft flesh, and the blade sank deep into it.
Half its nape was severed.
"Kshaaaaaaak!!"
The Basilisk twisted its massive body and let out a scream of agony.
When I pulled out the magic sword, its blood gushed out like a flood.
That was when it happened.
It shook its body violently.
It shook itself madly.
Its blood sprayed in every direction, spreading across an area impossible to evade.
Several monsters that had strayed from the Monster Wave's path came running toward me.
When they touched the Basilisk's blood, their bodies turned gray, then hardened entirely into stone and became statues.
A pattern that punished anyone who didn't know about it.
An injured Basilisk spreads its petrifying poison over a wide area as an area-of-effect attack.
Its blood was a highly concentrated petrifying poison incomparable to its saliva.
The countermeasure was simple.
I just had to keep it from touching my skin.
With the cape pulled over my head, I ran toward the Basilisk in the middle of its pattern.
The cape blocked my view.
My vision was completely cut off.
It didn't matter.
The Basilisk's desperation pattern, as well as its basic movements, were already engraved in my mind.
Eck had also witnessed a Basilisk hunt, so my cross-checking was complete.
Immediately after spraying its blood, the Basilisk fell into a brief stagger from anemia.
Elena would have needed to stagger it twice before she could kill it, but how about me now? I had brought it to a stagger in only a few blows, so the answer was obvious.
'Got it.'
I ignited the magic sword once more.
I leaped into its neck, which was nearly half severed, and gripped the magic sword firmly with both hands.
The blade caught on the edge of the split scales, tore through the gap between them, severed them apart, and pressed down with all my strength and weight.
With my foot planted on the ground on the opposite side, I looked through the gap in the scales.
The soft flesh of the snake.
Mana infused the magic sword.
Long-Range Slash.
A thin, long blue slash flew through the flesh of the Basilisk's neck.
The Basilisk's snake head fell to the ground, and its torso began thrashing violently.
"Tch. Still a nuisance to the very end."
I quickly widened the distance.
As the Basilisk's torso thrashed, the blood it sprayed covered the forest.
The blood gushing like a fountain from its severed neck gradually lost its force.
The body soon collapsed to the ground and fell still.
"Phew..."
I got it.
Just as I was about to exhale.
My head began spinning.
'What?'
The inside of my lungs prickled.
My body grew sluggish.
I couldn't feel my fingertips.
It felt like having general anesthesia at a hospital...
"Don't tell me..."
The Basilisk's bodily fluids dispersed through the air, spreading its petrifying poison.
Compared with petrifying poison, it was weak, but it had the potency of ordinary paralysis poison.
When the Basilisk made its final desperate struggle, tiny droplets of its bodily fluids had floated through the air.
I had never encountered a pattern like this in the game.
'But there was one among the items.'
A paralytic incense made from Basilisk venom.
"How was I supposed to predict that?!"
My fingers stopped bending one by one, and my entire palm hardened.
The strength of my grip on the magic sword weakened.
'First, I need to get out of here.'
Even so, I couldn't go too far.
Ironically, the Basilisk's petrifying poison was protecting me now.
Amid the monsters that had become statues, I lowered myself behind a tree untouched by the petrifying poison.
'I just have to hold out until the duration ends.'
The magic sword slipped between my fingers and fell to the ground.
Both my arms and legs hardened completely and would not move, as though they no longer belonged to me.
As sensation faded from my entire body, even my consciousness drifted away from the flesh.
Through my blurry vision, murderous gazes gathered on me one by one.
Orcs, trolls... what else? The monsters that discovered me shot me hateful looks.
Several monsters that approached stepped barefoot onto the petrifying poison and turned to stone, so the others watched me without daring to come closer, like a treat they could see but not reach.
But when would they notice?
If they threw even a stone, I had no way to resist.
I had no choice but to entrust my end to luck.
'Is this as far as I go.'
In my hazy mind, someone mocked and ridiculed me.
***
- You swaggered around knowing so much about this world, and this is how you screw it up?
'You're still here.'
The fragment of Eck this body had been born with.
The violent temperament that had controlled me in the early days of my reincarnation.
As time passed, I found an unbridgeable gap opening between him and me.
Whenever I became aware of that gap, Eck's presence inside me grew more concrete.
Until recently, he had only spoken to me through vague feelings, and now he was going so far as to become a second personality?
'This is driving me insane.'
A sharp sneer rang out through my fading consciousness.
- You fucking idiot. You should've run when you saw the tail instead.
The paralysis kept me from concentrating, so I couldn't brush off Eck's nonsense.
He rifled through my mind at will.
The residue left by the original owner of this body, which had nested deep inside me, had emerged solely to mock me.
- We could've just let a single village be wiped out!
He screamed irritably.
- The moment the Basilisk appeared, you should've turned around and run! Who cared where it holed up, side quest or otherwise? You should've escaped!
There had been no Basilisk at this point in the original story.
I had been startled when I first saw it, and the timing had been bad enough that I took the ogre's thrown log head-on.
- It had fuck-all to do with us! Why did I have to step up and save some place that was nothing but passing background in the game?!
The selfishness spewed by Eck's remnant echoed as though it would tear my eardrums apart.
The Basilisk would become the boss monster of a side quest.
It would probably break away from this Monster Wave and become the permanent resident of the mithril mine.
In the process, an entire village would be ground into dust.
- You watched that Elena bitch get jerked around and screwed over every time until you were sick of it in the game. Why are you trying to imitate that stupid girl? Are you a sucker? A moron? You fucking idiot!
As Eck said, whether the Basilisk wiped out the village or not, there was no connection between its people and me.
I know.
I know that too.
- Then why?
'But I couldn't just stand by.'
I let out a dry chuckle.
'I had the power to stop it. If not for all these variables, I would have escaped the Monster Wave and returned to the city by now.'
I wasn't entirely dead yet.
Once the petrifying poison's duration ended, the mobs targeting me wouldn't even be worth a punch.
'Don't measure me by your weak-ass standards.'
- Oh, is that so? Then what is that great veteran player doing now?
I was leaving my life to luck.
The worst variable.
- Hand it over to me.
Eck's thoughts grew stronger.
- I couldn't stand watching your idiotic behavior any longer. Ever since that bitch Rebecca drugged me, I've had to sit here and watch you act like an idiot! Do you know how frustrating it was? You let Jaina, who drugged me, off the hook, and you didn't even teach that bitch Rebecca a lesson! What do you think the adventurers thought of me?!
Eck shouted that all of it was tied to his lifeline.
- You want to see it through to the end too, don't you? I'll make that Elena you cling to stay by my side for the rest of my life. I'll let you fuck and intoxicate that beautiful body of hers to your heart's content.
Eck's whisper dug into my ears.
- Hand over control quietly.
His voice, thick with vulgar lust, barked resentfully.
Did he think I hadn't considered his method simply because I didn't know it?
'That temperament of yours is what clearly separates us. How could I accept the thinking of a horny piece-of-trash bastard like you?'
You'd have to be horny enough for us to merge in the first place.
This bastard was no different from the former guildmaster or Darko—a brazen, arrogant piece of shit.
- You frustrating bastard.
My mouth tasted bitter.
- Bastards like you die first. Why the fuck are you dragging me into this? Fuck.
'You'd have died within a week without me. Don't you ever think about the consequences of your actions?'
In any case, it was a fact that I had knowingly accepted the possibility of failure to save a village.
I was protecting the people of a village whose faces I couldn't remember.
If this were a game, they would be nothing more than unnecessary plot branches, not worth including.
Still...
"...."
My fingers wouldn't move.
I couldn't even turn my head.
Shadows wavered at the edge of my vision.
Tap.
A stone came flying.
Ah, so this is how I die.
- Your sucker act is what made you choose death. You fucking bastard. Do you really think anyone will save you just because you save someone else? Fuck. Piece of shit. Complete fucking moron.
'That's harsh.'
- Because of you, I couldn't even take that bitch's virginity!
Eck recited it in a contemptuous tone.
"Haa..."
Hot breath escaped between my hardened lips.
'I don't want to die.'
The calm murmur scattered into the air.
At the very least, I wanted to see Elena save the world.
A stone flew over and struck my head.
It hit my forehead, but I felt no pain.
Could I at least take this as a consolation?
Then the monsters began approaching one step at a time.
They seemed to have figured out a route that avoided the petrifying poison.
'Is this really the end?'
There was no way to dodge or block them.
Death had come right up to my doorstep.
They were only a few meters away.
"———Mister!!!"
A voice like a hallucination reached my ears.