Chapter 86
-Understood.
At Jade’s command, Noeanen laughed playfully and moved the earth.
It had buried the basilisk, which was over twenty meters long, halfway into the ground.
Sizzle!
Once Noeanen had immobilized the basilisk, Jade immediately thrust his sword into it.
Adding his own Aura Blade to Ignis’s power, he tore the basilisk’s body apart.
Squeee!
The pain that had spread from its upper body to its back made the basilisk thrash violently once more.
It was trying somehow to shake Jade off.
But contrary to its intentions, its body barely moved.
The once-muddy swamp had hardened in an instant, pressing down on the basilisk.
Flash! Flash!
Once it was unable to move at all, the only thing the basilisk could use was its petrification rays.
Though it could not move its body, it could still move its head, so the basilisk sprayed petrification rays in every direction.
Yet the petrification rays that had served as its strongest weapon until now could not pierce the shield Ignis had created.
Boom!
In the end, the basilisk, with a flame sword embedded in its brain, collapsed to the ground.
It had died without ever turning the tide of the battle.
-We won!
-That was anticlimactic.
-That’s because Jade is strong!
Jade calmly looked down at the basilisk, which continued radiating intense heat from various parts of its body even after death.
The basilisk was a terrifying monster known as a calamity, and it had clearly been strong.
As a Sword Master, Jade had seen absolutely no chance of winning.
But as a spirit summoner, it had not been a particularly difficult opponent.
Whuuu!
As soon as the basilisk fell, Whid flew over at once.
He had come to congratulate Jade on his victory.
Eit flew over behind him as well.
-Aren’t you going to eat the heart?
Silestin, who had been the first to congratulate Jade, asked.
Absorbing it while it was still freshly dead would be best, but the basilisk clearly did not look like something Jade intended to eat.
“It’s not over yet.”
-Huh?
“There’s one more. A stronger one.”
-There’s another one?
Silestin’s eyes widened, as did Elestra’s.
They were both startled to hear that there was a stronger basilisk, not merely another one.
Meanwhile, Noeanen, who had quietly appeared beside Jade, wore an expression suggesting that he had known.
“I don’t know why it isn’t moving, though.”
Swish.
Jade’s gaze turned toward a certain spot.
Though it had hidden itself, Jade knew.
A stronger creature than the one lying fallen was coiled not far away.
-How did I not notice?
-I didn’t sense it either.
“Because neither of you is in your true form. And it was very good at hiding itself. Even I wasn’t sure at first.”
-Jade is right. There’s another being with an aura similar to the fallen one. But its aura is much greater and more concealed.
Noeanen agreed with Jade.
As an earth spirit, he could sense it even more clearly.
-Is it scared? Of Jade’s power!
“I doubt it. Even the power I can vaguely sense is enough to make me cautious. If this is how much it’s hiding…….”
Jade’s expression grew serious.
The relaxed composure he had shown while facing the fallen basilisk had largely vanished now.
In its place, a faint competitive spirit had arisen.
It was because he felt that, against the being he sensed now, he could unleash his power to its limit.
-I like it. My blood hasn’t even cooled yet!
-Idiot. Where would you have blood? You’re made of fire.
-Hmph! How ridiculous. An idiot calling a normal spirit an idiot.
-What?!
Ignis’s face appeared across the surface of the breastplate.
Although he was in Spirit Armor form, that did not mean he couldn’t speak.
If he wished, he could talk and express himself freely, just as he was now.
-It’s true that Silestin is an idiot.
-They say an idiot sees only idiots.
-But Silestin isn’t wrong. Ignis is a battle idiot, too.
-More precisely, you could call him a combat maniac.
-He’s pointlessly aggressive.
Noeanen and Elestra were perfectly in sync.
To the two of them, Silestin and Ignis were not much different.
-What did you say?!
-How could you say something so harsh?!
Silestin and Ignis screeched angrily as if they could not accept it, but Elestra and Noeanen did not even pretend to hear them.
They thought it wasn’t worth answering.
While the four spirits, reunited after a long time, bickered, Whid and the lightning spirit he was contracted with prodded and examined various parts of the basilisk’s body.
He even tasted the blood flowing from its wounds.
Blegh.
Whid, who had licked the black blood with his tongue, screwed up his face.
Whid ate anything without being picky, but the basilisk’s blood tasted extremely foul.
Foul enough to contort his face on its own.
Instead, Whid flapped his wings and flew over to land near its heart.
Tap, tap.
The tremendous mana he sensed, though invisible, told Whid instinctively
that the basilisk’s heart was right there.
But since Jade had not given permission and the blood tasted fishy and disgusting, Whid sat obediently and waited.
“Let’s at least touch it…….”
Jade, who had been staring into the distance, stopped speaking.
There was finally movement in the place he had been watching.
It seemed the creature had moved first because Jade had remained standing perfectly still.
Rumble.
Yet the ground shook as though an earthquake had struck from the mere act of moving.
The basilisk Jade had brought down was huge, but not this huge, so a hint of tension crossed Jade’s face.
At the same time, the other two spirits, Elestra included, entered combat stance.
So they could merge with Jade at any moment.
-We do not wish to fight you.
“Huh?”
Jade blinked at the two thoughts he heard simultaneously.
The presence he sensed was only one, but there were two voices, one male and one female.
But that question was quickly answered.
When he saw the enormous basilisk slowly reveal itself, he understood why there were two voices.
“A twin-headed serpent.”
-It has one body but two heads!
Silestin cried out in surprise at the two heads sharing a single body.
The other three were clearly surprised as well, though they said nothing.
Squeak, squeee!
Whid had never seen a twin-headed serpent before either, so he let out a cry of astonishment and clung to Jade.
Whid was still a child, no matter how much he pretended to be grown-up.
-That is so, human. Or rather, one who is human, yet not human.
“……Did you really have to say the exact same thing?”
Jade’s brow furrowed.
Although they must have had different thoughts, hearing them say the same thing made his head ring.
-I was just about to say what I wanted to say……
-It was merely a coincidence.
The two heads of the Twin-Headed Basilisk glanced at each other briefly before speaking different words for the first time.
Yet somehow, they seemed to subtly reject each other.
It felt as though they lived together only because they had no choice, having been born that way.
“That’s better. But you don’t want to fight me?”
-There is no need to engage in a meaningless fight, is there?
“It isn’t meaningless to me. I need combat experience against powerful beings.”
-More precisely, you want power, don’t you?
The more masculine-looking head hit the nail on the head.
It had pinpointed the crux exactly.
But Jade did not readily admit it.
“It’s merely spoils that come with winning. Besides, I killed someone who might have been your child or sibling, and you don’t want to fight?”
Jade’s gaze turned toward the basilisk’s corpse.
Yet even the basilisk that had been over twenty meters long looked like a child beside the Twin-Headed Basilisk.
Even at a rough glance, the Twin-Headed Basilisk looked well over thirty meters long.
It might even have been over forty meters.
-To be precise, it was one of our children. But it was not a child.
-Once one has matured, its life and death are determined by fate. It is regrettable, but we bear no particular feelings toward you. This is a place where only the strong can survive.
Their tones differed, but the bitterness contained within them was the same.
Yet they held no killing intent or anger toward Jade.
They simply accepted the death of their child without protest.
“How unexpected.”
-Not every monster is ignorant.
-There are rational monsters, too. From nature’s perspective, humans, monsters, and elves are all simply living beings.
Jade let out a hollow laugh.
He couldn’t help laughing when a monster known as a calamity spoke philosophically.
What was even more amusing was that its words were not wrong.
“Are you trying to become a better being?”
-That is correct.
“There must be an easier way. For example, eating me.”
-That is true. But we do not wish to take risks. Even if we won, we do not want a victory that leaves us with nothing but wounds.
“I never expected to have a conversation like this with monsters.”
Jade’s fighting spirit completely dissipated at the utterly rational answer.
Fighting an opponent that did not want to fight felt like nothing but bullying.
-If it is power you desire, we can help you.
-In return, we would ask that you not challenge us to a fight.
Despite possessing considerable power, the Twin-Headed Basilisk avoided fighting Jade.
Even though it must have known there was a chance it could win.
Perhaps because it was so intelligent, it seemed to know that what Jade had shown so far was not all his power.
It also seemed to have noticed the power of Silestin and Elestra, even though they had not manifested their true forms.
“A sort of price?”
-That is correct. There is no reason to shed unnecessary blood, is there? If you need an opponent, there is another one besides us.
-If you wish, we can tell you where it is. It is not very far from here.
Jade gave a short laugh.
The crafty scheme was so obvious.
But he did not bother pointing that out.
“Let’s see what you’re offering first.”
-Follow us.
The enormous Twin-Headed Basilisk turned around.
Whether it trusted Jade or had another reason for its confidence, it showed its back without hesitation.
“You seem to trust me too much.”
-A strong being such as yourself would not act cowardly. If you were that sort of being, this conversation would never have taken place in the first place.
“You really don’t seem like monsters.”
-Monsters are living beings, too. To us, humans, beasts, and elves are all the same. In a sense, humans are the monsters.
Feeling as if he were speaking to a sage rather than a monster, Jade shook his head.
Then he mounted Eit and followed the Twin-Headed Basilisk.
“This is…….”
Under the unexpected Twin-Headed Basilisk’s guidance, Jade moved deep into the canyon and opened his eyes wide.
He was stunned because something familiar that he had thought he would never see on Arpedia lay before him.
-Do you know what this is?
“It may have another name, but I call it wild ginseng. But I never expected it to exist here.”
He had never seen it in person, but he had seen quite a lot of wild ginseng on television.
That was why Jade could recognize it just from the leaves.
The fruit at the tip, which looked somewhat like a flower, was slightly different, but Jade knew instinctively.
Even the slightly exposed white roots told him it was wild ginseng.
-Wild ginseng.
-So that is what this is called.
“But why didn’t you eat it? It would help you, too.”
Though the canyon was filled with swamp, the area around the wild ginseng looked like a well-tended garden.
That made it look even more bizarre.
Only the place where the wild ginseng had taken root looked like another world.
-We were weak.
-We were discriminated against from the moment we were born.
-So we ran, and ran again. We were siblings, but also competitors. In the end, only the strong could survive in the wild.
-Then we arrived here. Quite by chance. Of course, even then, this wild ginseng contained abundant mana. But instead of absorbing it, we chose something else.
-Even if we had eaten it, we would have died. Back then, we were too weak and small to withstand the wild ginseng.