Savage Fighting Baboon

"Gorilla, no! My name is Saburo! I am a Savage Fighting Baboon, the strongest warrior of my clan! Intruder, dieeeee!"

Saburo, a particularly large baboon of the Barbarian Baboon race, announced himself. It was obvious from his appearance that he was an evolved baboon, but no one had expected him to possess enough intelligence to speak, even in broken phrases.

"What, a named higher species!?"

"Tch, old man!"

"Indeed."

Unlike Jigoro, who clicked his tongue in disappointment, Genjuro seemed rather excited. Whenever they encountered a powerful enemy, they decided beforehand with rock-paper-scissors who would fight it. Genjuro had won today, so he had earned the right to fight. Jigoro, unable to battle an opponent he had never seen before, looked genuinely frustrated.

Genjuro raised his odachi overhead, crossing his katana and kodachi in his lower pair of arms. Then he spread his wings and took flight as he stepped forward. The wings growing from his back, combined with his leg strength, generated explosive propulsion, allowing him to close the distance in the blink of an eye.

"Ugh!?"

"Shaaaaa!"

Startled by this completely unexpected turn of events, Genjuro swung his blades with a roar that seemed to rend the air. He swept the crossed katana and kodachi out to either side, then brought down his odachi in one fluid motion. It was a consecutive attack that made skillful use of four arms and three swords.

"Get off meee!"

"Mmm... tough hide, this."

Genjuro's blades had certainly found their mark on Saburo's body. However, they had dealt surprisingly little damage. His bristles, as tough as metal fibers, the thick hide beneath them, and his hard muscles had all blocked the blades. It was less a matter of Genjuro lacking attack power than Saburo possessing exceptionally high defense.

Even so, Saburo had taken damage, so he flailed his arms wildly to drive Genjuro away. His monotonous, wide-swinging punches did not even graze Genjuro, but Saburo himself was fast, and his arms were long. Genjuro had retreated to evade them, but getting back inside Saburo's reach would require some ingenuity.

"I can't cut those arms off, and if I try to deflect or parry them, my blades might break. In that case... hmph!"

Genjuro used the rhinoceros beetle horn jutting from his forehead to knock an arm aside. After reaching level 60 and evolving from Samurai Insector Edge Beetle into Samurai Master Insector Edge Beetle, his horn had become both hard and sharp enough to serve as a spearhead. Besides, even if it broke, it would grow back, so he could use it without hesitation.

A jolt of force traveled through the horn as he knocked the arm away, and it creaked sharply. Genjuro wondered if it had cracked, but suppressed the unpleasant sensation through sheer reason and swung his sword.

"Take this!"

"Ugegh!?"

His hard body hair seemed to function like armor, but it apparently offered little protection against thrusts. When Genjuro repeated his stabs with all three swords, his hands clearly felt the resistance of flesh being torn apart.

Genjuro grinned at that—or rather, the antenna beside his mouth quivered. As an Insector, he had no facial expressions. But his composure was soon blown away.

"Uuuugh, you're annoying! Uuuuuhooooooo!"

"Wuuukiiiiiiii!"

When Saburo shrieked in his high-pitched voice, the baboons under his command began shrieking in response. Then every one of them began to radiate a yellow aura. They had obviously powered up, and all four of them could feel the battle entering its second phase.

"Damn it! Didn't they get way too strong!?"

"Hahahahahaha! That's more like it! That's what I'm talking about!"

"Why are you getting so worked up...?"

Sei panicked at the enemies' sudden increase in strength, while Jigoro reacted with delight, leaving Nanako bewildered by Jigoro's response. The three of them showed three entirely different reactions, but they continued fighting all the while. Baboons kept pouring out of the depths of the forest as reinforcements, and each of them cut the creatures down in their own way.

"Yipe!"

"Phil!?"

A change finally came to the seemingly endless battle. Phil, Sei's tamed monster, had taken heavy damage and fallen into critical condition. Sei wanted to descend to the ground immediately, but the baboons surrounding him would not allow it. Tess, his other tamed monster, was fighting hard as well, but at this rate, it was only a matter of time before they died.

"Can't be helped. I'll use a Secret Art! 【Perfect Doppelganger】!"

Since they could not afford to lose any more fighting power in this situation, Nanako, unable to stand by and watch, used his 'Secret Art,' 【Perfect Doppelganger】. Only those who had raised 【Summoning】 to level 40 could learn this technique, which summoned ten doppelgangers possessing exactly the same stats as the user.

Monsters summoned through 【Summoning】 would remain weaker than a player or Mob of the same species, even if their Skill level was raised and they were strengthened with 【Imbuement】. That was only natural, since otherwise 【Summoning】 would be far too powerful, but 【Perfect Doppelganger】 overturned that limitation.

The summoned doppelgangers lost one percent of their maximum health every second. They could not be healed, and disappeared once their health reached zero. The conditions were almost identical to those of Jigoro's previously used 【Demon God's Tough Body】, but the caster would not be left on the verge of death when the doppelgangers vanished, making this technique far more convenient to use.

"Spell Adjustment, Holy Ray! Fire eleven shots at once!"

Eleven beams of white light pierced through groups of baboons. Since this technique could be learned by those skilled in 【Summoning】, its users were almost certain to be skilled in magic as well. Thus, while the doppelgangers were active, the user's total magical firepower rose tremendously. That was why Nanako had chosen this 'Secret Art' first.

"Sei, now!"

"Thanks, Big Brother Nanako! I'll use my Ultimate Art too! 【Bond Between Master and Servant】!"

While Nanako was scattering magic in spectacular fashion, Sei ran over to his tamed monsters and used his Ultimate Art. 【Bond Between Master and Servant】 could only be learned by someone with the Tamer Job, and its effect was fusion with one's tamed monsters.

While active, the user's stats became the sum of the stats of every tamed monster in their party. This allowed Sei to temporarily obtain stats on the level of a field boss and rampage to his heart's content. In addition, he could use his tamed monsters' Skills while fused, meaning that Sei could even use the magic of Tess, a fairy-type monster. He lost the advantage of numbers, but gained more than enough power to make up for it.

The duration of the effect was proportional to the 'bond level' of the tamed monsters being fused with him. This was a hidden stat represented by a number from one to one hundred, though its exact value could not normally be known. It could only be raised steadily through communication with one's tamed monsters, so Tamers who treated their monsters as disposable weapons suffered the disadvantage of having an extremely short fusion time. It was truly an Ultimate Art that could not be used without a deep bond between master and servant.

"Wooooooooo! Here I go!"

"Whoa, what a bizarre look you've got there."

This drawback was not a problem for Sei. Phil and Tess had fought alongside him from the very beginning, and their 'bond levels' had already reached the cap, allowing them to fuse for exactly one hundred seconds.

However, their fused form was strange enough to make even Nanako blurt out a comment. Overall, it was based on Sei's powerfully built, humanoid ape body, but its head was that of a horned wolf, and butterfly wings sprouted from its back.

That monster flew around using its wings while swinging a long staff. It was extremely distinctive and bizarre.

However, its fighting power could only be described as tremendous. A swing of its staff, a bite from its wolf fangs, the scales scattered by its butterfly wings, and its magic all dealt damage capable of killing the baboons outright. Its savage fighting style was probably comparable even to Jigoro's.

Incidentally, Sei had held a mock battle with Jigoro while fused, partly to test-drive his 'Ultimate Art,' but he had been thoroughly beaten. His avatar's specs had overwhelmingly surpassed Jigoro's, but player skill had completely overturned the result.

"Hahahaha! Not bad, Sei! Have you gotten better?"

"Someday, I'll beat you without using my Ultimate Art, Big Bro!"

"Gahahahaha! That's the spirit!"

Even now, with the baboons strengthened, Jigoro continued to rampage while laughing gleefully. If they came at him head-on, he punched them down. If they approached from his feet, he stomped them flat. If they leaped at him from above, he impaled them on his horns. He dodged magic, and when they threw pebbles at him, he caught them and threw them right back.

Even when attacked from behind, he responded as if he had eyes in the back of his head, so the corpses of baboons simply continued piling up around him. Sei watched his absurd strength with admiration, while Nanako could only gape in disbelief.

"...Still, it's frustrating. That guy over there looks like he's having way more fun."

Jigoro turned his gaze away from the onrushing horde of baboons for just an instant and looked toward Genjuro. There stood Genjuro, one horn broken and his exoskeleton cracked in numerous places.

"Uhooooooooo! Dieeeeeee!"

"Nnngh...!"

The roar Saburo used to strengthen himself and his allies was his 'Ultimate Art.' It was called 【Rallying Fighting Aura】, and it cloaked the user and all allies within range of his voice in an aura called 'Fighting Spirit.'

That was the source of the yellow aura. Simply wearing 'Fighting Spirit' increased physical attack power and physical defense, which was why the baboons had suddenly grown so much stronger.

In addition, as a Savage Fighting Baboon, Saburo could use 'Fighting Spirit' itself as a weapon through a Skill. He changed the shape of the aura enveloping his entire body, forming new arms out of 'Fighting Spirit.'

These 'Fighting Spirit' arms were troublesome enough simply because they increased his number of limbs, but since they were made from the special substance known as 'Fighting Spirit,' they could stretch and contract freely. This disrupted Genjuro's sense of distance and made the battle difficult for him.

Genjuro's fighting style depended on carefully managing the distance between himself and his opponent, so these shape-shifting arms were almost his natural enemy. The distance changed every time, leaving him with no fixed range to rely on and making the fight extremely difficult. To evade them safely, he had to create a considerable amount of distance, which naturally made it difficult to counterattack.

"Hoo... good grief, only two minutes have passed...?"

It was almost unprecedented for Genjuro to be beaten so one-sidedly since starting the game. However, he had been working toward a move that could turn the tables. He was certain that the new 'Ultimate Art' he had chosen upon reaching level 60 would be useful for breaking through this situation.

Using this 'Ultimate Art' required him to have 'not attacked at all for three minutes or longer.' Normally, it would have been best used as an ambush at the very start, but now that he had no room to counterattack, it was a trump card that could reverse the entire battle with a single strike.

"Why are you running wild? Is there some reason?"

Since all Genjuro could do for the moment was endure, he asked about their circumstances to buy time and occupy himself. He did not expect their attacks to slacken, but if they hesitated, that would be a bonus.

"Orders from my old man! Shut up and die!"

"Your old man... huh."

It was unclear whether 'old man' meant his father or someone in the sense of a boss. However, from this brief exchange, it became clear that this battle, which could only be called an invasion war, had been set in motion by someone's will.

It could of course have been a lie, but Saburo did not look like the sort who was capable of bluffing or scheming. It was safe to assume that the information was almost certainly true.

"Was there some event that caused your old man to change his mind?"

"Shut up! One chatterbox named Shentu is more than enough!"

"Shentu...?"

The new proper noun 'Shentu' struck Genjuro as odd. The opponent he was fighting was named Saburo, and Heavenly Spirit Island was a Japanese-style world. Its monsters' Names were usually fitting as well, so this unfamiliar sound stood out conspicuously.

"It would be wise to consult Lord Great Tengu. Now, at long last, three minutes have passed. 【Swordmaster's Arrival】, 【New Moon's Hour】... hmph!"

Genjuro removed his katana and kodachi from his equipment. After applying the same self-enhancement he had used during the battle against MacFarlane, he gripped the odachi with all four arms and rested it on his shoulder, then used his wings to leap far backward.

"Don't run!"

"I won't... run!"

Just as in their first clash, Genjuro charged straight at Saburo. A player might have suspected that he had some secret plan, but Saburo, driven by his own ferocity, met him head-on. There was no need to fear a weakling who had been capable of nothing but dodging until moments ago.

"Be crushed! Savage Beast Heavy Fist Barrage!"

"Hrk!?"

Saburo drew back both his physical arms and his 'Fighting Spirit' arms, then unleashed a barrage of martial strikes. Genjuro somehow evaded the elongated 'Fighting Spirit' arm rushing toward him, but even a graze shattered his exoskeleton and dealt him considerable damage.

Genjuro did not retreat. Even as the exoskeleton on his shoulders, chest, and arms peeled away, and his right forewing was completely destroyed, he succeeded in closing the distance to his own range.

"Ooooooooooo! 【Absolute Blade】!"

"Ugo...?"

Casting aside his usual air of a kindly old man, Genjuro let out a roar from the depths of his stomach and brought his odachi down from overhead. The fur seemed likely to reduce the damage just as before, but the single stroke he unleashed cleaved Saburo cleanly in two, from the crown of his head to his crotch. Genjuro won without even allowing Saburo to realize that he had died.