Chapter 301
"Aaaaaah! They're still coming!?"
Just when I thought we'd defeated them, elephant Hell Beasts came falling down again. The reinforcements had come so many times that I was growing too tired to count them, and I couldn't help raising my voice in frustration. Apparently, everyone felt the same way, because Eiji and Toji seemed to be fighting more recklessly as well.
I swung my scythe while shouting. Then I stretched out my tail, stabbed it into the soft torso of the Hell Beast from behind, twisted it, and swung it away with all my might. The torso had such poor defense that even my puny physical attacks could inflict meaningful damage.
Right now, I was fighting on the front lines while directing the battle. The simple reason was that we didn't have enough hands. We had defeated nearly twenty elephant Hell Beasts on this hill alone. In the meantime, our forces had been gradually whittled down. Despite that, there was no sign of the pace at which elephant Hell Beasts were being dropped slowing down. As a result, I had been forced to draw one of them away while commanding the battle myself, despite being a mage.
"Activate Magic Formation, Stone Wall! The Undead unit that has been fighting until now, fall back for a moment! Reserve unit, move up!"
It was grueling to command the Golems and Undead while warding off an elephant's trunk with magic, since a direct hit would probably kill me instantly. But everyone else was fighting with all their might as well. Wool had been singing a song to strengthen everyone without pause, while Eiji and Toji were desperately holding off four of them between the two of them.
The two of them had been fighting continuously ever since the first reinforcements arrived. They were using a reckless method that prioritized speed above all else and ignored attrition. In other words, they were slashing the torsos with flaming swords and making them explode.
It was certainly faster that way, but every time an explosion went off, Eiji went flying through the air like he was in a gag manga, and Toji had been caught in the blast and injured several times as well. Both of them were covered in wounds and soot, utterly battered. I didn't even want to imagine what would have happened if we hadn't prepared such an ample supply of potions...
"Geez, what a nuisance! Short Teleport!"
As I flew through the air, swinging my scythe, an elephant Hell Beast sprayed bodily fluid at me. Since even the water pressure alone would probably kill me, I used 【Spatial Magic】 to circle around behind it, used three Fire Lance talismans to set its torso alight, and then used a Short Teleport talisman to escape upward.
Below me, the elephant Hell Beast exploded. It was possible to defeat them this way by using fire skillfully, but getting caught in the explosion would cause a catastrophe, so I hesitated to use fire thoughtlessly. I had only used it this time because I knew there were no allies within the blast radius.
"That's one... Tch! It's still throwing them!? Are they endless unless we take down the big one?"
The giant elephant Hell Beast was still throwing additional enemies in every direction. If we really had to defeat that thing, we would need to send reinforcements to Jigorou and the others. But we were already stretched to our limits. There were no reserve forces anywhere.
If things continued like this, we were certain to be gradually driven back and defeated. After coming this far, there was no way I could accept defeat! I had to think of some kind of countermeasure...
"What can we do... Hm? A message from Iris... Heh heh... Hahahahahaha!"
"...What happened?"
Wool gave me a suspicious look when I suddenly began laughing. But I was too delighted to care about her gaze. I had learned that all the hardships we had endured so far had not been in vain.
"Rejoice, Wool! The reinforcements made it in time!"
"Woooooooah!"
Just as I shouted excitedly, a war cry rose from the sea. Dozens of players came streaming out from the coast near the vertical shaft.
Who were they, and how did I know they were players? The answer lay in a message I had previously received from Conrad. I had heard that, using his immense wealth, he had built a large ship capable of traveling between continents, then set sail for the continent of Tinbrika using the map information I had given him.
The message I had just received from Iris was a report that Shiratsuki had spotted something resembling a ship out at sea. It seemed Conrad and the others had arrived at precisely the right time, almost as if they had planned it. Their arrival was a tremendous help.
The people who emerged from the shore appeared to be uniformly armed, and I could see that every one of them carried a one-handed sword. They all charged toward the giant elephant Hell Beast. Hey, wait! That wasn't an opponent you could just charge at without a plan...
"Aaaaaaaah!?"
Just as I expected, their straightforward charge ended with them being knocked flying by several elephant trunks right in front of them. They flew through the air in an arc, like Eiji when he took a blast at point-blank range, then crashed into the sea and sent up a spray of water. The reinforcements had been sent back into the sea in an instant, but were they all right!?
"Who told you to charge in on your own, you bunch of idiots!? Show some guts! If you're tuckered out from something this minor, it'll be a disgrace to the Blue-Scale Pirate Crew!"
"Aye, Boss!"
As I worried about them, a husky woman's angry shout echoed across the battlefield. The speaker was a large woman wearing a tricorne tilted to one side. Like the others, she held a one-handed sword in each hand.
Her dull red hair waved in the sea breeze, and her healthy, sun-tanned brown skin was striking. Judging from her silhouette, she appeared to be a Human, but she was too far away for me to make out any details. In any case, I would have to thank her later.
When the woman they called Boss urged them on, the players who had fallen into the sea climbed back onto land and began fighting bravely again. Once she took command, they began displaying coordinated teamwork, as though their lack of discipline just a minute earlier had been nothing more than a lie.
"First squad, throw the grappling hooks! Second squad, charge!"
"Aye, Boss!"
The players held swords in one hand, while in the other they gripped grappling hooks with claws on the ends. Half of them used the hooks to bind the elephant's heads tightly, while the other half raised their swords and charged again. Perhaps being bound kept them from moving their prized trunks properly, because the elephant heads were hacked to pieces by the dull-glinting white blades.
Were swords and grappling hooks their standard equipment? They had called themselves a pirate crew, and even I associated pirates with using grappling hooks to board enemy ships. Still, I had thought of them as tools for boarding, not weapons. But since these people handled them skillfully as weapons, I supposed there was no problem.
The mage giant Hell Beast roared at the giant elephant Hell Beast and ordered it to throw elephant Hell Beasts at the reinforcements behind it. The obedient Hell Beast acted as ordered, but that created a fatal opening.
"Uwahahahaha! What are you looking at!?"
"I'll cover you, Jigorou."
Jigorou and Genzuro did not miss the instant the enemy's attention was drawn behind it. Jigorou kicked off an elephant's head and ran up it at tremendous speed, while Genzuro sent flying slashes toward the elephant heads that threatened to obstruct him.
When Jigorou reached the top of the head in a single rush, he swung a fist at the mage giant Hell Beast. It reacted immediately and appeared to intercept Jigorou's fist with its staff, but once he had gotten inside its guard, the mage was already doomed. It had been fully occupied with defensive magic.
That meant there was no one left to ignite the flammable bodily fluid after it was sprayed. The fluid burned away and the flames weakened, allowing Genzuro to approach as well.
As though venting all the frustration of having been kept waiting for so long, Genzuro attacked with terrifying force. Several long elephant trunks were sliced off, and countless heads were cleaved in two and sent spinning through the air.
Jigorou and Genzuro attacked alongside the pirate reinforcements and Shiratsuki's aerial unit. Exposed to this assault, the Hell Beasts were driven into a corner, just as we had been moments earlier. Realizing this, the mage giant Hell Beast created a barrier that appeared to be a Magic Shield between itself and Jigorou, then twisted its face in disgust and let out its loudest roar yet.
"Gorooooooooooooooooo!"
"Babooooooooooooooooo!"
The elephant Hell Beast answered with a bellow of its own, and then the lower half of the giant Hell Beast began to melt and be sucked into the elephant Hell Beast. At the same time, the surface of the elephant Hell Beast crackled and became covered in hard scales.
But the transformation did not stop there. The small elephant heads on its torso were covered in scales as well, and its flabby torso rose into a standing humanoid shape. The result was a monster with a flabby humanoid body covered in scales and bearing an elephant's head, with the upper body of the giant Hell Beast sprouting from it.
I had seen something similar before. It was Sei's ultimate technique, in which he fused with his tamed monster and became a single, powerful warrior. Since the giant Hell Beast had been controlling the elephant Hell Beast, there was no reason it couldn't use the same technique as Sei.
"Gabbogoooooooooo!!!"
The dissonant sound of the giant and elephant Hell Beasts' cries blended together and echoed across the entire battlefield. Judging from Sei's example, it was reasonable to assume that this creature could use both of the techniques available to the two types of Hell Beast.
The enemy had certainly grown stronger, but the fact that it had used its trump card meant that if we could somehow deal with this, we would win. The reinforcements had also raised the morale of the entire force, which had nearly collapsed. This was where we had to make our stand!