by Okina Baba
On top of that, the heat generated increases the user’s physical capabilities.
Apparently, the fire dragon recognizes me as a strong enemy that isn’t to be trifled with.
Neither of us underestimates the other.
The curtain opens on a fierce, no-holds-barred battle.
The fire dragon spits a fireball.
It seems to be testing the waters rather than engaging in a serious attack.
Still, considering I’m especially weak to fire, it could easily wipe me out in one blow if I take a direct hit.
Not to mention, even this casual shot is on par with a fire wyrm’s full-power fireballs.
I evade it with all my might.
Thanks to the combination of Hit and Probability Super-Correction, it’s not easy to dodge.
Even the dragon’s weakest attacks require every bit of my Enhancement and Evasion skills to overcome.
I have to make good use of Thought Acceleration and Foresight.
As the fire dragon spits another fireball, it starts closing the distance between us.
The fireball is just a distraction—the real attack follows close behind.
Bending its long, snakelike body, the monster whips its enormous tail at me.
This simple physical attack is augmented with the power of those flames, an effect that could easily prove fatal to me.
I narrowly avoid this attack as well.
The fire on its tail grazes my body.
That alone is enough to reduce my HP slightly.
If it weren’t for Thought Acceleration giving me time to recognize the fire dragon’s approach and Foresight predicting its movements, it would’ve been a much closer call.
For now, my Evasion combo seems to ever so slightly outmatch the fire dragon’s Hit/Probability combo.
But things aren’t looking good.
No matter how long I fix my Evil Eyes on it, the fire dragon isn’t becoming paralyzed.
The Cursed Evil Eye is reducing its HP and SP by the tiniest amount, but it’s having little effect on its stats.
Both abilities are probably butting heads with the dragon’s incredibly high resistance.
With enough time, I think the Evil Eyes should still take effect, but it’s not like the fire dragon is going to politely wait around until that happens.
I barely manage to avoid claws that fly at me shortly after the dragon’s tail recedes.
Feeling cautious after I avoid all its attacks, the fire dragon backs off a little.
I have only two things going for me at the moment.
One is that the fire dragon isn’t starting out at full health thanks to Mother’s attack.
Its HP has been cut nearly in half, and while it has stocked up MP as well as SP thanks to Gluttony, those stocks have been reduced quite a bit.
And since my Cursed Evil Eye is shaving off its HP faster than its HP Rapid Recovery skill can counter, it won’t be healing anymore.
The other silver lining is that it doesn’t have its army.
The fire dragon’s skills are mostly enhanced versions of the fire wyrm’s.
Naturally, it can do anything a fire wyrm could.
Specifically, I’m thinking of the skill the fire wyrm used to back me into a corner and cause me all kinds of pain.
Command, an advanced version of the Leadership skill the fire wyrm had.
A skill that can control its minions with even greater power.
Luckily, the dragon’s soldiers have all been wiped out by Mother’s attack.
This is a pure one-on-one fight.
Thank you, O Great Mother!
However, even after taking all that into account, the fire dragon still has the advantage.
I fire a Poison Shot as I dodge the fire dragon’s attack, but it disappears before connecting with the dragon’s body.
The effect of Imperial Scales must have weakened the magic’s structure before it even came into contact with the dragon’s flame-covered body.
And once it did, it was weakened enough that the Flame Wrap simply evaporated it.
The fire dragon didn’t need to take any evasive action. Its defenses were enough to nullify the Poison Shot either way.
This monster has attack power that means instant death for me on top of defense that won’t budge from any weak attacks.
And its speed is higher than mine.
If it feels like it, the fire dragon probably could use its speed plus its Evasion and Probability Super-Correction skills to avoid Poison Shot, too.
Okay, this officially sucks.
Thanks to my Cursed Evil Eye, the dragon’s HP is slowly decreasing.
But honestly, there’s no way I can bring this huge number down to 0 with Evil Eyes alone.
I would collapse from exhaustion long before then.
I’m not expecting much in the way of stat decreases, either.
I mean, it is working. A little bit.
But the speed at which its stats are dropping is much slower than when I use it on other monsters.
It’ll be a long time before the effects of the stat reduction are actually noticeable, too.
I’m sure I would end up dead before then.
Paralyzing Evil Eye is my best hope for a reversal.
But then again, it’s probably best not to get my hopes up.
That’s because the fire dragon’s Status Condition Resistance skill has just gone up to level 2.
Hopefully, it had almost all the proficiency it needed already and simply got lucky. If not, then that means its resistance will go up faster than I can inflict paralysis.
I don’t think it can ward off the effects completely, but it’s probably too much to wish for the fire dragon to become completely paralyzed.
There goes another move I can’t count on.
As I rule out more possibilities, my remaining options are getting real sparse.
The most effective possible method at this point is to clobber the dragon with enough poison to overwhelm its resistance.
My Deadly Spider Poison is the most lethal attack method of any of my skills.
Even with Status Condition Resistance, I doubt it could get through that without a scratch.
But one hit probably won’t be enough to do it in.
I can’t just throw a lucky punch and hope for the best.
I need to be absolutely sure my attacks will hit dead-on.
But Flame Wrap poses a problem.
That fire is so fierce that it whittled down my HP by grazing me.
I have to break through that somehow, or I won’t be able to hit with enough firepower.
My attacks will just burn up, and me along with them.
Even as my thoughts race, my body brain keeps desperately avoiding the fire dragon’s effects.
It’s so intense that I give up on attacking completely and concentrate on dodging.
Even when the magic brain counterattacks with spells, the combo of Imperial Scales and Flame Wrap brushes them right off.
Even Poison Fog, which I used to massacre so many monsters in the battle against the fire wyrm, would be useless here.
The fire dragon leaps into the air.
Seeing that, I quickly adjust my Poison Synthesis settings.
Almost immediately afterward, flames burst out from the fire dragon’s mouth.
An immense breath attack torches the ground.
It’s Inferno Breath, a level-10 Fire Dragon ability.
This wide-range destructive force blows away the nearby earth, melting it and turning the area into a new magma ocean.
I jump in the nick of time, invoking Weak Poison with Poison Synthesis at the same time.
I synthesize the largest amount I can and take shelter inside the giant blob of poison.
Since I set the damage points to the minimum, my HP doesn’t take much damage.
The moment I entered the poison ball and the moment the breath attack covered the ground were more or less at the same exact time.
Even though I wasn’t hit directly, my HP still drops.
I stretch a thread up to the ceiling and frantically escape before the poison evaporates completely.
Then I flee along the ceiling without looking back.
Naturally, the fire dragon chases after me, but at least I escaped the newly formed magma.
A fireball is bearing down on me.
Kicking off the ceiling, I drop into the air just as the fireball impacts the spot where I was only moments ago.
Thrown into open space, my body is pulled toward the ground by gravity.
As if it was waiting for that moment, the fire dragon swoops in with its fangs bared.
I pull on the thread I attached to the ceiling, thin enough that the dragon would have difficulty seeing it.
At the same time, I synthesize Deadly Spider Poison imbued with the Paralysis effect.
The fire dragon passes directly beneath me.
Then it goes into a tailspin in midair.
The instant the dragon’s mouth closes, my enhanced vision sees it twist its body to narrowly avoid swallowing the poison.
My bait-and-switch poison strategy, which has ushered so many Middle Stratum monsters into their graves, has been defeated.
At least it bought me enough time to get back down to the ground.
But that was a big mistake.
The spot I land on is surrounded by magma, with nowhere to run.
I’m a perfect sitting duck for the fire dragon.
It wasn’t just attacking me with Inferno Breath. There was a deeper strategy that involved destroying the ground itself to change the flow of the magma.
No matter where I turn, there’s nowhere to go except up above me, where the fire dragon has righted itself and is hurtling straight toward me.
I can see in its eyes that it won’t let me escape.
I’m trapped on all sides.
The fire dragon unleashes another Inferno Breath.
Roaring flames engulf my entire body without the slightest resistance.
Then, just like that, my body burns up into nothing, evaporating without leaving so much as ash.
JULIUS
Hyrince has returned.
I just found out yesterday.
I was eager to talk to him right away, but there’s a time and place for everything.
It took a while before Hyrince could meet with me.
I was so anxious about it yesterday, I couldn’t sit still.
Today, I can finally speak to Hyrince face-to-face.
I’m waiting on the edge of my seat in the room where we agreed to meet.
“Looks like I’ve kept you waiting awhile.”
Hyrince enters the room at last.
He looks a bit thinner than the burly man I remember.
“Shun…I’m sorry!”
Hyrince bows his head deeply.
“Julius shouldn’t have been the one to die. He should’ve survived, not me.”
“What do you mean…?”
I can barely speak, my mouth running dry.
“It was this…”
“What is it?”
Hyrince holds out a tattered red feather.
“It’s a phoenix feather. An item that makes the holder temporarily invincible.”
“What happened exactly?”
“It was the hero, Julius, who was supposed to have it. But he said it would be better for me to have it, since I’m the tank, so he gave it to me…”
“You mean…”
“Yeah. I’m only alive because of this item. It’s lost its effect now, but…Julius should have been the one to have it, not me. Julius was the one who should’ve survived.”
Hyrince lowers his head again as if in penitence.
“Hyrince, please raise your head. There’s no reason for you to apologize.”
“No, I…”
“Hyrince, I’m sure my brother forced you to take it against your will, didn’t he? I bet he said something like, ‘I’m not going to die—don’t worry.’”
“Ha-ha… You really are his brother. That’s exactly right.”
Hyrince looks up with a bitter smile.
“‘I’m not going to die. Since you’re our shield user, your chances of dying are much higher, right? So it’s better if you take it, Hyrince.’ No matter how much I argued with him, he refused to take it.”
My lips wobble at Hyrince’s horrible imitation.
Steadying myself, I force out the words I need to ask.
“Hyrince, please tell me…about my brother’s last moments.”
“All right.”
Hyrince straightens up.
He sits facing me across the table.
“But just so you know, I might not be able to tell you much. It pains me to admit it, but I didn’t understand much of what was happening even at the time…”
And so, Hyrince tells me from start to finish about how the war broke out.
Julius and his party were guarding one of the fortresses.
Refusing to stay holed up inside, he went out to directly join the fray.
With his incredible range of combat skills, he defeated several elite members of the demon army in battle before finally entering one-on-one combat with the enemy general.
The general was strong but not as strong as my brother the hero.
Julius magnificently defeated his opponent, then advised the rest of the demon army to surrender.
“And that was when it happened. When that…thing…showed up.”
The “thing” in question was a white little girl.
“Just a pure-white girl. There’s no other way to describe it.”
The girl walked onto the battlefield as if taking a leisurely stroll.
Her eyes were closed.
“That’s the last thing I remember. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground. Looking back, I don’t think I was out for very long…but by the time I woke up, it was all over.”
When Hyrince came to his senses, all that remained of his friends were their clothing and equipment.
It was as if the people themselves had simply disappeared.
“I think I know what it was, though. A Rot Attack.”
“Rot Attack…”
“Yeah. They call it the attribute that governs death. Anyone hit with a Rot Attack will become dust and perish.”
Is that kind of thing really possible?
My brother Julius was the hero, the strongest human alive.
And he was turned into dust…?
That’s impossible.
And yet, that’s exactly what Hyrince says happened in my brother’s final moments.
“I can’t believe it…”
As I sink into silence, Hyrince produces something from his pocket.
“That’s…the one my brother always wore.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he ever told you, but this was your mother’s last gift to Julius before she died.”
Hyrince hands the object to me.
It’s a pure-white scarf.
“I’m sorry. That was all I could bring back with me.”
“Not at all. Thank you very much.”
I can’t say anything else.
My vision starts to blur.
I remember the first time I saw my older brother.
I was still a baby then.
My brother came to the nursery room with a few attendants.
He kept looking between Sue and me, tears streaming from his eyes.
That was the only time I ever saw my brother cry.
He murmured something as he patted our heads, then left the room.
At the time, I didn’t know this world’s language.
So I didn’t understand my brother’s words.
Even now, I don’t know what he said.
But I think he must have come to some kind of decision at that moment.
Later, I learned that his and my mother had passed a
way the day before.
To be honest, knowing that my mother made this white scarf doesn’t carry that much weight for me.
I mean, I never even met my mother.
But my brother was different.
I’m sure that for him, our mother was an important person who could never be replaced.
Losing his beloved parent at a young age and learning that he had to fight as a hero…
I wonder what kind of decision my brother made in the midst of all that suffering.
“Nice to meet you. I’m your big brother Julius. I might not look it, but I’m the hero.”
I clearly remember my brother’s smile that second time we met, our first real interaction.
His smile surprised me. It was so composed for a child around grade-school age.
If you include my previous life, I was theoretically the older one, but I remember thinking I could never smile like that.
It was a smile that seemed to be hiding something deep underneath.
“You’re pretty clever, Schlain. Maybe you could be a good politician when you grow up.”
“Sue, don’t hang off Schlain so much.”
“You’ve got talent with a sword, too, Schlain. How about it? Want to join me someday? Ah, Sue, don’t glare at me like that. Fine, fine…you can come, too.”
“Hey, Schlain. I hear you have a girlfriend now? So you call each other by nicknames and everything, huh? Can I start calling you Shun, too, then?”
“Shun. I know Sue’s cute and all, but don’t spoil her too much, okay?”
“Shun, our father is very kind, you know. It’s simply that his position as a king comes before his family. He’s doing his best to fulfill his duties to his kingdom. Try to understand, okay?”
“Shun, if anything happens, just talk to Leston. He’s always in the castle anyway. He’s got the most time on his hands of anyone in our family, so I’m sure he’ll help you out.”
“That’s just how our eldest brother is. He might’ve lost sight of himself a little bit, but he still cares about our kingdom just as much as I do. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“If you ask me, Hyrince is getting to the age where he should be thinking about marrying and carrying on his bloodline. But I’ve never heard him mention it, so I’m a little worried… Me? If I got married, I wouldn’t be able to give my spouse anything in return. Why marry if it’d just make both parties unhappy?”
