by Hiro Ainana
Although even if it had been a woman, I didn’t think I was advanced enough to be attracted to someone with a face like a chameleon monster.
His face must have been warped by demonic potion, just like Ludaman’s.
I picked up the captured plunderer with Magic Hand and carried him along.
Of course, I could’ve just left him there, but I didn’t want to come back to find a corpse half-eaten by some monster.
Placing a seal slate and using Return every time I captured someone would’ve been way too much of a pain.
“Ooh, so this is the trap level?”
My “Trap Detection” skill informed me that there were several traps up ahead.
Beyond the traps, a weak-looking plunderer was dozing off in the middle of the passageway.
Actually, this guy might be one of the traps, too.
Standing in front of him was a transparent monster called a “wall slime” that appeared to be trained by the plunderer.
I’d seen monsters like this once in a famous tabletop RPG I played a long time ago.
If I hadn’t noticed the red dot on my radar, I might have approached to capture the plunderer and run right into the wall slime.
“All right, I can’t be wasting time here.”
I used Magic Hand to push the plunderer from behind, sending him right into the wall slime.
Obviously, he panicked and started flailing around inside the creature’s goo.
In the meantime, I crossed over the traps with “Skyrunning,” then used a pebble to shoot out the oil slime’s core right as it extended a tendril toward me.
Next, I produced a Thunder Rod from Storage and used it to electrocute the plunderer in the slime’s remains, rendering him immobile.
“…Ew.”
The man twitching on the ground was sticky with slime.
If I knocked him out with a punch, it might get on my clothes, so I used Magic Hand to strike the chameleon plunderer’s head against his, then tied him up with the same spell.
“This one’s face is warped, too…”
The upper half of the man’s face was covered in murky blue crystals.
Maybe there were more people who’d been transfigured by demonic potion than I realized.
Next, I snuck through a corridor patrolled by an areamaster-class monster, then used “Warp” to get through a narrow passage populated by poisonous bugs and shadow monsters, until finally I came upon the first outpost of the plunderers.
“Looks like the real fight starts here.”
Two lookouts with bows were standing around chatting.
There was a total of ten plunderers at the outpost; one of them was in the 30s, but the rest were all level 10 and below.
My first order of business was to deal with the one with skills like “Sprinting” and “Off-Road Running” before he escaped.
Not that it would matter if the noise of the battle alerted the rest of the base anyway.
Once I’d finished assessing the situation on my map, I thought about using Clairvoyance to scout things out but decided against it and closed my magic menu.
I didn’t want some plunderer with sharp senses to notice me doing it.
Instead, I put down the two plunderers I was carrying with Magic Hand, then landed right in front of the two guards with “Flashrunning.”
“Wh—?”
“Y—”
Before they could complete a word, I knocked both of them out with a few swift punches.
There didn’t seem to be walls around the outpost, so I could see the rest of the plunderers from here.
One sharp-eyed plunderer noticed me and immediately tried to break into a run.
I don’t think so.
I jumped in front of the plunderers with “Warp,” then quickly knocked out the rabbitfolk plunderer with the “Sprinting” skill.
“What the—?”
Once the rest of the plunderers reached for their weapons, I brought them down one by one with artful steps.
When I hit one of them, he emitted a red light.
According to my AR, it was a buff called Demonic Body, a special side effect of overdosing on demonic potion.
“Boss!”
Oh?
One of the plunderers who I thought I’d knocked out was pulling himself up and shouting.
I dealt another blow to the unexpectedly tough plunderer, knocking him out properly this time.
It was the one who’d let off the red light before, so on top of creating some kind of barrier, Demonic Body seemed to increase the user’s endurance and strength as well.
For me, it just made him a little more annoying to deal with, but it might pose a serious challenge to a fighter on a similar level.
“Never seen you before. Are you a garnet-badge explorer?”
A half-naked man in his thirties swaggered out of the shadows, looking like a self-styled big shot.
“Your Wolfsbane, comrade.”
A completely naked man emerged from behind the half-naked one, handing him a spear with a black blade.
“Wolfsbane” must be the name of the Magic Spear.
“Think you can just show up and interrupt my fun? I’ll be killin’ you slowly, mate.”
The half-naked man swallowed what appeared to be demonic potion. Red magic circles glowed on his body for a moment, then disappeared as jet-black scales grew over his arms.
“Demon Armor—Black Scales.”
As he uttered what must have been an activation phrase, a pair of bumps on his forehead grew into two horns.
It was a pretty cheesy name, but the overall effect was that of a pretty cool antihero.
“Bwa-ha-ha, cower in fear! For he is none other than the right-hand man of Plunderer King Ludaman: Demon Warrior Kurse!”
The naked man sneered as he introduced the half-naked warrior.
That’s great and all, but could you put some clothes on, please?
“Come at me, user of the black arts! But paralytic poison won’t work on the likes of me!”
I was actually empty-handed, but since I’d defeated all his comrades in an instant, he must have assumed that I had a hidden dagger coated with paralytic poison.
“Or are you too scared?”
Kurse brandished his Magic Spear and bucked his horns intimidatingly.
He had skills like “Spear,” “Blink,” and even the unusual “Counterattack.”
That must be why he wanted me to attack him first.
This was a rare chance, so I decided to lower my attacks to a speed at which he could counterattack it so that I could learn the skill, too.
I produced a cheap dagger from Storage, moved toward him slowly enough to avoid using “Blink,” and jabbed at the man.
“Tch. Not bad, assassin!”
I had tried to hold back considerably, but it took all the man had just to dodge, so he wasn’t able to counterattack.
Oh, all right. Tossing the dagger aside, I swung a straightforward telephone punch at him instead.
“Bad move, mate! Demon Wolf’s Fang!”
Shouting some kind of attack name, the man unleashed a counterattack.
Black mist whirled around his spear, spinning like a drill as it zoomed toward me.
If I let that hit me, it’d probably hurt.
I held up a magic-armored hand to knock the spear away before it hit me, then used the other hand to strike him right in the jaw.
The red light around the man’s body disappeared.
> Skill Acquired: “Counterattack”
Sweet, I got the skill.
“Guuuuuh!”
The warrior unleashed an animalistic yell and managed to stay standing.
I thought that attack would knock him out, but he was tougher than I thought.
I grabbed his shoulder with one hand, smacking him around with the other hand to render him unconscious.
“B… Bwuh…”
He seemed to be trying to say something, but the rapid blows to his cheeks p
revented him from speaking properly, and finally he passed out.
“Let go of him!”
The naked man raised a scimitar and charged at me.
He should be the last plunderer in the area.
My new “Counterattack” skill helped me block and counter the attack with just the right timing.
I followed its guidance and swung my fist and was able to knock him out with even less strength than usual.
Well, fractionally less anyway.
“Now, it would be a pain to carry all these guys around…”
I surveyed the plunderers lying strewn across the floor.
There was a perfectly sized patch of exposed dirt in one corner, and I couldn’t really make a pit here due to the nature of the labyrinth, so I decided to make a temporary jail.
I tied up the men, disarmed them, and collected them all on the patch of earth.
Just as I was about to use the Earth Magic spell Wall from my magic menu, I heard a battle cry from one of the plunderers.
“My slime is the strongeeeeest!”
The second plunderer I’d defeated, the slime fellow, had recovered and was charging at me.
Judging by the red light around him, he must have popped some demonic potion while I wasn’t looking.
He had cut through the ropes around him with crystalline claws that had sprouted from his fingers.
“Take thiiiiis!”
“…Yeeesh!”
Slimy tentacles sprouted from his mouth and nose, startling me into making a strange noise.
“What is this, a freak show?”
Muttering to myself, I saw in my AR that the tentacles were a monster called a Parasite Slime. They must have been living in the man’s body.
If I hadn’t electrocuted him with the Thunder Rod before, these slimes might’ve come out to attack me the first time.
I didn’t want to have a hand-to-hand fight with this sticky weirdo, so I used my go-to, Magic Hand, to grab his legs and pull him to the ground.
Before he could get up, I pulled out the Thunder Rod and paralyzed him along with the parasitic slimes.
“You’re not getting away!”
The chameleon man tried to escape while I was dealing with the slime man, but I used a stone spear from Storage to pin him to the wall.
The demonic potion must have permanently altered their bodies to recover more quickly.
“Kwaaaaeo!”
Even their screams didn’t sound human.
I hit the chameleon man harder than before to knock him out, propped him up next to the other plunderers, and started making a prison with Wall to trap them in.
Even these superhuman freaks shouldn’t be able to bust through a fifteen-foot-thick earth wall.
The particularly tough half-naked man, Kurse, was already recovering, and I heard him cursing through the small air hole.
“Sit tight. I’ll come back to collect you later.”
With that, I left the plunderer outpost behind.
After taking down a few more lookout posts, I finally arrived at the main hideout.
It had taken about a half hour from my arrival via Return. Maybe I wasted too much time.
“Security is one’s greatest enemy, you know.”
As one of the sentries of the main hideout yawned, I snuck up behind him and incapacitated him.
Quickly assessing the base on my map, I determined the best way to reach the captives, as well as an escape route.
“Hmm, how about a blockade?”
I used Earth Magic to create a giant wall blocking the four main passages.
The bare earth wasn’t exposed in this area, but I was still able to make a wall by using three to five times more magic than usual.
That made a slightly more brittle wall than it normally would, but I just made it extra thick to make up for that.
“Wh-what the?!”
“Those labyrinth bastards are serious this time!”
“A wall?!”
Ignoring the voices of panicking plunderers, I used “Flashrunning” to charge at the main building, to make a single opening.
Flexible Shield!
Right before I collided with the building, I used the intermediate Practical Magic spell Flexible Shield to soften the impact.
The wall I’d crashed into broke open like Styrofoam, alarming the plunderers inside with a boom and a cloud of dust.
> Title Acquired: Attacker
“W-we’re under attack!”
“Is it other plunderers?!”
“No, only a demon could do something like this!”
A demon? How rude.
Oops. One of the plunderers was trying to escape through a secret exit.
I used “Warp” to appear in front of him, stomping down the stone cover he was attempting to lift.
“Good call, but you’re a little too late.”
“Tch, masked bastard!”
The plunderer whipped out a sword from his belt and slashed at me.
The black blade emitted a red light as it swung through the air.
“A cursed sword, huh?”
According to the AR, it was a magic one-handed sword from the labyrinth.
The information displayed didn’t mention that it was cursed, but it was pitch-black when I turned on my “Miasma Vision” for a moment, so there was little doubt.
Pulling out a cheap dagger again, I parried the plunderer’s sword.
The dagger broke with a sharp clang.
I guess cheap weapons aren’t very durable.
“What, did you crack it with some stupid attack?”
Seeing my weapon break, the plunderer sneered nastily and licked his blade.
It was only then that I noticed that his tongue was forked like a snake’s.
On closer inspection, his arms were longer than normal, too.
“Diiiiie!”
“Yer goin’ doooown!”
The other plunderers started bellowing and charging at me, too, encouraged by their comrade’s apparent advantage in battle.
These guys all had strange physical traits, too, like insect- or crab-like carapaces on their limbs or animallike fur.
One of them was even a snake from the head up, but that was because he was a race of beastfolk called “snake-headed folk.”
“Raaah!”
“Take thiiis!”
As the plunderers attacked from all sides, I swung a stone spear from Storage to knock them all back.
It wasn’t too strong a swing, but it still knocked all of them into the walls.
“Wh-where’d this bastard come from?”
“Tch! A mage?”
“There was no chant. Must be a magic tool!”
Bzzzt. It’s a Unique Skill.
“Use the drugs, boys! No holding back now! Don’t let this crazy masked bastard get away alive!”
Seeing his comrades at a loss, the Magic Sword wielder shouted instructions.
He must have been left in charge while Ludaman was away.
“This’ll be easy. When we’ve had demonic potion, we can take on an enemy above level ten no problem!”
As the plunderers scrambled for their demonic potions, the leader put on a bluffing leer, displaying a fang-like dogtooth.
Sorry, but ten levels isn’t going to do much. You’re still 280 levels short.
“Rrrrgh!”
“Here gooooes!”
Once the group had taken the dangerous drug, they entered an overdose state.
The red magic circles that appeared on their body seeped into their skin, warping their bodies even further.
Some grew horns, some had blades burst out of their upper arms, and some grew feathered or leathery wings.
They were like crude mash-ups of humans and monsters.
“That’s freaky,” I muttered.
“Heh, someone who’s never taken demonic potion wouldn’t understand this all-powerful feeling!” an effeminate man boasted.
“Here comes Red-Blade Garon, the Pl
underer King Ludaman’s number one warrior!”
“I’m the top warrior here! Black-Blade Ashiro—special move Armor-Piercing Blade!”
“Already?! Fine, then I’ll use my secret technique, Triple Lava Attack!”
The leader with the black blade and the effeminate man with the red blade bantered with each other as they both launched some kind of special attack.
With the enhancement from the demonic potion, they moved remarkably quickly.
The leader’s was a slashing attack, while the other man’s was stabbing.
Of course, with skills like “Foresight: Versus Human,” I could intercept the attacks, but instead I decided to break their hearts by countering with a secret move of my own.
“Sixfold Rapid Attack.”
It was a special move I’d learned from Hayato, Hero of the Saga Empire, in the old capital.
I struck in six quick flashes of my spear, narrowly avoiding directly piercing the plunderers, who were sent flying with a spray of blood.
They burst through the wall of the building, the shock wave knocking out the rest of the lowly plunderers with ease.
The stone spear crumbled in my hands, unable to withstand the force of the move. Then, with a loud crash, the building collapsed, too.
Escaping into the air with “Skyrunning,” I watched the plunderers from the ceiling.
The stone spear hadn’t even grazed them, but the shock wave had done considerable damage.
The Hero’s move was an impressive one, all right.
It wasn’t quite what I’d planned, but the plunderers outside were too stunned to move, so I used Remote Stun from the magic menu.
The target marks in my AR locked onto the plunderers, one after another.
“Fire.”
As the plunderers stared at the ruins of the building, mouths agape, I treated them to a rain of 120 Remote Stuns.
The Magic Bullets knocked them down one by one, but the ones cloaked with the red light of Demonic Body hadn’t been knocked out completely and started taking cover in the shadows.
These guys who were overdosing on demonic potion were a major pain.
This time, instead of the Remote Stun spell I normally reserved for people, I selected the Short Stun spell I reserved for monsters.
Another invisible rain of bullets came down, hitting the plunderers along with the other facilities of the base.
Short Stun was too powerful to leave them totally intact, since it could break even the hardest of monster carapaces, so most of the plunderers were knocked out with serious injuries.
