by Fuse
“Impressive,” I said.
“Yes. Sir Hakuro taught them well,” Shuna replied.
“He certainly has,” Benimaru agreed. “Growing younger has only added further polish to his demon-instructor ways.”
“Wow! I wish I could play with ’em, too!”
Milim, meanwhile, apparently had the wrong idea about this whole battle. Better not think about it. If I play her game, I lose by default.
“Hey, c’mon, do you think I could—”
“No.”
She was tugging at my clothing, begging for a chance. I had to play bad cop with her.
I wish she wouldn’t look at me like that. I’m about ready to cry myself, here.
Up in the sky, things were getting pretty explosive.
Soei was there, and like Benimaru, he was only capable of using Airflight—and he wasn’t particularly great at it, either. Despite that—and I don’t know how he managed it—he was grappling with a megalodon in midair.
The secret behind it was actually simple. Soka and her four dragonewt guards were positioned above the shark, casting their shadows over its body. Soei could then use Shadow Motion to make a beeline for them. Magic Interference only interfered with magicules in midair, so Shadow Motion didn’t seem to be affected.
I gotta hand it to Soei—the moment he spotted that loophole, he immediately made use of it. But he was just getting started.
Now Soka’s team of five was hovering over a single megalodon. This was indicated by the way both the “real” Soei and four of his Replication-conjured clones were each latched on to a different shark.
“Monster Puppet String!!”
Soei’s four clones each launched the skill at once. It was a secret move, letting the caster fully control monsters that lacked intelligence. Special bewitching string was used to tap into the neural network that carried messages from the brain, replacing them with fabricated orders instead. This immediately placed four megalodons under Soei’s control—using the dead bodies of other animals just came back to bite these guys.
Controlling each of his replicated bodies, Soei had the megalodons attack one another. They split into two pairs, feasting upon each other’s flesh.
“Take those four out when the time is right,” he shouted to the dragonewts above, using the fifth megalodon he was personally riding to head for Charybdis. It was such a brilliant, dazzling display that you almost forgot those sharks were supposed to be A rank.
It looked like Soei was on a whole new level now, much like Benimaru. I’m sure he was putting his all into this fight, but he made it seem incredibly effortless. He couldn’t have been much different in strength from Geld—where did that clear difference come from? Despite the chaos all around me, I couldn’t help but wonder.
As for Soka’s team:
“Understood, Sir Soei. Leave the rest to us.”
Soka gave him a quick salute, steeling her gaze at the megalodons.
“Don’t let up! I refuse to let you do anything to disappoint Sir Soei!”
Her voice was cold as she addressed her team. Toka, Saika, Nanso, and Hokuso looked just as grim and resolute.
I knew Hakuro was a demon instructor. But what about Soei? In a relatively short time, this group of five had grown astonishingly coolheaded. What kind of education did it take to instill that in them?
After a little bit, when the megalodon-on-megalodon fighting grew more intense, the four dragonewts under Soka began their attack. Soka stayed high above, giving out orders for the others to follow.
It worked. Despite the difference in rank, they were bringing the sharks down.
Soei wasn’t the only one pulling off impressive feats today.
And thus, Soka’s team bagged four confirmed shark kills for themselves.
Even more impressive were Shion and Ranga. They must’ve formed a team when I wasn’t paying attention.
“This time, no matter what, I’ve just got to stand out!”
“Mm. Yes. I am in agreement with that opinion.”
So Shion jumped on the back of Ranga, now at his default huge size. He was expecting this, and once she was on, he started running—and jumped right off my command post on the hill, sprinting straight into the air.
Wait. Into the air?
Looking closely, Ranga was running in midair, making a few powerful leaps as he did, as if there were invisible footholds to stand on. And there were, in a way. He was using the extra skill Control Wind to create them. Pretty skillful feat, there. Maybe you could call it Windwalker or something. But anyway, it meant that Ranga could run even faster in midair than he could on the ground.
This art used magicules, however, which meant that Magic Interference could affect it. No matter how sturdy Ranga’s footholds were, a megalodon’s interference might be enough to shatter them…or so I thought.
As I watched, trying to figure out what he was doing, Ranga showed off some truly amazing moves. In a moment, he was in the air above a megalodon and jumping off, gaining speed as he practically dive-bombed the enemy directly below him.
At his full size, Ranga was a good fifteen feet or so in length. Not much compared to a megalodon, but still, that’s a lot of mass. And now Ranga was approaching the shark, combining his own leaping skills with the pull of gravity to gain more speed than running alone could accomplish. But this wasn’t simply a ramming attack. Shion was still riding him, and her large sword was out.
Despite being parallel with the ground below, Shion couldn’t have looked more serene. And the moment that Ranga and the megalodon crossed paths, she brought her sword down, the light-purple glow it emitted arcing across the air. She had used her aura to expand and strengthen the sword, extending it to over three times its normal size. Like a guillotine blade thundering down from above, the demon sword descended…and neatly removed the megalodon’s head.
“Behold! Decapitating Demon Blade!”
Decapitating Demon Blade was the name of the skill. Instead of unleashing pure aura like Ogresword Cannon, it simply formed it into a set shape for use. But thanks to working with Ranga to gain as much speed as she possibly could for the strike, the tip of the extended sword flickered faster than the speed of sound, cleaving right through the megalodon’s head.
It was a simple, yet absolutely heroic move, I thought, and in that way it befitted Shion well. After that, now that the shark’s Magic Interference was gone, Ranga shot some lightning down to burn the body, and that was that.
Shion and Ranga used the same tactics to take out two more of the sharks.
“Fighting these huge, tactless brutes is no fun at all. I grow tired of it. I’d like to target their leader, but what do you think, Ranga?”
“Shion, that opinion speaks to my own heart as well. Let us go and see what this foe’s strength truly is.”
“That’s the spirit, Ranga. Let’s do it!”
Their excuses made, the two of them sprinted toward Charybdis.
There were, at first, thirteen megalodons, each an A-ranked monster. Of the two remaining survivors, one was already dead, slashed to ribbons by Hakuro’s barrage of strikes. We had lost nobody on our side to death or injury. Things were going well, and I breathed an internal sigh of relief over it.
“Ah, how disappointing. Your mobility and ability to avoid danger have improved, but your offense is still woefully lacking. You couldn’t even defeat a single one of them… Once this battle is over, I will need to toughen up your training.”
“Whoa! Come on, gramps! If you toughen it up any further, I’m gonna die! Like, really, really die!”
“Did you just call me gramps?”
“Aghh?!”
I heard a pained scream from Gobta, and then all was quiet. I wasn’t sure what had happened. Maybe some passing megalodon bit him or something, huh? So I guess we now have one casualty. I’m sure he’s not dead, though, so I’ll just believe that he’s still all right.
—And as I was thinking all this nonsense, new developments began to unfold. Soei was
controlling the final megalodon like a well-trained mount, making it sink its teeth mercilessly into Charybdis. It was latched on to the great dragon now, looking like a work of surrealist art.
The megalodon was still alive, but it was no longer any sort of threat. That just left Charybdis to tackle.
Paying no further mind to the megalodon, Soei flew over to Charybdis.
“Whoa, you think Soei’s gonna be all right?”
“Sir Rimuru, there is nothing to worry about. Soei is second only to me in terms of real strength. This is the perfect chance to test out Charybdis’s powers.”
Benimaru heard me muttering to myself and cheerfully replied. He didn’t sound worried at all, implying just how much he believed in Soei.
“Besides, we have that pair in the battle, too.” He pointed to Shion and Ranga.
They were both on the dragon’s back. Presumably they had climbed up to a pretty high altitude to avoid Magic Interference, then dive-bombed down on it. Looking at Charybdis, though… The sheer size of it was mind-blowing. Being over 150 feet long was a threat in and of itself. Simply dropping a mass that size on a city from above would result in unimaginable damage.
Understood. Based on an estimate of its size, from a height of—
That’s fine, Great Sage. Thanks, but I don’t need to crunch the numbers. It’d just depress me to hear it anyway. If you’re gonna be that way, how about giving me some easy way to beat this guy?
Radio silence, huh? The Sage had this incredibly bad habit of going mum exactly when I needed it the most. Or maybe it was just pouting at me.
Anyway.
Before my eyes, Soei, Shion, and Ranga had commenced their attack on Charybdis.
Things have been going well so far. Maybe…
But despite my wishes, it wasn’t that easy. The sheer size was a true menace, and now that was clearer than ever. All three launched attacks, but none worked at all. They were up against a 150-foot-long frame; anything they could throw at it was little more than peeling a layer off an onion. And more importantly, none of it could reach its magic-controlling neural network.
Charybdis, technically speaking, was not a living thing. It was a monster with a pretty twisted ecology, and thus it had no internal organs or anything. Picture it as using the flesh of lesser dragons to construct an armor of meat surrounding it.
This was to be expected, and it was also a given that no half-baked attack would be enough to stab through it.
“So it’s come to this. My magic had virtually no effect from outside of a thousand feet…but if a close-range approach like that fails as well, there is nothing we can do. Magic doesn’t work, and now we know that physical attacks are just as meaningless,” an anxious Treyni said.
“See, this is why I told you to leave it to me…”
Even at a time like this, Milim was still wheedling incessantly. I had no time for her at the moment.
According to Treyni, even Aerial Blade—the strongest elemental magic spell she had at her disposal—was reduced to only about a tenth of its natural power. Far from the deciding blow it was meant to be. It did deal some damage, but as she put it, the wounds immediately healed themselves.
Plus, after the attack had continued for a while, it suddenly flew into a violent rage—the pain receptors must’ve taken their time transmitting their message to its brain.
“It suddenly sped up and attempted to ram me. Each of the scales on its body slashed at us, like small individual swords. The light rays from its eye scattered the nearby magicules. To beings like ourselves, which create their corporeal forms through magicules, it was a very difficult attack to deal with.”
She recounted the situation for us.
I had this explained to me at the meeting hall, but seeing it in person made the sheer ferocity easy to understand. Run-of-the-mill attacks were meaningless against this monster.
“…Oh no!” Treyni suddenly shouted.
“Its single eye flashed red for a moment. That might be a sign that Charybdis is preparing to attack,” Benimaru explained.
Uh, I saw it, too, guys, okay? I was just, you know, taking a more laid-back approach to assessing it. Besides, Shion had just summoned her full aura to bust out an Ogresword Cannon, so I was kind of distracted by that. Maybe that’s what pissed Charybdis off, but regardless of the reason, it looked dangerous. I decided to send a Thought Communication their way.
Did you hear that? It might be hatching something, so keep your guard up!
Yes, Sir Rimuru!
Understood.
I hear you, my master!
I nodded at the replies. I’m sure they didn’t need that “keep your guard up” reminder, but hey, just in case.
But my message turned out to be an incredibly good idea. Just a moment later, Soei and the others were exposed to a truly massive attack. A deafening sound akin to fingernails on glass filled the air, itself enough to make it feel like your very soul was being contaminated. It was the sound of the scales that covered Charybdis’s body grating against one another. And then…
“My heavens! I had no idea it possessed an attack like that…”
“This…is bad. It can’t be evaded.”
The tension was clear in Treyni’s and Benimaru’s voices. From every inch of its own body, Charybdis was unleashing a calamity, one that would spread death and destruction wherever it went.
And in the midst of it…
“Hohh! So this is Tempest Scale, the attack that made Charybdis feared as a tyrant! Never seen that before!”
That was Milim. Having nothing else to do, she was offering color commentary to me now. The name of it doesn’t matter. And if you knew about that, I really wish you could’ve told us…
I almost asked her what she knew, but I stopped myself. Now was no time for a long-winded explanation, and the attack was pretty self-evident anyway.
Right now, I was more worried for Shion and our other allies. It had happened right after I warned them to stay on guard, so Soei, Shion, and Ranga were just barely able to take evasive action. But they were being threatened by Charybdis’s overwhelming supply of scales—hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands—being shot out in all directions like high-caliber bullets. They varied in size, but even the tiniest were several inches in diameter. Take one unguarded, and it’d no doubt be even more disastrous for you than a sword slash.
There were tens of thousands of them raining down at incredible speed. There was no place to run. The so-called Tempest Scale worked at a far broader range than even Hellflare, which was capable of mowing down entire landscapes.
“Ngh, I can’t dodge them all. Ranga and I have Shadow Motion, but…”
“Dodge them? What a childish thing to suggest. This won’t be enough to kill me!” Shion snickered at Soei’s assessment.
Her eyes were bloodshot, and I was pretty sure she had lost all sense of reason. She was brandishing her sword at Charybdis, not even bothering to protect herself against the storm of scales. She was obviously in danger.
Soei and Ranga met in the air once more.
“…Soei, you should flee. I will serve as a shield for Shion.”
Fully stretching out his legs, Ranga leaped away from their foe’s Magic Interference radius, then used the extra skill Control Wind to turn back toward Charybdis. The first wave of scales had already reached him, cutting through skin. Just as he promised, he intended to shield Shion with his own body.
“Are you crazy, Ranga? You need to go!” Shion shouted, regaining her senses.
“Heh-heh-heh… I imagine that Sir Rimuru, too, would select the option that gave him the greatest chance of survival. But with a body this size, I cannot find shadows suitable enough for me to use Shadow Motion with. You go alone, Soei.”
Shadow Motion often seemed like an all-powerful skill, but even it had its limitations. In the air, with only stable and temporary footholds available, it simply wasn’t available to Ranga. Hearing this made even Soei hesitate for a bit.
&n
bsp; “…The greatest chance of survival, eh? Then I’m staying here. But don’t worry. I’ll make the real me retreat before I die.”
“Ha! How Soei-like of you. In that case, may we all live to see another day!” Shion laughed, voice loud and clear.
Faced with the terrifying Tempest Scale, not one dared to give up on themselves. It could be called reckless, but to me, I couldn’t have asked for anything else.
They were all ready for this.
“You people really are a bunch of idiots, you know that? You could at least count on me now, of all times.”
I decided now was the time to speak.
“““?!”””
All three froze in surprise. I flew in front of them, raising my left arm against the advancing scales.
“““Sir Rimuru!!”””
I could hear them shouting my name, a mixture of shock and joy in their voices. I didn’t respond, head faced forward to handle what must be done.
Which was…
“Consume them all, Glutton!!”
With my call, the insatiable Glutton within me stirred. The results unfolded in a single moment. I imagine not too many knew what had happened. The wall of innumerable scales that loomed over them just a moment ago had now neatly disappeared.
“A…astounding. Well done, Sir Rimuru…”
It was Soei who found his voice first. And really, I was just as surprised as he was.
I flew up there since, hey, if it’s a long-range attack, I could just eat it all up.
…Okay, that’s a lie. The Great Sage actually tipped me off. All I did was take it at its word and step up to protect my friends. Using Shadow Motion to appear in front of them, I just barely made it in time to follow the Sage’s advice and unleash Glutton.
The effect was awe-inspiring. All the scales that hurtled through the air between us and Charybdis were fully consumed. This skill was even more off the charts than I had thought—and well done on the Sage’s part, too, for making the timely suggestion.
