by Sakon Kaidou
Aside from exceptions like Ray and Rook, among the newbies that had escaped the central arena, these girls had the greatest combined amount of battle potential. If that hadn’t been the case, they would never have stood a chance against the modified monsters attacking them.
“Phew,” Io sighed. “We can finally catch our breath!”
“N-No, we can’t... Rook is still fighting... We have to help...” said Kasumi.
The three had been intending to help Rook fight Hugo right when the battle began, but they’d had to make a change of plans when they’d gotten attacked by the monsters.
“Oh, yeah! How’s he holding up?!” cried Kasumi.
“They’ve stopped and are now talking about something,” answered Fujinon. “I can’t hear them from here.”
“All right! I’ll use my Bursting Mode and...!” said Io as she was about to make Five-Ring transform into its third form, but Kasumi and Fujinon quickly stopped her.
“D-Don’t...”
“Attacking right now doesn’t seem like a good idea. Let’s watch and see where this goes... Kasumi, are there any other Masters nearby?”
“N-No...” Kasumi slowly shook her head. “Ray’s mark is outside the gates... so he’s still alive... Franklin is there, too, though...”
“I see.”
“Okay! Then let’s go and pick up the drops! Demi-Dragons give lots of stuff!” cried Io before running to take the items around them.
“I-Io... there might be more... so we should be on-guard,” Kasumi warned.
“Let’s sell it all and split the money equally!” Io cried. “Oh, but I might take the armor the boss boxes give! There isn’t much we Barbarian Fighters can equip, you know?”
“Sh-She’s not listening...”
Io got absorbed in her looting, while Kasumi looked at her with teary eyes.
Fujinon, on the other hand, noticed something strange. “Drops...? Wait... why are they dropping items? Tamed monsters aren’t supposed to drop anything, aren’t they?”
Her question wasn’t without reason, for what was happening right here was simply impossible.
In Infinite Dendrogram, the system itself made it so that tamed monsters under someone’s command wouldn’t drop items.
“Not only that, but the default setting makes it so that tamed monsters return to the jewel before they get fatal damage,” she continued. “But even if he changed it, there’s still no reason for them to be dropping items...”
It was evident that the monsters had been made by Franklin and were under his command, which was exactly why they were targeting the kingdom’s Masters.
“But what if they’re not actual tamed monsters and aren’t acting by his orders?” Fujinon said slowly. “What if that directive was imprinted during the creation stages? If that’s the case... If Franklin can do this, then...”
As a conclusion began to form in Fujinon’s mind...
—■■■!!
An air-rending clash resounded around them, causing the three to turn to its source.
It came from the frozen hell — the area of effect of La Porte de l’Enfer.
Its cause was the impact made by the enraged Magingear using all its power to bring one of its blades down on Rook.
Following the sound, the silver-haired young man, Rook, disappeared from the frozen hell. It wasn’t just him, either, for Babylon and Marilyn, his Embryo and minion, were nowhere in sight.
The three girls thought Rook had been defeated and that his creatures had disappeared with him. But they soon noticed something strange.
“Who is that?” asked Kasumi, momentarily breaking the silence enveloping the surroundings.
Indeed, Rook’s team was nowhere in sight.
Instead, there was just someone none of them recognized.
◇◇◇
“Wh-What’s going on?” Hugo asked, perplexed more than anyone else witnessing this event.
Enraged by Rook’s words, he’d swung his blade down on him. Then his attack had been stopped.
The unknown person before him used the long weapon in his right hand to stop the superhuman robot’s blade, and that person definitely didn’t look like Rook. He had devilish wings on his back, devilish horns on his head, and draconic scales on his body. In his right hand he held a silver lance, seemingly made out of three bundled dragon horns.
He was a fine figure of a man, looking much the way one would expect the silver-haired pretty boy to look if he aged a bit.
“Who... Who are you?!” asked Hugo.
In response, the creature flashed a grin before answering.
“Union Jack — Dragon-Devil-Man.”
The man closed in on the Magingear and kicked it away. Though its weight surpassed ten tons, the attack made the machine get blasted a few metels back.
“Kh...!” Hugo quickly recovered from the mental shock and the physical impact before regaining his posture.
A moment later, he noticed the man standing right beside his Magingear with his left hand on the robot’s chest armor piece.
“Little Flare.”
The point-blank fire spell melted the frozen armor as it delivered an impact to the inside of the Magingear.
“That’s the magic skill used by the Embryo!” cried Hugo, and he was completely right. But the draconic, devilish man’s Little Flare was several times more powerful than that of Babi’s.
“Tri-Horn Upper!” the man said as he closed the distance between them and swung the dragon horn lance.
That was another skill Hugo was already familiar with. Though the horns had been replaced by a lance, it was definitely the same move that Marilyn had used during the battle before she vanished.
Hugo tried to deflect it with the right blade, but it wasn’t able to bear the attack and broke off at about the halfway point.
“Th-This is too...!”
A moment later, he activated the Smoke Discharger attached to the Magingear’s thigh part. The area instantly got covered in a sight-obscuring smokescreen, causing the man’s movements to become duller.
“Motor Slash!” said Hugo as he brought his remaining blade down on the man, who evaded it by jumping backwards, clearly aware that it was coming. The manner of movement was one he’d already seen many times during this battle.
“I see,” he said. “So that’s how it is.”
Hugo was now absolutely certain about the nature of his “new” enemy.
“So you’re ‘him,’ aren’t you?” he continued. “Right now, you’re merged with your Embryo and monster. That’s the effect of the skill you used before, isn’t it?”
In response, the man... Rook... merely smiled.
His opponent solved the details of his skill, but there was no need for him to confirm it. Hugo himself had reacted in a similar manner, after all. However, it was undeniable that he was absolutely correct.
Master, Embryo, and monster merging. That was indeed the effect of Union Jack, the skill Babylon had gained upon reaching her third form.
It had been born out of Rook’s admiration for Ray and the way his fighting style focused on combining his powers with those of Nemesis. Though Union Jack wasn’t quite the same as what they did, it wasn’t completely unlike it, either.
The skill combined the stats and skills of three creatures to create a single entity.
In this case, it bore the great stats of the dragon known as “Marilyn,” the many skills of the devil called “Babylon,” and the intelligence of the genius man leading them. Thus, it was labeled “Dragon-Devil-Man,” and it was the strongest ace up Rook’s sleeve.
“Can you really perform such a skill without any preparation?” added Hugo, and with good reason, too.
Union Jack wasn’t the only skill that merged or combined certain entities. However, all of them either needed some time to be charged up before they were ready to use or had the combining process itself take a while. That was the ultimate negative of such skills.
“Skill preparation? But I did do it
. And for a while, too,” the man purposely answered with words, rather than just a smile.
Noticing that what he’d said had made Hugo subconsciously began rummaging through his memory, the man used the opening to attack him yet again.
“Gh!” Hugo came back to his senses and swung his blade down.
“I can see your movements even better than before,” Rook said as he evaded the sword and lunged the lance into one of the robot’s leg joints.
The Magingear had high defense in its basic state, and it was increased even further by the frost armor. Due to that, the attack didn’t break it completely, but the stats Rook had gained as a result of Union Jack had made him surpass even Marilyn, and the damage done to the armor wasn’t something Hugo could just brush off.
“Now, when do you think I started preparing this skill? Take a moment to think on it,” Rook said in a gentle voice that contrasted with his vicious attacks.
The correct answer was that Babi had begun charging Union Jack the moment Rook had said “check,” and that it was over by the time Babi said “done.” It was a code they’d decided on beforehand.
The reason Rook had dedicated time to explaining his theory about Hugo’s skill, seemingly neglecting the fact that his body had a higher chance to Freeze the more time had passed, had been both to confirm that he was right and to buy time for Union Jack.
In his mock battle against Marie, he’d prepared this skill during the break between the ninth and tenth battles.
Rook wondered how he’d go about buying the time during an actual battle, but in this one, he had been able to do it thanks to his conversational skills and a bit of planning.
“As you may have noticed already, La Porte de l’Enfer has no effect on me anymore,” he added.
Indeed, upon becoming the Dragon-Devil-Man, Rook had been freed from the ice damning his left arm. Not only that, but he didn’t show any signs of freezing again.
“Right now, I don’t count as human, and I don’t believe there’s even a kill counter for what I am,” he said. “So, La Porte de l’Enfer can’t do anything to me.”
By merging with a dragon and a devil, Rook had become a chimera, and since he hadn’t killed a single one of those, the frozen hell was nothing more than scenery to him. Rook had escaped La Porte de l’Enfer’s judgment by changing his own creature type.
“From here on out... our battle is merely a contest of strength, Hugo Lesseps,” he said.
“La Porte de l’Enfer is meaningless, and you have enough power to match me all by your lonesome,” said Hugo. “I can see why you call it that. Very well, I’ll face you, Rook Holmes.”
Rook jumped backwards, creating some distance between them.
It wasn’t to escape. Far from it. He needed the distance to get the speed necessary for the activation of the most damaging skill at his disposal: Marilyn’s charge attack.
In response, Hugo, Cocytus, and the Magingear got into posture. Unlike before, they weren’t going to use a Motor Slash or some firearm attack.
Among her unique skills, Cocytus had only one that did damage directly. It was severely taxing in terms of MP, so Hugo had avoided using it in order to keep La Porte de l’Enfer active. However, as things were, he decided to prioritize preventing the person before him from getting to Franklin alive. He had become absolutely certain that his opponent was too dangerous to be allowed to go and support Ray.
He’s too much of a threat, Hugo thought. It’s not about his power... He merely sees through people too well to be allowed to see “him.” I have to end him, here and now.
What followed next was a deafening silence.
It felt as though the very air that transmitted sound vibrations became Frozen.
The Dragon-Devil-Man and the Magingear faced one another, not moving a muscle or a mechanical joint.
Surrounded by the many ice sculptures, they stood so still that they, too, seemed like pieces of art.
Suddenly, the sound of an explosion from outside the gate resounded around them, breaking the silence and the tense air.
The two had no means of knowing what had caused it, nor did they care enough to find out. They merely used the sound as a trigger to begin dashing.
Rook brandished the silver-coated dragon horn lance and sprinted with a posture so low that it seemed like he could scrape the pavement. He used Marilyn’s charge attack, which was empowered by both the stats he’d gotten due to the merge and the many passive skills Babi had at her disposal.
The lance’s attack was now beyond the realm of Demi-Dragons, and it wouldn’t have been far-fetched to say that it could bore a hole in a Pure-Dragon.
Tri-Horn Grand Dash.
The Magingear re-created the left blade it had lost. But unlike before, it wasn’t an ice weapon. On the contrary — the distorted air around it made it quite obvious that it was a blade of pure heat.
It was Cocytus’s trump card — a skill that took all the heat absorbed by La Porte de l’Enfer and transformed it into offensive energy.
Purgatorial Slash!
And so, the two clashed, finally deciding the victor.
◇
The end of the battle was witnessed by only three people — Kasumi, Io, and Fujinon.
“Ah...”
What they saw after the clash was Rook, lying down on the pavement.
The two’s most lethal attacks met, and the Dragon-Devil-Man reached his limit before his lance could completely pierce the Magingear’s cockpit. The deadly damage he’d received had caused the transformation to be undone, so Babi and Marilyn were lying nearby.
Rook was wounded all over.
“Looks like... I didn’t have the power to win,” he said.
Though many would argue that he’d simply been unlucky. If the Masters defeated by La Porte de l’Enfer hadn’t included Bishmal, the kingdom’s strongest fire user, the heat absorbed wouldn’t have been nearly as great, and the power of the Purgatorial Slash would’ve been significantly lower.
If that had been the case, Babi’s resistances and the Demi-Dragon-surpassing stats would’ve made it possible for him to bear the attack.
“Mh...” Hugo silently examined the damage on his Magingear, as it certainly hadn’t come out unscathed, either. The frozen armor on the front of the machine had shattered, and the armor of the Marshall II R itself was crooked and pierced deep enough to reach the cockpit.
Hugo had seen the tip of the silver lance that had entered his vision. If he’d been just a little bit slower in defeating his opponent, he would’ve surely gotten the death penalty. However, the Marshall II R was still up and running. If the Magingear Cocytus used as a base was still there, and he could still use La Porte de l’Enfer.
As proof of that, Rook — having returned to being human — was beginning to Freeze again.
“Next... it’s those three,” muttered Hugo as he shifted his gaze towards Kasumi, Io, and Fujinon.
That slight action was the greatest mistake Hugo had made tonight.
He should’ve crushed Rook’s head before taking time to analyze the situation.
After all, Rook...
“If I don’t have the energy to beat him directly, I’d like you to open the hatch... Liz.”
...was a boy who always had multiple plans running through his mind.
Following his words, the Marshall II R’s hatch quickly opened up.
“Wha... AH?!” Hugo exclaimed in shock as he saw a gathering of silver-colored liquid metal on the button opening the hatch.
It was Liz the Mithril Arms Slime.
Rook had hid her existence from the moment they’d introduced themselves and used her while making sure that Hugo wouldn’t notice. Liz had been the very thing coating the surface of the dragon horn lance in a brilliant silver. She’d snuck into the cockpit the moment the weapon had pierced inside.
Originally, the plan had been that she would just cut Hugo apart, but the heat of the Purgatorial Slash had made a lot of her volume evaporate, making her l
ack the strength to do it. Thus, all Liz could do was press the button to the Marshall II R’s hatch.
However, that was more than enough. After all, with the hatch open, nothing was separating Hugo and Rook’s group...
“Male Temptation.”
“Lilim Temptation.”
...letting the Pimp and the succubus do what they did best.
“Checkmate,” Rook proclaimed. With those words, the battle of the western gate was ended.
Chapter Seven: The Right Arm of the Victor
???
The Kingdom of Altar’s Knights of the Royal Guard.
That was the name of the order closest to the royal family — the knights who served and protected them with their very lives.
The minimum requirement to join them was to become a Paladin, a high-rank job of the knight grouping, while their leader the commander had the Superior Job known as “Celestial Knight.” This had been the case for the entirety of the order’s history.
Being the strongest knight of his generation, the commander had been entrusted with one of the kingdom’s national treasures, a Prism Steed, and he had ridden it as he led the country’s forces into battle.
As the strongest of knights leading the proudest order, the Kingdom of Altar’s Royal Guard had been the very symbol of their country, which was often called “the land of knights.”
Again, “had been.”
As things were now, the Royal Guard was generally referred to as a thing of the past. The most glorious Altarian knight order had been all but annihilated about half a year ago, Dendrogram time.
During the so-called “First Knight-Machine War,” a certain portion of the Dryfe Imperium’s forces had killed about 60% of the Royal Guard’s members. That was bad by itself, but it was even worse when you considered the fact that, in a sense, it had been done by just a single person: Hell General, Logan Goddhart.
He was one of Dryfe’s three — two at the time — Superiors.
