Morgana: Everybody Loves Large Chests (Vol.4)

by Iliev, Neven

  Snack circled around and bombarded that beholder with Fireballs and Magma Missiles. Her attacks had very little effect, however, as the many-eyed floating head effortlessly deflected her Spells with its defensive magic. As for the VIP himself, Claws kept him busy by neutralizing all his Spells with her back-mounted scythes. That wouldn’t last long though, as her Counterspell Skill would drain her MP long before that Warlock ran out of his own magical reserves. Normally, she’d just gut the guy and bite his head off, but she wasn’t able to get close enough to make it happen while that beholder was covering the Warlock. The only reason she could hold her ground at all was probably because a significant number of Warlock Spells were ineffective against demons.

  “Aroooo!”

  As if to prove that point, the hellhound broke free of its bindings after only a few seconds with a piercing howl. It growled and glared at its target for a moment before leaping at Boxxy once again.

  “Massive Rejection!”

  “Arf!”

  “Shadowbind!”

  The ashen wolf-demon then found itself right back where it started.

  Boxxy did some more thinking, and realized that running away was a bad idea. Both a hellhound and a beholder had its scent, so simply falling back and hoping for the best was stupid. It was only a matter of time before the other side’s superior power overwhelmed its own. Even then, it was unlikely that old Warlock would give up so easily. The fact he had called the towering mercenary ‘Mister Underwood’ just now implied he had come here hoping to find his fellow Warlock. That beholder had probably revealed Boxxy’s nature as a shapeshifter by now, so there was a good chance that news might spread and reach a certain spymaster should Boxxy let this guy go.

  So, if running was a foregone conclusion, then how about fighting? Well, if Boxxy was going to do something it had to do it fast, so it wasted no time assessing its options.

  The best method of dealing with high-Level magic users—namely assassination—was clearly no longer an option. Using the dryads was one way to get the drop on him, but Boxxy had no way to give them orders right now. They only listened to ‘mummy’ to begin with, and the effects of the Elder Dryad’s Authority did not extend to Boxxy’s familiars. Any orders relayed through them would therefore be ignored, and the quintuplets were unlikely to do anything on their own after Boxxy had explicitly told them to stay put.

  It was regrettable, but on second thought even the dryads couldn’t do much. The opponent had a beholder, and beholders had Mana Locator Glands even more advanced than Boxxy’s. So long as that floating mass of eyes was around, any dirty tricks the ex-mimic might have tried would get spotted immediately. And since Shinji was a Level 100 Warlock, it was safe to assume he was very experienced in controlling his familiars and giving them airtight instructions. In short, if Boxxy was going to do anything, it had to take out that beholder first. The real question was whether that human had Soul Link like Boxxy did. Thankfully, the shapeshifter had just the thing it needed to test this out.

  “Shadowbind!”

  The Mimic restrained the hellhound just as it broke free of its second set of bindings. It activated Power Overwhelming, letting a flashy aura of crackling energy wrap around its cloaked figure. It grabbed hold of its staff with both arms and raised it above its head, as if it were an axe.

  “Reality Slash!”

  The skull-tipped rod swung diagonally along with those words. There was a brief, narrow flash of light as if a blade swung to mirror the Mimic’s movements. The motion was followed by something invisible that cleaved a deep gash through the blood-soaked ground before colliding with the chained hellhound dead-on.

  [Your target has suffered a deep cut. Target HP -2,561.]

  The beast let out a howl of pain as the Spell dug deep into its flesh. It managed to weave its head out of the way in the last moment, but the Reality Slash split its shoulder and part of its torso wide open. The magic also smashed through the magical chains restraining the creature, but it was in no position to start running wild. Boxxy didn’t have any intention of giving it the chance to do so either.

  “Shadowbind!”

  Being a Ruin Spell, the next Shadowbind was also influenced by the effects of Power Overwhelming, as it chained the half-headless wolf to the ground with enough force to strangle the life out of it if given enough time. The shapeshifter didn’t have any intention of putting that to the test, of course.

  “Reality Slash!”

  [Your target has been decapitated. Target HP -3,734.]

  Completely robbed of its freedom, the fiery wolf demon could no longer avoid having its head split wide open like a gourd in a guillotine. Its massive body fell to the ground, where it would remain motionless until it dissolved into nothing shortly after.

  This sort of explosive damage output made Boxxy extremely wary of that Warlock. It varied from person to person, but it was doubtless that Shinji was capable of doing a lot more than that. Provided that he had access to Power Overwhelming, of course, but he was plenty dangerous even without it. The upside was that he clearly hadn’t opted to learn the Soul Link Skill, otherwise that hellhound would not have died so easily. The shapeshifter had no idea why the man opted out of getting the ability, but it was a decision he would soon regret.

  “Snack, stop wasting time on that eye and come to me!” it commanded telepathically while it ran back to its minions.

  The succubus responded with curt, ‘Yes, Master!’ before she stopped trying to fruitlessly drop Meteors on the beholder and flew towards Boxxy. Shinji realized they were up to something and sent a Reality Slash of his own at her, but Claws leapt through the air and cut the invisible guillotine in half. It was an impressive feat, although she failed to get the angle right and lost one of her back-mounted limbs in the process. A deep cut appeared on both Kora and Xera’s backs as the damage was split through their Soul Link.

  However, damage wasn’t the only thing the Skill shared between them.

  “Here, drink this!”

  Once the succubus was close enough, Boxxy threw a vial of pink liquid at her. Xera caught it, uncorked it and downed it as fast as she could. A bright pink aura shone out of her body, and the regenerative effects of the high-quality and highly-toxic Rejuvenation Potion were transmitted to the other two. All three demons’ wounds closed up as if time ran backwards. Even Drea’s lost spider-like limbs grew out of her upper back as if it were never gone.

  “Dark Infusion!”

  Next, the shapeshifter empowered all of its familiars at once by using the succubus as this normally short-ranged Spell’s target. Xera moaned, Kora roared, and Drea chittered as they felt their bodies swell with power. The fiend benefited the most, as the sudden influx of strength and speed allowed her to gain a temporary edge over the glaive-wielding fiend and she knocked him back with a well-timed uppercut. If it was like this, she was quite sure she could kick his ass by herself. Unfortunately for her, her master had other plans.

  “Snack, you and Smokey keep that blue fiend busy. Claws, I’ll distract the Warlock while you and Arms get in position to take out the beholder.”

  It was times like this that Soul Link’s shared telepathic connection was really useful. It allowed Boxxy to give orders in a far more expedient manner than it would have been able to if it had to change mental channels all the time. It used the precious few moments it had saved to address its drastically lowered MP reserves. Power Overwhelming may have allowed it to put down that hellhound in seconds, but it exhausted much of its magical energy in the process.

  Thankfully, Boxxy had an easy fix for that. It tossed a trio of blue-tinted potions into a mouth it created under its cloak, smashing through the crystal vials with its teeth.

  [You have used a Mana Potion. MP +500.]

  [You have used a Mana Potion. MP +500.]

  [You have used a Mana Potion. MP +500.]

  The monster’s familiars all moved to their position, and Shinji’s eyes locked onto the Sandman’s yellow orbs. There was
something different about the way he looked at the towering figure, but Boxxy had neither the luxury nor the interest to care about that. The old man started glowing with the very obvious visual effects of Power Overwhelming, sending the shapeshifter’s survival instincts into overdrive. He pointed his staff directly at the cloaked figure and unleashed one of the most devastating anti-personnel Warlock Spells available.

  “Ebonfire!”

  Being a Warlock itself, Boxxy not only anticipated it and recognized the incantation, but knew full well how to counter it. The Sandman’s large body momentarily split in two as the distorted figure of a thirteen-year-old child with pitch-black skin and no face fell out from under that heavy silver-colored cloak. This was Boxxy’s true form and body, while the Mirror Image it left behind as a body double erupted in black flames and disappeared into ash. The exposed doppelganger immediately grew back into its former size and clad itself in a fresh disguise out of its Storage. The sheer speed at which it operated its pocket dimension under duress rivaled that of Hilda’s Rearm, which was practically instantaneous.

  From Shinji’s point of view, his opponent literally evaporated, only to see that a ‘new’ Sandman popped up immediately behind the original. No, a brief mental check with his beholder confirmed that this was the real one, and the one his Spell hit was just a soulless meat puppet. He tried using Ebonfire once more, but the slippery creature avoided it in much the same way, eliciting a frustrated click of Shinji’s tongue in response. That Spell relied on the user’s eyesight to pick a target, so he was unable to hit the real body if he couldn’t see it, even if he knew where it was. Projectile-based Spells were also useless, as that man, no, that monster was more than capable of avoiding them.

  “Alright, let’s see you dodge this,” the man grumbled. “Dark Explosion!”

  This time, the cloaked creature used the brief gap between the incantation and the Spell’s actual activation to jump up into the air with all its might while covering as much of its body as possible with a steel carapace, courtesy of Metal Mimicry. The ground immediately below it was dented in the shape of a perfect hemisphere, almost as if it had been scooped out with a giant spoon. As for Boxxy, it got thrown high up into the air as it was still well in range of that blast.

  [You have been blown away by explosive force. HP -2,189.]

  Its armored skin diffused part of the impact, the Voidcaller staff boosted its magic resistance, and the damage was further mitigated by its Natural Armor Skill. Yet, the monster still lost half its HP in an instant, and that was after it avoided the worst of the blast. The shapeshifter doubted even blood would have been left behind if it had taken a direct hit from that thing.

  *DO-DO-DO-DOOOON*

  In the meantime, the little ‘presents’ it had thrown at the shielded Warlock’s feet while he was chanting let off a chain of explosions. The man briefly shut his eyes so as to not get blinded, but those particular balls were fragmentation grenades, not flashbangs. Shinji wasn’t blinded, but the flames, dirt, and smoke the explosives kicked up was enough to temporarily obscure his sight. Even if that beholder was capable of feeding his master with that information, learning about it second-hand was unlikely to help the human target the shapeshifter. The familiar’s magical barrier nevertheless ensured his master was unharmed.

  Well, that pain-in-the-lid demon was about to be eliminated, so Boxxy wasn’t particularly worried about him. It also made a mental note to make stock up on actual smoke bombs rather than forcing itself to improvise like that. Fragmentation grenades were expensive and time-consuming for an Artificer make, after all.

  “Arms, Claws! Now!” it called out.

  “On it, boss!” the fiend replied in high spirits.

  “Ugh… I really don’t wanna get near that guy,” the stalker whined.

  A beholder simply had way too many eyes. Even if Drea was mostly fine being seen by other demons, ‘mostly’ was definitely the operative word in that statement. Regardless, she still did as her master instructed and let Kora grab her by her primary set of legs. The fiend then spun around on her heels once, then twice, then threw the horribly embarrassed Drea through the air with a loud cry of, “ORRRAAAAAA!”

  “Mind Pulse!”

  Shinji used a Spell unknown to Boxxy to disperse the cloud of debris around him sooner than expected. He looked up to see that his opponent hadn’t come back down to the ground, but was gliding around on a set of bat-like wings after being thrown in the air by his magic. He was about to renew his assault, when he caught a blur zoom by out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head just in time to see that troublesome and inexplicably airborne stalker from earlier collide with his beholder. Her claws and scythes ripped through the floating head’s multi-layered barriers with ease. She dug her bladed limbs deep into its main eye, although she lost quite a bit of momentum by the time she got that close. Her victim roared in pain, but the actual damage was nowhere near enough to kill the beholder outright.

  “Demonate!”

  Boxxy finished chanting its Spell the instant after the stalker’s claws firmly attached to the enemy’s familiar. Her body shone with a bright-green light for a moment before it exploded violently, killing both demons and scattering their various bits around.

  “That’s enough!” Shinji shouted. “Abyssal Plane!”

  The old Warlock struck the ground with the bottom of his plain-looking staff, causing a thin purple film to spread rapidly over the trampled and bloodied soil underfoot. Boxxy, Kora, Xera, Smokey, Shinji’s sole surviving familiar, and anything else within thirty meters of the old man fell flat on the ground. The gravity around them had instantly increased tenfold, and none of them could support the weight of their own bodies. Xera was so physically weak that she started choking since she was unable to even breathe properly, while the stronger ones like the fiends or Boxxy could do little else than weakly move their limbs around.

  Out of the corner of its eye, the shapeshifter saw the Republic’s remaining snipers started taking shots at the VIP. However, their arrows merely crashed to the ground pretty much the instant they entered the Ultimate Skill’s area of effect. Even the few Spells that reached this far dissipated into nothingness almost immediately. Boxxy tried casting some of its own, but no matter how much it chanted, it couldn’t produce even a single Shadowbolt. The overwhelming weight of the Abyssal Plane was powerful enough to disrupt magic itself.

  The one who had unleashed this terrifying Skill was the sole person left standing, even if barely. Shinji really didn’t want to use his Ultimate, as maintaining it placed a heavy burden on his body and mind, but that blasted creature had forced his hand. He simply wanted to have a little chat with it, and it just lashed out like an angry toddler. The Warlock limped over to where the cloaked shapeshifter had crash-landed and looked down at the pinned monster while leaning heavily on his staff. His black, glassy eyes gazed into Boxxy’s yellow orbs.

  “You really need to listen to other people when they’re speaking to you,” he said with a low, rasping voice. “But, I suppose it can’t be helped. You’re a monster, aren’t you? You simply don’t know any better.”

  “Talk is cheap,” came the curt, aggressive reply.

  “Nonsense! No matter how much one may try to use violence in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words are the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of the truth. And the truth is there is something very much wrong with this world of yours.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not from around here, you know. I came to this… realm about sixty years ago, from elsewhere. A plane of reality where we understood each other with words, not with swords. A world where things such as Attributes, Skills, Jobs, and Levels were not part of everyday life and only existed in fiction. A place where gods and magic did not exist, and neither did monsters.”

  “Sounds dull.”

  “Dull? Oh yes, that may have been so, but I would still go back t
here if I could. I’m not saying the people back home were flawless… but they were at least better than the ones here.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because nobody will listen unless I force them to!”

  Shinji’s eyes and voice flashed with the pressure and intensity that only a Ranker could give off.

  “My so-called ‘fellow men’ all cling to their ancient beliefs, to those sideways morals that will lead this world into ruin! I mean, look at this ‘war.’ It’s bullshit. It’s all manufactured to feed their greed. This is exactly what G҉́҉͘͏j̵͜͝4͏̸́̕͜%̴͘k̡͢͠j̵̧͞ ̡͏̀͢B̨̨̀͜͞#̶̴̧͞5̶̷́d̶̨̡ did in Ḩ̶̢͟͝r̴̵̶͘͠R̵̸̶͘͝ḱ̵$́͟͝͝͡ back during the Ģ̡͢k̵̢̡͝3̷̧͘%͠͏l̢̕͠g̀͘͞v̶̵̨̕ centuries ago.”

  There were some weird, buzzing words mixed in there. It was extremely bizarre, almost as if the sounds that came out of the enraged old man’s lips weren’t syllables, but white noise. The odd event lended some credibility to the rumor that this man was supposedly an other-worlder, though Boxxy had no idea what he was rambling about.

  “Don’t even get me started on all that slavery business!” the man continued. “Sometimes I wonder if those other nobles are worse than the thousands of monsters I’ve killed since I got here. And of course, none of them even tried to establish peaceful relations with the less advanced civilizations around us, treating them like vermin that needed to be eradicated.”

  The shapeshifter was finally starting to grasp what this old man was getting at, and it was honestly kind of disappointed. It had expected to hear some intrinsic truth of the world that only someone from outside of it could understand, but all it got instead was this moronic drivel.

  “Not a single drop of effort to stop this perpetual cycle of violence and revenge,” Shinji carried on. “Why?! Because the ones they need to understand are not people, but ‘monsters!’ Creatures that they see as nothing but loot and XP! What sort of blind prejudice is that?! I mean yes, they do attack people on sight, but who can blame them after we subjected them to generation after generation of genocide?!”