Double Play
Whoosh!
"Something like this?!"
Hummm—
Against the flames belched by the pink birds, the noble young lady Betty raised her shield. The moment she poured aura into it, the magic engraved upon the shield activated, generating a translucent barrier.
"Kyaaah!"
"Fuck! Protect us too, damn it!"
"Figure it out yourselves!"
The dancer's scream and the barbarian warrior's desperate plea rose from behind her, but Betty coldly ignored them both. Her entire mind was fixed on the spirit standing before her.
"…"
The spirit watched her with only her eyes visible above the fan covering her mouth. Betty could read contempt, fury, and sheer pity in that gaze. The spirit made no effort to hide her feelings; she laid them bare without the slightest restraint.
"A mere spirit dares look at me like that!"
Shame and rage set her whole body trembling. Abandoned by some pretty commoner wasn't enough—now even his summon was looking down on her. Every humiliation she had ever suffered in her life, piled together, still couldn't match this.
"I'll erase you."
Thud!
"W-wait!"
"Hey!"
Betty charged forward. The dancer and barbarian warrior stretched out their hands toward her, but once again she ignored their pleas. She knew full well that without her, those two—lacking even a defensive magic tool, let alone elemental resistance gear—would soon die pointlessly to the pink birds' elemental attacks. She simply didn't care. A commoner's life meant less to her than her own honor.
"How truly repulsive."
Dohwa's pink eyes grew colder still. The ugliness before her had gone so far beyond the pale that she felt she might retch. Wearing an expression as if she were looking at something filthy rather than merely unpleasant, she swung the fan that had been half-hiding her face.
Thud! Thud!
Several of the pink birds circling her settled onto the ground, sank into it, and rose again as stone soldiers of Eastern design. In the blink of an eye the soldiers formed a phalanx, spears and shields raised, barring the path of the repulsive beast.
"Out of my way!"
The creations of a mere summon, standing in her path?! Betty seethed and, without breaking her charge, activated Shield Charge.
Thud-thud-thud—halt!
"…Huh?"
She had intended to bulldoze straight through and put a blade through that insolent spirit. Not kill her—just half-wreck her, then drag her before her master and personally teach both of them their place. But the plan fell apart from the very first step. She had shoved aside a mere three soldiers, and her Shield Charge stopped dead—stopped by nothing more than the spirit's creations.
"…Grrk!"
Realizing it too late, Betty clenched her teeth and swung her sword at the constructs, desperate to deny the ominous ending already taking shape in her mind.
Slash!
"Th-this can't be."
She couldn't even manage that. The sword, swung with full force, bit into a soldier's body shield and all—then stopped halfway through.
"What in the…"
Green-rank aura. A blade saturated with it could slice through steel as easily as paper. And yet it couldn't fully cut through mere stone. She stared blankly at the sight before her, unable to believe it. Then she understood.
"Au…ra?"
She could feel the faintest trace of aura from the constructs in front of her. And the aura she had poured into her own sword—the blade now lodged in a construct's torso—was being absorbed by the soldier at a terrifying rate. The ominous ending began to swell at frightening speed.
"Is that all?"
At that moment, the voice of the one who, in that ending, had delivered death without a moment's hesitation reached her ears. Even though she didn't want to look, even though she was terrified, her eyes sought out the speaker of their own accord. The woman who entered her vision was startlingly identical to the one from that ending—gazing at her with eyes that regarded something filthy, something that was pure trash. Their eyes met naturally.
Why? Why did she see a tree in those eyes? A tree so vast, so lofty, so beautiful. Her breath grew short. The solemnity the tree radiated felt as if it were crushing her very existence.
Trickle…
Something hot ran down between Betty's legs. She didn't even notice.
"Fuuuuuuck!"
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Voices she had never expected to hear again rang out. Turning her head, she saw the barbarian warrior roaring as he tanked the pink birds' concentrated barrage with his bare body, and the dancer shoving him forward from behind, using him as a living shield.
"Run! You want to die like this?!"
"A-aaaaah!!!"
The two of them charged and hurled themselves at the soldiers blocking Betty's path. The dancer, her body a wreck of burns and frostbite, shoved the dagger she'd been holding into Betty's hands and urged her on. Betty sobbed like a child as she forced herself through the gap they had made. The spirit who had seemed forever out of reach was suddenly close enough that she could almost touch her if she stretched out her arm.
"Die!"
Praying desperately that the ending would go wrong, she raised the dagger high. In that instant—
Shhk!
Something sliced through the air, and something else brushed past her neck. She tried to finish the swing regardless, but for some reason her field of vision was dropping lower and lower.
Why?
Click.
"I have cut down something most trivial."
Betty's vision filled with the spirit calmly sheathing her blade—and with her own body dropping to both knees.
Thud.
She tried to figure out why her body had knelt, why she was looking up at herself, but a surging drowsiness pushed the questions aside. Betty simply closed her eyes. And so she sank into a sleep from which she would never wake.
"…Looks like things are finished over there. This is getting embarrassing."
"Aww… I lost to the little ones."
At Jun's mutter, Fortuna's shoulders slumped.
"Mooooo!!!"
Apparently deciding she looked exhausted, the minotaur—which had been watching carefully, its bulk oddly timid—bellowed and charged again.
"Tch! This is all your fault!"
Fortuna charged right back at it with equal ferocity. At the same time, she absorbed the shield in one hand into the hammer in the other, swelling the hammer's bulk. Was she that furious about losing to the little ones? Or was this a strategy born from the experience she'd piled up trading blows with the beast? Either way, she seemed ready to abandon defense entirely and pour everything into each individual strike.
"Graaargh!"
The moment the shield vanished, a natural opening appeared. The hellhound burst out from behind the minotaur and lunged for that gap with bared fangs.
"Not a chance!"
Jun was never going to sit still for that. He leapt through space and appeared at the hellhound's flank, then drove Siliens—wrapped in electricity and wind—toward the beast, intending to put a nice clean hole through it. Just as the storm erupting from Siliens was about to punch that hole—
Whoosh!
Pitch-black flames enveloped the hellhound's entire body.
Crack! Whoooosh!
Whoosh! Whooosh!
Storm and flame locked in a struggle to devour each other. The storm tried to scorch and tear the flames apart; the flames tried to burn the storm to nothing.
"Grrrr!"
"Tch!"
The fierce contest ended in a draw. Storm and flame annihilated each other amicably. For Jun, who had been trying to put a hole in the beast's side, it was deeply regrettable—but his original purpose had been achieved, so he decided to wait for the next opportunity.
With Jun's help clearing the way, Fortuna reached the minotaur unhindered. She blasted holy power from her back like a booster and dove into the beast's embrace. Then—
"Hyaaaah!!!"
With a thunderous battle cry, she swung the hammer gripped in both hands with every ounce of her strength.
BOOM!
"Ungko!"
The minotaur's massive, multi-ton bulk lifted clean into the air. Even seeing it with his own eyes, Jun could barely believe it. Still harder to believe was that the one who had produced that sight was a small, delicate woman. But it was no illusion—it was solid fact. The combination of Trait—Strength Enhancement, aura, Holy Magic—Buff, and her racial bonus had granted that small, delicate woman monstrous physical power.
Is it just me, or does that minotaur's scream sound like it's mocking her?
"Don't make weird noises!"
Apparently it wasn't just him. Fortuna, thoroughly pissed off, charged at the minotaur still tumbling across the ground. The beast sprang to its feet as if it really had been playing around. The same situation had already played out three times, so it wasn't particularly surprising. It clearly possessed some kind of ability that dampened impact.
"Kuaaah!"
Whoosh! Whooosh!
Whether it meant to shake Jun off and go help the minotaur, the hellhound spewed black flames from its maw. At first he'd flinched, thinking it was a genuine breath attack—
"That's the third time already."
—but by the third round, it had lost all impact. Jun leapt through space, dodging the flames while cutting off the beast's path, and at the same time stamped his foot to unfold the Heavenly Demon Descent Step.
BOOM!
"Kueong?"
Pressure incomparably stronger than anything it had felt before, concentrated exclusively on the critical points of its body. Even a hellhound with several times a human's strength had no choice but to drop to its knees.
"Let's finish this."
"Grrrr."
Jun exhaled lightly as he spoke, and the hellhound growled. He couldn't understand dog-speech, but somehow he knew what it was saying. You really think you can? We're both stuck here unable to move, it would have said.
"Well, you're not wrong. Honestly, just standing is about all I can manage right now."
The pressure currently applied to the beast numbered exactly one hundred. Even for Jun, with his super-intelligence ability, maintaining that many was grueling. But—
"That's only for right now."
CPU
From the Psychic Core at the exact center of his brain, psychic energy leaked out and formed a single pseudo-core. The pseudo-core—CPU—hummed to life and took over the processing of all one hundred pressure calculations. His head felt instantly clearer.
"Whew. Not anymore."
Jun raised Siliens high. Time to send this unleashed mutt back home.
The hellhound asked with its eyes what raising a sword had to do with anything.
"Well, your house is a place you can only get to by dying."
The name alone made that obvious enough.