Chapter 34
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 34
Chapter Title: Floor 4 - Lv. 325 Barbaroi (3)
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The preparations to shove the Vampire Lord into the light proceeded with far more precision than I'd anticipated.
Sir Dusburn had completely abandoned any offense.
He was only rigorously blocking the Barbaroi from draining blood by killing some weaker prey.
The Night Crow group, which had numbered around a dozen, had everyone but the mage wielding bows now.
They seemed to be a multiclass of archers and swordsmen.
It was a perfectly sound judgment for monster hunters.
Every time Sir Dusburn looked like he might let the enemy slip away, he signaled with a hand gesture.
A sacred arrow would immediately fly toward the target, buying them one breath's delay.
Humans were generally a weak species in close combat.
They didn't naturally wield magic.
They couldn't even converse with spirits.
Whether by Labyrinth standards or the continent's, humans had almost no advantages.
Honing themselves like that and learning to coordinate with their numbers was the only way to survive.
Once Sir Dusburn switched tactics, he sealed off the Barbaroi with great effectiveness and persistence.
He hadn't landed a single scratch, but neither had the enemy.
He never struck first.
He only severed the mana with his sword aura right before the explosion.
A swordmaster was devoting himself entirely to blocking the magic itself.
The battlefield fell eerily silent, save for the sound of the magical explosion carving an opening for the light.
The mage steadily demolished the ceiling with spells.
The area of sunlight gradually widened.
As time passed, the healing potions began to take effect.
There was something off about the Waters of the Healing Spring, which provided immediate restoration.
They were recovery potions used among monster hunter groups.
Their pain relief and hemostasis effects were top-notch anywhere.
Once the bleeding stopped, the vampire's regenerative power diminished too.
The blood-red mist being sucked from the Girl's arm vanished.
The situation looked stable enough.
Sunset was still a long way off.
I wasn't optimistic.
Humans were the ones walking on thin ice.
This side needed even greater precision, while the Vampire Lord lurked for an opening.
That's why Sir Dusburn had no choice but to press the attack aggressively at first.
Now the situation had already turned dire.
I confirmed my party members had escaped the danger zone and silently melted into [Stealth].
This might sound harsh, but if I'd had command over Sir Dusburn and the Night Crows, this fight would've been won already.
Our party's specs just made it impossible.
When you've got no teeth, you make do with gums.
These well-trained, vengeance-fueled monster hunters made for excellent gums.
In the midst of the quiet war of nerves.
My presence was fading from everyone's awareness.
The only focus was the slowly expanding sunlight.
This was the moment.
An assassin's time.
Sir Dusburn was fully aware of how unfavorable the situation had become.
At a glance, it might seem evenly matched.
But the side facing the higher difficulty was at a disadvantage.
The Barbaroi merely had to detonate an explosion.
Dusburn had to slice that spell at the perfect timing.
The Barbaroi could take ten more hits and still have margin left.
If this side took any damage, it was near-instant death.
For humans, this was nothing but tightrope walking.
The collapse came a bit sooner than expected.
Dusburn was a man who'd gripped a sword his entire life.
Even for him, reading the flow of magic cast by a skilled mage was a feat.
Slicing it perfectly was superhuman.
Mana gathered, taking shape.
He thought he'd severed it just before detonation.
It was a feint.
The scattered mana bands coalesced elsewhere.
An explosion erupted from his side.
Weak because it was forcibly manifested, but an injury was an injury.
Pain dulled his senses.
His reactions slowed slightly.
And the wound bled, restoring the enemy.
The fragile stalemate on thin ice shattered in an instant.
He raised his sword to block the strike.
The sword cloaked in sword aura barely warded off the fatal blow.
With a boom, Dusburn was sent flying.
The mage's spell, which had been casting in preparation for such a moment, kicked in.
The vampire scattered into bats.
The binding spell, long-charged and densely packed with mana, caught some of the bats.
'Should've taken at least one bottle of Miracle Spring Water.'
In hindsight, it had been arrogance.
He hadn't expected much from the exiles.
That was based on what he'd seen of them.
At the end of his flight, someone caught him.
He couldn't make out the figure clearly.
A whisper in his ear.
"At the crucial moment, use this on the enemy."
A plain dagger, devoid of patterns or ornamentation.
He knew what it was.
A miracle item that some assassins exploited innately.
"Looks like I'll have to leave the finale to you too."
He muttered it to himself, but it probably carried.
He didn't know the method.
But he believed.
The one he'd dismissed as dead weight had already exceeded expectations.
Now it was Dusburn's turn to trust.
One man was dead.
Sir Dusburn had been the only one who could pin the Vampire Lord one-on-one.
It happened in the brief moment he'd pulled away.
The vampire vanished.
They discarded their bows and drew swords to counter, but in an instant, their heads were seized.
Then they exploded.
Literal mana poured into a living human body and detonated.
True to a close-range mage who'd reached the pinnacle of lethality.
Five liters of adult male blood.
Accounting for some loss in the explosion.
Still, an enormous volume was sucked into the Barbaroi's body.
Vitality returned to the monster.
I watched from the shadows.
Closer than it imagined.
It hadn't detected my stealth.
Mana sensing had been abandoned long ago, as I'd predicted.
Even for a cunning, ancient Vampire Lord, this was a fight for survival.
It lacked the leeway.
I'd seen our party escape too.
The timing would be Sir Dusburn's call.
The swordmaster leaped back in.
No rage showed for his fallen subordinate.
Only faint mourning.
That was the Night Crow way.
Dusburn had no idea what the bold and capable exile leader was thinking.
But having seen him vanish into stealth, he knew the ability he possessed.
The perfect timing for an assassin was the moment the enemy least expected.
The swordmaster resumed his assault.
There had been a mishap, but the sunlit area had definitely expanded.
Even scattering into bats narrowed its room to maneuver sharply.
Some harassing arrows now struck home.
It had recovered substantially, so things weren't entirely against them.
Still, Dusburn knew this would only delay defeat.
His mage was competent.
She followed even incomprehensible orders.
A few hand signals prompted specific spells.
After a short wait, he ordered the launch.
Bold.
Bolder than expected.
Sir Dusburn had the mage cast [Gravity], the spell that generated attractive force.
Unless exploiting terrain or objects, it was a largely pointless spell here.
The reason for using it now was obvious on instinct.
Sir Dusburn charged.
Unlike before, a straight-line attack heedless of his life.
The Barbaroi panicked for a split second, scattering into bats without counterattacking.
It must have sensed a threat in that eerie resolve.
The one-eyed swordsman unleashed mana at full power.
Rocket-like propulsion surged through his body. He rode that momentum, launching accelerated sword aura.
I saw it. Right behind the flashy crescent mana blade, with the tiniest time lag, I hurled the dagger.
Not a clean throw. The trajectory wobbled.
But it was just transport anyway.
[Gravity] activated in the midst of the bats.
The scattering bats were pulled together.
Unable to reposition, they reformed on the spot.
As long as the heart bat survived, the monster would win.
The Vampire Lord's face filled with bewilderment as it raised mana in both hands.
Flames coiled around. Sword aura warped.
Human and monster mana twisted, intertwining.
The only frontal clash today between two classes ignorant of defense.
This fight was one humans inevitably lost.
Sir Dusburn's arm flew off.
Detached from the body, the sword aura peeled away.
The battered sword couldn't overcome the magic, bending before snapping.
Minimal defense became impossible.
The next spell engulfed the one-eyed swordsman.
This ends it.
The Barbaroi surely thought so.
I blinked.
And splashed the bottle's contents.
Even as an old clan master, it was enough to make him recoil in horror.
Holy water would've been preferable.
The problem with the Miracle Spring Water those exiles carried wasn't its power—it was the excruciating pain.
How many times had it died today? The [Blood Spring] was running low.
While writhing in agony, it wouldn't know if it'd die several times over or if its heart would split.
It redirected the mana flowing toward the human swordmaster.
Flames erupted toward the splashing liquid.
Not a drop would touch.
It dispersed its body.
Lacking strength for mist form, it had to turn into bats one by one.
Every part of its body transformed into living blood bats and fell away.
Those were its flesh and its clones.
Each one represented a specific body part.
The inherited powers etched into its body also shifted into bat form and flew off.
Just three of them.
I'd judged stripping innate equipment akin to authorities as a glitch.
Not solely because it was impossible back in the game days.
The Abyss was the Labyrinth's system.
Native NPCs didn't understand the Labyrinth well.
They merely lived under its influence to some degree.
They didn't even have Mind Maps.
Kacrish served the Abyss because he was a [Hero Unit].
[Hero Units] were those attuned to the Labyrinth's flow.
Other NPCs knew nothing of such things.
They just lived in the reality as it was.
What if such a being were suddenly exiled to the Abyss?
The Abyss was a landfill of collapsed, crumbling floors.
I wasn't this world's designer.
But the situation hinted at something profoundly meaningful.
The Barbaroi fled reflexively.
It had been brutally hurt, nearly killed.
It couldn't ignore the shock of the liquid being splashed.
The instant it spotted me, saw what I held.
Wings were already sprouting from its back.
In truth, it was just water sloshed from some random bottle.
I evaded the explosion it unleashed toward me with repeated [Dash] angle shifts.
And swiftly snatched the three bats I'd eyed.
Couldn't kill them.
They'd revert to blood and reform its body.
I stabbed each wing once.
Curare poison coursed through their blood.
Vampire Lord or not, fragmented bats were just strong beasts.
The numbing symptoms spread instantly.
The flailing bats stilled.
I looked up.
The Vampire Lord's demeanor screamed utter incomprehension.
Only one bat—the heart—needed to survive for it to live.
The rest could die and regenerate.
But why paralyze them to interfere?
That was its exact expression.
I dangled the three immobilized bats conspicuously.
Figure it out.
You have to figure it out.
What parts these are.
Intuition strikes in a flash.
The Barbaroi's eyes bulged like they might pop out.
Compared to its prior composure, it flailed desperately for them.
Impossible, yet.
The mere possibility that I could sever those powers from it.
All its focus.
Its vision.
Mana detection.
Concentrated solely on me.
And the three bats I held.
That was its downfall.
A gruesome sound of flesh piercing rang out.
[Invisibility] broke as the Girl appeared directly behind the Barbaroi.
The perfect moment when all its nerves were fixated here. An impeccable backstab.
Akasha's Eye hummed fiercely.
Deep indigo darkness erupted.
⟨ Akasha's Eye ⟩
The Vampire Lord, oblivious for a split second to what had happened, clutched its chest.
An ornate, antique blade protruded from its chest, having pierced through.
A violet edge.
Akasha's Eye.
The vampire's mouth gaped, as if to speak.
Whether a scream or mere groan, I couldn't tell.
Unlike Kacrish's exile authority.
That was resistible force, reproducible by magic.
A backstab from Akasha's Eye triggered a different [Exile]. The effect alone differed.
From the stab point, its body disintegrated dot by dot.
Not sucked into darkness from the eye.
Melting into the gap.
Seeping as if becoming one.
Its particle-scattered body vanished completely.
The darkness that had nested in the castle turret finally pulsed with satiated predation before dissipating.
I flashed a grin and thumbs-up at the Night Crow mage.
She returned a wry smile and mirrored it.
Casting [Invisibility] quietly on me must've been tricky, but she'd pulled it off.
Made it seem our whole party had fully withdrawn.
Staged it like only I remained.
We'd earned ample wariness in the initial exchange, but our party had burned through resources too.
From the Barbaroi's view, it couldn't pinpoint our ties to the Night Crows.
It probably never imagined an attack like this, nor had the leeway to.
The Girl rushed over.
The dagger in her hand still gleamed violet.
But one of the three black pearls that had shone was now dim.
"Uncle! No EXP came in!"
The rushing Girl complained.
Not great news.
Looked like a heart hit. Had it relocated it beforehand?
A surprisingly common trick.
Still, I didn't think a guy touring the Abyss for the first time would survive.
No humans to drain there.
That was seriously tough.
Hey, Bar-whatever. Just croak already.