The Ancient Missing Link (8)
I dashed forward at full speed, my footsteps ringing out sharply as I closed in on Yerna. She clicked her tongue in clear annoyance and pulled her hand back. Mana gathered rapidly in her palm.
Shrrrrrk—!
—BOOOOOOM!!!
Yerna unleashed a sphere of water mana like a giant sprinkler, spraying it toward us. Just because it was water didn't mean we could take it lightly. She'd cast it without an incantation, but this was high-tier water magic that fired droplets thicker than peppermint candies at lethal pressure. Get hit by that and you'd end up looking like pork butchered with a shotgun—bones and flesh ripped apart.
But I didn't give a single fuck. I just covered my eyes and charged straight in.
From behind me, Dana let out a ferocious roar.
—Fwoosh!!
A shield bloomed in front of me like the aurora curtains visible from the Arctic. Dana's defensive magic had completely blocked Yerna's spell. I hadn't called my precious Dana a heal tank for nothing.
"Ahahaha!! Too slow!!" I laughed.
But of course Yerna knew exactly how skilled Dana was at silent casting. She waited for the curtain of light to vanish, as if she'd expected it, then unleashed her second spell.
—Bam bam bam!
Water droplets slammed into my body like bullets. I felt no pain. I simply bared my teeth in a savage grin at the wide-eyed Yerna.
The Thurisaz rune, which boosted resistance to offensive magic! I'd turned it into magic items and handed them out to the party before we even arrived in Germania. The scattered water pellets had struck the others too, but no one was injured. I'd made damn sure everyone was properly equipped before we entered this place.
Unless Yerna's mana pool was vastly larger than ours, wiping us out with area-of-effect magic would be impossible.
"Ahahaha!! I'll take back what I said about being disappointed!! Relying on items is still pathetic, though!!"
"If you've got the skill to use it, gear counts as strength too, dumbass!!"
I roared and thrust my spear. It stabbed through empty air where Yerna's neck had been. She'd dodged like a swallow skimming water. Of course she could—she was a mage who knew how to reinforce her body with mana. I hadn't expected to land a clean hit anyway.
Yerna evaded my spear and Larilura's Magic Arrow, but she raised her hand and deployed a small compressed shield without chanting.
Clang—!
A knife sparked against the shield, scattering metallic flames. Franc had predicted her dodge and thrown it. She'd only used the shield because she wouldn't have been able to block it otherwise.
"Hehehe, you're more skilled than I thought! Dealing with adventurers was so dull, but this won't be boring at all!"
Yerna burst into wild laughter, like cold water suddenly coming to a boil. That was a bad sign. As far as I knew, this bitch was at least as strong as a Gold Class adventurer. The fact that she'd taken down the black mage who'd nested in the underground tomb suggested she'd been holding back. Right now we were ganging up on her, but if she got serious, someone was definitely going to get hurt. I had to slit her throat while she was still underestimating us!
"Still, five against one is a bit annoying!!"
"Then who told you to live like a fucking loner, you pathetic loser?!"
I was about to ignore her and attack when the moss beneath my feet made my mind snap to attention.
—Ping!
A vine shot out from the moss like an arrow, aiming straight for my jaw.
A razor-sharp vine pierced the air just three centimeters from my cheek. My breath caught, but I'd managed to dodge in that split second. I clicked my tongue and backed away from the moss. This wasn't some overgrown colony—this was something else entirely! Yerna had never shown us this kind of magic during our joint exploration!
So she really was hiding her true power.
I was carefully watching the mossy patches and considering my next move when—
—Whoosh!
Yerna swung her hand like she was pulling a lever on a tomb wall. The earthen wall collapsed with a rumble, and a cascade of white bones poured out. I knew exactly what she was doing.
Veronica raised the mana of her runes in warning.
Her mocking, breathy insult came with an undead parade. The bone soldiers rising with war horns blaring, shaking the entire tomb, looked like old men lost in memories of their glory days!
"Hyaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"
Skeletons burst from the floor, shattering stone. Three of the bastards had even been kind enough to come straight for me. The twin-axe skeletons wearing Viking helmets were bulkier than me, and I was a hundred and eighty centimeters tall.
"Huuuuuuuuuyaaaaaaaa!!"
The natural-born undead charged with horrifying forms that no living thing could match. I saw the bluish flames burning in their eye sockets and immediately understood the situation.
I let go of the spear shaft. Then, like a World Cup player doing keepy-uppies, I kicked the end of the shaft with perfect timing. It was a secret technique only possible with perfect balance, striking point, and technique—all tens out of ten.
Shwaaaaack—!
The spear, empowered with three times my arm strength, slammed straight into a skeleton Viking's skull. Undead didn't die from something like that. Even though their comrade's head had turned into a lollipop on a stick, the other two showed no hesitation.
Tat—!
I stamped down with the foot I'd used to kick the spear and leaped. The skeletons' axes sliced through the spot where I'd been standing, missing by a hair. I completed an acrobatic dodge, grabbed the jaw of the skeleton with my spear still embedded in its skull, and roared.
Superhuman strength fused with bestial savagery. Using Beast Regression to push my physical abilities to the limit, I swung the skeleton like I was shaking out a blanket.
KWAAAAANG—!!
The skeleton was driven headfirst into the ground. "Hyu, oooooo……."
The skeleton that had become a literal tombstone evaporated. The mana that had been binding its joints snapped, and the light of its soul vanished from its eye sockets. Skeletons were classified as spirit-type monsters like wraiths or ghosts. What moved their bone-only bodies was mana and soul. And these bastards were the soul-driven kind. The flames I'd seen in their sockets were their very souls.
Were these three the strongest force in this underground tomb? They might have been powerful warriors in life.
"But you picked the wrong opponent."
As soon as I muttered that, I felt two pairs of axes swinging toward the back of my head, ready to split it open like a tangerine. I didn't panic. I activated the magic dwelling in my spear.
—Spin!
My rune-enhanced Puppetry knocked the axes away. It was a clash that lasted less than a second. Before the spear shaft could be overpowered in the struggle, I struck the skeletons' ribcages with the butt of my weapon and backstepped.
Tap. Tap.
It was such a light touch that it wouldn't even have tickled. A pickpocket would have hit harder. But the ancient Viking warriors I'd touched staggered like their hearts had been stolen, then collapsed. The light of their souls went out as they returned to piles of bone.
Those souls had been so vivid that even an ordinary person could have seen them, like spirit photography. With souls that powerful, these bastards must have been formidable undead, strong enough to rival the boss bugs that spawned randomly from the Underground Tower. If I hadn't been able to send every soul I touched to the afterlife, I would have had a much harder time.
"Hmm. Those were undead that a Silver Class adventurer team could have taken down without a scratch, yet you wiped them out in an instant?"
Yerna's voice carried surprise mixed with interest. I spun my spear and caught it firmly in my grip. I didn't have time to pose or get excited by an enemy's praise. The way this bitch's aura was turning dead serious in the blink of an eye filled me with dread.
"Ahahaha!! Nord, you've become unbelievably strong, haven't you? Still, you humans—all of you—always rush through life so impatiently."
Yerna laughed chillingly and finally began drawing up her mana in earnest.
—Kwooooooo.
The air trembled like a localized natural disaster. I had no reason to be afraid, but I held my ground. If I got too close, the plants rising from the floor would attack.
"Hyaaaaaaaaa!!!"
Still, standing still would only get me swarmed by the skeletons. I observed the army of bone soldiers. At a glance, they were mass-produced types. Normally that would be good news, but if they were undead without souls, I wouldn't be able to exorcise them. An ironic situation where cheap enemies were actually harder to deal with.
Yerna gathering mana, and hundreds of skeletons pouring in from ten meters away! The situation was so desperate that even calling it "absolute crisis" felt like an understatement. Yet I calmly waited for the tide to turn.
Because today, I'd yielded the role of main dealer to someone else.
Dana chanted softly and raised her hand.
—Clang!
With a sound like a sword being drawn from its sheath, a double-edged blade of pure light formed in the air. The Sword of Light stabbed into the floor.
Fwaaaaaah—!!
The sword embedded in the empty ground exploded with light like a flashbang. The skeletons hit by the radiance melted away like frost exposed to an electric oven.
"Hyaaaaaaa?!"
It was the one anti-undead extermination spell Dana had learned. I'd heard she'd picked it up because it gave her an advantage against the undead monsters that appeared in ruins.
Next was Veronica. Her magic, activated in her divine race mode, lived up to its reputation once again. The Sowulo rune floated behind her like wings in enormous size. Six rune magic circles bloomed in a line. It was a dual-attribute spell of light and flame that rivaled the sun itself.
The mana released like a loosed bowstring became scorching beams of compressed flame that swept wildly across every corner of the moss-covered tomb.
Kwaaaaaaaaah—!!
The underground tomb blazed as if six baby dragons were breathing fire. It wasn't the best technique to use underground, but the space was wide enough that it wasn't a major problem.
"Getting heated, huh."
The flames rose like the merciless judgment of a god. Could Veronica control that fire? The blaze didn't spread beyond the moss and instead consumed the area where Yerna had been standing.
Fwoooosh—!
Crackle. Crackle….
The skeleton army was completely annihilated. Yerna was also wrapped in flames and showed no signs of movement. Even so, we maintained our combat stance.
Dana's magic is something Yerna already knows.
Just as I remembered Yerna's water pellet barrage, that bitch knew Dana's Sword of Light spell very well. Dana had used that magic countless times while exploring ruins.
The skeletons were just a distraction.
She'd simply been toying with the tomb's defense system. How could a professor-level archaeologist who wasn't even a specialized black mage control undead like her own limbs? We still didn't know the original purpose of this ruin, but at the very least, this wouldn't decide the outcome of the fight.
Crackle… Crackle….
A momentary lull stretched on, where one second felt like ten minutes. The moss Yerna had spread was burned away—and what remained were the buds of white flowers.
A colossal bloom large enough to swallow an entire carriage! It unfurled like a morning glory bathed in sunlight. The moment I thought I saw something dark green moving between the petals—
In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it 0.1-second instant, the petals burst outward like a grenade explosion, and a thick vine flew straight at me.
The fact that I managed to block it was honestly a miracle.
KWAAAAANG——!!!!
Even though I'd succeeded in defending, the impact was like being struck by a meteor. My consciousness blanked out for a moment. I couldn't even let out a groan or a scream. The spear shaft I'd used to block snapped cleanly in half!
Mom, how much did that thing cost?!
The moment my knees hit the ground, an enraged Franc swung her knife. But the vine dodged the attack as if it had eyes. It slithered across the walls and floor. It wasn't retreating. The tip, raised like a snake, now targeted Franc and Dana. Just like how it must have kidnapped the other adventurers!
The rage that surged through me filled my limbs with power.
—KWAAAAANG!!
I slammed the broken spear into the vine like driving in a nail. Its defense wasn't that impressive; it stopped moving like a decapitated snake.
"…Cough."
Damn it. I must have overdone it right after getting hit. I wiped the blood flowing from the corner of my mouth. This wasn't some martial arts novel, yet here I was experiencing internal injuries for the first time in my life.
"Nord!!"
Dana hugged me and cast healing. I spat out the blood pooled in my mouth; it tasted of iron. The party members, having shaken off their brief shock, moved according to the changing situation.
Larilura shouted with murderous intent and fired her maximum-output physical laser cannon at the flower petal shield. The single-shot destructive power, among the strongest in our party, flew toward the target as if being sucked in.
—KWAAAAAANG!!
A flawless direct hit. But Larilura's face was deathly pale. A second vine had emerged from the petals and blocked the cannon before it could strike.
—Thud. Thud.
Was it lucky or unlucky? The vine, curled up like a mosquito coil, had been shredded by Larilura's blast. But I wasn't sure if that was something to celebrate. Because countless other vines identical to it had spread across the underground tomb like octopus tentacles.
"Sorry~? This magic is hard to hold back, you know~. I accidentally went all out."
The white flower's petals spat out a translucent pearl from within. It was Yerna, shield deployed.
"Still, you held on without dying. Very well done. If I were to grade you, I'd give an A+."
Chuckle. Chuckle.
Yerna stood atop the flower petal connected to the vines and spoke.