60th Floor Free-for-All 2
The Four Heavenly King stood wreathed in torrents of pitch-black demonic power, his tattered old cloak thrashing so hard it looked ready to tear itself apart. The sheer force of the aura pouring off him felt like a cocoon spun from living fog.
Apparently the sight of a fully armored knight turning his back and fleeing without a second's hesitation had enraged him beyond measure—his presence was seething, ugly and violent. And that fury, ironically enough, spilled over onto the other adventurers who had been hovering nearby, waiting to see how things played out.
"Ghk—b-back off!"
"You'll get caught in the blast! Don't get in the way—run!"
"But that—that's the boss—!"
"Ah, fuck it! You wanna end up like a rat that got stomped flat trying to snatch scraps?"
The mid-boss Dark Mage's prepared forces had already been cleaned up neatly, and now a seriously dangerous powerhouse had come bursting out through the open fortress gates. The black something that came flying at the adventurers who'd been circling the edges of the fight was the result.
Demonic power, scattered like mist, transformed into every kind of thrown weapon—arrows, javelins, throwing knives—and streaked out in every direction. The spear he'd tried to hurl at Katie earlier made sense now. This was a boss who forged weapons out of pure demonic energy and fought with whatever he needed.
A battle maniac who ranted about warriors and honor and lived for head-on clashes. A raw-stats boss who endlessly swapped weapons with his vast mana reserves, covering every pattern from close range to long. A creature whose entire existence screamed at the player: stop screwing around and come at me straight.
"Just because you can't swing a sword, calling us ruffians and rabble—that's too much—!"
"Says the rat trying to steal treasure that should be won in battle!"
Fortunately, it hadn't been a carefully aimed area attack, so the apprentice commanders escaped without anyone dying. The retreat looked undignified, but the sharp-sensed adventurers and the ones who were absolute experts at self-preservation had dragged them out in a hurry, so the damage stopped at wounds.
I'd half expected them to abandon us and bolt, but thinking it over—with a fat commission fee on the line, the mercenaries weren't about to stab us in the back. And even if they did turn traitor, they had no way to fence a boss monster's loot anyway.
The Holy Chunshiks, their Voluntary Conscription duration apparently expired, crumbled back into magic stones and rolled across the dirt. People used the dissolving bodies as shields and scrambled out beyond the walls. Thanks to that, the wrecked encampment in front of the fortress entrance became a dueling ground—just me and the Four Heavenly King, weapons thrashing as we locked eyes.
"Brave, and nothing more! Not a trace of true skill to be found!"
"Yap, yap, yap—you sure talk a lot for someone running away!"
"Isn't that the favorite tactic of you adventurer types? Hahaha! If it offends you, come and get me!"
Calling it a dueling ground was a stretch—the situation was messier than that.
He kept slipping and sliding backward as if the player-boss relationship had flipped, bleeding off every strike. He'd figured out that the Holy Sword had a time limit and that while it ignored defense and resistance, it wasn't guaranteed to hit or kill—and he was damn good at reading it.
Personally, this was the type of enemy I hated most: small, agile, and skilled. He'd decided that burning through his absurdly deep mana pool was better than taking damage, so he kept generating every kind of demonic weapon and slamming them into the Holy Sword.
Watching him ram two or three black-magic weapons into each swing of the Holy Sword like some wuxia character before finally managing to escape—this is a Four Heavenly King?—a peculiar irritation started climbing up from my chest.
Being a combat-obsessed martial artist type, he seemed sensitive to the flow of mana and holy power too. Even when I suddenly extended the Holy Sword's reach, he ducked and threw himself aside with circus-level flair. My head was starting to burn hotter by the second.
"Roland, I'm coming to help!"
"Finally showing up, you little thief!"
Han Se-ah must have seen it through the camera—she came sprinting over with the rest of the party. Irene looked a little tired from overusing her holy magic, but she was otherwise fine, joining up alongside Grace.
Katie's sword streaked toward the Four Heavenly King's wrist as he bent sharply at the waist to dodge the wildly swinging Holy Sword. The opposite wrist, left open as he twisted the Holy Sword's trajectory and used the rebound to fall back, was met by Grace's arrow with uncanny timing.
But even that wasn't enough to pin him down. He kicked his leg up like a circus acrobat—apparently weapons didn't have to be held in his hands—and a black blade erupted from his boot, batting the arrow aside. The force of the kick launched him into a midair somersault that kept his wrist clear of Katie's blade.
…What the hell is this guy?
The Holy Sword aimed at his body was deflected with a conjured shield and sword. Katie and Grace's supporting fire targeting his wrists and ankles was kicked away or flipped past with blades sprouting from his knees and toes. The only real damage we'd landed was the earlier thrashing with the Holy Sword.
"Tch, this bastard's fast!"
"He can't keep running forever—press him!"
"We'll help too! Let's build a fire net!"
Sensing the crisis, the adventurers who'd fallen far back started quietly using the collapsed walls and tent wreckage as cover, loosing supporting fire.
Arrows and magic cut through the air as if this were a real war. Mixed in among the mid-tier attacks from the Empire's apprentice commanders and the mid-rank mercenaries hired to match their force composition were the devastating strikes of top-tier adventurers and upper-rank mercenaries, weaving together into a proper fire net.
A few arrows from the less skilled mercenaries came flying at my back, but that much I could ignore. With less than two minutes left on the Holy Sword, I kept driving forward.
"Keh-heh, excellent! Even a pack of street rabble—getting this far means you've earned the right!"
"You do nothing but run and still have the balls to call us rabble?!"
"Not rabble—a wild boar, was it—!"
I slammed into him with a shoulder tackle, trusting that even if a counter landed, it wouldn't kill me instantly. When he tried his usual clever dodge, I stuck to him so tightly he had no room left to work. For the first time, he looked genuinely cornered, spreading both arms to grapple me.
We were too close for him to dodge the Holy Sword, so he was trying to lock me down hard enough that I couldn't swing it—even if it left him open to everything else. I was about to jam a dagger into him like a shiv when—
"That sword of yours is truly troublesome!"
"H-hey, you son of a—!"
That had been a feint too. He blasted mana hard from both hands and flung himself backward in what was practically a self-detonation, vanishing through the open fortress gates in a single bound.
…This motherfucker. Seriously?
The wide-open fortress gates slammed shut.
The tents and military encampment outside the fortress might as well not have existed—the gates sealed themselves tight. It was an utterly absurd situation, but there was nothing we could do about it.
We'd gathered in a hurry to collect information, after all. Nobody had brought siege engines capable of smashing a fortress's massive iron doors. The one silver lining was that the mid-boss materials Katie had hastily scooped up were still nestled safely in the inventory.
"A Four Heavenly King, going on about duels and honor… and then just running away."
"Still, nothing else is coming out from inside. Looks like he's the only one in the fortress."
The viewers were howling with laughter at the ridiculous situation of a boss fleeing and locking the door behind him. Still, with all the mid-boss materials secured, equipment enhancement wouldn't be a problem.
Katie had already used a Special Enhancement Stone on her weapon, so that left four ogre magic stones needed for me, Han Se-ah, Grace, and Irene. Out of the ten ogre magic stones, six would go to the Magic Tower for sale and four to the stone dwarves—that was the plan taking shape.
While we were discussing the mid-boss materials, people started sidling over toward us.
"Ahem, ahem. It is a true honor to witness the Hero's prowess firsthand."
"H-Hero, sir. About the monster materials we handled…"
An Imperial commander trying to get on our good side, and adventurers and mercenaries eyeing us carefully over money. Fair enough—Irene's holy magic had done the heavy lifting, but they were the ones who'd hunted the mid-boss's trash mobs. Using the Holy Chunshiks as meat shields, they'd cleaned up the miscellaneous monsters for us.
That was how the temporary camp ended up forming with us using the collapsed walls instead. Merchants who'd gone down to spread the word meant people were trickling in, and before long the area in front of the boss's fortress had turned into a bustling marketplace.
"He's not going to suddenly charge out, is he?"
"Can't rule it out completely. But the way he fights is all about maximum efficiency—he won't just casually walk into a crowd. If he's gearing up inside the fortress and preparing to receive us, that's another story."
The Imperial apprentice commanders were loud. The mercenaries arguing among themselves over their share while still watching us carefully were loud. The priests quietly gathering around Irene to praise her holy magic were loud—
So this is what a real free-for-all looks like. And then, beyond the grasslands, a massive banner came into view. People had been trickling in as reinforcements, but now it looked like a nation had actually sent someone. I glanced toward the plains, and one of the commanders who'd been approaching to talk to me went wide-eyed and started frothing like he was about to have a seizure.
"W-why is the Imperial Guard here?!"
What the hell is it this time, damn it.