The Storm of Sharp Blades
Domain designation complete.
“Kkyaa! Mana stone harvesting is done, nyang!”
“I’m finished too…!”
Sion and the contractor stood with blood staining both hands, gazing at the blood-soaked mana stones with expressions of pure happiness. Their transparency suggested they were ordinary mana stones. Each one was about the size of an underripe watermelon. They looked like they’d fetch a decent price.
“This is top-grade even among ordinary mana stones, nyang! As expected of a 3-Tier Entity—the luster is completely different, nyang!”
‘I thought it was pretty big… so it was a 3-Tier Entity?’
A 3-Tier Entity was considered strong enough that even twenty 1-Tier adventurers attacking together couldn’t guarantee victory. But apparently it was no match for a 2-Tier demon armed with three hundred million in armor. The power of capital truly was magnificent.
My hands itched with the urge to slaughter the Entities, sweep up their mana stones, and move on.
“Good work, everyone.”
So hurry outside and wash the blood off your hands in the rainwater. For a second I thought you’d been infected. I chased the blood-drenched party members out of the cave to avoid triggering my zombie apocalypse PTSD, then followed right behind them, dragging two megatheriums along with Invisible Hand.
Oh, and for reference—the mana stones harvested from the megatheriums were too large, so I’d stored them inside Kkachi’s shadow. It really was an enviably convenient ability. I could store various things in my own chest cavity, of course, but my capacity wasn’t nearly as large as Kkachi’s. I couldn’t pull out exactly what I needed at any given moment, either. A familiar more capable than its master… I was starting to worry I’d be abandoned by the contractor for being useless.
“Aaaah… why does rain even exist, nyang?”
“Stop talking nonsense and wash yourselves properly. I’ll go dispose of these.”
“Yes, please be careful…!”
“You have to take them as far away as possible, kkyaa! Once the rain stops, there will definitely be Entities that catch the scent of blood and come swarming, nyang!”
“Understood. I’ll make sure they’re dealt with properly.”
I grabbed the two megatherium corpses—chests carved open and hollowed out for their mana stones—with Invisible Hand and hurled them as far away as I could. Then I turned my steps back toward the temporary base.
I had used Fear Eater to check for any humans in the area releasing fear before throwing them, so hopefully no unlucky adventurer would be crushed to death by giant ground sloths falling from the sky.
Probably.
“Kyaaaooo!”
“Filling.”
Charge 10.
[Charge]
‘Aichmophobia’: Fear of sharp or pointed objects.
Click.
Whoosh!
I quietly pierced and eliminated the black-panther-like Entity that had been secretly watching me from the treetops while leaking faint fear, using Aichmophobia. Then I tore open its chest, harvested the translucent mana stone, rinsed the blood off in the rainwater, and stored it in my chest cavity. The contractor would probably be delighted if I showed it to her later in secret.
After flinging the black-panther Entity—eyes rolled back in death—far away just like the megatheriums, I returned to the temporary base.
Swish.
I brushed aside the moss hanging over the cave entrance with one hand and stepped inside.
Tap tap tap tap! Scrape scrape scrape!
“...?”
Two primitive humans were gathering twigs and fallen leaves, piling them on the floor, and desperately struggling to start a fire.
“Nyaaaaaaaang! Damn it, every single piece of firewood is soaked! Even when I light the kindling, the fire won’t catch, nyang! I want to dry my clothes quickly. I’m going crazy, nyang!”
The especially furious-looking primitive hurled the two flint stones she was holding onto the ground and yowled in frustration. She had been the one constantly telling me and the contractor to be quiet, yet here she was making all this noise. What a hypocritical cat.
Meanwhile, beside Sion—who was wildly waving wet branches around in the air in an attempt to dry them—sat the contractor.
“Hoo. Hoo. Hoooooo…!”
She had placed dry kindling she’d prepared earlier on top of split, damp logs and was frantically rubbing two wooden sticks together.
“Ugh, just a little more and it should work…”
There wasn’t even a hint of smoke rising. The sight of her desperately blowing on it to nurture a spark was shockingly adorable. It made my nonexistent heart ache.
“Kkyuu.”
I stroked Kkachi, who was perched on the contractor’s shoulder and staring at the two primitives with a look of utter pity. Then—
“Eunyang!”
I smacked Sion on the head as she was shakily pulling an extremely expensive single-use item called a throwing flame potion from her pouch. Was she actually insane? Why was she digging that out?
“Why did you hit me, nyang! Kkyaa! Eunyang… my head is ringing, nyang… I feel like my intelligence is dropping in real time, nyang…”
She really did look like her intelligence had taken a hit. Even before I punched her.
“Thief, have you finally lost your mind?”
Otherwise there was no way she would consider throwing what was essentially a Molotov cocktail inside this cramped cave. Did she want us all to die of suffocation? I had no idea why our veteran high-ranker was suddenly acting like this.
“But this is the only way to light these disgustingly wet pieces of firewood, nyang! So don’t stop me, nyang! This body wants to dry her clothes quickly, nyang!”
“Calm down, Thief. I have a method.”
Whether it was because she was soaked from head to toe or because her intelligence and judgment had plummeted, the cat beastkin kept trying to hurl the makeshift incendiary at the firewood. I calmed her down, then pulled the Injector from my chest cavity.
“Eunyang…”
Sion glared at the Injector with a look of pure disgust. Her eyes were full of distrust, probably because of the time she’d been caught in an explosion before.
“That insane wand is the method you’re talking about, kkyaa? That looks a million times more dangerous than a throwing flame potion, nyang. Are you trying to blow up the temporary base, nyang?”
“…Just stay quiet for a moment.”
The survival expert will take care of it, you idiot.
“Adventurer, it looks like the crow is about to do something crazy again, so we should get out of the way, nyang.”
“Aaaah, I was almost there…!”
“There isn’t even any smoke. What do you mean you were almost there, nyang?”
“Ugh…”
I told the contractor—who was passionately rubbing the sticks together with Sion—to step back with her. Then I quietly recited the skill command.
“Filling.”
[Filling]
[Class Exclusive]
Fills the Injector with fear.
- Charge.
‘Charge.’
Pyrophobia.
[Charge]
‘Pyrophobia (Pyrophobia)’: Fear of fire.
‘Mana… to be safe, let’s start with 1 MP.’
If I used 10 MP or 100 MP for no reason, a catastrophe might really occur just like Sion said, so I charged it with the minimum amount of mana.
Injected Fear: [‘Pyrophobia (Pyrophobia)’]
Injected Mana: [1]
Remaining Mana: [MP: 28,425,204]
I looked at my mana—my very life force—which had neither increased nor decreased from before, then pulled the trigger toward the firewood.
[No valid injection target exists.]
Of course that was going to happen. My one and only revolver, true to its alias as the Injector, couldn’t fire even a single shot at inanimate objects that couldn’t feel fear.
But that didn’t mean there was no way.
Shing.
I shaped a small knife using Indescribable Fear, threw it into the firewood, and embedded it there.
Thud.
Then I aimed at the knife and pulled the trigger again.
Immediately—
Whoosh!
‘Oh. It works.’
“It’s fire, nyang!”
“First explosions, now fire… just what can’t that wand do?”
A stream of fire stretched toward the firewood—no, more precisely, toward the knife I had shaped from a part of my own body. The Injector treated not only Entities but even its user—me—as a ‘plague,’ and my senses were partially linked to weapons created by detaching Indescribable Fear. This was a little trick I came up with by taking advantage of that fact.
I’d wondered if it would work, but it actually did. If I’d bragged about it and then failed, it would have been pretty embarrassing. Thank goodness.
Fwoosh…
Because the injected mana was so weak, the flame quickly shrank. Seeing that a weak flame from 1 MP lasted about three seconds, using around 10 MP should let me light a fire reliably.
I’d been hoping for a flamethrower-type bullet.
‘You’re back, my little mini-flamethrower…!’
It perfectly matched my tastes, so I was extremely satisfied.
Late that evening.
I left the party members—who had devoured an unidentified soup made with dried jerky and root vegetables and then fallen asleep nodding off—inside the base and stepped outside.
The rain that had been pouring down without pause had finally stopped. Darkness had settled over the area outside the cave.
And.
Countless pairs of gleaming eyes shone through the deep darkness between the tall trees.
“…I clearly warned you.”
Apparently one wasn’t enough. I had planned to scare them off moderately without them attacking first, but they dared to covet my companions’ lives? As expected, mercy toward beasts was a luxury.
“I did say the smell of blood attracts Entities.”
But there was a limit to that. A faint whiff of blood—just enough to linger on the tip of the tongue—was a sweetener that stimulated beasts’ appetites. However, a river of blood created by the deaths of dozens or hundreds of lives was instead excellent at driving beasts away.
“You lovely little things.”
Seeing them stubbornly holding their ground despite feeling fear, they seemed to have judged that they could somehow manage it with sheer numbers. That was a very mistaken thought.
“Filling.”
[Charge]
‘Aichmophobia’: Fear of sharp or pointed objects.
Injected Fear: [‘Aichmophobia’]
Injected Mana: [50,000]
Remaining Mana: [MP: 28,425,204]
A red scar was carved into space as if slicing it apart, following the muzzle of the Injector. It was the fear of blades that tore through the canvas of reality.
Using the Injector like a brush, I swung my arm widely toward the world steeped in darkness.
Like drawing a line following the stars, a red line raced after the gleaming eyes of the Entities.
“Grrrr…”
The pack of black-panther Entities flinched and rustled in place, startled by my sudden strange behavior. Some seemed to sense something was wrong and broke away from the group, retreating. But that alone wouldn’t be enough to escape.
I was usually well-behaved, but once provoked, I was the kind of man who saw things through to the end. They should not have bared their fangs at me and dared to dream of survival.
Then—
“Die.”
Click.
. . .
That night, a storm swept through the Green Zone.
A storm as sharp and keen as a blade.