When Three Monsters Gather
When three monsters gathered, '...Damn it! I almost really died?!' It was a razor-sharp strike aimed directly at the core in my head.
'Incredible swordsmanship. For a mere thrust to carry this much power...' I also noticed an unidentified vortex blooming across the creature's body. That bizarre ability had to be what let it move so fast my eyes couldn't even register it for a split second.
'No way... has it not been fighting seriously until now? But...' As far as I could tell, the skeleton knight had already been exerting its full strength while staying wary of me. So if it suddenly showed this kind of drastic change, it could only mean one thing.
'I remember now. But wasn't that ability a trait that only triggered briefly when it fell into a near-death state?' If this was an active skill it could use with almost no restrictions, I would need to rethink my entire approach. I began watching for an opening while preparing the fusion technique of Lightning Step and Reckless Charge I'd just used.
'Hmm...' I quickly swept my senses across the battlefield. Fortunately, everywhere except my own fight was completely dominating the monsters. The performance of our newly acquired weapons was proving far more effective than the buffs the enemy had received.
Obviously. Even a sloppy swing was enough to make their armor explode. I let out a long breath. 'Whew—good. If I just handle my part—' The moment I tried to seize the initiative, something changed.
'What... the hell is this?' I felt someone forcibly tearing open the space of the cavern we were in. The familiar lurch was exactly like passing through a gate portal, except this time it was clearly intentional—someone was doing it on purpose.
A massive portal began forming on one side of the cavern. Behind the shimmering surface, three faint silhouettes flickered. Robed... giants. Three of them. A familiar shape I had seen before.
"What the...?!"
"Fuck! What the hell is that now?!"
"We have to finish these things fast—! Hurry!"
My comrades realized something was wrong and began taking reckless risks with their attacks. But even though we had been pushing them back, we hadn't reduced the skeleton knight's forces by any meaningful amount. Naturally, the battle between both sides ground to a halt.
'Not counting the ones killed by the initial bombs, we've only taken out about a hundred...' No—considering the enemy had powered up, this might actually count as doing pretty well.
The portal swelled instantly, its presence expanding. I could sense a countless number of monsters on the other side. At this critical moment where the outcome was still uncertain, the appearance of a third faction was the absolute worst-case scenario.
We weren't the only ones thrown into confusion. The skeleton knight, which had pulled its heavenly troops back, stared at the portal with blue ghostly flames blazing in its eyes. The gaze was filled with clear hatred and hostility, making every hunter on the battlefield swallow nervously.
'...Damn it...'
'......' Nargul. The ones who had opened this portal were undoubtedly the rulers of this dungeon. It was normally unthinkable for three of them to appear at once. They had used a divine technique to cross a distance that would normally take two full days in an instant.
'So when three Narguls gather, they can even pull off something like this...' I wondered how they had pinpointed this location so quickly, but the answer came from the skeleton knight beside me, which was radiating murderous rage. 'They tracked us using this bastard's energy? Nothing ever goes right. Damn it!'
Undead forces were already pouring through the completed portal. The skeleton knight glanced at me and muttered something.
It sounded like it was suggesting we stop fighting each other and deal with these newcomers first. I shrugged and pointed at the portal. The skeleton knight nodded and turned its gaze away. It seemed to think I had agreed.
I quickly approached Yeon-hee and relayed the message. The information spread fast, and the hunters' faces filled with a mix of shock and hope as they watched the skeleton knight's forces. They couldn't simply charge in based on the word of an enemy commander they'd been fighting moments ago, so they waited for the undead to move first.
The skeleton knight ignored our hesitation completely. It pointed at the portal and ordered an all-out charge.
"KRUUUUAAAAAHH—!!"
Though their numbers had decreased slightly, the upgraded undead charged with unstoppable momentum.
"Hik—! You scared me! Are we seriously teaming up with those things?"
Arin spoke in disbelief even as she hurried toward the portal. The rest of the party and my summons followed. We had to launch an all-out attack and cut them off before the Narguls' minions could fully cross over.
The portal's size kept expanding. "Damn it! The portal's getting bigger!" "How many Narguls are there?!" "At least they haven't crossed over yet. That's a blessing."
The Narguls themselves remained on the other side, only maintaining the spatial connection. They couldn't come through. Simply keeping the portal open seemed to be pushing their limits. Even when they gathered like this, there were things they could and couldn't do.
The skeleton knight had already collided head-on with the undead army that had crossed over, turning the area into chaos. Following behind it, I floated in the air and hurled every remaining bomb I had toward the portal.
Bomb Barrage
BOOOOOOOOM—!
The Narguls' undead, funneled through the narrow portal, were caught in the explosions and sent bone fragments flying everywhere. At that moment, the Narguls maintaining the portal glared at me with murderous intent.
'What are you gonna do about it? Come through if you dare!'
But they only flashed their eyes. The Nargul trio took no further action. In fact— 'What? They can't even revive the monsters?' Maintaining the portal seemed to be taking everything they had; they couldn't even use their greatest strength.
Still, there had to be a reason they were so desperate to strike this place. It couldn't be just to catch us.
'I can't miss this chance!'
Flames roared. I prepared the condensed fireball I had used against the Blue Eye cult when they were tampering with that evil-tainted crystal. While observing the skeleton knight's battle from the air, I stacked another fireball—the one I hadn't been able to use earlier.
The fireballs layering in my left hand soon formed a massive orb that floated like a small sun in the sky.
Condensed Fireball — Overlap
[HARRRGUUUUU—!]
[NATARAAAAAAN—!]
Whether they noticed me or simply decided my attack wasn't worth paying attention to, the Narguls and the skeleton knight were too busy exchanging horrific screams in a battle of attrition. Even though they couldn't fight each other directly at this distance, they kept shrieking as if competing to see who was louder.
Agh— so noisy! Shut up, you idiots! Whatever history existed between them wasn't my concern. From the nicknames attached to this dungeon, I could roughly guess the story, but since I had to eliminate all of them, I simply hoped they would keep fighting each other.
'Still... it's a little disappointing.' This was practically my ultimate move, yet they weren't giving it the slightest attention. That in itself was irritating.
The enormous sphere of fire—easily twice the size of the tent where I had slept with Yeon-hee—began descending from the cavern ceiling at my gesture.
Only after feeling the scorching heat above their heads did both sides' leaders and the remaining fodder finally look up in shock.
[......!]
'Boom.'
BOOOOOOOOOOM—!
With a cataclysmic explosion, the fireball detonated at the portal entrance, exerting force across dozens of meters. It even performed the feat of instantly vaporizing the heads of two giant skeletons belonging to the Nargul faction.
'Haha, those giant bastards. I had to smash them repeatedly with my dagger before they finally died.' The stacked fireballs truly deserved to be called an ultimate technique. This was only my second time using it, yet it still surprised even me.
"Whoaaa..."
"That thing's a real monster..."
"Just how much magic power does it have to pull off an attack of that scale? It looked like stacked fireballs... even high-ranking hunters don't casually attempt something like that."
"Wait, is that even a fireball anymore?"
Everyone chimed in with their astonishment at my ultimate move. Only then did I feel somewhat satisfied. Since the rest of our party members except Yeon-hee were seeing this technique for the first time, they couldn't close their gaping mouths.
"N-now! Follow me—!"
Yeom Tae-seok activated the "Follow Me" command I'd only heard about. He was the only one who hadn't been distracted by my attack, and his timing for the charge was excellent. He layered his Aura of Devotion on every close-combat hunter nearby, then spun like a top with a mace in one hand and a club in the other, sweeping enemies away.
'Amazing. Did he get a second youth or something?'
Of course, the reason Yeom Tae-seok and the hunters could rampage freely was thanks to Ham Eun-yeong continuously supporting them from the rear and No Hayun restricting enemy movement by freezing the ground with her Ice Field.
I couldn't fall behind either. Using big techniques in succession was taxing, but I began condensing yet another fireball. Preparing two major spells in a row nearly drained my magic power in an instant. However, the top-grade magic circuit perk immediately replenished it. I gathered the newly supplied magic and hurled another massive fireball toward the portal.
Crackle—
BOOOOOOM—!
But the fireball that had been flying straight suddenly warped, its trajectory twisting before exploding midway.
Arcane Deflection
'Those damn Narguls!' They had used Arcane Deflection to twist the trajectory of my fireball. There was no way one of them could have done it alone at this level of magic.
'As expected!' I saw all three Narguls holding hands, staring at me. They had even let go of the portal to do it. The noticeably reduced magic power told me the attempt hadn't been easy for them either. After deflecting my spell, they panicked at how much the portal had shrunk and quickly released their hands.
'They actually deflected that...' I felt somewhat dazed by the fact that my greatest ultimate technique had been wasted so anticlimactically. These guys kept surprising me today. A necromancer that could use both magic and its undead abilities simultaneously—what kind of world had produced such absurd monsters?
...Damn it! Filthy bastards! Ptui ptui!
"Kyaaaaaaaagh! Hot—! Ah, h-hot— Uhhk...!"
The deflected fireball had exploded in the wrong place. The only hunter in our group using a bow—a woman—had been caught in the blast. Her arm was horribly burned, the flesh sizzling. She collapsed to the ground, rolling around while clutching the limb that was still blazing with flames.
I immediately rushed to her and poured Irmana's water onto the burning arm. The flames that refused to go out were extinguished in an instant. But even in that brief moment, the arm had suffered severe burns, and fist-sized blisters were already forming everywhere.