A Familiar Guest (2)
——————!!
The Frost Elder Dragon's roar hammered against eardrums. Thud. Thud. The beast closed the distance with deliberate slowness, its massive body advancing in unhurried increments.
Friga narrowed her eyes and tightened her grip on the Dragon Hunter's Axe. Along the patterns etched into the elder dragon's hide, strange illusions and phantom sounds flickered into being.
Cloaked in a haze of cold, they flowed across the dragon's body, shifting form without rest — like mist that could never settle. One moment they wore her mother's face. The next, the face of a former subordinate.
"Shit…"
The whispers of the dead rattled Friga's mind.
Every one of them was a wound she carried. The image of her dead mother. The subordinate who had volunteered as bait and been left behind alone. Those who had died because of her misjudgment.
People she had buried deep in the dark of forgetting were waking. Wounds she had frozen solid beneath the northern snows — wounds she had deliberately pretended not to know — stirred and turned to face her.
The cold-wreathed phantoms whispered to her.
That she had killed them. That they had died because of her mistakes.
"Ha— hup— ssup— khup!"
Her breath locked in her throat. The memories had become scars, and the scars were strangling her. It felt as though the dead had laid their cold hands around her windpipe.
They seeped into her mind and heart. They took root in her chest and whispered.
A dying subordinate's last breath. Her mother's final scream. Both of them echoed.
The ghosts of the past were shouting. They clawed at old wounds and shook her spirit to its foundations.
She faltered.
Friga's feet stepped backward. The writhing patterns had become specters, scrambling her eyes and ears.
——————!!
KRA-KRA-KRACK!
The elder dragon's foreleg scraped the earth as it advanced. Its enormous jaws yawned open toward Friga—
"Khut!!"
BOOM—!
Dazed by the illusions, Friga rolled sideways and barely escaped. The elder dragon pressed her at its leisure. At times it even attacked with deliberate sluggishness, toying with her.
Screeech—!
The dragon's claws raked across her axe while the patterns danced and dazzled her vision.
Whoosh—!
The massive tail cracked like a whip. Friga kept rolling across the ground, dodging by the barest margins.
BOOM—!
The elder dragon's claws came down in a merciless cascade. Razor talons tore into her without restraint.
"Ghhhk!!"
She had somehow avoided a fatal wound. Friga clutched her injured arm and kicked off the ground. But her pupils still darted in panic, and the dragon's patterns continued to bewitch her and rattle her mind.
——————…!!!
The Frost Elder Dragon flaunted its majesty and hunted her at its ease. Like a cat playing with a wounded mouse, it deliberately refused to kill her and herded her slowly into a corner.
"My lady…"
Kenis called out in distress from outside the arena. Something was wrong with Friga. Beside her, Lionheart spoke quietly.
"Those markings… they seem to be showing her hallucinations. Even allowing for that, her reaction is far too severe."
"Hallucinations?"
"I can't be certain, but… most likely."
Lionheart stroked his chin and studied the patterns with a steady gaze. The sinuous, dancing designs. If his guess was right, Friga was seeing visions and hearing phantom voices right now.
Even accounting for that, her mind looked uniquely unstable. Unnaturally so.
"Even so, that state is too strange. To shake a person's spirit just by looking at it? That's practically a curse."
"…Even when she was still in the North, my lady often hurt herself. Even on ordinary days she would hear the voices of dead subordinates, or see them. Lately there had been no sign of it, so I thought she had gotten better."
"Then what we're seeing is everything she suppressed, breaking free all at once."
Lionheart's eyes grew heavy. Decades of surviving battlefields where blood washed blood had taught him this: the wounds you cannot see are far more dangerous than the ones you can. A wound of the heart eats into a person's soul and burrows deep.
And a person whose heart has rotted through will, at some point, simply collapse. Far too easily.
Lionheart had seen it more times than he could count. So he prayed.
Please. Don't let that young woman break.
——————!!
"Shiiit…"
Drip… drip…
Red blood ran from the long gash. Fortunately it wasn't her dominant arm — a slight tremor, but she could still move it.
The situation, however, was grim. Her axe hadn't even touched the elder dragon, and the patterns kept feeding her illusions.
She clenched her jaw.
Even so, she would fight. Her pride would not allow her to lose this ugly.
With sheer force of will she dragged her wavering focus back onto the dragon. As expected, the patterns writhed and tried to bewitch her. The faces of the dead twisted and shifted at the dragon's side.
"Khup…!"
Crunch—
Friga bit down on her own tongue to clear her head. Blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Pain sharpened her thoughts for a moment. Her eyes darted, hunting desperately for a way through.
Fight with my eyes closed? That's ridiculous. Then look somewhere else entirely? Or—
Clack.
In the middle of racing thoughts, something angular pressed against her from inside a pocket. A small whetstone.
The one she had ground through the night while picturing a certain someone's face. Friga set the whetstone in her palm and stared at it blankly.
It felt oddly warm. Probably her imagination — but her choked-off breath seemed to ease, just a little.
"Hah… huuuh— what a goddamn cheap trick."
She had come in talking big, and all she'd shown was this pathetic spectacle. Look at that vacant face staring at her over there — that idiot. Somehow, the thought of herself being jerked around by ghosts struck her as funny.
She closed her hand tight around the little whetstone. Her breathing loosened a fraction more. Not bad.
——————!!!
Wooong—!
The Dragon Hunter's Axe howled with force.
The dead. The wounds. The scars.
All of them her painful memories. Moments that had hurt and been hard. In the past she had heard phantom voices and seen hallucinations even in her right mind, and sometimes she had cut herself.
But that was the past.
Residue of time already gone. She would not be jerked around by the ghosts of yesterday any longer.
The whetstone clenched in her fist felt newly solid. And so did that idiot face over there.
"You… you've been taking me way too lightly!"
Tap-tap—!
She drove forward hard and plunged into the elder dragon's reach. The patterns writhed and showed her the faces of the dead — but she no longer swayed.
Screeech—!!
——————!!
The Dragon Hunter's Axe split the writhing illusions and smashed into the elder dragon's ankle.
Flash—
The characters on the axe haft glittered. Six empty slots remaining.
"Watch closely, you bag of bones. And you too."
Friga leveled the axe as she spoke. In her hand, she still gripped the whetstone tight.
The pathetic display — that much was enough.
Seeing the Frost Elder Dragon bellow with that thunderous roar, my hands started shaking and cold sweat broke out. Was this what PTSD felt like for soldiers who'd been through war?
I wasn't joking. I genuinely never expected a Frost Elder Dragon to come bursting out of this place.
Screeech—!
"Ha— hup— ssup— khup!"
While I blanked out for a second under a wave of bad memories, Friga was fighting for her life and getting herded into a corner. I snapped back fast and started hunting for skills.
Okay, so… first, debuffs!
Weakening the Frost Elder Dragon was the absolute priority. I threw one of the debuffs I'd been using to good effect at the elder dragon.
Touch of Weakness!
Accelerates the target's aging. Significantly reduces the target's Agility, Defense, and Attack Power for a set duration.
For a skill that cost twenty thousand won, it was an absolute broken cheat — it gutted every major combat stat at once. Thanks to this one, the bottom-tier fighters had at least managed to hang on a little longer and avoid dead last.
"Ghhhk…!"
Friga's condition on the screen looked bad. Her whole body was trembling and her face had gone pale — something was off.
Sure enough, a message window popped up.
Ding-dong!
Friga has fallen under the status effect Confusion!
Friga's attacks miss at a significantly high rate!
Friga has fallen under the status effect Guilt!
Friga's movements are slowed!
"Oh, for fuck's—"
The second I saw it, a string of curses tried to climb out of my throat. Even at full strength it was a coin flip whether she could win — and now she had status effects stacked on top.
Last raid, there hadn't been any status effects like this. It had to be those patterns plastered all over the elder dragon's body that were applying them.
BOOM!
——————!!
Thanks to the debuff I'd already laid down, Friga somehow kept dodging and staying alive even under the status effects.
"Purify — the purify skill…"
I clearly remembered buying a purification skill before. I had to clear those garbage status effects before I could do anything else, so I flicked through my skills as fast as my fingers would move.
"Ah — here it is!"
Composed Mind — the one I'd bought last time that wiped every status effect clean. I was about to slam it onto Friga when—
Ba-bam—!
Friga has overcome the status effect Confusion!
Friga has overcome the status effect Guilt!
"You've been taking me way too lightly…!"
Screeech—!
Friga, who had shaken off the status effects entirely on her own, swung her axe in a massive arc at the elder dragon. With its Defense already gutted by the debuff, the dragon staggered hard and a chunk of its HP peeled away.
The sudden turnaround left me a little stunned. Of course it was good that the status effects were gone, but…
"Wait — uh… how?"
How did she clear the status effects by herself?