Do Dreams Come True? (6)

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As my vision cleared, cold air seeped in through my clothes.

A dense conifer forest stretched beneath a gloomy sky. Unlike the Great Forest of Fairy Trees, where the entire battlefield was packed wall-to-wall with timber, white snowfields could be spotted throughout this map. Blizzards could whip up from those open stretches, but… it wasn't a gimmick that appeared often. Nothing I needed to worry about right now.

I had no idea what strategy Crow would bring after ending the last match in defeat. I scanned the battlefield quickly, searching for mana signatures, but nothing showed itself yet. The Necromancer's mana, in particular, was nowhere to be found. Just a few undead lurking here and there? At this point, it was fair to assume they'd abandoned mana detection entirely.

Which meant something else would be serving as their eyes instead… and right on cue, an unnatural shadow fell across the ground. Not as massive as a bone dragon, but not small either. Their appearance revealed the truth: a flock of griffons, rotting and decaying in places. Crow was almost certainly sharing vision with those things.

Aerial surveillance. Of all places, in a forest?

I swallowed the rising questions and kept moving, hunting for my opponent.

Found them at last — footprints.

Tracking an opponent's footprints was basic technique on any field covered in snow or soft earth. Crow knew that too, of course, so the ground around me was littered with other tracks. Most of them were decoys left by summoned undead. Among this countless mess of prints, only one set would belong to the mage.

A carefully laid disguise. But it should have been more thorough.

The depth of a footprint scales with body weight. Ghouls are light for their size once the flesh has rotted away; Dullahans and Death Knights, by contrast, wear heavy armor. Factor in the gait and weight I'd observed in the previous match, and the correct trail was possible to deduce.

I was gradually following Crow's tracks when a sharp scream rang out from somewhere.

— Kyaaaaah!

My body reacted faster than my mind. A throwing dagger flew on pure reflex and struck something midair. A grotesque lump of flesh dropped to the ground with a wet thud.

"Ha."

Watching Eye, was it? A familiar with outstanding detection capability — and a correspondingly brutal point cost. The enemy had abandoned the most convenient, efficient form of mana sensing. In its place, they'd chosen aerial surveillance and a familiar. The one domain where those two options vastly outclassed mana detection was this: neither revealed the caster's location.

Putting this much effort into presence concealment said a great deal. Crow would have almost no means of self-defense in this match. The moment I found the Necromancer's true body, the game was mine. On the flip side, there was a high chance they'd brought something extremely annoying as a strategy.

How long did I follow those footprints? Not long at all before Crow's undead reached me. First to arrive, naturally, were the griffons circling overhead. From farther off, I thought I could hear the sound of hooves as well. Louder and more numerous than before. A build that had increased the proportion of high-tier undead.

The distant Death Knights could wait. First, deal with the griffons.

A massive forest predator descended, casting its shadow over me. An eagle's beak, a lion's legs — even rotting, that majesty would still hold. I was bracing for an aerial assault when a curse slipped out of my mouth on its own.

"You have got to be fucking kidding—!"

The descending griffon banked and climbed back toward the sky. No hard beak, no razor talons came rushing at me. What filled my vision instead was a dozen-odd ghouls.

Free-falling from the sky, the ghouls' bodies swelled. Red light bloomed in their lifeless eyes and mouths, and my grim premonition became reality. Shrapnel from corpses exploding on every side came flying at me without mercy. A dizzying force of pressure shoved my body back. I only stopped when I slammed into a tree. My guard had already been completely shattered, and I hadn't prepared any shadows to slip into. I swatted away a few visible fragments, but there was no helping the way my health bar got carved up.

"Ghk—!"

To make matters worse, the sound of hooves was already rising nearby. The homework I'd set aside for later had come to torment me. Distinguishing directions barely mattered — they were approaching from nearly every side, front and back, left and right.

Jump into the air?

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No. One griffon was still circling the area. Humans don't have wings, so defense in midair is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠difficult. If I got hit from above and fell, there'd be no recovering from that. Better to take the beating on the ground than get wrecked for free in the sky.

The Death Knights that appeared moments later looked incomparably stronger than the ones from the previous match. The black aura blanketing their surroundings was unusually dense — denser than anything I'd seen in all my time playing this game. I couldn't even begin to guess how many points had been poured into them.

Crow had brought an extreme summon-enhancement build. That was why they'd needed to maintain presence concealment, and why the insane stunt of ferrying ghouls in on griffons had been possible. If I'd known from the start, I could have countered it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cleanly enough. If I'd brought a stealth-focused build, I would have taken the win without any real trouble. But when would I ever have run into a strategy this deranged?

A one-time strategy for this Arena. No — something that could never be used again. But the first time it landed, it was a sure-fire killing blow, and it had come straight for me.

They probably meant to save this for the finals. So this is its own kind of recognition, I guess? Not that I'm exactly thrilled about it.

Five Death Knights in sight. No Dullahans, no skeleton soldiers, no Liches either. There is no invincible strategy in Infinity Black. The rule is that to gain one thing, you give up another. By any reasonable logic, the forces here had to be their entire army.

Abandon the idea of hunting down Crow's true body for now. With a slow debuff and enhanced Death Knights on my trail, that was far too dangerous a call. More than that, I still didn't know the exact location — only that it was somewhere in this general area.

Which left one other win condition. If I survived until every last one of these undead was spent, I won. No matter how badly I got hurt, I wasn't losing to a Necromancer with no summons and no magic left.

I parried a thrusting spearhead, slipped under the shaft, and went for the enemy. I meant to shatter a shinbone — then abandoned the idea just as fast. Push any deeper and there'd be no way to dodge the flanking pressure. Instead I put a conifer at my back as a shield.

Their movements were far too refined for ordinary Death Knights. This wasn't default AI behavior — Crow was issuing the commands personally. That one had staked everything on this fight too.

Not a bad call. Rather than flinging half-baked bone spears, the plan was to beat me with area bombardment and raw numbers. It had worked fairly well so far, but that ended here. In the end, if those Death Knights couldn't kill me, none of it meant a thing.

I strung Silver Thread between the trees and slipped the next spear thrust. After weathering one full assault, the Death Knights pulled back to open distance. What filled the gap were ghouls dropping from the sky — more of them than before.

"Ha, shit… raining garbage from the sky."

A halberd blade came crashing down with heavy force. I knocked the edge aside and twisted its path, but the numbness in my wrist wouldn't fade easily. Proof of how badly I'd been worn down. Part of it was the sheer volume of ghoul poison I'd been doused in; part of it was the injuries severe enough to tear my clothes in places. The damage stacked up, clinging wet and heavy around my ankles.

The silver lining was that the frequency of ghoul bombardments had dropped sharply. A few griffons were still flying around with ghouls clutched in their talons, but the numbers looked thin now. Obvious enough. This was the last of them, so they'd be looking for an opening.

"Pff…"

I get wanting to be careful. But aren't you underestimating me a little too much?

An opponent with an overly obvious weakness has a ceiling. Not simply because the weakness exists — no one is strong in every domain. The problem is that being too conscious of a weakness leads to overcompensation. Flip that around, and the direction where unconscious overcompensation shows up is exactly where the weakness lies.

Nearly ten bombardments. Death Knights rotating in wave after wave. If they'd thought I was just quietly fighting this whole time — that would be the reason they lost.

The moment a Death Knight lunged, I shifted through a shadow I'd laid in advance. I opened the distance once, then stepped up onto the Silver Thread I'd installed.

"Found you."

The undead's eyes flashed red. Death Knights closing at terrifying speed, ghouls diving from the sky. I threw out my one and only smoke screen and slipped into cover for a moment.

Then the Assassin's form came flying toward the Necromancer's true body.