That Wasn't All I Taught You
That wasn't all I taught her.
Quests in DeoEn are nothing but a chain of choices. Every decision a player makes can turn the entire course of a run on its head, and with it, the rewards and the follow-up quest chains change as well. Higher difficulty, better compensation—that much goes without saying.
Mythic-grade gear had been revealed to the public two years ago, yet only a handful of rankers still carried it. The reason was simple.
"It's been a while, Yena."
"H-hahaha…"
Mythic-grade quests are tuned to a difficulty so brutal it's meant to be impossible.
Yena clenched her teeth. This was not the plan she'd drawn up after Lily had given her the okay sign.
The original strategy had been simple: use the assassin's stealth to cut down the beastmen at speed, then ambush Lily and knock her out of the quest. No matter how much stronger Yena got, no matter how far ahead her stats were on paper, Lily was an onion of a woman—peel back one layer and another technique came tumbling out. Even in the worst possible position, she would somehow dig up an answer. Yena simply couldn't imagine beating her head-on.
A straight fight is absolutely, absolutely out of the question.
So she had avoided open battle, and everything had been proceeding smoothly—until…
"Lady Yena."
"…Who are you?"
"It's a pleasure. I am Miho, the former High Priestess, currently lending my aid to Blen."
A staggeringly beautiful fox beastman.
Though not quite on Lily's level.
"By the way—why did you summon me out of nowhere?"
It had been a fight with less than a guaranteed win, but there had been at least a ten percent chance of victory. Then this random summoning had dropped it to roughly one percent. To Yena, who had been grinning from ear to ear at the prospect of Mythic gear, it was a bolt from the blue.
When Yena glared at her with feral eyes, Miho merely curved her lips into a faint smile.
"Don't worry. You can no longer lose."
"What are you talk—"
Pa-at.
"—Ugh?!"
A wave of blue mana flooded into Yena. A colossal surge of magic raced through the mana channels spreading out from her heart to every corner of her body. Her original crimson mana was swept away like foam before the tide, and only blue remained inside her.
Haah…
Her heterochromatic eyes had turned blue in both irises, and Yena stared at Miho in utter bewilderment.
"I have granted you the complete authority. Once this business concludes, that power will be yours to keep."
"…This is Mythic?"
Power overflowed. She no longer felt like a mere assassin—as if she could shoulder any role at all.
Just like Leo.
Shriing.
A chill crawled up her spine as absurd levels of mana flowed through her blue dagger. Only a single thought remained in Yena's mind.
I can't let this go.
She had to have this power. Even if she didn't deserve it, she had to take it. If she fought seriously, her odds were—
"Ready?"
Her head snapped around.
Lily stood waiting, a spear resting on her shoulder. It was like having a bucket of ice water dumped over her skull.
What was I just doing?
For an instant, the chat window—the one that had frozen over, or rather, simply stopped registering in her eyes—flooded back into view.
What good is some Mythic-grade item if a streamer gets drunk on power and forgets her own broadcast entirely…
"Uuugh…"
Mortifying.
At this rate it would rank somewhere in her top five worst stream moments of all time.
I should just crawl into a hole and die…
"Shall we begin?"
"…I'm sorry, what?"
Woom.
The spear moved.
"Don't you want it? That thing."
"…But."
Was it right to obtain it like this? She was supposed to be the veteran helping out a newbie, and yet she'd received every courtesy a newbie could ask for on her way to the prize?
Lily gave a beautiful smile.
"Yena, you worry about the strangest things."
Just come at me.
"It's not like you have any further to fall."
"…What do you mean, fall!"
As she shrieked it out loud, the mana brimming through her body surged and rippled. She truly had nothing left to hold back now.
She could win this.
"…Fine. I'm getting seriously serious now."
Yena discarded the two daggers she carried and drew a new pair from her subspace. Not a hidden piece or a Mythic, but Legendary-grade daggers fitted with some genuinely fine enchantments. The twin blades settled perfectly into Yena's grip. Her two blue-lit eyes flashed.
"Phantom Shadow."
Yena's body vanished.
An avalanche of blue daggers came pouring down. It was the convergence of two assassin arts—Shadow Veil and Shadow Phantom—unleashing a torrent of blades. Movements that looked as if dozens of attackers were striking instead of one; an expert of equal caliber could never hope to block it all.
She wasn't the strongest in a one-on-one for nothing.
Lily spun her spear in a full circle. A technique that blurred the flow of mana across an entire area and nullified incoming attacks. It was one Yena had already seen several times on stream, and she read it instantly—abandoning her assault with startling speed and rolling her body away.
The moment the nullification ended, the counterattack came in. An upward slash of the dagger, then a second blade layering over it, spewing blue mana.
Lily laid the spear flat and caught it—but—
Pushuk!
"Double Slash."
The second strike raked across Lily's forearm.
Sure-Hit.
That was the promise of the Legendary-grade enchantment: even a blocked blow would deal damage to the target. The graze on her arm drank in mana and began gnawing away at her health.
The spear split.
The instant Yena saw it multiply into seven, she froze her next attack, clicked her tongue at the missed opening, and melted into stealth.
Certainly, with a Mythic-grade item layered under a high-level assassin's stealth, her position was anything but easy to detect.
There was a way.
Lily hurled the split spears outward. Naturally, Yena wasn't hit.
"Spear's Roar."
"…!"
Kradeudeuk!
All seven of the flung, split spears triggered Spear's Roar simultaneously. In an instant, the seven points converging on a single target became seven enormous breaths of force that tore the entire area apart.
Kwagwagwagwaga—!!!
The high priest's dwelling crumbled to powder. As the smoke cleared, the landscape around it lay exposed, wrecked from end to end. Everything was gone—except for the three who had evacuated their bodies well in advance.
Tap, tap.
…There's no way she died to just this much.
Yena was, after all, a talent I had personally recognized as exceptional—and now a high ranker with a Mythic-grade item in hand, on top of it. She wouldn't die from something this small.
Whoosh.
Ka, kagagang!!!
The dagger lunging for my throat was parried into futility by my spearhead.
"You blocked that?!"
"Next session, I'll teach you how to conceal your mana too."
"Ugh…!"
Yena scrambled backward, and I pursued, my spear spinning. The weapon hungrily chased her down, but the nimble girl weaved and darted, absorbing the bulk of the incoming damage as she went.
Kang!Pushushuk!
She even mounted counterattacks of her own, landing several respectable wounds on me. Legendary-grade or not, those short blades cut far deeper than the Sure-Hit effect alone could account for. Better still was the fact that each and every one of Yena's strikes was making use of proper mana manipulation.
She's earned the right to sit in my class.
I smiled.
"Excellent."
"I'm not here to say thank you, so—no! That's not it!"
She dealt damage, yes, but never a decisive blow. Judging that this exchange was getting her nowhere, she backpedaled another full step and ground her teeth together.
Why Yena was still struggling despite holding a Mythic-grade item was simple: the Blue-Ring power she'd roughly absorbed was fundamentally specialized toward magical reinforcement rather than physical enhancement. The being was strong enough that her physical performance was guaranteed to some degree regardless, but in the end, Yena was swinging a staff meant for casting spells as though it were a sword. If Yena had been a mage instead of an assassin, things would have been far thornier than they were now.
Conversely, the reason Taebaek's Flute of the Abyss had worked so well against me was that it slashed my own abilities down rather than buffing his.
"If only Death Echo weren't on cooldown…"
I tapped the head of my spear lightly.
It glowed bright with the light of blue mana.
Instantly, Yena's brow creased.
"…I used Teleport, you know."
"That wasn't the only thing I taught you."
I had taught her one more technique besides Teleport. And a Yena whose magical capabilities had bloomed to their current state should be able to pull it off.
Yena wavered between her pride and the Mythic-grade prize.
"……I've never once pulled it off."
Keiiing…
Her daggers began to rotate, slowly, bit by bit.