Come Out

“Phew…”

Rolling my slightly stiff shoulders in big circles, I recalled my spear. A moment ago, prompted by the chat, I had used a technique my current body simply couldn't handle. If I'd pulled that off in the real world—where pain and strain come through exactly as they are—I'd have been bedridden for a week. Not that my real body has the mana or the physique for it in the first place.

“...A party trick?”

Mmgh. I scratched my head. The chat window had descended into utter chaos, but it really was a party trick. What I'd just used was nothing more than an imitation of Spear's Roar, one of the techniques I'd wielded in my past life. Its power fell short of the genuine article by more than ninety percent, and even the aftershock of force was far smaller. After all, the attack had only managed to burn away three or four of the wisps drifting nearby. Borrowing the chat's own vocabulary, I suppose you'd call it a baby Spear's Roar.

Taking my eyes off the chat, I raised my spear. The wisps, which had frozen in place for a moment, seemed to sense the danger, and though they weren't even dead yet they began clustering together in one spot. The bobbing, hopping wisps fused into something behind them, and in an instant the mass began swelling to a monstrous size.

Before I could lift a finger, the Will-o'-Wisp King had swollen to an absolutely staggering size. Before I knew it, a three-story-building-tall monarch wreathed in a crimson flame haze was radiating a crushing, oppressive weight.

The moment those crimson eyes fixed on me, the ground beneath my feet heated in an instant. I sprang off the scorched earth on reflex and checked the level.

—LV.62

The chat was in an uproar, but my attention was fixed more on the enemy before me than on any of it. What level had Kroktoos been again? Around twenty-five, if I remembered right. A level doesn't decide everything, but there was no question that this thing was on an entirely different plane from him.

The crimson, haze-shrouded eyes locked onto me, and my body's temperature began to climb. A Heaven-Scented Human has high resistance to shifts in temperature, but right now the gap between us was considerable. This was a body that rarely registered heat differences at all, and even so it was starting to warm, bit by bit.

A chat window desperate to coach me. But for Lily, who wasn't reading the chat, all that wailing might as well have been static. I moved fast. The Will-o'-Wisp King, its bulk grown so enormous, had slowed right down with it, and by the time it registered my position, my spear was already buried in its body.

“...!”

“Krrgh!”

Perhaps the damage had been trivial—the thing ignored it entirely and scattered wisps from its whole body like flung embers. Crossing my spear and arm into a guard, I sprang backward. My arm burned hot. I couldn't say for certain, but I'd taken what, a first-degree burn?

“Ngh.”

Our eyes met once more, and my body grew hotter still. So the power lies in the eyes.

I twisted the green spear in my grip. Spear's Roar was out of the question. Even in the old days I couldn't spam it without delay, and no matter how far I watered down its power, the constraint remained. And using any other technique would strain both my mana and this body past their limits. Magic, obviously, was impossible.

There has to be a way... ah.

I looked down at the accessory on my hand. Sylphid's Ring, the one Yena had given me—a ring imbued with the power of a wind spirit. What were its effects again?

Flame came hurtling toward me. Dodging the gaze and the fire in equal measure, I read the ring's description. Semi-Legendary tier. A boost to all stats, a slight increase to movement speed, greater spirit affinity. And then—

Fwoooosh…!

“...!”

“Temporarily imbues your weapon with the wind attribute... apparently.”

Out of nowhere, wind began to blow through the fire-choked air. The crimson wisps tried to swallow even the wind itself, but a spirit's gale was not about to be devoured by some low-grade flame like that. For a moment the fire's roar guttered and sank, and I felt the faintest whisper of coolness.

I charged, spear in hand. My target: the two eyes glaring me down. The Will-o'-Wisp King bellowed its fury at the figure soaring high above it, but the wind-wreathed spear pried those eyes apart and drove straight in.

“Whew... it's hot.”

Crunch! Cleaving through the last remnant of the Will-o'-Wisp King, I drove my spear into the ground. Not an easy opponent, all things considered. It felt like being one of the world's weaklings again, back in an age where only the strong had mattered. The stats themselves weren't anything I'd call superior, but that Gaze of its had been genuinely troublesome. By the time I realized I wasn't supposed to meet its eyes, I was already carrying three stacks. The fact that it was an energy-form monster hadn't helped either.

Catching my breath, I reopened the chat window I'd shut for a moment.

“Uh... thank you? You're asking what dropped? One moment.”

Leaving the spear where it stood, I dragged myself over to gather what the Wisp King had left behind. Once this hunt wrapped up, I should end the stream. I felt oddly drained. Let's see... gold, will-o'-wisp seeds... a charm, and...

“Oh, this looks like a weapon—”

Shriiing—!

A blade-sharp something, aimed at my throat in that instant. I batted it aside with the wisp king's weapon, which I still happened to be holding. The dagger-deflected strike went spinning off, turned away by the blue rod.

“Huh? How did I block that?”

“...An ambush?”

“That's strange. It's got Guaranteed Targeting—it should have hit no matter what.”

There was definitely a woman standing in front of me. I could hear her voice, but I couldn't see her at all. Probably something like invisibility. If I'd had Detection, a crude trick like that wouldn't have gotten within a mile of filtering past me. Honestly, this body—fine on the physical side, but its mana supply is just far too thin.

“Come out.”

No answer. I swept my gaze wide across the surroundings. Judging by the flow of mana, there were three of them: one in front, two behind. The one in front was coiled and ready to lunge at any moment, while the two behind seemed to be biding their time, waiting only for an opening.

“I'd rather not?”

At some invisible signal, the two behind me closed in fast—one going for my back, the other making for the spear I'd planted in the ground. Decision made. I moved.

The Dagger of Reflection hadn't worked. To her, a member of the bandit crew, that fact landed like a blow to the chest. A Rare-tier item bearing the Guaranteed Targeting enchantment. It didn't compare to the Sylphid's Ring Lily wore, but for an assassin it was still a weapon worth a fair bit of gold. Once per day, it would unerringly strike whatever was reflected in its blade. How on earth had she parried an attack that neither saw nor heard—nothing less than a sure-hit strike?

But it didn't matter. Lily had already burned through most of her health and stamina, and she'd let go of her spear. The wisp king's weapon irked her a little, true, but a rod wasn't her main weapon by any stretch.

Kill her.

She gave the signal. The two in the back scurried into motion. Once the old man seized the spear, he and Jack could hit her with a combined assault, and that would be more than enough to take the woman down. The old man grabbed the spear. It was over now.

“That was a pointless little gesture.”

“Bluff all you want! Die!”

The dagger flew. And then—

“Wh-what—?”

Deflected by the very rod that had come flying in alongside it, the dagger drove straight through Jack's heart.