The Second Death and Resurrection

A deep, bone-shaking rumble rolled through the sand.

"Whoa!"

Kutlanka, having taken a solid crack to the crown of its skull, lurched to a halt and began to shudder as if seized by convulsions. Nothing remained of the thing but bone — yet a body over thirty meters tall trembling like that set the desert floor vibrating right along with it.

I nearly lost my footing and tumbled off. I held on, barely.

"Now!"

I shoved myself upright, sucked in a lungful of air, and bellowed down at the party waiting below.

Kutlanka had dropped into a Stun. This was our window — the one chance we had to pour on everything we had.

Skills hammered into the giant's skull from the ground. Explosions ripped across bone. Fire bloomed.

"Burn!"

A detonation of flame swallowed the crown of Kutlanka's head. While I had been buying time up here with the fairies, Chae Gillard had recovered his stamina and mana — and now he was back in the fight. With Plasma gone, Chae was the strongest card I had left to play.

Aquaril and Entris could fling sword aura until their arms gave out and still not match a single one of Chae Gillard's fire spells. Watching him step out of the fight after launching that miniature sun had left a hole I felt in my teeth. His timing, coming back now, was perfect.

Bone splintered. Bone cracked.

Anyone who had played Fairy Masters already knew how brutal a Stun really was. Under the party's concentrated assault, Kutlanka's skull began coming apart at speed. The snout bones jutting out like a canine's muzzle shattered in an instant, crumbling the way scorched rice crust shatters under a spoon.

Earlier, we had dumped every skill we had — Chae had even burned his strongest technique — and we had barely managed to snap a single leg bone. Now we were breaking this thing's skull without even putting out that kind of force.

We should have been hitting it like this from the start.

The fight had taught me something else. Following the textbook clear was usually the right call — but sometimes an unorthodox strike hit harder. Especially when you were underpowered. If we had thrown the force we had wasted on that leg bone at this weak point instead, we could have carved a much uglier ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wound.

The thought sat in my chest, sour and unfinished.

"Ku—KUUOOOOOOOH—!"

Kutlanka tore free of the Stun and roared. It shook a skull webbed with fractures, three tail bones rearing high against the sky.

"Stop attacking! Stop attacking!"

I shouted the party down, snatched up my sword, and sprinted. Then I brought the blade down on the weak point that had stunned it in the first place — that protruding knob of bone at the very crown of its skull.

CLANG!

"KUUOOOOOOK—?!"

"Heh heh heh. That hurt? Good. Keep hurting."

The roar had jumped a register. I laughed.

My mana was a dry well, so I could not force another Stun — but a weak point was a weak point for a reason. Even this brainless flailing carved real damage out of it.

Would've been nice if someone else had climbed up here with me.

If I had known it would go like this, I would have brought Aquaril. We could have landed a second Stun. Ignoring the standard clear I had used in the game was costing me — mistake after mistake.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

"Heheheh! Kheheheheh!"

I laughed like a lunatic and hammered the weak point without pause. Maybe it was my imagination, but attacking like this — grinning, unhinged — felt like it hit harder.

"Master!!!!!!"

"Hn?"

Aquaril's voice climbed up from below. She was screaming with everything she had, loud enough to reach a man standing thirty meters in the air, and the sound of it was raw with urgency.

"...When did it get this dark?"

Her voice snapped me back into my body. The scorching sunlight was gone. The world around me had dimmed, as if I had stepped into shade.

I looked up.

A tail bone was falling toward my face.

"What the fuck. Is this thing insane?"

Kutlanka had not swept the tail in from the side. It had lifted the bone high and brought it down in a quiet, vertical drop — a clean execution, meant to crush the man gnawing at its weak point and be done with him.

If that tail landed, it would kill me. It would also be slamming its own weak point with its own weapon. Attacking yourself on purpose. Yeah. Insane was the word.

Which also meant I had gotten under its skin badly enough that it was willing to hurt itself just to scrape me off. Was I supposed to take that as a compliment?

"Holy fuck, that's terrifying."

I needed to jump before the tail flattened me. Leaping from thirty meters with no rope and no parachute was a special kind of nightmare — but if I wanted to live, I had to crush the fear under my heel and go.

I set myself to jump.

A thought surfaced.

"...Shit."

Maybe it was the Uroboros's Avatar talking. Even staring down a death I could see coming, I could not let go of what I wanted. We call people like that fools. Apparently I had become one.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

"Kill me if you can, you skull-faced son of a bitch!"

I did not jump. Greed was harder to beat than the fear of dying.

I gave up the fall and chopped at Kutlanka's weak point like I was splitting firewood, blade rising and falling in a frenzy.

A chill walked up my spine with every strike. My groin went tight and aching, the way it does right before you piss yourself. Cold sweat ran off me in sheets. Death was coming.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

"Aaaaaaah!"

I did not let go of the sword. Not even at the end.

An overwhelming weight arrived from above, a force no body could hold — and then it pressed me flat. Flesh burst. Blood sprayed in every direction.

"Masteeeeer!!!!!!"

The last thing I heard before the lights went out was Aquaril's scream. She's going to ruin her throat like that...

That was the thought I took with me into the dark.

"No! Master! Masteeeeer!!!!!"

Alan died exactly where he stood, crushed beneath Kutlanka's tail bone. Aquaril watched her master die and screamed, then hurled herself at the giant.

"...He didn't dodge?"

Entris, who had seen it happen right beside Aquaril, could not make the picture fit. What? Had she seen that wrong?

The Alan she knew treated his own life as the most important thing he owned. Before Kutlanka had even risen, he had said it more than once — if things went bad, he was running.

So of course she had assumed he would leap off that skull the moment the tail came down.

He had not. He had attacked the weak point until the last possible second, and the tail had flattened him where he stood.

Alan was three-star. Even stacked to the ceiling, his Durability capped at sixty points. Sixty points of Durability was not enough to survive Kutlanka's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tail. He had died without leaving a corpse behind.

"Hmm~ Looks like Master had him wrong."

Entris folded her arms and murmured it to herself.

Her master, Chae Gillard, had rated Alan highly. The way the man threw around power that did not match his rank had convinced Chae there was a secret under the surface.

That man was dead. Entris decided, master's opinion or not, that this time Chae had missed.

"Guess the raid's a bust."

Alan had been calling the shots as the temporary party's leader. With him gone, the raid was over.

Chae could have stepped into the hole and kept it going. Entris believed, as a matter of course, that her master was far the better Master of the two. Anything Alan had done, Chae could do.

"Aaaaaaagh!!!"

"A-Alan? Th-that's a lie, right? Alan is... dead?"

"....."

But Alan's death had already ended the temporary party.

Aquaril, Alan's fairy. Kanisia Lora, who had been fighting at his side. Abraham, Kanisia's fairy. All three of them had taken the hit like a blade between the ribs. Aquaril was shrieking and hacking at Kutlanka in a blind frenzy. Kanisia and Abraham had gone empty-eyed.

The party's strength had fallen off a cliff. With what was left, even Chae could not clear this.

"I should get back to Master."

Judging the raid a failure, Entris turned to go.

She made it a few steps, then stopped and looked back.

"Aaaaagh! Aaaaaaaaagh!"

Tears flying, throat torn open, Aquaril kept swinging her sword at Kutlanka.

If a master as precious as the world itself had died the way Alan just had, Entris knew she would have looked exactly like that.

The sight of Aquaril was so raw, so wretched, that it hurt to watch. Entris swore to herself she would never become that. No matter what it took, she would protect her master.

She watched a moment longer, then went back to Chae's side. She wanted to see him.

...How long has it been?

A window bloomed in the blacked-out dark of my vision. It was enough to drag my mind back together.

Fuck. That was hideous.

The instant that enormous tail bone touched my head, time slowed — as if some chronomancer had seized the world and dragged it down to a crawl. In reality I must have been crushed in the space of a blink. From where I stood, it played out in agonizing slow motion.

My skull compressed. My neck snapped. My spine shattered. My flesh burst, and blood sprayed out of me in every direction.

Every last sensation arrived in exquisite, unbearable detail. It was horrific.

God. I really, really hate dying.

Use the skill.

Time to go back.

Oh. It leveled up again?

Skills only gained experience — and levels — if you actually used them. I had used Molt exactly twice, counting this one, and it had leveled both times. Don't tell me this thing ranked up every single time I popped it?

A new effect, though... What did I just get?

Status window.

Reinforced ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Snake Scales?

A new trait had appeared in the status window.

Stat boost plus physical and magic damage reduction. Not bad.

I looked over the new effect on Molt and the Reinforced Snake Scales trait and decided I had come out ahead.

The catch was the timer — thirty minutes after using the skill, and then it was gone — and the fact that the whole trait was a defensive package.

I've got enough defense already.

What I needed right now was not a thicker hide. It was more punch. I was great at farming things weaker than me and useless against anything stronger.

Then again, I was still painfully weak. Anything I could get my hands on was a gift.

A soft rustle moved through me. I could feel flesh knitting itself back together — which meant the nerves had come online first.

A moment later I was alive again, and completely naked. I had to give the skill this much: the effect was incredible.

"That's something."

Scales had pushed up through my skin — nothing a human body should have been growing. They dotted my arms, my torso, my thighs, scattered like someone had stuck them on as decals. They were not soft the way human flesh was, but they were smooth, and they felt good under the fingers. The temporary Reinforced Snake Scales trait, doing its work.

"Hah... fuck."

I clicked my tongue at the sight of my own bare, well-built body. The armor and weapons I had barely finished buying were gone. All of them.

I could replace them once I got back to Baidu. That did not make it sting less. I had not even gotten my money's worth. Not a little. A lot.

"I crawled out of death just to kill you, you piece of shit."

I shook the stiffness out of my limbs and climbed back onto the crown of Kutlanka's skull. The giant was still trembling in a Stun, having just smashed its own weak point to paste me. I had lost my weapons — but I still had Wind Arrow.

And thanks to Molt, every drop of the mana I had burned dry was back.

"I don't care what it takes. I'm the one who kills you, and I'm the one who takes the loot. Fuck."

A storm of wind arrows hammered into Kutlanka's weak point.