It Doesn't Flow Away (8)
The Hero, the Vessel of Wrath, and even those petty little dogs of the gods—irritating enough to matter.
Faced with so clear an encirclement, Leviathan faltered. How had it come to this? The thought itself was almost unthinkable.
"I didn't break the contract, did I?"
[How dare you……!]
At first, when that enormous mass of holy power had come straight toward him, he had assumed it was coincidence.
But after he moved twice and it still tracked him with perfect precision, he knew better.
He had no idea what method they had used, but those damned creatures could now pin his location in real time.
[Mere humans……!]
What he never expected was that the cause would be none other than the lowly human he had planned to use and discard.
No human until now had ever found the loophole in a contract he forced upon them.
Even if the sample size was small—he rarely bothered forcing contracts in the first place—it was still true.
It had been the simplest form, and therefore the most certain. So why?
No—more than that, how had that human known where he was? Even he himself could not sense a contract partner's location with such fine precision. How?
And why had those fanatics left the man alive? The moment they found him they should have killed him on the spot, yet this time……!
"I will never let you leave this place alive……!"
"Khahaha! Berserk joins in too! I won't stand by while my comrades have all the fun!"
He had at least hoped to deliver the shock of betrayal, even if the blade itself never reached them. That, too, seemed to have failed completely.
Leviathan watched the dogs of the gods tighten the net from a short distance away, and the Vessel of Wrath closing in on him step by step.
This was a crisis.
[Hah, a fool who couldn't even seize one proper vessel!]
"Victory to my blade."
"Uwahahaha!! First time hunting a Great Demon!"
[You think I'll go down like this?!]
"Glory to the heavens above."
"Do try to entertain Berserk!"
A crisis?
[You think the likes of you can bring me down?!]
Leviathan trembled at the thought that had risen in his own mind.
He could never accept it. To be placed in danger by a single human—so unfair, so infuriating that he refused to treat it as reality.
"Death to that demon……!"
"Here I come!!"
So Leviathan drew up his power.
He forgot that this was not the King's domain and that there was no water, so he could not unleash his full strength. He ignored the fact that even a Great Demon alone would struggle against the Hero and the Vessel of Wrath—and that he now faced both at once.
[I am the Seat of Envy, Moby Dick—!]
Boom!
A blade steeped in black demon energy and a dark-hued halberd slammed into the silk of his robes.
At the same moment, water erupted like a geyser from what had been ordinary earth, surging all the way into the high sky.
Above the clouds, in air already thin, a sky whale swimming through the emptiness let out a great cry.
I quietly contemplated the water that had shot upward like a reverse waterfall, the vanished demon, and the sky whale that had taken its place—most likely Moby Dick.
Why was it that every raid I ran, the enemy refused to stay on the ground? Why did every single fight demand that I surpass human limits and pull off miracles just to land a hit?
If someone said, That's just how raids work, I wouldn't have a comeback—but still. This was excessive.
Normally a raid like this at least gave you platforms so you could reach the strike zone, or the enemy came down on its own.
"We'll hold it!"
Instead of just raining bombardment from above like this!
Crash!
I watched a golden barrier intercept the water spout Moby Dick had fired. A miracle performed by the group of priests with the Inquisitor at their head.
"We'll lighten the Hero's burden!"
"O God, grant us the courage to face evil!"
At first I had wondered if she had brought too many of them, but looking at it now, it wasn't a bad idea. The plan to surround and starve the demon had failed, yet it would clearly spare the Inquisitor's stamina.
"It went up. We can't hit it like that! Come down here!"
Meanwhile Berserk was shouting that sort of thing, furious. For all her simplicity, I agreed, so I kept quiet.
"So it really was a Great Demon……. Are you all right?"
"Yes, yes. Holding up so far."
"Good. Still, fall back just in case. No telling what tricks that demon might try on you."
"Yes, sir."
The Archmage checked on Dev's safety, then began chanting in earnest.
Mana was gathering in an ominous volume; he was preparing a proper raid-level finisher. She was the only mage in the expedition, so it wouldn't reach the level of Far Enoch's defense, but still.
Bang!
And when the water spout finally stopped, I unleashed a Bombard I had charged to the limit, while the Archmage loosed a compact bolt of lightning.
"…The range is far too great."
The distance between us and the target was simply too much. My attack never reached; the Archmage's may have, but it made no difference.
"And it's too large. I thought it was inside effective range, but if it looks that big even when it isn't……."
The Archmage's second point was just as serious.
At that size, even inside range the attacks would barely register. Not like driving a toothpick into a human body—more like jabbing it with an acupuncture needle.
"Berserk wants to use magic too……."
"Ugh. There's no way to attack with holy power from here."
So were we just supposed to sit here and take it? I hated that idea.
I racked my brain for a way to hit Moby Dick.
And when the sky whale fired another water spout, when the golden barrier blocked it again, one idea surfaced.
That barrier—if it had physical substance, couldn't it serve as a foothold? Use it as a stepping stone and climb all the way up to where that thing was floating?
"You."
"At this rate it'll be a war of attrition… Did you call me?"
I watched Kimchi Dumpling blankly point at herself and felt a moment's conflict. Now that I was about to say it out loud, the plan sounded like pure recklessness.
But I also hated just getting hit one-sidedly like this.
I decided it wouldn't break character and refined the hypothesis into words.
The listeners' facial muscles all asked whether I had lost my mind, yet light slowly gathered in Kimchi Dumpling's eyes as she listened.
"It… might be possible! I've never generated a barrier at that kind of distance, but if I go with you it should work!"
"That's far too dangerous! Once you go up there even the air will be thin……!"
"It's fine! If we stay like this it won't mean anything anyway!"
The Inquisitor cried that and looked up at the sky. Whether the water spout needed a cooldown or not, Moby Dick was silent for the moment.
If we were going to do it, now was the timing. I couldn't exactly claim human stamina outlasted a Great Demon's.
"But Demon Knight— in that case your strikes would……."
"I don't care."
Ah, of course. Using holy-power barriers as footholds meant continuous damage every time I touched them. But the health lost from mere contact wasn't that much.
The oxygen problem I had just mentioned would be worse than the holy-power drain. Altitude sickness and all that.
Did I really have to worry about this kind of thing too?
"Then the ones going up will be……."
"Berserk is definitely going!"
"Th-then we should also……."
"What about the Mage……?"
More importantly, I wasn't planning to stay up there forever.
"Only you, you, and me."
Honestly, think about it. The real flaw in the plan was that one small mistake from the Inquisitor meant we all fell to our deaths. Bring extra people and altitude sickness or cold or anything else would just produce non-combat losses. They would only become dead weight.
"That's far too dang—!"
"Go. Knock it out of the sky."
"……!"
Rather than keep fighting while carrying that risk, wasn't it better to try dropping the enemy to the ground?
Cut its wings, or slam it down from above with overwhelming force—there had to be a method if we looked. If it failed, we just fought as we were.
"Khahahaha! My comrade's sharp! If the enemy's above us, we just drag it down!"
"Th-there's no way something like that could work……."
"…Do you really think it's possible?"
In any case, the priests—who knew what kind of people we were but not what kind of road we had walked—started melting down.
The Archmage, on the other hand, only examined the practicality and never declared it impossible. Dev, still hanging back from incomplete suspicion and safety concerns, wore an expression that said, There he goes again.
"As a precaution, the rest of us should remain on the ground."
Still, the ones doing the fighting were us, not the priests. Permission was finally granted.
Well, it was closer to being shoved forward by the clock than anything else, but anyway. The Inquisitor planted her mace in the earth.
"I'm still not used to moving the barrier itself. You'll have to jump!"
"Khah, doesn't matter!"
"Then let's go!"
Using her mace like a staff, the Inquisitor created a foothold in midair. Accounting for her own jump height, it wasn't particularly high.
"Ohh!"
But if we climbed at this height like a staircase, when would we ever reach that thing? Wouldn't her holy power run dry first?
I gave a dull look to the stretch that would have been a skip cutscene in any normal game. Doubt crept in about whether the scheme I had cooked up was actually good.
The moment I stepped on the barrier, though, I took that judgment back. Our Kimchi Dumpling was a clever little dumpling.
Thump!
The barrier shoved us upward. Since she couldn't freely move the barrier itself, she simply shifted it a little and launched us into the air.
"Hup!"
Right before we fell, a new foothold appeared in the empty sky. Exactly the form I had envisioned.
The three of us rose higher, higher.
Bwooooo!
Perhaps sensing the danger, Moby Dick let out a long cry and drew water into its maw. Calling it water was generous—the mass glittered with thick strands of demon energy.
"I-I'm not sure I can block this……!"
"A frontal breakthrough, is it! Good! Berserk can take it!"
Having to maintain the footholds below while also stopping the force pouring from above would be rough. Berserk was putting on a bold front, but tanking that attack bare-bodied was honestly impossible.
And if we sprouted footholds every which way and hopped around like grasshoppers, the whale would just re-aim its cannon and it would all be for nothing.
Normal games didn't pull that kind of dirty play, but this place had never respected fair play from the start.
So I raised my sword. No special reason—it simply made the image easier to form.
"I'll try to somehow—"
"Ignore it."
"What?"
"Your job is to make ground we can stand on."
I had used a bit of mana earlier, but while Moby Dick was on cooldown I had recovered some as well.
"What are you planning?"
"If you have any sense, move."
"Th-this way, please!"
Recalling the feel of the technique I had used in the Great Forest, I extended lines of mana from the tip of my sword in every direction. The goal was a dome made of lines.
"Comrade, what are you going to do with this?"
"Demon Knight, this is……."
Don't touch it—just duck a little, will you? I was at least grateful that the Inquisitor had dragged Berserk right behind me as I slowly began rotating the mana.
The lines spun like a pinwheel.
KRA-BOOM!
And the moment those lines, accelerated, looked almost like a hemisphere, Moby Dick fired its cannon.
My mana and the whale's water cannon began a contest of strength. Like drilling through a water jet—or simply holding it back.
"……!"
"Ohh!"
"Demon Knight, this……!"
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRASH!
More than that, the sound was exactly like an old-style automatic car wash. High-pressure water, soap spray, then brushes sweeping along the sides and top—this was that exact noise.
Grit.
Meanwhile my arm hurt like hell.
I felt the droplets that had inevitably sprayed inward and clenched my teeth hard. Getting soaked was secondary; the arm holding the sword hurt so much I had to bite down just to keep from groaning.
Well, I was taking the entire pressure of the blast through one arm, so it was only natural.
"Mm! If it's like this, I can do it too! Next time it's my turn!"
"I never imagined this kind of method was possible……."
Still, I had my concept and my pride. Whining or collapsing would look bad—especially now that we had proven this kind of defense was possible.
So I gritted it out, and at last the water spout ended.
Pop!
Shards of mana scattered in every direction like an explosion, and the light-filled water droplets sprayed outward with them. Against the pale, hazy sky the black fragments and glittering droplets looked almost like jewels.
"We did it!"
"Ohh, the people below are fine too!"
The Inquisitor, face bright with excitement, drove the point home again. Berserk, shading her eyes with one hand, checked on the people waiting below.
According to her, the ground side had taken almost no damage. Probably because we had ground the entire water spout to nothing.
"We keep going."
Then let's move! My arm already hurt too much to grind this pattern more than two more times!