Among the Vines
How many times had I leapt, watching, making sure I wouldn’t end up snared between the vines?
While I was throwing my strength into it, Biryuho seemed unable to move, and I’d half considered taking a shot at her… but one look at the vines exploding upward at that pace and I abandoned the idea.
If I launched myself into the air to cut them, I’d only lose my footing on the way back and fall. Right now, staying alive among the purple tendrils shooting up like bamboo after rain mattered more.
Kwaddeudeuk.
They weren’t going to grow forever, at least. The vines’ growth was finally starting to slow.
That was when I first had room to look around.
I checked every direction, trying to see how far this wisteria-like plant had spread.
Fortunately, it hadn’t punched through the cloud layer.
“…Shorter than Jack’s beanstalk, I guess.”
Even so, it was easily comparable to a high-rise. From experience, climbing buildings over a hundred stories felt about like this.
So these vines had grown roughly five hundred meters, give or take. Far better than last time, when I’d been thousands of meters up. Still not the ground, though.
Wondering when I’d ever get to run a raid with solid earth under my feet, I looked down.
The distance was dizzying and the vines filled everything, so not much reached my eyes… but I could tell this trunk had blanketed the whole forest region. Good thing I hadn’t dragged anyone else along.
Dev and the lord of Camborer had been evacuating rearward, and they’d be carrying the lord of Ednium, so they were probably fine. Whatever depth my worry ran to, the fact remained I couldn’t go check on them now.
If I had to name someone worth worrying about at the moment, it was the ones who’d been fighting beside me.
I’d seen the Inquisitor pull the Archmage clear earlier, but I hadn’t laid eyes on Berserk since losing her mid-fight.
“Whoa! That’s one huge tree!”
Correction. Worrying about Berserk had been stupid.
“You have my thanks. Without you, Inquisitor, this old man would have met his end today.”
“Please don’t say that. I was only doing what I ought.”
“More importantly—where are the others…?”
“Ah! I believe they’re over there!”
I’d found the Inquisitor and the Archmage as well.
Looking at them, safely alive a half-dozen stems below, I wrenched free the sword I’d driven into the trunk—wedged there briefly to keep myself anchored.
Kwak!
The silver blade tore free, shattering the purple wisteria-like bark as it came.
“So where’d the tiger go?”
“Berserk is over there as well. But Biryuho…”
“I can’t pinpoint Biryuho’s position. Impurity is throbbing from every direction…”
Well. That side had been the origin point.
I spun the longsword lightly between my fingers, shifting from reverse grip to forward.
It’s coming.
Instinct whispered. The arm holding the sword flipped fast, setting the blade vertical across my torso. My right forearm braced the center of the steel.
Kwang!
An instant later, a ferocious force smashed into my blade. Without mana loaded into it, the sword might well have broken. The impact was that severe.
“Demon Knight!”
Hwiik.
Fortunately the force only shoved me outward and didn’t chase me all the way. The power I’d deflected was so strong I didn’t drop, either.
My body spun mid-flight and found a stem growing perpendicular to my path. Tak. With a light step, that heavy, launched weight turned and shot back toward whatever had attacked me.
“Did you think a cheap ambush would work?”
Kkaang!
My sword and Biryuho’s claws met. Whether she’d awakened from Biryuho into True Biryuho, the rebound was fiercer than before.
Her other hand was still free, and she casually tried to reach for me with it.
“There you are!”
Before Biryuho’s fingers could touch me, Berserk charged in. From my far side—Biryuho’s rear—she came swinging a halberd in a great arc.
I was inside the strike’s range too, but it let me slip Biryuho’s attack.
I fell back and found another stem. Biryuho, for her part, seemed to have leapt upward and driven her claws into the vines, clinging to them like a ceiling.
And just as Berserk sprang up in a single bound to cut that body in two—
Biryuho roared, and something translucent came surging out of her form.
It looked a little like a soul-body peeling free… but it clearly had physical force. The pale thing’s body-check threw Berserk off balance.
Berserk failed to land what she’d wanted and crashed back onto a lower vine. The pale spirit-form took the shape of a tiger, eyes blazing as it fixed on her.
A clone pattern, most likely. Something in that vein.
Peobeobeok!
"Kh…!"
Then that was fine by me. We’d never been a party that fought in sync—we specialized in taking things down one by one.
I checked that the mana lances I’d flung at the moment Biryuho made the clone—not knowing what she was doing then, just throwing them—had lodged cleanly, and prepared a second strike.
Sword-aura carved through the place Biryuho had been. A heavy stem cracked and skewed with a grinding sound. Entangled with everything else as it was, it only barely avoided collapsing.
Udeudeuk!
“……!”
But that wasn’t the problem.
I scowled at the greenery suddenly sprouting from the vine’s surface—because it had seized my ankle.
And timed perfectly with that, Biryuho was charging.
“Demon Knight!”
“The distance is too great—I can’t help…!”
I didn’t particularly need help.
I tossed the longsword upward and drew the two-hander. Timing hard because of the draw time? That was what the inventory was for.
I had a contact-type inventory as well as the bag type.
It burned a lot of mana, so I couldn’t use it often, but once or twice was fine.
So I touched the two-hander with my right hand, stowed it, then summoned it back into the left hand that had thrown the longsword. The two-hander drove straight down into the trunk.
Ground Crash. Mana surged outward in every direction, shattering the wisteria under my feet and shoving Biryuho back.
Puseuseuseuk.
I leapt clear of the crumbling platform. Catching the falling longsword mid-motion put me back where I’d started.
Mindful of plants snagging my feet, I ran the vines. The driven-back Biryuho half-beasted and stuck close behind me.
“Aaaaah! That’s dirty, comrade! You’re hogging the fun one!”
Whether the clone was drawing her the other way or something else, Berserk’s voice was growing distant.
No more team-kill concerns, at least. The Inquisitor and Archmage had drawn away too, so I couldn’t count on their help either.
"Keoheong!"
Then Biryuho swept a hand. A colossal tiger’s forepaw smashed the place I’d been standing.
Seokduk. That single blow sheared the stem into four pieces. My body raced across the airborne segments, kicking off them, and flung several shards of sword-aura back in answer.
A mass of vine, chopped too fine to hold together by entanglement alone, plummeted toward the ground.
Tadadadak.
It didn’t matter. Biryuho and I kept going. This forest of stems was vast, and there were ways up as well as down.
Seogeok!
I cut away Biryuho’s next foothold and climbed higher.
In retaliation she severed the base. The vine, its support gone, hung in empty air and naturally fell.
This felt different again from fighting the Sea Dragon.
Having to fight while relying on thick, twisted cylindrical platforms, always braced for a fall—that much was similar. That was all, though.
I watched the thrashing tendrils and leapt hard. My coat-tails flared like a swallow’s forked tail; a branch that had jutted out suddenly tried to skewer me.
And behind me, the maw of the beasted Biryuho was waiting.
My body spun, cutting through the wisteria, and in the middle of that rotation my eyes met hers. I thrust the sword forward and made her look straight at it.
Bombard. A line of mana punched through Biryuho’s throat. Of course she took the pain and kept coming, as if that much were nothing.
Tak.
Was I going to have to dive into that mouth again? The thought crossed my mind just as the platform I’d been aiming for finally met my foot.
Kwaang!
With ground under me, nothing was frightening. I drove force into the stem until it crumpled, and my body shot forward like a bolt of light.
Activating Three Claws as well, the sword-strikes meant to split the tiger became three.
"Kyaak!"
She could endure a piercing blow like Bombard, but sword-aura set to carve her face into four pieces was another matter.
Watching Biryuho shift back into human form, I hung from a single vine.
Until now, no matter what damage the beast form took, her human shape had barely shown it. This wound alone she covered with a hand pressed to her face. Blood ran freely between the fingers.
Jjeojeojeok.
The black hole in the center of her chest had grown larger than before.
Her murky red eyes ground her teeth, then she shrieked.
Her hair rose like a lion’s mane, then lengthened like silk streamers. It looked exactly like a Jangsanbeom.
Paseuseuseuk.
What pattern was this now?
I saw the vine I was hanging from wither in an instant and scrambled free.
The next one I stepped on was in the same state. More precisely—every stem formed above a certain height.
Kwadeudeuk!
But it didn’t stop there. New ones grew. Then they broke apart again. Creation and destruction, over and over.
If I just burned the whole lot of them, this would be easy.
No—this was way past the line! When I’d used flying types as platforms, they’d moved irregularly, sure, but at least they didn’t crumble the moment I stepped on them!
And the criteria for creation and destruction weren’t even consistent! Was it random?! Were these gacha platforms?!!
I gritted my teeth at the cursing difficulty. I was a little curious how the others were faring, but even that got shoved aside by the crisis right in front of me.
Biryuho alone enjoyed free platforms, and she came at me like a wild dog.
My body spun.
Seogeok!
I might not have the vines’ protection, but I had claws of my own. I floated three crescent moons to check Biryuho, then stepped on a platform that was already crumbling to dust.
Survival Instinct? I spun that every time the cooldown came up.
I’d never thought my spatial sense was lacking, but in a situation where wood chips fell like rain and withered and growing stems were impossible to tell apart, I couldn’t claim confidence either.
If I were only running, maybe. Fighting Biryuho at the same time was another story.
Then a notification I hadn’t seen in a while appeared, reporting the poison gauge. The flowers blooming here and there were probably the cause. She really did have every trick.
My teeth clamped tight as I dodged something growing after me like a tentacle. Then I used the thickest of them as a road and ran.
Everything I stepped on crumbled fast behind me, but luckily my body was faster still.
"Die!"
My feet left the vine and my claws crossed with Biryuho’s. Sparks flew hundreds of meters up, and the mana lances I’d barely managed to form through the dizziness punched through parts of her body.
Trade won by me. Damn it, though—I was about to fall.
Pareureureuk.
Wind slammed my body with tremendous force, whipping coat-tails and hair. The flowers in full bloom on the purple wisteria were scattering pale-red powder in every direction.
The scent was so rich it made my head swim.
And after several spins to somehow disperse the impact, kwang—my legs slammed into a thick stem below.
Mana reinforcement kept my body from shattering, but the stem was sloped, and I went sliding.
What was I, snowboarding? Sawdust whipped past like snow.
Kwak.
How many tens of meters had I been shoved?
I barely transferred to another stem and started climbing again. Biryuho simply extended intact branches only beneath herself and came at me in perfect comfort.
"Human—!"
“Die, you pest.”
I going up and Biryuho plunging down crossed in an instant, swapping places.
My tightly gripped two-hander carved Biryuho’s side, and her claws raked my shoulder.
Chwaak.
Blood sprayed in every direction.