The Contract (2)
The caves they had passed through until now had seemed natural formations. From here on, everything changed.
A passage that looked as if someone had carved it by hand.
Walls cut into clean right angles, doors set to divide one chamber from the next, and statues whose meaning no one could name. Beyond them lay a vast cavern.
Had the demons once made use of this place, long ago?
"No wonder the atmosphere felt off..."
What awaited them in the middle of that passage was not a horde, but a single monster.
And its form was all too familiar.
"Ugh... that's disgusting."
More precisely, that single creature was already finishing a light, effortless victory over a pack of two-headed hounds—and then greedily chewing through the corpses.
It did not take long. In the end, only one monster remained in the space. The bodies vanished into its belly in an instant.
Prrrrrrh!
Apparently sated, its gaze slowly turned toward them.
A unicorn.
There was no mistaking it—the same unicorn they had seen in the forest only days before.
But nothing remained of the sacred presence it had once radiated. Its entire body was caked in dried blood. Mane and tail stood stiff and matted where the gore had hardened again and again. Its eyes burned with a savage red light, and the golden horn said to purify all that was unclean had twisted and lengthened like a demon's spike.
Was this truly the same mythical creature once called a symbol of purity?
As if to prove what became of a fallen sacred beast, the thing wore a shape closer to a devil than anything else.
"A corrupted unicorn... and the size of it is absurd."
"Yeah..."
Compared to the unicorn in the forest, this one stood nearly three times as large.
"I have no idea why a unicorn would wander into a subterranean dungeon like this—the kind of place that only spits out monsters—but it looks like it's been living down here for decades, hunting and feeding on them. And it doesn't seem to have left this area even once."
The floor was littered with rotting monster carcasses and dog bones. The remains of its meals, without a doubt. It had clearly claimed the heart of the mana vein as its territory and hunted every monster drawn by the concentrated mana.
For a long time, this place had been its domain.
We have to kill it first before we can even think about summoning anything...
Even after gorging itself on two-headed hounds, the beast was still unsatisfied. The moment it spotted Roy's party, it began snorting and pawing—then charged without the slightest hesitation.
In his previous life, during the days of the Empire, Roy had heard a legend about unicorns.
"Never face a unicorn whose horn has grown longer than the Empire's most common longsword.
Even the knights who ride beside the Hero struggle to match one that wields its horn so well—and even if you are lucky enough to kill it, all you earn is a curse."
At the time, Roy had snorted and dismissed it. How could a single horse possibly stand against the Hero's companions?
Looking at the monster before him now, he was forced to take that old warning seriously.
Its bulk was massive enough on its own. The horn alone stretched at least two meters—perhaps even three. It charged like a lancer with a spear leveled, without the slightest break in momentum, closing on Roy's party with the force of a giant ballista bolt.
"Shedi!"
Even without Lily's call, the shadow spirit twisted them clear of the attack. It was close. Had the charge not been a straight line, they would never have dodged so cleanly.
The wall where the horn struck collapsed in a thunderous cascade of stone.
Enraged that its prey had slipped away, the beast snorted harder, its breath rough and furious.
"Lily. Can you ask the spirit to hide us?"
"We were hidden a moment ago. That thing just sensed us anyway."
"Really? So stealth doesn't work on it..."
Roy's brow furrowed hard. Disaster. A mana beast of this caliber was never going to fall for cheap tricks.
Lily possessed respectable mana for her age, but even so it was only a little more than a baron's. If she had managed a contract with that much, Shedi was almost certainly not yet fully grown—and its abilities would be bound by plenty of limits.
The enormous horse, on the other hand, had spent years at the heart of a mana vein, devouring countless monsters. Whatever rank it had started as, both its level and its very grade had risen.
Roy thought of the ogre he had hunted four years earlier. Odds were high that this cursed unicorn's organs were studded with the mana stones of every two-headed hound it had swallowed.
We can hunt it. The problem is mana.
Several ways to bring the beast down sprang to mind at once. The trouble was that spending too much mana to kill it would leave him short when the time came to summon the ancient spirit.
And it's not the kind of opponent I can just face with a sword alone...
Should he focus on killing it today, recover his mana overnight, and come back tomorrow?
Roy hesitated.
"Roy! What now? Do we run?"
"Absolutely not. It's not that dangerous yet, is it?"
"Shedi's fine, but if either of us actually gets hit, we're dead on the spot. Ah—here it comes again! Hold on tight!"
Roy locked his arms around Lily's waist. The shadow spirit launched them high into the air, clear of the unicorn's mad charge.
KRA-KOOM!
Once more the corrupted unicorn drove its head into the cave wall. The impact rang like a thunderclap—yet not so much as a scratch marked the beast's skull.
The one mercy was that they stood in the very heart of a mana vein. Maintaining the shadow spirit cost almost nothing. Without that, Lily's mana would have been drained dry in moments.
Prrrh. Prrrh.
The beast began snorting again. After watching its attacks fail again and again, its fury had climbed to the breaking point. A moment later a piercing equine scream—Ihihihihing!—filled the entire cavern and tore at their ears.
"Roy, let's just go. This is going to end badly."
"Wait. I'm still thinking."
Right now the creature was underestimating them. That was why it kept charging in a straight line. If he timed a thrust into its body the moment its head slammed into the wall, he could drop it. Avoid the hind kicks, stick close to the torso, and it might fall surprisingly easily.
"Lily. When it drives its head into the wall, can you bring the shadow spirit right up alongside it?"
"I can, but it's way too dangerous..."
"It's fine. Just trust me."
"...All right."
Roy put the plan into motion at once.
KUU-GUNG!
"Haaah—!"
He swung his sword at the massive flank of the idiot that had once again buried its head in the stone.
Thuk—
Even the faintest thread of mana flowing through the blade was enough. Roy's sword punched cleanly through the thick hide. With an unenchanted weapon it would have been impossible.
"It's not over yeeet—!"
He wrenched the embedded blade with every ounce of strength he had, trying to make up for the minimal mana with pure muscle. But riding Black Wolf without stirrups made it nearly impossible to put his full weight behind the cut. As a stopgap he clenched his teeth and clamped both thighs tight.
A thick sheet of bright-red blood poured from the split hide. Because of the creature's size, Roy and Lily—pressed against its underbelly—were instantly drenched.
"Get some distance, now!"
Roy urged Lily on. He had opened a wound in its gut, but the thing was enormous. Far from enough to drop it yet.
"We'll repeat this! How does that sound?"
"There's blood all over me..."
"Just hold on a little longer. Get through this cleanly and I'll give you anything you want."
"...Can we really bring it down like this?"
"We'll find out. Stay sharp, though. We don't know when it'll change its pattern."
Lily steered Shedi exactly as Roy directed. They planted themselves in front of a wall, baited the charge, slipped aside, then closed on the flank again. Without fail, Roy's sword flashed.
They fought it for a long while.
The body that had already been painted in blood was now streaked and soaked with its own. Unable to contain its rage, the unicorn thrashed like a mad thing—and the more it did, the wider its wounds tore open, the heavier the bleeding became.
Perhaps because it had once been a non-aggressive mythical species, the beast was powerful but its attack patterns were not particularly sophisticated.
That did not last.
Before long it finally abandoned those mindless charges. It began closing the distance gradually—and then it started swinging the horn growing from its brow as if the thing were a sword.
—Tung!
Enormous force. Roy barely managed to catch the horn on his blade. If he had not deliberately gone soft in the wrist, the impact would have flung his entire body backward. Falling from Black Wolf's back in this situation would have been the worst possible outcome.
A unicorn that no longer charged but instead lashed with its horn was a far more troublesome opponent. He had no choice but to ride Black Wolf in wide circles around it. Right now, staying mobile was the only option.
"...This isn't working. Put me down."
"...!?"
"Lily, I said put me down. Have the spirit hold still over there for a second."
"What are you even talking about? Do you want to die?"
"Your mana's still fine, right? While I drop down and draw its attention, you use magic. Anything that can pin it, even for a moment."
Given Lily's reserves, that much should be well within her reach.
"Magic...?"
"Yeah. You've got something. If you can't do it, say so now."
"N-no. I can. Just for a second."
Roy shifted his thinking. At this rate there was no end in sight. He would draw the beast while Lily cast. Magic did not have to come from him alone.
"Elven magic has something useful, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. I can summon vines to bind its movements. Only for a very short time, though."
"That's plenty. And don't worry about me. I packed charms for exactly this kind of situation."
"Charms?"
Over the past few days of conversation, Roy had roughly mapped out which elemental affinities Lily could use. He had planned from the start to bring her into the dungeon with him, so of course he had.
"Even so, isn't this way too dangerous?"
"You'd be shocked if you knew how good my charms are. Just trust me. After everything I've shown you so far, you can, right?"
"Yeah. Well..."
"Then I'm counting on you. First get me down over there, fast."
"...If something happens to you, don't blame me."
"Hurry!"
Roy put a long stretch of ground between himself and the corrupted unicorn, then slid down from Black Wolf's back. The instant his boots hit stone he flung a spare dagger to make sure the beast locked onto him.
It had already learned the power of enchanted weapons. The completely unenchanted dagger sent it scrambling to dodge with desperate urgency.
"What are you waiting for? Come on, you damn horse!"