There Was a Beastman
There was a beastman.
He looked as if a human and a rabbit had been joined into one, and yet he stood taller and more elegant than most elves. A splendid rabbit beastman. His name was Genus, and his appearance set him somewhat apart from King Calton and Prince Sirius.
A player has intruded upon the event! Difficulty will rise sharply.
Party player detected. Difficulty will rise.
A hologram message flared up without warning. Genus's brow creased. The difficulty went up? Things were already hard enough. And now they were getting harder still? On top of that, he couldn't begin to guess how anyone had gotten in here. The cave was nowhere easy to find, and he had posted chimeras as sentries — truly formidable ones. He had been certain that not a single player in the Underground Kingdom could break through them and reach the capsule.
Was there a powerhouse I didn't know about?
In that instant, dozens of spears came driving in at him. Standing in the middle of the battlefield, Genus shot swiftly into the air — only for an imperial mage to cancel his Fly spell with Gravity magic.
"This is insane!"
Was that even possible? How could anyone fix Gravity magic on a precise point from that far away? The spell was notorious for being extraordinarily difficult to wield. Even among seasoned mages, nine out of ten failed. And yet the Empire's mages seemed to stand on an entirely different plane. The knights were no different. They endured the grand magic Genus had poured his heart's blood into without dying, and even pulled off the feat of batting incoming spells aside.
This is all because of the player who just barged in.
The imperial mages and knights had never been at this level. The intruder named in the hologram was the problem. From the moment that player joined the event, the enemy had grown absurdly strong — not only the knights and mages, but even the common soldiers, now powerful enough to be a genuine nuisance.
This won't do.
Genus chose retreat. Fortunately, the enemy was not pressing the attack with any great zeal. He cast a spatial teleportation spell and slipped clear of the battlefield, and once he was out of the encirclement he let out a sigh of relief.
I nearly lost my life in the event. Dying here would be the end. Unlike the other events, there was no spare life waiting. All the more reason to be cautious upon cautious.
What do I do?
For the moment, there was no decent course open to him. He could draw up a plan, but he lacked the strength to carry it out — because the difficulty had risen. At the original difficulty he might have scraped together the Extreme Ice Stone one way or another. The intruding player had reduced all of that to nothing. If it had ended there, well enough, but the odds were high that he would remain trapped in this place from here on. Genus's situation was bleaker than imagination allowed, and he knew it.
"There is no answer to this."
It was a cruel joke. He had stumbled upon a capsule that granted entry to the event, spent nearly half a year preparing and preparing again, and challenged it at last — only for a player to wedge in at precisely this moment. He was furious, and there was nowhere to spend the fury. He sat in silence and turned over what he ought to do next.
Since it's come to this, cooperating with another player is the only way. There was no need to insist on playing alone. He had gone solo only because no player matched his level — though, of course, the fact that forming a party raised the difficulty had played its part as well.
I'll have to find that player first.
A fierce light flashed in Genus's eyes.
"My lord. Will you not partake of the bird?"
"It isn't even cooked."
A single cast of Poison Cold Squall had melted the lot of it, so there was nothing left to eat in the first place. The same went for the Enhanced Yeti.
"Let's try this, then."
Yujun took up a sword he had wiped clean with a Water Ball and a cloth, and began carving the well-roasted yeti meat. Manuela sniffed the air.
"......Looking at it like this, it actually looks tasty."
"You eat animals just fine. Why draw the line at monsters?"
"It just looked like it would reek of game, so it put me off."
"And now?"
"I want to eat it."
At that frank answer, Yujun burst out laughing.
"Here. Eat."
He held out a cut from a tender part. A heavenly aroma rose from the meat, browned to a deep gold, and Manuela's face lit up.
"Go on, try it."
"Is it all right if I eat first? You're the one who caught it and cooked it."
Cooking's a grand word for it. I just grilled the thing. Eat. It's fine."
"Okay!"
Looking deeply moved, Manuela bit into the meat.
"Mmm!"
Her eyes flew wide. Smiling in full bloom, she looked genuinely happy.
"Yujun, hurry and eat. This is seriously delicious!"
"Oh, that good? Then I guess there's no poison. What a relief."
Manuela's face went stiff.
"......Huh? You had me eat first because of the poison?"
"Oh, come on. As if..."
Yujun turned his head and hid his face. Looking thoroughly wronged, her cheeks puffed out like a steamed bun, Manuela rounded on him.
"I—I knew it! You used me!"
"What? What are you talking about. Of course I knew there was no poison. I said it to make you laugh."
"......Really?"
"Yeah."
"Honestly. You startled me. Say something next time."
"Sorry."
He really was sorry. For lying. Even so, he could hardly put food straight into his mouth when he didn't know whether it was poisoned. Poison wouldn't actually put his life in danger, but it would still leave a bad taste. He watched Manuela closely. Three minutes passed without the slightest change, which meant there was definitely no poison. Only then did Yujun take a great mouthful of the meat.
Oh...
Contrary to its tough-looking exterior, it was remarkably tender. The moment he bit down, a clean meat juice — salty, yet not greasy in the least — flooded his mouth. The outside was slightly charred, and that lent it a faint, sweet savor. Three seconds was all it took to taste every note of it. The lean meat melted away on his tongue in an instant. A hollow feeling flickered across Yujun's face, but there was still plenty of meat left.
Paranet, who had been watching him, let out a rough, panting breath and asked.
"Hah—hah! My lord. What manner of flavor is it?"
"The flavor of magnificent drool wrapping it snug and tight."
"Pardon? What... sort of flavor is that?"
Paranet's tone suggested he had seen every variety of strange human there was.
"Why are your eyes so wide?"
"......My apologies."
Eyeless as he was, Paranet felt deeply wronged.
"Anyway, this is good. Shame you can't eat it."
"...How bitter."
With meat like this in his mouth, he missed pork belly a little less. The texture was, if anything, a touch more tender than well-grilled pork neck. It needed no sauce and no seasoning. The flavor of the meat alone was sublime.
I'd like to set some aside. Weren't there any more Enhanced Yetis around? The event itself was nowhere in his thoughts. He had fallen completely for the taste of yeti meat. It might sound like an exaggeration, but one bite and a person couldn't help reacting this way. He had never imagined that, here in the Tower of Infinity rather than on Earth, he would get to eat something this good.
Since I came to the Tower of Infinity, I've been living without ever knowing the joy of eating.
Yujun smacked his forehead. Had he been too blindly obsessed with growing stronger? He reflected on it.
I need to think differently. If, until now, he had devoted something like a hundred percent of his effort to getting stronger, from here on he meant to devote ninety-eight. Becoming a man who fell two percent short was his long-term goal. Hadn't someone said that resting in moderation was a kind of training too? He had no idea who.
It was then, as the party enjoyed a feast for the first time in ages, that the sound came.
Boom. Thud.
A great roar rang out at steady intervals. A thin thread of mana gathered in Yujun's eyes. Something enormous was coming this way. His meal interrupted, he knit his brow. This time, it seemed, he would not be able to take things at his leisure. The presence of that vast something reached all the way to them, and a tingling ran through his whole body — enough to sting the skin. Before that overwhelming strength, Manuela and Paranet went rigid.
This is no joke.
The monsters up to now — the giant bats, the raids of the Enhanced Yetis — had been nothing more than a child's game. This one was larger even than Gigantified Tapagol. Honestly, wasn't that too huge, even for huge?
For once, the warning was almost kind. The Yeti King's looks could be summed up as an Enhanced Yeti scaled up dozens of times over. Yujun called for Tapagol.
"Tapagol."
"Yes!"
"Combat Power Meter, deploy."
"......I cannot comprehend the meaning."
"That thing. Fight it."
Tapagol blinked.
"This is an incomprehensible command."
"Hey. Quit acting."
"......"
Yujun couldn't read the golem's expression, but he could tell well enough that the fellow was playing dumb on purpose.
"Tapagol."
"My apologies. I shall meet it in battle, as my lord commands."
Tapagol activated Gigantification and strode forward.
Boom. Boom.
Every step he took shook the ground as if an earthquake had struck. Tapagol came face to face with the Snowfield Yeti King.
I never thought I'd see the day that Tapagol looked small.
The Snowfield Yeti King stood a full head taller. The crown of Tapagol's head barely reached its shoulder. Tapagol took the first move. A laser lanced from his eyes toward the Yeti King.
Kraaang!
The king's body was simply too large, and Tapagol's laser far too fast, for it to dodge. Even so, not a single wound opened on the Snowfield Yeti King. A patch of its chest had blackened, but it was hard to call that a wound. The fur had only scorched — and even that regenerated in an instant. Staggering toughness, and a staggering power of recovery.
Fur regenerating too? That's genuinely grotesque.
Such was Yujun's assessment of the Snowfield Yeti King. And then—
Kraaaaaang—!
The fist the Snowfield Yeti King threw only grazed Tapagol's head. It passed by in the barest brush, and with that alone Tapagol's head was pulverized and he was unsummoned.
"......"
This wasn't even a match. Tapagol's level was over eight hundred, no less. Guide golem or not, raw level was a tyrant in its own right, and for him to be taken down this helplessly was proof of just how strong the Snowfield Yeti King was.
The system didn't warn us for nothing. He had thought the kindness suspicious, and there had been a reason. An enemy you could not prepare for, even knowing it was coming. That was the system's judgment of the Snowfield Yeti King.
Let's see just how strong it is.
Yujun cast Space Domination. The space around the Snowfield Yeti King's head began to warp. Sensing something amiss, the king yanked its head back and swept out an enormous hand. Monstrous strength canceled Space Domination outright. Yujun's eyes went wide. There had been foes his attacks could not touch at all, barred by a gulf in caliber — but this was the first time anything had erased Space Domination entirely. And not with magic. With physical force.
So that's possible.
The Snowfield Yeti King came on at a slow walk. Yujun took up his sword and ran. He kicked off the ground, leapt into the empty air, and cast Fly. In an instant he was before the Snowfield Yeti King's face, and he poured Chaos into the blade.
Vmmm. Vmmmm!
The sword shot forth like a bolt of light.