Their True Forms Still Unknown
He still could not tell what they were, but two of the shapes were immense, and the third was roughly on his own scale.
What did she summon?
Curiosity outweighed any sense of danger. What sort of creatures had she called, that she felt sure enough to lock him in here? Without a fair measure of confidence, she never would have thought to trap him in Pierre's Domain to begin with. Had she done it anyway, she would only have raised the proficiency of his skills and traits. She must have judged that she could kill him, or at least drag the fight out long enough to matter.
The three forms suspended in the empty air grew distinct, one after another.
The first summon revealed itself as a hydra with seven heads. Ancient histories said the beast had originally borne nine, but the one that manifested in this virtual battle space had seven. The System claimed to replicate existing beings, yet a perfect copy might well be beyond it.
Seven heads or nine, I doubt it makes much difference. Still, I'll take the smaller number.
The second summon was a monster in the shape of a colossal gorilla. Its body ran to dozens of meters, and measured by height it stood even taller than the hydra.
No idea what this one is, but it's no joke either.
If this summon, like the hydra, had been weakened in the copying, what had the original looked like? Muscle packed its frame past the point of excess, and the pressure rolling off it was considerable. If anything, it surpassed the hydra. It was certainly not the lesser of the two.
Then came the last summon.
Set beside the other two, its body was tiny — slight enough to look small even next to Yujun, who was solidly built for a human.
A Dragon-Fang?
The shape of it was familiar, and with good reason. During the Grand Melee, the event every player had entered, he had met Caston of the Dragon-Fang race, and this one shared that same build. The face was clearly different, but a single glance was enough to know they were the same people.
We even traded messages. I'm sure of it.
He could not send a message from inside Pierre's Domain, but he could still confirm that Caston remained on his messenger list.
He said he was the last Dragon-Fang alive... so that wasn't true either?
These were replicas of the living, which meant that besides Caston, at least one more Dragon-Fang existed. And this one was far stronger than Caston.
Even back when I was much weaker than I am now, I was already stronger than Caston. From the aura I'm feeling, Caston wouldn't last a moment against this one.
The presence coming off that small body was heavier than either the hydra's or the giant gorilla's.
No wonder Ukria was confident.
Had he been facing only the hydra and the giant gorilla, it might have cost him time and nothing more — perhaps never turned truly dangerous. Add a Dragon-Fang, and the fight changed. A hydra, a giant gorilla, and a Dragon-Fang: the virtual opponents Ukria had chosen for him. Not one of them was an easy mark. These had to be the strongest beings she could conceive of, or else a combination that became devastating once gathered in one place. Possibly both.
Even so, Yujun's expression was not a bad one. He was smiling.
This isn't entirely a bad thing. Chances to raise skill and trait proficiency almost never come along, and I'd already been thinking the gains were too slow.
He would turn the crisis into an opportunity. He had been forced into raising his proficiency anyway. If he could not avoid it, he might as well enjoy it.
Nothing here is restraining my body, either.
That meant he could draw on his strength exactly as it was. Manuela's blessing was still in effect.
The blessing doesn't wear off quickly. Unless this drags on all day, it shouldn't be a problem.
The difference between having her blessing and lacking it was enormous. Looking back, receiving it just before the decisive battle began had been a genuine stroke of luck. It was not so much a solemn resolve to stay at his peak and never grow complacent as a habit — and that habit was paying off now.
Yujun lifted his sword. Through Sword Unity, he manifested ten blades in the empty air ahead of time. With that, his preparations were finished.
"Kraaaaaak!"
All seven of the hydra's heads shrieked at once. The hateful sound slammed into his eardrums until it felt as if his brain were shaking. This was not merely loud and unpleasant. Some power seemed woven into the cry, and strength drained out of his whole body. The System did not display it, but the effect was plainly a debuff that suppressed his physical ability.
Not a chance.
He swept a hand charged with Touch of Healing once across his chest, and the debuff vanished.
Touch of Healing really is broken.
It was not a skill, so it consumed almost no mana, and yet its effect was outstanding. Healing of this caliber was practically unheard of. Its only drawback was that it required contact — and how hard was it to touch one's own body? Where healing himself was concerned, it could hardly be called a drawback at all.
Restored to perfect condition, Yujun set the swords born of Sword Unity into motion. He did not aim first for the hydra, troublesome to kill because all seven heads had to be severed at once, but for the giant gorilla. Pierre's Domain was vast, with no real limit on space, so the brute could thrash as it pleased — but it looked slower than the Dragon-Fang, and that made it the first prey.
The blades shot toward the giant gorilla. In an instant they were diving for its head, and it swatted them aside with a broad palm. The motion suited a monster that boasted overwhelming bulk, but the attack power of the Planet Destroyer's Sword was hardly ordinary.
Thuk! Thuk! Thuk!
The swords drove straight into the giant gorilla's palm. Two of them even punched clean through and flew on toward its eyes. The creature hurled its body aside in a panic.
Kuuung—!
It crashed hard against the white floor, a surface of some unknowable material, and the ten swords under Yujun's control dropped onto it from above.
That was when the hydra fired mana cannons laced with lethal poison from each of its heads. The blasts struck the falling swords and knocked them aside. Separate from the blades' own attack power, the cannons carried tremendous force; hit from the flank, the swords could not hold their original paths.
When the swords take a hit, it burns straight through my mana.
This was news to him. His blades had never before suffered an impact severe enough to wear down their durability.
Better to learn it now than later.
Sword Unity's mana cost was already steep. The Planet Destroyer's Sword possessed such immense attack power that manifesting copies consumed a great deal, and the mana required to restore a damaged blade defied imagination.
And my mana stat isn't even low.
He possessed mana high enough to stand alongside an ancient mage — Yenil, the Black Sorceress. To match a Black Sorceress who had devoted herself to magic alone, and still be scraping the bottom already... The weakness of the swords created through Sword Unity was showing itself here.
Yujun immediately uncorked several highest-grade mana potions and drank them down.
I'm going to have to fight this in person.
The moment the empty bottles clattered across the floor, the Dragon-Fang — motionless until then — moved. As if that were the signal, the hydra loosed another volley of poison-laced mana cannons, and the giant gorilla came pounding in.
Yujun met the most eager guest first: the Dragon-Fang.
The warrior was the tough sort who did not spare a thought for weapons. Closing to point-blank range, he drove out a fist that did not look especially sturdy. The speed was extreme, but not beyond what the eye could follow. Yujun, of course, simply set his sword in its path.
Kaang—!
His eyes went wide. He had expected the Dragon-Fang's body to split cleanly in half along with the fist, but the result was not what he had anticipated. Yujun's sword was knocked away. Unable to withstand the destructive force bound in the blade, the Dragon-Fang was sent flying a long distance — yet his flesh was intact.
That's a bit of a shock.
He had run into cases like this now and then.
Is he wearing knuckles I can't see?
Transparent knuckles carrying an indestructible option would explain it. No matter how high one's attack power, one could not defy a law written into a System option.
And the Dragon-Fang was not his only enemy.
"Graaaaaah—!"
The giant gorilla roared and brought both fists down on the floor where Yujun stood.
Kwaaaang—!
He had long since left that spot, and another poison mana cannon from the hydra fired along the path he had taken.
Can that thing fire without limit?
Each blast covered so much ground that dodging was genuinely difficult.
"Graaaah!"
Out of nowhere, the giant gorilla screamed in pain. It had inhaled the hydra's poison spreading through the air.
"They really do come with every last inconvenience..."
Even so, the giant gorilla possessed a powerful resistance to poison. Its sheer size helped as well, and breathing the toxin in did not kill it.
I'll finish one of them in this opening.
With the giant gorilla temporarily unable to fight, this was his chance.
The Dragon-Fang first.
Yujun closed at a run until he was right in front of the warrior. Strength and agility that high let him slip, for a moment, out of the Dragon-Fang's tracking, and in that instant the sword flashed and swung. The Planet Destroyer's Sword grazed the Dragon-Fang's shoulder and passed on.
"Ghk!"
It was the first time he heard the Dragon-Fang's voice. Contrary to the slender body and fine features, the sound was rough, low, and deep.
The Dragon-Fang possessed formidable regeneration. The wound, however, did not close. It split wider still. Chaos, bound into the sword, was the cause. Whether from shock that the injury refused to heal, the warrior's expression soured.
Yujun did not stop at a single strike. He pressed without pause, chaining sword blows one after another, and his eyes tightened. Somehow the Dragon-Fang was holding out, meeting the blade with his fists.
The indestructible option is certain.
Those fists collided with the Planet Destroyer's Sword again and again and did not take so much as a scratch. More telling was the feel of the impact. A few clashes were enough to know: some transparent, paper-thin membrane seemed to sheathe the fists, invisible to the eye.
Even so, the Dragon-Fang was not blocking the attacks perfectly. The destructive force the sword put out was so overwhelming that every collision between fist and blade dealt heavy internal damage.
"This is impossible..."
The flow of the fight left him no choice but to be shaken. He was a being replicated inside a virtual battle space, yet he carried his original's memories and body into the fight intact. True, he was restricted, unable to fully draw out the power inherent to the Dragon-Fang race itself. Even so, being pushed this hard by a single opponent was unprecedented.
And what he felt now was less wounded pride than a rising sense of crisis.
This is an opponent I cannot beat.
Against someone of that caliber, a few exchanges were enough to know. There existed foes one could not defeat no matter how desperately one struggled, no matter what one poured into the fight. And the one delivering that fact to him for the first time, together with the taste of defeat, was the player standing before his eyes.
No choice, then.
The Dragon-Fang drew the strategic weapon he had never intended to reveal.