That Previous Attack Was...
"So the attack before that was a trap, was it. Ugh."
Paranet clutched his knee and hauled himself upright. The dismay was plain on him; the same Paranet who had been nothing but confidence a moment ago now turned a pitiful look on Yujun.
"Why?"
"Master. It would seem this humble summon is lacking after all. To fail to properly dispose of even one of those wretched riffraff……."
"Try actually using the abilities you've got."
With Paranet, the level he reached depended entirely on how he used what he had. His abilities were not especially varied, but Thousand-Pound Drop and Body Slam were simple skills, and simple skills lived or died by timing.
"Might I truly be capable of it?"
"Why not? Honestly, what do you even have that's worse than them?"
"T-truly? Then I am the superior being, am I not?"
"Right?"
He said it, though he wasn't actually sure. Still, Paranet had evolved twice. Surely that put him well above a cyclops? On looks alone, the cool poured off him in sheets. The gear, mostly. Even so, he cut a figure solid enough that "strongest knight of the undead" would not have been a strange title to hang on him.
"Go on. I'll back you up."
"Understood!"
Yujun, whose charge had stalled because Paranet had been made a fool of so absurdly, moved again. While the cyclopes had their eyes locked on Paranet, he slipped into the gap and cut two of them down in a flash, the blade shearing twice.
Oh. A level, just like that?
Yujun's eyes lit as he confirmed the message. A cyclops had paid out more experience than he'd expected. So they're that strong.
He was just thinking it impressive that Paranet had held out at all when the impact landed—KRAANG!
"Kaaak!"
One of the cyclopes was torn apart from end to end by Paranet's Body Slam.
"Oh……."
Paranet seemed to have felt for himself just how tremendous his strength was; he looked thoroughly elated. Even to Yujun, the change in him was considerable. There was a reason they called it evolution.
"Ah! I have yet to receive my lady's blessing."
"So you haven't."
"My lady! I beg of you!"
"Got it."
Paranet went so far as to burn a Space Movement just to appear at Manuela's side. He wanted that blessing rather badly. And with reason—the Goddess's Grace she wielded was a skill with a profound effect on battle, capable of drawing out at least one and a half times a fighter's strength.
Laid upon Paranet.
Bearing the blessing, Paranet charged the cyclopes at a speed far beyond his earlier pace. They answered nimbly, but they could not stop the Thousand-Pound Drop and Body Slam chain when it landed at that exquisite timing. Yujun never had to step in. Paranet cleared what remained with ease.
"Huh. Look at you."
"Ahem…… If one is to stand at Master's side, this much is merely the baseline."
"Good. But just because Body Slam and Thousand-Pound Drop are working, don't go neglecting the sword entirely. There's no guarantee that'll keep working forever."
"Understood. As it happens, whenever I find myself idle of late, I have been training a great deal through mental imagery."
"Mental imagery? That actually helps?"
"It does seem to. Has Master never tried it?"
"No real need for me to."
"……"
"Kidding. It just didn't do anything for me."
"Is that so?"
Yujun's case was a little different from Paranet's. He was already drawing so heavily on his perks, his skills, and his traits, and wearing such extravagant items besides, that wringing any further gain out of mental-image training was difficult.
"Even so, I beg you try once more. One never knows."
"When I've got time."
He meant he wouldn't.
Once the cyclopes were cleared away, Yujun set off again.
"Still, they don't come in herds, do they?"
"Nope. Cyclopes aren't the sort you see easily. Five of them just now was already unusual."
Yujun nodded at Manuela's words.
"However dangerous the road to the pond is supposed to be, that still wouldn't make sense."
As he said it, something worse revealed itself ahead of him. The shape was much like a cyclops. Only…… the size was a little different.
"It's a Great Cyclops King."
"There's one of those? 'Great King' is kind of childish, but also kind of cool."
"The name isn't stuck on there for nothing, you know. Out of every cyclops in the world, there's only one Great Cyclops King."
"So the strongest one becomes the king. That sort of thing?"
"Right."
"How do you know all this?"
"When I was making chimeras, I looked into a ridiculous number of monsters. Even then, a cyclops corpse was hard to get."
"So you did get one."
"Half the body was already gone, so it didn't amount to much. If I'm being greedy, I wanted to make a chimera with a Great Cyclops King as the material."
A look of regret crossed Manuela's face.
"Isn't that a case of the garnish costing more than the meal?"
"No. A cyclops corpse is top-tier chimera material. I only can't combine it because there aren't any. If I had corpses to spare, I'd be working them into every chimera."
"That good, huh. So what you're getting at is you want the corpses."
"Yeah. Is that all right?"
"Do what you want. If I'd been on my own, I wouldn't have looked twice anyway. Paranet did smash them all to pieces, though. You sure you're fine with that?"
"I'll just use the two you killed, Yujun……."
"My apologies, my lady. I was entirely without tact."
"It's fine. You don't have a brain. I get it."
"……"
With her small hands, Manuela tucked the cyclops corpses away into a subspace. Yujun's eyes went wide at the sight. She already had a subspace?
"Where'd you get a subspace?"
"This? Calling it a subspace is a stretch. It's more of a necromancer-only spatial item. Only bodies and carcasses go in."
"Something like that exists?"
"I made it, so I can't swear there's another."
"You made it?"
"Yeah."
"……"
Now that he thought about it, Manuela did like making things. Was she actually good at it? Either way, he had fetched materials for her before, going all the way to that infamous Sourtul Forest. And Jo Su-a, met there of all people, had happened to be carrying exactly the material he needed.
Wonder how Jo Su-a's doing. She seemed to be alive, at least. In Yujun's eyes she was a player overflowing with talent; barring anything unusual, she would grow just fine.
The party unhurriedly finished their business right in front of the Great Cyclops King. The monster looked dumbfounded.
"Do your eyes fail to see this body?"
"We see you. You come alone?"
"Yes. Alone. Because you wretches just killed my children."
"What a shame. My condolences."
At the Great Cyclops King's words, Yujun tilted his head.
"This has got to be a loose translation, right? No way a monster knows what the underworld is."
Yujun was the only person from Earth present, and so neither Manuela nor Paranet understood what he meant. In that moment the Great Cyclops King sprang.
The massive body shot upward in an instant, and a vast shadow swallowed Yujun's party as the king came down on where they stood. The leap itself was formidable, but given that weight, the speed of the fall would be greater still. Paranet seized Manuela and Yujun and cast Space Movement. The Great Cyclops King slammed hard into empty earth and sprang again in the same breath. A second cast was impossible. The skill was still on cooldown.
In the instant Paranet moved to meet it with a Body Slam, Yujun yanked him back.
"Wh—!"
"Use Thousand-Pound Drop and you'll come flying straight into us. Wait here."
He spat it in a rapid-fire burst, quick as a rapper, and leapt toward the Great Cyclops King plunging down. The sword flashed like lightning—and bit.
The difference in their size was beyond all comparison. It did not matter. The Great Cyclops King's body was split clean in half. Yujun turned once in the air and landed, and the two severed halves crashed down on either side of him with a heavy, ground-shaking thud.
Four levels, this time.
For a title like King, it didn't feel like much of a climb—but four level-ups off a single swing of the sword left him nothing to complain about.
"……Yujun."
"Yeah?"
"Can I use that Great Cyclops King now?"
"Yeah. Take it."
"Thanks! I'll make a good chimera out of it, something that'll actually help you."
"Sure."
For Manuela, who laid Goddess's Grace on them without stinting, this much was nothing. She also handled no small number of rare curses, which made her all the more useful when a powerful enemy appeared. Monster corpses were a cheap enough price for the simple fact that she traveled with them.
"I see why they called this place dangerous. Things like that showing up at the start, not even deep in—no wonder the celestials are too scared to come."
"For Master, who sent the Great Cyclops King to the Lord's side in a single stroke, to say such a thing…… It is absurd."
"An undead saying 'the Lord' is the more absurd part, don't you think?"
"Ah. Is that how it is?"
"Anyway, this isn't a place you come across easily. A Great Cyclops King right at the entrance is enough to tell you that."
"Quite so. And yet, even granting the cyclopes, was the Great Cyclops King's appearance not only to be expected? In a sense, we did slay the creature's children."
"Hey. You trying to jinx it?"
"Pardon?"
"Cyclopes need to count as the small fry in this forest. That way there are stronger things out there, and levels go up faster."
Get lucky, and rare items came with them. A place this dangerous was bound to cough up a decent consumable or two. Can't discount my luck, either.
The original aim had been to reach the Moonlight-Drinking Pond and uncover the hidden item, but now that this forest had shown itself to be a gold mine, he realized there was no need to hurry. The distance left to the pond is shorter than it looks. A straight line to the destination might not turn up more than a handful of monsters. Not happening.
Yujun chose a path that wound wide and still drew monsters in. An extremely dangerous choice. Any other celestial who saw it would have called it madness and pointed. It was a way of thinking nothing like anyone else's, possible only because the strength to back it was there. Yujun himself had not been abnormal from the beginning. Whether the choice was the right one, he couldn't say. The plan, at any rate, had succeeded.
"Graaaah—!"
"Kaaak!"
"Kill!"
"Easy prey!"
A host.
Not a word too large for the number of goblins that had begun to mass around Yujun's party. Had they been ordinary goblins, his face would not have been nearly so bright. He had once thought even Sourtul Forest was beyond all measure. It seemed time to retire that worn-out notion.
Every single one of them is boss-monster class? How does that even make sense?
The presence rolling off the goblins was nothing ordinary.