Fretaljeong... No,...
Fretaljeong... no. Fretalin's magic boasted considerable power, just as the headmaster had said. Every spell that crashed against the sword landed with a heavy, solid weight—though his blade split every last one of them cleanly in half.
It's reaching its limit. The sword...
Its durability was nearly spent. A few more decent blows, and it would have nothing left to give. Maybe I should try that.
He had no item on hand that could repair a weapon, but he did have his knowledge of New-Generation Magic. Attempting it in the moment before the blade failed was a little foolish, and yet if the sword broke now he would have to fight with magic or his bare hands. Having finally gotten a proper taste for Swordsmanship, Yujun had no desire to set the blade aside.
He poured what little mana remained after dispelling the barrier into the sword. The mana did not manifest outside the steel. He wasn't trying to amplify the weapon's power—he was trying to repair it. The idea resembled an enchantment, but it wasn't quite the same. Restoring the sword to its original state with mana alone didn't require him to know its exact composition and structure. There was a spell called Refresh, ordinarily used to invigorate living things: hardly an outstanding magic, and yet viciously difficult. Yujun could cast it. Bind it properly to enchantment magic so the effect would take on objects as well, and the problem solved itself.
The damaged portions began, slowly, to knit back together. A thin thread of mana squirmed along the steel, and the sight was oddly cute.
That was when Fretalin loosed another barrage. He was in the middle of the repair, and blocking with the sword now risked shattering it, so Yujun chose to dodge instead. Even for him, evading projectile spells that never let up was no simple matter. Superb kinetic vision and reflexes did not, by themselves, mean his body could move that fast. So he used what was around him.
This was the Secret Library—which meant tall, towering bookshelves, packed with books, stood everywhere. The magic tomes were a shame to waste, but he meant to turn them into a shield, and it worked.
KRA-KOOM!
Fretalin, who still had a specific tome to find, hesitated. Cast recklessly into the shelves, and the very book she was hunting could be caught in the blast and reduced to ash. That was an ending she would never accept. One bookcase was blown half away, but after that, just as Yujun had expected, no follow-up strike came. Sensing his moment, he repaired the weapon in a hurry.
"Not coming out?"
"......"
Fretalin decided he was staying hidden because he was afraid. My magic is fierce, I'll give him that. You know a thing or two, you little whelp. Even so, she could hardly wait forever for him to show himself. She drew her mana up and began searching the shelves for the tome.
In that brief span, Yujun managed to restore a considerable share of the sword's ruined durability. I burned through all my mana, but at this rate I'm still walking away with the lion's share. He had grown more proficient as he worked, and the repairs came faster and faster. A little more mana, and a perfect restoration might even have been possible. This is enough. So long as the sword wasn't teetering on the verge of snapping, he could split magic with it.
The instant the work was done, he moved. He hadn't bothered to be stealthy, so Fretalin noticed at once—but with him slipping between the shelves and keeping his body hidden, she had no proper way to attack. All she could do was raise a shield and wait for him to come fully into view. Once the distance had closed enough, Yujun stopped hiding and showed himself outright.
As he surged in, Fretalin cast freezing magic again. The spells with the greatest power, and the ones hardest to cleave with a sword, were surely fire—but she seemed afraid that flame magic would send the shelves up in a flash. That suited Yujun perfectly. Dozens of ice projectiles came at him, and he erased them with a few swings as he advanced. Cutting projectile magic that flew at such a horrific speed was, on its face, absurd. Yujun produced the same result dozens of times over.
"What? Wha—? What is that..."
A swordsman, not a mage. Fretalin had never seen a swordsman who pulverized magic like that, and she couldn't begin to grasp how to answer him. The price of that hesitation was steep. Before she knew it, Yujun was right in front of her, and the sword came down.
She cast Blink and tried to slip away, but she was a fraction too late. A sword wound opened across her left shoulder, and blood began to run. It could not be called fatal, though—the blade carried neither Chaos nor poison. Fretalin bit her lip until it bled. She poured out magic without sparing a drop of mana, and not a single spell touched him.
Yujun kicked off the ground again. Thuk! Before she could cast Blink a second time, the sword that had closed in punched through Fretalin's forehead. That was the end. She could never have been called stronger than the Demon King. There had never been any world in which she was Yujun's match.
He strolled through the Secret Library at his leisure. His eyes, scanning the magic tomes, moved quickly. Nothing special. Most of it was knowledge and information he already possessed. Now and then a book peddled some bizarre theory, and a few even ventured inferences rather close to New-Generation Magic—though the foundations were so shaky that they amounted to a high schooler's daydream of if you did this and that, wouldn't it turn out like so? About as vague as assuming there must be aliens somewhere in the universe. By Yujun's measure, nothing here rose to a particularly high level.
He memorized a handful of fresh spells that might actually prove useful, and there were plenty of auxiliary magics he judged worth keeping. Combine these with other spells, and they could be pretty handy. Fusing magic with magic was no easy thing, but for him it wasn't flatly impossible. He had tried it a few times before, and succeeded.
What was Fretalin looking for? She couldn't have meant to ransack every single book. It had to be something distinctive. If it were an ordinary tome, the Secret Library was so vast that finding it would take an age. He would have liked to call in others to help search, but there was no chance Headmaster Solaphe would look kindly on people rifling through the stacks. So he summoned Tapagol.
"Tapagol! Master! I have arrived."
"You've gotten lively."
"It has been a long time."
"Yeah. Think you could find the unusual books and tomes and gather them up—leave the ordinary magic books out of it?"
"It is not difficult."
Tapagol was a guide golem, and he was good at finding more than roads. Anything, really. Leave the work to him, and Yujun was sure it would amount to more than simply doubling the labor. Just as expected, Tapagol set to it at a remarkable pace. He wasn't reading the books; he was choosing by feel, so of course he was faster than Yujun. Even so, the accuracy was no joke. Every volume Tapagol pulled was far removed from a magic tome. For finding whatever the Demon King and Fretalin had wanted, his ability was perfect.
Yujun looked over the books the golem was stacking in neat piles. Secret Library or not, some of them held useless chatter—the daily habits of the Tesla race, and the like. He skimmed those and moved on at once. The Demon King would never have wanted books like these.
Twenty minutes or so had passed when the feeling crept in that Headmaster Solaphe might burst into the Secret Library at any moment—and that was when he found a book that gave off a chilling air. Tapagol had drawn this one out as well. Set beside the others, it was pitch-black and unpleasant to the touch. The System seemed to have judged it an item, because he was able to call up its information.
◈ King of the Undying. A tome containing his power, knowledge, and memories.
◈ Prolonged contact with the body may allow an evil and powerful energy to erode the holder. Handle with caution.
Yujun let go at once. Not because he had read the option, but because his body was violently rejecting the book. It was an extremely dangerous object. Touch it any longer, and he felt he might lose his reason. Transcendent-grade tome or not... hard to call this a useful item for me. He couldn't use his inventory at the moment, either, so even storing it was difficult.
"Tapagol. How does it feel when you touch this?"
"Ah. The book that was sitting in a strange place, like a vault. I felt nothing when I touched it."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Then you hold on to it."
"I need only carry it?"
"Yeah."
Yujun didn't pass it over with his own hands. He had Tapagol pick it up himself.
"You feel nothing at all?"
"Yes. That is correct."
Was it because the book didn't recognize Tapagol as a living thing? Perhaps the energy simply didn't erode objects, and that was why the golem was fine. A relief—there was a way to store it. Yujun unsummoned Tapagol as he was, still holding the King of the Undying, and left the Secret Library. He had made a wreck of the place—no, he had only disordered it a little—but if he said Fretalin had done it, the matter would resolve itself easily enough.
A Shop Key is granted to every player who took part in the event dungeon and was involved in this incident.
Titles are retained unchanged even after the event dungeon is cleared or escaped.
What, they're just handing the key over like this? If there had been something like the Barbarian's Trial, he had meant to clear that too before he left. Trials that scaled their rewards to the achievement usually bestowed outrageous gifts when the results were good, and he had been looking forward to it. The moment the key was given, the odds were high that he would now be leaving the event dungeon.
Yujun headed for the headmaster's office. The Demon King's army had struck hard, and the work of rescuing the wounded was underway. The instant he met Manuela and Yenil, his vision washed pure white, and the warp began. The timing was absurdly perfect, but they could talk once they were out.
"See you outside."
"Yeah."
The moment he returned, he craned his head this way and that, looking for Harp.
"Dad!"
Fortunately, Harp was right where he had been.
"Sorry. For going on ahead. Did anything happen?"
"Nope! I'm okay. I was playing with my friends in the forest here."
"You're not hurt anywhere?"
"Nope! Dad! But it's so nice seeing you after so long! Hehe..."
"I'm glad too."
Leaving Harp behind alone had kept nagging at him. Hearing that the little one had been fine, the knot in his chest seemed to come undone all at once.
"But you seem a little different."
"Me?"
"Yes! You seem way stronger!"
"You can tell?"
"Actually... I knew because I got stronger. I was playing just now and shooting my breath, and it got huge—super huge! My breath!"
"Did it."
Did growth from Swordsmanship proficiency reach Harp as well? He had picked up two titles with absurdly broken effects on top of that. After the welcome reunion, Yujun opened his status window. Fortunately, he had come out of the Barbarian state. The titles he had earned there remained exactly as they were.
Considering that the monsters of the event dungeon had only gone as far as spirit kings, earth dragons, and the Demon King, it was a reward well beyond what the place deserved. And that was not all he had gained there. He had obtained a new stat—Barbarism—and no small figure, either. A full five hundred. The question was how to use it. It feels like something you apply to the body. Unlike Chaos, I don't think it can be handled on its own. He hadn't tried it yet, so he couldn't be sure. Yujun slowly closed his eyes and reached for the Barbarism lying dormant within him.