The Underground Dungeon, Once Again (3)
Others might not know, but Yona knew exactly what that demon was.
A Dullahan.
The headless knight. The knight who heralds death. A knight of death clad in steel armor, swinging a greatsword with its own severed head clamped under its arm.
And now that Dullahan stood revealed before her very eyes.
“D-Du… Dullahan…”
Whether or not Yona was muttering, the Dullahan let out a massive roar the moment it emerged from its coffin.
Under that bestial bellow no human could hope to withstand, the subjugation force clutched their ears and collapsed where they stood.
The Dullahan was as heavy as it was enormous, and every step it took seemed to shake the earth beneath them again and again with resounding booms.
Fifty subjugators in total, with seven priests among them—and yet the sight stirred a dread in anyone who looked: could they truly bring down that demon?
‘Sh-Shit… that thing, that thing is a mere mob…?’
The Dullahans from the web novels she'd read in her old world, from other media—weren't they almost all low-level trash mobs? Things that would show up briefly, only for a powered-up protagonist to go hmph, swing a sword once, and slice them apart into pieces.
But this Dullahan, standing at a glance five or six times the height of a man, radiated a truly overwhelming presence.
—Whooom!
Every swing of the greatsword drew screams and sent arcs of blood spraying. The knights were high-tier personnel, trained and hardened as befit their station, so they managed to dodge or block the Dullahan's greatsword with shields—but the adventurers were too busy screaming and fleeing for their lives.
Screams filled the third floor of the Catacombs to bursting.
The Dullahan seemed to have carved out its own world entirely, and for their part, the adventurers and even the knights were so consumed with deflecting its attacks that none dared dream of striking the Dullahan itself.
A gap in weight class. That is a very serious thing indeed.
—Groooooooh…
Black circles began opening here and there across the floor. From them emerged hideous monsters, flesh endlessly sloughing off their bodies, and the moment they appeared they threw their gaping maws wide and hurled themselves at the subjugation force.
“G-Ghouls!”
Ghouls—rotting corpses bearing a blind hatred for all living things. They had appeared alongside the Dullahan, and their numbers kept swelling. The subjugation force initially formed up to receive them, but the moment the Dullahan began trampling through their ranks, everything fell apart.
“Protect the priests! Protect the priests!”
The subjugation captain's voice rang out. In a corner guarded by five or six knights, the priests had gathered, each gripping their rosary firmly as they recited prayers.
—Graaaaagh!
A roar poured forth from the head tucked under the Dullahan's arm. White light blazed again and again from atop the knight's severed neck, pushing back against the thick miasma—but that was all it could do. It lacked the power to halt the Dullahan's movements.
It was a shambles.
The adventurers, without even anyone to command them, were barely holding their own against the ghouls with no idea what they should be doing, and Yona likewise stayed glued behind Alec, matching his movements as she fought them off.
Kayak brought his hammer down on a ghoul's skull.
As he swung the two-handed hammer, another ghoul lunged at his exposed flank.
“Not today!”
Alec smashed the ghoul's head away with his shield, then drove his hammer down again into the skull of a ghoul charging from the front. In that instant, a ghoul darting in from the side sank its teeth into Alec's upper arm.
“You little—!”
The shield on Yona's left arm came crashing down on the ghoul's head. As its skull flew off, the ghoul gnawing at Alec's arm went slack, its jaws slipping away, and bright red blood soon began to pour from the wound.
Yona's hand was over it at once.
“Hey, you okay?”
“…I'm fine.”
He was clearly not fine. Alec answered through gritted teeth, but Yona said nothing.
By the time she drew her hand away, the bite wound had healed cleanly.
“Careful.”
“Yeah.”
The kind of relationship where even a word of thanks was unnecessary. Yona slipped back behind Alec and rested her hands on his shoulders once more.
And then—
“Come with me!”
Someone yanked her arm without warning. The Hero was pulling at it.
“L-Let go of me!”
For the first time, Ludwig's face twisted at Yona, who resisted even in a situation like this.
“That demon must be slain!”
The one who couldn't understand was Yona. She was a healer; if the Hero asked her to come along, she ought to be following at his back to keep him healed—except that was absurd. People joked that a Bronze-rank healer matched a Silver-rank warrior, but that was only because healers were rare, not because their skill actually compared. And she was supposed to keep pace with Ludwig's movements at Gold rank? Not a chance.
She could cover someone at Kayak's level—Silver rank, in other words—but beyond that was beyond her.
“No, why me—?!”
I'm not the one who's supposed to be following you.
Yona reached her hand out toward Alec. Alec reached back for her, but their fingers never met.
“Ludwig, you must go with me.”
Unexpectedly, it was Vigrind who cut in.
As Vigrind appeared, Yona wrenched her hand free of Ludwig's loosened grip, shot him a glare, and turned back toward Alec.
“…My place is here. Go with that priest and do what you can. Leave the ghouls to us.”
Face the demon yourself? Talk about getting ahead of yourself.
Yona patted Alec's head. The bald scalp, which had picked up nicks and cuts here and there in the meantime, healed the instant her hand passed over it.
The Dullahan's target was no longer the subjugation force but the priests. It, too, had realized that the ones capable of dealing it real harm were not those worthless warriors but the priests, and it had presumably judged that clearing them out first was the far better move.
But among those priests was Aize.
A priestess who had also lived long as an adventurer and climbed as high as Bronze rank—her judgment in situations like this was swift. Even setting her aside, there were still six other priests, and with Vigrind among them, their holy power would likely be sufficient.
Aize slipped out from the cluster of priests and ran circles around the battlefield, casting blessings on each fighter's weapon in turn.
The adventurers, nearly half of whom were already dead, numbered barely seventeen now, while the knights, astonishingly, had suffered not a single casualty—twenty fighting men preserved intact. Blessing every one of their weapons effectively multiplied the number of people wielding holy power.
“Mages, focus on the ghouls! Don't hoard your mana—burn it all!”
The subjugation captain took command. Perhaps he should have done so from the start, but facing a demon head-on made that easier said than done. That he had gathered his wits at all, even this late, was impressive in its own right.
Blessed or not, there was no mage present powerful enough to burn away miasma through sheer magic alone. But their spells were more than enough to handle ghouls, so assigning the mages here to the ghouls was actually the better call.
“You five there, keep guarding the priests. The rest of you spread into a ring formation, and adventurers, scatter and support the knights individually. Protect the mages as well. And you, Gold rank—you move separately with Priestess Vigrind. Any objections?”
Better to move than to answer. Those who received orders scattered swiftly.
The Dullahan's greatsword flew in every direction, rampaging with such fury that the Catacombs threatened to collapse on the spot. And even its movements—its very footfalls—were deadly, meaning a single misjudgment in a moment could cost a warrior their life.
“Goddammit, they paid us, so we work! Move, move, move! Work like you actually got paid!”
Kayak bellowed.
“We haven't been paid yet, you lizard bastard!”
At someone's retort, the adventurers snorted even as they moved faster. Scattering after the knights—those walking embodiments of martial might—each adventurer fell into their assigned role.
The knights deflected the Dullahan's attacks with tower shields and hammered away at its armor again and again with their blessed longswords. Even against something shrouded and shielded by miasma, blessed weapons were worth a try on their end as well.
The adventurers struck at the Dullahan's armor too, but their real duty was closer to guarding the knights.
The ghouls kept coming. They must have killed dozens already, yet no matter how many they cut down, endless waves kept emerging and hurling themselves forward.
The Dullahan, meanwhile, remained as formidable as ever.
Blessings were not permanent, and at some point the white light woven into their weapons had dimmed considerably; more and more often, their blows simply failed to land properly.
“Is there a way?”
“…There is.”
Ludwig nodded at Vigrind's words. His weapon was a spear—not the one he'd carried before, but the Light Spear he had received alongside his revelation as the Hero. A weapon that needed no blessing, because it was a blessing in itself.
Ludwig turned his head slightly to look at Vigrind.
“It seems it must come to close quarters. I entrust my healing to you.”
“…Yes.”
Vigrind nodded. She marveled only briefly at the sight of Ludwig drawing a spear from thin air, then simply watched his back as he moved away.
…I still don't understand why he keeps seeking out Yona, but I'll have to make him see that I'm better than she is.
The Saint is me—me, and this body. That was what she wanted to show him.
Ludwig charged, Light Spear in hand. The Dullahan sensed that the oncoming knight was no ordinary foe, raised its greatsword, and swung.
The spearhead coiled around the incoming greatsword with a hiss. The blade turned the greatsword's edge diagonally, sliding it upward. Ludwig was broad and powerfully built, but no match for the Dullahan's frame—and even so, following the spear's lead, the greatsword's trajectory slipped up and away.
Ludwig stepped up onto the now-flattened blade of the greatsword. The moment his feet landed, he flung himself forward with that momentum—kicked off the greatsword, planted a foot on the wrist of the hand gripping it, then ran up over the vambrace and the armored upper arm, leaping all the way to the pauldron.
“For a headless bastard, the cut's the weak point, as expected.”
Ludwig smiled and raised his spear. The smooth, empty stump of the neck gaped open before him. White light flared even brighter along the raised spearhead.
When he glanced briefly to the side, he saw Vigrind in his vision, rosary in hand, facing him. She must be lending her holy power to the Light Spear.
Not bad.
Without hesitation, Ludwig drove the spear down.
—Krakoom.
There was furious resistance, but it could not stop the Light Spear. The spear sank deep into the stump of the Dullahan's neck, and feeling holiness flood into its miasma-thick body with terrifying force, the Dullahan convulsed.
—Graaah, graaaaagh! Graaaaaaaaaaagh!
It swung the greatsword in its grip wildly, while with its other hand it flailed again and again, trying to seize Ludwig clinging to its neck. But Ludwig, spear still lodged in place, evaded those grasping fingers with practiced ease.
And just as the Dullahan was flailing its greatsword without aim—
The blind blade came sweeping down toward Alec.
—CLANG!
Blood sprayed with the shriek of metal striking shield.
“—Alec!”
Yona's scream rang out in the same instant, and she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
Blood poured freely from the deep gash across Alec's waist, while holy power erupted from Yona's right hand like something gone mad.
“Hey, hey…! You bald bastard, don't you die! Don't you dare die!”
Perhaps because the blood was draining out of him so fast, Alec's face went white as paper in seconds. Blood trickling from his mouth, he lay sprawled and looked up at Yona.
“I-I'm not… dying… you cursed woman… not until I've… gotten a handful of those… tits…”
“R-Right, I'll let you grope them all you want, so don't you die—you promised!”
Yona kept kneading and pressing at Alec's waist, desperately trying to at least stop the bleeding. But with her power, a wound cut this deep was beyond recovery.
The shadow of death fell heavily across Alec's face. Yona saw it too—knew it all too well—but she could not stop it.
A limit. Her limit. A limit she could do nothing about, healer though she was.
As she slammed headlong into that limit, a deep despair closed over her like a tide.
“Don't die… don't die, Alec… don't die…”
“I-I'm not… gonna… not until I've… gotten a handful…”
But the shadow of death only deepened. Alec's breathing was growing fainter and fainter.
And Yona's voice grew more desperate with every fading breath.