2. The Underground Dungeon (4)
It was a clusterfuck, the likes of which you've never seen.
Yona looked around her, leaving Kayak and Alec to wait for her to finish her sentence.
A good number of the vanguard were already out of commission.
Some of them were dead. The rest were doing well just to barely hold back the greatsword's swings.
The goat-headed monster towering over the Catacombs bellowed goat bleats like war cries, swinging its greatsword again and again. With every swing, bricks cracked and crumbled, and the catacombs where the dead were meant to sleep in peace had been turned into complete ruin by a single goat head.
"...There's a chance I might die, though."
"Don't do it."
Alec answered flatly. That startled both Kayak and Yona.
"Healers are precious enough as it is. We can't gamble on you dying too, Yona. The warriors have to figure this out. Right, Kayak?"
But Kayak couldn't answer.
It was true that the warriors, and the mages, and the archers, were the ones who had to handle it. But hadn't nearly half of them already been wounded or killed?
And compared to that, the monster showed no opening whatsoever — not even a sliver of a chance.
"Look at this little shit, acting tough because it got its ass in a bind."
Yona snorted despite herself.
Theoretically, it could work. She'd heard of cases where it had. The church had mentioned it once... It was horribly inefficient, granted.
"Alec, get its attention for me."
"You crazy woman, what are you planning to do?"
"That's exactly why I'm doing it — because I'm crazy. Anyway, just do it. Got it? Kayak, you too."
"...I have no idea what you're about to pull, but understood."
In the middle of all this, Emerson shrieked — gyaaah! — as a greatsword slammed into the ground right beside him, and they watched him bolt.
- MeeeeeEEHHH!
The monster seemed to have decided it had already won, what with so few of them still fighting fit. It raised both hands high and bellowed again.
"Alec, Kayak. Do it for me."
"'Do it for me' my ass, goddamn it. Fine. Fine!"
Kayak and Alec exchanged a glance and sprinted toward the spot where Emerson had just been standing.
Left alone, Yona gripped her Holy Shroud tight and rewrapped it.
Fucking hell, what am I about to do... Ugh.
Either way, dying here meant nothing. Staying alive was the only way there'd be an afterward.
"Alec, keep me covered. For real."
Alec would find a way. It had been three years since the two of them registered at the adventurer's guild together, one flimsy connection that had kept them rolling in the same party ever since. By now he could read roughly what she was thinking from a look alone.
If we survive this, maybe I'll let him cop a feel. Just a little.
Like a man, yeah. Something like that.
Alec shot a sidelong glance at Yona standing quietly, and readjusted his grip on his shield. A heavy steel shield was liable to sag on you if you didn't grip it just like that.
"Alec, snap out of it. Yona's about to sacrifice herself."
"Sacrifice nothing, you son of a bitch."
Alec glared at Kayak. He didn't even know what Yona was planning, and here he was, treating her like a dead woman the moment she said she might die. It left a bad taste in his mouth.
"Fair point. Let me correct myself. She's about to try to sacrifice herself."
"You little—"
Alec ground his teeth. As if he'd let Yona die. As if he'd stand by and watch a partner of three whole years die.
Alec holstered his true weapon, the hammer, and picked up a one-handed sword rolling around nearby. It was far lighter than his hammer from the very first heft — he doubted the thing would do a damn bit of good — but he'd only use it once anyway, so who cared.
"Right then. Here we go!"
Kayak let out a battle cry. The area around them was already packed with nothing but guys who'd lost their nerve and were running for their lives, but when the shout suddenly rang out, the monster whipped its head toward the sound.
The greatsword came flying all the same.
- CLANG!
Alec shoved forward in front of Kayak and angled his shield to catch it. The greatsword raked across the shield and slid up and away.
"You goat-headed bastard!"
Goat-headed or twin-headed — whichever it was, he didn't much care.
Kayak angled his spear and leapt in, stabbing deep at the monster's leg. The hide was so tough the spear bowed into a curve, then snapped free with a twang.
- MEEEEHHHH!
The greatsword in the other hand came flying again, and once more Alec met it shield-first, knocking the blade upward from below. He could feel the shield getting gouged and slowly, steadily bending out of shape.
'Shit, this is going to cost a fortune to repair.'
Alec grumbled inwardly. And then, in the corner of his vision, he saw Yona edging closer behind the goat head.
'That — that lunatic, what the hell is she doing...!?'
'All right. So this really is the situation she said it was for.'
Just as the instructor nun had put it — you try it when you're about to die anyway — well, this was exactly that situation.
Yona clutched her Holy Shroud tight and stepped in behind the goat head. She even undid the shield on her left arm and dropped it where she stood.
"Hoo... hoo... hoo..."
After a few fierce, deep breaths, Yona kicked off the ground and leapt. Into the wound on the monster's leg she'd been watching so carefully, she shoved her right hand, deep and fast.
It was an open wound already, but no skin was soft enough to sink into like she was driving her arm into dough — except Yona's right hand was no ordinary right hand.
Holy power. Holy power that could not be projected externally.
But when that entire mass of holy power burrowed in through the wound, the monster's miasma-coated protection meant nothing at all.
Yona's right hand sank in, deep. And as it did, the healing principle took hold — this whole body came to be recognized as a part of Yona's own, and her holy power began spreading through the monster's entire frame.
The body was shaking violently.
Holy power was eating inward from within. For a demonic beast — a mass of miasma — how much must that have hurt?
"NOW! ATTACK NOOOOW! Kayak, you motherfucking—NOW! ATTACK IT, HURRRY!!!"
Yona clung on with everything she had as the goat head thrashed again and again, trying to shake her off. The miasma that had sheathed its skin was being stripped away by the holy power churning through its insides, and that fortress-tough hide was without a doubt giving way.
Kayak, who had just tested it with a spear-thrust, shouted at the top of his lungs.
"HEY! You bastards who aren't dead, get the hell over here! Kill it! Kill it NOW! If you don't, Yona dies!"
Everyone who wasn't actually dead — including those who'd only been playing dead. Everyone still mobile, except those too wounded to move.
A little over ten of them snatched up their weapons all at once and charged.
Even Freaky the mage grabbed some random stick that wasn't hers and began chanting a spell.
The hide that miasma had protected now cut like butter. The skin that never should have given way pierced clean through.
Where they'd cut, they cut again. Where they'd stabbed, they stabbed again.
At last they managed to sever one of its legs, and the goat head bellowed and toppled sideways. Once the greatsword left its grip, all that remained was sheer bulk — and that bulk couldn't move properly anymore. It was, quite literally, nothing but a helpless punching bag now.
All the while, Yona's Holy Shroud was staining pitch black.
"Haah... haaah. Whew."
Yona sprawled on her back, limbs splayed, gasping for breath.
She finally understood why the instructor nun had told her to try it only when she was on death's door. Why she'd said it that way.
It was dangerous, yes — but the rate at which her holy power had been sucked out was monstrous. Her holy power, which was supposed to fill only her right arm, had drained out at a rate that threatened to refill that whole monster, and toward the end she'd honestly felt like her organs were being siphoned out along with it.
More than pain, it was a crushing, colossal sense of loss.
The Holy Shroud had long since turned jet black. It probably couldn't be used again — it would have to be thrown away.
And Holy Shrouds weren't cheap.
They weren't something sold at any old weapons shop; you had to receive them directly from the church, and the price was nothing to sneeze at.
"Goddamn it... I'm billing them for the shroud. Every coin..."
"You should. I'll testify on your behalf, word for word. Without you, we'd all be dead."
Kayak and Alec walked over laughing and sat down beside her. With no strength even to turn her head, Yona could only drag her eyes over — and Alec grinned down at her.
"Out of strength? Can't move?"
"Yeah, dying here. To hell with it — I can't so much as wiggle a finger."
"Is that so?"
Alec raised his hand with a leisurely slide. The way his fingers wriggled around was more than a little sleazy.
"...Don't you dare, you son of a bitch. Do it and I'll actually kill you."
"When else am I going to get the chance? Squeezing a nun's tits has been my life's dream."
"Don't. You. Dare."
If he'd just quietly encouraged her and said one word about how hard she'd worked, she might have been inclined to let him have a little feel. Alec had kicked away his own good fortune with both feet.
"Hey... Alec, unwrap this shroud for me. It's all sticky and gross."
"You got it."
He knew how to unwrapping a Holy Shroud well enough. Alec groaned to his feet, went to Yona's side, and undid the knot at her palm first. Around and around and around the shroud came loose.
And with every stretch of Yona's bare arm that came into view, Alec's expression turned stranger and stranger.
"What? Something wrong with my arm?"
"Uh, yeah. It's gotten... weird."
"Bullshit."
"No, I'm serious. It's genuinely weird."
There wasn't a trace of joking in Alec's answer. The more of the shroud he unwound, the more his face twisted, and watching him, Yona started to think something really was off.
"...What? What is it?"
"Maybe you'd better see for yourself...?"
Yona turned her sluggish head as far as it would go and looked at her own right arm.
And she went speechless.
Her right arm was covered in black tattoos.
It was packed edge to edge with strange, grotesque characters — the kind of thing you might call irezumi in the world she'd come from — so dense that unless a patch of skin was showing through here and there, you'd believe her skin had always been black. Those uncanny glyphs, not even letters of this world, were inked thickly across her from shoulder to wrist.