Otherworld (10)
"No! Savior!"
Bianca's scream tore through the air as she watched Jeong Jojun drive his blade forward.
In the same instant, a glass-shattering crack rang out. The crimson-tinged world collapsed in on itself, and darkness rushed in to fill the void.
"Wh… what?"
Alice stared dumbly at the empty space where Jojun had vanished, her voice gone hollow. Only moments ago she had seen it — a demon in the shape of a tree, its entire body twisted and warped. The instant her eyes met that grotesque creature, she had felt it. An overwhelming gap.
The sheer volume of demonic energy flowing naturally from that bizarre demon was far beyond anything she could handle. And so, watching the wooden tendrils reach toward her, all Alice could do — bitterly, helplessly — was stare.
"Jo… Jojun!"
She called his name a beat too late, but the cry only echoed through empty air.
"Aaaah!"
Bianca shrieked, tearing at her lustrous golden hair. When they had first entered the Otherworld, she had glimpsed it through the window, however briefly. That thing standing near the first-floor entrance — even if it was the Savior, his life could not be guaranteed.
That could not be allowed. This world could only be saved if the Savior lived. She had to save him. Somehow. Anyhow.
Yongan — Dragon Eyes
All supernatural phenomena perceived and analyzed.
Bianca's Dragon Eyes flared as she stared at the formula the demon's finger had inscribed only moments ago. A flood of information poured into her mind. Seconds passed, and the formula was perfectly understood.
"Rebecca!"
"Yes, President."
Rebecca answered, her expression frozen stiff.
"We enter the Otherworld in five minutes. Prepare yourself."
The passage between this world and the Otherworld had already closed — but it had only just closed. If they forced it now, they could still squeeze through. With her Dragon Eyes, which could perceive and command every form of supernatural power, it was possible. There would be some loss, but it was possible.
Crackling golden ripples spread from the golden iris of Bianca's right eye. The wall before her began to grind away, a formula carving itself into the surface. As the wall was gouged out and the inscription took shape, bit by bit, a trickle of vivid crimson blood began to run from her left eye.
Please! Savior!
Bianca prayed. Please, don't encounter that thing before I get there. Please.
Watching the blood drip from Bianca's left eye, Rebecca bit down on her lip and gathered her abilities. Alice forced her trembling legs to stand and clenched her Uzi tight.
This is doable.
Six withered trees scattered across the fifth floor. Three fire hydrants stationed along each U-shaped stretch of corridor. At this pace, he could manage it.
A dry creak sounded as he rounded the corner. Directly ahead, a withered tree twisted its head around to look at him. Wooden tendrils burst from that warped trunk and came crashing down — but Jojun spun, the wind wrapped around his body carrying him into a whirling sidestep, slipping past the branches and driving forward.
He threaded a filament of wind to the hilt of the sword in his right hand and hurled the blade at a fire hydrant three meters ahead.
The hydrant burst. A jet of water exploded outward with a thunderous roar.
Spirit Aura.
He yanked the wind-thread and recovered the sword in the same motion, swapping the wind spirits cloaking his body for water spirits, then scattered the erupting spray in every direction. Behind him, the withered tree sent its tendrils lunging again.
Now.
He flash-froze the scattered water. The withered tree's movements seized up for a critical instant.
Drawing Sword — Flame Flower
In midair, his body settled naturally into the drawing-sword stance. A crimson line was drawn through empty space — and the contracted windows swelled, then shattered all at once in a cascading burst of glass.
Every window on the fifth floor was gone. Elapsed time: roughly fifty seconds.
He could do this. One way or another, he was going to close out this Otherworld scenario with his own two hands.
He flung himself through a broken window, angling for the fourth floor — and in that brief moment of hang time, with the entire campus laid out below him, every sense in his body screamed at once.
Something's down there.
"Oh, you have got to be shitting me!"
He smashed through a fourth-floor window and rolled into the corridor. Arrogance. The thought that he could clear this easily had been arrogance. The worst-case scenario he'd been quietly dreading had just arrived.
Even accounting for the jump from Hard Mode to Hell Mode — the spike in difficulty, the increased player involvement, the boosted bosses — the demonic energy he'd just felt was Count-Class.
A Count-Class demon. In the second scenario.
No wonder Angel had popped out of nowhere to give him a heads-up. This was never designed to be a solo clear!
"Fuck!"
A dry creak. The withered trees stationed at both ends of the corridor turned their heads toward him.
He sucked in a deep breath and concentrated as much wind as he could onto the tip of his blade. Then he unleashed everything in a single stroke, spreading the wind as far as it would go. A crescent of cutting wind erupted in every direction, blowing out the windows.
It was an overcommitted strike, but it shaved off a good seven seconds. If he just kept this up—
A low, weighty voice — familiar — unfurled through his mind. A True Word, usable only by Count-Class demons and above: a voice mixed naturally into the demonic energy saturating the air and delivered straight into the skull.
"Ha!"
He barked a disbelieving laugh and stopped moving.
"Thou must have sensed Our presence here. Why, then, dost thou still struggle so?"
The familiar voice rolled through his head again. As if he wouldn't recognize its owner. The single biggest view-count generator on his YouTube channel, SwordsmanPatchPlz.
The Flame Demon.
For the record, the highest-viewed video on that channel was titled Beating the Flame Demon With Nothing but a Sword.
"Hahahahaha!"
Laughter burst out of him, sheer incredulity. So it was you, Flame Bro! The withered trees showing up in this Otherworld hadn't been a coincidence. All those fire-immune pests packed into the scenario existed because the boss was the Flame Demon.
"Thou seemest to know a means of escaping this world. But thou knowest as well, do you not? That so long as We remain, it cannot be done."
"Heh heh heh! Flame Bro, of all things!"
The laughter wouldn't stop. Of all the nasty Count-Class demons out there, it had to be a nature-type — and not just any nature-type, but the Flame Demon, whose every pattern he'd memorized so thoroughly he'd embodied them, all for the sake of farming YouTube views.
The tension that had been winding his nerves tight a moment ago simply… unwound.
"Hey! Where are you, Flame Bro?!"
He stuck his head cheerfully out the window, scanning for her. And there, in the open courtyard — a courtyard that hadn't existed when he'd jumped down to the fourth floor — stood a throne of interwoven withered trees. Seated upon it, staring up at him with a bewildered expression, was the Flame Demon.
White-gold hair falling to her shoulders. Eight semicircular rings of flame floating behind her back. A burning crown upon her head. A beautiful girl, no matter how you looked at her.
Yep. That was his Flame Bro, all right.
"Hey, you bastard! Long time no see!"
He hopped off the fourth floor, using a Spirit Step to land neatly in the courtyard where she sat.
The Flame Demon stared at him, her face a portrait of utter incomprehension.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
"Has he gone mad, believing he cannot survive?"
She muttered it while looking at him.
"Mad? Who's mad? Flame Demon! You're the Flame Demon!"
"Hrm? Thou knowest even Our name?"
She looked even more bewildered.
"Ah, come on, that hurts. After everything we've been through together."
It was true. He and the Flame Demon were inseparable. The Beating the Flame Demon series on his channel had run to seven episodes. He'd milked that content for every last view — hell, he'd pulled the spine out and sucked the marrow. And she didn't even recognize him! Cold, pal. Real cold.
The Flame Demon shifted a finger on the arm of her throne, looking faintly unsettled. Then, as if reaching a decision, she crooked a smile.
"To know Our name… Very well. We shall grant thee the special privilege of dying in a single blow."
She lifted the hand resting on the throne, just slightly, and flicked her index finger toward him with a sharp snap. Flame erupted from one of the rings at her back with a roaring blast.
Third ring from the left. The Flame Demon's fourth pattern. A simple one: remain seated, flick a finger, fire a straight-line blast. He'd known it the moment she started to lift her hand.
Without using Spirit Aura or Spirit Step, he simply nudged his toes and slipped sideways.
A searing heat and a concussive blast detonated behind him. He whistled, glancing back. The shockwave had caved in an entire wall of the academy building.
At this rate she's going to smash all the windows herself.
"Wh… what?"
The Flame Demon stared at him, startled.
"Hey! You can't just attack without saying anything!"
"Ahem. That was a mistake. A mere mistake."
She cleared her throat, quietly shifted her toes, and flicked her index finger a fraction lower than before.
Flame Demon pattern three. Second ring on the right. His body moved before the thought had finished forming. He dipped slightly, angling down and to the left.
The blast skimmed past him by a hair, and a violent explosion of heat washed over his back.
"What?"
Now she was staring at him in outright shock. Fair enough — watching someone dodge with nothing but the tiniest shifts of posture would look pretty uncanny. That last pattern wasn't something you could react to on sight. He'd just memorized the tell.
"C'mere, Flame Demon! Heh heh heh!"
Ah, what a cute little thing. He drew his sword with a whisper of steel, licked the blade, and started walking toward her.
"Insolence!"
The Flame Demon kicked her throne. Pattern one. He bent and twisted his body at grotesque angles, slipping past the cone-shaped flames erupting from the ground at his feet.
"Y-you wretch!"
She surged up from the throne. The eight flame rings at her back began to spin, whirling faster and faster.
There it was. The Flame Demon's nastiest pattern.
Eight twisted vortexes of flame erupted from the rings and came screaming toward him from every direction. Under normal circumstances, dodging those was a miserable, grinding ordeal.
He didn't need to dodge. Why would he, when he had an Enchant with its growth values wrung out to the absolute limit? As he'd said before — against nature-types, that Enchant was a complete cheat. And now that he'd classed up to Elemental Swordsman, with his affinity even higher, he was effectively invincible.
He faced the onrushing vortexes and cloaked his entire body in a Spirit Aura of flame, focusing, reaching out to take control of all eight—
Huh?
Why weren't they moving the way he wanted?
The vortexes hesitated, just barely — and then kept coming straight at him.
"What the fuck?!"
He swore, frantically gathering every scrap of concentration he had, and dragged the leading edges of the vortexes downward. They warped, just barely changing course, and slammed into the ground directly in front of him instead.
A colossal blast of heat and wind launched him into the air. He hastily swapped his Spirit Aura to wind, righted himself mid-flight, and shoved aside the debris exploding outward in the aftershock.
What the hell was that? What just happened?
He hadn't been able to control the flames the Flame Demon had unleashed?
Back when he'd recorded the guides, his Enchant's growth values hadn't even been near the cap, and he'd still controlled her fire without breaking a sweat. So how—
"What art thou?"
The Flame Demon asked it with the same poleaxed expression he was wearing himself.
"What manner of being art thou, that thou canst take even a portion of what is Ours?"
Yeah, he wanted to ask her the same thing.
Wait. Unless—
Hell Mode surfaced in his mind, unbidden. A hypothesis popped up fully formed: the Flame Demon had been boosted by the jump to Hell Mode, and her affinity for flame now exceeded his own.
Not a hypothesis. A fact.
"Th-this isn't how this is supposed to go."
Of the countless Flame Demon patterns he'd broken, a huge number required controlling her flames to work. So how was he supposed to break them now, against a Flame Demon whose affinity was higher than his?
Her startled gaze met his in midair.
And for a moment, a strange silence settled over the courtyard.