The Burning Night
‘Those bastards I couldn’t kill just now. I’ve memorized every single one of your faces.’
Suppressing my anger, I pulled out the lowest-grade and low-grade potions from my pack and handed them out to everyone.
Pop.
I approached the person whose condition looked the worst and poured my one and only mid-grade potion directly onto their wounds.
“Th-thank you. Thank you for saving me!”
I gave a rough nod and turned away.
‘What’s this…? A seal? A mark?’
A tiny something caught my eye.
A small, spherical jointed doll-shaped mark left on the thread-wounded area.
And among Ivelin’s traits, some were censored: Puppet □□ Technique.
…No way?
An ominous thought flashed through my mind. At that moment, Ivelin raised her voice so everyone could hear.
“My, my. The people gathered here are higher level than I expected? Quite tenacious. Well then… hehe.”
“You’re laughing? You crazy bitch! How long do you think you can last, huh?”
“Vengeance for Medea. I’ll end your pathetic life with my own blade.”
Thud!
Slash!
Watching the battlefield from afar, the twins and Asan already looked like they had burned through most of their mana in the performance and were barely squeezing out what little remained.
“O Light God, let your radiance dwell in this fist to punish evil!”
Boom!!!
The monk, supported by the commander and the mystic mage, was still managing to press the attack. But…
“Lord Tehelum ordered me to secure as many offerings as possible with this body, so it’s about time I moved on to the next stage!”
Thud!!!
Ivelin clapped her palms together and summoned a massive tentacle, blasting everyone away with a shockwave.
Her eyes glowed an eerie violet-black.
Ivelin casts Puppetry.
Damn it. Just as I feared—it was a trap.
“We’ve been had! Everyone, get away from the wounded!”
“What?”
“What the hell is this now?”
Click.
At Ivelin’s gesture came the ominous sound of rusty clockwork meshing.
They lurched upright!
The wounded who had been lying or sitting while receiving treatment, or who had lost consciousness from blood loss, began rising one after another like zombies.
“A-Aaron?”
“Helen! You’re awake!!”
“No, get back!”
They hadn’t woken up on their own after being healed. Couldn’t they see those vacant eyes?
Thud!!
Crunch!
“Aaaagh—!”
“Kuh… why?”
The possessed wounded, their bodies threaded and marked, attacked the nearest people regardless of age or gender. They bit with teeth, clawed with nails, or impaled with arms, charging recklessly. Most people were too shocked to react properly.
The man I had treated with my precious mid-grade potion was no exception.
He turned out to be an adventurer—a rogue, apparently—and drew the dagger from his waist, lunging straight at me.
Clang!
‘Shit. Do I just kill him? But he’s being controlled—he’s not attacking of his own will. Should I try to incapacitate him somehow?’
I hesitated for a moment, but with no clear way to subdue him, I was about to swing my sword to sever his windpipe when—
“Here! If you cut away the skin with the black mark, you can incapacitate them!!”
“Even if you just keep hitting them until they pass out, they won’t get back up!”
Surprisingly, several veteran adventurers who had regained their senses and come up with countermeasures in that short time shouted the solution.
Good. Let’s try it.
Even without reason, the eerie blade kept aiming for my neck with relentless persistence.
Whoosh!
I twisted my body by a hair’s breadth to dodge, then used the opening to smash the pommel into his solar plexus. I kept striking until he finally lost consciousness.
Thud.
Others who had heard the method were tearfully trying to knock out their own family and friends.
“Aaaah! She said we could look forward to the performance, so what the hell is this?!”
“It’s only been a little while since I fixed you with potions, and now your head’s broken again! Get fixed! Get fixed!”
Thud. Thud thud!
…I’d better stop watching.
“Everyone, pay attention! I’m Valian, an instructor of the Sword Guild! We’ve contacted the Guildmaster, so if we hold out a little longer, there’ll be a way out! Let’s give it everything we’ve got!!”
“The Sword Guild’s Guildmaster…? If that person comes, then surely!”
Just as everyone was gradually succeeding in incapacitating the possessed, a middle-aged man protecting his family shouted.
‘Guildmaster? I don’t know who it is, but they must be at least a high-floor adventurer or higher!’
Everyone seemed to share the same thought. Whether they knew the Guildmaster or not, their faces lit up as they responded in agreement.
“I’ll cast a wide-area protective spell first. Anyone else who can use something similar, follow right after! To neutralize all the rampaging ones at once, we have to push them back in a single sweep!!”
Whoom—
“Protect everyone with holy light and grant sacred rest to the wicked!”
Divine Field
Thud!
“O dragon of bitter cold, roar. Howl! Frost Dragon’s Roar!!”
“Uwooooor!!!”
Berdolf casts Warrior’s Shout.
Kwaaaah──!
Most of the adventurers gathered here were ordinary low-floor adventurers.
Even so, alongside a few exceptionally strong individuals, many people combined their strength to hold back and push away the charging wounded.
“Now’s our chance!”
“Aaaah!”
“Don’t bother knocking them out—just tear off the regenerating flesh!”
We succeeded in either knocking out or cutting away the marks from all the frozen, fallen, or restrained possessed.
The barbarian at the front swung his two-handed club and shouted.
“Only the civilians and anyone too weak to risk their lives stay here. The rest of you, follow me!!”
Right. Now only Ivelin remained.
Compared to her, excluding the unconscious and the helpless civilians and adventurers, we still had at least several dozen people.
With nothing left to hold us back, if we all rushed her at once we could buy time until the Guildmaster arrived. If things went well, we might even kill her before then.
I glanced ahead and saw the party members gradually running out of strength. We had to move fast!
“Go—.”
Just as everyone, buoyed by renewed hope, started toward the center of the stage—
—Kwaaaaaaaaah!!!
What the—
Gregory casts Pair of Radiant Wings.
Berdolf casts Guardian Bear Hide.
Boooom!!!
Thud.
“Kuh…!”
“Kuhk. Cough.”
The paladin wrapped himself in wings of light and the barbarian whose skin had turned brown managed to barely block the sudden, fierce flames that shot out in a straight line, saving everyone.
‘What the hell was that? A breath attack? Does Ivelin have another ally?’
Wait. If it’s a breath attack, then…
Step.
The sudden attack brought both our side and the central battle between the party and Ivelin to a momentary lull.
Someone was walking into the colosseum.
“Ahaha! So the possession finally finished? I was wondering why it was taking so long!”
“Sh-Shurika?!”
Yes. That person was none other than Shurika.
‘No. Can I still call her the Shurika who was the first performer of the show?’
Her vivid red bob was streaked with purple, forming bridges, and even her eyes glowed the same violet-black as Ivelin’s tentacles.
She had already changed in many ways.
Moreover, the fiery breath she had just fired at us was identical to the performance she had shown with spirit fusion, so she had clearly become an enemy for some reason.
“What the hell is that appearance… Possession? What exactly did you do, you damned devil spawn!!!”
Thud!
The monk coated his fist in pure white divine power and charged at Ivelin.
“Ah, no.”
“Krrraaagh!”
Seeing that, Shurika muttered and waved her hand, summoning a fire lion twice as large as before that slammed into him.
Whoosh!!!
Crash.
“Kuhk… hup.”
The monk was sent flying far away, his body burned and cooking from the explosion and massive impact.
Shurika shed black tears as she watched him writhe on the ground.
“P-please kill me. Please.”
—Kikiki.
—Hiiing!
—Puuu!
Behind the despairing Shurika, whose body and mind seemed to be acting separately, the spirits also shed black tears as they appeared one by one with cries.
“Wh-what is that?”
“Now we have to fight a spirit master too?”
“Fuck, is that the problem right now?! Look at that face—she clearly wants to die! The evil god’s minions must have pulled some trick!”
Seeing Shurika, who had been brimming with confidence just hours ago, and the spirits who had danced joyfully before the audience now reduced to this state, an indescribable disgust welled up in everyone’s hearts.
“Kuk.”
She’s laughing?
“Puhaha! Look at those faces. They’re a masterpiece!”
Grind.
Ivelin’s mocking laughter, as if she were dying of amusement, united us as one.
“I’m definitely going to catch that bitch.”
“Agreed. She’s pure evil. She must be eradicated at all costs.”
“Then, before any interference comes from above, shall we wrap this up?!”
Ivelin casts Tehelum’s Bridge.
Fwoooosh──!
A swarm of massive tentacles unleashed in earnest, a feast of black-glowing threads, and on top of that, the flames spewed by Shurika’s gathered spirits.
It was a desperate moment where we had no choice but to grit our teeth and clash head-on.
Or so it seemed.
“Well now. This is quite the mess, isn’t it?”
“⋯!”
A chill—
A voice that instantly rang alarm bells in my head.
It felt as distant as when I had faced the fragment of Ivelin’s killing intent, the one filled with genuine rage over what had happened to Yeriel.
In the slowed world, I barely managed to roll my eyes.
‘An ally? Could she be the Sword Guild’s Guildmaster?’
Before I knew it, someone wearing orange sunglasses and carrying a sword at their waist stood at the front of the stage.
Their presence was so overwhelming that for an instant it seemed to push away all the surrounding darkness, creating the illusion that everything had turned pure white.
Shing.
She placed her hand on the hilt at her waist.
“Huu… hah.”
She stepped forward with her left foot.
Sena casts Horizontal Thrust Massacre.
She swung from left to right.
────.
There was no loud explosion. No large movement. No surging mana.
…Not a single one of those things happened.
Swish.
It was merely a single horizontal flash of the blade.
With that one strike, the massive tentacles, black threads, and spewing flames that had filled the view all vanished without a trace.
‘What the hell just—’
“Uh…”
“Ah? Eh?”
“Guildmaster!!!”
The middle-aged man who had introduced himself as an instructor earlier raised his arms and waved them wildly.
“Hey— sorry! I’m a bit late, aren’t I?”
She smiled innocently, as if nothing had just happened.
“As expected of evil god bastards, they messed up the warp gate spell in District 5 ahead of time when I tried to communicate. Those shady little shits. Their heads only spin fast when it comes to being rotten.”
Tap tap.
“Thanks to that, I couldn’t wait for the repair work and just ran here straight from District 4. Hahaha!”
Her playful, overflowing laughter eased the tense atmosphere.
‘With this person here… we can do this!’
After that, flames of hope began to rise in everyone’s hearts.
Whew.
The scene I had just witnessed was burned so vividly into my mind that I unconsciously stared at her and thought about checking her information.
Martial Arts’ Amber Eye nullifies Chaos Eye.
“Huh?”
‘Shit.’
It was the first time. Not just partially reading the status window, but having it completely nullified and detected.
“Hup.”
In the blink of an eye, the Guildmaster—no, Sena—appeared beside me, lifted my chin, pushed her sunglasses up, and stared straight into my eyes.
A few seconds passed.
As I broke into a cold sweat while meeting her gaze, she chuckled and let go.
“Interesting? You’re cute. Let’s have a private talk later.”
Shing.
“First, let’s deal with that thing.”
“Did I drag it out too long? I didn’t expect an interferer to show up this quickly!”
Ivelin bit her lower lip as she looked at Sena.
“⋯Grr! How arrogant. Fine, I’ll make you a special offering dedicated to Lord Tehelum! Die!!!”
Shwaaaak!!!