Dead End

Past the corridor that ran on from the stone chamber, another chamber opened before me. Grotesque, chilling murals covered every wall here as well, but unlike the room before, this was a dead end—no way forward at all. And in that sealed chamber, there were only two of us.

"Graaaah!"

A roaring black gnoll, and me.

To make matters worse, the passage I had come through was completely blocked. The black gnoll, thrashing in a frenzy, had swung its iron mace into the ceiling of the corridor, and the impact had brought rock and earth crashing down. A small mercy: the collapse was not total. If Walter and the soldiers outside put their backs into it, they could clear the rubble soon enough. The problem was everything before that.

"The question is whether I can hold out until then."

I muttered it under my breath, watching the black gnoll tremble as it choked down a rage that looked ready to burst. Those blood-red eyes fixed on me with savage hostility. This was not the black gnoll I knew.

Whether something had driven it mad or simply reinforced it, its strength sat on an entirely different plane from an ordinary one. Even Walter, a 3-Star Knight, had nearly died to it. Facing a thing like that as I was now could only be called reckless. And yet—

"…I think I can handle this."

A confident smile tugged at my mouth as I checked the inventory only I could see. I had brought plenty of trump cards for a situation exactly like this.

I used the stat-boosting elixirs stacked in my inventory without a moment's hesitation, one after another. They were cash-shop items—barely five minutes of duration, but each raised a stat by a full twenty.

In an instant the three core stats a fight demanded all sat around thirty, and a strength and speed I had never possessed surged through my body. Even that fell woefully short of overwhelming the thing. Stats at thirty still did not reach the level of a 2-Star Knight in this world. The rest I would have to fill with nothing but experience and instinct.

"———!"

Killing intent and Fear crashed over me together as the black gnoll charged. The massive mace tore the air, and in the blink of an eye its head was at my nose.

Clang!

I threw everything I had into the blow, as if I were meeting a falling boulder. A straight contest of strength was hopeless. The best I could do was twist the angle of the blade and spill the attack aside however I could.

Boom!

With a thunderous crack, the mace—its arc thrown off—smashed the floor right beside me. Stone shards sprayed in every direction and grated on my nerves, but this moment was unmistakably my opening. I slipped inside the black gnoll's guard without a heartbeat of hesitation and drove the sword in.

Skrrk!

What came back from the point of the blade was not the clean bite of steel through flesh and bone, but the ugly scrape of something hard being gouged. The gnoll's hide was tougher and denser than I had expected. The thrust never sank deep into that thick leather and muscle, and I paid for it by leaving myself open to a lethal counter—the shadow of the huge mace flashing in from the side like a streak of light.

"Guh—!"

The next instant my body lifted as lightly as a sheet of paper and went airborne. I had thrown myself into an evasive motion on instinct just before the mace arrived, but even strengthened by the elixirs, this sluggish body could not clear it completely.

"Tch…!"

I clicked my tongue and barely hauled myself up off the floor I had been driven into. The price of allowing a single hit was brutal. My left arm was twisted completely out of shape, bone punched through the flesh in a grotesque spike, and red blood poured from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it as if someone had opened a faucet. The agony, as if the limb had been set on fire, came free of charge.

"Grrrr…"

The black gnoll caught the smell of my blood pooling on the floor and rumbled low, pleased with itself. Did it think it had dealt me a mortal wound? Arrogance already sat in its eyes—the certainty of victory. But—

"If this is all… I really can handle it."

In that moment I saw how the fight would be won. The black gnoll's attacks were undeniably lethal. A graze like the one I had just taken would tear a limb away; a solid hit would burst a body apart. What mattered was that they were not enough to kill me outright. The stat elixirs had not been the only card I had prepared.

"This is the real one."

I used a top-grade recovery potion from my inventory.

In Crius Saga, an ordinary recovery potion took time before its effect appeared, and it came with a cooldown besides. Cash items had none of those inconvenient limits. The whole reason ordinary potions had been plastered with restrictions in the first place was to frustrate players into buying the paid ones. And the effect of a potion like this was immediate. Light wrapped the wound as if by magic, and my shattered arm returned to its proper shape in an instant. Bone set. Flesh filled in. That uncanny sensation wiped even the agony away, as if it had been a lie.

"Graaaaah!"

Whether enraged by a sight it could not believe, the black gnoll roared and charged again. The mace came down like lightning and crushed my leg. At the same moment the potion flooded through me, and the leg the mace had pulped recovered in the blink of an eye. I kicked off the ground on a leg that had been wreckage a second before and carved another wound into the thing's body.

"Good. Just keep my head out of the way."

After that, the fight was repetition. Under its attacks my arms and legs broke and pulped again and again; my ribs crumbled; my organs burst. Every time, I healed the damage at once with a potion—and in return, I added one more wound the gnoll could not heal.

The process was never smooth. A potion could close an injury, but it did not erase the horrific pain of the moment it was dealt. An ordinary person would have broken in the mind long before the body gave out, gone mad from the pain, or simply chosen to die. But—

"It's fine. I can handle it."

Even a fight this hellish was familiar to me. Back when I was an S-rank Hunter, the Gates held healers whose recovery matched these potions—no, surpassed them. People with healing skills that could bring you back from anything short of death. Healers that powerful made a Hunter's battles not merely fierce, but excessive. Even for me, losing an arm or a leg mid-fight was routine.

There were times my upper body and lower body were severed completely. Times half of me melted under acid. Times a vast flame swallowed me and left my whole body like a heap of ash.

Each time I lived because a healer put me back together, and before I could even get my head straight, I had to raise my sword again. That was what an S-rank Hunter's fight had been. Set beside those memories, the pain of having my limbs ground into minced meat one by one was something I could endure.

How long did it go on?

"Krrrr…"

Before I knew it, the one-armed gnoll—soaked in blood from head to toe—had collapsed in front of me, panting hard. What lingered in those red eyes was no longer rage or killing intent. Fear. Looking at me, it felt a primal terror, and no wonder. Tear its body to shreds, make it bleed as much as you liked, and still the thing before it rose again without end. It must have felt like staring at a monster.

"This is the end."

I smiled faintly, used every remaining elixir one last time, and pinned the limp head under my foot. Then I wrung out what strength I had left and drove the sword deep between the monster's eyes.

Crunch!

The black gnoll's huge body convulsed once, then went utterly still. At the same moment the sword, pushed past its limit, snapped clean through.

"This is why you don't settle for cheap."

I muttered at the broken blade, thoroughly unimpressed.

At that same moment, Walter was digging desperately through the collapsed earth at the mouth of the corridor, the soldiers beside him. Beyond that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rock and soil, Lucas was trapped, and they were trying to reach him.

All of this was my failure.

Even as he heaved for breath and clawed at the dirt, he felt his earlier misjudgment down to the bone. At first he had thought it was merely an unusually large, vicious black gnoll. It was not. Strength and toughness several times that of an ordinary gnoll—and, even if only for a moment, a Fear that could freeze a knight's movements. Walter knew what that grotesque monster was.

A Branded Monster…!

The southern reaches of the Roenheim ducal domain bordered a vast Great Forest that human feet almost never touched. Together with the rugged mountain country in the Empire's north, that Great Forest was uncharted ground, so unknown that not even a map of it existed. Deep inside it lay a danger zone called the Red Forest. It was a den where demonkin, monsters, and devils lived tangled together—forbidden ground, watched with dread by the Roenheim ducal house and by the Empire as a whole.

Branded Monsters were a special kind of creature seen only in that Red Forest. No one had determined whether they were the product of some contract or some curse. They were simply monsters branded with an ominous crest, far more savage and far more powerful for it. Why a creature that dangerous had been shut away in an abandoned hideout like this, even Walter could not say.

"Sir Walter."

One of the soldiers digging at the mound approached with a grim face and whispered.

"At this pace… even if we break through, the young master will already…"

He could not finish. Walter knew exactly what he meant to say. Left alone with that Branded Monster, the chance that Lucas was still alive was almost none. No—it was fair to say there was none at all. But Walter was Lucas's escort knight. Even if his lord was so incompetent the family had all but discarded him. Even if that lord was already a cold corpse. Walter's duty was to see the end with his own eyes and put it in order.

"Enough of that useless talk. Just—"

He was about to tell them to dig when it happened.

"Hey!"

From beyond the mound came a sharp ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shout, thick with irritation. No one else's voice. Lucas's.

"You walk off and leave me, you're dead. I mean it."

The soldiers' eyes went wide at a voice none of them had expected. One of them even muttered nonsense—maybe the monster was mimicking him, maybe it was a ghost. Walter shut that drivel down with a bark. The manner of speech was a little cruder than usual, but the irritation was unmistakably something the young master would produce.

"Stop dawdling and hurry! His Lordship is alive!"

At Walter's shout the soldiers threw themselves at the earth again with everything they had, and before long they had opened a passage just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.

"Ugh, dig the hole bigger. I nearly suffocated in there."

Caked in dirt, Lucas crawled out of the passage, grumbling. He was drenched in blood to a horrific degree—and yet, astonishingly, he was whole, without a single visible wound.

"Young master! That blood… are you all right?"

Walter asked it in a voice that mixed shock with relief. Lucas waved him off as if the question were a nuisance.

"I'm fine. More to the point—is everyone unharmed?"

Unexpectedly, the first thing Lucas asked after was whether Walter and the soldiers were safe. When the soldiers only stared, dumbstruck and silent, he went so far as to count them off on his fingers, one by one.

"Good. All alive."

"…Young master?"

The odd behavior pushed Walter past puzzlement into unease. Had he taken a blow to the head? Lucas seemed to realize he had slipped. He cleared his throat and hurriedly changed the subject.

"Ah. Ahem… more to the point, do you have a spare sword?"

"A sword? Why all of a sudden?"

"Broke mine fighting that thing."

At those words Walter turned his gaze toward the chamber where Lucas had been. And there—

"How in the world…!"

The one-armed black gnoll he had seen only moments ago lay dead, a broken sword driven into its ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠head. Walter said nothing. He only stared at Lucas, the look full of shock.

"It was already wounded. That's how I got lucky."

Lucas answered with nothing but that, shameless as you please. Then he belted the new sword at his waist.

"I'm tired. Business is done, so let's head back."

He said it in a tone that left no room for further questions.