The Summoner of Salvation (82)
Thud!!!
The mouth slammed shut.
Crunch, crack, squelch—
What followed was a grotesque chorus of something snapping, shattering, and being chewed. No scream rose. Only the sight of that horror made every brow furrow in revulsion.
Gulp!
The endless, sickening noise finally ceased.
Thump! Thump!!
The change that came after was dramatic. The thunder of a heartbeat rang out with far greater clarity.
Everyone went pale at the sight of the monster that had swollen to enormous size, gorging itself on that very pulse. It had devoured every scrap of the overwhelming mana.
...There was no telling how much larger it might grow.
The sound of someone swallowing hard carried through the air. In that instant of tension, when every fighter stood ready to strike—
“Kuuuugh...?!”
The monster suddenly writhed in agony and began to contract.
“Aaaah, it hurts, daaah, aaaaah...! Hurts, ah, no, kill, kill. Kill. Kill. Kill..!!!”
Until now the creature had only repeated broken words like a damaged radio. But its voice was sharpening, aligning into clear, unmistakable murderous intent. And there was not a soul present who failed to recognize whose voice it was.
Squelch!!!
“Maaaaaasteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!!!!!”
The sound stretched and warped, thick with static. Matching it, the monster’s form began to mutate. From the pure mass of flesh, the shapes of countless other monsters erupted. Among them were the remnants of the stone, trees, and buildings it had swallowed.
They all fused and melted together like scrap flung into a giant furnace to be smelted at once.
...Crack.
In the end the flesh-mass failed even to finish shaping itself into a human form and hardened into a blackened shell. No one relaxed. Tension only climbed higher.
Thump.
Inside that black carapace, mana of a magnitude beyond anything yet seen was stirring. The thing was not dead. Even now, it was evolving.
Boom!! Rumble!!
This time the mages moved first. Most sensitive to shifts in mana, they instantly raised walls to shield everyone. Ban Taewung and Lucia, who had been ready, barely managed to keep pace; their swords crossed in front of them.
The coal-black shell before them split, and what burst out planted itself squarely in Taewung’s path.
Roll.
“Enemy, kill.”
The form that appeared next went beyond grotesque into pure revulsion.
A purple eyeball spun lazily inside a gigantic mouth set in its belly, surveying the surroundings.
Ban Taewung and Lucia instinctively swallowed. It was strong.
Clack.
Their crossed blades met the creature’s fist.
KRAAAAAANG!!!!
“Ghhhk...!!”
“Kyaah...!”
That alone whipped up a gale; the two of them were caught in the shockwave and hurled away.
Onohara Erika and Cheon Jang-mi seized the opening, weapons flashing, but even those strikes were caught and blocked by mouths that sprouted from other parts of its body.
“Interfere, kill?”
Creak-creak
A bizarre sound accompanied the twisting of what passed for its face. The monster looked as if a human shape had been forcibly compressed and woven together—pure grotesquery.
Bodies of every sort of beast jutted from its frame like living armor. It possessed none of the parts a person ought to have; only mouths and teeth packed every surface.
Crack
The mouth on its head yawned open, and from within emerged the face of Yashiro Hisame. Only half the face remained intact; the other half was hideously fused with the monster.
“Kihihik, this is, Yashiro’s masterpiece, I, will, kill...”
It was no longer anything that could be called human. A hybrid of man and monster whose mind had degenerated until it could think of nothing but killing.
“Everyone, scatter!!!”
Taewung clawed free of the rubble he had been thrown into and shouted. The creature’s back split open; arms of every beast erupted from the wound.
Taewung ran. His whole body screamed for rest and recovery, but he ignored it and ran.
Some of the stronger fighters swung their weapons. The monster simply spread its many arms, blocked every blow, then spat more arms from its belly to counterattack those who had charged.
“Gah...!”
“...Kh!”
Casualties appeared at once. A few managed to pull free, but those struck in bad places hung limp, skewered on the arms.
“Food, hungry... daaah!”
Craaack
A colossal mouth gaped. The impaled people were lifted toward it. What would follow was too horrible to imagine. Mana boiled through Taewung’s entire body. There was no time left to conserve it.
“Stoooooooooop!!!!!!”
He forced so much mana into the blade that the already battered sword groaned and spiderwebbed with cracks. He did not care.
If he let this moment slip, the regret would be worse. A sword could be remade a hundred times. He had to save them. He had to save those people!!
Mana answered that will, swirling around the blade in a savage current of gold and black.
What rose in his mind was the draw-cut Sinwoo had shown that day. Perfect replication was impossible. So he would replace it, however poorly, with his own method.
A crude imitation barely worthy of the name. He would fling this mana and cut the enemy. That single purpose drove the swing.
Shraaaaaak!!!
A blade of pure mana shot out and severed the arm. At the same instant the sword in his hand crumbled to powder.
That was enough.
The arm had been cleanly cut.
The moment the wounded dropped free, the highly mobile Cheon Jang-mi and the Shirogane mother and children scooped them up and fell back.
Ssshk
“Caught, you?”
“Ugh?!”
But even that had been bait. Yashiro Hisame’s face twisted into a chilling smile and he moved.
His sole target was Shirogane Hanabi.
While she fled with an injured person on her back, a razor-sharp blade that had been hidden among the arms streaked toward her. Dodge and the person in her arms would die. Leave it and Hanabi herself would take a grievous wound.
Ban Taewung wrenched more mana from his core, clutched his spinning head, and threw his body forward. The sword was gone, but his flesh was still intact.
Better that he, with his durability and recovery, take the hit than leave her defenseless.
That was the thought that moved him.
“Taewung-ssi!!!”
“Nooooooo----!!!”
Screams rang out. Every face twisted in horror. He knew how reckless he was being. He also knew the mana packed into that strike was anything but ordinary.
Still, there was no other choice. This was the best he could do.
If only I had more power...
No—if only he had had a little more time, he could have blocked it more cleanly.
The blade closed in, aimed straight at his heart. Ah, this one he could not simply take. He was willing to be hit, but not without resistance. He crossed his mana-wrapped arms.
In that stretched instant he saw Lucia screaming and Riri, uncharacteristically expressive, constructing a spell. Erika and Jang-mi’s faces were no different.
Time crawled. Was this a life flashing before his eyes? The feeling was far from pleasant. Still, he had no intention of dying quietly. He steeled himself and poured every ounce of strength into his body—
“...Just as Master said, you really have no sense of self-preservation.”
Thump
His diving body was shoved sideways. In a blink he was clear of the blade’s path. Why? His eyes flicked sideways and saw a girl pushing him. White-and-black maid uniform. An appearance utterly out of place here.
Shunk!!
And the girl who had taken his place was run clean through.
The hands that had once withstood countless assassin blades shattered. Her body was bisected and flung aside. The power core that served as her heart exploded into fragments.
Crash!
A beat later Taewung himself managed a tumbling landing. He was dazed. His brain’s commands never reached his body; he stayed rigid, unable even to think of moving.
His fists clenched. Past the limit, blood welled between his fingers.
“Fai, lure? How, come?”
“Destruction Storm!! Gust Tornado!!!”
Whatever the monster was babbling, Riri’s magic slammed into it and drove it back. Only then did Taewung’s awareness catch up; he staggered upright and stumbled toward the place where the girl’s body lay.
“Ah... aah...”
The ground was red. She was a machine, so it could not be blood. Mana fluid, or oil, or something he did not know.
He gathered the scattered broken parts, but it was meaningless. Seeing them like this finally made the word “machine” real.
Yet his hands would not stop trembling.
“Co...met...?”
He called the name his friend had used for her. No answer came. He was afraid to turn the body over. Because she was a machine, it was fine?
Don’t make me laugh. The way she had smiled beside his friend, talked, even raged at their enemies—that had been life itself.
She had been alive there.
And now that light was gone. Because of him.
Clack
He turned her over. Sticky fluid clung to his hands. What had been faintly warm cooled the moment it met the air. Half-lidded eyes held no light. The power source flickered once, then died for good.
Of course. Something smashed beyond repair into scattered pieces does not come back.
“Taewung-ssi!!!!”
Clack!
Someone seized him and dragged him away. The jolt made him drop the girl’s lower half.
Startled, I looked at whoever had grabbed me. It was Lucia. I was stronger than her, yet somehow she pulled me along as if I weighed nothing.
Slap!!
My head snapped sideways. It hurt. The moment I realized both cheeks were being held, they were yanked forward again. Lucia’s tear-streaked face filled my vision.
Only then did I understand I had been slapped.
“Snap out of it!! Do you intend to make her death completely meaningless?!!”
“...Ah.”
Right. This was reality. The real situation. The enemy still existed, and there was no time to stand here dazed.
As if waking from a dream, the world rushed back in. Everything that had felt distant pressed against my skin, and things I had not seen became clear.
Reflexively I pulled the girl in front of me into a tight embrace.
Tremble... tremble...
Lucia was shaking hard. Not from cold. She was enduring pain and fear. Only then did I realize she had been wounded saving me.
Grind...
I clenched my teeth until they ached. And I thought I could save anyone like this? What the hell had I been doing?
A sharp sting filled my mouth with the taste of blood. Probably split my lip when she slapped me. Fair enough, given how I had been standing there like an idiot in a crisis.
When Lucia’s trembling finally eased, I gently eased her out of my arms and clenched my fist.
Thud!
Then I punched myself across the face with everything I had. My skull rang; for an instant my vision split. At Lucia’s startled look I forced the corner of my mouth up into a smile.
“Sorry. Thanks to you, I’m clear-headed again.”
The fog of useless thoughts blew away. Right—Sinwoo had said it, hadn’t he? Comet was a machine, an android. Unlike a human whose body dies when cut apart, she could be repaired.
Maybe her power was only temporarily cut and she was in this state for now. I would cling to that hope.
And what I had to do was erase this monster from the field as fast as possible so we could clean up the rest.
“...Take this.”
Something wrapped in fine cloth was held out to the newly resolved Taewung. It was the package Lucia had carried on her back since before the battle began.
“This is... a sword?”
The cloth seal came undone, revealing a longsword. Its appearance was simple, yet even a glance showed perfect balance—a fine blade.
Moreover, a faint blue sheen already ran along the edge without him even touching it, proof it was no ordinary weapon.
“I had planned to hand it over slowly on the way back today... I never imagined things would turn out like this.”
Well, neither had he. Forgetting for a moment that they stood in the middle of a battlefield, the two of them shared a bitter smile.
“I’ll put it to good use.”
Clack
The moment he gripped the hilt it settled into his palm as if he had used it for years. The weight was just right; the feel was excellent.
“It’s as sturdy as you are, Taewung-ssi, so don’t hold back—swing it as hard as you like.”
“Yeah, Lucia... really, thank you.”
“...If you’re truly grateful, th-then maybe later you could... take me on a d-date...!”
Having said it, Lucia flushed scarlet and whipped her head away in embarrassment.
The sight was so cute, so lovely, that it felt almost wasteful for him alone to see it; the tension in his body melted away of its own accord.
Ah, he really was a lucky man.
Realizing it afresh, Taewung pulled Lucia into one more firm embrace, then rose to his feet.
“I’ll be back.”
At those words Lucia puffed her cheeks, sprang up, and seized her own sword.
“You mean ‘let’s go together,’ right?”
Yeah, that was the kind of person she was. Taewung gave a wry smile and clasped her free hand with his own.
““[Engage].””
Engage
Mana resonance established. Black-gold and white-gold mana merge and circle the pair.
Gong! Gooong!!
The fused mana of the two of them pealed like a colossal bell, becoming strength for each other.
What they wanted to say needed no words. They accepted it and poured everything out without filter.
A stance of perfect unity.
At the same moment both settled into position, starlight flashed in their eyes.