This Is What an Academy Is (26)
Slash!!
Without warning, a tail that looked like a scorpion’s swept through the air in a massive arc. Right behind it came a writhing mass of green tentacles tangled with bone fragments—something so grotesque it barely deserved a name.
“Kallion!!”
Screeeech!!
At my shout, Kallion’s bladed tail whipped around in a perfect semicircle. It sliced through the scorpion tail and shredded the tentacle cluster, but the momentum wasn’t enough; the bone mass behind them stopped the strike cold.
“Back.”
I vaulted onto Growl’s back and called Kallion to me in the same breath. The dragon, already lunging for another attack, instantly bent his will, pulled back, and settled at my side.
The old Kallion would have taken the hit just to land one more blow. The training was paying off. Half of it was pure terror burned into him, but he was obeying. That was enough.
“Cawww!!!”
“Get lost!!! You filthy crow bastards…!”
Right on cue, Hive swarmed the creature’s vision. In that opening I reclaimed the shadow blade I’d fixed to Kallion’s tail and reshaped it into a massive rectangular shield.
Variable Form’s bonus damage only applied to attacks. Keeping that in mind, I decided not to plant my feet and tank—better to charge and bounce the thing off.
“Let’s go.”
“Woof!”
“Grrrr!!”
Kallion answered by flaring his scales and charging; Growl launched forward like a spring. Target: the chimera still distracted by the crows. I poured mana into the shield, hardening its core while sprouting razor spikes along the face until it looked less like a shield and more like a blunt weapon pretending to be one.
The moment the timing lined up, I slammed into the creature together with the crows.
CRACK!!!
“Kh…!?”
Even with half its sight gone it crossed its arms to block, but Growl’s full charge was too much. The chimera’s body lifted off the ground—exactly the opening Kallion needed. His tail came around like a flyswatter.
Whoosh—SLASH!!
“Gah…!”
The blow hammered the chimera’s back and drove it face-first into the dirt. It still rose instantly, using the monstrous arms sprouting from its back, then slammed all four limbs into the ground and heaved an entire slab of earth at us.
“GRAAAAAAH!!!!”
Growl and I, plus Hive in the air, cleared the zone easily. Kallion, slower on the ground, chose not to dodge. He planted his hind legs, spread his forelegs, and caught the boulder head-on.
“Grrrr!”
Mana flared around him. Body and scales swelled at once—Dragon Blood and Reverse Scale firing together.
BOOM!!!
He caught it, but the weight was winning; he was sinking toward the ground in real time. I almost dismissed the summon, then changed my mind and shoved more mana through the link instead.
Crunch!
“Grr…!!!”
Kallion’s scales darkened to a bloody black as his body ballooned past its limits. Since I’d already overcharged him, I decided to test the last skill.
“Demi-Breath.”
“Grrrrrk!!”
He sucked in a lungful of air. Condensed mana leaked between clenched teeth. The second it hit critical mass his jaws snapped open and a light bright enough to blind erupted.
“…!!!!”
The roar that followed was less a cry and more a detonation. The boulder crushing him shattered and rocketed skyward again, cracks spider-webbing across its surface like drought-baked earth before it exploded into flying shards.
BOOOOM!!!
I didn’t raise the shadow shield. I turned it into a staff and urged Growl to leap straight into the cloud of debris.
The world jolted upward. I gripped the staff like a baseball bat and eyed the biggest chunk still hanging in the air. Target: the boss below.
Thanks to the muscle memory from when I’d first learned the skill Bow, aiming the rock was almost too easy—far easier than guiding weightless arrows.
CLANG!!
The mixed mana of Kallion and me shattered the stone into a spear of force that screamed toward the boss. The chimera, still catching its breath after flinging the boulder, ground its teeth and crossed its legs in a defensive stance.
CLANG! CLANG! CRAAASH!!!
I kept swinging. Growl, clever as ever, used the larger rocks I couldn’t hit as stepping stones, bouncing me from one perfect batting position to the next. All I had to do was keep my arms moving; the rocks flew themselves.
This was why competent subordinates were the best. They did the work so my body could stay lazy. Choosing summoner over the “destined” path had been the smartest move of my life.
“Khrrrk…!”
Anything saturated with mana was a weapon by default. The Champion threw every arm it had—including the ones on its back—against the rock storm, but the barrage was too thick. Shards tore skin and buried themselves in muscle. Realizing a war of attrition would only bleed it dry, the chimera dropped its guard and began to inhale deeply.
Crack!
Scales erupted across its body; it ballooned like a grotesque balloon. Déjà vu hit me hard. I ordered Growl to dodge, linked a shadow thread to the biggest remaining boulder, and transformed the staff into a bow, stringing another shadow line to the arrow.
“Grrraaah…!! You pieces of trash!!!!”
BOOOOM!!!
The roar that blasted out of its mouth wasn’t heavy with mana, but it shoved the air itself aside. I loosed the overcharged arrow in that exact window; the tethered boulder plummeted toward the Champion’s head.
“You dare mock me with cheap tricks…!!!”
A brand-new scaled arm burst from its back and smashed the rock to powder. I landed, eyes narrowing.
“How’s it feel using that trash’s technique to stay alive?”
“SHUT UP!!!!”
That reaction sealed it. Somehow the chimera had copied Kallion’s skill. Not a perfect copy—the power was less than a quarter—but still. The conditions were obvious: the blood and scale fragments I’d left behind when I pulled Kallion out of the arena. The thing must have eaten every scrap.
Ugly as hell, but the form fit the dungeon’s theme perfectly. Reach the boss after a brutal climb and it starts using your own skills against you, plus whatever else it already has. Even if each individual power is weaker, the sheer variety creates a near-unwinnable hand. A living doppelgänger. “Your greatest enemy is yourself,” and all that.
Beating it meant facing your own weaknesses and clawing out a new possibility. In that sense it was the ideal dungeon boss.
Personally? I wasn’t impressed. Dress it up however you like—it was still a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. A D-rank dungeon boss that could never climb higher. No matter how many tricks it stacked, the ceiling stayed the same.
So I kept my face blank and flicked the verbal dagger with casual contempt.
“Looking closer, you’re not a Champion. You’re just a lucky trash can.”
The chimera froze mid-motion, as if it had heard something it was never meant to hear. Its hollow eyes bulged. Then the arms on its back went berserk, clawing and raking its own body—head, face, torso, legs—until blood poured from every self-inflicted wound.
“GRRAAAAAAAAH!!!!!! DIE!!! I’LL KILL YOU!!! I’LL DEFINITELY KILL YOOOOU!!!!”
It launched itself at me with a howl. The speed was unnatural; every arm on its back pushed off the ground at once. I didn’t flinch.
“Still slower than a bullet.”
CLANG!!
A shadow sword met the claws aimed at my throat.
“WOOOOOOOOOH!!!!!!”
Any scrap of reason was gone. Pure kill-intent drove the flailing arms. I watched every trajectory and answered with the absolute minimum movement—dodge what I could, cut what I couldn’t. Anything that slipped past my awareness was intercepted by Hive’s shadow crows or flagged by a direct warning.
“Woof!!!”
The longer I held, the freer Growl and Kallion became. One by one the extra arms snapped and tore under their assault.
“GRAAAAH!!!”
The boss didn’t care. Fewer arms meant less weight; it simply clung closer. I shifted the shadow from sword to gauntlets and met it head-on.
BANG!
I smashed an insectile chitin arm aside, spiked the knuckles, locked on, and ripped the half-shredded limb clean off with Growl’s help. A tentacle lunged for my back; I sidestepped, stomped, and drove a shadow spike through its foot into the ground, pinning it.
In the opening I threw simultaneous punches at face and solar plexus—whichever landed was fine. It looked ridiculous, but in a real fight nothing was more reliable.
CLANG!!
The chimera used its own claws instead of the monster arms to bat the body shot away. The force spun it sideways. At the same moment a thorned vine shot for my neck; I tilted my head a fraction and countered with a clean right hook to the temple.
CRACK!
Confirmed. I grew a thick spike from the opposite fist and drove it straight through the eyeball.
CRUNCH!!
“%@@#$@#!!@$%!!!!!!”
A wordless scream. The boss clutched its face and tried to retreat. I stepped on its remaining foot, spiked it to the dirt, and pressed in even closer.
Thud! Crunch! Crack! Grind!
Vision blacked out for the enemy. Pain and chaos erased any coherent read of the fight. After that it was pure one-sided beating. Block one side and I shifted to the open one. Flail wildly to cover both and Growl and I simply cut the weaker limb and poured through the gap.
Hard targets got the blunt weapon. Soft ones got the blade. Gaps got the spear. Unblockable swings got the shield—deflected or body-checked into the air. Anything too close for a weapon got a fist and a step back.
“WHAT THE HELL!!! ARE YOU!!! ANYWAYYYYY!!!!”
It tried to spit poison. I cracked its jaw shut, stepped out of the line, and transformed the gauntlets into a halberd mid-swing.
SLASH!!!
“GRAAAAH…!?!!!”
Through it all, Torture and Sadism kept shining. Every new wound dimmed the red mana flaring in its eyes—proof that the constant agony was fracturing its body reinforcement. Accumulated damage ground it down; the tokens stacked in real time and kept feeding my own mana higher.
The body was a ruin. Blood never stopped. The mismatched arms that had been stitched on were scattered across the arena. Not a single uninjured patch of flesh remained. Death was visibly arriving.
CRRRRACK!!!
“DIEEEEEE!!!”
Refusing to accept it was losing, the chimera gathered every remaining arm into one colossal limb. Something that size would be dangerous even if I dodged the first hit. I’d been feeding surplus mana into Kallion for exactly this moment.
“Fire.”
SNAP!
The boss spotted Kallion’s open jaws too late and tried to redirect the giant arm. Its own bulk was too clumsy.
“…!!!!!”
BEEEEEEP--------!
The breath left Kallion’s throat before the arm could fall.
BOOOOOOM!!!!!
A massive explosion bloomed. Everything that had been forcibly fused lost its center and rained down as corpses and chunks of meat. I spun a shadow umbrella overhead—not an ordinary umbrella. Twist the handle and a sword slid free.
Shhhhhh
The blood rain settled the dust in seconds.
“…Khah!”
At the blast’s heart the boss still stood. Blood poured from every hole; the entire left half of its upper body was simply gone, organs twitching in the open cavity. Yet it remained upright on two shaking legs.
“Oh, tough guy?”
Even rotten, the Champion name carried weight. Kallion had forced power far past his limit through pure mana overcharge and was now coughing blood on the ground, while the target of that blast was still standing. Of course, my current mana was absurdly high; under normal conditions that kind of transfer efficiency would never produce a miracle like this. From Kallion’s perspective I’d just forced the impossible through pure abuse.
Honestly, even I hadn’t expected that much output. My ears were still ringing. I’d apologize to him later.
Once the blood rain stopped I shook the umbrella into a sword and walked over. I set the tip against the chimera’s throat—close enough that a gentle push would pierce skin. Only then did the Champion lift its head to look at me.
“I… I didn’t lose. I didn’t fall… This body… is the king… of this world…!”
The voice was a ragged wheeze, ready to die at any second. But the eyes still burned with hostility and rage.
Was that rage aimed at me, or just the programmed hatred for any “challenger”? I wondered if it could still feel that way once it understood what I was about to do.
“…Ah, is that so?”
I smiled.
Lucky me. Even under the full synergy of Sadism and Torture it still hadn’t broken. If I ever got hit by this combo myself I’d tell every god to go fuck themselves and end it on the spot.
From the moment I realized it was a chimera I had never once turned Torture off. The thing carried an impressive collection of samples. Perfect material for filling out my bestiary.
I used the shadow blade to sever every remaining muscle in its limbs, then replaced the connections with shadow itself. Shadow stakes drove through every joint, locking them in place. Even if it regenerated, it would never move again.
The screams were loud. I ignored them. Its pupils flickered—still hunting for a counterattack. That meant the mind was still holding on.
I reshaped the shadow blade into the perfect tool for dissection.
“Let’s see how long you can last.”
I hoped it would last a good long while.