Chromatic Phind's Hide and Seek
I hadn't seen a single hint of it since stepping out of Mea's concealment room.
It wasn't just camouflage. It was perfect mana fusion.
It was magic, in a way.
If Mea's stealth spell worked like a blanket that made everyone ignore us, this was the background itself.
Even a senior explorer who was supposed to be a master couldn't detect it without full concentration.
"The color of mana too...?"
It had to be the top predator on the first floor.
If that was the case, I had a way.
Kwee-! Kwaaang!
"First shot."
I fired into the spot it had been, but it just passed right through and slammed into the wall.
It moved again.
"Right? Left?"
I couldn't tell.
Then.
"Both of them."
I lifted both hands and gathered mana.
This was the double mana control I couldn't do while only contracted with Seir.
But a second contract had been carved into me, expanding my mana pathway into two.
Unrestrained mana bullets shot from both hands, hammering the surroundings in every direction.
"Hit me once."
No limit on mana meant this crude but effective tactic.
I could hide my presence perfectly, but I couldn't erase my existence.
The Chromatic Phind wasn't a ghost monster.
But the method had a weakness.
In the end, I could only fire two mana bullets at once.
If it dodged the movement properly, this would all be for nothing.
"I haven't mastered mana sensing yet."
Mana sensing, which spread my own mana to create a single detection field, was still too difficult for me.
It was one of the weaknesses of demonologists.
In the end, what demonologists mostly handled was borrowed mana.
Since it wasn't my own, my sensory expansion was inevitably weak.
A skilled demonologist overcame that handicap, but I hadn't yet.
"It's fine."
"Theresia?"
"Keep shooting. I'll tell you the position."
Theresia said that, then sliced her palm with the dagger in her hand.
The cut was deep.
Blood immediately poured out.
She swung her arm as if it didn't hurt.
Blood droplets scattered.
"Even if you get blood on you, it will just stain."
"Got it."
"Or maybe figure out mana sensing... "
She didn't even seem to be listening. Theresia quietly chanted.
"Bloom, my bloodline."
With Theresia's chant, the scattered blood droplets began to sprout.
Like blood freely changing shape, it resembled watching the pulse of life.
Like a plant rooting in the ground and sprouting with fierce vitality, it stretched veins outward and firmly gripped the earth.
And like a flower blooming at the peak of a plant's life.
The blood droplet, now a seed, bloomed into a red flower.
It was Lycoris radiata, also called the resurrection lily.
This was magic too?
A fusion of magic and a bloodline power.
Just as Ray was born with the senses of a beastman, Theresia, as a half-vampire Dampir, had power over blood.
And that blood, the moment it touched the hidden Chromatic Phind, transmitted its location to Theresia.
"Left. The stairwell is at 12 o'clock, three o'clock direction."
"Confirmed."
Kwee-!
The charged bullet was Leraje's mana.
Demon mana was a curse in itself.
And Leraje's was especially potent.
"It's moving. Four o'clock. Come this way."
"That's straight on at four o'clock."
It was almost weird not to hit it.
The compressed bullet signaled the end of charging.
At the same time, I pulled the mental trigger.
Kwoooooong-!
The bullet rushed with a weight different from ordinary speed.
It flew straight toward the unseen enemy.
Boom!
Hit.
With the impact sound, the Chromatic Phind's discoloration momentarily disrupted, revealing a part of its body.
"Roman, it doesn't seem like you took any damage?"
The fact that it was attacked made the Chromatic Phind stop its charge and pull back again.
However, the figure revealed by the bullet looked unharmed.
Noticing too late that my bullet hadn't pierced its tough hide, it let out a strange growl and spilled its anger.
And then it melted back into the space with a slither.
"Is there no stronger attack?"
"That was the maximum."
"...This is troublesome."
"No. It's fine. The next one will be stronger."
Theresia narrowed her eyes as if I were spouting nonsense.
"You just said that shot was the maximum, but the next one will be stronger. What nonsense is that?"
It sounded contradictory, but it was fact.
" My magic has already been cast, Theresia."
" What? Your magic is... wait, there's no way it was just one. Good. I trust you."
"Position?"
"It moved. Six o'clock."
Kwee-!
Another bullet shot.
But the Chromatic Phind didn't stop.
It ran.
Without caring about the discoloration, it charged fiercely.
The fool who thought attacks couldn't harm me no longer felt fear or caution.
Thud! Pow!
The impact sound carried weight.
Two direct hits.
But the thing didn't budge.
Just before the collision.
Theresia grabbed me and leaped to the side.
"What are you doing, Roman? You should have dodged. Why didn't you use space? Wait, no, why didn't you?"
"I was already using another magic. Simultaneous casting is still difficult."
And it wasn't something I could do on the fly either.
"I had time to dodge. Think again."
Because of the previous experience with the Chromatic Phind, Theresia noticed the difference I hadn't seen.
"So... it was slow."
"Right."
The first charge and this one.
The Chromatic Phind was clearly slower.
The more it hit my bullet, the more.
It was Leraje's contract magic.
My second magic.
Exhaustion.
[Not Exhaustion. It's Die Gezeichneten, the Marked Ones, right? That's awesome!]
[Why? Exhaustion is fine. It's intuitive.]
This is a 2v1, Seir-nim.
Just accept my naming method.
This was the era's trend anyway.
In any case, Exhaustion was as the name suggested.
It was derived from Leraje's power to slow the movements of prey.
Just as Blink had the restriction of line of sight, Exhaustion required direct mana impact.
"In exchange, I gained the strength of stacking."
In that sense, the Chromatic Phind's mindless charge was the worst possible counter.
Until then, it had been the undisputed top predator.
Even so, its early caution was surprisingly surprising.
But it had decided the enemy was too easy to spot.
It couldn't have been more careless.
"And Leraje's mana has passive poison."
How many more times would it last?
Until it couldn't even twitch an eyelid.
Ten times? Twenty times?
I could guess it.
After making it completely immobile...
"Theresia."
"Hmm?"
"If you skin a living Chromatic Phind, the quality should be top-tier, right?"
Theresia stretched her lips long at my words.
Her protruding fangs glinted as she answered as if she had been waiting.
"Of course."
§
I sat on the stairs and watched Theresia skin the living Chromatic Phind.
The Chromatic Phind had held out quite a bit.
It had only stopped moving completely after taking seventeen mana bullets.
Just in case, I put my hand on its body and directly poured Leraje's mana into it.
The toxicity in Leraje's mana was surprisingly easy for me to control at will.
The maximum level was fixed, but within that range, it was freely adjustable.
To make it stronger, I would have to borrow Leraje's power and create a new magic.
But even at paralysis-poison level, it was more than enough to take away the Chromatic Phind's physical freedom.
There was Exhaustion.
And Theresia was focusing solely on the slaughter while trusting me.
"By the way, Theresia, can we just leave Priscilla like this?"
"...It'll be fine."
Swish-thud.
Theresia didn't even turn around as she said.
"The Chromatic Phind's discoloration isn't just camouflage."
"Ah, that intense color change that made the eyes hurt earlier, right."
Its final struggle was bioluminescence that rapidly changed its entire body into a rainbow of colors.
It was a visual terror that made me think of polygon shock or something.
I had thought it was an attack meant to blind me.
"There's that too, but it also causes mental disruption with intense colors. Probably, the senior saw it during the escape. He had to protect the other comrades."
It was a leader who took the responsibility of protecting them seriously.
By the way, as Theresia was friends with Fiona too, she was the key promising talent of the Blastoma school.
With such a Theresia, they must have picked a trustworthy candidate for training.
"...It's not permanent. She couldn't use any defensive magic because she had no mana, but once her mana recovers over time, she'll naturally recover."
"Um, really?"
I turned my head and looked toward Priscilla who Mea was guarding.
We had made eye contact for a brief moment.
It had been too fleeting to see properly, but the focus seemed to have returned.
"It'll be fine. Theresia said so."
With that, I put Priscilla out of my mind.
§
Theresia was right.
Priscilla's mental collapse wasn't just because her mental strength was weak. There were many other reasons layered on top.
Mana was lost, protective magic all dismantled, and her juniors were dying right in front of her.
In that situation, the image of herself escaping with the help of a junior.
Her already-overloaded mind was powerless against the chaos light emitted by the Chromatic Phind.
Theresia's analysis was accurate, but there was one part she hadn't noticed.
Priscilla's mind didn't snap at a single moment like when magic is dispelled, but recovered gradually over time.
And the broken mind, desperately craving a protector, had watched everything happening around her even in a drowsy state of consciousness.
Priscilla had seen it.
She remembered it.
In the gap of her split mind, she had etched it clearly.
The demonologist who was pouring out mana close to infinite.
Priscilla had looked at Roman silently like that.
Endlessly.