Chapter 833 - Protect Me Too
Ars Pugnae, the method of fighting by erupting one's vigor, is specialized for interpersonal combat.
Therefore, it was difficult to utilize it perfectly now.
Still, she could mix in some parts of it.
The monsters of fire created by the Salamander were cut down, exploded, scattered, and vanished, blocked by the wall that was the Madmen Knight Order before they could even approach Shinar.
The fire shaping spells were all blocked by Esther.
All of it was truly impressive.
Each and every thing they accomplished was, in Shinar's eyes, a considerable feat.
'They are all so tenacious.'
They were beings who had advanced to the point where she could no longer catch up with just the swordsmanship that utilized vigor.
The entire Madmen Knight Order was like that.
That didn't mean she was jealous.
She had simply recognized that she too had to do something.
Shinar raised her sword.
It was a sword that had at some point become a needle in the shape of an awl.
'Winter.'
Instead of recklessly joining the fight, she imbued her sword with a chill.
If a beastkin fought with life force itself, an elf's vigor contained the power of the four seasons.
She rejected the rain of fire with the needle that held the chill of winter.
It was enough to raise her sword and draw a trajectory that seemed to block her body, starting from above her head.
A barrier of chill met the rain of fire, and with a hiss, steam rose.
With that, she had bought a moment of time.
The defensive barrier made of chill would hold for about the time it took to take three breaths.
One full circle from her head, past her right ankle, to above her left head.
At the same time as she finished brandishing the sword, she threw it into the air and caught it in a reverse grip.
With a thwack, the elf, who had tossed the sword into the air and snatched it, planted her left foot on the ground and twisted her waist with her ankle as the axis.
Power flowed from her ankle to her waist, elbow, and wrist.
A transfer of muscular strength.
Then, she added vigor to the needle that held the chill of winter.
To be precise, she was gathering vigor at her fingertips and shooting it out.
'I cannot be pushed back.'
There was no jealousy, but there was resolve.
Shinar looked back at herself, falling behind within the Madmen Knight Order, and instead of giving up and stopping, she decided to move forward.
She put the method of Ars Pugnae into her sword and also utilized the way of throwing projectiles she had learned over the shoulder from Rem.
And so, she threw the sword.
Her silver hair whipped around fiercely.
As her body rotated, a dynamic movement unbecoming of an elf emerged.
It was as if she were about to fall forward, having used all the elasticity of her entire body.
And so, the needle Winter, which had left her hand held in a reverse grip, became a single line.
BOOM!
An air pocket burst behind the flying sword, pushing back the heat.
If one had eyes that could see temperature, they would have seen a single blue line drawn in a place full of yellow heat.
KWANG!
Her sword pierced and burst a part of the fire cloud.
The Dragonkin looked back, having noticed what the elf was aiming for.
"Indeed," the Dragonkin muttered.
He had already known and grasped that there was something he had missed.
It was the thought-form left by the parasite of heat.
It was a mass of negative emotions along with malice.
From between the fire clouds, a dull-colored pillar of fire rose, soared up, and then went back into the clouds.
There was no sound.
But the ones here all possessed keen senses.
Enkrid and Jaxen were no exception, and Audin had also gauged the mass of malice that existed among the Salamander based on his divine power.
Rem had even been prepared to hit it with his projectile if an opening appeared.
Shinar had simply struck first.
Black soot flowed from the place where the dull pillar of fire had risen.
It looked as if a black foreign substance were caught between the fire clouds.
To put it in Dunbakel's terms, it was a soot that looked like it would stink.
Is a thought-form different from the main body?
It is.
It cannot project the same overwhelming martial power as the main body.
It cannot bring the forces stationed in the demon realm.
It is also impossible to summon a superior host.
The thought-form, the parasite, thought.
'So they think there's nothing I can do?'
So they pierced the thought-form with this pathetic skewer?
The blade of cold had pierced its body, but that was all.
The damage was minimal.
Should it say it felt a sense of displeasure?
Even as a part of the thought separated from the main body, it shared the same ideology as the main body.
In other words, its pride was hurt just the same.
'How dare they?'
The pathetic lifeforms living on the continent call him a demon.
The parasite of heat knew what the mortals called him.
He also knew that they called him that because he could do things they couldn't even imagine.
'With a mere skewer?'
This was a provocation.
The parasite decided to turn its displeasure into anger.
That didn't mean he would burst out in anger like a human.
That wasn't befitting of a demon.
Instead, he decided to present them with a slightly harsher situation.
In the first place, none of this had been to his liking from the start.
Therefore, the act of deciding to burn everything squirming down there to a crisp was not such a great thing.
'A mere human killing Beelrog?'
He must have been lucky.
If not, it would have been the suicide of that fool who cried out for strife.
That is why the host had looked down on the opponent from the beginning, influenced by the thought-form's ideology.
And he was annoyed by all of them, starting with the one who had suddenly appeared and swung a blazing greatsword, all of them who knew no respect.
The parasite quietly dissected and divided its emotions.
He knows the hatred that fills the Salamander.
To use a metaphor, the phantom beast feels pain just by breathing here.
Because this is not the place where it lives.
'Hatred born from pain.'
He mixes a part of his thought-form and brings out that hatred.
A hatred mixed in with the black soot.
In the depths of the Salamander's memory, a being shrouded in a dull shadow whispered.
"Your will does not matter. Your intention does not matter. Your wish does not matter. You are just a fireball. A fireball that burns everything."
These were the words of the one who had summoned the phantom beast here with a false contract.
The spirit of fire, drawn in by its innocence, had lost its reason.
'Hatred towards the false contract.'
The parasite of heat was originally a being that gnaws at the human mind.
It couldn't do the same to a phantom beast, but it could stimulate it and wake it up, and it could also do something like this.
'Hatred, gather.'
He gathers and clumps together negative emotions, the desire for destruction.
The phantom beast, writhing in pain, cannot stop it.
He may not be able to make it his host, but he could make it into a fire-form clumped with hatred.
And so the parasite did, with the power he possessed.
***
All the Salamander had done was to spread an illusion called a mirage so that no one would approach it.
Because it did not want to fight.
If they finally overcame the illusion he had spread and approached, the Salamander could not help it.
It had to fight, engulfed in hatred.
A part of the parasite stimulated the emotions that made up the phantom beast.
'Entrust your body to hatred.'
The phantom beast's mind was split in two.
The side that watched and agonized, and the side that entrusted its body to hatred and pain and writhed.
That was the best resistance he could muster.
The parasite wanted to show the worms squirming below a mystery that could only be seen in the demon realm.
It was not free.
The price was, of course, their lives.
Depending on the situation, he might even be able to gain an advantage by taking a host.
He had lost the host that used the greatsword, but if he could take over the body of the man who had luckily killed Beelrog, it would be a profitable trade.
'You are the ones who gave me the name of 'demon.'
Now I will show you its meaning.'
The needle that Shinar had thrown had damaged the thought-form, but it had not led to its annihilation.
And the Winter that Shinar had thrown had not only affected the thought-form.
It had led to an unexpected situation.
The parasite detected the presence of another being besides himself in a place where he should have been alone.
"What are you?" the parasite asked, raising its will in the world of imagery.
A faint green light gathers and forms a shape.
From between the green, a silver waterfall cascades down.
A figure with silver hair and green eyes spoke.
"You."
Somehow, a mental body that was a part of Shinar was facing him inside the Salamander.
The mental body continued to speak.
"You are truly ugly."
Only mortals care about the beauty or ugliness of one's appearance, so the parasite was not affected by those words.
However, because elves only speak the truth, its sincerity reached him, and it was simply unpleasant.
The color of her emotion towards him was vivid.
Disgust and hatred.
Because they were facing each other as mental bodies, a long conversation was not necessary.
Here, they could share emotions in real time and gauge each other with their will.
"A fearless elf. Shall I tear you to pieces? Or shall I throw you as a plaything for my soldiers?"
A demon's threat is not a bluff.
It is what will happen in the future.
A part of the future.
A part of the parasite's words was based on fact.
And Shinar was indeed a fearless elf who had lost her fear after her experience with the One-Killer Demon.
"I refuse. And I did not come by your invitation."
She saw a line of fire between the demon's thought-form and herself.
Immediately after throwing Winter, she had heard a call for help.
It was a call that only an elf, and an elf with the sensitivity of a city leader, could hear and respond to in this land.
Shinar had not ignored it.
That was the reason she had come here.
Black soot flowed between the flame clouds, and then flames followed again.
In that moment, the surrounding temperature rose even further.
It felt as if the air were sizzling.
A temperature so high that sweat would not even form.
It was a heat that would make even a knight feel uncomfortable.
"Tongue."
Simultaneously with the heat boiling up, the Dragonkin spoke.
Enkrid moved even before the words were finished, holding the unconscious Shinar, who had lost her mind after throwing Winter, at his side.
The heat-ray, which looked like a whip, bent in three directions and struck down, aiming for Rem, Ragna, Audin, and Enkrid.
It was an attack that should not be blocked head-on, even with holy light armor.
The heat-ray was like a treasured sword that cut through everything it touched.
Moreover, the places the Salamander's tongue passed through did not even catch fire, but were simply left as black ash.
The tongue, having missed the four, scraped the ground, grazed a burning log, and returned to the sky.
The tree that the heat-ray had grazed tilted and then fell to the ground with a thud, meeting the embers that were burning the ground and began to burn brightly.
Tak.
Esther, seeing this, snapped her fingers and put out the fire.
This too was a great skill, but against a phantom beast that changed the climate, it just seemed like a parlor trick.
"This is not good."
Esther came right up next to Enkrid and glanced at Shinar.
Others might not know, but she, at least, could guess Shinar's current state.
Enkrid, hearing those words, asked.
"Why did she faint?"
Esther explained the situation briefly and to the point.
"A part of her mind has connected to what is above."
It was too short a statement.
Enkrid asked again.
"Above?"
"With the phantom beast, the Salamander."
What the hell is this now?
Was there any reason for this to happen all of a sudden when they had more than enough strength to just hold them off?
No.
This was all a coincidence.
And how could there not be coincidences in the world?
If that coincidence is in your favor, you're lucky, and if not…
"Has the goddess of fortune turned her back on us?"
Enkrid muttered.
From experience and intuition, he judged that Shinar could not have done it on purpose.
However, it couldn't have all been done by her will alone.
Following the heat-ray tongue, the rain of fire became thicker and more numerous.
"Is that bastard using all the bullshit he's saved up for his entire life today? Huh?" Rem complained.
Whether it was a monster that had once driven the continent into fear or not, to Rem, it was just another monster.
His complaint was understandable.
Even though he had prepared in various ways, coating his sling strap with a potion and making it from braided beastkin leather, it was a common occurrence for the strap to break if he overused it in this heat.
Ragna, with an indifferent attitude, raised his Sunrise above his head and just tilted it.
Along the blade, the streams of fire were drawn to one side and extinguished.
His hand gestures and gaze were impassive, but that calm gaze actually looked more menacing.
If things went south, he was prepared to cut down the Dragonkin and everything else, saving the Salamander be damned.
It was clear that he was clad in that resolve.
Audin reduced the light of his holy radiance and moved his body here and there.
It was not a difficult task for him to see and dodge a rain of fire of this level.
Of course, to an uninformed person, it would look like a bear performing tricks.
Jaxen walked through the flames, roughly parrying the fire with a single dagger.
The ground around them was already blazing.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that if there was a fiery hell, it would be right here.
Flames that burned even the smoke and soot enveloped them.
So, was this a crisis?
It didn't seem like it at all.
That's what Jaxen thought.
They had come here to stop the Salamander, but they could escape whenever they wanted.
Would that phantom beast with the strange tongue also have the skill to read his presence?
Even if it did, how would it catch him as he ultimately escaped?
And it wasn't as if this only applied to him.
Everyone probably had a means to escape.
'It would be easier to just kill it.'
More than that, Jaxen had several means to deal with a monster of that form.
It was the same before he faced Beelrog, but after facing that thing, he had collected relics scattered around the continent, even if it meant getting gold from Krais.
He had even planned to explore a few ruins if he had the time, not just collect them.
The relics he had collected filled the basement of his guild and his lover's house.
If there was one worry, it was that it would be quite a hassle to put out the forest fire after this was all over.
A barrier made of black velvet material formed above Esther's head, blocking the rain of fire.
The falling streams of fire were blocked by the velvet and scattered.
If you looked closely, the rain of fire looked like individual, long, misshapen creatures.
Should they be called lizards with four legs and an abnormally long body?
Enkrid and everyone else had already grasped it with their dynamic visual acuity, but knowing that didn't change anything.
"If we kill that thing, Shinar will die with it," Esther said.
She had put one eye in the world of spells and was observing the other side of the phenomenon.
A thin green light extending from Shinar's physical body connected to what was above.
It was thin, but there was no chance of it breaking.
But if they killed the Salamander?
Now there was a real reason not to kill it.
In the midst of that, they saw flames clumping together around the black soot above, and then extending down in a long line.
Enkrid, watching this, thought that it looked just like the process of making a glass bottle he had seen in the city, the way it extended so stickily.
A flame heading for the ground.
On top of the crimson flame, a yellow and blue light lingered, then it turned into a white flame.
Seeing this, the Dragonkin's eyes began to glow a bright yellow.
"Protect me too," he said without any context and closed his eyes.
Rem, hearing this, opened his mouth in bewilderment.
"...This bastard has no fear?"
If the Dragonkin had been awake, he would have answered, 'I trust in what I saw,' using honesty and purity as his weapon, but the Dragonkin had only left those words and had fainted while standing, so only Rem was left muttering.
***
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