by Hiro Ainana
This room was on the opposite side from the entrance I’d first come in through; through the hole, I could see that so many of the leaves of the giant tree had fallen off or changed color.
I couldn’t see the top through the clouds, but when I looked down, I saw that the bark of the trunk was in terrible condition from more bug infestations.
This was different from what I’d read in Trazayuya’s notes. The monsters should have no reason to lay waste to the tree like this, in theory…
The bugs that had skittered away from the gust of air were starting to move toward me again, so I scattered them with the Magic Gun as I made my way to the grand staircase.
The guardian of the door to the 190th floor was a sea anemone–like monster that shot ice bullets from its tentacles, but I defeated it easily with the halberd, so it didn’t leave much of an impression.
There were no insect monsters on the other side of this door; instead, manufactured wood golems were silently working to repair the holes made by the insects.
They didn’t seem to have any interest in attacking me or slowing me down, so I ignored them and kept moving.
After that, I managed to make it to the main room without any major hindrances. Not even thirty minutes had passed.
It seemed like there were traps about, but they were all deactivated—maybe to allow the wood golems to work—so I didn’t know what kind.
In the back of the great hall, Zen was waiting for me.
Mia was on the throne, too, but she was still unconscious. About a third of her stamina had recovered, but her MP was depleted again.
“I didn’t think you would make it up here so quickly.”
“Oh really?”
Zen looked surprised, but I simply shrugged.
Trying to keep his guard down, I walked forward very slowly as I spoke.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way that you could return Mia to me without a fight?”
Zen cackled.
“No, certainly not. By defeating the iron golem, you’ve demonstrated that you are qualified.”
He carried on his monologue.
“However, you do not have the right title to fight me. I’ll have to have you fight a formidable enemy that you cannot possibly defeat so that you might earn the Hero title. As a reward, I will grant you this Holy Sword, Gjallarhorn.”
Zen held out the sword in his hands, still in its scabbard. The scabbard was shaped like a long, narrow cone.
The AR display also gave its name as Gjallarhorn, so it must be the real thing.
I had heard of this sword before from Zena. If I remembered correctly, the king who’d founded the Shiga Kingdom had made it.
Although its stats weren’t very high when compared with the Holy Swords I already had, it was certainly leagues above any ordinary sword.
But I had to wonder how he had gotten his hands on such a national treasure.
“So is this supposed to motivate me?”
“Of course! If you return this lost sword Gjallahorn to its kingdom, you’ll have all the fame you could possibly desire. You could surely even become a noble if you wished.”
The words alone made it seem as if he was simply appealing to my greed, but he spat the second half of his statement with such contempt that the word noble sounded more like filthy dog.
Still, I couldn’t figure out his true motives. Did he really just want to be killed, as I’d inferred before he forcibly transported me out of the Cradle?
“Here are your opponents.”
After Zen spoke, his shadow spread out to the center of the room. Then, three iron golems appeared from inside. Unlike the golems I’d seen so far, these had no writing on their foreheads. They were probably in some hard-to-find location, then.
On top of that, seven beauties who had been hiding in the shadows of the pillars lined up behind the golems.
Among them, I saw the two who’d fled earlier, Number 5 and Number 6. They all had the same face, but their hair was different enough that I was able to tell them apart.
Since there were seven of them, I thought perhaps Number 7, whom I’d left behind in the Guardian Knight’s Area, was there, too, but a woman called Number 8 was there in her place. Unlike the other girls, her chest was rather desolate.
“However, in your current position, you will surely be killed by these formidable enemies and attain the title of Hero only beyond the grave.”
From Zen’s perspective, I was level 10. He undoubtedly assumed that I couldn’t win against three level-30 golems.
Zen spread both arms and spoke toward the heavens.
“Therefore, I will give the blessing of the gods to all of you: Limit Break.”
A violet aura radiated from Zen’s body, engulfing the golems, the women, and even me.
Judging by his speech, it must have been some kind of strengthening magic, but I would prefer not to receive any charity from someone who was clearly my enemy.
As if sensing my feelings, the purple light around me faded.
My log informed me that I had resisted the effects of Limit Break.
I didn’t receive any skill in the process, which made me wonder if this was one of Zen’s Unique Skills.
“Now, I look forward to an excellent battle to the death.”
With those words, Zen put his hands on the music stand–like Cradle Core and began to operate it with his fingertips.
In the next moment, a wall arose between the throne area and the rest of the room. Checking the map, I saw that in addition to the wall, the throne platform had risen to become a viewing area.
A magic arrow flew at my head as if to chastise me for being distracted by the map, but I dodged it by tilting my head to the side.
Then I zigzagged to avoid the arrows that followed.
Was this many really necessary?
When I looked in the direction they’d come from, I saw the women who’d fired them glaring at me with demonic anger.
But that wasn’t the only thing strange about them.
Why in the world were they shedding red tears?
And why, instead of the strange speaking style I’d seen before, were they howling like wounded animals?
Maybe that spell literally broke their limits?
If you sacrificed the safety of your own body in order to become more powerful, you’d be destroyed either way, so what was the point?
Were these women nothing more than tools to Zen, then?
While I was occupied with these unhelpful thoughts, the golems and women had started to move. They were much faster than the ones I’d fought in the Guardian Knight’s Area.
On closer inspection, I saw that glowing rings of magic were spinning around their arms and legs.
This was probably a visual indicator of Zen’s Limit Break spell.
The golems had the same rings of light around their limbs, too.
However, the power boost must not have reached their control systems, because their movements were very clumsy. They were so unbalanced that it looked like they could fall at any moment.
I focused on the first golem to close the distance between us.
I wanted to use this as an opportunity to ascertain the effects of Zen’s Unique Skill, but I didn’t have any way to do so: the iron golem from before (which was the same model) or the wyvern I’d faced (which was the same level) might have been comparable, but I hadn’t taken any damage from them.
The golem tried to strike me, and I took advantage of its lost balance to grab that arm and toss it judo-style. It was a very simple maneuver.
However, taking advantage of my carelessness, the seven women used the golem’s giant body as a blind spot to fire arrows at me.
They fired three magic arrows each, for a total of twenty-one.
The arrows flew at me with the speed of bullets, and I moved as my “Evasion” skill instructed me, sidestepping one and then another.
At this point, I was pretty sure that even if someone fired on me at point-blank ra
nge with an automatic pistol, I could still dodge it.
But my opponents were prepared for this, and when I was still recovering my balance from evading all the arrows, the second golem charged.
Its arm swung at me with a powerful gust, but I avoided it with a side step.
Putting some distance between us, I fired magic bullets at the golem’s leg with the Magic Gun’s power on its highest setting. Three hits destroyed the golem’s knee, and it immediately slid to a halt, carving a groove in the floor.
Before the third golem arrived, I took a short spear out from Storage by way of the Item Box and stabbed it into the second golem’s leg as it tried to crawl across the floor.
> Skill Acquired: “Spear”
I quickly allocated some points to the new skill, then used my newfound talents with the spear to hurl it at the approaching third golem.
There was a loud noise of metal against metal, and the spear disappeared.
A hole opened up in the golem’s chest, and it flew back as if struck by an invisible fist.
There was another huge hole in the wall behind it.
Did the spear I threw really do all that? Now, that’s insanely OP.
The second golem stood; I waited until it was lined up with the first one, then took out my next spear and threw it. I needed no confirmation to tell me that my attack had worked.
I saw the golem’s red dot disappear from my radar out of the corner of my eye as I turned my attention to the other points that were coming up behind me.
Three of the homunculi were attacking me side by side.
The way they were moving together looked a bit silly, but I could tell by their weapons that Zen wasn’t playing around. The one in front had a large shield and a rapier, the second one had a bhuj, and the third had a poleax.
Most likely, the one in the front would block my attacks, while the other two would use their longer weapons to counterattack from either side.
Hidden entirely behind her giant shield, the first woman attacked me almost twice as fast as Number 7 had in the Guardian Knight’s Area.
Once she came into my range, I aimed a kick at her slightly tilted shield.
She lost her balance and toppled back onto her rear, and just as I expected, the other two women charged around her and came at me from the left and right.
I had planned to knock out the woman with the shield first, but the other two backed her up faster than I’d expected.
The woman with the poleax charged at me with a yell, but I smacked her weapon away from me and into the bhuj approaching on the other side, canceling both attacks.
Next I yanked on the poleax and kneed the woman holding it as she was pulled toward me, knocking her out. There must have been too much force, though, because I heard her bones creaking on impact.
I’d have to be more careful or I might seriously injure one of them.
I grabbed the poleax from the unconscious woman and whacked the bhuj-wielder under the chin with the handle as she tried to change her stance, knocking her down. So that she wouldn’t get right back up, I jabbed her lightly with the butt end of the poleax, knocking her unconscious.
Five to go.
The four who’d been hidden behind the wreckage of the golem were approaching me now.
The woman with the large shield was standing up, so I decided to deal with her first. I smacked down her shield with the poleax, destroying her stance again— Huh?
Well, that plan didn’t work.
I must have put too much strength into the slashing attack with the polehammer, because it sliced the top of the shield clean off, despite both being made of steel.
She lashed out at me with a short sword from behind the remains of the shield, so I quickly dodged.
Long-handled weapons might be too difficult to use at such close range.
I postponed the troublesome woman with the shield, focusing instead on the four women coming up behind her.
I couldn’t see them, so I relied on the dots of light on my radar to track their movements.
Just then, one of the women leaped out from behind the shielded woman in a pose straight out of a beat-’em-up game, swinging a war hammer down toward me.
Since I’d been depending on the two-dimensional radar, I wasn’t expecting her to come from above, so my reaction was a little slow.
As a result, there was a gap in my defense after I parried her with the poleax, and a woman with a greatsword came around the woman with the shield to attack me.
The whole “identical faces” thing was getting really confusing. The fact that they all had different weapons was my only salvation.
Raising the greatsword with both hands, the woman swung it sideways at me.
At this rate, my torso was going to take a direct hit from the giant blade.
Well, if I was normal, that is.
I dug my toes into the floor enough to make a hole in it, then swung my foot up forcibly, flinging up flooring to use as cover.
It was meant to be only a diversion, but the area of my kick’s effect was unexpectedly strong, and the woman was flung into the air along with the dirt.
Was this the parallel-world equivalent of flipping tatami floorboards?
But I had no time to entertain such superfluous thoughts, as the next attack was already on its way.
The woman with the short spear slid under the feet of the one with the shield, who’d also been launched into the air a bit, and stabbed up at me from below.
My posture was too unbalanced to evade it normally.
I pushed myself into the air with only the power of one ankle. It wasn’t enough, but I compensated by grabbing the shield woman’s shoulder and pulling myself up farther.
Once I was in the air, the beauty with the war hammer came at me with another powerful swing.
I used my grip on the other woman’s shoulder to whirl myself around in midair, avoiding the attack by a hair’s breadth. As I landed on the ceiling, the woman with the scimitar shot a magic arrow at me.
This is getting a little too hectic.
I kicked off the ceiling and avoided the incoming missile, landed on both my hands, and used a classic break-dance-like move to swing both feet and knock out the women who used the war hammer and the short spear.
The woman with the large shield parried my attack and rolled across the ground. Opponents with high defense were a real pain.
Three to go.
The beauty with the greatsword scrabbled back up from the floor, scowled at me, and gave a yell.
The red liquid was now flowing from her ears and nose as well as her red-stained eyes. This couldn’t be good for her body. Her stamina gauge had already been reduced almost by half.
A magic circle appeared on her forehead, glowing with a suspicious purple light, and then started to get bigger.
It expanded to the diameter of a basketball and created an absurd number of magic arrows—five times as many as before.
Her MP gauge was at zero, but for some reason the arrows didn’t run out.
It was causing a considerable strain on her body, though; I could see blood vessels popping out all the way up to her fingertips as she stretched her arm toward me.
I ducked left, then right, to dodge the first arrow and sank my fingers into the leg of the fallen second golem, lifting it up to use it as a shield. Warding off the endless stream of arrows, I started to edge toward the woman with the greatsword.
Just before my improvised golem-shield could crash into her, the woman danced through the air and swung her blade down toward me.
I promptly released my hold on the leg and shifted the poleax in my other hand to deflect the sword.
…I have a bad feeling about this.
It might have been because of my “Polearm” skill or a different skill.
But in any case, thanks to this premonition, I was able to avoid becoming the victim of the greatsword, though my ax wasn’t so lucky.
> Skill Acquired: “Sense Danger”
>
The polearm split in two, but I dodged backward, a piece in each hand.
The woman with the large shield had moved back to the front of the ranks and was getting closer.
I noticed that well enough, but I assumed she was going to attack with her rapier, so I failed to get away when she came at me with a shield bash instead.
I was flung into midair as if hit by a truck, and the swordswoman followed close behind with a stormy slashing attack. As a bonus, the woman with the scimitar came at me from the side, using a bizarre technique where she spun like a top.
Normally, I’d have no way of avoiding all this, but if I gave up now, I’d be done for.
With my current position and potential moves, I could think of several possible ways to incapacitate the beauties without killing them.
The fact that I was able to consider all this in an instant was probably thanks to my obscenely high INT stat.
I used the broken halves of the poleax in each hand to strike the greatsword on both sides, ruining both our weapons, then used the splintered remains to pulverize the ground beneath the feet of the scimitar-wielder.
> Skill Acquired: “Weapon Destruction”
The scimitar-wielding woman fell to the floor like a top thrown off balance.
The swordswoman attacked me with the remains of her greatsword, so I parried with the splintered handle in my other hand. Then I used the momentum from my parry for a roundhouse kick, knocking out the greatsword-wielder.
Two to go.
Ignoring the fallen beauty with the scimitar for now, I turned my attention to the one with the large shield.
Her capillaries appeared to be in bad shape, too, as her skin and clothes were bright red.
Worse yet, her stamina gauge was way too low. If I took a swing at her, it looked like she would pass out before I even landed a blow.
I had no choice. I discarded the handle in my left hand and focused on the opponent’s rapier.
I held still as it came toward me, aiming for the last possible second before catching the blade with two fingers, my absurdly high STR stat allowing me to easily snatch the weapon from her hands.