Naturally, Miledi tried to drop the block he’d landed on as well, but before she could, Shea jumped up behind her, aiming for her head. Since she needed to flash her eyes before controlling the platforms, Shea had decided to crush them along with the rest of her face.
Unfortunately, Miledi noticed Shea in time, so she sent her remaining golems after her while she was still mid-jump. In the sky, Shea was defenseless. But just before a knight’s sword sliced her in two—
“...I won’t let you.” Yue suddenly popped up behind her and diced the golems into little pieces with her Rupture.
“Thanks, Yue-san!” Her obstacles now removed, Shea swung down her hammer with all the might of her body strengthening behind it.
“Do you really think you can beat a golem in a contest of strength?” As if to prove her point, Miledi turned around and swung her burning right fist up at Shea.
There was a thunderous crash as Miledi’s heat knuckle and Shea’s Drucken collided. The shockwaves were powerful enough to send all the nearby platforms spinning away.
“You liiiiiittle!” Shea let out a bestial roar as she struggled to push through Miledi’s fist. However, she was unable to match the golem’s strength, so she was blown away.
“Kyaaa!” Shea screamed loudly as she flew through the air. Her body had been temporarily stunned by Miledi’s fist, and there were no floating platforms in the direction she was headed. At this rate she would fall, but Yue suddenly jumped next to her, grabbed her mid-flight, and used Updraft to correct their trajectory to a nearby platform.
“You’ve got quite the coordinated little team there.” Miledi looked down at Yue and Shea, her voice smug. But just then, another voice rang out from right beside her.
“I know, right?”
“Wha—!?”
As Miledi turned around in surprise, she saw Hajime. He had fired an anchor into the gap between her armor and found himself a foothold. In his hands was the railgun-accelerated anti-materiel rifle Schlagen, pointed directly at her heart. Sparks were flying down the length of Schlagen’s barrel.
“Wh-When did you—” Miledi was interrupted by the sound of a bullet being fired. The point blank rifle shot sent Miledi flying backward, obliterating the armor around her chest. With his Lightning Field weakened, Schlagen was only as powerful as Donner normally was. Still, that was more than enough to destroy metal armor. Even in this dungeon Donner was powerful enough to blow away the normal golem knights’ armor, and since Miledi seemed to be made of the same material, the most she could have done to her armor was make it thicker.
Smoke billowed from her chest as she flew backward, and the recoil sent Hajime flying in the opposite direction. He fired another anchor off at a nearby platform and swung himself up onto it. Then, he took a closer look at what had become of Miledi. Yue and Shea jumped onto nearby blocks as well.
“...Did you get her?”
“I definitely felt it hit, but...”
“I really hope this is the end.” Yue looked cautious, while Shea seemed hopeful. Hajime’s expression, on the other hand, was unreadable. As he expected, Miledi started drawing nearby platforms to her as if nothing had happened, and spoke to Hajime with a voice full of admiration.
“Maaan, that was close. I actually thought I was done for. If this dungeon didn’t dissipate mana, and that artifact had been able to fire at full power, I really would have bit the dust. Yep, I’m a genius for spending so much time making my labyrinth like this!” All he heard from the Miledi Golem were words of admiration for herself, which Hajime paid no heed to. His expression was grim. Behind her regular armor plating had been another set of jet black armor. Schlagen hadn’t even been able to scratch that. He remembered seeing that armor before.
“Hmm. So you’re interested in this, huh?” Miledi noticed where Hajime’s gaze was directed and pointed to her jet black armor as she spoke gleefully.
“Well...” she continued suggestively, but before she could continue, Hajime spat out a curse and answered her question.
“Shit. It’s Azantium.”
Azantium was the hardest metal in this world. Plenty of Hajime’s own equipment was forged out of it as well. Even a light coat of it would be tough enough to withstand a full power shot from Donner. No wonder Schlagen didn’t do anything. Breaking through Azantium was next to impossible, which made Hajime furrow his brows.
“Oh? You already knew about it? Well, I guess that makes sense. You beat O-chan’s dungeon, after all. There’s no way someone capable of using creation magic wouldn’t know of it. Now, since you’re finally starting to despair a little, how about we get started with round two!?” Miledi finished repairing her outer armor with materials stolen from the platforms and fired her flail while rushing forward at the same time.
“Wh-What do we do now, Hajime-san!?”
“We’re not out of options yet, but we have to seal her movements first somehow.”
“Okay, leave it to me.” Shea was on the verge of panicking when she realized they lacked sufficient firepower. But Hajime still had a trump card up his sleeve. He’d need to stop the Miledi Golem from moving to use it, though. When he mentioned as much to Shea, she regained her composure for the most part, and together with Yue she prepared to jump out of the way of the flail. However—
“Not this time~” Miledi said in a singsong voice as she started rotating the block they were standing on.
Hajime and the others all lost their balance. The flail smashed into their platform with overwhelming force. The trio was flung away from their now pulverized foothold. Before Miledi could reel her flail back in, Hajime grabbed onto its chains. Yue used the crumbled remains of their old platform as a foothold while she used Updraft to carry her to safety. Meanwhile, Shea maneuvered to a nearby platform using Drucken’s explosive bursts to propel her.
Next, Miledi followed up by swinging her heat knuckle down on them.
“Kuh!”
“Mmm!”
They managed to avoid a direct hit, but the heat of the explosion generated by the impact still scorched them. Even while they were crying out in pain, they didn’t stop fighting. Yue used Rupture to hack away at Miledi’s arm, while Shea activated Drucken’s spike and drove it into Miledi’s armor.
While Yue’s Rupture managed to cut partway through Miledi’s arm, it couldn’t sever it. She jumped back to safety with a frustrated expression.
On the other side, Shea had managed to climb up Miledi’s left shoulder, and aimed a swing right at her head. However, Miledi changed the direction of her gravity again, making Shea lose her balance and fall.
“Kyaaa!” Shea screamed as she fell. Hajime swung himself off the flail’s chain and caught Shea in midair.
“Hajime-san!” Shea cried out joyfully. She was finally being carried by Hajime like she’d always wanted. Even though she knew this wasn’t the time, she couldn’t help but be happy. But of course, Hajime had to ruin the moment. He held her up with one hand, like he had the time he’d thrown her into a mob of monsters.
“H-Hajime-san!?”
“Do it again!” With a metallic whoosh, Hajime reloaded his arm shotgun and fired it again. He started rotating in place and used the centrifugal force to aid his throw.
“Hajime-san, you bastaaaard!” Shea let out a scream of enraged desperation as she readied Drucken. Just when she thought her wish had finally been granted, he’d thrown her to the wolves again.
Even Miledi was taken aback by the heartlessness of Hajime’s actions. However, she still moved to intercept, and made a fist with her right hand. But before she could fire her heat knuckle, the chain that had returned to her along with her flail exploded.
“Wawawah!? What was that!?” Miledi cried out in surprise. When he had still been hanging on to the chain, Hajime had attached a large number of grenades to it. The force of the explosion blew half of the chain away and ruined Miledi’s left arm. The shockwaves were powerful enough to throw her off balance. And it was at that very moment that Shea
appeared with Drucken in hand.
“Uryaaaaaaaaaah!” With a spirited yell, Shea pulled Drucken’s trigger, firing off a barrage of shotgun shells. The recoil accelerated her hammer to mach speeds.
Miledi reflexively raised up her damaged left arm to guard, but Drucken slammed into it with tremendous force, pulverizing whatever remained of Miledi’s arm, shattering it from the shoulder down.
The force of her swing sent Shea spiraling through the air. Trying to get revenge for her destroyed left arm, Miledi swung her heat knuckle down on the defenseless Shea. But before she could reach, a jet of water surged up from below and struck the area that had been cut earlier. The second wave of water was enough to cut through it completely, so Miledi lost her right arm as well.
“Fufu, you let your guard down.” Yue smiled triumphantly as she said that.
“You! How dare you!” Miledi’s facade finally cracked, and anger spilled into her voice. Meanwhile, Hajime had used his anchor as a pendulum, swinging around on it to catch Shea. But he wasn’t doing a princess carry this time. Instead, he held her beneath his arm like a sack of potatoes.
“Hajime-saaan, that was the perfect opportunity to carry me like an actual girl. Don’t I deserve a reward? Read the mood a little.”
“Please don’t talk about me like I’m dense or something. In fact, why don’t you learn to read the mood instead? You’re always trying to twist every situation into an opportunity to satisfy yourself.”
Shea started complaining the moment they landed, but Hajime shut her up with a tired rebuttal. For some reason, Miledi wasn’t drawing nearby platforms to her in order to repair her arms. Instead, she was looking up at the sky, her eyes glowing brightly.
Hajime stiffened. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Shea, who was standing right next to him, paled as well.
“Hajime-san, Yue-san! Run! She’s making them all fall!” Hajime assumed Shea’s Future Sight must have activated again. That could only have meant that something life threatening was about to head their way again. Hajime spared a quick glance at Yue, who was standing nearby, before readying himself.
A second later, it happened. The entire room rumbled. Rocks started raining from the sky. No, they weren’t rocks. Miledi was bringing the entire ceiling down on them.
“Huh!? No way!”
“Fufufu, here’s my revenge. Aside from the knights, I can’t give multiple objects orders at once, but I can make everything fall. Try dodging this~” Miledi’s words irked Hajime, but there wasn’t any time to worry about her. There were a few platforms making up part of the room’s wall, but its ceiling was made almost entirely of platforms. Each of those platforms was easily ten tons, and they were falling as thickly as raindrops. Cold sweat poured down Hajime’s forehead.
“H-Hajime-san!”
“We’ve gotta regroup with Yue!”
Hajime hugged Shea close and swung down from his anchor toward Yue. Yue too, was jumping from block to block to try and reach Hajime.
Meanwhile, Miledi continued staring up at the ceiling. She’d mentioned it before too, but the way she controlled the platforms was different from how she controlled the golems. Judging by how quickly they adapted to their situation, the golems must have had some level of autonomy to them. That was why she could coordinate with them and give them sophisticated orders.
However, giving precise commands to things without autonomy was difficult, which was why she could only control one or two objects at once. Even giving orders as simple as “fall” to numerous objects took up all her concentration.
The time it took for her to focus also bought Hajime and Yue enough time to regroup. The moment the three of them met up the sky started falling.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrummmmmbbllle! When the shaking finally stopped, it was replaced by a series of loud booms as the platforms started falling. Worse, because Miledi could control the trajectory to some extent, the platforms were heavily concentrated where Hajime and the others were standing. Considering the fact that Miledi probably didn’t intend to kill herself too, Hajime guessed the space around her must have been safe. However, the falling rocks were nearly upon them, and they only had time to huddle near a wall. It was too late to try and make a break for her.
“Yue, Shea, grab hold of me! Don’t let go, no matter what!”
“Okay.”
“You got it!”
The moment they grabbed on, Hajime took Orkan out of his Treasure Trove. Then, he started firing missiles at the rocks coming down from the ceiling. Each missile found a mark and Hajime pulverized stone after stone.
The sky, which had been covered in gray stone, finally started to show some cracks due to Orkan’s barrage. Slivers of sky could finally been seen through the blanket of stone. Hajime returned Orkan to his Treasure Trove and instead pulled out Donner and Schlag, firing both of them repeatedly. In order to increase their chances of survival by even one percent, Hajime accurately calculated where he needed to shoot to break apart the right fragments, then he shot them down with precision.
But even he could only do so much. The rocks were finally upon them. After making sure Yue and Shea were still hanging on tight, Hajime activated one of his special magic skills, Riftwalk. The world suddenly slowed down around him, and Hajime could make out each piece of death falling toward him.
Using the minimum amount of movement possible, Hajime nimbly weaved his way through the falling barrage. At the same time, he reloaded his pistols and shot aside the rocks he couldn’t evade. He couldn’t afford to make even a fraction of a mistake. Even the level of perception he’d had when he’d first learned Riftwalk in the fight against the Great Orcus Labyrinth’s guardian wouldn’t be enough. He would need to surpass all his limits to survive. Hajime activated another one of his skills, Limit Break.
Crimson light enveloped his body, then dissipated seconds later. Normally, Limit Break would triple his base stats, but because mana was dispersed upon being released from the body, it was rendered ineffective. That was because Limit Break achieved its effects by wrapping its user in an aura of mana. But it also wrapped the inside of its user’s body with another layer of mana. Which meant that even if the strengthening was rendered ineffective, his heightened senses from using the skill remained.
He was breaking his limits in the very literal sense of the phrase. Naturally, this placed a huge burden on his body. Especially because he’d already enhanced his senses to the limit earlier with Riftwalk. Had his body not been transformed by monster meat, it would have broken apart from the strain of his own abilities. As it was, Hajime was still bleeding from his eye and nose because of the burden.
With fluid motions, he dodged death by a hair’s breadth time and time again. This was all the more impressive because Yue and Shea were still clinging to him. He jumped from crumbling platform to crumbling platform with a godlike level of balance, sometimes even using the falling rocks as footholds.
Now that time was moving in slow motion, Hajime was able to see the cracks in each stone as it fell past. Having long since surpassed the limits of any human, Hajime continually found the one thread of life in a sea of death. To Miledi, who was watching from across the room near the far wall, it looked as if Hajime had been swallowed by the barrage of rocks. They fought hard, but I guess they just couldn’t handle that kind of barrage. Slightly disappointed, Miledi released her hold on the rocks.
The few platforms that hadn’t been totally destroyed floated aimlessly among the remnants of the fallen sky.
“Well, I guess it was too much for them after all. But if they can’t even survive this, they’d never have been able to take on those bastards.” Sighing, Miledi started searching for Hajime’s corpse. But at that moment—
“I thought I already told you that I don’t care about fighting those bastards.”
“Huh?”
She heard a familiar voice. It was the voice of that arrogant white-haired boy that wore an eyepatch and used artifacts she’d never seen before. It was Hajime’s
voice. Miledi turned around, her voice a mixture of surprise and joy. He looked down at Miledi from his perch on one of the few intact platforms. He was bleeding from his eye and nose, but otherwise looked unharmed.
“H-How did you...” She was sure she’d seen him get swallowed up by the barrage of rocks, yet here he was, standing before her. Hajime smiled victoriously.
“I don’t mind telling you... but don’t you think you should be worrying about something else?”
“Huh?” she said again. But her confusion vanished an instant later when a magical attack slammed into her.
“Rupture!” Yue’s cool voice rang out through the crumbling chamber, and multiple jets of water cut through Miledi’s back, legs, head, and shoulders. Entire chunks of her armor were cut off.
“No matter how many times you try, the result won’t change~ I’ll just fix it all up when I fix my arms~”
“You won’t get the chance to.” Hajime fired an anchor at Miledi and reeled himself close to her. He was holding Schlagen in his right hand.
“Ahaha, this again? You know that can’t pierce my Azantium armor.” Miledi was still confident they couldn’t win. She even let Hajime swing up to her and point Schlagen at her chest again. She didn’t bother trying to block with any of her remaining platforms.
From her perspective, it made sense. The fact that Hajime’s weapons couldn’t penetrate her Azantium armor had already been proven. She assumed that because they were trying the same thing again, they’d exhausted all other options... But that negligence proved to be fatal.
“I know!” Hajime fired, and Schlagen’s enhanced full metal jacket bullet slammed into Miledi’s body. Like before, Miledi was blown away by the force of it. But this time, Hajime didn’t fly back after firing. He kept the anchor firmly embedded to stay close to Miledi, then fired all of his prosthetic arm’s shotgun shells into her chest. She was sent flying even further back, and crashed into one of the floating platforms behind her.
“N-No matter what you do, you still...”
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 2 Page 26