by Fujino Omori
“—”
The form illuminated by the light of the crystals was huge and thin.
It had two arms and two legs. The long, thin arms were bizarrely out of proportion with the body. The legs, too, were long and thin but bent backward at the joints. Oddly, the bony, nearly fleshless form was covered in a shell that at first glance looked like a coat of armor. It glinted with a strange dark-purplish-blue light. From the base of its back extended a hard four-meder-long tail.
Its bumpy head was identical to a beast’s skull, except for the crimson light that glowed within the two empty eye sockets. The color was deeper and far more malicious than that of Bell’s rubellite eyes.
If Bell had to describe the monster’s overall appearance, he would have called it a “dinosaur fossil wearing armor.”
Even among the innumerable monsters inhabiting the Dungeon, it was clearly an Irregular.
“—”
Its body, suspended upside down as it gripped the crystal wall with the claws of its feet and stared down at Bell and the other adventurers, measured three meders long. There was no question this was a large-category monster.
Its most conspicuous feature was its fang-like claws. Extending from the ends of its bony six-fingered hands, the disproportionately long claws glittered deep purple. At the sight of them, Lyu sank into despair and Jura smiled twitchily.
The monster that inflicted such tragedy five years ago had appeared once again before the two adventurers, and now for the first time, Bell was seeing it, too.
Its crimson eyes scrutinized the remaining adventurers.
“H-help m—”
Crunch.
Before the eyes of the stunned Bell, the monster bit through the adventurer it held between its teeth, as if doing so was the most ordinary thing in the world.
Here was the prime culprit behind Astrea Familia’s suffering.
At the time, people had said it would only be a matter of time before the young female adventurers who made up the familia attained first-tier status. But this one monster had decimated them, erasing their future in a matter of minutes.
Two had been Level Three. Eight had been Level Four.
This nameless monster had wiped out all ten of these second-tier adventurers.
Although the Guild’s records made no mention of the beast, Ouranos had bestowed a name upon it.
Juggernaut.
The destroyer.
The adventurer’s head quietly fell from between the monster’s fangs and split open on the ground.
Bors and the others went pale as they watched. Bell’s mind went blank.
The monster moved again.
“—”
Its knees bent backward, extended—and once again it vanished.
“—?!”
It moved with unbelievable speed.
The wind it threw off was so strong it blew back the adventurers’ hair.
Bell dodged the streak of purple just in the nick of time.
A second later, someone screamed.
“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
An animal person had been torn into several pieces.
The claws, moving so fast they left behind a deep-purple arc, had murdered him.
It had taken only a single swipe.
The massacre continued unabated.
The beast pulverized a pair of dwarves with its long flail-like tail. They collapsed, vomiting blood. Then it brought down its hand onto an elf, crushing her into the ground. Still gripped within its hand, she fell prey to the fang-like claws. Her arms and legs dropped away from her body, now no more than a mangled lump of meat.
It devoured a human from the head down.
Within a window of time so brief that Bell’s mind could not keep up, a chain of five deaths had taken place.
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Half-crazy with fear and anger, the three adventurers in the front guard rushed forward, swinging their greatsword, mace, and battle-ax.
The instant before the weapons landed on their target, the monster crouched nimbly on its backward-bent legs, crushing the crystal floor beneath it, and leaped to the side. The three weapons met nothing but air. The Juggernaut landed beside a huge cluster of crystals, sending up a spray of debris.
It dashed forward again, and the upper bodies of the three adventurers flew into the air.
The purple-blue form did not stop.
Springing from one crystal column to the next, it began its mad dance of death.
“Aaaaaah!!”
Each time it passed, fresh blood spewed from adventurers and shredded armor flew toward the ceiling. Like a spider weaving its web, the monster surrounded Bors and his party with intersecting flashes of purple. Caught in this web, the prey vomited blood, lost limbs, and fell to the ground one after the next.
The calamity Cassandra had foreseen in her dream was made real.
What allowed the monster to carry out this slaughter that not even a floor boss could have managed was its ability to move at super-high speed. Normally, large-category monsters could not move this fast.
Using the insane power of its legs, it sped like a missile from one corner of the fifty-meder-wide room to the other, efficiently wiping out the virus—that is, the adventurers. It ricocheted off the floor, ceiling, and walls in a continuous series of leaps, swiftly and cruelly massacring the large group of adventurers who had gathered in that chamber of death. They didn’t even have time to understand what was happening.
As she watched her nightmare rise to life once again, Lyu’s voice caught in her throat.
Even Jura, who was the originator of all the horror, found his legs shaking beneath him.
Bell stared in disbelief.
Adventurers collapsed.
Brave warriors were torn to pieces along with their shields.
Cowards were pierced through as they tried to flee.
The wavering chants of sorcerers turned to requiems as they were murdered.
The rampage wasn’t even a battle.
The spectacle of so many deaths in such a brief period of time defied the limits of emotion. As Bell watched the merciless slaughter unfold, he felt neither terror nor despair; instead, it was as if he had been cut loose from all feelings.
“—!!”
Suddenly, he exploded.
With eyes wide open and a wordless roar on his lips, he leaped into the midst of the massacre.
“Mr. Cranell?!”
Perhaps it was fortunate that Bell had not ventured out into the maze and witnessed the deaths of the other adventurers. After all, just the deaths inside the room had been enough to make him lose his cool entirely.
Ignoring Lyu’s shout, he accelerated.
“Uaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
The savage claws and fangs bore down on the adventurers who not long before had made up Bell’s party—the animal-person siblings, the powerful Amazon, and the ax-wielding Bors.
You think I’ll let you get away with that?!
Channeling his raging emotions into a roar, Bell scooped up a greatsword that had been dropped by its original owner and charged toward the speeding purple blur.
“!!”
The sword resonated with a low bovine clang.
Purplish-blue fragments scattered onto the ground.
The light within the Juggernaut’s eye sockets focused in on the boy. It had suffered a direct blow to the side, which forced
it to abort its attack. Bell’s rubellite eyes had perfectly tracked the high-speed movements of its huge body and responded with an equally accelerated sword blow, which the monster had blocked with one of its long, bony forearms.
“Rabbit Foot?!”
Drenched in blood and sobbing, Bors and his three companions cried out in joy as the Juggernaut stopped in its tracks. For the first time, the unstoppable torrent of violence was momentarily stalled.
Bell’s gaze met the glow of the monster’s eye sockets.
In those brief few seconds, he sensed the unfathomable depth of his enemy’s skill, and he shuddered.
For its part, the monster recognized the creature in front of it as a menace, and it automatically shifted its priorities so that Bell was now at the top.
Each saw only the other.
The fight to the death between adventurer and monster began.
“Aaaaaa!!”
“!!”
The boy swung his greatsword, and the monster swiped its left forearm.
The whining metal sent fragments of the enemy’s armored shell flying into the air. Bell staggered from the Juggernaut’s brute strength, yet even as he dripped sweat at the thought of its overwhelming force, he had discovered a point of attack.
Its defenses are weak!
His opponent’s shell had cracked under a single blow, and a faint fissure had run down its thin arm.
An instant of battle was enough for Bell to understand. To the extent that the monster’s strength and speed had evolved far beyond ordinary limits, its endurance in the face of attack had declined.
Whoever struck first would win!
Having reached this simple, clear conclusion regarding the conditions for victory, Bell spurred his body to even more energetic movement.
“Yah!”
Using the energy from the foot he planted on the ground, he abruptly twisted his upper body to deliver a fierce spinning blow with the greatsword.
The arc of the black scarf around his neck mirrored that of the silver blade.
“—”
In response, the Juggernaut’s reverse joints creaked, and it sprang forward.
“Huh?!”
The blow Bell had delivered with all his strength met thin air, and for a moment his enemy vanished from view. He looked up as he heard it land above him.
The Juggernaut was suspended upside down from the ceiling.
No way!
Could it really have leaped twenty meders upward in a single bound?
Nope, no way.
There’s no way something like this can exist.
On the one hand, it was an insane large-category monster strong enough to kill an upper-class adventurer with a single blow, but on the other, it had the unparalleled speed and agility to easily dodge its opponent’s attacks.
Everything Bell thought he knew about monsters was being turned upside down. Still, the knowledge and experience he’d gained so far gave him parallels to work with.
This thing is like a floor boss that moves faster than an iguaçu!
You’ve gotta be kidding me. What is this? I can’t win. It’s impossible. I’ve gotta get out of here.
Bell pushed away the thoughts blaring inside his head, rejecting what both logic and instinct told him.
There’s no way I could escape anyway.
He pushed down the fear and unease surging inside him with a ferocious determination to fight, gritting his teeth with an iron will.
“!”
The Juggernaut exhaled a hot breath, fixed its glowing orbs on Bell, and launched itself off the ceiling with a powerful kick.
“Whoa!”
Bell dodged by a hairbreadth the massive arrow of destruction that came hurtling toward him.
The shock waves followed fast and furious. Adventurers who had been standing rooted to the spot were blown backward as the ground burst open to form a crater. Crystal fragments bombarded Bell like scattershot.
The greatsword—which he had pulled aside just a moment too late—was half-demolished.
“What the…?!”
Bell skidded across the ground, tossed aside the greatsword, and thrust out his left hand.
No matter how fast the enemy was, Bell figured it would be no match for the speed of his electrifying flames now that he’d leveled up. He’d use his Swift-Strike Magic to break through the monster’s vulnerable defenses.
“It won’t work!!”
Lyu’s all-out scream came just as Bell opened his own mouth.
“Firebolt!”
Electrical fire spouted from his fist.
The instant before the scarlet lightning bolt exploded into its target, however, the purplish-blue shell encasing the silent Juggernaut pulsed with light.
Instantly, electrifying flames exploded into Bell’s own body.
“Owww—!”
He stumbled backward, not grasping what had happened.
Smoke billowed from his breastplate.
A power and heat so strong they took his breath away told him his own magic had struck his chest. The sparks danced uselessly before him.
It rebounded—?
As flames he had never expected to experience burned his body, he stared at the being standing in the distance.
Even now, the ominous beast’s armored shell was glowing.
Light rippled out from the spot on its stomach where Bell had expected the electrical fire to make contact, but there wasn’t the faintest trace of a wound.
“—”
The blank incomprehension in Bell’s mind lasted only an instant, but the Juggernaut seized that moment.
Crushing the ground underfoot, it launched its body forward at top speed.
“Whoaaa!!”
As the monster bore down with its right arm raised above its head, Bell switched into defensive mode just a second too late.
The long, glittering claws swept through the air.
Bell whipped the Hestia Knife from its hilt with his right hand.
The knife’s purple arc mirrored that of the monster’s claws as Bell tried to block the blow.
“No—”
Just as he made contact, Bell heard someone behind him whisper.
It was the despairing whisper of an elf, like a bird that had lost its wings.
Then came a blow so powerful the whole world quaked before Bell’s eyes.
The next moment, he felt a lightness in his right shoulder.
“—?”
Something was spinning through the air.
It was as vibrant as a songbird, spraying specks of liquid that looked like blood.
It was sheathed in a gauntlet.
It was gripping a black knife.
It was Bell’s right arm.
“Aa—”
He had lost one of his arms.
His right one, sliced off at the elbow.
It took a second for the reality to hit him.
The next instant, what remained of his arm flared like it was on fire.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
A scream ripped from his throat.
As if to restart the temporarily frozen flow of time, a fountain of blood spurted from the exposed flesh of his right elbow.
The pain was so intense he thought his nerve endings were going to burn out. His eyes were bloodshot to their very core.
The arm drew a parabola through the air before landing—still clutching the knife—in the waterway.
“Mr. Cranell!”
He could hear Lyu screaming his name.
But it wasn’t a cry of grief—it was a warning.
The enormous shadow covering Bell flickered.
He looked up in surprise and saw the silhouette of the monster with the claws of its left hand raised like a guillotine above his head.
The fear that flooded his body at the sight of t
hose claws that had ripped off his arm, protector and all, was enough to make him cry. Nevertheless, he raised his gauntlet-clad left arm to block the blow. Its dual adamantite flashed.
An instant later, the gauntlet met the claws, and it was destroyed.
“—”
That armor was supposed to be unrivaled.
At the very least, Bell had believed it was. Certainly, it was the strongest armor Welf had ever forged for him. But now the dir-adamantite shield that had withstood even the blows of the black minotaur was demolished.
It couldn’t fend off the blow.
Bell had intended for the claws to slide along the metal, but the moment they made contact, the force of the blow had crushed the armor.
That was how strong the Juggernaut’s claws of destruction were.
They extended ominously from the end of the six fingers that signaled a monster. The fingers themselves were as thin as bones, but the tips were thick and sharp and curved. They glinted like purple jewels, just like Bell’s Divine Knife.
Only Lyu and Jura knew the truth: that one must never tangle with those claws. One had to somehow fight without letting them bite into one’s flesh. Only they, paralyzed by the return of their worst nightmare, knew that defense against the claws of destruction was completely impossible.
Shaped more like fangs than claws, they were a gift from the Dungeon, stronger than any armor and honed to points sharper than any weapon.
“—”
The monster advanced mercilessly on Bell as he stared in a daze at the crushed back of his left hand.
It brought its claws up into the air, then down.
That was enough to split open his armor.
Somehow managing to avoid a direct blow, his one-armed body crumpled. All hope drained from his heart as he watched the fragments of silver swirl in front of his eyes.
His shoulder guards, his hip guards, his knee guards, and his chest guard all split into fragments and flew off him. Even the leg holster on his left leg burst off, spraying blood into the air.
Whether from the extreme pain or from fear, Bell realized something through the haze of blood and tears.
The reason the monster’s defenses were so low was that it had no need for them.
It had magnificent strength, all-destroying claws, and an overwhelming, unparalleled ability to kill. Why would it need to defend itself against prey it could slaughter in a single second? The entire purpose of its specialization in offensive attacks was to crush its enemies.