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Chapter 414: A Speechless Reunion. [Release Version]
🕑 Added 2023-04-29 01:29:37 +0000 UTC“Demonkin!”
Oh no …
Neill's eyes were aimed at Vifi’Yok, completely ignoring the dragonslayers in front of her.
Her hair having purple tints on them meant she was in her [Battle Frenzy] mode, and from how she was looking, it was in the moderate stage at least. The fact I could see the glimmer of light surrounding her body like a veil meant she was also receiving the buffs from my spell songs. Taking all of that into account, it made sense how that giant mana beam—her [Pulse Arcana: Maxima]—completely eviscerated that lance fighter. She was being buffed up to high heavens.
“Uuuurgh!” However, just as I was worried she would attack Vifi’Yok, Neill fell onto the ground, her purple highlights blinking wildly before they disappeared, returning her hair color back to her usual black. “Oh shit, too long …”
What remained purple, though, were her hands. Now that I looked at her, her face was also starting to turn blue—[Arcane Fever], without a doubt! She tried to push herself up—her face was still filled with rage as she glared at Vifi’Yok, but that quickly changed as she groaned in pain. She took out two potions—one to recover health and the other … was for Winter’s Gift?!
“Sis!” I called out for her as I saw this, realizing she must be in more trouble than I thought.
This worry got even worse when I noticed a signal suddenly moving towards her, agitating my instincts to the point my body temperature rose without my consent. My rocket boosters activated as my parallel minds cast [Wind Blast], sending me flying towards her.
I saw the flicker of something red, followed by Galg appearing before me. With his back facing me, he shouted “Nice to see you again!” before he swung his blades, only for metal to clash as Vifi’Yok came to Neill’s rescue. This gave me just enough time to change [The Will to Fight and Survive] into [Dragon Fire], before unleashing a flame breath onto the dragonslayer.
Unfortunately, my fears became real as I saw Galg fully tank my [Dreadflame Breath], not even bothering to block it with an arm or anything; instead, he just kept attacking Vifi’Yok while to get to Neill. That armor of his really was made from my materials. Not to mention, it was obvious his blades were coated with that fire dragon killing venom Winter’s Gift. His preparations made him one of my worst counters!
Huh?!
My sensory skills just picked up on an attack coming from my flank, causing me to increase the power of my rocket boosters, sending me flying up to the ceiling to avoid an arrow flying at me. Three more flew, forcing me to stop my breath attack to zoom around like a fly and locate the archer responsible for this inconvenience.
As I was thinking of a way to handle that blind katzune, a hand suddenly emerged from his shadow as a wolfkin woman jumped out of it, barely missing the archer’s head as she slashed at him with her dagger. It was Saori! With [Dark Tendrils] emerging from the shadow as well, the archer had to run backwards to avoid them.
As she was about to shoot a black lightning bolt at him, Saori was attacked by the leonid berserker, nearly smashing her arm, only for another person to jump out of the shadows. Another wolfkin, about the height of Yorshka but with the appearance of a werewolf, grabbed the berserker’s arm and protected Saori, before wrestling the leonid to the ground. The mage intervened by creating a [Terra Wall], separating the two sides.
While I did want to continue watching what was happening with my best friend, the clash below me was intensifying as Vifi’Yok and Galg were hard locked into single combat. Their weapons did not slow down despite both duelists moving at hyper-accelerated speeds—the former with their voltaic lighting and the latter while a red aura covered their body.
Dammit, snap out of it! I chastised myself for feeling scared of this person. A single encounter where he managed to cut my arm and poison me was making me useless in this fight?! Preposterous! I’ve dealt with this crap enough times now to charge through the fear, charge through this damn fear!
Act! Terra Wall!
Rock walls erupted from the ground, sending Neill up to the sky and separating the two duelists from each other. I couldn’t fight him, but I could still support. I’ve made a combat style where my supportive abilities were my most effective option!
I grabbed Neill and fed her the two potions while I blasted spells at Galg from up here, forcing him to dodge around before throwing one of his chain-hooked blades at me. I blasted it away with a [Draconic Roar] while using the recoil to fling myself back to the subspace portal. Vifi’Yok took this chance to throw a [Voltaic Red: Thunderspeed Roar] at him and the rest of the dragonslayers, causing Saori and the werefolk fighting with her to retreat back into the shadow.
Saori’s thunder spear finally tore through the room, covering the place with a storm of dust.
Once in the clear, I snapped my head around to Tatsuya and Kyouya pushing the injured dwarves and elves into the portal, until they brought Ungi and the Ankoran King over. The former was battered and almost dead, with his samurai armor cut apart to the point it couldn’t be used any longer. The latter was still up and kicking, but half of his helmet was just cut in half.
“Controlling the damn earth ain’t doing me much when I can’t hit him!” the king chastised himself before he looked down and grabbed Saintess Fleindia from up the ground. “I don’t know what exactly is happening here and how the kirin lass and wolfkin got here, but I suggest we get out of here first. Get a larger room to fight in. There are too many people in this hallway, and not enough space for all of us to fight.”
“Your majesty, you—” Kyouya tried to interrupt him, but the dwarven king pushed himself off him and handed him the unconscious Saintess.
“Nah, nah, I can still fight. Fought longer even after Ungi shielded me. I’m getting the lass out of this place one way or another, and that is not before we find out what the bladdarg is going on here. Heal me, Hestia, we need to run.”
<Allied Territory [Earth Ruler’s Reign] deactivated>
He banged his chest plate as the pumpkin-sized runes on it and his axe dimed in color. He then threw away the other half of his helmet before he turned around, watching as Vifi’Yok ran over to us with my glaive. He glared at her, but before he could speak up, Neill gasped for air.
“Aaaaah!” She clenched her claws around my shoulders, pushing herself up. Uttering a stammer, she growled as she pointed in the direction of the dragonslayers. “We need to leave, now! Wyvernslayers! Two full parties of them came hunting! Bastards have dragon blood coated weapons, too.”
“… More snuck into the city, after all. Once again, I failed.”
Regardless of the situation, was fighting the dragonslayers here smart? Fight or flight? I was always a supporter of “fleeing was winning,” but at this point, I once again had this strong urge to fight and win. I wanted to shred that Galg to pieces for not only attacking Neill, but also for causing this damn fear I had. A single fight, and I felt like a damn coward!
Shit! I jerked as I saw the shine of his red aura coming from the dust veil. I snapped my body around, waiting to heal everybody, but somebody suddenly threw a white ball on the ground, causing it to explode.
Whatever was in that ball attached itself onto everybody’s body, causing me to retch a bit at how slimy it was, only for it to suddenly start being absorbed into our body. For some reason, it felt soothing, almost as good as a massage with a silky-feeling cream. In the next moment, my body felt rejuvenated, as if my white flames had just healed me.
It was Asaka who appeared through the portal.
“Took you long enough to open the damn portal! You know how much Haruka has been worried for you?” the punk girl shouted while wearing a modified priestess robe and holding onto what looked like a graffiti can. She was still behind the portal, not entering the dungeon. “We need to catch up, but I see you’ve got problems behind you. I can heal the injured, so if you need to get anybody away from the battlefield, send them in! I got the gist from the Ankoran Queen!”
The moment I lost my [Room] runes, everything began to fall apart as my party and I were driven deeper into the dungeons, but now that I had them back, what happened? Saori and I were reunited on the battlefield and even Asaka was giving me background support by acting like a clinic.
If anything, this showed I really needed to keep those runes safer. Kyouya and Tatsuya already lost theirs on our trip.
These thoughts ended when Neill’s warning came true as more people suddenly stormed out of the portal. As the dust settled, the dragonslayers and the adventurers clad in scale armor faced each other, with the latter demanding to know where “the kirin dragonewt” was, confirming they were the people Sis had mentioned.
Once all the injured were inside the portal, I summoned Rajah, having all of us mount him aside from Vifi’Yok, who decided to keep the rearguard safe with her speed and higher stats. With the hallway just large enough for Rajah to move in, but not fight, we dashed away with my [Room] runes back in my storage and [Hydra] canceled.
“That wolfkin is a dragonkin, too!” the katzune archer shouted as Galg dashed forward with [Gale Steps], only to once again be blocked by Vifi’Yok.
“That girl …” Saori raised a frown as Rajah raced through the hallway with us on his back. “I want to ask how the demonkin is here, but …”
Saori suddenly embraced me out of nowhere, before grabbing Tatsuya and Kyouya, pulling them into her hug as the three of us were squished together. She released us three flabbergasted adolescents before patting Rajah on his back.
“Good boy, good boy, you managed to evolve! Haha, you do not know how overjoyed Varya was when I discovered that little bit of news through my shadow pack menu! Haha!” She then turned to us. “Asaka was right, you know! You do not know how worried we were but, haha, how I missed this! The Aurora special of running into the stupidest misadventurers, haha, it has been too long—Hey.”
Saori’s wild elation as if she was letting loose for the first time in a while was quickly interrupted as the bone amulet she was wearing, looking very similar to a miniature wolf skull, began to shake. At the same time, we snapped our head back as we saw not only Galg but the leonid berserker rushing at us. They were keeping up with Rajah.
However, before they could come any closer, Saori whistled, causing one of the shadows to the side to rumble, before a large tail lashed out, slamming on the ground. A vircarguca, just like Rajah, only different in size and appearance, appeared before us, intercepting the dragonslayers before she melted back into the shadow.
[“Mom!”] Rajah called, confirmed that it was Varya. I knew she evolved, but wow, seeing her in the flesh excited me with how much Saori’s shadow pack grew.
And the surprise wasn’t ending any time soon, as four fenrirs lept from the shadows and attacked the dragonslayers. All of them were members of the shadow pack.
Uno the fenrir covered in black flames, looking like the devil’s hound. Sarasa the mage wolf, jumping in and out of the shadow to cast spells. Sarasa the werewolf from before with full focus on strength to overpower even the strongest enemies. Quatre was the wolf clad in armor, made to lead the charge. We even had Shoyi, our party’s sewer slime who could turn into a tidal wave like my [Hydra].
Lastly, we had Saori’s garm mother. The garm matriarch I had fought during the first few months of my new life. Although still a rank C, she possessed the experience of the beast who once managed to control a large part of the Belzac Forest through her prowess alone.
Everybody here was covering our rear to keep them back. Even if the shadow pack couldn’t stop Galg, it was enough for Vifi’Yok to get to us in time to save us. In this mad rush through the hallway, only the leonid and Galg could keep up, and the former was being kept back by the shadow pack. Once again, meeting these hunter bastards was a nightmare.
At least we knew one of them was dead this time from all the equipment and loot he dropped, as he was a void-touched. The dragonslayers might forget about that stuff if we ran too far away.
“Out of the way!” Galg shouted as he kicked Vifi’Yok into a wall and jumped, aiming his blades at us. Being in the air, he was vulnerable to my spells as I blasted him away from us, only for the leonid berserker to grab Rajah’s tail during this chaos.
She pulled him back, stopping him. My virgacuga hardened his fur around it, turning himself into a porcupine, creating a momentary confusion which Vifi’Yok used to slash the berserker, leaving a large gash through her torso. Vifi’Yok then landed a thunder kick right to her head, sending the dragonslayer crashing into the ground with a chilling crack.
The demonkin jumped on before we resumed our run, but our eyes widened as the leonid burst in laughter from the pain and stood back up. She then pulled out what looked like a bomb and detonated it behind her, sending her flying toward us. I thought she was crazy, causing herself damage, but instead, the opposite was the truth. She was healing!
Wait, that crimson glow? That’s my scale-dust.
Once again, the preparations of the dragonslayers astounded me as I realized what was going on. She was somehow healing from my own scale-dust explosions, or was it just the fire element in general? How was that possible? Did her armor have some special effect? It could also be that green potion she and the other slayers ingested before they fought me.
“Cry! Rending Flesh!” she shouted, launching her hammer attack.
The Ankoran King jumped off Rajah, swinging his axe to intercept our enemy with a loud warcry, yelling out his attack. “Activate!”
A rune lit up on his axe as stone began to materialize around its blade, cladding it in it until it transformed into a hammer. The king clashed against the leonid’s hammer, causing a loud bang to erupt as the Ankoran King successfully parried the attack, able to redirect her strength away from us.
Saori managed to catch the king as he fell with her [Dark Tendrils], leaving the leonid wide open for Neill’s counter. With mana gathering around her one horn, she shot out one of her strongest attacks—the all-piercing [Freikugel]—ripping right through the left side of the leonid, eviscerating it similar to how she destroyed Vifi’Yok’s arm.
As her bloodied body crashed on the ground, tumbling like a fallen toy, Sis clicked her tongue. “Those damn lions are always so sturdy! That didn’t kill her!”
“That ripped through her entire right side! I saw her lungs and ribs!” I shouted in response, before groaning myself, remembering as long as your health stayed above zero, you could survive some seriously crazy stuff.
“Hey, hey, forward! Look!” Tatsuya shouted as he pointed at a couple of portals along the way, noting how people had started to come out of them.
“The gambit is catching up …” Neill responded, causing the majority of us to question what she meant by that. With Vifi’Yok telling us she would keep watch for any further enemies, Neill began her explanation. “The whole Event Quest is about different gambits on every other floor pitting every party against every other party to advance to the next floor. I don’t know how all of you made it here, but it doesn’t matter now. On the eighth floor, the gambit was about taking risks on how to advance to the next floor. Tasianna chose our path after everybody decided to follow her lead, but the trick separated us all. That’s why I was alone.”
Neill was alone with people she didn’t know as the gambit teleported her to a random location. Two groups of wyvern slayers led everybody after some goading the other adventurers at the fact Neill was one of the top performers on the other floors. If they wanted to win the Event, they had to take care of her.
Naturally, she beat most of them back as she made her way towards the portal which led her here. She was far too strong for all of them, but knowing the wyvern slayers had weapons and armor made to combat dragonkins, she decided to regroup with her party instead of risking a fight all alone. In fact, I wasn’t confused when I saw her drink that antidote, one of the wyvern slayers had some Winter’s Gift on him—they worked just as well on fire wyverns as fire dragons.
“That was when I saw the demonkin.” She pointed at Vifi’Yok.
“Demonkin, huh?” The cat was out of the bag as the Ankoran King looked at me, to which I shrugged and replied with “long story.”
Neill continued. “I was already in battle frenzy, so I just unleashed the pulse arcana when I saw you to the side. I didn’t notice those … Shit, why did it have to be them!”
Her voice broke as she cried out, rubbing her hand against her face in annoyance. She grimaced, looking ill, before realizing I was worried about her. She shivered a bit, but took a deep sigh.
“Those were the people you met, right?” I finally asked her, trying to find the confirmation despite it being hinted on multiple times. I wanted to hear it from her.
She nodded. “Warnings make sense, but you rarely take them seriously until they hit you on the head and you have no answer for them. Getting hunted for days without any sleep or rest, just cuz you know you can’t fight them. I saw that guy. He smelled like you. He made armor from your body, right?! That bomb, too. That guy hunted you before, right?!”
She got all that information from that small moment. Neill’s rage was clear to see, overwhelming the fear she felt for Galg and his crew. Her shivering didn’t stop, but her irises had thinned up so much they looked laser focused. Those were the eyes of not a hunter, but someone who wanted revenge.
<Announcing: The correct portal had been chosen by one of the participants. All portal skips will now close up. Congratulations, you may now proceed to the next floor! … But for the little cheater who tried to sneak in, let me say I have had it with you cheaters. For that, I have something special for you and your friends …>
Light suddenly began to bask all of us as that System message informed us of the dungeon master’s words. His message lingered in my mind as my vision was blinded by that light, only for it to return after a while.
I looked around, noticing I was inside a … workshop—a smithy to be precise. I could identify an anvil, a set of tools, the furnace, and quite a few metalworking machines to the side. All of the latter were fueled by manatech from the look of it.
“Uuurgh …” I jerked around as I noticed a signal, readying myself, only for my guard to drop when I saw who it was.
“Grimnir!” My eyes then locked onto a bright silhouette behind my party’s blacksmith, only for my jaw to drop when it was also another friend! “Ellaine!”
“La-—Woah!?”
I embraced both of them before they could say anything, tightening my arms around them. I haven’t seen them in so long! But, at the same time, why were they here? How did they get here?
Well, all those questions were about to be answered when three of us noticed more lights appearing—all of them were from the people who were just with me before the teleport. Saori, Neill, Tatsuya, Kyouya, Rajah, King Fugnarus and Vifi’Yok. All of them were here, equally confused with where we were and why this was a smithy.
Everyone fell silent, however, when we heard footsteps coming from behind the workshop’s door. A dwarf wearing a smithing apron with small hammers and other smithing tools appeared and calmly walked towards us. At the same time, Grimnir let out a questioning groan as he took off his helmet. He slowly walked forward, looking at the dwarven man with an agape mouth.
“Grimnir …” he spoke. He stroked his beard as he licked his lips, looking like he was trying to find his next words. “It’s good to see you, again … cuoso.”
Cuoso? Cousin?
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, guhahahah, no, no, no! NO! You’re dead! You’re dead! Damn you Manethala, don’t bring my cousin in this! Broggi is DEAD! BROGGI IS DEAD!”
… That’s Broggi?
Comments
Thanks! I'm planning on editing the last chapter a bit. Make Hestia seem less passive. But I'm glad the flow is decent.
Diego Rossi
Fight of flight? -> Fight oR flight? Good changes. Very interesting.
Eric
The changes are Good and you involve the other Part of her group as well now
