#54
Elf (2)
A few days earlier.
“Hooop— ha! Refreshing, maybe because the mountains are close.”
Harley had arrived at the Steel Fortress, on the border of the Tulk Kingdom where it met the northern mountain range.
After declaring his first beginning as a mercenary in Tarak, he had gone through all sorts of twists and turns before arriving here.
The world was wide, and madmen were many.
There had been fools who picked fights with him, calling him uncivilized and whatnot even after seeing Harley’s beautiful, magnificent muscles.
“That’s the guy who smashed up Ralph’s gang...”
“Shh! Don’t make eye contact.”
Perhaps they had been fellows with a fair bit of fame, because they had seemed to come at him with some confidence.
They were skilled enough to handle Aura, the energy wielded by warriors, at a high level.
“They say he broke every bone in their limbs with his bare hands?”
“I heard blades barely go into him, too.”
When the first quarrel broke out, Harley had agonized over how to respond, since he had never fought humans before.
As someone who would become a hero, he couldn’t very well kill people recklessly inside a city just because he failed to control his strength.
‘So I grabbed them one by one and gently twisted their bones for them!’
That way, there was no worry of accidentally killing them!
In the process, he was able to learn firsthand just how much force it took to break the human body, so it had been a helpful experience for him as well.
‘And I was able to learn how to use Aura, too.’
The haze rising from the struggling men’s bodies, and their bodies suddenly growing much harder.
In the end, when he applied more strength, they snapped with a crack anyway, but the increase in physical ability itself wasn’t bad.
‘I thought it looked useful, so beating the method out of them was good and all...’
The problem was that he couldn’t use it with this body.
His body was closer to that of a magical beast than an ordinary human’s.
Naturally, he couldn’t use a technique made on the assumption of a human physique.
Since he was far stronger now than he would be if he returned his body’s composition to that of a human and used Aura, it was truly something useless yet too good to throw away.
‘Well, if I learn anything, it’ll come in handy someday.’
Smacking his lips in regret, Harley turned his steps toward the northern mountain range in search of prey that would make him stronger right away.
***
“Gwoooong!”
“Huhahahah—! Die!”
Harley, his eyes rolled back, burst into mad laughter as he swung his axes at a magical beast in the shape of a giant bear.
The moment the axe in his right hand struck through the knee of the beast standing on two legs, the axe in his left hand lodged itself in the back of its knee.
“Gwoeok!”
The bear’s forepaw immediately came crashing down.
He deflected the attack with nothing more than a single step to the side, then drove the axe in his right hand into the crook of the beast’s arm.
An elegant axe technique that did not match Harley’s wild appearance.
The twin axes in both hands drew graceful arcs as they ravaged the magical beast’s entire body.
Crunch!
“Guuuuh...”
After repeated blows of the axe, the moment the beast staggered in place.
“Hooop!”
Harley drew in a breath, charged at the magical beast, and twisted his waist to the fullest.
With swelling muscles, and with power amplified to the limit through the recoil of rotation, he struck the bear’s leg with...
Craack—!
A low kick.
In an instant, the magical beast’s leg bone shattered, and its body rotated ninety degrees in the air before slamming into the ground.
“Urachacha—!”
Harley, a hunter who did not miss his chance, immediately jumped and brought his axe down on the bear’s neck.
“Gwoeok!”
The axe blade did not sink deeply into its tough hide and steel-like muscles.
If it didn’t work, he would keep going until it did.
As he alternated the blows of both hands, their muscles bulging, a lively bout of axe work began.
After a short while passed like that...
“Khahahah! Quite a tough opponent!”
Standing atop the magical beast that had finally stopped breathing, Harley let out a refreshing laugh.
Then he threw aside his axes and drove his hand, transformed sharply, into the prey’s heart.
His fingernails dug deep into the magical beast’s solid body.
Before long, a mana stone the size of a fist came out in Harley’s grasp.
After roughly shaking off the blood clinging to it, he put it in his mouth and crunched it down while sinking into thought.
‘...To think my bare body is stronger than using weapons...’
The brutal truth he had tried hard to ignore.
After all the effort of obtaining axes and training in axe techniques, they were of little use against monsters!
The physical toughness of creatures that altered and used the mana residing in their bodies was beyond imagination, so weapons that contained no energy could not inflict much damage.
For now, he could overpower them by brute force with his overwhelming strength, but if this continued, even his sturdy black steel axes would eventually break.
Yet if he applied only a moderate amount of strength, he couldn’t damage them, leaving him in the ironic situation where his bare body, which allowed him to go all out, was stronger.
At this rate, he was no different from a hidden master concealing his true strength and pretending to be weak!
‘Huh? Maybe that’s not so bad either...’
Temptation surged for a moment, but it didn’t fit his goal, so that wouldn’t do.
“Huaa— Now, shall I collect the requested item?”
As Harley felt his body’s composition change through the mana stone, he sharpened his nails again.
Then, in order to extract the bear gallbladder that was the requested item, he split open the bear’s belly.
‘Using the power of a magical beast with 「Body Mutation」 makes it this easy, so why is it when I use a weapon... Hm?’
For an instant, his movements stopped.
The power of monsters that altered the mana residing in their bodies: vital force.
The power of warriors who refined absorbed mana within their bodies: Aura.
‘In any case, they’re the same in that they process the energy inside the body to suit themselves. The only difference is in how they handle it.’
Monsters used mana instinctively with their innate bodies, so they did not need a complicated refining process.
In order for humans to use mana through acquired effort, methods of refining Aura and techniques for handling it had developed.
The methods were different, but their aim was the same.
Then, if he combined the two advantages...
‘Couldn’t I skip the refining process and use the method of handling Aura to control vital force?’
In reality, the important and complicated part of Aura training methods was the process of refining mana.
High-level techniques were even passed down as secret arts of each faction.
But the method of handling it itself was not some great secret.
It wasn’t that difficult a technique to begin with.
Based on the knowledge of Aura he had obtained before, he immediately got to work.
Several rounds of trial and error followed.
Using 「Mutation」 and 「Body Mutation」, he analyzed the differences between a human body and his current body, adjusting the sense of discrepancy.
Black magic power, blood magic power, divine power.
Thanks to his experience handling many energies until now, his work progressed in an instant.
The moment he concentrated on handling vital force while tearing into bear meat whenever he ran short on calories.
A flash passed through his mind.
《The individual has fulfilled the conditions and gained enlightenment. You have acquired the special skill 「Bio-Aura」.》
A faint haze rose from the axe held in one hand.
“Heh... Huhahahahah—!”
Harley’s mad laughter burst out thunderously.
It was the moment a monster in human form obtained the power of humans.
***
Slaaash—!
The large severed head fell to the ground.
Thud!
The enormous ogre collapsed, sending tremors through the earth around it.
“Keuheu... That bastard sure was damn strong.”
Harley, sitting down where he stood, lay flat on his back.
His own physical condition was not normal either.
His entire body was covered in blood, and blood that had refluxed was still pouring from his mouth.
「Regeneration」 was activating without pause, but his shattered left arm was still in the middle of being restored.
Grrrr—
Amid all that, a maddening hunger surged in.
During the battle, he had burned through energy lavishly with 「Body Mutation」, 「Bio-Aura」, and 「Regeneration」, exhausting all the energy he had accumulated.
“Ugh... I’ll only get my strength back if I eat something.”
Harley staggered to his feet, approached the fallen ogre, and coated the axe in his right hand with Aura.
An enormous ogre nearly five meters tall.
Its entire body was filled with muscles of overwhelming density, so not only its strength but even its agility was on a transcendent level.
Its senses were so sharp that even though Harley had snuck up on it while it lay peacefully asleep and ambushed it, it reacted immediately and counterattacked.
“As expected, maybe because it’s all muscle, it’s way too tough.”
During the fight, bones throughout his body had broken several times and his organs had ruptured, but he had endured to the end with 「Regeneration」 while gradually whittling down the beast’s stamina using 「Bio-Aura」.
“Hahahah—! Still, in the end, this body is the victor!”
Only now did laughter burst out of him.
Perhaps thanks to 「Monstrous Gluttony」, he seemed to have finally recovered enough stamina to laugh.
“The stronger the guy, the better the effect. It was worth the trouble of hunting it down!”
The reaction of his body burst forth immediately after he filled his stomach to the brim, stored energy, and even chewed up the mana stone.
His muscles repeatedly swelled and compressed.
His skeleton hardened, his nerves sharpened, and his skin grew even tougher.
“Phew... Good.”
Feeling satisfied with his body, which had grown another level stronger, he finished dismantling the ogre’s corpse.
After securing enough spoils with rare materials to fill his subspace magic tool, and recovering the axe he had dropped from his left hand as well, he looked around in order to move on...
“Come to think of it, where am I?”
In the dense forest.
The fierce battle with the ogre had overturned the surroundings, making it impossible to tell the direction.
Harley immediately climbed a nearby tree and surveyed the area.
The vast sea of trees spread out endlessly before him, making his insides feel refreshed.
“Ahaha! Looks like I got too excited and came in too deep, huh?”
Over the past few days, he had tracked various kinds of prey using the developed sense of smell of a magical beast, but it seemed that because he had blindly followed only new scents, he had ended up venturing deep inside.
It was an accident that occurred because, without considering the vastness of the northern mountain range, he had been blinded by various genes and moved around recklessly.
“Well, once night falls, I can move by looking at the stars!”
Of course, it wasn’t a big problem.
Now that he had been living in Auterica for over a year, confirming direction through the stars was simple enough, so there was no need to use the transfer array.
In any case, it was on cooldown, so he couldn’t use it.
After descending from the tree, he headed back into the forest, thinking he would hunt some more before night fell.
Then, around the time the day was slowly growing dark...
Sniff, sniff—
“Hm?”
His keen magical beast senses detected something extremely familiar.
A nostalgic sensation, like the scent of the homeland he had smelled for so long.
“The smell of black magic power?”
And it was a faint remnant of magical power, as if suppressed through a concealment field.
Judging from his experience of having spent quite a long time in Hans’s secret laboratory, this was one hundred percent certain.
“Is a black magician hiding here?”
After pondering for a moment, he stealthily moved toward the place where the smell was coming from.
Because the familiar energy sensed by his magical beast senses felt somehow unpleasant.
At the end of it, he was able to discover it.
A barrier unfolded with black magic.
‘This is familiar too.’
Hans immediately analyzed the barrier seen through Harley’s eyes and produced a result.
It was the barrier Hans had encountered in the early days, right after he took the first fragment of the Immortal King and became a demilich.
It was the concealment barrier used by the Oath of Heaven’s Defiance.
‘So those guys were hiding here too? Well, thinking they were only in the Talia Kingdom did make them seem too big for that. Back then, some kind of restriction had been placed on them too.’
All their souls had been drawn out somewhere.
Hans as he was now could likely ignore that restriction, but he had been too busy hiding from the saint’s pursuit to even think of finding them.
‘And yet I’ve discovered them like this.’
Just as a strange sense of delight surged within him...
‘Hm?’
Hans, who had detected a minute flow of black magic power through Harley’s keen senses, put forward a new diagnosis.
‘A sacrificial ritual is in progress? And this is...’
He analyzed the situation with the black magic knowledge of 「Forbidden Knowledge」.
A sacrificial ritual of this scale could not help but leave traces one way or another.
That was why they usually moved locations immediately afterward, but since they generated a negative-dimensional gate with the black magic power from right after offering the sacrifice and moved through it, tracking them was close to impossible.
In other words, if he missed them here, there was no knowing when he would meet them again.
“Heh... After finally meeting like this, I should at least see their faces, no?”
Baring his teeth in a ferocious grin, he took an axe into each hand and concentrated.
Perhaps because he had hunted an ogre, an even denser haze rose up, wrapping around the axes.
Thus, the bio-energy generated from his entire body was contained in the two axe blades.
“Huhahahaha—! Shatter!”
The two axes that had been slung behind his shoulders swept out in broad arcs and slammed into the barrier.
Kwaaaang—!
With a tremendous explosion, a hole was punched through the barrier, revealing the hidden cave.
A flurry of noise came from inside, but Harley paid it no mind and strode boldly in.
“I can’t exactly stand by and watch things go well for you lot again.”
They were of the same ilk as the ones who had stabbed Hans in the back and massacred the villagers.
If there had been room to make use of them, that would be one thing, but in a situation where that was impossible, wasn’t it only right to obstruct them with all his might?
And if he could pick up something along the way, all the better.
If things really looked hopeless, he could just run!
‘I’m absolutely not doing this because I hold a grudge.’
As he ran toward the place where the aura of black magic grew thick, a group of humans burst out from within.
“What?! Who the hell are you!”
“Stop him!”
They were the black mages’ underlings.
One knight-class, and five at the level of mercenaries.
‘No need to wait for them! I’m going all out from the start!’
Harley’s leg muscles swelled, and his body crouched like a beast of prey just before it struck.
The next instant—
Kwaang!
He was already right in front of the knight-class man.
“Ghk! How dare you!”
Black magic power surged thickly along the drawn sword.
Even under the sudden assault, he skillfully swung his weapon and knocked away Harley’s axe.
Kaaang—
“What the?!”
But that was his fatal mistake.
The moment his body staggered from the unexpected, tremendous brute force—
Slice!
The axe in Harley’s other hand swept past and struck his neck.
‘Carelessness is always one’s greatest enemy.’
Judging by the way he handled his weapon and the level of his black magic power, he was by no means someone who should have died this easily. But the fact that he had taken Harley for an ordinary warrior had hastened his death.
“Kahahah! Come at me all at once!”
Letting out a wild laugh, he charged at the remaining underlings.
After a short while had passed.
Harley was once again sprinting down the passage, his whole body spattered with blood.
‘The small fry aren’t worth paying much attention to. Are all the black mages farther inside?’
Just as he was steeling himself for the decisive battle with them—
His senses caught something rapidly approaching from underground.
“What trick is this now!”
He felt no killing intent, but there was no way something that could approach him so freely in the enemy’s stronghold would be friendly.
Just as he was about to swing his axe at once—
“Eek!”
A small girl popped up out of the ground.
A cute face that even her shabby clothes and the black shackles around her neck could not hide.
She was an elf girl with pointed ears, light green hair, and orange eyes, clutching some kind of tree branch in her arms.
And in that moment, Harley realized who this girl was.
“...Hahahahat! Well, this is troublesome!”
To hide his bewilderment, he deliberately laughed heartily and scratched his head.
“So, little lady. What’s your name?”
Still, to make certain, he confirmed it with her directly.
While trying to smile as gently as possible.
A muscular man she had met for the first time in a black mage den had abruptly asked her name, but the elf girl merely shrank back a little and obediently answered.
“Ce... Cecily... My name is Cecily.”
In the very heart of the Heaven-Defying Oath’s hideout.
It was the moment the High Elf candidate Cecily and the barbarian warrior Harley encountered each other.