Episode 032.
Inside the dark, sticky body of the monster, whatever it had been eating, the unpleasant sensation and stench stabbed at my nose.
“……”
How long had I been steeling myself?
Suddenly, I noticed something strange.
Chiiiiik─!
A putrid fluid close to deadly poison soaked my entire body, melting my skin.
Only…
Ding!
++
[You have entered an extremely dangerous contaminated area!]
[The effect of Passive: ‘Aura of Regeneration’ is amplified tenfold!]
[Skill: ‘Firm Oath’ has activated, increasing all status abnormality resistances by 95%.]
++
“…Is this for real?”
I swallowed a hollow laugh.
My armor and shoes had melted away in tatters, to the point that they were about to lose even their shape, but my body alone was perfectly fine.
No, this went beyond being perfectly fine.
It felt like being hit by a high-pressure shower. If anything, every time the putrid fluid stimulated my skin, I felt as though my body grew stronger than before.
Ding!
[Proficiency in Passive ‘Aura of Regeneration’ has increased.]
[Proficiency in Passive ‘Acid Resistance’ has increased by leaps and bounds.]
“……?”
This is way better than I expected, isn’t it?
Normally, the inside of a boss-class entity like this would be hell, with instant-death-level damage pouring in.
But the absurd class called “Hero of Recovery” had turned this place into an automatic proficiency farming ground.
I adjusted my grip on Varsha’s sword and stabbed again and again into the writhing stomach walls around me.
Chiiik─
With that sound, black blood sprayed up like a fountain.
“Huh?”
The moment the sword sank in deep,
++
[Critical Strike!!]
[You have landed an effective blow on a higher entity!]
[You have acquired Passive ‘Vital Point Exposure.’]
[You have acquired Passive ‘Brand of Weakness.’]
++
As I said before, that thing’s “Predation” skill can only fully absorb a target once the target is dead.
In other words, as long as I’m alive, Invium’s monster is nothing more than a punching bag.
Unable to digest me, unable to spit me out, it was fated to become my proficiency shuttle.
I could probably eat, sleep, and train in here for two or three months.
If I got really hungry, I could just tear off some of this bastard’s flesh and eat it.
“Prisia! Can you hear me?! Old man! Don’t just kill this thing! I’m going to live in here for a few months before I come out!”
Of course, there was no way that shout would be heard outside.
Ding!
Ding!
And so, after I had been happily swinging my sword and gorging myself on proficiency for quite some time,
Rumble rumble rumble─!!
The monster’s massive body suddenly began vibrating like mad.
It wasn’t a simple struggle.
This cold yet intense energy seeped all the way into its stomach.
“What?”
It was still immature,
but it was a sensation I truly, truly hadn’t felt in a long time.
It wasn’t a mere wave of mana.
A strike in which a martial artist manifests the will held within their sword—that was…
“Intent (意念)?”
Don’t tell me Prisia did this?
The possibility was low, but it wasn’t zero.
If she had awakened intent in such a short time, she would have become far stronger than me, who could barely use mana.
Admirably enough, it seemed she had broken through her limits and crossed the line in order to save me.
“……”
It was a shame, but as her master, I couldn’t just sit inside here and enjoy the benefits.
I, too, adjusted my grip on Varsha’s sword and focused on the blade.
As if responding to the sharp intent I could sense from outside, I swung toward the weakest point from within.
Kwaaaaaaaaang─!!
Under the sword strikes unleashed simultaneously from inside and outside, the monster’s body tore like a sheet of paper!
Along with a dazzling light,
I stepped forward as though being flung outside.
All around me, red plum blossoms scattered beautifully, and the terrible stench of decay had vanished without a trace, replaced by a sweet floral fragrance brushing past my nose.
“Tsk, what a shame.”
If I’d stayed just a little longer, I might have unlocked a higher Authority.
“Master… no…”
Just as I was sweeping back my wet hair, someone came running toward me like mad and leapt into my arms.
“Tanas!”
“Prisia?”
Clothes ruined and covered in ash, hands raw from burns,
yet she seemed to pay none of that any mind as she hugged my neck tightly enough to crush it.
Prisia looked straight at me with a radiant smile.
The tears gathered in her eyes flowed down her cheeks.
“……”
“I like you.”
“What?”
“I love you!”
Without giving me even a moment to answer her sudden declaration,
she rose onto her tiptoes and stole my lips.
“……!!”
My body stiffened in bewilderment.
At the edge of my lips, I tasted the sweetness of plum blossoms.
And as if proving just how much Prisia had burned herself away, a slightly charred plum blossom scent brushed the tip of my nose.
When the short yet intense kiss ended, she rubbed her face against my chest and whispered.
“…I’ll never let you go now. Don’t go anywhere.”
“……”
“Please…”
With those words, Prisia’s tension seemed to drain away, and she fell asleep right there in my arms.
Her blistered hands, her face pale as though she had drawn on her mana to its very limit—
when I gripped her hand tightly, my Authority manifested, and her wounds slowly began to heal.
“……”
There was a lot I wanted to say, but cleaning up came first.
Because it wasn’t over yet.
“Grrrrrr─.”
A dreadful breath leaked out from behind me.
*****************
The Kingdom of Ersha.
The air in the royal capital was heavy.
No—more precisely, perhaps Seria was the only one who felt it that way.
Seria gripped the window frame as though she might break it and looked down at the plaza.
The head of the Copy Demon that Helena Ronain had submitted as evidence,
and the overturned testimonies of the internal traitors they had bribed with money.
Those pieces of evidence had become bombs, mercilessly shaking the foundations of the royal family and the Order.
And Seria could not avoid that explosion either.
The proclamation of Tanas’s innocence.
[Notice: Restoration of Honor and Declaration Nullifying the False Charges Against Former Hero of Recovery Tanas]
That single scrap of paper posted in the middle of the plaza had driven Seria—no, the Order—into a deathtrap.
On top of that, what irritated her even more was the internal fracture.
“Seria, what are you going to do?”
“That’s right! I only did what you told me to!”
“You said we just had to sell out Tanas, didn’t you? I trusted your words and did that to poor Tanas…”
“I never wanted to do it!”
Voices belatedly trying to distance themselves—Rein, Arshe, Lurain.
The party members who had once coordinated their stories while making plans to send Tanas into the abyss were now pretending otherwise and cornering Seria.
Seria slowly turned her head and looked at them.
She was so dumbfounded that not even a hollow laugh came out.
‘…Are you people really human?’
She barely swallowed the curses that were about to burst out of her mouth.
When they bought dresses with the money Tanas earned, bought mana cores, and lived in luxury while stuffing themselves with the finest cuisine, they had been happy enough.
When they tormented and humiliated him as though venting their own anger, without even being told to, they had all laughed together.
And now that the situation had turned against them, they were trying to dump all the blame on her?
Of course,
Seria was no different, but her thoughts did not reach that far.
“My fault? Are you done talking? Lurain, wasn’t it you who sold Tanas’s magic items on the black market and lined your pockets? And Rein, when we framed him as a rapist, weren’t you the first one to rip your clothes and act the part?”
At Seria’s cold retort, the two of them instantly turned pale.
But then Arshe slammed the table and screamed.
“Even so, you were the ringleader! You said we were giving Tanas a trial to make him stronger! You said we had to trust in our bond! That’s what you said!”
“Th-that’s right!”
“I never wanted to hit Tanas!”
“We trusted you because you’re a saintess!”
“…Ha. So now you’re saying we should all die together?”
Seria pressed a hand to her forehead.
These ugly accomplices weren’t feeling sorry toward Tanas right now.
They were terrified of the aftermath, and of the collapse of the life they had enjoyed until now.
“You’d better choose your words carefully. If what we did gets exposed…”
It was right then.
Woooooong─!
A massive wave of mana spread out, strong enough to make every piece of furniture in the room shift slightly.
“Wh-what is it?”
“What’s going on…”
Seria and the girls instinctively turned their gazes toward the window.
At that moment, an attendant pounded on the door and shouted.
“Lady Seria! There is an order for you to come at once…”
As she walked down the corridor with the party members,
commotion broke out everywhere.
“Bring the High Priest here, quickly!”
“No, bring the Cardinal as well!”
“Inform His Holiness the Pontiff at once!”
“The Holy Knights are to seal off the plaza immediately!”
Even Seria and the others, who had been tearing one another down just moments before, followed the guide and ran out in front of the temple.
Through the crowds gathering from all around, the kingdom’s highest officials appeared one after another.
That day,
the sky over the continent was momentarily dyed a strange gold.
Whether in the United Kingdom, the Empire, or the Kingdom of Ersha,
at the heart of each nation’s Order, a single flower bud filled with mysterious light had bloomed.
Only then did it become clear that not only Seria’s group, but also the hero parties of , , and , who had been staying in the royal capital, were hurriedly making their way over.
Countless people held their breath as they stared in shock at the flower in the center of the Order, radiating divine power.
“C-could that be… the ‘Flower of Ananta’?”
“Wh-what? Why would the legendary flower known as the messenger of god bloom now?”
“Don’t tell me the Demon King has died?”
“The Hero of already?”
Before the questions could even be finished, the flower bloomed magnificently,
and soon a faint sound that made the air tremble rang out.
It was less a voice than a fresh wave engraving itself into the mind.
[Invium’s Nightmare has been annihilated in the Kingdom of Ersha─.]
“What? Did I hear that wrong?”
“Invium’s Nightmare!? I can’t believe such a calamity-class beast appeared in the kingdom to begin with…”
“And yet it has already been annihilated!?”
Arshe tilted her head and asked.
“Invium…? What’s that? I’ve never heard of it…”
Beside her, Dmitri, the Hero of , adjusted his glasses with a look of disgust and rebuked her.
“How ignorant! You don’t know of the atrocious monster that drove the Empire to the brink of destruction five hundred years ago? Ha! And you call yourself an agent of the Tyr Order…”
“……”
In any case,
the kingdom had received a declaration that a terrible calamity whose existence they had not even known of had been annihilated.
Everyone held their breath in their own way, waiting for the flower’s next words.
Thump, thump.
But Seria alone was trembling all over.
Because the sensation she had not felt since the day the goddess’s voice was cut off was coming back to life.
Instinctively, she could feel a strange flow.
Then the flower bud opened once more.
[─The savior is.]
Who could have stopped such a dreadful calamity?
As everyone’s eyes focused on it, the petals fluttered, and the final bud bloomed.
[Tanas─.]
“……!!”
In an instant, silence descended.
##