Chapter 181

“Limit-Breaking Cleave!!!” It was Haage who first met the enemy with his sword. However, by all appearances, the trajectory and length of the blade he swung weren’t enough to turn back the dragon’s attack. Yet the space past the tip of Haage’s sword—where there should have only been empty air—clashed with the dragon’s left wing. The invisible force ground against the appendage, magnificently diverting the creature’s path to protect Leonhardt’s forces from a direct hit. “Phew, that thing really is tough! A real blade wouldn’t stand a chance!” This sword technique was the source of Haage’s alias, Limit Breaker. It allowed the guildmaster to go beyond the length of the weapon he held to unleash an attack. The ability worked with any weapon; the real advantage was how the difference between the observable length of the weapon and that of the actual range made it difficult for opponents to guard themselves. By his own admission, even the man who wielded the technique didn’t really know whether this was due to magical power or a combination of spells. Haage seemed content to settle what it was with three words: “It’s fighting spirit!” In truth, the skill’s strength and size did actually vary based on the intensity of his fighting spirit when he used it, so he wasn’t necessarily wrong. After Haage’s strike to its left wing, the monster raised its right faster than Haage could flash a thumbs-up. This membrane was still intact, and the dragon attacked Leonhardt and the others with the wing itself along with a surge of wind it gathered via magic. Despite the fearsome attack, Sieg didn’t overlook this opening. The right wing caught enough air pressure beneath it that the dragon could have taken flight if both wings were intact, but Sieg’s arrow tore straight through it. Then, to make matters worse, a single spear left another hole in the membrane. “Rising Dragon Spear!” Struck by Dick’s spear and Sieg’s arrows, the red dragon had finally lost the power of flight. “Rrraaaaaah!” The earth-shaking roar assailing the subjugation force was anger made tangible, and the stratum started to shake as if in answer. Everyone plunged their weapons into the ground to endure the violent tremors. The volcano had started to move. The lava surged upward with loud booms, while the temperatures around it grew even hotter. The soldiers, despite their alchemical protection, felt the searing heat on their skin. Worst of all, breathing became more difficult than ever as clouds of noxious gasses issued from the molten rock, diluting the surrounding oxygen. The masks were only barely sustaining them. Rrrrrrrrumble, rrrrrrrrumble. The footsteps of the volcano reverberated in the distance. Was it moving toward the dragon and the invaders? Eight legs, visible in the distance, lumbered forward like a turtle with the bizarre monster on its back. The small volcano the size of a hill, bearing nothing resembling a head, spouted ash and smoke from its top as it advanced slowly but steadily. Clinging to the thing’s side were five soldiers, with Weishardt leading them. “Eat this!” “Huuu-ra!” Four unit captains drove giant steel piles one after another into the side of the living mountain at a point about a third of the way down from its summit. The weight of the piles and the collective skill of the soldiers driving them in served as a testament to their strength. “Why’re we pretending to be combat engineers?” “Can’t do nothin’ about it. This is also revenge for that young guy. Dick assigned this to us.” “Besides, he’s terrible at magic.” “When we get back safe, let’s have a round of drinks on Dick’s coin!” After driving in all the piles they’d been able to carry, the four captains dashed toward the crater. There, Weishardt and the fifth captain, a magic specialist, were busy crafting a large-scale spell together. “We’ll help!” The four captains who joined up with them also poured in magical power to assist. The technique they were building gathered together a large mass of a certain something this stratum was full of. No matter how many piles they shoved in, the Walking Mountain of Fire seemed unbothered and kept walking. As if building up energy for an eruption, it simply absorbed the lava at its feet and continued its slow, thundering march toward the red dragon. It was evident to all that their party would need something of a suitable mass to defeat this stratum boss. Rrrrrrrrumble, rrrrrrrrumble. The Walking Mountain of Fire shook the earth with each step. The group was only going to get one shot at defeating it, and they were going to need more time. 05 One could harvest expensive materials from dragons. In the case of a high-ranking dragon, this was not limited to just its leather and fangs. All sorts of parts, ranging from a single scale to a tiny drop of blood, were valuable and could be used to make highly effective medicines. This was true even for materials taken from the bodies of dead dragons. Why would one assume a living, moving dragon was weak after merely losing its wings? Perhaps a spurt of lava had helped push it back up onto its feet, as the red dragon now stood on its two hind legs. Enraged, the crimson monster thrashed about with its powerful tail. The only ones able to dodge were the Lightning Empress Elmera, whose physical abilities had been bolstered through electrical power, and Voyd. Haage was in the tail’s trajectory and avoided a direct hit by using his Limit-Breaking Cleave, but he was still blown about ten meters away. Likewise, Dick timed his Dragon Spear Attack to coincide with the moment the dragon’s tail collided with him, reducing the impact enough to withstand. Though perhaps withstand wasn’t the right word. Haage had taken a weighty blow, and blood trickled from his mouth. Likewise, although Dick successfully negated the attack’s impact, both of his arms were bent in unnatural directions from ramming his spear into the oncoming blow. Even with such wounds, they were probably very lucky simply by the fact that neither had fallen and met their immediate end in a pit of lava. Leonhardt, who had also used his sword to avert the attack, was knocked toward a lava pool, and Sieg rushed over to catch him, just barely arriving in time. Well, catching him was perhaps a bit optimistic. Leonhardt was a large man, too large for Sieg to catch on a mount while keeping his own momentum, and in the process, they very nearly crashed into the lava pool together. “Grarar!” The reason the two only ended up with some fractures and burns was because the salamander slid between Sieg and the lava hardening the molten rock around them. “You saved me.” “No, someone else came to my rescue as well.” “Grar!” The two smiled ruefully at the salamander, who seemed to say, “Don’t worry about it!” Even in the face of such a powerful enemy, Sieg and Leonhardt still seemed hopeful of victory. “Just to be sure, let’s use Ice Spirit’s Protection. It’s coming again.” “Yes, sir.” The two used special-grade heal potions and Ice Spirit’s Protection, both of which they had plenty of, and immediately returned to the battlefront. Both Dick’s arms and Haage’s internal organs had been severely damaged but recovered in an instant, thanks to the special-grade heal potions. Everyone who would have otherwise been out of commission was able to resume the fight. The crushed insects were beginning to move again, and the discontented dragon opened its jaws and breathed an inferno to reduce the defiant creatures to nothing. “Hollow Rift.” Yet even such absolute firepower was swallowed by the rift that expanded in front of Voyd. The flames were consumed without so much as singing a hair. “Groooooooar!” The dragon seemed to shift its focus. If it couldn’t reduce its opponents to cinders, it would just eat them. Thankfully, the enormous maw aiming for Voyd never reached him because Hollow Rift—the mosaic-like space where tiny fragments of light and darkness were at odds—had thwarted it. The red dragon loudly gnashed its teeth. Elmera fired her lightning at its head, and Sieg fired his arrow at the monster’s left eye. The flash of lightning slowed the dragon’s reactions for a split second, and Sieg’s arrow found its mark with exquisite accuracy. When the red dragon threw its head back in pain, Leonhardt, Dick, and Haage charged with their weapons and pierced its throat and stomach in rapid succession. The gargantuan monster tried to shake them all off with its tail. Some avoided it, while others who flew back and coughed up blood returned moments later. The red dragon’s breath was extinguished, and its left was eye crushed. Its body was weakening more by the second. What was the dragon thinking as the storm of attacks bound it to the earth? Did it seek help, seek hope from the slowly approaching Walking Mountain of Fire? At that same moment, the mountain the red dragon was supposed to be protecting was similarly nearing its final moments, right before its guardian’s eyes. “It’s done. Now!” As Weishardt gave the signal, the block of ice they had gathered and formed with a large quantity of magical power was dropped. The enormous block was just ice magic. To be exact, only the surface was frozen; the inside remained water. The mass of liquid encased in a thin frozen layer was constructed by gathering steam from the water that had been steadily leaking down from the fifty-fourth stratum two levels above, the stratum of sea caverns. The size of the block was unbelievable. At Weishardt’s signal, the unit captains retreated all at once, and behind them, the enormous block of ice slowly fell toward the caldera. The volume of water might have been a full third of the size of the entire mountain. Volcanos are known to suffer tremendous explosions when water vapor builds up inside them. The degree of the blast is said to be determined by the ratio of water to lava. According to volcanologists in the imperial capital, the most violent explosions came a volume of water that was 30 percent of the lava’s volume. That was exactly the proportion that Weishardt’s group had used. To those present, the ensuing sound was difficult to describe. Their eardrums had already ruptured from the thunderous roar of the explosion that swept over the area, and the only thing they had to go on was the tactile, the impact of the small rocks that hurtled at them along with the searing, steaming wind. The incursion had driven piles into one side of the Walking Mountain of Fire specifically to make sure the force of the explosion would release on the side opposite Leonhardt’s group. Their plan had worked, but the soldiers had still been too close when it had gone off. Even just the blast that had erupted from the caldera was enough to put the nearby people in danger. Although one unit captain, a shield knight, extended his skill to protect the lightly armored Weishardt and the accompanying mage, they were all blown clear off their perches. Their Ice Spirit’s Protection potions had long since worn off, and each suffered serious burns beneath their armor. The other unit captains, too, were thrown to the ground and lay completely motionless. “Hang in there! You’re still breathing, right?!” Weishardt and the mage could only barely move their bodies. Heedless of their own broken limbs, they immediately used special-grade heal potions and Ice Spirit’s Protection to restore the other soldiers, starting with the one with the most serious injuries, the shield knight. “Ugh, phew. That was the most painful thing I’ve ever felt in my life.” “If you can complain, then you’ll be all right. What of the volcano?!” “How should I know?” The endless smoke and ash rising from the walking mountain made it impossible to see anything but what was immediately in front of them. Some of the soldiers spied a distant glow of red and thought it might be lava spilling from the collapsed mountain. However, they could no longer feel the tremors from the volcano’s earth-shaking gait. “Groooooooar!” The howl of the red dragon cut through the hazy air. It sounded mournful and furious. “The volcano has fallen. Let’s return to my brother!” Without knowing exactly why, Weishardt was almost certain that the dragon’s roar signaled the death of the volcano. The explosion was severe enough to cause devastating damage to Weishardt’s group, but Leonhardt’s hardly suffered thanks to the dragon between them and the Walking Mountain of Fire. It blew away Sieg, who had distanced himself from the dragon to use his bow, and once again, the salamander saved him right before he fell into a pool of lava. Thankfully, the injuries weren’t serious enough to require special-grade heal potions. After having seen the thing it was sworn to protect fall before its eyes, the red dragon appeared dumbfounded for a moment. “Groooooooar!” Did the mighty monster howl with anger or grief? “I’m sorry.” And why did an apology slip from Leonhardt’s mouth? The dragon had briefly lowered its guard, and Leonhardt wasn’t about to miss that chance. He lunged at its chest, charged his sword with all the magical power he possessed, and pierced the dragon’s heart. The steam and ash that erupted from the volcano cast the entirety of the Labyrinth’s fifty-sixth stratum in pure white. Amid the thick murk in the air, the light emitted from the lava pools reflected off the floating motes of ash, a sight both dreadful and beautiful. None of them could see beyond an arm’s length in the world of white, and the low visibility didn’t feel confined to this stratum of the Labyrinth alone. Rather, it seemed to be a mist that carried on all the way to the world of the dead. In that alabaster realm, the dark, towering silhouette of the red dragon crashed to the earth, never to move again. “Heyyy!” “Everyone’s here. Are you all right?!” Calling out in concord, one figure, then another emerged from within the cloudy world. The people who gathered under Leonhardt numbered twelve in all. Everyone had managed to return alive. At the joy of being alive and seeing one another again, they bumped fists, clapped shoulders, and congratulated each other on a good fight. No joy came from the kill, however. Perhaps their sense of accomplishment in that feat had been soured by the mournful cry of the dragon when it lost its companion. The hunters owed their lives to a nearly endless list of fortuitous circumstances. They had started with skillfully luring the monster and impeding its left wing, then downing it with Heavenbolt. If the dragon’s left eye hadn’t been pierced, Leonhardt probably wouldn’t have been able to make an attack on its chest, even if the great fiend had dropped its guard when the volcano fell. Had they not been able to so narrowly avoid the monster’s attacks, the adventurers would have met their end in a single strike. Maintaining pressure on the dragon and rapidly wounding it had proved critical, too. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to bring the monster to its knees, and Leonhardt’s sword wouldn’t have reached its heart. There was no mistaking that this victory was one that could have only been accomplished together. Yet even with their many triumphs, Leonhardt and the others who heard the red dragon’s howl were overcome with a feeling that today, they’d protected what they loved, but the dragon had been unable to do the same. Ceaseless rains of ash in the Labyrinth’s fifty-sixth stratum were like the voiceless death cry of the volcano and cast the scenery in grays and whites from the stratum stairs to the middle of the cavern. “Rarar.” They didn’t know how on earth it could see in such poor visibility, but under the salamander’s guidance, the group finally managed to reach the stairs leading back up. It seemed that searching for the stairs to the next stratum, however, would have to wait until the ash settled. “Let’s withdraw for today.” As everyone began to ascend the stairs on Leonhardt’s order, Sieg, who brought up the rear, found himself being licked on the right cheek by the salamander. “Rar!” With that last utterance, the spirit burst into flames and returned home. Its magical power had finally been expended. “That creature was a great help.” Leonhardt turned his head at the sound and expressed his appreciation. “You’re right.” It wasn’t simply that it had successfully lured the red dragon. The salamander had saved members of the incursion countless times when they were about to fall into a lava pool. The salamander—and Mariela—had protected all of them. That Walking Mountain of Fire was coming straight this way. Could it have been trying to protect the red dragon…? Sieg lightly shook his head as if to shake off the thought itself. Even if that were true, there was little choice about what needed to be done. If they didn’t kill the boss of the Labyrinth that awaited them on the deepest level, there was no future in which Sieg or the others could survive in this land. Simply sitting and waiting idly for the day they’d be eaten wasn’t an option. By the time the party returned to the Labyrinth Suppression Forces’ base after climbing the stratum stairs, using a Teleportation Circle, and traveling through the underground Aqueduct, the sun hung high in the sky, and it was well past noon. After washing off the ash that caked their bodies at the base’s watering hole, followed by medical examinations from Nierenberg, the exhausted dragon slayers were finally permitted to go home. Those who had worn masks to protect against the volcanic gases hadn’t inhaled the cinders, but some unfortunate ones had removed theirs to drink potions and inhaled a large quantity of the white powder. They needed a bit of time to be treated. The shield knight’s gait was a bit off, and his legs appeared to be crooked. Nierenberg took him away, saying with a smile, “Do you intend to leave them like that? I’ll heal them right away.” As he was ushered off, the knight seemed even more sorrowful than he had before they challenged the red dragon. Mariela, Amber, and Freyja—the ones who’d seen the party off—awaited the warriors’ return in a room of the base that had been prepared in lieu of a proper waiting room. Apparently, the Forces had very kindly prepared the room and offered it to the three women. “Welcome back! Sieg, are you hurt at all? Here’s your eye patch.” “Thanks. I only made it back because of you, Mariela.” “Good jooob. Sieg, you haven’t eaten yet, right? Let’s go to the Yagu Drawbridge Pavilion for some fooood.” Freyja’s involvement had soured the mood a little, though that was nothing unusual. Next to Sieg and Mariela, Dick and Amber shared the joy of Dick’s safe return with a discreet distance between them. The two were adults and newlyweds, so there was no need for them to hesitate to be all lovey-dovey in front of others. Amber seemed to be in the “no public flirting” camp, however. “Anyway, let’s have lunch at the Yagu Drawbridge Pavilion! Sieg, your group should come, too!” Dick probably wasn’t in the mood to return to work. In truth, he wanted to go to the pavilion with Amber. Perhaps Dick thought she would turn him down, though, as he instead proposed everyone go together. Before they all left the base to get some much-needed food, Voyd and Elmera Seele passed them. “Oh, we’re off.” “Good job today, everyone.” The pair passed by with very simple farewells. Per usual, Elmera had her hair tied up and wore her glasses. Similarly, Voyd wore glasses and had a calm look on his face, but the couple’s arms were linked, and they happily stuck close together with no regard for what the others might think. “Say, darling. Let’s go on a date before the children get home.” “That sounds nice. There happens to be a restaurant I’ve been wanting to go to with you.” It had been obvious since that time they’d eaten fried prawns at Sunlight’s Canopy, but Mr. and Mrs. Seele had no qualms about public flirting. Dick, seeing how close the couple was, put his left hand on Amber’s lower back and glanced at her imploringly, but she took an extra half-step away from him and urged, “Well, shall we go?” As she watched the newlyweds, Mariela took Sieg’s hand in her right and Freyja’s in her left and followed the couple. Together, the five departed for the Yagu Drawbridge Pavilion. “Captain! I got to A Rank! It might be indirect, but fighting the red dragon would be vengeance for Lynx! I’d like to join you!” Trapped by a chance encounter with Edgan, Captain Dick couldn’t bring himself to tell the eager man that his quarry had already been defeated. Instead, Dick averted his eyes with an uncomfortable expression. Freyja was about to burst out laughing, while Sieg had clearly forgotten that Edgan had reached A Rank at all; Mariela took both of them and inconspicuously made an escape from the Yagu Drawbridge Pavilion. Even though he missed lunch, the unchanged hustle and bustle of the Labyrinth City made it clear to Sieg that the battle with the red dragon had been worth it.