—I wanna go home...
“This castle is massive; we don’t have time to go through it slowly,” Noah told Aira. “Do you know where the Emperor is?”
“Of course. I don’t want to waste any more time either. There’s a long trench ahead. If we go down there, we should reach the Emperor’s throne. And the distance shouldn’t be that—”
“Good, show us the way.”
“Over here!”
Aira led them unflinchingly through the branching corridors. Everything seemed to be going well. So well that it was boring.
Diablo thought that, after all his adventures with Rem, Shera, and the others, he’d gotten a bit more used to playing in a party. This made him expect he’d do a bit better this time around. But he wasn’t doing any better. It felt every bit as awkward as the times he tried to play with other players.
“Ugh, I’ve had enough,” Diablo sighed for what felt like the umpteenth time that day. “I’ll just keep going by myself...”
It was then that he saw something shine farther into the dark corridor. Diablo felt a chill go down his spine.
“Huh?!”
Then he heard a blunt noise and the sound of tearing flesh. One of the party members collapsed loudly. It was the Kobold girl, Aira, crimson blood gushing from her chest.
“Kah, nngah?!” she gargled.
Alan, Daisy, Utata, and Noah stood shocked. Maximum moved ahead to guard Noah from any danger while Edelgard jumped ahead of Klem to protect her.
You idiots!
Diablo chose a different course of action.
“《Diamond Dust》!”
Countless blocks of ice whizzed through the corridor, rushing into the darkness like a barrage of frozen knives. What enemy was he up against? What kind of attack did they launch? Diablo didn’t know, but it was clear he was up against a high-level threat. He didn’t have time to investigate and think it over.
—What good would panicking and freezing up do?!
Alan was the first to come to. He stood up with his sword at the ready, his eyes burning with anger.
“You did it now, you bastards!”
He rushed forward, his body enveloped with a shining aura. A charge-type martial art that used his stamina points — in other words, an Outglow. It looked reckless at first, but a vanguard’s job was to tank the enemy’s attacks. He was effectively playing by the book.
Diablo clicked his tongue, though.
We wouldn’t be seeing weak enemies this late into the game, would we?
If this were the MMORPG, this was the time a strong enemy would pop out — probably one too strong for Alan to handle on his own. And this world wasn’t a game; it was cold, hard reality. It didn’t have to conform to genre conventions.
This is a dangerous opponent!
The light of Alan’s martial art dispelled the darkness, revealing a large wall of red, writhing flesh.
—Is this some kind of serpent? A worm? No...
Diablo recognized this, but not from the game. It was the same thing that filled the Magimatic Sol’s cockpit. The tentacles.
—That’s the Emperor!
Had he shouted it, would it have changed what happened next?
“Gaaah?!” Alan screamed as his right arm went flying into the air.
The floor was dyed red with blood. Daisy screamed and started firing her magi-gun haphazardly. Her shots produced a few flashy explosions...but they didn’t seem to deal any damage to the tentacles.
Calm down! Diablo thought angrily. Bullets on that level wouldn’t even faze it! Can’t you tell he has magic resistance?!
The Diamond Dust spell he’d sent earlier didn’t seem to deal any damage to it either. In other words, spells below level 70 wouldn’t work on it. This was something Diablo expected, though. The Shadow they faced earlier and the Magimatic Sols all had considerable magic resistance.
—If I’m going to get enough firepower to burn the Emperor’s tentacles away... I’ll need time to charge my spell.
Letting Alan and the others die would buy him that time. But letting them die would mean...
“Tch!” Diablo grit his teeth. “This is why I can’t stand fighting in parties!”
Diablo charged the enemy. He could use contact-based spells without having to chant and charge. The number of tentacles reaching out from the darkness was...progressively growing. A few of them were reduced to piles of flesh and littered the ground, likely the result of Alan’s slash.
Alan was now kneeling on the ground, his arm missing. Countless tentacles extended toward him, like the gigantic wall of flesh was closing in on him.
“Goddammit!” Alan thrust out his left fist.
His fist shone, knocking the tentacles away. But knocking a few of them away didn’t really make much of a difference. More reached out from the darkness, as if to compensate for the ones that were destroyed. It looked like they might envelop him entirely.
“Aaaaah?!” he shouted.
—Damn brat.
His stats were high, but he had zero understanding of strategy. Didn’t he know how to fight those kinds of enemies? Diablo quickly closed the distance between them using 《Sword Smite Ⅲ》 and thrust Tenma’s Staff at the tentacles.
“《Matoi Izuna》!”
The wall of tentacles let out a voiceless howl, shuddering.
Matoi Izuna was a spell that surged electricity through its target. It had the significant limitation of requiring that the caster touch the target directly, but its firepower was considerable. And as Diablo had demonstrated over the course of his many adventures, in situations where there were multiple enemies, the spell could spread to other enemies in a group through physical contact. On top of that, the spell rattled the enemy from within, yielding a passive, continual damage effect that could induce paralysis.
A sorcerer risking physical contact with an enemy was a gamble that could very well cost one their life. But this spell’s effects were potent and powerful enough to warrant using it.
Some of the tentacles were shredded to bits and crumbled to the ground. While the enemy remained stunned, Alan fell back to the rest of the group. It seemed he wasn’t stupid enough to continue fighting recklessly.
†
“Captain, it’s crazy strong!” Alan fell back, clutching his wounded shoulder.
“You were careless, you idiot!” Maximum shouted, landing an iron fist on Alan’s head.
“Ngh!” The argent-haired Dwarf fell face-first on the floor.
For a moment, Diablo had to wonder if that punch finished him off...but Alan soon hopped back to his feet with a smile.
“That hit the spot!”
Much to Diablo’s surprise, Alan’s right arm was completely whole and healed. His gauntlet was crushed and he’d lost his sword, but his body was back to normal.
—Is Maximum a Healer?! He looks more like a strength-based warrior...!
The fact that he could restore a missing limb put him on the same level as the High Priest. Aira was standing next to them, and the last time he saw her, she was gushing blood from her chest. It looked like a fatal injury, but now she was cradled in Noah’s arms, awfully pale but still alive.
“Ugh... I’m sorry...” she moaned. “I didn’t think the Emperor’s grasp reached this place too...”
“Would burning those tentacles defeat the Emperor?” Noah asked her.
Aira shook her head.
“That’s just a detached part of the Emperor, like the ones that fill the Magimatic Sols. You can destroy a detachment, but it won’t deal any damage to the real thing.”
“...And it’s still this strong,” Noah muttered bitterly.
“But a detached tentacle shouldn’t have that much individual power,” Aira added. “That means it should lead us directly to the Emperor.”
“It’s risky, but we’ll have to act on that,” Noah nodded pensively.
But they weren’t in a position where they could take their time. Matoi Izuna had turned most of the tentacles into charred flesh, but there were more and more tendrils extending from the darkness. Diablo felt like he was plunging into a den of snakes.
“《Flare Burst》! 《Rock Cannon》!”
Diablo shot the fleshy tentacles extending toward him with high-firepower spells, but they kept coming out faster than he could destroy them. Daisy and Utata drew back, but Diablo snapped at them.