“Don’t let the ones in the front distract you!”
“Huh?!” Utata wheeled around...but there was nothing there.
However, the next moment, tentacles fell down on them from above. Just as it seemed like they would crush the party, a white flash blotted them out.
“《Infinity Detonation》!” Klem cast one of her many spells, the light of which was dazzling to behold. Her power was every bit as overwhelming as a real Demon Lord’s should be. After all, she was Krebskulm, the strongest of them all. And despite not being in her true form, she was still this powerful...
Alan picked up his sword and removed it from the grip of his old severed arm. With this, he’d regained his position as vanguard.
Klem was keeping watch for above and behind them, while Diablo was roasting the tentacles rushing in from their flanks. With Alan, Daisy, and Utata regaining their composure, they were able to stabilize their ranks again. So long as they remained calm, their fighting potential was high.
“So we’re supposed to follow these things back to their source, right?!” Alan shouted. “Let’s cut them down as we go!”
It was a difficult but certain way to get to the boss. They moved ahead gradually, cutting the tentacles down faster than they could regenerate...but they were being careless with respect to a certain attack they’d seen earlier. Diablo felt a sense of panic creep in.
—Don’t tell me they haven’t noticed.
“Alan!” Noah shouted. “There should be an enemy capable of ranged attacks! Watch out for any you might run into!”
“Oh, right!”
The flash in the darkness that gouged into Aira’s chest — some enemy had to have fired that attack.
But Diablo ended up raising his voice despite himself.
“No! You’re wrong!”
“What are you saying, you fools?!” Klem scolded Noah at the same time as Diablo spoke. “A tentacle fired that attack! Weren’t you looking?!”
“Huh?!”
Alan and Noah were shocked at this chiding. It attacked too quickly for them to see what had really happened. It was so sudden that by the time Diablo had noticed it, the attack had already reached Aira. The answer was fairly obvious once he thought about it.
—They’re tentacles! Of course they’d fire something out of their tips!
It was cliche.
The tentacles all around them parted open and unleashed beams of light. Instead of telling everyone else to be careful, Diablo cast a spell.
“《Prism Wall》!”
This formed a powerful barrier that successfully blocked off an attack from one direction, but there were still shots coming at them from everywhere else. The countless tentacles around them fired white, cloudy bullets at them — the same color as the nerve connection threads used to link a Magimatic Sol to its pilot’s consciousness.
Alan cut down the shots headed for him. So long as he remained focused, he could handle this. But he was a high-level warrior, and the rest of the party was not. He could hear screaming from the other members.
“Gyah?!”
“Nng!”
Blood spurted through the air.
“Captain, they got Utata and Daisy!” Alan called for help.
“U-Ugh...”
But Maximum was kneeling on the floor, his greatsword cracked and his body bloodied from having to shield Noah. Diablo had healing potions, so he could give one to Maximum, who would go on to heal Daisy and Utata...
But while that thought did cross his mind, he didn’t have the time or the presence of mind to actually do it. He had a flurry of attacks coming his way that he had to block.
—How long can they keep shooting us for?!
It seemed the Emperor intentionally went easy on them to lure them deeper into his lair. Daisy and Utata were too injured to move, and Alan was shielding them from any further shots, but his stamina was limited. There were only a few seconds left before Daisy’s enchantments would run out, and Maximum had his hands full defending Aira and Noah.
The attacks were gradually chipping away at their HP. More tentacles slithered in around them, increasing the rate of fire.
It was then that Klem counterattacked. She never was one to remain passive.
“This Demon Lord will fry you to a crisp! 《Thunder Storm》!”
This was a spell Krebskulm used once when Diablo fought her in her complete form. Countless bolts of lightning would sizzle through the air, electrocuting the enemy. However, if she were to blast away all the tentacles at once, more would emerge to attack them, but it would grant them the time they needed to heal or retreat.
While this was an appropriate decision, there was one thing Klem was overlooking. Diablo tried to shout a warning at her...but the rumbling of thunder blotted out his words.
“Some of them resist lightning!”
After fighting them for some time, Diablo realized each individual tentacle had its own unique elemental affinities and resistances. The tentacles all looked roughly the same, but each one must have been imbued with either earth, wind, fire, water, light or darkness.
Lightning element attacks were light spells with a fire attribute. They would deal double damage to tentacles with the wind or darkness attributes, but dealt reduced damage to any with the water attribute — meaning they would survive the spell.
Worse yet, using such a high-firepower spell meant the caster would have a longer cooldown after casting it. And if the enemy were to make use of that opening...
One thick tentacle extended toward Klem. Its tip was wide open, revealing three large fangs. It screeched as it lunged at her.
“You dare to try and eat this Demon Lord...?!”
But someone jumped to Klem’s rescue — the spear-wielding Fallen, Edelgard.
“Demon Lord!” she shouted as she gouged her spear into the fanged tentacle with a powerful blow.
An explosion boomed in Diablo’s ears. Edelgard’s martial art blasted the tentacle into fragments of flesh. It was a reckless attack that didn’t take defense in mind. The remaining tentacles spewed their bullets at Edelgard in concentrated fire.
“Agh?! Kh?! Ngaaah?!”
After taking a few direct hits, Edelgard was blown back. Her scaly skin cracked like pottery and fragments of her hard flesh flew through the air.
“Edelgard!” Klem screeched.
“This party...is gonna get wiped out,” Diablo whispered to himself with painful clarity, his heart sinking.
He’d slain many challengers in his days, so he’d seen this happen time and time again. The more members that fell off, the harder it became for a party to regain its footing.
Klem’s spell had destroyed all of the tentacles except for the water element ones, so Diablo fired an earth spell to sweep them away. But before he could do anything else, more were already extending toward them.
There was no breaking this deadlock. It felt like a foregone conclusion to him that they would wipe here.
But it was then that Noah seemed to make a decision. She raised her hands up to the air and chanted.
“《Grand Crash》!”
It was a spell Diablo didn’t know. Noah was a level 300 elemental sorcerer, and back when Diablo played the game, level 150 was the upper level limit any character could reach. Noah, however, played the game in a different time period. She then thrust her hands down to the ground and unleashed her high-level magic.
The floor, which seemed to have been made out of some magimatic material resembling concrete, cracked beneath them, and the stonework under Diablo’s feet disappeared. It was as if the floor was never there to begin with, like a fissure had been torn through the world itself. Noah and the rest of the party were now falling.
—Did she fumble the spell...?
Apparently not; this seemed to be exactly her intent. That was her only way of pulling everyone out of the death trap at once.
“Everyone, I give you an absolute order!” Noah shouted. “No matter what, don’t die!”
Maximum plummeted down, holding her and Aira in his arms. Alan, Daisy, and Utata were falling too...but they didn’t scream, or even respond.
—Are they still alive?!
Klem fell as well, holding onto Edelgard’s limp form.