Tama threw a kunai, blocking the assassin’s swing—then used a wind technique to blast the assassin into the air.
“Hah!”
Unable to defend itself, Lulu’s shot pierced its brow.
“Nice assiiiist!”
Tama waved at Lulu, then vanished into her Shadow.
“We’ve closed off the labyrinth behind us. Nana, you can join the fray.”
“Mm, Genomos.”
At Mia’s command, her pseudo-earth spirit put up some sturdy barricades.
“I shall sally forth, I cry!”
The thrusters on Nana’s back fired, and she shot at the king far faster than she usually could.
The beast girls had already eliminated his minions, and Arisa and Lulu had felled anyone who slipped past them.
BZUUMZOOOO!
The king howled, and multiple layers of barrier armor appeared around him—almost like the demon Golden Boar Lord. His specter took on a dark red glow. He was level 60—he had plenty of tricks in his bag.
“‘Helix Spear Attack—Pile On.’”
The king had stopped moving, and Liza hit it with a “Spear” combo. The king blocked several “Thrusts” with the specter, and the rest merely succeeded in punching through the barriers.
“Tankier than I thought. Oh well.”
Liza took a step back, putting the Magic Cricket Spear in her golden armor’s Storage.
This must have looked like an opening—the king swung his aura-laced specter like a club, aiming for Liza—but Tama’s Shadow Bind and Lulu’s sniping blocked the blow.
“Your feet are open, sir!”
Pochi prepared for a Quick strike, aiming for the king’s Achilles tendon.
BZUMZO!
It let out a roar and stomped the ground, generating iron walls that protected its feet.
“Oopsie-daisy, sir!”
With a metallic screech, Pochi’s Holy Sword slid across the top of the iron wall.
That was clearly not ordinary iron. If it had been, no matter how thick it was, Pochi’s blow would have sliced through it.
The king’s specter swung toward her back.
“Falliiiiinx!”
Tama popped out of her shadow, using the disposable shield item, Phalanx, to stop the king’s blow.
“‘Shield Bash’ to ‘Blast Fort,’ I announce.”
With the king’s arm fully down, Nana hit his shoulder with her shield, thrusters fully engaged, then shattered his barriers with her special move.
“Not yet.”
“Yes, Mia! ‘Blast Armor Rush,’ I announce!”
The barriers had cracked, so Nana pushed through with her special move.
“I got thiiiis? ‘Vorpal Faaang’!”
Tama slipped through the crack Nana made, her special move driving two swords home.
This team play shattered the king’s barriers like so much glass.
BZUUMZOOOO!
“Not happening!”
The king howled and tried to regenerate the barriers, but a shot from Lulu’s Fireburst Gun hit the source of them.
“Nice, Lulu!” Arisa cried, and hit the king’s face with a Fire spell to distract it.
“‘Blink—Vanquish Strike,’ sir!”
The king’s belly was wide open, so Pochi shot in like a bullet.
BZUMZZZO!
“Yikes, it’s stuck, sir!”
Pochi’s Holy Sword was in to the hilt, but the king crunched its abs and wouldn’t let her retrieve it.
BZUUMZOOOO!
It also put up several more barriers, surrounding her.
Nana smashed through these just as she had a moment before, but failed to handle all of them. Arisa backed this with Space Magic, but that still left a single barrier between the king and Pochi and the rest of us.
“Pochi, look out!”
The king dropped the specter, trying to crush her between its hands.
“Don’t worry, be happyyyy!”
Tama’s Shadow Bind snagged its arms—but it was already up to speed, and she didn’t quite manage to stop them both.
But that proved more than enough.
After all
“‘Lightspeed—Draco Buster’!”
Moving at a speed beyond “Blink,” Liza’s “Thrust” punched through the barriers and the king’s chest.
Dragon fangs bit through everything, and her dragon spear with a special move was insanely powerful.
BZUUMZOOOO!
Even with a spear through its heart, the fight hadn’t left the king’s eyes.
It shifted targets to Liza and went for the pincer move, both hands coated in that dark red aura.
Liza’s eyes caught it, and without flinching, she used her final call.
“‘Peak—Spellblade Blaster.’”
An instant later, the king swelled from within, countless Spellblades tearing their way out of him and shredding his body.
BZUMZZZO!
His aura-laced claws reached for Liza’s eyes—and his knees crumbled.
“You were a powerful foe.”
BZUMZO…
As if in answer to her words, it died—with a satisfied look on its face.
“Even a monster carries itself like a king,” Arisa said.
“Indeed it did,” Liza agreed, then turned to face me. “Master, if I may make a request—”
“Bury it properly, rather than turning it into materials?”
“If it’s not too much to ask.”
“Of course it’s not too much, Liza.”
I used Magic Hand to seat the king’s corpse on the throne, and I asked Arisa to give it a proper funeral pyre.
We all watched in silence, and as we started to gather the loot, Tama said, “Secret passaaage?”
She tapped the wall with her foot—and it moved aside, revealing a secret staircase behind the throne.
“What’s waiting for us down there?”
“Lots of treasure, sir!”
“Hidden boss.”
Everyone shared their theories as we headed down.
According to my map, this connected to the depths below the castle, and there was a level-66 Taurus queen waiting. Mia’s guess was on the money.
“Fooog?”
“White billows.”
“There’s a big Mrs. Cow behind it, sir!”
“Cows can sit like pandas, but that doesn’t make them cute.”
The Taurus king had been nearly six yards tall, but the Taurus queen was gigantic, well over thirty yards tall.
“Not that large a room, so let’s make this quick,” Arisa said, patting Lulu’s shoulder.
“Sorry, Arisa. In a room this size, the ricochet on an Acceleration Gun could be scary.”
“Oh, right, that happens. My Fire spells would crisp it right up. Mia, you wanna go?”
“Mm, got it. …”
Mia began a Spirit Magic chant.
That was calling out Behemoth. Ending with a kaiju fight? Apparently not. The queen sensed the rising mana and opened her eyes, turning to face us.
BZUUUUMZO.
She’d used a minion “Summon” skill, but the king had already summoned everything—nothing happened.
“She spotted us.”
“So it seems. We’ll have to buy time for Mia’s incantation.”
“Aye-aye!”
The beast girls all darted off.
The queen had been looking baffled, but when she saw them coming, she pulled six arms out, brandishing them high.
BZUUUUMZO!
“Look out! She’s got an Item Box!”
Arisa was right—she was pulling giant weapons out of her Item Box, arming each of her six arms.
“Huge! Girls! Brace yourselves!” Arisa shrieked—and the queen started flailing wildly.
The weapons were massive boulders or lumps of bone—she was too far away to reach the girls directly, but they cracked the walls and floors, sending tons of rubble flying through the air.
A blow to the face, impossible to dodge—but hardly their first time seeing the like.
“Deracinator!”
“Ninpo, Shadow Aaaarts!”
Arisa’s Space Magic blocked the barrage, and Tama created a Shadow shelter for the front line to huddle in.
Projectiles reached the back line, but Lulu used a Phalanx to block them.
The dust hid us both from each other.
BZUUUUMZO!
“…… Create Behemoth Majuu Ou Souzou.”
The queen’s howl and Mia’s cast overlapped.
“Go.”
PUWAOOOOWWNNN!!
The behemoth’s powerful roar shook the room, and it charged through the dust at the queen.
The air churned, and through the dust I caught a glimpse of the queen, her barriers shattered, buried in the wall beyond.
“Hot damn, that behemoth is mighty!” Arisa yelped.
The dust made it hard to see, but it seemed to have the upper hand.
In time, the dust died down, and we could see again.
PUWAOOOOWWNNN!!
Her limbs—three arms and two legs on either side for a total of ten—shattered, and the behemoth was standing over the queen, kicking her triumphantly.
“Behemoth, finish her.”
PUWAOOOOWWNNN!!
At Mia’s cry, the behemoth’s horns were wreathed in purple lightning.
And just as those horns pierced the queen—
“It vanished?!”
The queen had disappeared, the dust in the air flowing in the space she’d occupied.
“Like your Teleportation, Arisa.”
“Master, can you tell?”
“At the least, it’s not anywhere connected to the castle.”
I’d thought this would be over quick, so I hadn’t placed a marker on it.
“The queen didn’t have any ‘Teleport’ skills, right?” Arisa asked.
“Not that I could see.” I nodded. “That seemed less like her choice than like someone else snatched her away. Does Space Magic tell us anything?”
“Uh…doesn’t seem like there’s any traces that’ll let us track her,” she said, using her magic to investigate.
“Weeeird.”
“Is it over, sir?”
Tama popped out of her Shadow.
“Whew…how is that not bothering you?”
“That space has a negative impact on my calculation circuits, I report.”
Liza and Nana both looked rather ill.
Tama’s Shadow was a lot like the Shadow Jail made with Zena’s Shadow Magic; if you didn’t have an aptitude for it, it gave you something rather like motion sickness.
“Oh,” Arisa muttered. She looked up at me. “Might be the DM’s handiwork.”
“The DM? Oh, the dungeonmaster?”
She elaborated, saying the traces were a lot like the spatial distortions found around the Jungle Labyrinth.
Made sense—anyone capable of “Warping” space over the entire dungeon could also teleport monsters under its control around.
“Not that I have any way of proving it.”
“That’s fine. Since it abdicated the fight, victory is still ours.”
My party all cheered.
“Treasure rooooom!”
Tama led us through a crack in the wall to a gymnasium-sized space with treasure chests everywhere.
Standard-issue precious metals but also Magic Items and potions—similar to what we found when we beat the floormaster in Celivera Labyrinth.
The magic gear included lots of weapons and armor, but it was mostly Taurus size; 90 percent of the human-size equipment was cursed.
No matter how high the attack value was, if it made you go insane, we didn’t need it.
We could sell some of this stuff off in the fortress city, but the bad-news stuff was getting dropped straight in my Sealed folder forever.
“Master, I found a scroll!”
I was there so quickly, I’d almost teleported.
“Thanks, Lulu.”
I took it from her and looked closely and discovered it was a Plating scroll.
This was the first we’d seen drop, but apparently the Jungle Labyrinth did offer scrolls.
I used the scroll, adding it to my menu’s spell list, then took out a random iron sword and a silver ingot and tried Plating it.
“That came out beautifully.”
I could change the amount of silver used at will, and that changed how thick the Plating was.
A pretty handy spell.