In terms of appearance, the armor Tessius was wearing looked less like the berserk bestial Zanaffar and more like the magical Zenafa Armor that transformed into a white giant. But a key thing both versions had in common? Attack spells didn’t work on them.
So, yeah. This was a very bad matchup for a sorcerer like me. After all, even the Dragon Slave I’d unleashed minutes earlier hadn’t made a dent on the thing. We were down the Sword of Light, which had slain the Zanaffar of legend, and I didn’t even have access to the spell I’d used to defeat its rampaging cousin from a few years back.
It was all the more reason to keep bluffing. Showing confidence despite knowing how powerful Tessius was might make him think I had an actual countermeasure in mind. And, as expected...
“How do you know about the Zanaffar?! And... what’s a Zenafa Armor?” Tessius asked cautiously.
Aha... So he had to be wearing something based on the incomplete version.
“Good question! Oh, just to warn you, if that’s the Zanaffar I know, it’s gonna be eating you pretty soon.” I decided to hit him with a dose of the facts. The Zanaffar we’d fought before consumed its host to facilitate its growth into a ruthless, intelligent beast. But...
“Ahh,” Tessius said casually. “When it gains its own will and starts to corrupt the wearer, you mean? We have a talented scholar among us who detected that issue and resolved it in the production stage. Of course, I’m sure mere human techniques can’t compare to our elven magic.”
That explained a lot. If they’d realized the problem before making their version and their point of reference was a technique used by humans, they’d most likely gotten their hands on the janky version that bizarro cult had made for human use. I’d wondered if the Forest Hounds had learned from their Zanaffar, but they’d actually analyzed it, improved on it, and created this upgraded model. That would certainly explain the sudden burst of activity from the all-but-dead extremist group.
I doubted Zel knew about this. If he had, he would have realized immediately that he was barking up the wrong tree. He also would’ve let us know.
Still, fighting this guy is gonna be kind of annoying...
But I kept those thoughts to myself for now. “Ah, so you worked out all the kinks, huh?” I replied with continuing confidence as I racked my brain for potential solutions. Just then...
“What are you doing, Tessius?” asked a new voice from behind the elf.
Erk! As it spoke, something surfaced in the mist—a second gray giant. You kiddin’ me here? I desperately tried to keep my face neutral.
This giant seemed a little smoother than the horned Zanaffar that Tessius was wearing. There were no noticeable protrusions on its head, and it had only a single large onyx-like eye. Its silhouette was rotund, as if wearing a full-body mantle or robe of some kind. Basically, it was a different type of Zanaffar.
Okay, hang on a minute! They didn’t just improve it—they iterated on it?! Guess Tessius wasn’t kidding when he said they had a talented scholar among them!
“Sagan! This human knows about the Zanaffar!”
The new arrival didn’t seem fazed. “Is that a problem?”
Hearing him talk again, I was able to place his voice. It was the archer who’d attacked me on our way back from town after meeting up with Amelia and Zel.
The archer—rather, the cyclopic Zanaffar wearer named Sagan—raised a hand toward me. “We’d have to kill her sooner or later regardle—”
Vwoosh! Just then, a powerful wind blew and took Sagan’s next words with it. The mist danced in swirls, whipping around my hair and cape. I came close to losing my balance and took five or six steps into the wind to steady myself.
When it all died down... Gourry, Zel, and Alaina were by my side!
They made it already?! That sure was fast... Aha, of course! It would’ve taken a while to get here with magic cast by a human. But cast by an elf? No wonder they were here in no time! Thanks, Alaina!
I had to admit I was grateful. Buying time with Tessius was easy enough, but Sagan didn’t seem so easily goaded. Still, our numbers didn’t change the fact that we were at a disadvantage.
“What are those?” Zelgadis whispered, glaring at the two giants. Meanwhile...
“Zelgadis... and an elf?!” Our opponents seemed as surprised as we were. Sagan let out a cry of shock and lowered his right hand when he spotted Alaina.
“Why is there an elf on their side?!” Tessius’s voice was shaking as well.
But then...
“Why do you think?” Alaina proclaimed unexpectedly. She was shouting in her own voice, without the amplification of the Regulus Discs. Her words echoed through the woods as she glared at the two giants. “Why don’t you ask yourselves why I might be here?! Why don’t you self-centered, self-declared ‘defenders of the forest’ go back to hiding in the leaves like the social outcasts you are? You dog-foolish hooligans decided to get all riled up and attack humans with your new little toy armors while the rest of the decent elves have to pay the price, which is why I have no choice but to debase myself trying to stop you before you escalate things any further! And after giving me the runaround while I was trying to deal with this quietly, you go and attack the city! It’s shocking to me that you find this so shocking! If you don’t like being rebuked by a fellow elf, drop those silly toys right now and go back under whatever rock you crawled out from in the first place to suck water out from moss!”
A pointed silence fell. Nothing moved but the billowing mist for a time.
Whoa... So Alaina can talk confidently to other elves! And kind of rudely, at that!
Tessius and Sagan, bowled over by her forcefulness, just stood there silently until...
“Tessius.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s kill her.”
“Agreed.”
At this, both giants raised their hands and fired beams of light that tore through the mist! It was the Zanaffars’ special laser breath!
“Whaaat?!”
Gourry, Zel, Alaina, and I all cried out at once and dashed to the side, heading for the densest grouping of tree cover possible.
I pulled up alongside the blonde elf and called out to her. “Hey! Alaina!”
She activated the Regulus Discs on her collar to reply, “It doesn’t seem like I can convince them!”
“You were trying to convince them?! It sounded like you were trying to provoke them to me!”
“That’s what you were doing before we arrived, isn’t it? I heard you!”
“I was trying to buy time! Also, that was mighty big talk from someone so shy!”
“Once I know they’re enemies, I don’t care what they think of me anymore!”
I knew social anxiety generally stemmed from fear of the judgment of others—but I’d had no idea hers was so selective!
Another beam of light, then another and another, tore through the fog behind us as we ran.
“What are those, Lina?!” Zelgadis asked, keeping up the pace.
I replied, likewise booking it, “Magical Beast Zanaffar! A powered-up version!”
“What?!” he cried back in shock.
Gourry, running just as fast, threw in, “You know about it, Zel?!”
“Of course I do! Same as you! It was that white beast we fought with all the tentacles and laser breath and everything!”
“The white... Oh, hey, I remember that!” Gourry recalled with a careless nod.
Zel had been with us when we fought Zanaffar, which had taken the form of a giant white quadruped. It would’ve been hard to say at a glance that these two giants were related to it in any way. I only recognized them because I’d seen the perfected Zanaffar, the Zenafa Armor, and the resemblance there was much stronger.
“Zanaffar?!” Alaina cried, overhearing our conversation. “From that human legend?!”
“Yep! Most attack spells do zilch against it!” I warned her.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before I provoked them?!”
“So you were trying to provoke them!” I turned to Zel, who was running beside me. “That’s probably why they started acting up out of the blue! Did they ever drop a hint about it when you were around?”
“No! They must have been keeping it from me!” he replied.
Aha... Just as I thought.
“Doesn’t armor of Zanaffar consume its wearer’s will?!” he then asked.
“I told you this was a powered-up version!” I reminded him.
We were running the whole time we were talking, naturally. The laser breath had stopped coming—perhaps because we were amidst tree cover now—but we had every reason to think the two giants were still pursuing us. We couldn’t afford to stop.
It was a full-on yellow-bellied retreat, but I wasn’t about to complain! It would’ve been bad news if Zel or Alaina had tried to tangle with these opponents without knowing about their magic immunity. I’d needed time to fill them in.
“The fact that the elves were able to improve on the Zanaffar probably means they can make it do whatever they want it to! Even though we can’t use spells on them, I’m sure they can on us!”
“That’s even worse!”
“I agree!”
The hide of the Zanaffar we’d fought previously kept its body cut off from the astral side, meaning most black magic had no effect on the beast. The trade-off was that it couldn’t use magic either. I knew that wasn’t the case for the elves, however, for a visible reason—the white mist. One of them had to have cast the spell to put out the fire I’d set to lure them. So it stood to reason that their improved Zanaffars, much like the Zenafa Armor, allowed them to regulate connection to the astral side at will.
“What do we do?!” Gourry asked.
I was glad we were drawing the Hounds’ attention away from the city, but we couldn’t keep this game of tag up forever. We needed to find some place to strike back and take them down, one at a time if necessary.
“We’ll draw them into the forest and—”
Before I could finish my sentence, there was a rustling. The forest came alive around us. From the underbrush, from behind the trunks... figures emerged to surround us.
Plant golems? A little fire magic would make a clean sweep of those! “Alaina! Can you dispel the mist?!”
“Temporarily, yes. But there’s a good chance they’ll cast it again immediately.”
“Good enough for me! On my signal!” Before I could see whether she nodded or not, I began my incantation. The plant golems continued to bear down on us all the while. I finished my spell, gave Alaina the signal, and then...
“Disenchant!” she whispered.
The mist around us disappeared like a wave receding from the shore. With my vision cleared, I could see the plant golems closing in on us in great detail. And in addition...