“Hey, what is that?”
I wasn’t sure who had spoken. Was it Simon or Mark? Maybe it was everyone.
We all thought the boy was crazy. Defying my do-or-die plan to act as decoy wasn’t just talk—he actually went and did it.
A support caster was fighting a boss alone, and this wasn’t just any boss. Alone, it was one of the strongest we had ever encountered. This one could even control the weather and had a band of loyal minions beside it. Rushing in to fight it was suicide.
I was flummoxed. Some tried to stop him, others tried to save him. Some were even furious.
But yes, what was that? Who was that swift warrior capable of fighting a boss on equal footing?
It took all my concentration just to follow his movements. How was he accomplishing all this? He leaped and jumped yet was never in free fall. How could he keep control of himself while airborne? What was he kicking against? Was he using his foe?
This was not the work of a human. He was like a puppet being pulled by strings, accelerating one moment then stopping the next. It was as if he could weave through a hair’s length gap in an overwhelming, impenetrable force.
He had to be destroying himself. Neither his MP nor flesh could withstand such movements. Yet, he kept going, eluding certain death using miracles that could only be the work of the divine.
✦ ✦ ✦
In another moment, the boss would hit the ground. I was currently inside its body. If I didn’t make it out soon, I would be turned into mincemeat.
I decided to escape through its side and changed course, cutting through the flesh beside me. I made one, two, three slashes, creating a triangle. All that was left was to kick my way through.
However, something seemed off. I had been cutting away at its insides and had yet to find any organs. I wanted to at least locate them before I escaped, so I immediately flipped around and stretched my back upwards with all my might, inspecting the boss’s innards as I kicked through the hole.
Its flesh was translucent, but I still couldn’t see everything. Wait, I saw something that looked like black mist, but it wasn’t in the same spot I had seen from outside. It must have moved the organ! It was crazy that a boss could rearrange its vitals.
I was out of time. Making my safe escape, I flew through the air.
I wanted to get one over on this thing. I hurled my knife at the black mist.
Cling! That was the sound I heard right before the boss slammed into the ground—or really, water.
The boss finally seemed to react to my attacks. It stopped fighting and was now wriggling around in a different manner than before. It was probably in pain, which made sense considering a human-sized hole had been ripped through it the moment it jumped into the air. There was no chance it understood what had happened to it—in fact, even I could barely keep up.
Wow, was this amazing. Everything went just as I pictured it! I put my thoughts into action the moment they occurred to me.
My body was on fire, and it was only getting hotter. However, my mind was still calm. Wait, am I excited?
“Fweh heh!” A laugh slipped out. I was getting lost in the moment, but there was no time to get caught up in that. I was carrying the lives of everyone in Nachtlibelle on my shoulders! Someone could die if I failed to buy ample time! Don’t deviate from the role you’re supposed to be playing, Wim. This is no time for fun. I mean, the round minions are still perfectly fine, so—
Wait. Time for fun? Was I having fun right now?
Once I realized that, there was no stopping it. I had discovered the thrill of being one wrong move away from death, and how good it felt to be covered in the goosebumps. The greater the danger, the more I enjoyed it. I couldn’t stop shaking! I must have known deep down that I would be here someday. I had always, always wanted to jump into mortal peril. I had been waiting for this moment my whole life!
I felt so alive!
The boss started to move differently. I thought it was about to launch its tentacles at me again, but I was wrong. It shot all its tentacles out of its body at once, swirling them in the air above its gelatinous body.
It must be trying to defend itself. But how would defense help against a foe like me?
I immediately knew what it was trying to do. The round minions swarmed around the boss and began to float.
“Huh?”
They floated high into the “sky,” spinning above me like a cloud. They all seemed to move independently before, but now it was completely different. They seemed to have turned into one, collective, manipulated consciousness.
What was that—some sort of magic? Magic didn’t mean you could do absolutely anything!
The boss dropped its defense. It looked changed, maybe a bit bigger. It now had more tentacles, and it had another short pair of horns. This was probably its true form. It wasn’t a slug or a snail, but a sea slug.
In any case, it had changed forms, which was a secret, last-resort trump card some bosses used when they had nowhere to go. The one on the last floor had done this too.
In other words, I had this boss cornered.
“Round two, huh?”
What would happen? I didn’t know what tricks the boss had up its sleeves, but I knew it had grown much stronger than before.
I guess that just meant I had to make myself stronger too.
I could hear my heart collapse on itself at the commander’s defeat. How could I consider myself a candidate as a future leader of this party? That was just hubris. I thought I could save people, but I was powerless.
The commander didn’t let me be a part of her fight, and I even let myself be overwhelmed by despair at how the battle ended.
“Abel! Cover me!”
Wim’s words were what finally thrust me back into action. I reevaluated myself and focused on protecting him and the commander. I succeeded thanks to Wim’s buffs, and was glad to have served a purpose—even when we were all on the brink of death.
The moment that occurred to me, Wim had slipped from beside me to fight the boss himself. I was met with the sight of a man with a timid slouch, smaller and more helpless than myself, who was in no position to stand against the might of this beast, yet trying exactly that.
That’s what made Wim so special. Everyone around us, including the boss, had their eyes locked on this out-of-place character.
Right now, that very man had the boss cornered. It was absurd, but I was shocked to realize that I didn’t find this strange or unexpected.
There was a clear difference between us. I wasn’t bothered—the distance that separated us was so extremely vast that I even felt some comfort. It was different from the envy I felt towards the commander. How could I explain it? It was like our goals—no, we were headed down such dissimilar paths that the word “goals” wasn’t quite right.
Oh, that was it—I felt indebted to him. What I felt was hope, as well as gratitude toward the man who had pulled me out of the pits of despair. While I was certain that Wim or others thought that exchange was trivial, I couldn’t help but feel that this moment would stick with me forever.
“Let’s make it out of this alive,” I thought, while using my battered body to withstand the stray attacks Wim had misdirected.