The sound of clashing swords reverberated throughout the labyrinth underneath the castle. Two shadows cast on the stone walls battled for dominance. Dill pulled back one side of his body to dodge the spear Yuujin thrust toward him, and as he pulled back he seized the spear and wrested it away. Yuujin immediately let go and went to draw out a new spear with his Skill—but for a moment, just one moment, he was wide open.
Dill stepped toward Yuujin, coming within striking distance. Tossing aside his spear, he grabbed Yuujin by the chest with his bare hands instead. “Give up. You will never defeat me now!” Dill said before bashing Yuujin, who was about to unleash some kind of Skill, with the shield he still gripped in his left hand.
Yuujin floundered. However, Dill would not let him go, nor did he stay the hand he’d used to strike him with his shield. This was the conclusion he had reached after many battles with the Reincarnator known as Hero—all Skills were meaningless if they could not be used. Since Yuujin’s Skills required him to exert his mental will, interrupting his concentration would cause them to fail. If Dill continued to rattle his brain physically, again and again, there would be no way for him to use any Skill whatsoever.
“My name...is Dill Steel-Link! That’s the name of the man who already killed you once!” Dill drew his arm back a little farther and struck at Yuujin with his shield once more with the intent of delivering the coup de grâce. Yuujin, a mere phantasm created of psychokinesis, crumbled to pieces. The fragments of his being dissolved into flames and failed to catch on the floor, or otherwise floated up as embers.
Suddenly, a wind that could not have blown underground rushed across the room. The flames left behind by Yuujin’s image all moved in a single direction. Aiming in the same direction, Dill picked up his spear and hurled it.
“So playing dead...won’t work...!” The flames were suspended at the end of the spear that pierced them, and once again they condensed to take a humanoid shape. It was Yuujin himself—a being who had lost his physical body and had only been granted a transient form by Prodotis’s Skill. His definition of a body was different from what it had once been.
Dill unsheathed his sword and slashed at Yuujin, dodging a counterattack from his spear and turning into the corridor. As they exchanged blows, he shouted to someone behind him.
“Do it now! I’ll keep him busy!” Dill spoke to the Reincarnator who had followed him underground. Slipping past the combatants, he went to the far corner of the room, stood before the exposed brain of the giant, and readied his shotgun, which glowed red from the intense heat of his Skill.
“No, don’t! Don’t keep me from seeing the world a true hero will create!” wailed Yuujin.
There was no way the Reincarnator would listen to him. He pulled the trigger, and the buckshot buried itself deep in the giant’s brain. The shotgun pellets, heated to the point of combustion by Red Lotus’s Skill, set the entire brain aflame upon impact.
“Kujo! Please...I’ve finally found hope here! Prodotis will...”
The Reincarnator fired his shotgun again. Two shots, three shots, four. The flames spread. The footing of the giant supporting the castle wavered. It was clearly suffering. Yuujin swung his spear around in an attempt to push Dill away. Dill coolly weathered this attack, which was barely more than a child’s tantrum. He deflected the spear with his shield, stopped it dead with his sword, then kicked back at Yuujin. Yuujin—the man once called the Project’s Hero—was defeated easily.
“How wretched you are.” Dill spoke a decisive parting shot as he held the tip of his blade against the back of Yuujin’s neck. Yuujin groaned.
“Believe me, I know...” Yuujin said. “Having been defeated by you twice already, I know I cannot match you! That’s not the point. Having lost my own body to become a Reincarnator, and then having the Project tinker with my very soul that remained, I can’t even be sure I’m myself anymore! Is...there anything else left to me now? The only proof I have left of my identity is this ideal, this drive to seek out heroes...”
Red Lotus, who had unloaded all of his ammunition, paused. As a fellow Reincarnator, he perhaps empathized with Yuujin. Finally, Red Lotus spoke. “For us Reincarnators, it was the Project and the Tower Capital that made us who we are. I believed you were a true comrade who held the same convictions I did...but you’re really nothing more than a traitor. Steel-Link, please, go ahead.” Dill nodded, and brought his sword down—but it was deflected midswing.
“The divine peak from whence the light pours down. The seeker who roams the face of the earth.”
“Ahh. Ahh...” Yuujin began to shed tears at the sound of this new voice.
“The indivisible salvation. The one who would fight for the throne of heaven. Passed down by the tongues of countless bards, my name is...”
Dill stepped back and reassumed his fighting stance. Raising back his chin, he glared at the newcomer with his rust-colored eyes.
“The hero Prodotis, the silver mountain!” The hero of Redguard now stood before Yuujin, guarding him behind his back. His long silver hair reflected the color of the surrounding flames like a polished mirror, turning it a deep red.
“Eugene. O weak one, there is nothing to fear. You have become my shadow. My fame, my valor, and my name—you will share it for all eternity. Now, return to me. Let us walk together... Gather now, Epimetheus, the returning favor!”
Yuujin’s body crumbled into flames that rose into the air. These flames were all drawn into Prodotis’s body, leaving no trace of the man called Yuujin ever having existed.
“How dare you vandalize my castle, people of Terea?” The air around Prodotis seemed to creak with tension.
Dill held firm against this commanding presence. Although he had a common man’s body without the blood of gods in his veins, the great heart he possessed as an actor made this possible.
“Have you forgotten, ancient hero? Have you forgotten who it was that defeated you so long ago?”
“...Just so. After fighting the slave hero, Sclavos, who represented the forces of Terea, in single combat and barely achieving victory, I was greeted with a stone thrown by one of you nameless Terean worms. What an undignified end...what dishonor! Defeating Sclavos—a flawless warrior—had left me exhausted, and my life was cut short by a mere pebble. I know not even who threw the stone! The Tereans passed down a distorted version of my story to later generations, heaping praise upon me in order to conceal their own cowardly acts!”
“A humble man of Terea is about to slay you once again.”
“I will wait and see. I, Prodotis, will judge if your prowess is as valiant as your tongue.” The floor sank as the hero took a step forward, and cracks raced across its surface. In the next instant, Prodotis was already right in front of Dill. Dill reflexively raised his shield to block a powerful thrust from Prodotis’s spear, but saw the point emerge through the back of the shield. With another step that cracked the floor beneath him, the hero pushed his spear all the way through.
Dill dodged to one side. With a metallic shriek his shield was torn apart—its left side, where the spear had pierced, was entirely gouged away and sent flying.
“Steel-Link! Get down—”
“Hey, idiot—”
Dill had no choice but to obey the voice from behind. Red Lotus, who had reloaded his shotgun, aimed at Prodotis and pulled the trigger. He was far away, and the scatter shot had the property of losing force as it traveled, but on the other hand, it spread out wider, becoming a curtain of gunfire that was difficult to avoid.
“How pitiful,” lamented Prodotis from behind Red Lotus. “Have you forgotten that I, Prodotis, can accomplish anything that you Reincarnator folk are capable of?”
The teleportation gate closed behind Prodotis. Prodotis thrust forth his spear, skewering the Reincarnator with the burning head of the spear. Prodotis had utilized the same Skill that Red Lotus used, which induced combustion.
“Steel-Link, I’ll leave the rest...” To you. Red Lotus was unable to speak the final words. The flames of Prodotis’s Skill were stronger than any that Red Lotus could produce. The flames roared as they engulfed the Reincarnator, incinerating him until there was nothing left but blackened cinders, whereupon his body crumbled away.
Dill didn’t need to be told not to waste this opportunity. He drew a javelin from underneath his chain mail cloak, and threw it. His target...was not Prodotis. It was the giant’s brain behind him.
“...Impudent cur.” Although irritated, the hero answered this gambit. Tossing aside the incinerated corpse, he held out a hand. A vortex appeared ahead of Dill’s spear, which vanished into another dimension.
All the while Dill had been running, drawing closer to Prodotis to deliver a lethal attack. Prodotis had seen through this strategy, though. He exerted his will and activated his Skill.
“Lerna, the devouring swamp.” The floor of the room was suffused by pitch blackness, then by a teleportation gate. This was the trap used by the Reincarnator known as Pitfall, but the time required to activate it was shorter by far. Dill was given no window in which to respond. The swamp was so large that it began to swallow Prodotis’s feet as well.
“It would be easy to defeat you—but first I will change the setting.”