“Can’t say I think very highly of you or your field, considering it’s an offense to all living things.”
Emil was doubtlessly referring to techniques that involved toying with the very existence of his subjects without their consent and turning them into different beings altogether. It was biological, and it was engineering in a sense, but it definitely wasn’t the bioengineering he was familiar with.
“A difference of perspectives, then. The way I see it, my research is a noble pursuit in which I elevate life to higher and higher stages—”
“Then use yourself as a test subject first,” hissed Renya.
“What are you talking about?” asked Emil in return, as though he couldn’t understand Renya’s question.
Renya’s eyes widened a little. The implications of Emil’s bafflement occurred to him, and he paled visibly.
“Of course I’d use myself as a test subject,” answered Emil, not disturbed in the slightest by what he was saying. Every other researcher in the world would probably fervently disagree with his opinion, but he simply appeared perplexed as to why he needed to state the obvious. “My body has been constructed using flexible cells that can greatly change their morphology. It’s one of the fruits of my research.”
“…I was expecting you to have a few screws loose, but man. I guess it wasn’t just a few.”
“Research. It’s all about the research. So long as it’s necessary, we’ll use whatever we need, whether it’s ourselves or others. That’s what it means to be a researcher, no?” asked Emil as his arms stretched themselves out and touched the ground. Long, thin, and whip-like, they were clearly the tentacles that had knocked Shion and Azu into the wall and hurled Rona through the air.
“You said something about this dungeon being your fishing hole and that you made it, right?” If the talking stopped, the battle would begin. Since Renya had yet to figure out a plan of action, a battle would be overwhelmingly in the demon’s favor. He racked his brains for ways to keep the conversation going while he continued to observe Emil. “That means this dungeon has no core, then?”
“Correct. You could, in a way, say I’m the core.”
Emil flicked his right arm lightly. Its supple end disappeared from view. At the same time, an impact to Renya’s left shoulder caused him to stagger, tearing his shirt and causing a welt to form on his skin. His muscle and bone, however, remained unharmed.
“Tell me now. Could you see it? You couldn’t see it, could you?” asked a positively jubilant Emil. He laughed, and then continued, “Now, then. Have you said your prayers? Though it was a replicant, you killed something that took my form. Expect suffering — much suffering indeed — before I turn you all into specimens for my research.”
Renya was of the opinion that a whipping was very much unappealing to watch when it was a man on the receiving end. He would have voiced this opinion, too, had he been in less dire straits. At the moment, he kept his mouth shut and braced himself with his blade in hand.
“All right… Ready? Here I come,” whispered the demon, his eyes narrowing like those of a predator marking prey. As soon as he spoke, the room’s lights went out.
Everything went black. All of a sudden, Renya couldn’t even see the tip of his nose. He did not panic. Instead, he curled his tongue. A loud click echoed in the darkness. His katana flashed. It grazed something; he felt it through the hilt. By the time his mind registered the sensation, his body was already in motion, withdrawing the blade and quickly stepping away. Moments later, there was a crack — the sound of a whip hitting the ground. He slashed in the direction of the noise. Score again; he felt a slight resistance at the cusp of his blade.
“Hm, I find it quite hard to believe, but… tell me now. Do you actually see me?”
Renya spun toward the direction of the voice and thrust out his blade, but the third time was not the charm; it caught nothing but empty air. While constantly changing his position through small, zigzagging steps, he answered into the darkness.
“You do realize human eyeballs need light to function, right? Do you see any light around here?”
“Well, for someone who is allegedly blind…”
Renya leaned away a little. Something whisked through the space in front of him, missing him by a hair. Before it could be retracted, he swung his katana upwards in a scooping motion. This time, the blade’s bite was firmer, and there was a small groan of pain. It was, however, little reason to rejoice; he figured it had done as much damage as nicking someone’s little finger.
“Your attacks — counterattacks, rather — are vexingly accurate.”
“Luck must be on my side, then. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a good boy all this time, and you look like you’ve been a very very bad one.”
The demon probably assumed there was no possible way for Renya to see him. As a result, his attacks were linear and predictable.
Renya, for his part, continued to dodge attacks he shouldn’t be able to see. Each step he took made an audible tap. At times, he clicked his tongue.
“Ah. I see,” Emil whispered after a few cycles of striking and dodging. “The sound.”
This time, the noise that Renya made with his tongue was closer to a tsk than a click. He made a sharp lunge in the direction of the voice and swung. His blade touched nothing. Realizing he had missed once more, he quickly turned around. At the same time, the ceiling began to emit its soft light again, and his vision returned. Directly in front of him stood Emil, whose expression was brimming with curiosity. Small, shallow cuts dotted his body.
“The sound of your tongue clicks. And your footsteps. You used their echoes to examine your environment. I must say, that’s a most intriguing technique you employed.”
“I see the whole ‘researcher’ bit wasn’t all talk, huh? You figured out my trick pretty quickly.”
Renya spoke in a bitter tone, but he had expected the demon to see through what he was doing. What he hadn’t expected was how little time the demon took.
“If you’re able to react like that in the darkness, then there’s not much point to hampering your vision.”
“So, that’s why you turned the lights back on?”
“It makes for easier observation.”
A slit appeared in each of Emil’s tentacle arms, growing outwards until they both split into two. He wriggled what were now effectively four tentacles and laughed gleefully.
“In the next experiment, we shall test your reaction speed. Come on, keep up now. Let’s see how fast you can go.”
White whips shot toward Renya. Unlike those employed by human hands, these required no windup, which made them feel unusually fast. He swiped them aside with his blade. If anything, Emil was the one hurting after these exchanges; it was his fleshy tentacles against Renya’s very metal, very sharp blade. Despite his increasing number of wounds, however, Emil showed no signs of letting up on his attacks. One after another, his four whips kept up a relentless series of attacks that kept Renya firmly on the defensive.
Nevertheless, Renya slowly edged toward Emil. The flurry of attacks raining down on him grew more intense with each step forward, but he had no choice but to keep pressing on until he was at least close enough to strike back. Emil, clearly aware of his intentions, matched each of his steps forward with a step back.
Unable to close the gap, Renya grit his teeth and kept a cool head. He was well aware that there was a world of pain waiting for him if he let frustration get the better of him and rushed ahead.
“Truly remarkable. It seems that so long as you have access to your sight, you’re quite capable of brushing off attacks of this level,” said Emil before chuckling. “How curious, then, for me to have landed that first hit on you.”
“You talk too much. Quit yapping and let me cut you already.”
Despite his best efforts to keep his composure, Renya found himself growing hasty. The four guys brawling against those meat chunks in the next room was cause enough for concern, but he also had three downed friends in the current room whose condition worried him to no end.
The way Azu was sent flying, in particular, looked pretty brutal. Rona, too, almost certainly had her leg broken after being thrown by it. Even Shion, who had at least managed to get her sword in the way, was hit by an attack that snapped the thing in half. He badly wanted to get them some medical attention as soon as possible, but it would take them a day by wagon to reach a town with a doctor. And that was assuming he managed to get them out of this dungeon right away.
The realization that he was running out of time further stressed his already-frayed nerves. As he continued to defend himself, grinding his teeth harder after warding off each lash, he desperately told himself to calm down. Though his eyes were gradually becoming used to following the motion of the attacks, a single missed parry would leave him down for the count. If he was down for the count, then their whole party would be incapacitated, and if the whole party was incapacitated — a party wipe — then no help could come. The only thing left to do after that would be to hope they were blessed with a quick death.
“Full points for endurance, as well. The ability to continue fending off attacks of this speed is an extraordinary display of stamina.”
Renya remained silent, lacking the spare focus to venture a response. Seeing that his comment fell on deaf ears, Emil grinned widely as though he just thought of something terribly amusing.
“Here’s a thought. Tell me now. What would happen if, in your current state,” he quipped at a wordless Renya, “you were to go blind again?”
His four tentacles that had been striking Renya one after another suddenly lined up and lashed out in sync. At the same time, he snuffed out the lights.
“—Huh?”
Renya deftly slipped past the four-pronged attack and dashed up, hoisting his katana high.
Emil watched, dumbfounded, as the blade’s sharp edge came swinging down at his head. Even so, his survival instincts kicked in and he reflexively twisted his body to evade. He barely dodged the strike, but the blade still bit into his left collar, severing his entire left arm clean at the shoulder, before snapping back and tearing a shallow gash through his abdomen.