Plus... I glanced behind me.
While I hadn’t expected it to come into play so quickly, I had already handed the right person the right item. It was a piece of equipment with a silly pun of a name, but its effects were outstanding. If used right, it could completely change up the flow of how any given event went.
All right! I sucked in a huge breath, steadying my nerves. Failure was unacceptable, which was precisely why I needed to handle things calmly.
I kept my eyes locked on Veltar as I spoke to the rest of my comrades. I injected as much confidence as I could into my words, hoping my wording conveyed my intentions to the four of them. “Radd, Nyuuk, Prana, Mana—this guy’s tough, but he’s not unbeatable, and this isn’t your first time dealing with the undead. Remember that Elder Lich we fought, the one with an instant death spell? As long as we’re methodical about our approach, we can beat Veltar just like we did the Elder Lich.”
“Oh!” Nyuuk let out a small gasp, as if he’d completely forgotten he’d killed the Elder Lich.
“He he. Now that’s the kind of speech I want from you, old man.” Radd said, grinning.
At his words, everyone’s nervousness vanished. Nyuuk and the others drew their weapons, quietly waiting for my orders.
“How dare you,” Veltar said, snarling. “Don’t compare me to some second-rate lich!” He stuck his hand out, and black mana started swirling around it.
That’s an AoE attack!
“Scatter!” I shouted.
Everyone dashed in a different direction, and a mere second later, Veltar fired off his spell.
“Blood Bomb!” he cried, a crimson ball shooting out of his hand.
I let out a grunt as it grazed me slightly, then stumbled back a step as it continued forward to slam into the ground.
The ball burst on impact, sending a blast of wind out in every direction. I waved my left arm around to regain my balance, then used the force of the wind to propel me forward toward Veltar.
“Tch! You worms!” He snarled, firing a second and then a third blast at me.
Unfortunately for him, I was ready for his attacks. I could easily read the trajectory of his spells from watching where he aimed his palm, which made them easy enough to dodge.
Too bad; I already know all of your moves! I thought as I ran.
“Square Cross!” I yelled, throwing out my first Art. It slashed through empty air, but I was close enough that the Art I was about to combo it into would hit Veltar. “Arts Plus! Tri—!”
“Know your place, human!” Veltar snarled, finally drawing his weapon. “It’s over!”
Veltar held his thin rapier out to block my slash while he gathered a massive amount of mana in his free left hand.
If that spell hit me at point-blank range, I’d be done for. But I was ready for him.
“You fell for it!” I shouted, thrusting my left hand out at him.
Originally, there was nothing in it, but by using Fast Swap, I was able to teleport a bag filled with white powder into my palm—it was the very same Sacred Ash that we’d used to neutralize the Elder Lich.
The bag flew from my hand, powder scattering.
“Gah, you bastard!”
Unlike the Elder Lich, which hadn’t had any resistance to status ailments, Veltar was late-game boss who had moderate to high resistance against all status ailments. The Sacred Ash barely even stopped him for a second. But that second was all I needed.
“Don’t you think—”
“Get hiiim!” I shouted.
Everyone was already moving. It seemed they had managed to guess my plan from my earlier words, and they’d been waiting for the opening. And so, in the split second that Veltar was paralyzed, Radd, Nyuuk, Prana, and Mana hit him with their strongest attacks.
“Crimson Crash!” Radd cried as he slashed down his weapon, the sword ablaze.
“Flare Cannon!” Nyuuk shouted, this time casting his own spell rather than relying on an item.
“Mirage,” Prana murmured, summoning her clones. Then, she used her strongest arrows to barrage Veltar.
Finally, Mana swung her own staff down and shouted, “Take this! Judgment Ray!”
As always, her light magic was our strongest weapon against undead foes.
Veltar let out a hoarse scream, one you wouldn’t expect from a vampire who looked as suave as him. He fired the spell he’d been readying at the ground, creating a shock wave that blew all of us back.
Radd, who had the highest defenses, was the first to recover. “Did we get him?!” he shouted as he got to his feet.
“You puny humans!!!”
The sound of flapping wings accompanied a wave of pitch black that surged toward us, blotting out the white light Mana had summoned.
“Are those bats?!”
Indeed, it seemed they were—and apparently, Mana’s final spell hadn’t actually hit Veltar. He must have used magic to transform into a cloud of bats and dodge out of the way at the last second.
“Ngh! Arts Plus, Tri-Edge!” I finished my two-Art combo and slashed at the bats, but these were far more agile than the ones I’d fought in the basement.
“Fool! Your sword will never reach me!”
I winced. It was unfortunately true that Arts, which had fixed and relatively simple movement patterns, would be unable to hit the bats.
“Pathetic! Prepare to die, foolish human! You will regret ever baring your fangs at me!”
The swarm of bats rushed toward me.
“I don’t think so,” I said with a grin.
This was in fact precisely what I had been hoping he’d do. Without bothering to pull my sword back, I instead raised my left hand high into the air, equipping a Goblin Slaughterer using Fast Swap.
“Take this!”
In the same way that I could use Final Break with my left-hand weapon and transfer the power over to my right-hand one, I could similarly transfer the power of any Art I used with my right-hand weapon to my left-hand one.
“Final Break!”
There was a burst of light even brighter than the one Mana had called down. For a moment, it looked like the sun had risen again over Rose Manor.
After a few seconds, the light began to dim, revealing a burned and battered swarm of bats that barely resembled their original form.
❈❈❈
That was close.
Since this had been a surprise boss encounter, I hadn’t been able to swap out to the optimal equipment loadout ahead of time. I had been worried only a single Attack-boosting ring wouldn’t be enough, but it looked like things had worked out.
Transforming into a cloud of bats was Veltar’s ultimate trump card, since it gave him unparalleled evasion. But at the same time, it heavily lowered his Defense, and also turned him from a single target into multiple targets you could theoretically all hit at once.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I sheathed my weapon. But just then, the voice of the man I’d just killed echoed through the night.
“I admit, I underestimated you.”
“Wha—?! No way!” Nyuuk’s jaw dropped open as he watched the various black blobs that had used to be bats begin to crawl toward each other.
Veltar was regenerating. The blobs of black flesh started stitching themselves together, reforming into the shape of a man. In the span of a few seconds, Veltar stood before us, looking no worse for the wear.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me...” Radd muttered.
“I am a vampire, a ruler of the night. No weapon and no magic can slay me. No matter how many times you kill me, no matter how many times you burn my body to ash, I will continue to revive over, and—”
“Actually, you’re done for,” I said confidently.
Recilia, who’d been hiding in the shadows and waiting for this exact moment, rushed up and stabbed something through Veltar’s chest before he could react.
“Gah!” He coughed up blood, staring down in disbelief at the object that had been stabbed into his heart. “How did you...”
The object Recilia had stabbed him with was too plain, and in many ways too blunt to be truly called a bladed weapon. In fact, the weapon’s “blade” was made of wood, and though it was classified as a dagger, it looked a lot more like a stake.
“It’s called the Dagger of Regret, apparently,” Recilia said, pushing the “dagger” even deeper into Veltar’s chest.
If you looked at the weapon’s flavor text, you would notice it was described as a “steak knife” which was a dumb pun about how it was actually a stake. It was a weapon with a storied history. Apparently, someone who’d lost their wife and kids to a vampire had crafted it to get his revenge, but then died before he’d been able to, leaving just this weapon behind. This was also the only weapon that could kill Veltar for good. Because, just like in the legends, vampires could only be completely destroyed by driving a wooden stake through their heart.
“Urgh... My body... It’s...”
Veltar’s body was starting to disintegrate, and no amount of regenerative power could help him now. His black hair turned white, and wrinkles started appearing on his skin.
It’s a pretty gruesome way to go, but this is the only way to kill him.
I had, of course, known from the start that Veltar couldn’t be killed through standard means. After all, even if you beat him in the fight where he tried to curse Rose, he’d just regenerate. That was why I’d entered Rose Manor’s basement dungeon earlier than you were supposed to be able to, so I could get the event item you needed to kill Veltar for good before he managed to curse Rose. The plan had been to kill him once to force his regeneration, and then have Recilia hit him with a surprise attack while he was still in the middle of regenerating and completely defenseless.
And now, I should have successfully changed the future! I should be able to take Rose’s event in a new direction the game wouldn’t have permitted!
The tension drained from my body, and I nearly slumped to the ground.
“Rex!” Rose exclaimed, running over to where I was.
Despite the shock of learning that her beloved uncle was a monster, and then also seeing him die before her very eyes, she still tried to run over and help me...
But before she could reach me, a red magic circle suddenly appeared underneath her feet.
“Huh?”
Oh no...
It seemed this nightmare of a night wasn’t over just yet.
Though he was on the verge of death, Veltar grinned triumphantly and shouted, “I offer the last of my mana to you, my lord!” The Demon Lord’s relic was clutched between his two hands, and it was pulsing with an ominous red light.