“…”
Her bad feeling was on the mark.
Alina looked around, and seeing how hopeless things were, she bit her lip.
Jade and Lowe were lying on the ground, and Lululee must have overused her Sigurth skill to heal them, as her face was pale, but she was still trying to heal them.
It was fair to call this a total party wipe.
“Lululee…the two of them aren’t dead…right…?” asked Alina.
“They’re alive! But they’re badly wounded, and Jade’s skill exhaustion is also severe…”
“…”
With a little bite of her lip, Alina looked toward the small-pupiled man who had driven Jade and the others to defeat.
This was the man who called himself Gald, who had killed the dark god Raum in the hidden dungeon they had teleported to and stolen the god core. He was an acquaintance of Lowe’s…so he said, but looking at the merciless wounds on Lowe from Gald, it was clear that he was no gentle “acquaintance.”
“So you’re the Executioner…and that’s your Dia skill, Dia Break, huh?” Gald already bore the familiar mark of Dia on his forehead as he glared at her.
He’d become a dark god. That was why he had managed to push Jade and the others to this point.
“…So what?” Alina shot back.
But Alina’s arrival made him cry out in glee. “If I kill you, then that’ll prove that my magic is the strongest…! After Silver Sword comes you! You’re gonna die for my goal…! In order to prove that magic is better than skills!”
“…To prove that…?” Alina muttered, her voice trembling slightly. “You did this…for something like that…?”
She clenched her war hammer so hard that her hands turned white. She bit her lip hard enough to bleed.
Hopeless fury welled up from within her.
This wasn’t a dangerous dungeon, nor was it a place where adventurers would be working. It was just a fighting arena. Once they finished this once-every-four-year tournament, someone would win, and then it was supposed to end.
So then why? Why did Jade and the others have to nearly die?
Why did they always try to steal away the people Alina cared about—?
“Something like that, you say?” Gald’s eyebrow twitched. “…Oh, I see…something like that…that’s all it is…” Muttering, he thrust out his right arm, palm to the sky. Suddenly, his arm began to turn black.
“!” Alina went on guard, readying her war hammer, while before her, something even stranger began to happen to Gald’s blackened right arm. The palm of his hand roiled black, bubbling just like a muddy swamp.
“…Right now, even the mages of the Dark Guild are all such damn cowards, they all ignore it, but…” While this creepy sight was unfolding, Gald continued to mutter. “Do you understand just how much the mages two hundred years ago resented skills, having their positions stolen from them…?”
Gald’s hand made a burbling noise like something was about to gush out. Eventually, the black fluid that overflowed from his palm dribbled to the floor—instantly, just as if it had opened up a hole that went deep into the black dark, a pitch-black puddle spread on the floor.
“Wha…?!”
Alina had no idea just what was going on. Only the shivers running up her spine were telling her something bad was happening. Darkness leaked from Gald’s right hand, and the fallen darkness spread the black puddle even farther.
“Two hundred years ago, with their magic rejected and driven into the shadows, the mages left behind words of a curse—in exchange for their own lives.” Hanging his head, Gald finally turned his dark eyes to Alina.
“…Skills should be destroyed…,” he muttered in a low, low voice, like a spell, and that moment, there was a rippling sound as the black puddle spread on the floor undulated.
“Skills should be destroyed…!”
That undulation gradually became greater, and it whirled around.
“Skills should be destroyed!!”
That moment.
The black puddle swelled large, and something leaped out, as if breaking through a film.
“?!”
A low howl like a ghost’s rang out. It was black and long and quickly rose to the heavens. Alina looked up, and filling her field of view was a jet-black dragon floating in the air.
“Wh-what is that…?!”
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the black fluid was taking the shape of a dragon. The black fluid that composed its body undulated, dripping on the floor, dyeing it with black. It was different from a dragon, like a monster, but its eyes glowed red, and it bared its fangs like a starving beast.
“Forbidden technique: summoning the cursed dragon—” Gald smirked. “Come, cursed dragon…the skill users you loathed are right in front of you.”
The cursed dragon moaned, “Wooohhh…!” like a lament. The moment its red eyes saw Alina—a cold shiver hit her spine.
Clear malice. Jealousy enough that you’d want to claw at your throat, suffocating envy… Humiliation, frustration. And an all too powerful murderous intent that was all those mixed together.
When the red eyes of the cursed dragon captured her, those dark feelings hit Alina like a wave. Alina had never before been hit with this many massive negative emotions, like all of humanity’s darkness condensed, and it froze her.
“Devour her!” Gald ordered, and the jet-black dragon howled and attacked Alina.
“…!”
She understood that it was not just an attack, but her feet wouldn’t move. Immediately, she raised her war hammer like a shield, to block its fierce fangs.
“…?!”
That was when Alina’s breath caught—since the moment the cursed dragon bit into the silver war hammer, a repulsive pattern had appeared on her weapon. It gradually spread as if eating away at it, covering the whole war hammer.
“What is this…?!”
She let go of the war hammer at once, and the cursed dragon waved its head about, as if to tear the prey it had bitten to shreds. Baching, went the war hammer as it was crunched in the dragon’s mouth.
But that wasn’t all. The black pattern that had corroded the war hammer appeared on Alina’s arms as well. It was a repulsive pattern, like tangled snakes.
“Wooohhhh…!”
Having destroyed the war hammer, the cursed dragon cried out like it was lamenting. Its gaze of condensed malice toward humans turned to Alina as if to say, You’re next.
“…Skill Activate: Dia Break!” Alina activated her skill before she could be caught in that fear once more. But—
“…Huh…?”
Nothing responded to Alina’s call.
No white magic sigil or silver war hammer appeared. Alina couldn’t understand what had happened, crying once more, “Dia Break!”
But no matter how many times she chanted it, the silver war hammer did not appear after all, and her Dia skill did not activate.
“My skill won’t work…?!” Alina looked down at her hands in shock. She didn’t feel anything strange physically, and she wasn’t experiencing skill exhaustion. It was just that strange pattern covering her hands.
“—Flama.”
When she lifted her head with a start, Gald was firing off a blue flame. When it came close, she somehow dodged to the side—but her leap was weak. Unable to activate Dia Break, her muscle strength was back to that of an ordinary human’s. Leaping not even half as far as she had imagined, the Flama just barely passed by her side to disappear. If she’d reacted even a little late, she would have been hit.
“…!”
Her heart pounded.
Her skill wouldn’t activate… In other words, right now, Alina was just a girl with no powers at all.
“What’s the matter? Can’t do anything without your skill?” Gald smirked in amusement at her pale face. The black cursed dragon circled around him protectively.
“Well, I guess I didn’t have to ask!” Cackling, Gald fired off countless Flamas.
“…!”
A wide area attack. For an instant, Alina’s thoughts all came to a halt. There was no way for her to evade with her strength now—
The Flama was right in front of her face, but someone wrapped their arms around her waist and flung her to roll off to the side.
“Hn…?!”
She was flung so hard, she dug into the ground of the arena. She was scraped here and there, but she had evaded the Flama just by a hair. Alina lifted her face and saw the man who was lying face down like her at her side and cried out, “Lowe…?!”
Lowe was holding his wounded side, his expression grim. He was supposed to have been getting healed by Lululee, but he had saved Alina from Gald’s attack.
“Y-your injury…”
“This isn’t the time for that… I’m the only one who can move right now…!” he said, but his face was pale and bloodless, and he was soaked in sweat. His pained gaze flicked toward Alina’s arms. “Dammit…I never thought Gald would even use the damn cursed dragon…”
“Hey, the heck is this?! My skill won’t activate…!” Alina pressed Lowe, who seemed to know something.
Lowe said bitterly, “It’s a forbidden technique. Some mages two hundred years ago made it in exchange for their lives. It’s the oldest and most dangerous forbidden technique, the ‘cursed dragon’…”
“Cursed dragon…?”
“A powerful curse born from resentment… It’s a curse spell that robs your skills.”
Hearing that, Alina was shocked. “R-robs…skills…?!”
“Oh, what an observation!” Gald’s elated voice rang through the fighting arena. The corners of his lips were pulled up, and he touched the cursed dragon.
“Forbidden technique: cursed dragon… When I learned about this, I became certain. It’s possible that magic can even surpass Dia skills. If I use this to kill the Executioner…then those skill-brained idiots have to open their eyes…!”
“…Surpass…a Dia skill…?”
Proof. She finally understood the meaning of what Gald had said. Gald had always planned to use that repulsive dragon to seal away Alina’s Dia skill.
“Do you know what this dragon really is?” Gald coldly narrowed his eyes. “It’s the resentment of mages over the course of two hundred years. It was their resentment for having their positions stolen by skills and the value of magic diminished by rotten-eyed idiots, but even then they swore they would one day strike back, and so ended their lives… Even the Dark Guild didn’t know what to do with this forbidden technique. They even sealed it away.”
Alina looked down at the curse patterns that marked her arms.
“…I can’t use…my skill…”
It was like the heavy weight of despair weighed down on her whole body.
She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t protect them. So they would all die.
They would all die, like Shroud. Every single one of them would be gone.
She would be alone again—
When Alina was just about swallowed up by despair, Lowe’s words made her snap out of it. “…We just have to destroy that cursed dragon.”
“But my skill—”
“I’ll do it,” Lowe muttered. “I’ll destroy the cursed dragon.”