By Zephyria The swiftly flying ice spears made a cracking sound as they firmly embedded themselves in the ice barrier. Each time the tips of the intersecting weapons pierced through the angular sphere, the opaque interior of the ice turned red, and the roaring of the struggling core leaked from the cracks.
Once again, Meterion’s sword and Isabella’s scythe deeply pried into and stirred the gaps. Charlotte, who had flown in afterward, also forcefully struck the crack with the tip of her sword, but her sword blade, unable to penetrate the solid barrier, slipped sideways.
“Aim properly!”
At that moment, Rainer’s only hand reached out and grabbed the hilt of her sword along with Charlotte. The tip of the sword, standing upright, was sharpened even more sharply by hardening, and the combined strength of the two instantly pierced through the thick ice and tough hide.
Like a porcupine with its quills raised, the surface of the ice barrier was filled with sharp weapons without any gaps. Leonardo, who was quickly rushing towards the few remaining empty spots in the middle, increased his charging speed even more, lengthening the spear in his anxiety.
‘Please just stay still. I’ll finish you in one go.’
Because Teleport was impossible due to the rain-obscured vision, the time it took to reach the monster felt like an eternity. With the battalion commanders who had embedded their weapons enduring the monster’s fierce struggles and looking only at him, Leonardo aimed at one point with the intention of piercing through to the other side and put his weight on both arms.
But then, the core’s blurry eyeballs, watching him, were visible beyond the cracked ice barrier. Instinctively feeling a threat from that form, Leonardo twisted his shoulder in the air and shifted the direction of his charge to the side. Then, before the monster could make another move, he hastily unleashed the lightning in his hand.
Due to the shifted center of gravity and the slowed acceleration, the tip of the lightning scraped the ice barrier and pierced it diagonally. At the same time, a giant claw that had broken through the barrier and burst out in an instant reached under Leonardo’s chin, narrowly grazing his skin.
‘……!’
Blood mixed with rainwater trickled down his stinging chin. But Leonardo was in no condition to care about that now. The monster’s forepaw, which had swept through once, was now approaching head-on. To make matters worse, the beam of light from the Destruction Beam he had seen earlier was spewing out in all directions from the cracks in the ice.
‘Is it self-destructing?’
Leonardo, barely dodging the monster’s grasp in that glowing beam of light, quickly deployed an Aura, raised his guard, and hastily moved away from the ice barrier.
However, an ominous noise, as if foreshadowing an explosion, quickly caught up with him as he moved away, and the scorching heat, which seemed to melt even bones, poured over his entire body in an instant.
By the time he realized that the world had turned white for a moment, he had already been swallowed up in a fierce gale.
Kwaaaang—!
The high-temperature pressure, which had momentarily blown away even the heavy rain, carried shattered ice fragments and scraped his skin. Leonardo, who was being swept away by the force of the explosion with a dizzy consciousness, heard chilling screams and cries that echoed in that chaotic gap.
The sound, which made him instinctively realize that something was going wrong, jolted his fading mind.
As soon as he opened his eyes wide, what unfolded in his blurred vision was the core’s foreleg, with ragged, dangling hide clinging to it. And, hanging from the long claws raised high above was a figure whose abdomen had been pierced.
Golden eyes shook violently as if unable to believe what they were seeing.
“Liner Molton—!”
“Rainer!”
Leonardo’s thoughts froze for a moment, as it seemed as if the situation had unfolded as a result of him trying to block his path.
Shrill voices, which he couldn’t tell where they were coming from, filled the surroundings. However, the core, as if annoyed by what was caught in its claws, shook its foreleg outward, easily throwing the pierced human to another place.
Charlotte, with a bloodshot neck, cried out to her superior at the sight of the blood droplets scattering in the air and the limp figure, and headed towards him.
Meanwhile, Isabella, who seemed to have completely lost her mind this time, screamed with a flushed face and rushed at the core.
However, she, too, who had been caught in the explosion at close range, was in a state where her reflexes had noticeably deteriorated, and she was unable to avoid the monster’s tail flying towards her. She was hit by the blunt mace and instantly bounced in the opposite direction.
A cracking sound, as if some bone was being crushed, echoed in the air in an instant. Behind the figure pushed out into the gap mixed with rain and steam in the blink of an eye, a strong impact sound of colliding with a rock face spread from an unseen place.
Kuuung—
In the midst of that tragic scene, Meterion, who had been having difficulties manipulating dust and steam due to the pouring rain, was in a state of turmoil. Soon after, the Queen, who had spotted his suspicious movements, lightly threatened him by firing a few massive breaths at him, then immediately changed direction and charged back towards Leonardo.
As the Council’s battalion commanders were tragically knocked down by the monster in an instant, cold anger slowly welled up on Leonardo’s pale face. The string of reason snapped, and he began to unleash all sorts of attacks on the monster approaching before his eyes.
“…Why won’t you die, why!”
Tremendous heat and destructive power seethed in his two hands raised above his head in frustration. The swirling vortex around him and the thunder and lightning striking in the sky harmonized in perfect timing, exuding a terrifying aura.
When the monster spewed out its breath, he retaliated with equally crimson fireballs, and he indiscriminately fired anything and everything, whether it was lightning spears, lightning strikes, or any attack that could be cast in seconds.
It didn’t consume a lot of Magic Power, but spamming magic in short cycles in his poor condition made him feel dizzy and drained of strength.
But even more than that, what made him feel impatient was the terrifying form of the monster, which, even when hit directly by a Fire Ball and its flesh was charred black, or when its eyeballs popped out and exploded from the pressure of being struck by lightning, would quickly regenerate its head in the blazing flames.
Leonardo gritted his teeth at the haunting image that seemed to appear even in his dreams. As a result, the blood seeping from his cut chin was flowing at an unusual rate, but with the mountain-like behemoth approaching close at hand, there was nowhere else to retreat.
As the red pupils targeting him lunged with its maw wide open, Leonardo covered his entire right arm with a pure white spark crackling with ultra-high-temperature current. Then, bracing himself to be riddled with holes, he swiftly thrust his arm towards the monster’s throat as it charged at him.
Then, as if waiting for it, the monster’s tentacles stretched out, constricted the prey’s neck, and instantly pulled it into its mouth.
At that moment, a large hand that suddenly appeared from the side instantly crossed in front of his face and fearlessly grabbed Leonardo’s arm crackling with current. Then, with the force of pulling his arm off, it pulled him backward, not only slicing off the writhing monster’s tentacles but also mercilessly plunging a Greatsword into its throat.
After Hugo deployed an Aura in front of himself and Leonardo, he blew up the Greatsword that was blocking the core’s maw in one fell swoop.
KWA-AAAAANG―!
KYA-AAAAK―
As the fragmented shards pierced her delicate skin and finely minced her flesh, the Queen twisted her body, paused for a moment, and created some distance. Leonardo, who was still being held by Hugo and hadn’t fully grasped the situation, reflexively pushed away and hastily retreated when he saw Hugo’s hand, which was clearly burned and flushed red.
“Are you crazy? What are you doing―”
“What were you trying to do just now?”
He spat out the words in an accusatory tone due to his bewilderment, but Hugo asked him first in a chilling voice. His face was probably pale from being soaked in the rain as well, but his cold eyes and heavy breathing made it seem as if he was shocked by Leonardo’s reckless behavior, so Leonardo couldn’t continue his answer and closed his mouth.
“…….”
Silence seemed to continue for a while, but the two quickly distanced themselves again because of the Destruction Beam that was fired, taking advantage of the gap.
Hugo, who quickly pushed the opponent away, threw himself to block the core in close combat in order to obstruct the core’s path, which was focusing solely on the target.
As he tried to fully withstand the weight of the massive body, the internal injury he had sustained earlier throbbed and ached from the heavy impact that was transmitted instantaneously. Moreover, it was difficult to estimate how much longer he could endure, as he had consumed a lot of stamina due to the prolonged battle.
Enduring the pain, he tried to deploy a magnificent Magic Circle once again in the distant sky, obscured by clouds. At the same time, Leonardo, who had been pushed away by Hugo, concealed his presence and circled around the core, increasing his speed.
The core, instinctively rolling its eyeballs, sensed that the one who had concealed his presence would ambush its rear, so it pushed away the annoying human who was trying to block its path and flung its massive body backward. Hugo, thinking that the core would target Leonardo again with that action, instantly shifted his position and blocked the direction the core was trying to move in head-on.
However, contrary to his expectations, the core’s target was not Leonardo. The core’s tail, with its thorns raised, flew at a crazy speed toward the side of Hugo, who was clutching a thick shield.
‘Damn it.’
By the time he discovered the heavy mass of flesh approaching right before his eyes, his body, covered in shattered ice, was already plummeting to the ground.
“Hugo!”
Leonardo, his eyes wide open, rushed to catch him as he fell. However, the Queen wasn’t going to just stand by and watch.
As the target that had been disrupting her nerves reappeared, the core charged toward Leonardo’s expected location and slashed with its sharply raised claws.
Leonardo, who had been focused solely on catching Hugo, belatedly discovered the claws trying to pierce him and changed direction. However, his left upper body, which had been paralyzed by the poison and had slowed perception, couldn’t completely escape the core’s grasp.
The fiend’s ferocious claws cruelly scraped away the skin, where he couldn’t even feel the pain due to the numbness. At that moment, the savagely splattering red blood and torn pieces of clothing flickered before his eyes.
As the excessively vivid fishy smell instantly consumed his mind, Leonardo felt his body’s trajectory become uncontrollably distorted from that point on. He clearly didn’t feel anything, but strangely, his body wasn’t listening to him.
“Leo―!”
Hugo barely reduced his falling speed by detonating an air sphere and immediately changed direction upward. He tried to approach Leonardo, who had lost his balance in the air, as quickly as possible, but the distance between himself and Leonardo was overwhelmingly greater than the distance between the core, which had opened its maw, and Leonardo.
He hastily grabbed Magic Power in both hands and fired it at the core, but he couldn’t hit it, whether it was because his aim was off or because the core was adept at evading. In the end, Hugo arbitrarily deployed a Magic Circle around Leonardo instead of destroying the Magic Circle in the sky. Then, he wrapped Leonardo’s body tightly with a stream of water, and he charged toward the core, which was aiming for Leonardo, with his Greatsword in hand.
At that moment, when the blade of the Greatsword barely squeezed between the core and Leonardo.
The ‘chilling fire energy’ that he felt not far away momentarily brushed past Hugo’s spine.
KIIEENG― KWA-AAAAANG―!
A massive flame, flying at a speed that the eyes couldn’t even follow, directly hit the core’s head. The core, heightening its vigilance against the suddenly appearing other figure, created some distance and rolled its eyeballs.
Hugo also instinctively turned his head when he felt such a strong Magic Power that it wouldn’t be strange even if another Legion Commander had come to support them.
That contradictory fire energy that he had recognized just a few days ago, or rather, a few hours ago. The traces of a powerful firestorm that had erased its footprints at the collapse site and deliberately collapsed the ceiling.
The black shadow with that energy snatched Leonardo, who was floating in the air, in an instant.