Where had this heaven-sent badass come from?!
The shadowed figure registered an overwhelming pressure radiating off Darrick's blade.
The same sensation he'd felt facing his own commander.
No — wait.
He'd never once seen killing intent this naked, this pure, on his own captain's face.
Nothing else was mixed into it. Just raw, absolute intent to kill. To draw blood.
Worse still — his own reaction speed simply wasn't fast enough to dodge it.
One Wolf Leap, and Darrick landed clean, blade already sweeping outward to shake the black fluid free from his Farron Greatsword. His expression barely shifted.
Behind him, the shadowed figure lay split cleanly in two — mask included. The body that had previously flowed and writhed constantly now sat frozen solid, like stone.
Had he actually killed it?
"Old man Darrick! He's not dead yet — finish him!" Luluwo shouted.
"I'm younger than you."
Darrick turned calmly and, in one continuous motion straight out of Gojo Satoru's playbook, sliced the shadowed figure horizontally into five pieces, then followed with several more strikes, reducing what remained to scattered fragments in the air.
"That was just an honorific — showing gratitude toward your endless generosity, flowing like the great rivers and seas."
Even seriously wounded, Luluwo couldn't help herself.
Darrick didn't answer.
Not because he was ignoring her.
Something about the sensation of his last strike had registered as wrong.
The scattered fragments drifted downward.
Just black cloth.
The real body —
BOOM!
Darrick's left hand shot up.
The dagger paired with his Farron Greatsword knocked aside an incoming sneak attack in a single motion.
The shadowed figure resurfaced some distance away, out of the darkness.
Its mask was gone. Its true face exposed. An unidentified black substance coated the entire surface, leaving only the outline of features visible.
The overall effect landed disturbingly close to Kuroko — the "Black Silhouette" from Detective Conan.
"My mask! I'll KILL—"
Devastation swept across him.
Not physically.
Purely mental.
Apparently, that mask had meant something to him.
He twisted his body, gearing up for some kind of dramatic final speech.
A genuinely terrifying aura began building around him.
Second phase incoming?
Sein Dungeon's elite monsters always enjoyed protected phase transitions — cutscenes, or poise absurd enough to be functionally uninterruptible.
But this wasn't the dungeon.
So —
Darrick dropped low and reappeared directly in front of him, closing the gap in an instant. Like a street dancer stepping into a routine, he swung his sword through the opening beat.
A huge spray of black blood erupted from the figure's chest.
This guy doesn't follow the rules!
The shadowed figure's eyes went wide.
His body collapsed into a puddle of black sludge, merging seamlessly with the ground's shadow, writhing frantically to escape Darrick's reach.
No matter where he fled, Darrick's footwork followed.
Under that cold, flat gaze, Darrick danced through the coolest sequence of movement imaginable — deliberately holding back the final component of the Farron Dance the entire time.
The figure tried fighting back — direct strikes, ambush attempts, both at once — and none of it landed a single clean hit on Darrick.
Darrick's dagger seemed to see everything coming. Wherever the strike aimed, the deflection was already waiting.
Other combatants used shields to parry.
Darrick had learned to parry with a dagger, taught directly by a Farron Knight, and his execution had already reached something close to perfection.
The shadowed figure was overtaken by a genuine, overwhelming sense of absurdity.
He'd been born into an actual family of assassins. Trained since childhood in every strange, unpredictable killing method imaginable. He'd been confident that even Eliphis couldn't walk away from him unscathed.
So how — how — was this normally low-profile leader of the Farron Guards doing this to him?!
There's no way he's stronger than Eliphis... right?
If Darrick could've heard the internal monologue, he might have flashed back to recent training.
To practice parrying, he'd taken to fighting a Rajang every single day — an experience that had brought him to the edge of death more times than he cared to count. The moment he'd become capable of barely parrying half of Rajang's wild haymakers, he'd considered himself graduated.
Parrying every single one perfectly?
Not even a fantasy he allowed himself.
To sharpen his reaction time further, he'd also visited the blacksmith Palico and picked up a Long Sword, practicing Spirit Slash with its Weapon Art daily.
His counters had become genuinely wind-fast by now. Real improvement.
Unfortunately, the Long Sword was too big and heavy — it never quite carried the right feel for actually beating people up. So he kept it strictly for training and stuck with his beloved Farron Greatsword for anything real.
His mastery of parrying and his reaction speed happened to counter the shadowed figure's fighting style completely. Which meant the captain of the Assassination Squad — someone whose raw strength sat well above C-Rank — was currently getting thoroughly, comprehensively humiliated.
"How long are you idiots just going to stand there?! HELP ME!"
Desperation finally forced the shout out of him.
As captain of the Assassination Squad, he held Eliphis-granted authority over his subordinates — the ones who'd transformed via the Demonfall Egg.
At the same time, the Alluring Skulls' effect was finally wearing off. Under his direct control, the beastmen broke free of their compulsion and surged forward, howling.
More than half went for Darrick.
The rest turned on the Skyrim Expedition Group.
"Come on! I'm not scared of any of you!"
Luluwo hunched forward, bared her teeth at the closest beastman, doing her level best to look fierce despite everything.
Mid-fight, Darrick suddenly fired a Soul Arrow straight up into the sky.
Only then did anyone register that he was carrying a magic staff in his left hand alongside the dagger.
When the Soul Arrow detonated overhead, a full wolf pack surged out of the treeline.
And, naturally, riding them — the Farron Guard.
Fully armed, every one of them.
Armor design uniform across the whole group, modeled directly on the Farron Knight's own set. Even the massive wolves beneath them carried matching plating. The largest wolf in the pack even bore a greatsword in its jaws, styled directly after Sif.
The remaining wolves were kitted out in gear modeled on the Palamutes from Monster Hunter Rise.
The Farron Guard, notably, no longer blindly copied the Farron Undead's signature greatsword choice the way they once had. Now they each carried whatever suited their own individual fighting style.
Spears. Bows and crossbows. Great hammers. Magic.
An enormous spread of weapon types — and somehow none of it read as chaotic. If anything, the overall impression was of a group that had mastered every martial discipline under the sun.
The instant they arrived, a barrage of Farron Short Arrows tore into the beastmen. With fur covering most targets, the light-crossbow hunters silently switched to Flame Rounds.
Someone even found a window to fire a Demon Round directly at Darrick, boosting his physical output further.
Let's tally the buffs currently stacked on him.
Wolf Blood Awakening. Oath of Gold. Power Within. Demon Round. Hero Meat. Plus a small mountain of miscellaneous native combat skills, talismans, and rings.
Once, stacking this many buffs at once would have overwhelmed his body outright.
Now, he barely noticed.
Because without doing exactly this, forget parrying Rajang — he'd simply die after two or three hits. He'd never even get the chance to practice.
So every single time he challenged Rajang, he loaded up on every available buff first. Over time, his "drug resistance" had climbed steadily higher.
Not unlike how certain fitness devotees graduate from protein shakes straight into genuinely alarming physical extremes.
Darrick had, somewhere along the way, developed a real addiction to stacking buffs. The more layered on, the happier he got. Walking into a fight with fewer than three active positive effects left him physically uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, the shadowed figure had gone fully numb to the situation. He'd assumed trading the beastmen for reinforcements would improve his odds.
Instead, the Farron Guard's arrival had made everything considerably worse.
Wait a second — why is every one of these guys over two meters tall?!
Are any of you even remotely human?!
While that thought derailed him, Darrick landed two more clean cuts.
The shadowed figure already looked like a man at the very end of his reserves.
A beastman lunged at Darrick from behind. He swung his blade backward without even fully turning, killing it in a single motion, then continued his footwork against the shadowed figure without missing a beat.
You have got to be kidding me.
At this point, escape had become the only goal remaining.
No question — tonight's operation had failed.
"Don't push me too far..."
Spikes erupted across the shadowed figure's entire body, hedgehog-like. His frame split apart rapidly — dozens of copies blooming into existence in the span of a blink, all charging Darrick at once.
Meanwhile, his true body dissolved into sludge and fled.
"Heheh. Enjoy my clones. Once I'm clear, I'll come assassinate you every single day."
The shadowed figure — or more accurately, the Light Eagle Corps behind him — had spent considerable effort investigating the various factions connected to Sein Dungeon. The Farron Guard sat among those investigated.
According to their intelligence, the Farron Guard operated on its own distinct system of weapons and magic, and their abilities followed reasonably predictable patterns. Large-scale offensive magic, in particular, was supposedly almost nonexistent for them.
Which meant, by their own math, a few dozen clones should easily keep Darrick occupied long enough for the real body to get clear.
As for the rest of the beastmen?
Sorry. Sacrifices for the greater cause.
The shadowed figure exhaled in relief. He'd barely covered a dozen meters, nearly fully swallowed by the treeline —
Then —
A flash of light appeared behind him.
The next instant, Darrick's grim, unimpressed face was directly in front of his own.
"WAAAAAH!!!"
A genuinely undignified, high-pitched scream tore out of him. Pure shock forced him back into full humanoid shape.
How was Darrick still tracking him like some kind of ghost?!
And where had the clones gone?
He spun around.
None left.
Already gone.
"You — how did you—"
The shadowed figure froze.
Darrick raised the magic staff, pointing it directly at him. Layer upon layer of magic circles lit up along its tip, a genuinely terrifying volume of magical energy gathering within them.
Is this what wiped out every one of my clones?!
With no viable path left to escape, the shadowed figure settled on a desperate gambit — sacrifice the body currently under fire as bait, split off a small fragment of himself unnoticed, and survive right at the moment the spell actually landed.
But the performance still had to sell.
Let's see what kind of earth-shattering magic this guy can actually pull off.
"I'll take you down with me!"
He launched himself into the air, charging Darrick in one last, desperate strike.
Darrick calmly announced the spell's name as he cast it.
His tone and expression landed somewhere unnervingly close to how his magic teacher, Frieren, delivered things.
"[Standard Offensive Magic]."
What kind of ridiculous name is that?!
The shadowed figure genuinely felt his own sanity buckling. He'd worked hard to make this final stand read as tragic, heroic — and his opponent had responded with a spell carrying a name that ridiculous.
Is this some kind of joke?
No, no. Focus. Escape was still the plan.
Perfect. The moment the spell connected, he'd split off and slip away.
Hah. See you around.
The surging blast of standard magic completely engulfed him.
At the last possible instant, he coughed out a tiny fragment of himself with a soft pfft.
"Hm?"
Darrick casually flicked the staff.
The spell swept across, catching the fleeing fragment directly.
Gone entirely.
This particular spell, it turned out, didn't finish after a single discharge — it kept firing for a short window afterward.
And so — the captain of the Light Eagle Corps' Assassination Squad, a shadowed figure who'd never even earned a proper name, was officially, permanently dead.
Meanwhile, the fight between the Farron Guard and the beastmen wound down as well.
The beastmen lost, unsurprisingly.
"Wait — leave one alive! I need to interrogate—"
Before Luluwo finished the sentence, the last surviving beastman self-destructed.
The blast nearly reinjured her seriously all over again.
She stared out at the devastated battlefield — not a single survivor left to question — and fell silent.
They'd spent the entire night fighting.
Never saw the meteor shower.
Never got to eat.
Ended up seriously wounded.
And in the end —
"I don't even know what the hell any of this was actually about."
She was, genuinely, on the verge of tears.