"—Snow that fills the heavens, winter thrice over — my name is Alf!"
Lefiya's and Riveria's chants rose at the same moment. A breath of freezing air swept past, and the water that had just surged up locked solid.
Everyone's feet, on the verge of sinking under, finally found something to stand on.
But that hardly mattered. What mattered was the enormous, pitch-black shadow in the depths of the great lake, which was steadily spreading outward.
It was growing larger.
Obviously because it was rising — coming closer and closer, and that closeness was what the eye registered as growth.
Every one of them braced for it.
The vanguard, Gareth and Tiona, stood at the very front, each covering a different angle. The middle guard, Finn and Ais, waited at center, ready to support at any instant.
Behind them stood Lefiya, Riveria and Haruhime.
The fox girl had already begun her chant. The small golden mallet was long since ready, and with it the tail of pure magic power, about to descend over the heads of them all.
And just as that mass of darkness was about to burst up out of the water —
Thump.
For some reason, every one of them heard the sound of their own heartbeat.
Heavy. Constricted. Almost frightening.
And with that heartbeat, the vast darkness that had nearly covered the entire lake contracted all at once, until at last it became a single black dot.
"?"
Crack!
It sounded like glass shattering — or like something breaking out of a shell.
From the deep blue ice, an arm reached out first.
Azure and crimson scales gleamed woven together, and the slender talons possessed a strange, impossible beauty. One hand slapped down on the ice, braced the body, and hauled itself up out from beneath the surface.
A "dragon-man."
Since they had seen something similar over on Isagi's side before, neither Ais nor Riveria was particularly shocked.
Because it really was almost identical.
There was truly no difference between this and the "dragon-men" they had watched inside the Dragon Valley through the Eye Crystal.
It stood a little over two meters tall — larger than an ordinary person, but not by much.
It was not bulky. If anything, compared to that tall frame, its limbs and torso looked almost too slender, giving it a peculiar streamlined grace.
The scales across its body blazed brilliantly, and in the thin seams between them one could just make out some kind of golden liquid flowing, as dazzling as its pair of golden slit-pupiled eyes.
Its face was human overall, save for the viciously twisted horns growing from its brow.
["Azure's Crimson" · Beast's Miracle · Amphis Baena]
"What the hell..."
The dragon-man in front of them had two heads.
It was a twin-headed dragon, so that much was natural — only the way it manifested now was deeply unsettling.
The second head grew out of the back of the Monster's skull.
Two faces, one front and one back, completely identical. The horns at their temples had even grown out and tangled together, forming a grotesque sort of crown flecked with fine scales of interwoven crimson and azure.
It carried no weapon.
It simply stood where it was, expressionless, watching the people around it with cold eyes. The sight gave off an intensely wrong feeling.
But Gareth and the others weren't about to wait. They chose to strike first.
"Earth Raid!"
A magic that could only be triggered on solid ground — and here, on the ice, countless spikes grew of their own accord and shot toward the Monster a short distance away.
At the same moment, Tiona slammed both hands into the ground.
The ice shattered, and cracks spread out toward the boss in a dense spiderweb. Beneath those fissures, deep red blood aura spread as well, until at last it erupted from under the boss's feet as a scorching pillar of blood that shot to the ceiling.
But.
The dragon-man boss was too fast.
The instant Gareth and Tiona launched their attacks, it had already left its position — and struck at both of them.
"?"
Tiona and Gareth were both vanguards, so neither stood far from the boss. But they were covering different angles, which meant a considerable distance lay between the two of them.
And yet.
They both found the twin-headed dragon appearing in front of them at very nearly the same instant.
The moment that towering figure appeared, an unbearably heavy pressure crashed down, forcing their bodies to carry a weight beyond imagining.
Gareth and Tiona both saw it raise a hand, close its talons into a fist, and hammer down.
A plain, unadorned blow.
But. But.
If it landed, they would die.
For the first time, the dwarven vanguard with his great axe and massive shield did not even attempt a probing block. He moved his feet and threw himself backward.
That heavy body, wrapped in armor thick enough to make him a walking fortress of steel, could only rely on the technique forged through countless life-and-death battles, shifting with the barest economy of motion — and just barely slipping past that fist.
The fist never touched the ice either. It swung through empty air, nothing more. And still Gareth heard something break.
A dry, splitting crack.
Had the air shattered? Or space itself?
No.
It was the wind pressure off that fist grazing his shield — and one corner of the massive shield had crumbled to powder in an instant.
"!!!"
Terrifying.
What kind of absurd attack power and destructive force was that?
And while Gareth stood there stunned, Tiona, on the other side, was facing a fist from that same twin-headed dragon at almost exactly the same moment.
Blood aura burst outward, wrapping the girl's small frame, then splitting into countless crimson ribbons that scattered in every direction — and gathered again some distance away, reforming into the shape of the girl.
Clearly.
Compared to Gareth, Tiona had a good deal more experience with this.
Especially with the kind of fight where you absolutely could not be touched even once. In that, the girl was a veteran, and she had been braced for it from the start.
She let out a breath.
One exchange had been enough.
Both of them understood that this boss was something else entirely. That monstrous Strength was absurd to a degree that bordered on the ridiculous.
But what Gareth and Tiona had clearly failed to notice was that the boss also possessed an equally ridiculous speed.
A moment ago, the two of them had been attacked by the boss at what felt like the same time.
But because each was too focused on what stood in front of them — could only focus on what stood in front of them — neither Gareth nor Tiona had seen what was happening on the other's side.
Ais and Riveria, however, positioned as middle guard and rear guard, saw it perfectly.
The twin-headed dragon had split into two.
No.
It was so fast that it had left behind an afterimage.
It attacked Gareth first, then went straight for Tiona — but the two strikes came so quickly, one after the other, that it looked as though it had attacked them both simultaneously.
That was going a little far, even for this place.
Right now, thanks to Haruhime's level-boosting magic, everyone had essentially been raised to Lv.8. They weren't genuinely as strong as a true Lv.8 adventurer, but the increase in raw stats was real enough.
And even so.
They could barely follow this boss's speed.
For some reason, a thoroughly outrageous thought came to Ais.
Namely this.
A normal Monster Rex's strength lay in the absurd [Endurance] it possessed — hundreds of times that of a Monster of the same level.
So the altered, special Monster Rex created by Isagi's influence — this so-called Miracle standing in front of them — surely what it possessed wouldn't be [Strength], [Agility], [Dexterity] and... [Magic] hundreds of times greater than a Monster of the same level?
...
Isagi had no way of knowing that the thing Loki Familia and Lefiya were facing sat at the exact opposite extreme from the boss in front of him.
At this moment, Isagi was still working hard to take apart the ridiculous mechanics of this "SSS"-rank hunter.
From what he could see so far, this thing called [The Unreachable Eternity] could, without moving from where it stood, strike every target anywhere in the arena at any time — a full three hundred and sixty degrees, with no blind spot.
But each swing of the sword only landed once per target. One swing never produced multiple hits on the same target.
That was one mechanic he could confirm.
For now, it posed no great threat to his side. They could handle it.
The troublesome part was this thing's second mechanic.
Or rather.
Its "core mechanic," probably?
Anything touched by its weapon — that longsword coated in thick, deep red blood — whether weapon or body, underwent a certain change.
It could be treated as an abnormal status of a sort.
The result it produced was this.
A weapon or piece of equipment became unfamiliar, and was then gradually forgotten. In concrete terms, the body forgot how to use the weapon in its hands, until finally it could no longer even comprehend the thing itself, treating it entirely as something that did not exist.
And if the body itself was wounded by the longsword, the same effect appeared.
But here was the strange part.
Even now, Ottar and the others from Freya Familia were still swarming the boss over there — and it was still using that other mechanic, the one that kept the Goddess of Beauty's warriors from ever reaching its weapon or its body.
That was what felt so wrong.
Speaking purely of this boss's core mechanic, Isagi's mind went straight to the [Pale King].
Take a hit from the weapon in that Goblin king's hand and you accumulated an "instant death" status. Enough stacks, and a part of your body simply died.
By comparison.
The [Pale King]'s mechanic was arguably the more direct of the two.
After all, for all its complexity, the boss in front of him never got as crude and simple as instant death.
So.
Following that line of thought.
Shouldn't close combat be exactly what this boss wanted?
Just like the Pale King.
With Ottar and the others swarming it now, it ought to want a blade-to-blade fight — through weapon clashes, it wouldn't take long at all before the members of Freya Familia all forgot how to use the arms in their hands.
There was no need whatsoever to do what it was doing now, using that "untouchable" mechanic to keep Ottar and the rest from landing a single blow.
There had to be a secret buried in that.
The way Isagi saw it, a mechanics-type boss was essentially a puzzle.
On a first encounter they always seemed absurd, so strong as to be unbeatable. In reality, once you understood the principle behind the thing, you could find its weakness — and then clear it easily by learning the patterns.
The [Pale King] had been exactly that, in a sense.
And the "SSS"-rank hunter in front of him was the same.
Right now, Isagi and Ryuu-senpai at his side were supporting the wounded Hedin whenever the chance came, and at the same time both were turning the boss's mechanics and a possible strategy over in their minds.
The Elf girl listened patiently.
She listened to Isagi lay out everything he had worked through, committing all of it to memory while thinking rapidly on her own.
And then.
She offered a view that was thoroughly absurd, and yet seemed to fit the facts remarkably well.
"Could it be that this thing is simply terrible at close combat?"
The first thing they could be sure of was this.
The boss really was only Lv.8. Numerically speaking, that full-arena attack of his a moment ago had been average in both speed and Strength — a level everyone could handle. It was the method and the angles that were bizarre, which was what made it feel outrageous.
In practice, though, it wasn't all that troublesome.
And now, facing a joint assault from Ottar, Hogni and Allen Fromel — honestly, even something of the same level had no chance of coming through completely unscathed unless its technique was absurdly, monstrously good.
So the boss using that defensive ability now, keeping the Goddess of Beauty's warriors from ever touching its body or its weapon — was that a passive defensive strategy?
That did make sense.
Looked at that way, Ottar's judgment had been correct. If they had stayed at range like before and let the boss keep hitting the whole arena at once, the situation would have been worse than it was now, no matter how you sliced it.
"So what comes next?"
What came next looked more or less unsolvable. Perhaps this boss's mechanic was one of the truly classic ones.
"Absolute defense."
Maybe people from Ryuu-senpai's world would find it hard to grasp.
But Isagi knew this type intimately, because the mechanic was a classic.
"It can only touch you when you've touched it first."
In a sense, a pure and near-unsolvable cheat.
The initiative stayed in its hands at every single moment. In all likelihood the enemy had to sacrifice themselves — offer up a fatal wound as bait — before they could make it take damage in return.
It was a classic among classics.
And precisely because it was a classic, Isagi found himself smiling.
Simple enough.
The thing about a "mechanics boss" was that, compared with an unknown, the known was always easier to deal with.
As long as you understood the logic driving the mechanic, there was always a way to clear it.
Conversely.
The genuinely troublesome kind was the "stat" boss.
Because that kind was too pure. You beat it only if you were stronger than it. Otherwise there was nothing to be done.
Like a cruel measuring line drawn across the floor.
In games, that was the sort of boss that gave people the worst headaches.
Thankfully, this one wasn't that.
Isagi thought it through, let out a small breath of relief — and by then a plan had already taken shape in his head—
____
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