"You really wanna fight me? By yourself?" I asked. Even if Hinata was an otherworlder and a paladin, I was an otherworlder and a demon lord seed. Even with this barrier restricting my abilities, there wasn't a chance of me losing to a mere human.
At least, that's what I thought.
"Oh, really? Someone's overconfident." Hinata smirked as she unleashed her next barrage of attacks at a supersonic speed. Even with the Wise One accurately predicting the path of Hinata's rapier and speeding my mind up 10,000 times the norm, I still took two surface-level scratches.
'Her sword can get past my Cancel Pain!?' I immediately realized.
"Hmm. Only two strikes. Perhaps I did underestimate you." So she said, but her expression didn't change a bit, indicating that she still believed that she held the absolute advantage.
She managed another strike on me before the Wise One managed to give me my answer as to why my Pain Resistance wasn't working.
'Report. This arts-based skill seems to act directly on the spiritual body.' Damn. Only four more hits and I'm dead, huh? Hinata was right to assume that she had the upper hand with a cheat like that, and she hadn't even busted her Unique Skill out yet, and I just knew that she had one.
As I jumped backward, to get away from that crazy sword of hers, Hinata congratulated me on figuring out the secret and not… you know, just dying instantly.
Still would've been nice if she'd just LISTENED TO ME.
"You've noticed it, right?" Hinata asked, casually strolling up to me. I wasn't dumb enough to think that she'd actually dropped her guard, though. "This barrier. It's a Holy Field. Specifically designed to purify your kind. Inside this field, monsters below the rank of A are prohibited from even taking action. You asked me if I was confident fighting you by myself, but a monster such as yourself doesn't even warrant my personal attention in this Holy Field. There's only one reason that I even bothered to show up today." She took a casual stab at me, which I barely parried with the flat of my blade. Sharp pain. She got another strike in. Three left.
"Because you killed Miss Shizu. I'm here for revenge. No more, no less. Today you die, at my hand."
"Revenge? Fine, I may have ended her life, but-"
Hinata cut me off, not interested in hearing my words. Damn Yuuki. "But? It doesn't matter. The only woman to show me a shred of kindness in this world, and now she's dead." She choked up a bit at the end, looking at me with the eyes of someone crushing an ant under her boot. The way she just wouldn't listen reminded me so much of Risa and Milim, dammit.
"I don't regret what I did. I regret what I couldn't do. I couldn't save her. But I can spare you." I told Hinata, leaning back in a casual stance. Just because I couldn't use magicules didn't mean that I was totally useless. The Wise One had just finished its tests, and I knew my exact limits in this space. Now, all I had to do was pretend that they were higher than they actually were.
"Shut up." Hinata said, her rapier flashing.
But even if I wasn't fast enough to keep up with her, the Wise One was. The moment her rapier flashed at me, my sword flashed with a bright light, coming up to block her own blade instinctively. But that was just the distraction. The main attack was a nearly unseen yellow mist that sprayed from countless tiny, pressurized subdermal glands in my arms.
Now, I couldn't use magicules at all, at least outside my body. I also couldn't shapeshift externally, either. But internally, I was protected by my own magic force. That meant that skills like the Black Snake's acid breath weren't completely offline. I just needed to use chemicals that didn't rely on magicules.
That made them weaker, sure, but with all of the random raw materials in my stomach, I could still use chemical attacks. This specific chemical was a version of the Evil Centipede's paralysis breath, made from a complex array of chemicals pulled from herbs. When assisted by magicules, the toxin would even paralyze Risa or I for a few seconds. Take the magicules out, and it'd still be enough to keep Rango and Ranta down for quite a while.
And sure enough, Hinata's sword lowered, missing its target, me, by several inches. Immediately, I took the option to dash backwards once more. "Sorry, Hinata. I couldn't help Shizu, but I can help my friends."
While it'd take me half-a-day to fully analyze the barrier, if I could just get Hinata to lose sight of me, I knew that I could find some other way to get out of here, even with but a mile of space, end to end. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't to be.
As I ran away, my instincts forced me to turn around on the spot, in order to block Hinata's rapier once more. "You honestly think cheap tricks will save you?" She hissed, her expression even colder than before. Now, she really wanted to kill me, huh?
'Understood. Running analysis. Recommended courses of action are:...' Wise One immediately realized what I needed, as I took another slash, leaving me only two strikes before I was dead.
"I'm sorry, Hinata! You leave me no other choice. I'm getting serious now, so try not to die!" I declared confidently. "Swirling death mode: Activate!"
Suddenly, my entire body was shrouded in a cloud of blackish-greed poison so thick that you could practically reach out and grab it. It emanated outward, instantly destroying anything in sight. Rocks, grass, trees, seemed to simply vanish before it. Immediately sensing the danger, Hinata jumped back and analyzed me through the fog, but not before wincing.
For once, Hinata's cold expression was gone, shock in its place. Just from the single, short moment that the poison had touched her, Hinata's sleeve and pant leg had been eaten away almost completely, the skin beneath bright red and covered in boils. Still, it was only skin deep, so her self-regeneration healed it as she stood there, trying to calculate how to get past the poison mist.
Then, to her horror, the entire mist exploded into blue flames, fueled by Ifrit. For any normal person, the heat would've pushed them back even further, but not Hinata. Instead, she simply looked on, part-impressed, and part horrified.
Horrified because, inside the hellish, fiery mist, she could see the ground moving around, being forcibly absorbed into my body. 'Swirling Death mode' was just a program that the Wise One had concocted on the spot. The first part of it was the super-poison released into the air, the same way that I'd released the paralysis poison. Next, I used Ifrit's power to make it explode, creating a firestorm with temperatures rivaling Hellflare. Then, finally, my body, safe inside the hellstorm, pulls my surroundings inside with Gluttony, forcibly transforming itself into something optimized for battle, despite my lack of available magicules. Dragon scales. Direwolf fur, eagle eyes, the nose of a wolf, the tongue of a snake, two tails, my body looked like a chimera pulled straight from a horror movie. Even Hinata was impressed.
Somewhat.
"As I thought. You can't keep the poison up for very long." Hinata muttered to herself, charging straight through the fire like it wasn't even there, to stab my body twice more with her rapier.
In response, I roared, swiping at her with claws sharper than steel.
"You gave up your sentiency for this attack. You're just an irrational monster now." She realized with wide eyes, stepping back just as the Swirling Death monster used Gluttony to pull the ground out from beneath her feet. Unfortunately for her, it also swallowed her blade. "Stubborn until the end. If I leave you alone, you'll destroy the entire planet." Backing up, Hinata released a bunch of non-elemental spirits to hold the monster down, but it only bought her a few seconds, as the Swirling Death monster released a concentrated burst of spirit flame, before swallowing all of them near instantly.
But the moment that they gave her was more than enough.
"Let me provide you a prayer to the divine. I hope and desire for the power of the holy spirits. Listen to my appeal and overcome all in your way! Disintegration!" As she cast her magic, a giant, complex multilayered magic circle suddenly appeared, trapping the Swirling Death monster in the center of it. And finally, the Disintegration magic was complete. The ultimate in targeted magic, literally divine and capable of destroying all in its path without exception.
The Swirling Death monster was destroyed without a trace.
Dang. If she had something that powerful in her arsenal, I wondered why she'd even bothered with the barrier. I really hated enemies who were both powerful and cautious. My confidence in my own power was completely shattered by that.
Still, according to the Wise One, I likely would've beaten her if I were to unleash all of my power and fully absorb Charybdis. Well, there was a 60% chance.