Chapter 43: The Blade of Wrath, A One-Hit Kill!
Otonashi Chiya killed a total of six Earthworm Devil clones before the first floor was cleared.
"Six devils on just the first floor... this Earthworm Devil is truly a pain to deal with. Thank god the Vice Captain is here!"
"Yeah, if it were me, I wouldn't dare get into close-quarters combat with just martial arts. I'd have to rely on devil powers."
"But if you used devil powers against every single one of these things, your body would give out first. I definitely don't want the Fox Devil eating all the skin off my arms."
Looking at the floor covered in Earthworm Devil corpses, blood, and entrails, the five hunters accompanying Chiya couldn't help but marvel. While they were getting headaches over how troublesome the devil was, Chiya was actually in high spirits.
He was having a blast farming attribute points. A single clone yielded 5 points, and hunting them was effortless for him. In just a few moments, he had already farmed 30 attribute points. Contrary to the others, he was actually hoping the second and third floors would have even more clones for him to harvest.
"We'll handle the bodies later. We must find the Earthworm Devil's main body and eliminate it first."
With those words, Chiya gripped his katana and headed up to the second floor, the others following close behind.
Just as they reached the corner of the second-floor landing, a massive earthworm head suddenly lunged out. Its gaping maw was large enough to swallow Chiya whole. This head was at least two or three times the size of the clones—this was undoubtedly the main body. It had likely heard the commotion downstairs and set an ambush at the top of the stairs, waiting for them to ascend.
But how could such a devil possibly harm Chiya? Even with the massive power boost from the Gun Devil flesh, it was futile.
His body blurred as he sidestepped with extreme speed, pivoting to deliver a counter-slash precisely across the main body's neck. To his surprise, however, the blade didn't sever the head; it only managed to cut about a quarter of the way through.
The neck was actually one of its softest spots—the head itself was covered in a layer of thick, bone-like exoskeleton that looked incredibly sturdy. Furthermore, he couldn't be certain if the main body's weakness was the brain like the clones. This was the most resilient devil Chiya had encountered so far. Even with three times the strength of an average human, a standard katana wasn't sharp enough to easily cleave through its defense.
"Aaaagh! That hurts!!"
The Earthworm Devil screamed, but the wound on its neck began to heal almost instantly. It shouted arrogantly, "It's useless! Hahaha! You can't kill me! It's you who will die!"
"Strike now!"
The five hunters behind Chiya weren't about to stand by and watch. Three of them activated their devil powers simultaneously, summoning the massive claws of the Fox Devil from thin air. Three sets of claws tore through the air, and in a flash of bloody light, the Earthworm Devil's body was shredded into several segments, its giant head rolling onto the floor.
A buzz-cut youth among them then transformed his right arm and the axe he held, doubling their size, and brought the weapon down heavily onto the severed head.
The final member of the group was Ishii Rinka—the girl Chiya had made cry during sparring. She was currently helping heal the skin wounds the others had sustained as a price for their contracts.
"Tch... the Fox Devil's bite is as vicious as ever. The skin on my left forearm is completely gone."
"Is the thing dead? It's stopped moving."
"I have a feeling it's not that simple..."
The squad members thought they could catch their breath, chatting while Ishii Rinka tended to their wounds. Only Otonashi Chiya kept his sharp gaze fixed on the Earthworm Devil's head.
Despite its body being sliced into segments, the exoskeleton on its head remained almost entirely intact. The slight dent on the surface, caused by the giant axe earlier, had done no real damage. Right now, the creature's head lay motionless, but Chiya suspected it was playing dead, waiting for them to lower their guard before launching a frantic counterattack.
If the clones couldn't be killed without destroying the brain, there was no way the main body—empowered by the Gun Devil's flesh—would die this easily.
Chiya opened his right hand and chanted internally: Blade of Wrath!
The miniature blood seal in his palm flickered with a crimson light. A blood-colored throne materialized beneath his feet, with a gold-and-red double-edged longsword standing vertically upon it. Chiya stood atop the throne, his palm pressing down on the hilt's pommel.
A strange, heavy atmosphere instantly filled the hallway, affecting not just Chiya, but exerting a faint, unsettling influence on everyone nearby.
"What's going on?!"
The squad members felt a sudden surge of irritability and aggression. While it wasn't hard to suppress, they were baffled by the sudden emotional shift. Turning around, they were stunned to see a throne behind the Vice Captain and a gold-red blade wreathed in an eerie aura.
"Vice Captain... are you okay with that thing?"
Chiya gave a slight shake of his head and drew the Blade of Wrath. The throne vanished, merging into the sword and extending its length by another meter, while crimson mysterious runes flickered across the blade.
The Earthworm Devil, startled by this lethally dangerous aura, abandoned its ruse. A brand-new body erupted rapidly from its neck. It didn't recognize the Wrath Devil, but the sheer intensity of the aura made it realize it couldn't afford to be careless!
Chiya gripped the Blade of Wrath with both hands and swung upward. A massive, scarlet crescent-shaped shockwave tore from the blade. The wave spanned four or five meters in diameter, cracking the floor and ceiling of the hallway as it hurtled forward with undiminished speed.
With unstoppable momentum, it sliced the Earthworm Devil's newly grown body vertically in two. Even the thickest part of the head's exoskeleton was shattered instantly by the strike. The brain was obliterated; the entire body and head of the Earthworm Devil were cleaved clean in half.
[Ding! Host has successfully hunted the "Earthworm Devil (Main Body)". Attribute Points gained: 30!]
The Earthworm Devil was killed in a single strike.
However, that one swing took a heavy toll on Chiya. Had his rage not been entirely absorbed by the Mangekyō Sharingan, that strike would have likely caused him to lose his sanity instantly. Instead, it drained a massive amount of his ocular power and vitality—a consumption roughly equivalent to using the offensive "Kamui."
While it might have been more efficient to just use Kamui—since almost no physical defense can withstand it—he needed to test the Wrath Devil's power to understand the cost. In the end, as long as the devil was dead, it didn't matter.
The five men beside him were speechless once again. They hadn't expected the Earthworm Devil to regenerate a whole new body, and they certainly hadn't expected the Vice Captain's strike to be so devastatingly powerful.