“The ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) boss rooms... are multiplying?”
No sooner had Serhi finished, than a thunderous crash rang out.
Bang! Bang! Bang! KWA-kwang!
Every boss-room door shook.
From inside, something hammered and rattled as if straining to break out, the blows making the air vibrate.
Staring blankly at the grotesque sight, Serhi finally opened his mouth.
“...Did the bosses just become plural, right now?”
Gidan bared his teeth in a crooked grin. For the first time in a while, he felt his blood really pumping.
“Who knows. We’ll find out after we clear them all.”
[Skill ‘Violet Bloodstream’ is activated.]
[Skill ‘Lion’s Breath’ is activated.]
A powerful surge of mana began sucking all the air in the vicinity inward.
Guru, who had been diligently poking the ground with her hoe, widened her eyes and rolled them round and round.
“Ueeng?”
“That bastard! Fucker pops skills without thinking about front or back!”
Cursing Gidan, Serhi snatched Guru up.
He was just about to move to set her down somewhere safe.
In that instant, the dungeon’s temperature plummeted. A chill so cold it seemed to freeze even his breath burrowed into the skin.
The boss rooms that had been pounding went silent, all of them at once.
“...”
“...”
Under suffocating tension,
Serhi and Gidan’s gazes converged on one point.
A child stood there.
Gidan moved with invisible speed to stand before the child and leveled his sword tip.
“What are you?”
The child lifted his listless face as-is and looked at Gidan.
“I am—”
The child’s mouth split long.
“Roballi.”
From the tip of the being’s toes that had given its name, shadow swelled and heaved, then split into countless strands and whipped about.
[Roballi Puldok (SSS)]
“SSS-class...”
Confirming Roballi’s rank, Gidan let out a low hum.
Then Roballi lashed the heaving shadows like whips, and Gidan barely blocked them.
The shadows swung one by one came with chilling precision and sharpness.
A shiver. He felt it was far stronger than Malikian, whom he had faced before.
They had to run for now. Together with Serhi, buying time would be doable.
Only, there was one big variable.
There was no guarantee the currently quiet boss-room doors wouldn’t open.
Judging from how the boss rooms had fallen quiet after Roballi’s appearance, the monsters were clearly under Roballi’s control.
'If that’s the case, the top priority is...'
Gidan turned his head.
Meeting eyes with him, Serhi gave a knowing nod.
'Protecting Guru.'
Receiving the stares of the highly strung Gidan and Serhi, Guru held her hoe and gaped, “Heh,” mouth open.
***
Meanwhile, unlike Gidan and Serhi, Guru showed no tension at all.
Beside the child, Veilach lifted his head like a meerkat, and Mephisto’s eyes flashed pew.
The two were thinking the same thing.
'An SSS-class restorative...'
Ever since tasting takoyaki, Mephisto hadn’t been able to shake thoughts of nourishing tonics.
And now, a precious restorative had rolled right up to them.
Greed overflowed from Mephisto’s eyes and beak.
Mephisto licked his beak once and pecked at empty air.
A quest window popped up before Guru’s eyes.
[Caregiver Quest: Let’s make a filial nourishing tonic for caregiver ‘Mephisto’!]
[Caregiver Mephisto was not filled by takoyaki. Let’s make an SSS-class filial nourishing tonic for Mephisto, who needs a restorative!]
'Ta, tako!'
Guru recalled how she had once made takoyaki out of an SSS-class monster and fed it to Mephisto.
'He was a bad guy.'
He had tried to eat Mephisto first. He deserved what he got.
Guru lifted the hand gripping her hoe tight.
'Do I have to... make it again?'
That dangerous power—she had to use it again. Today of all days, the hoe felt heavy.
What she glared at with eyes wide was a fierce scene.
Serhi kicked up sandstorms to obstruct the enemy’s sight while firing spells, and Gidan clutched his sword and was tanking with his body.
As if testing himself against Gidan and Serhi, Roballi increased the shadows one by one—when one strand was cut, it became two; when two were cut, it became three—pressing them hard.
When all those shadows had been cut and burst apart, there was a brief lull.
“Finally done? What can you do now?”
Gidan sneered as he caught his breath.
But Roballi only stared at Gidan without the slightest movement.
Then Serhi shouted.
“Gidan! Look ahead!”
KA-THOOM!!
In an instant, Roballi’s heaving shadows drew inward and were stowed away.
And then, with a boom, Gidan’s body whirled backward, as if the world had jolted.
Where Gidan had been standing, Roballi stood alone, perfectly still.
Gidan, slammed into the ground, didn’t so much as twitch.
Gulp.
'Fuck... I didn’t see it'.
Swallowing, Serhi clenched his wand and couldn’t take his eyes off Roballi.
Sssp.
Roballi’s head tilted to the side, and his eyes met Serhi’s.
The face that had remained expressionless began to contort grotesquely.
The corners of his over-wide eyes split, multiple pupils skittering madly about.
When the busy-darting irises halted and Serhi’s figure was reflected in them, his mouth split long, forming a chilling smile.
A shudder!
Every hair on Serhi’s body stood on end.
He sensed death in a blink.
The moment he shut his eyes without meaning to—
A cold so deep it seeped into his lungs constricted his body. Frost was slowly spreading under his feet.
“Haa—”
Serhi’s breath fanned out white.
No matter if it was a frost-domain monster, there was no way a chill this biting would assault an S-class like this...
Cautiously opening his eyes, he saw Roballi’s attack had stopped a hair’s breadth in front of him.
Roballi looked as if he had frozen into ice on a snowfield.
Serhi’s eyes trembled violently.
What came into his view was...
'Guru?'
Roballi was staring—like he was seeing something truly terrifying—at the small child’s figure, crunch-crunch stepping across the snow.
Roballi swallowed.
His opponent was only a small child, and yet a fear and awe etched into his genes welled up.
He was about to instinctively kneel before his liege.
“Urk!”
Suddenly a pain like his head splitting surged.
'Mother...!'
“Grrrk!”
Defying instinct, Roballi launched his attack at Serhi again.
It was then, as the unguarded Serhi sucked in a breath—
Buuuun—
Buun~ buun~
Guru’s bag opened, and drones rose like angry bees when a hive is attacked.
They were the combined drones Guru had devised after watching an aircraft carrier.
The drones took to the air in perfect formation and poured concentrated fire at Roballi.
Pew!
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWANG!!
Barrage after barrage from eight drones’ railguns left Roballi unable to come to his senses.
Under the soul-stealing concentrated bombardment, his whole body was being shredded to pieces.
It didn’t take long before Roballi’s figure, unable to dodge under some unknown dominion, toppled.
Roballi couldn’t believe he’d been laid out on the floor without managing so much as a single resistance.
All his heart wanted was to spring up right now and kill every human in the dungeon.
But—
“Bad kid gotta get punished.”
The little child thrust a sharp hoe at his eyes; branded as a boundlessly huge and terrifying existence, he could only tremble where he lay.
***
Mother’s command hadn’t been hard.
With his power, he could push humans onto the back foot as much as he pleased.
So Roballi had thought.
But me? Why? How?
How could a human open the cradle?
And why did he have to be in such a wretched state?
Roballi couldn’t believe it.
At some point, he was in a clay pot.
Whether it was the tundra’s brutal cold, or fear of the tiny child—he didn’t know; as he shivered under an inexplicable chill,
Warm water kept being poured over his body.
Roballi stared, bewildered, at his own blunt arm. It was the wing of a typical flightless bird.
Roballi Puldok, SSS-class monster.
He was now a plucked quail in a clay pot.
He wasn’t the only one flustered.
Gidan, who had been wiping the blood from his lips as green glow from the drones washed over him and he stood up, and Serhi, who had been refilling his drained mana—
Both stared, slack-jawed, at one person.
The one at the center of those gazes snorted hot air from her nose and declared with grave dignity,
“You gonna be Mephi’s fiwial nowishing tonic.”
