Chapter 380

Chapter 380

For Sale. Fallen Lady. Never Used.

Episode 380: Paracelsus’s Spirits (5)

“Our battle starts now!”

I proudly declared, with Elisha and Iris, who had depleted their mana, under my arms.

“Junior. Stop talking nonsense and gather the samples.”

“Yes.”

The dungeon collapses the moment it’s cleared, and everything except the items the raider possesses flies into the dimensional gap.

So, if we don’t want to return again, we have to search these ruins now.

Reluctantly giving up the soft belly of the elven priestess, I searched the surroundings with telekinesis.

Surely, there must be golems that Elisha subdued somewhere around here….

“Ah, found it.”

The ground was covered with countless debris. Something wriggling alone was visible in it.

They were two golem knights whose hands and feet were frozen solid by Elisha’s magic.

One was a close-range style with the most common saw-blade sword, and the other was a long-range type with one arm modified into a cannon.

…It almost seems like a robot.

I was momentarily excited, but thinking of the giant mech… no, golem that Faye would make, I decided to give it to her.

“This is it, right, Senior Faye?”

“Yeah! First, I need to make them docile. Where’s the mana blocker…?”

Faye was rummaging through her subspace pocket, but for some reason, she finally took out a long stick from her cleavage.

When she cut it in half and placed it on the golems’ chests, their movements gradually slowed down and stopped completely.

“Good! Let’s disassemble them later and put them in the inventory for now! I’ll get monster samples in the meantime!”

“Do you need monster samples too?”

“To make a giant golem, the easiest way is to examine already giant creatures, right?”

“That makes sense. Then I’ll wake up Elisha and Iris in the meantime.”

While Faye headed towards the monster corpses, her alchemy pouch swaying, I fed mana potions to the dazed Elisha and Iris.

I also injected a bit of mana to awaken their minds.

Shortly after, they regained consciousness. When I carefully lowered them to the ground, they managed to stand on their own, albeit unsteadily.

“Ugh. I’m dizzy…”

“Master… the world is spinning… urgh.”

They seemed to have just barely managed to stand.

“We’re going to enter the workshop now. Can you fight more? Or should we fight from here?”

“I’ll stop here. After all, I’ve properly tested my new magic. How did it look to you?”

“What’s there to say? It was the best.”

“Hehe. As expected, right? Now that I’ve found my path, all that’s left is to run. I’ll catch up soon, so look forward to it okay?”

Elisha nodded satisfactorily, holding her head.

Indeed, Elisha, using Elemental Circle, exuded an aura close to that of a high-level magician.

In the first place, a high-level magician is a being who defines and realizes their own magic.

Magic control, mana quantity, and mana purity are all secondary.

Elisha, through Elemental Circle, presented her answer to the elemental magic she envisioned. All that remained was to become more familiar with and deeply understand it.

If she gained enough proficiency, she would naturally reach the level of a high-level magician.

As I nodded with a pleased expression, Iris, who had staggered over, lightly grabbed my thigh.

“Master? How was I? Huh? I think I was quite cool.”

“Of course, you were cool. But… you know, right?”

“Hmm. That’s right. The problem is that I haven’t completely organized it yet.”

The reason why the new Elemental Burst looked like unfinished clay or mimicked the form of existing magic was probably because of that.

Since Iris couldn’t form a clear shape within herself, her magic couldn’t achieve its own unique form.

“Still, thanks to you, Master, I’ve managed to get a grasp. I’d like to try a few more things, but…”

“You’re tired, aren’t you?”

“It’s been a while since I depleted my mana, so it’s a bit overwhelming. I confidently asked to handle the dungeon, but it seems this is my limit.”

“It’s okay. I was starting to get restless anyway.”

“…You can’t calm down without seeing blood, even for a day! You’re truly a sword demon!”

“Where did you get that weird view of me?!”

Iris, who had been badly beaten during the process of removing her slave seal, has been portraying me as a battle maniac or a lecher recently, probably out of resentment.

I chuckled and pressed down on Iris’s crown to silence her. Meanwhile, Faye, covered in blood, arrived, having disassembled all the monsters into appropriate parts.

“All done! Let’s go!”

“…Could you use Clean first?”

Large monsters like that don’t fit into the inventory, so she disassembled them on the spot… what did she do to end up like this?

After restoring Faye to her usual clean-yet-messy state, I stepped into the cave.

Thump.

From the outside, it looked like a naturally formed crack, so it didn’t feel like a cave.

But it was the same even after entering.

A passage cut into a perfect rectangular shape. It was clearly a trace of artificial processing. Moreover, the material wasn’t ordinary stone, as it emitted a subtle light on its own.

I canceled the light I had prepared and walked ahead into the passage.

There was no particular battle here. It was as if overcoming the battlefield outside was the trial of the dungeon itself, and now was the reward part.

Well, it was probably designed to look that way.

After walking for a while, a large door appeared at the end of the passage. It was impressive, but there wasn’t even a lock.

Unlike the outside world, where many people live and change organically, this was an isolated dungeon.

So, the scenery beyond this door was probably something I knew well.

“Hoo…”

I took a breath, holding the shining lion dagger in one hand and the staff in the other.

Then, I kicked the door open.

Bang!

The door swung open. But what filled my vision wasn’t the interior, but a semi-transparent woman crying tears of blood.

-If everyone died, if everyone died, if everyone died, if everyone died…

The woman muttered eerie things. It was a horror movie-like production, and I was actually surprised in H&A.

But there was no need to worry. It wasn’t a ghost, but a spirit of hatred.

In other words, it could be killed.

“Heup!”

I poured a lot of mana into the shining lion dagger in my right hand and swung it.

It was a basic mana blade, a low-level magic. I didn’t use any techniques; I just sharpened the blade with mana along the dagger.

But it would be a very sharp blow to a spirit whose body was composed of energy without physical substance.

Especially if it was a sword sharpened by the powerful mana control and Dragon Heart output unique to a high-level magician.

Slice.

The head flew off without any resistance. As befitting the name spirit of hatred, it frowned deeply, but that was its last struggle.

With a noise, the outlines of the separated body and head gradually blurred. And eventually, the spirit of hatred scattered into particles of light.

It was a rare scene of a spirit disappearing in this era, but I didn’t have time to pay attention to that.

The other incomplete spirits, who had noticed my intrusion, were all looking at me.

There was the spirit of anger, shaped like a half-melted wolf, the spirit of space, shaped like a boy in a cubic box made of dot pixels, and even the spirit of illusion, who had turned into my own form.

The artificial spirits scattered around the room heightened their spiritual power with hostility.

Although their reason was faint, it was a natural reaction to be wary of an intruder who had broken into their home, but…

Buzz.

Since they were all incomplete spirits, their bodies flickered with noise every time they used their power, as if they were about to collapse.

Moreover, although they were looking at me, their eyes were blurry, as if they couldn’t focus properly.

These artificial spirits, due to their incompleteness, had lower combat power than their inherent power… but this time, they wouldn’t even be able to use their power.

Because I was planning to wipe them out before they could do anything.

Whoosh.

Was this the first real battle since I obtained Dragon Heart?

Just like Elisha and Iris earlier, I needed a place to test what I had newly acquired.

Without hiding the corners of my mouth, which were unknowingly rising, I uttered the incantation.

“[Starlight Rain!]”

Originally, it was a magic that devastated the front with countless rays of light like rain.

But Dragon Heart didn’t allow such simple usage.

The split light began to wriggle like a living creature, aiming at the artificial spirits who had revealed their teeth.

It was the moment when a simple, wide-area devastation magic transformed into a targeted annihilation magic.

Paaaat!

Like a predator swallowing its prey, my magic swallowed the artificial spirits.

And that was the end of it.

With a single intermediate magic, all those artificial spirits were wiped out.

“???”

What?

What just happened…?