Ch.384Reinforcements Arrive

“Yaaah!”

*Slash!*

Seti’s spear, the Night Slasher, leaps high into the air and cleaves the massive flower monster—resembling a carnivorous plant—in half.

Sap-like mucus oozes from the wound inflicted by the spear. The flower monster tries to gather its tentacle-like stems scattered around to bind the wound shut, but—

“I carry a fragment of the sun at my fingertips—Incinerate All!”

*Whoosh!*

While the monster’s attention is focused on Seti, Jessica completes this week’s incantation.

The flower monster’s vitality, which had been regenerating endlessly—though not quite like a Hydra—is reduced to nothing more than damp kindling before the flames of the week. It burns instantly, revealing a jellyfish-like pistil part inside the scattered flower buds.

According to our intelligence, that pistil part is both the monster’s core and its weakness.

“The weak point is exposed! Everyone, open fire!”

*Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!*

*Whiiiiing~*

Bullets from the Gatling gun and revolvers rain down.

The flower monster collapses in tatters without even a death cry, and from where the jellyfish-shaped pistil was attached, a glass-like magical stone fragment rolls out with a *clink*.

“OK, that makes four.”

“Two hind legs, one foreleg, and the torso… now we just need the head and the other foreleg to complete it.”

“What does the Adventure Book say?”

“It’s coming together smoothly. Look here.”

As Anastasia opens the Adventure Book, new sentences are gradually being completed as the magical stone craft fragments come together.

[The formless–monster’s—–dissolv–with its own poison–remains in–body, when you–face its true form, the monster will–perish.]

“Hmm…”

“If we fill in the blanks… it seems to say that something of a formless monster remains inside something that was dissolved by its own poison.”

“The ‘formless monster’ must refer to the Venomous Demon Lord. The magical stone fragments we’ve found must be something important to that demon lord.”

“What? So we just need to find all the magical stone fragments after all?”

“Yes. It seems our task remains unchanged.”

As Phyllis says, to overcome our situation, we need to defeat boss-level monsters and collect the craft-like magical stone fragments.

If the head and foreleg parts aren’t broken into smaller pieces, we have two bosses left.

The treasure hunting content seems to be progressing smoothly, but…

“The problem is that we’re overworking our weapons in this unfavorable environment.”

“Can’t be helped. The original plan was one shot to take down the demon lord.”

“We never expected to have to use the ‘Demon Lord Slayer’ ability this extensively.”

The enemies we must fight aren’t just boss-level.

All sorts of monsters appear endlessly along this winding, unpleasant path.

Moreover, they’re all immortal beings whose lives can only be ended with the “Demon Lord Slayer” attribute.

Due to prolonged battles with such monsters, our weapons have been developing various issues.

“Femme Fatale is unusable for now due to magical overload, the Annihilator’s firing rate has visibly decreased, and my Wishmaker and Phyllis’s Old Willow are barely holding up…”

“Will, shouldn’t you be more concerned about your own magical depletion than the durability of your revolver?”

“Anastasia is right. Will’s ‘Demon Lord Slayer’ is powerful but takes a heavy toll. Using it any more would be dangerous.”

“Yeah… I know.”

I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

The only attacks that can defeat the monsters appearing here are those imbued with the power of ‘Demon Lord Slayer.’

Among them, Phyllis’s ‘Sacred Demon Buster’ is a trump card that can’t be fired in rapid succession.

In the end, Will, Seti, and Mina have to handle the enemies that come in numbers, and the enemy pressure is too intense for any one of us to take a break.

“Jessica, replenish my magic with the artifact.”

“But…”

“Let’s do what we can. Worst case, we can open a gate and escape.”

I say this, but I’d rather not resort to that method if possible.

I have a vague feeling that if we escape using the Adventure Book, all our efforts so far will be for nothing.

Somehow, I sense that we need to grit our teeth and clear this to the end to put a final period on our battle with the ‘Venomous Demon Lord.’

Since this feeling has no basis, I haven’t shared it with my companions yet.

‘Still, I am tired. When this is over, I’ll need to rest for at least a week doing absolutely nothing.’

Just as I was making that resolution and gritting my teeth…

“Oh? This is…”

Anastasia, who had been looking at me with worried eyes, seemed to sense something, and a meaningful smile appeared on her lips.

“Children, I have good news.”

“Good news?”

“It seems time flows faster in this space than we perceive. A full day has already passed since we arrived at the tower.”

“What!? It’s been that long already?”

“I thought only 4 or 5 hours had passed…”

Hearing that suddenly made me hungry.

But Anastasia didn’t bring this up just to tell us it was “time to eat.”

Then what? As that question arose, Jessica clapped her hands.

“Ah! We can reopen the gate to the treasure vault now.”

“Then it would be better to retreat to the treasure vault rather than Anastasia’s tower. It would be easier for Mina to maintain the weapons there too.”

“What should we do? Retreat right now?”

“Considering the master’s condition, that would be best.”

Most seemed to agree with Seti’s suggestion, but Anastasia shook her head.

“Wait. We are now inside the Venomous Demon Lord’s body, uncovering its most important secrets, are we not?”

“That’s right.”

“If there’s significance to the fact that the demon lord’s secrets were left inside its body, taking those magical stones out might lead to unfavorable results. We should think carefully, even considering the possibility of abandoning this battle.”

It seems Anastasia had a similar feeling to mine.

In fact, at Korkas Gorge, the ‘Adventure Book’ almost underwent a change before it was canceled.

Completing the Adventure Book is also Anastasia’s goal.

“Certainly, there’s logic in what Anastasia says…”

“If only we had a safe place to rest, we could somehow endure…”

My companions’ gazes converge on me.

I’m experiencing magical depletion symptoms after activating my skill to use ‘Demon Lord Slayer’ several times already.

Even if I draw magic from artifacts to replace what I’ve used, there’s no way to address the accumulating fatigue.

Moreover, for some reason, even ‘Repellation Field’ doesn’t activate properly here, so finding a solution to my fatigue problem seems distant at present.

“In short, we need to continue the battle without putting more burden on Will? And there was already a ‘Plan C’ prepared for that.”

“…Ah!”

That’s right.

With the situation changing so rapidly, even I had completely forgotten.

Plan A was to cross the swamp by airship and reach the tower.

Plan B was to open a gate and retreat for repairs and reorganization if the airship encountered problems due to monster attacks.

And there was also Plan C: to deploy additional forces if the tower’s structure and spatial dimensions allowed for it.

“Alright, let’s use Plan C. The path is a bit narrow, but it shouldn’t be a problem for fighting.”

“Yeah, since it’s come to this, let’s see it through to the end.”

“Then I’ll open the transfer gate. Beneath the mountain where iron and copper are buried, in the land where gold and gems sleep, open the door to the ownerless treasure vault.”

A blue gate opens on the slimy ground, and Mina throws a glittering signal device into it.

The activation signal for Plan C.

In less than ten seconds, reliable reinforcements appear from beyond the gate.

‘Neeeigh~!’

A glossy black body with a mane fluttering like blue-white flames.

Ancestor, freed from even the carriage harness, begins to transform with a clanking sound.

‘Boom’

A giant soldier wearing an ancient Roman-style helmet stands tall in this unpleasant world of mud.

Unfortunately, the cestus (hand wraps) covering his two fists would be of no help against immortal monsters, but—

“Heave-ho.”

The object Mina pulls out from the box of stopped time will solve that problem.

A silver-white metal pillar about 15cm in diameter and 1.5m in length.

This is a byproduct created during the design process of Seti’s ‘Night Slasher,’ continuously consuming vast amounts of magic to constantly exert a weak ‘Demon Lord Slayer’ attribute…

In terms of cost-effectiveness, it could be called nothing short of a failure.

*Click*

But when that failure is placed in the hands of a 3-meter-tall giant soldier,

*Whoosh~*

And massive amounts of magic are supplied from the small mana supply—containing an artifact—attached to the giant soldier’s back?

“I leave the rest to you, Ancestor.”

‘Boom~~’

It is no longer a failure but a special strike weapon for battling great demon lords.

The name is—

“Demon Lord—Absolutely Kill—Bat!”

“No! It’s called the ‘Pulverizer’!”

Either way, it works.