KABOOOM!!!

“Guhk...!”

A human-shaped figure was sent flying from the impact.

And over that human-shaped figure—

BZZZT...

a gigantic monster’s foot, dozens of meters wide, came down.

{So that cold power has finally run dry.}

“Ghk...!”

{You were truly stubborn material.}

CRUNCH!

“Kh...!”

When the giant put more weight into the stomp, the knight’s body beneath its foot shattered to pieces, and—

ROLL...

only the head remained, tumbling across the ground.

{Still, at this level, it does feel like material worth the trouble.}

“Let... go... m-me....”

One of the giant monster’s countless hands picked up that head.

{Don’t worry too much.}

Saying that, the doctor brought Mountain’s head in its grasp toward its own body.

{Your death... will not be a meaningless death.}

“S-stop...!”

The doctor’s body split open like a mouth—

and Mountain’s face was about to be “collected” inside—

at that exact moment.

“Rude knight!”

SLASH—

{...!?}

A monster that appeared out of nowhere cut that hand off.

And.

The one who had severed the hand shouted toward Mountain as he fell to the ground.

“I have taken the shadow of this land as my veil!”

With the hand severed, Mountain’s head that had been clenched in its grip also dropped toward the ground.

And when that head hit the earth—

even though it should have been the kind of impact that crushed it into a mess—

SLIP...

“Go in there, and replenish your former king’s power!”

that face was sucked into the shadow anchored to the ground.

And inside that shadow is the king the Belsnickels once served.

“Understood, Viscount...!”

A king who didn’t care whether his power was stolen or not.

{...You were alive. I’ll have to admit it—your recovery is impressive.}

“Hmph. I never asked for recognition from a mongrel like you. And besides.”

Ariella’s strike had torn /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ off the doctor’s arm, but it was only one arm out of dozens.

And even that—

SLIP.

“Looks like you’re not exactly in a position to talk, either.”

Less than thirty seconds after it was cut off, it regenerated perfectly.

It was a bizarre recovery that didn’t lose out even compared to a vampire’s.

{It’s impressive that you made it back alive, Guardian.}

And then—

the doctor pulled that perfectly restored fist back,

{If you barely survived, you ought to treasure that life a little more.}

KRA-KOOOM!!

It drove the fist forward at tremendous speed.

‘...Tsk!’

Ariella barely managed to avoid it.

And as she watched her own skin get peeled away from the mere wind pressure, she thought—

‘Direct fighting isn’t my strong suit.’

The core of Ariella’s strength lies in the forces she can command.

Those forces are certainly powerful, but Ariella’s personal martial power...

Even back when she was only a quasi-viscount, and she was exposed to divine power—it was a level where she could still clash head-on with Shin Youngjun to some extent.

Now, after rising through ranks until she was close to a count, her true body’s martial power had also grown considerably.

She probably wouldn’t be at a major disadvantage compared to those great great monsters.

But.

The moment Ariella, as the one who leads the forces, goes down, the entire force loses power.

Under normal circumstances, Ariella almost never fought on the front line.

Even so—

‘Right now, I have no choice but to step in myself.’

For some reason, right now she had stepped onto the front line.

“Because of you, my retainers lost their strength.”

It seemed Ariella had her own reasoning.

After barely dodging the fusion’s fist, she sprang onto that massive arm—

“Your blood! I will fill my children’s bellies with it!”

and sank her teeth toward it.

A vampire’s recovery comes from blood.

If Ariella could take even a little of that fusion’s blood, packed with overwhelming mana, it might mean countless retainers who had fallen out of combat could return to the fight.

But—

{That’s a bit.}

RIP!

{...Troublesome.}

As Ariella closed in, the giant monster’s head opened, and the bug that had shown itself before appeared again.

[Sunbug]

A bug that emits sunlight, a natural enemy to vampires.

No matter how powerful a noble Ariella is, even brushing that light would be fatal.

“Haha.”

And then—

“It really wasn’t a lie that you lack aptitude for combat.”

{...?}

“How can you act exactly the way I expect, to this extent?”

With that threatening bug right in front of her, Ariella smiled.

And.

The reason was simple.

SLASH!

{...!?}

The Sunbug’s head that had revealed itself from a distance—

that head was severed by a single dagger and falling to the ground.

{This is!?}

It wasn’t Ariella’s doing.

If it were a position where she could attack it, there would’ve been no need to bring the Sunbug out in the first place.

“You did a decent job! I’ll praise you for it!”

And right now, on this battlefield, the only beings who could attack a Sunbug without getting detected by the doctor were—

{No way.}

Among the Awakened of the Legion, those specialized in hiding their bodies to avoid monsters—

{...the natives.}

the Legion Commander’s escort team.

***

FWOOSH!

The Sunbug’s head burst apart.

Blood sprayed from the severed head—

and—

SLIP.

When Ariella extended her hand, that blood moved on its own and drifted into her embrace.

“Rise, my children!”

Then—

that blood spread in every direction and touched the retainers’ bodies.

-By my master’s command....

Retainers who hadn’t been completely erased pushed themselves up.

They attacked other nearby fusions and scattered that blood across the land.

Retainers with overwhelming power, spread across the battlefield,

began regaining strength one by one.

If it had been a little earlier, even if the retainers stood back up like that, it wouldn’t have meant much.

One flash of the Sunbug’s light, and all those retainers would’ve been neutralized again.

But not now.

-Follow my master’s command!

-Scatter the blood, and raise our brothers!

The Sunbug’s head had already been cut off and fallen to the ground.

The vampire force that had been on the verge of annihilation began increasing, one by one.

{I don’t understand.}

And.

As the doctor watched that, it thought.

‘They revealed themselves in front of me on purpose to cut down the Sunbug. That much, I can understand.’

But.

What it couldn’t understand was something else.

Faint presences felt somewhere in this land.

Presences so subtle that even the doctor, with its overwhelming power, could barely find them.

Those faint presences—the guardians who followed the Legion Commander earlier.

Among them, they were something only the natives possessed.

An Awakened’s power is extremely specialized to each field.

The presences of Legion members specialized in covert work were in a realm even the doctor struggled to sense.

In the past, it had only been a little annoying to detect—not so much that it couldn’t be found even with this body.

But not now.

{...Your presences seem even fainter than when we met before.}

Now, the presences that had already been faint had become far fainter than what the doctor remembered.

[Hero-grade Chef’s Blue Waterdrop Jelly]

[Upon consumption, you can blend into the surrounding environment a little better.]

So faint that even a monster as overwhelming as it was struggled to find them.

{Why aren’t you running?}

And.

That presence itself was the part it couldn’t understand.

{Those who reek of blood—I can understand. They have confidence in their vitality, so they stepped up to fight me.}

At that moment—

FWOOSH!

Another dagger flew in from somewhere.

{But....}

And.

At the exact moment the dagger flew in—

{The natives shouldn’t be like that.}

KRA-KOOOM!

The doctor’s fist shot forward at tremendous speed.

The fist’s destination was...the exact place the dagger had just come from.

“Guhk...!”

“Private Jang!”

The soldier who had attacked and tried to move avoided a direct hit by a hair—

but even the aftershock alone sent the soldier flying dozens of meters.

{Tsk. I told you to treasure your life.}

No matter how hard those presences were to find, the moment they attacked, once it knew where the attack came from—

it only needed to swing a fist at that location.

The doctor’s body had the kind of power that could destroy everything around it with a mere extension.

{Still, now you’ll back off....}

If it displayed this much power, they would’ve realized that hiding and attacking had no meaning.

That’s what the doctor thought as it started to move again—at that exact moment.

FWOOSH!

{...?}

Again.

A dagger flying in from somewhere.

KRA-KOOOM!!

Again, the doctor struck at where the dagger came from.

Because the response was based on seeing the attack coming, there was inevitably some time to dodge.

No matter how fast the attack was, it could avoid a direct hit.

But.

Even being clipped by its attack was endlessly lethal for the natives.

{Knowing that risk, you still insist on attacking me.}

They were people who couldn’t inflict meaningful damage on it through combat anyway.

A few hundred, a few thousand of those daggers—none of it mattered to it.

On the other hand, their stealth was undeniably exceptional.

Even the doctor was struggling to find them.

If they simply stayed hidden somewhere, they could safely leave this battlefield.

And yet they were still attacking it like this.

It was as if—

‘They’re deliberately trying to expose their location....’

In that moment.

A sharp sense of wrongness settled into the doctor’s mind.

They were.

Taking the risk, trying to get their location exposed.

And what that meant was—

‘There’s something they’re aiming for, worth taking that risk...!’

THUD!

The doctor’s enormous body moved abruptly and turned around.

The exact opposite direction from where the natives were luring it by attacking.

What was there—

{LEGION COMMANDEEEER!!!}

“...Ah.”

Walking somewhere in secret, hiding his presence as much as possible—

“Did I get spotted?”

was Sergeant Shin Youngjun.

***

{LEGION COMMANDEEEER!!!}

The doctor shouted the moment it spotted me and started closing in at tremendous speed.

{I thought you were hiding somewhere, or that you ran! If that was the case... I swore I would chase you down and kill you!}

From the start.

The only reason I’d had the breathing room to talk with Ariella was because Mountain bought me time.

Meaning it wasn’t like that bastard’s anger toward me had cooled off.

{And yet, you dare...!}

It probably assumed I’d run, and planned to remove Mountain—who could still interfere with it—

and then pursue me.

But—

{You shamelessly show yourself in front of me again!}

“Haha... I didn’t think I’d get spotted.”

The fact that I didn’t even run seemed to have made it genuinely furious.

{I won’t ask why you didn’t run. I was going to chase you down and kill you anyway.}

“......”

{The Legion Commander didn’t actually think you could lie to me and still return alive, did you.}

“...You. You keep going on about how I lied, how I lied.”

And at that, I shrugged and said,

“If we’re being picky, you’re not exactly polite either.”

{What....}

“You can call it a cultural difference if you want, but.”

I stared blankly at that gigantic monster’s body.

What I saw was jet-black mana.

And in that view—

[Ingredient Identification (Enhanced)]

[Avaros’s tendons]

[Fragment of a Sunbug’s head]

[Powro’s blood vessels]

[Gratias’s hide]

[Tel Lopol’s fur]

[Mortalshell carapace]

Countless names.

“When you’re talking to someone... not even showing your face is a bit much, isn’t it?”

{.......}

Among them, there was no name that referred to the doctor itself.

And.

“So.”

I moved my gaze off that monster, looked down, and said,

“Let’s look each other in the face and have an honest talk.”

Looking there—

speaking as if to something far away—

I kicked lightly off the ground.

Then—

WHOOOOOOSH!!!

My body started falling into the immeasurable depths underground.

***

When that huge monster first appeared, it came up from underground and targeted beneath Mountain’s feet.

‘The hole it made.’

The place I threw myself into was the very hole that monster itself drilled up through.

Just how deep did it come from?

A deep darkness where I couldn’t even see the bottom.

My body began free-falling into it.

And as I descended underground, I thought,

‘Come to think of it... it was strange from the start.’

When that huge monster appeared, I couldn’t help being shocked by that overwhelming power.

No powerful monster I’d met so far had ever shown power on that level.

If I had to describe it by mana color...navy.

A monster that would clearly be a full tier above those blue-mana monsters that had each been an absurd nightmare to deal with.

[Combat Power Gauge]

But.

When I looked at that monster, the color I saw was black.

‘Back then I wondered why it showed up as that kind of color.’

The mana colors shown on this [Combat Power Gauge] are seven colors—the colors of the rainbow.

But there are also white and black at the very edges of that rainbow, or something like that—so I wondered if it was a staggering existence that surpassed even violet...but no.

‘It was layered.’

I thought of the paints I used to mess with in art class as a kid.

Mix one or two colors and you get a decent color.

But if you keep mixing countless colors together, what you get is—

‘A nasty black.’

That huge monster isn’t a single monster.

It’s made from the corpses and materials of countless monsters.

An existence that can’t be treated as a single individual.

Which means—

‘It isn’t the doctor’s true body.’

From the start, I’d never faced that bastard properly even once.

I’d always been talking to one of the monsters it used.

There were a lot of things I seriously wanted to ask it.

I had questions I’d been holding onto, personally.

And.

If you’re going to talk about something important, you don’t do it through a call or a text.

You do it face-to-face.

‘I’m coming to meet you.’

It’s time to meet that bastard’s true body.

{LEGION COMMANDER!!!}

...Of course.

Only if it lets me.