Chapter 426: 426

The huge sphere of earth plummets towards me. I’m still unable to move in the air. If I could reach the wall with my slime I could dodge it, but in the current situation, the ball of earth will reach me first.

I decrease my viscosity to absorb some of the impact. My outline collapses. If avoiding it is impossible, then I want to reduce the damage as much as I can. Slashing attacks are fine, but bludgeoning attacks are a problem for me.

The ball of earth slams into me, and the shock courses through my body. As my consciousness grows faint, I feel my [Tentacle Whip] make contact with the wall, and I pull myself away. There, I raise my viscosity and return to my human form. As the ball of earth hits the ground, it sends shakes throughout the entire area.

“Shit, stubborn vain struggling…!”

I repair my body with [Autoregeneration]. I took a lot of damage, but it’s no fatal wound.

It’s fine. I’ve seen my opponent’s fundamental fighting strategy, and I’ve narrowed down her species. I’ll quickly heal, then think from my opponent’s perspective to crush however she plans to survive. I don’t have any intention of keeping up this game of tag any longer.

“They’ll probably use the thread to escape above…”

As I look up, I see the red-eyed girl swinging a huge sinister arm down towards me.

“Urgh…”

The arm crashes through my head. I am torn from the wall and thrown into the air.

She attacked while I was focused on [Autoregeration]. It was a surprise. Certainly, it was a bad timing for me to be attacked.

But, even so, it’s a bad move for her. Even though she was able to take me by surprise, it still shouldn’t been correct for her.

It’s was surprise attack made with preparation to die for her, but for me it’s not a huge amount of damage. Rather than trying to earn a little more damage, she should be trying to take even the smallest chance at escape. Of course, that only relates to her survival for the immediate future, but that should still be her objective in the current situation.

I create a huge mouth in my abdomen, and breath out with [Plague Breath]. The dull cloud of curses envelops the red-eyed girl in the air. She frowns.

Curses don’t work on undead. I know that. But, [Plague Breath] has the power to decompose organic material. In this case, her lifeline has been cut off.

Behind her, I see something snapping. There’s clear unrest in her expression. What I cut was the masked spider’s thread. Her objective was probably to hit me with a surprise attack, and then be pulled back to safety by the masked spider. There’s no way she would consider fighting me in close combat outside of a surprise attack.

“[Gale]!”

She raises a pale arm and activates wind magic. It’s certainly a good choice, as it’s a fast-activating magic that allows her to make use of her position advantage and keep me away in the air. Of course, that’s only if I don’t interfere.

I already know all her cards. So, by reading the current situation, it’s easy to predict what action she’ll take. And, with how full her hands are at the moment, she won’t have anything to spare in preparation for my counter.

I reach out with a tentacle of slime and touch her enlarged arm.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Ugh…”

As I begin to come down, I pull her with me. She raises her huge arm up in an attempt to counterattack. But there’s no way I could lose in a direct confrontation.

I pin down her huge arm, and grab her other elbow. I grow a third arm from my shoulder and chop it down through the centre of her caught arm.

The sound of bones breaking rings out. I then tear off her two arms and toss them below. As I prepare to deal the finishing blow, I notice a round disk of earth falling from above.

“…Is that [Clay Shield]?”

[Clay] has several varieties. Both [Clay Gun], which specialises in shooting out tiny bullets of earth, and [Clay Sphere], which specialises in shooting large balls of earth, can be replicated with the normal [Clay], albeit with worse fuel efficiency and power.

And then [Clay Shield] is a magic skill specialised in creating sturdy shields. It’s hard to shoot it out and use as a weapon, but using it as a hard falling weapon is certainly effective. It’s hard to imagine this was the masked spider’s doing. It’s Miria’s skill.

“I’m being underestimated.”

I swing my third arm upwards to shatter the disk of earth. I made contact with that Miria woman in the hall, but she’s clearly the weakest of the three. As an adventurer, she’s lower second-rate at best, and she’s not even enough to distract me.

From my blind spot above the disk, a thread shoots out. The masked spider was riding it.

It’s hard to imagine Miria would be able to cooperate with the masked spider. Probably, it saw the [Clay Shield] that she dropped in a hurry and jumped on it in order to rescue the red-eyed girl.

It’s a surprise attack as a result of chance. As a result, it was impossible to predict. The thread wraps around my neck.

“Cheh!”

I twist my body, swinging my raised arm down to cut the thread. The masked spider bites into my shoulder.

“[Gale]!”

Distracted by the masked spider, the red-eyed girl’s magic attacks me. The masked spider kicks away from me, using its thread to escape to the wall. The tornado attacks me and thrusts me down. A hole had opened up in the floor below from the red-eyed girl’s ball of earth earlier, and I fall through that hole. I again reduce my viscosity, breaking my outline, in order to reduce the amount of fall damage I take.

The impact of hitting the ground runs through my body. It’s a trivial amount of damage for me. I immediately activate [Autoregeneration].

I look around. I’ve fallen down two floors. So then this is the underground.

I took successive hits in that fight just now. My situation’s not great. They got me well. They also had luck on their side.

Simmering anger wells up inside me. Just how much trouble are they going to give me? If it was going to be like this, it would have been quicker to call for the slime soldiers on standby. The reason I didn’t was because I thought it’d be faster not to, but that was a mistake. I had meant to discard my negligence, but it seems I was still secretly thinking that they would be easy to clean up. I kept saying that I’ll settle it next time, that the next time is fine, and that piled up and led to the current situation. It really is irritating.

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“It’s useless! No matter what you do, our levels are too far apart! How long do you truly think you’ll be able to run!?”

I howl, lower myself to a crawling posture. My magic power reserves have gone down far more than expected. It’s the worst. Demon Lord-sama will surely be disappointed in me.

“Give up already… Shit, enough with the constant moving…”

As I’m about to start finding my way up, the red-eyed girl lands on the ground in front of me. She kills the impact of her landing with [Gale].

“You’ve finally given up…? Heh, or do you really think you can beat me as I am now?”

“…Running away would be pointless. I was leading you here from the start.”

“Haah? You were leading me?”

Certainly, it felt like she was taking a strange route through the castle. But it shouldn’t have been possible for her to know the layout in advance. Did the Saint tell her? That’s not something I want to consider, but… In the first place, it’s not like anything will change just from coming underground.

“If you’re trying to bluff, it’s no use.”

“…[Fog of the Dead].”

A thick fog covers the area. But I can still see her silhouette. It seems to have a presence-blocking effect, but that’s also only partial. I’ll end it quickly…

“Ah?”

Throughout the fog, countless silhouettes rise. She’s using the earth from the [Clay] ball to produce more puppets. But, it’s a meaningless cheap trick at this point. I can scatter them in an instant.

I grow four more humanlike arms, and form a mouth in my belly from which I grow several tentacles.

“Come from anywhere you want! I’ll smash through your delusion!”

I crush a jumping shadow. It easily falls back to the ground. But, it wasn’t earth. It was a human skull, still with decaying flesh clinging to it.

“Hah…?”

While I’m stunned, squirming shadows rise around me. Still shocked, the corpse by my feet that I should have defeated just now starts to get up.

“No way, is this [Undead Maker]!?”

It’s a possession-type skill owned by a few high-ranking undead. It allows control of the over the dead in an area through a miasma. Rather than subordinates, they’re closer to weapons. As a result, they don’t die. A broken sword can still be swung. To stop the sword, you have no choice but to aim at the wielder.

An undead cludgeons me from behind. After taking the hit, I grab its club and recklessly swing it around to knock down the undead around me.

I’m also running low on magic power. I’m no longer able to fully maintain my health. I’ll admit that I have been driven into a corner. I’ve no choice but to admit that.

But, the one who will win will be me. She should also be reaching her limit soon. With how much magic she’s shot out, that’s inevitable.

She’s probably replenishing by using [Mana Drain] on the spider every now and again, but that has to be running out too. In fact, her initial [Gale] had quite a lot more force behind compared to the second time. This [Fog of the Dead] and [Undead Maker] can’t last long.

And, [Undead Maker] can’t deal a deciding blow to me. She’ll definitely try something. As long as I can endure that, I’ll win when her magic runs out.

…These corpses are the bodies of humans we snatched. Normally they would be fed to the gigant slime, but in order to manage its overeating, the norm is to gather them beforehand and feed them to it regularly. That’s the reason there’s a corpse storage underground.

And probably, as a high-ranking undead, she has the power to sense places where the dead gather. From the start, she acted to lead me here. In that context, her earlier words make sense. Even without knowing the layout of the castle, she could sense a pile of corpses.

“[Dark Sphere]!” “Shiii!”

I hear sudden voices from either side. Pushing through the dark fog, two spheres of black light fly towards me.

“…Here it comes then.”

It’s the masked spider’s and red-eyed girl’s [Dark Spheres]. So the masked spider could also use this skill.

As I try to step aside to dodge them, an arm of earth wraps around my leg. It’s made from the earth of the ball that fell through.

“U-uguh…”

It was kept back until the last moment. All of this was so that the two [Dark Spheres] could hit me for certain. Everything, including that reckless flight through the castle, was for this moment.

Before I can slip out, the corpses pile onto me.

“Am I going to lose? In a place like this…!? N-no, I’m not going to let it end here!”

After a moment’s hesitation, I lower my body’s viscosity. I slip through gaps between the corpses.

By reducing my viscosity, I raise my resistance to impacts. But on the contrary, I become more vulnerable to energy attacks. In this case, [Dark Sphere] is the worst.

But still, I should have prioritised escaping from the restraints. My judgement was delayed. That has led to the worst outcome.

The approaching spheres of light explode against me.

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