Chapter 338 - 338: Heaven-Defying Mechanism!

Hedin had forgotten his left hand.

It was as though he had been born with only a right hand, as though every "memory" and every "habit" tied to his left had been wiped clean away.

And yet.

He himself could still sense that something was wrong, and the whole of him sank at once into a long, groping confusion.

In a battle, that was fatal. A single instant of distraction could kill.

"Look out!"

Isagi and Ryuu closed in on either side of Hedin, left and right, and turned aside the attack that had come out of nowhere.

That attack.

It had come from his own left hand.

Between the elf youth's arms, out of that blood-red region where his hand should be, a crimson blade had somehow taken shape, twisting around at an utterly grotesque angle — and a heartbeat ago it had been driving straight for his own throat.

And Hedin had felt nothing at all.

Because he had completely forgotten that his left hand existed. In his perception, his own "left hand" was simply a thing that was not there.

It made no sense. How could something like this even happen?

But it was happening.

Even now Hedin was throwing a puzzled look at him and at Ryuu, as if asking why they had done that. From his point of view, that lethal thrust had never existed, not from the first moment to the last — even now, he looked right through it.

How could this be?

If it went on like this the fight couldn't continue, because Hedin would need one person just to "babysit" him — otherwise he'd be killed by "himself" within minutes.

More importantly, it meant that in this fight no one could afford a single wound. The moment anyone ended up like Hedin, another person would have to be peeled off to support them, and from there things would spiral badly out of hand.

And on top of that —

Right now, for Isagi as much as for Ryuu, the weapons in their hands felt utterly "unfamiliar."

Not to Hedin's degree, not a total erasure of the thing's existence.

But there was a clumsiness to it that he couldn't put into words. Nothing sat right anywhere. That strange, off-kilter sensation kept gnawing at the mind, making it impossible to keep his attention on the battle in front of him.

Isagi at least could manage — he could swap to another weapon. But the others…

And it wasn't a real solution anyway.

He only carried so many weapons.

Something was off. Isagi was sure of it.

There had to be a problem somewhere. This BOSS's mechanic was too absurd. Forget everything else — didn't Hedin's current state prove that the BOSS in front of them simply couldn't be cleared solo?

Surely the requirement couldn't be a flawless, damage-free run?

Because the instant you took a wound, a part of your own body was forgotten, treated outright as though it did not exist — and out of that nonexistent place, a longsword would sprout to attack you.

That was ridiculous!!

Instinct told Isagi that no such absurd creature could exist. Even the [Empress], the final BOSS of the lower floors, had shown nothing but raw numbers. Nothing with a mechanic this outrageous.

Which meant —

The more outrageous a mechanic looked, the easier it ought to be to crack. The answer might well be right in front of him.

Focus!

Isagi looked toward the BOSS in the distance.

This "SSS"-rank hunter — its mechanic seemed to be spelled out plainly in its very name.

"The Unreachable Eternity."

At this moment.

Ottar, Hogni and Allen Fromel had it surrounded, and no matter what they did, the weapons in their hands could not touch it.

That was clearly wrong.

It had let Ottar and the others close in on purpose.

And just now, when it swung its own weapon, that deep crimson longsword had unmistakably crossed with his blade and with the others'.

Why?

He had to settle his mind and think this through.

These "hunters" were every one of them despicable creatures.

That had been the consensus when everyone traded information — someone had started the complaining, no one remembered who. Ambushes, betrayals, every dirty trick in the book. Isagi and the others had put down plenty of hunter BOSSes by now, and not one of them had taken the honest, open road.

So this thing in front of him had to be another scheming bastard!!

Everything it did, it did with a purpose!!

And right now his side was still being led around by the nose, with no idea what it actually wanted.

This was bad.

This thing really did deserve its place as the entity second only to the floor's final BOSS.

The difficulty of taking it down was on another level entirely.

No telling how things were going on Lefiya's side either. That "SSS"-rank piece of prey was a special Monster formed from a Monster Rex, one of the ones called a Miracle.

It had to be something formidable in its own right…

…

After parting ways with Isagi and the members of Freya Familia.

Riveria, together with Finn and Gareth, led the remaining girls of Astrea Familia back to floor 27.

Above the deep blue water.

A faint, drifting phosphorescence lit the cylindrical cavern.

Beneath the surface, plainly visible, lay something colossal — an immense black shadow radiating an aura that raised the hair on the back of the neck.

Every one of them knew the Monster Rex of floor 27, the twin-headed dragon Amphisbaena, very, very well.

Or rather.

Any second-tier adventurer would know it well.

Just as most Lv.2 adventurers took part, to one degree or another, in the operation to slay the giant Goliath and earned their [Excelia] that way.

For a Lv.4 adventurer hoping to rank up, the most common route of all was to hunt the twin-headed dragon on floor 27.

And as the Monster Rex ranked just below Goliath.

The Guild kept exhaustive records on it, and a standard strategy for it too.

First.

Under no circumstances could you let it dive underwater and fight you on terrain that favored it — not even if you happened to possess the [Diving] Development Ability.

So you needed a mage with ice-attribute magic, or a large stock of ice-attribute Magic Swords.

You froze the great lake at the bottom of floor 27, the water it made its home, outright.

At the very least you had to create a sheet of ice solid enough to stand on, and with it the chance to fight the thing on land.

Beyond that.

The only other thing to watch for was the magical breath its two heads spat out, each of an entirely different attribute.

Attacks so powerful that even second-tier adventurers struggled to meet them head-on.

Aside from that —

There was nothing else!

The old Dungeon had, after all, been fairly "plain."

A Monster Rex's strength lay in [Endurance] hundreds of times greater than an ordinary Monster's, and nothing more. With the right technique, a high-level adventurer really could take one down alone.

Which was precisely why.

Right now, everyone looked more than a little tense.

Who knew what the twin-headed dragon they all knew so well was about to turn into.

Almost out of habit.

They gathered at the edge of the great lake, and watched as Finn tossed the Plot Device in his hand — a transparent gem shot through with interwoven red and blue — down into the water below.

And then.

The water beneath their feet began to "dissolve."

A chill spread up through them, and with it Riveria and Lefiya began releasing the ice-attribute magic they had long since prepared.

All around, a gray-white mist congealed into walls. The battle on this side was about to begin as well.

____

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