"Leo!"
Seeing Leo blasted like a cannonball by that sudden black stake, smashing straight through the ceiling, the watching girls all cried out.
Ais especially, her grip on her sword tightening, an invisible current of air already drifting toward her and coiling around her body.
"Kah...!"
Slammed into the ceiling, Leo coughed up a mouthful of blood, feeling as though his whole body had been ground beneath a mountain, everything screaming with pain.
That last black stake had shattered the protective starlight of Comet Chase and still punched through his battle garb to wound him this badly, showing just how powerful it was.
...That...was...
Gritting his teeth, swallowing the rusty taste rising in his throat, Leo looked at that black stake, his pupils shrinking a fraction.
That stake was both huge and long, its whole body a shade blacker than the rest, and at over six meters it was longer than any of the others.
With the bones across its chest cracked and splintered, Udaeus's eerie eye-fires swayed. As though the recent brush with death had sent it into a rage, it slowly reached out and gripped the black stake.
Then it wrenched the stake free, shook off the fragments clinging to it, and exposed the thing inside to the air.
It was a sword, remarkably like the stake, yet more slender, more keen.
Just like those Spartoi wielding bone swords, Udaeus gripped the black greatsword and let out a violent roar.
The sight stunned Ais and the others.
"Wh, what's going on?!"
"Udaeus is using a sword?!"
Tiona and Tione cried out in utter astonishment.
Never mind those two, even Ais and Lefiya went wide-eyed. Because this was a sight no one had ever seen.
Not the Loki Familia, who had crossed swords with this Floor Boss many times, nor the intelligence the Guild had released to date, held any record of Udaeus ever using a sword. This Floor Boss's weapons were its massive body and the black stakes spread across the entire chamber, and nothing besides. Never, at any time, had it drawn a sword as it did today.
This was an Irregular!
No, this was a brand-new combat mode no one had ever triggered, one that appeared only when Udaeus was challenged alone!
The giant Skeleton King let out an earth-shaking roar, every joint on its body glowing.
Shoulders, elbows, wrists... each of Udaeus's core joints radiated a brilliant light like burning meteors.
The purple glow pouring from its sword hand felt especially ominous, and everyone present went cold.
They didn't know what would happen next, but Ais and the others all understood it would be nothing good.
So Ais could hold back no longer. Wind surged around her, and she charged straight into the arena like a raging storm.
"Lefiya! Don't come in!"
"You cover us!"
Tiona and Tione both shouted, then charged in right after her.
But apart from Ais, wrapped in wind, who tore into the arena at astonishing speed, neither Tiona nor Tione made it in.
The familiar sound of splitting rock rang out as small mounds rose from the ground one after another. A swarm of skeletal monsters burrowed out of the earth and blocked Tiona and Tione's path.
"Spartoi?!"
"At a time like this...!"
Tiona and Tione had to halt their charge and face off against the huge pack of Spartoi.
The bone warriors, hefting their bone weapons, roared one after another and closed in around the Amazon twins, tangling with them in a fierce melee.
"Miss Tiona! Miss Tione!"
Lefiya, who hadn't joined the battlefield, could only cry out in a panic.
By now Ais had already reached Udaeus.
Udaeus roared, eyeing the uninvited guest before it, a savage light flickering in its eyes, and swung its sword-hand without hesitation.
The purple glow became a surge of magic that poured into the sword, which swept sideways at a speed the eye couldn't follow. The core joints at its shoulder, elbow, and wrist flared one after another as the black greatsword slashed toward Ais.
The next second, a roaring blast that seemed to shake the entire Dungeon erupted.
This was a strike of ruin.
This was a strike of annihilation.
When the blow swept across the earth, the black stakes scattered over the ground and the Spartoi newly born alike were caught in an enormous explosion in an instant, vanishing as if crushed to dust.
Even Tiona and Tione, locked in fierce battle with the Spartoi, were blown off their feet by the oncoming shockwave, slamming hard into the wall at the chamber entrance one after the other and making Lefiya scream.
As for the chamber floor, it was as if that blow had shattered it, the ground caving downward all at once and bursting apart with a roar, throwing up thick smoke and dust and a storm of broken rock while a scorched-looking haze rose from it.
There was no doubt: this was a killing blow that could rival wide-area annihilation magic, and like Udaeus's sword, it was a power never shown before. It seemed to be an attack it could only unleash by channeling a vast amount of Magic, and combined with Udaeus's extraordinary arm strength, it could pulverize every object within range, with even wind-clad Ais no exception.
Ais took the blow head-on and crashed to the ground as though every bone in her body had broken, tumbling several times. The wind around her was gone, and most of her light armor had shattered, exposing skin smeared with dirt.
"Ais!"
"Ais!"
Many voices were calling Ais's name, but Ais lay sprawled there as if the life had gone out of her, not moving an inch.
"Ais...!"
His body sunk into the shattered ceiling, Leo gazed at the golden-haired girl fallen on the ground, and felt something snap in his mind.
It was the string called reason.
Paying no mind at all to his own wounds, Leo erupted with brilliant starlight from head to toe, roaring as he plunged down from above, turning into a comet, charging at Udaeus.
Having unleashed its killing blow, Udaeus's core joints had all stopped glowing, fallen dim, clearly having spent a vast amount of Magic and unable to use that attack again, needing time to recover and build its Magic back up.
So, faced with Leo falling from the sky, Udaeus didn't use the black greatsword again, but instead fired off its stakes, forming the countless black stakes into a sword-mountain that it hurled at that comet.
Leo had already pulled three high-grade Magic Potions from a pouch at his lower back and downed them in one go, squeezing out his near-exhausted Mind to sustain Comet Chase and accelerate sharply. The dazzling comet dragged a long tail of light, dodging the incoming sword-mountains at impossible angles and carving a graceful arc toward Udaeus.
Rage burning in both its eyes, Udaeus tried to raise the black greatsword and cut down, but was struck first by an incoming meteor, a burst of starfire exploding across its body, its torso rocking backward.
Firing off meteors even as he swept straight for the magic stone in Udaeus's chest, Leo slashed out with the Dragon Fang Sword, tracing a cold, sharp arc of light.
With a crisp ring, sparks scattered across Udaeus's chest.
The blow Leo had swung with all his might had, in the end, struck one of the chest bones and been knocked aside.
At some point Udaeus had repaired the shattered bones over its chest, once again shielding the magic stone behind rib after rib.
His slash deflected, Leo didn't stop. He drew the Emerald Staff from his left hip, lit the jewel atop it, and pointed it at the chest bones before him.
"Meteor Dance!"
A dazzling star magic circle spread open, and a thick meteor blasted out, slamming into the chest bones and blowing several of them away.
Leo meant to press the attack, but Udaeus's free hand smashed down in time, and with a thunderous whump backhanded Leo flying.
Under the protection of the starlight shield and the Giant's Battle Garb, the sent-flying Leo took no real harm, quickly righting himself in midair and charging heedlessly at Udaeus once more.
Udaeus swung the black greatsword in fury, bringing it down with terrifying force on that incoming comet.
Just as the two were about to collide, a whirlwind tore into the battlefield.
A figure wrapped in powerful wind slashed across Udaeus's body, knocking its upper half sideways and sending its lethal swing off course. The comet that had been about to meet it head-on closed in.
Another roar, and the slash Leo swung with all his massive momentum struck Udaeus's chest bones, shattering the rest of them entirely.
"Ais!"
His blow landed, but Leo's attention was no longer on Udaeus. It had turned to that figure wrapped in strong wind.
Ais was covered in wounds head to toe, ragged and battered, blood still trickling down her forehead, looking about to collapse, but she had come anyway.
"Together...!"
The girl shouted, her gaze firm.
"Right!"
Leo looked at her steadily for a moment, then nodded hard.
Udaeus roared and flew into a total rage, swinging the pitch-black sword while summoning Spartoi, striking at the man and woman before it.
Leo and Ais, one turning into a comet, the other wrapped in a hurricane, flew apart to left and right at the same time, dodging the direct swing of the pitch-black sword and the Spartoi rushing up from the ground alike.
"Go! Go help!"
"At least hold off those Spartoi!"
Tiona and Tione had already pulled themselves free of the wall, and charged together at those Spartoi, throwing themselves once more into a fierce fight.
"Proud warriors, archer corps of the forest. The encroaching raiders draw near, take up your bows. Answer the call of your kin, nock your arrows to the string."
Lefiya too finally raised her staff and began chanting her magic aloud.
And so, the battle entered its final act.
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