"Megumin, keep it from moving! Forget Explosion for now. Use your magical pressure to throw off its balance!"
Kōichi shouted as he took advantage of the Griffin lowering its head to cough. He pushed off the ground and shot toward its foul-smelling open maw like an arrow loosed from a bow.
"Darkness, hold its jaws open! Don't let it close its mouth!"
"Leave it to me! A task where I'm forcibly spread open by a giant beast... Ah, no, where I forcibly spread open a giant beast! This is exactly what I'm good at!"
Darkness let out an excited gasp and hurled herself forward, bracing her heavy shoulder armor firmly against the Griffin's upper beak.
The instant Kōichi's fingertips touched the cold, violently trembling silver pendant, it was as though someone had muted the entire world.
The Griffin's violent coughing, Darkness's excited panting, even Aqua's distant wailing all faded away.
A vast and ancient torrent of information surged through his fingertips and flooded Kōichi's mind, sending tremors through his very soul.
Within the fragmented memories, he saw a pristine white ruin floating high among the clouds.
It was Sylphy's true home.
He saw Sylphy in her younger form, cowering fearfully in the corner of an altar. Around her, the vaulted ceiling was collapsing and magical flames raged through the ruins.
To escape some indescribable shadow of the end, Sylphy had torn her own soul into several fragments and placed them within these divine artifacts. Then she had fallen into an eternal slumber, waiting for someone capable of resonating with the Silver Scale to awaken her.
And this pendant was the core that carried her senses and memories.
"So... you've been waiting all this time in that lonely darkness?"
Kōichi murmured.
The confusion in his eyes vanished, replaced by absolute determination.
"Kōichi! What are you spacing out for?! Get out of there!"
Kazuma's furious shout shattered the vision like a thunderclap.
"That thing's about to close its mouth! Darkness's arms are already shaking!"
He was right.
The Griffin had recovered from choking on the Holy Water. Its eerie green eyes now burned with unprecedented rage, while a grinding creak came from deep in its throat as its jaws began to close.
Darkness's face was bright red and her expression utterly blissful, but even her heavy armor was groaning under the tremendous force of the Griffin's bite.
"Got it!"
Kōichi pulled with all his strength and snapped the pendant's cord.
The instant he withdrew, the Griffin's massive beak slammed shut with a deafening crack, and the resulting shockwave sent Darkness flying.
Freed at last, the Griffin let out a roar powerful enough to tear apart the clouds.
It spread its enormous wings across the sky as violent blue lightning wrapped around its body, preparing to wipe out the humans who had dared profane its treasure.
"Darker than twilight, redder than blood..."
Megumin's chant finally reached its climax.
The ground beneath her feet cracked apart inch by inch, unable to withstand the magical power spilling from her body. Her exposed red left eye seemed to burn with the fires of Hell.
"Kōichi! Get out of the way! I'm going to blow everything around here away, including this unbearable hunger!"
"Everyone! Get down!!!"
Kōichi clenched the pendant tightly and threw himself into the grass.
"Explosion!!!"
A colossal mushroom cloud slowly rose over the plains outside Axel.
The air filled with the smell of scorched flesh and the searing magical heat unique to Explosion Magic.
As the smoke gradually thinned, the once-overwhelming mutated Griffin had been reduced to a huge, smoking mass of charred remains. A crater dozens of meters wide had been blasted into the earth.
Above the crater, one of the Griffin's primary feathers, nearly three meters long and charred black yet somehow still rigid, was lodged diagonally into a dirt slope like an oversized kite pole.
"Help me... Somebody get me down... That's my bounty... my Eris... my drinking money..."
Dust was dangling in midair in an utterly ridiculous pose, his belt caught on the broken feather as he swayed in the breeze like a hanging weather doll.
One of his boots had vanished somewhere, and his face was blackened as though he had just crawled out of a coal mine. Even so, he continued reaching desperately toward the Griffin's corpse while muttering nonsense about the reward.
"Pfft, hahahaha! Kōichi, look at him! He looks exactly like a salted fish hung up to dry!"
Kazuma crawled out of the dirt, dusting himself off as he pointed at Dust and laughed without restraint.
"So this is the glorious appearance of Axel's strongest thug? Truly inspiring!"
"Waaaaah! My clothes! My favorite sacred silk pajamas... No, my Adventurer outfit! Kōichi, look! It's completely black!"
Aqua did not even have time to laugh at Dust.
She sat on the ground, clutching the tattered remains of her skirt and sobbing at the top of her lungs.
"Compensation! You have to make that giant bird pay for this! Waaaaah, it's dead already? Then make Dust pay!"
The smoke had not yet cleared when another smell joined the scorched odor in the air.
The rank scent of wild beasts, strong enough to send a chill down anyone's spine.
Along the edge of the crater blasted open by Explosion Magic, pairs of eyes began appearing behind the blackened bushes, glowing like red lanterns.
They belonged to one of the predators most feared by novice adventurers around Axel.
One-Punch Bears.
The earth-shaking explosion and the smell of roasted Griffin flesh had drawn them here. Now they crouched low, deep growls rumbling in their throats as they clearly regarded the exhausted Adventurers as dessert.
"H-hey, hey! Kōichi, this isn't funny!"
Kazuma, who had been laughing at Dust only moments earlier, instantly went pale. His sharp senses had already noticed the pack closing in around them.
"Those are One-Punch Bears! And there's a whole damn pack of them! Megumin's useless now, Aqua's still crying, and Darkness... Darkness, wipe that look off your face! Stop looking like you're hoping for a bear hug!"
"Huh? One-Punch Bears?"
Aqua stopped crying and looked toward the glowing red eyes through her tears.
Then she screamed even louder.
"Aaaaaah! Why are there so many One-Punch Bears here?! Kōichi! Save me! I haven't even had my premium sparkling wine tonight! I don't want to die out here getting licked by bears!"
"Oho... The legendary embrace of a One-Punch Bear, said to shatter every bone in your body...?"
Darkness rose to her feet while supporting her battered armor.
Even through the smoke, the flush on her cheeks was obvious.
She actually stepped forward of her own accord and spread her arms wide.
"Come! Use those mighty claws of yours and ravage this resilient body to your heart's content!"
At that moment, the largest bear at the front could wait no longer.
It reared up to its full three-meter height and let out a deafening roar.
Its enormous paws slammed into the ground hard enough to leave deep craters, and then it charged forward like a black hurricane, heading straight for the nearest target.
Dust, still dangling from the feather.
"HEEEELP!! It's coming! It's going to do all kinds of horrible things to me! Kōichi, save meeeee!"
Terrified beyond reason, Dust kicked his legs wildly in midair, swinging back and forth like living bait.
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