Chapter 125: The Tollbearer (6)

"I’m fine."

She was not. But that sentence was practically tradition by now.

Misha shoved Stormpiercer back into storage before her fingers started shaking badly enough to embarrass her.

The moment the spear disappeared, she reached into the Faust Provision Pouch and rummaged blindly. She didn’t need to search for long. All she had to do was picture what she wanted, and the pouch guided her hand to it. Her fingers closed around a small bottle. She yanked it free.

Her other hand hooked underneath the bottom of the mask and lifted it just far enough to expose her mouth. She tore the stopper free with her teeth and spat it somewhere onto the blood-streaked pavement.

The Advanced Stamina Potion went down warm. Heat spread from her throat into her chest, then gradually outward. The trembling in her thighs eased, her breathing steadied, and her arms stopped feeling like they belonged to someone who had worked three consecutive shifts, gotten hit by a carriage, and then politely thrown down a staircase for good measure.

Hiiro watched her drain the last of the potion. "You have another one of those?"

Misha lowered the empty bottle, adjusted her mask back in place then stared at him .

Hiiro stared back. There was blood streaked across one cheek, and his clothes were torn in several places. Dust clung to his blue-and-white hair, and his left leg still carried the faint hitch that kept betraying him every time he thought nobody was looking.

Somehow, despite all of that, he managed to look expectant like a dog watching someone open a bag of treats.

Sighing inwardly, she tossed the empty bottle aside, reached into the pouch again.

His blue eyes brightened immediately. "You do!"

"Don’t sound so surprised."

"You looked like you were about to tell me no."

"I considered it." She pulled out another Advanced Stamina Potion and held it toward him.

Hiiro took it with both hands. "Thanks!"

The enthusiasm in his voice was entirely inappropriate for a sixteen-year-old standing several meters away from something that looked like it had crawled out of a mass grave, eaten the grave, and decided subtlety was for lower-ranked monsters.

Misha pointed at the bottle. "Drink it. Don’t save it."

"I wasn’t going to."

"You absolutely were going to."

Hiiro paused, then his gaze shifted suspiciously toward the monster. "...Maybe for phase two."

"There is no phase two."

He glanced toward the Primarch then back at her. "That sounds optimistic."

Misha’s face flattened. "Drink."

Ahead of them, chains scraped over broken stone.

Krrrraaang–

The sound scraped through the narrow street with enough weight to make Misha’s shoulders tense. The Primarch Vestige stepped forward, one massive foot came down. The pavement cracked beneath it.

The creature was no longer merely large, it was wrong in ways size could not explain. Its four arms twitched at different intervals, each limb apparently answering a separate impulse. Gray-black muscle knotted beneath skin stretched so tightly over the frame that Misha could see foreign structures moving underneath.

One head hung crooked against its shoulder. The jaw opened, closed, then opened again with no sound. The second head remained upright, watching. Its black eyes moved between Misha, Hiiro, and Caius with too much awareness for something that should have been nothing more than a mutated corpse.

And buried in the center of its chest–the gong.

Bronze had fused with flesh. Black strands crawled around its outer rim, anchoring the metal into the Primarch’s ribs. The crimson pulse inside it came faster now, once, twice, and again. Red light leaked through the grooves in the metal like blood being forced through cracked skin.

Misha tightened her grip around Twinfang.

Hiiro rolled his neck until something cracked. "DPS check?"

She glanced sideways. "Don’t make me regret this more than I already do."

Caius stepped forward. Purple current snapped between his fingers before climbing the length of his staff-spear. Electricity crawled over the engraved shaft in branching veins, gathering around the blade with a sharp hiss.

The reflected light made his features look harder, focused. Then he adjusted his stance. "We hit together."

"Yes." She fixed her eyes on the gong. "Same area. Don’t waste damage spreading it around. We need to find out whether it has an actual weak point."

Hiiro lifted one hand. "Chest?"

Misha slowly looked at him again.

He pointed toward the enormous crimson target embedded directly in the monster’s torso. "Just confirming."

"It’s glowing."

"Bosses sometimes do that to bait you."

"Please stop talking."

"No promises."

The Primarch moved, lifting its upper-right arm with a rusted iron mallet hung from its fist. Then the mallet came down–

GOOONNNG.

The sound did not hit her ears. It hit everything. Her teeth slammed together, pain speared through her skull. The ground seemed to tilt beneath her feet as the vibration tore through the street, ripping dust from shattered walls and sending loose tiles jumping across the pavement.

Misha staggered sideways, her vision doubled. For one sickening second, she could hear nothing except a thin, high-pitched whine.

「 〔SYSTEM NOTICE〕

Party has been afflicted with [Deathly Oppression].

Effects:

• Physical performance reduced by 10%

• Stamina consumption increased by 15%

• Fear resistance gradually deteriorates while within the affected area.

• Mental interference increases with prolonged exposure. 」

Misha stared at the notice through blurred vision. ’Oh, perfect.’

Because getting weaker while fighting something actively evolving was apparently the Tower’s version of balanced encounter design.

「 Fear response suppressed. 」

Then something enormous moved through the blur.

Her head snapped and saw Hiiro’s entire body left the ground as the Primarch’s lower-left arm had already reached him. The boy barely raised his guard. The impact sounded like someone hitting a sack of meat with a stone slab.

He flew backward, then smashed shoulder-first into the side of a ruined building. Stone burst outward, the wall partially collapsed, and he vanished inside a cloud of masonry.

"HIIRO!"

Caius did not turn. He trusted Hiiro to survive the hit, or he knew there was no time to check. Either way, his mana flared violently along his weapon. Lightning tore across the street and struck the gong dead center.

The bronze surface flashed white and the Primarch’s entire torso jerked backward.

"There!" he shouted, his jaw tightening under the strain. "Hit it!"