A diagonal gash split from shoulder to thigh. Black goo poured out, soaking his shadow in an even darker hue.
“Ugh…!”
Even a monster that easily regenerated from limb injuries struggled with such a severe wound. Ganagl clutched his chest, his shattered eyes trembling faintly.
What’s with the theatrics? It didn’t even hit his brain.
“Oww!”
“That’s delightful!”
Ganagl screamed and staggered back. I kicked the ground, charging after him with my sword raised. The greatsword surged like a lightning bolt.
“Lord Ganagl!”
One of the bishops from the Abyss Cult stretched out his arm and shouted. The abyssal magic granted by Ganagl shimmered at his fingertips.
In the next moment, with a splash, the greatsword aimed at Ganagl was caught in the teeth of a monster that appeared in midair. It was the mouth of the bishop’s summoned minion.
As soon as the sword was caught, a mass of unpleasant tentacles coiled tightly around my arm.
The thick tentacles were sticky with saliva, and the pressure gripping my arm was as tough as being held by a gorilla.
They said there’s a binding effect, but is this how it goes? Without my gauntlet, my bones might’ve cracked.
“Ugh…! Lord Ganagl, now’s the time!”
The bishop, who had used magic to catch my sword, staggered, clutching his forearm and shouted.
“You did well!”
Ganagl, dripping saliva and wearing a disgusting smile, stretched out his left arm toward me, and small chunks of flesh burst forth like buckshot.
– BANG!
Flesh seeds, a magic that summons venomous tentacles where they strike. If hit with bare skin, tentacles might grow inside you, leading to instant death.
“This crappy thing…!”
I yanked my sword free from the minion’s mouth with all my might and turned my body towards the incoming flesh seed buckshot.
The chunks were almost upon me. My body, sensing the threat, activated ‘Ice Heart,’ accelerating my reaction time.
In the blink of an eye, I needed to think of every possible way to respond.
Dodge sideways?
Dismissed. I could dodge the buckshot, but not the tentacles spewing from the planted seeds.
Should I use the Holy Barrier?
No, wasting that means I’d lose my means to counter the abyss’s call.
Strike it with my sword?
All of them? That’s something only a mom could do.
Jumping to dodge leaves no way to evade follow-up attacks, and relying on the armor’s protective spells means I’m still recharging from that spear earlier.
So, the remaining option is…
– FLAP!
I flung my cloak off with a lightning-fast motion. Like a matador’s cloth, the feathered cloak twirled, wrapping the flesh seeds like a blanket.
Just as the flesh seeds were about to rip through the cloak, I spun widely and hurled that blanket aside.
WHOOSH—the cloak flew away, being shredded in the air, and the protruding black tentacles could only flail helplessly in the empty sky before disappearing.
“You blocked the flesh seeds like that? Who the hell is this girl…!”
The astonished bishop shot his right arm toward me again.
Unlike before, his left arm was now missing below the elbow. An assassin had seized the moment when he used magic to grab me and cut the arm off.
Even after losing an arm, did he learn nothing? The bishop attempted to use magic to target me again.
For the sake of saving the leader, is sacrificing a couple of arms nothing to him? What remarkable loyalty for a cult fanatic.
Though that loyalty won’t be rewarded.
“Alright, help me one more time!”
With the bishop’s assistance, Ganagl quite safely created distance.
He summoned a total of four mouths in midair to block Friede, who charged like a wolf, while simultaneously reaching out with his right arm to snatch the bishop who had helped him.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
I attempted to charge in to stop him, but by now, there were three minion mouths spread around me.
Same type of magic, but summoning seven mouths simultaneously? That’s almost impossible even for an Abyss Priest.
– WHOOOOSH…
What makes this possible is the ability he possesses.
Ganagl could awaken the foreign brains contained in his stomach as auxiliary brains, simultaneously casting as many spells as the number of brains he swallowed.
Though those awakened brains melted away quickly, requiring new ones to be replenished, it was a downside.
At first, he underestimated us, so he didn’t bother using his abilities… but now, with his chest split open, he must have realized he needed to be careful.
Had I stayed overly complacent, I could have been thanking him. What a shame.
“Ugh…!”
Anyway, it was impossible for me to just charge through all of this.
So, I clicked my tongue and changed direction to avoid a mass of tentacles, then rolled on the ground to send another mass of tentacles flying overhead.
– SHWAAAAK!
I stood up and slashed away the last group.
Perhaps because he unleashed seven spells at once, the individual force of the tentacles had weakened slightly compared to earlier.
Even if they had weakened, it was still threatening enough at about one-seventh of their former strength.
– CRACK! CRACK!
Every time I severed a tentacle, my upper body shook lightly.
The kind of force that would have pushed me back without my strength. But now, I could handle this level of power head-on without it.
I have to be grateful for the training I’ve endured.
I reminisced about the exhausting training as I chopped through the tentacles spewing from the minion mouths.
And as Friede and I paused, battling the tentacles, Ganagl had captured the bishop he originally targeted with his extended right arm.
It was already too late to stop it, so all I could do was watch.
“Wh-what!?”
The bishop jumped in shock as the tentacles coiled around his body. He stared at Ganagl, his shoulders trembling. Fear and disgust were clear in his widened eyes.
His loyalty might have led him to sacrifice his arm without hesitation to save the leader, but was he prepared to give any more than that?
However, it was already too late to escape.
『 A sacrifice of Al’Patan 』
The moment Ganagl whispered the low incantation, the ends of the tentacles wrapping around the bishop opened like leeches, sticking to his flesh.
It looked like dozens of rubber hoses connected to his skin.
Then came the scream.
“Ganagl!!!”
The bishop’s complexion turned pale as he desperately tried to stop Ganagl, not even finishing his words, but he shrieked, flailing.
In the tattered robe, his muscular body convulsed fiercely, rapidly drying up. He was stripped of blood and flesh until only bones and skin remained.
“Grrrk….”
By the time the now-mummified bishop hung his head in death, the gash that had split Ganagl’s torso had vanished without a trace.
A spell that sacrificed the flesh and blood of allies to recover oneself.
That magic was the fundamental reason why defeating Ganagl required either an instant kill or the complete eradication of his minions.
As long as the Abyss Cultists were around, Ganagl could use them as sacrifices to heal his wounds repeatedly.
Moreover, not just healing his wounds, he could simply replenish the brains consumed by [Enhanced Brain] with the cultists’ brains.
“After this… oh, Al’Patan….”
Still, what… casting that magic means he sensed a fair amount of danger.
From Ganagl’s perspective, it was a way to reveal a trump card he had kept hidden. If he thought he could win without using it, he wouldn’t even think of casting it.
Al’Patan’s sacrifice was that sort of magic.
“Ahhh! The bishop! Bishop Hemit has been eaten!”
“Leader, what are you doing…!”
The moment that magic was unleashed, the zealots’ morale plummeted.
“We need to run, run away…!”
Naturally enough. Who would willingly present themselves as a meal when their leader was about to gobble them up?
Though the relationship between zealots and sacrifices is inseparable, like a holy knight and an orc, that’s only true when they are the ones giving the offerings.
Even zealots who enjoyed sacrificing others might not want to become sacrifices themselves.
Only a madman who’s brainwashed to see it as glorious could think that way. For average zealots, Ganagl would be far scarier than us or the assassins.
At the very least, we wouldn’t eat them alive.
As the zealots panicked in the face of the assassin Aargantir, their ranks, which had already dwindled to below twenty, began to be infected by fear.
