Arifureta Vol 8 Chapter 2 (2/2)

Hearing her agonized voice, Kaori and Eri instantly screamed Suzu’s name. Although Kaori tried to focus her mind to activate healing magic, but the s.h.i.+ning barrier Suzu made had disappeared first.

“Everyone, get away from that orb!”

Nomura warned the others with a voice filled with frustration. However, up till now, no magic could rival Suzu’s impregnable defense, “Holy Interruption.” That was why his warning came too slow.

With the disappearance of the barrier, the swirling grey orb flew mightily, crashed into the ground and exploded soundlessly, and scattered grey smoke to the surroundings tremendously.

Saitou, Kondou, and Nomura, ran towards Suzu who had collapsed in agony nearby. The grey smoke immediately wrapped around them. There were no shadows of demonic beasts. All of them had simultaneously distanced themselves at once.

The grey smoke continued to extend and tried to engulfed Kouki and the others.

“Come, O’ wind! “Wind Bomb”!”

Kouki immediately used wind magic to create a squall, which pushed the grey smoke outside the room.

Maybe because it was created with magic, the smoke didn’t easily get blown out of the room unlike ordinary smoke, but because Kouki’s magic was strengthened thanks to the “Limit Break,” he successfully blew the smoke away after some struggle, into the dungeon pa.s.sageway.

However, what was left by the smoke was…

“That can’t be, Suzu!”

“Nomura-kun”

“Saitou! Kondou!”

Saitou and Kondou had completely petrified and became unable to speak, while Suzu had her lower half of her body petrified, and Nomura who covered Suzu had the left side of his body petrified.

Saitou and Kondou were petrified with dumbfounded expressions because they didn’t understand what had happened. Suzu whose lower half petrified, coupled with severe pain, had lost her consciousness with a truly pained expression.

On the other hand, the one who protected Suzu, Nomura, had the most negligible damage, but he still let out a pained groan while gritting his teeth looking like he seemed to be enduring an acute pain. Nomura’s damage was slight because he was an “Earth Magic-user.” Carrying the highest apt.i.tude to earth attribute, it was natural he had high resistance against magic from Earth element.

In addition, Nomura instantaneously saw through the Demon race woman’s magic because it was of the Earth element, which he had studied — high-ranked offensive magic, “Final Prison.” It was a troublesome magic scattering petrifying grey smoke. Even if it was only a slight touch, the magic would gradually invade the body until one was completely petrified, and the only action to prevent it was to create barrier that’d hold up until the effect has worn off, or use strong magic to blow the smoke away. Moreover, the barrier would also be petrified unless it was a high-ranked one, and the smoke could also only be blown away using a high-ranked magic.

“b.a.s.t.a.r.d! How dare you!”

Kouki raised an enraged expression because of the disaster that fell upon his comrades. Kouki, who was wrapped in a s.h.i.+ning light due to the effect of “Limit Break,” began to s.h.i.+ne in a brighter dazzling light. He looked like he would charge towards the Demon race woman at any moment.

However, s.h.i.+zuku acted as a stopper to Kouki when she yelled with an admonis.h.i.+ng voice, followed by telling him to withdraw with all of their might.

“Stop! Kouki! Let’s withdraw! The path of retreat is clear now!”

“Wh—!? After what had happened, how can I run away?!”

However, with his fury from seeing his comrades getting hurt, Kouki glared and objected to s.h.i.+zuku’s plan of retreating. The pressure Kouki released rushed towards s.h.i.+zuku, but she received it as though it was nothing, and pressured him instead with a stern expression.

“Listen! Kaori will surely cure them. However, it’ll take time. There’s also the possibility of it being too late if we are too slow to treat them. So it is necessary to withdraw now and recover! Besides, we lack three people now, so if you rush out, everyone won’t be able to endure the next attack! We’ll truly be annihilated!”

“Ugh, but…”

“In addition, isn’t it about time your “Limit Break” reached dangerous time? In this situation, it’ll be truly the end if Kouki is weakened! Please calm down! Everyone also feels the same as you!”

Hearing the logical words of his childhood friend, Kouki hesitated as he bit his lip when he noticed the bleeding at the edge of s.h.i.+zuku’s lips, and he felt his boiling head go cold. s.h.i.+zuku was also mortified. Before she knew it, she had cut her lip. Her important comrades had been done in, and if possible she wanted to immediately beat up her enemy.

“Okay! Everyone, time to retreat! s.h.i.+zuku, Ryuutarou! Please endure it for a little longer!”

“Leave it to me!”

“Right on!”

Kouki thrusted up the Holy Sword and began a long chant. Until now, he didn’t use any long chant because it would not have defused their earlier situation. However, it was now the perfect magic to clear a path for their retreat. But, it became necessary for him to entrust his defense to s.h.i.+zuku and Ryuutarou because he was completely defenseless when he’s chanting. In other words, they must face the demonic beasts aiming for Kouki. Naturally, even if s.h.i.+zuku and Ryuutarou could not cope with it, they would still desperately fight back with considerable vigor even with injuries.

“Do you think I’ll let you escape?” When she said this, the Demon race woman ordered the demonic beasts to block the pa.s.sage behind Kouki’s party. Then, she began to chant magic, with the chanting Kouki as her target.

However, that’s when something abnormal began to happen to the Demon race woman.

“””””ROOOOAR!!”””””

“Kh!? Why!”

Somehow, five of the Chimeras that should be her allies were attacking the woman. While being surprised with widely opened eyes, she immediately resumed and used a shortened chant to activate her magic. High density of dust clouds became swirling blades with the woman in the center, cutting two of the attacking Chimeras. The attacks from the remaining Chimeras were somehow avoided by blowing herself away using the dust clouds.

The Demon race woman yelled, “Why am I being attacked!?” She was agitated while staring at the Chimeras that attacked her. Then, she noticed something — all of the Chimeras had parts of their bodies destroyed. There’s one that was headless, and one with a deep scar in its body which still had blood dripping from it even now.

“These…”

Just as the Demon race woman noticed, the five Chimeras that attacked her were the ones defeated by Kouki. The should-be-dead Chimeras stood up and attacked her. The situation was unreal until the Demon race woman recalled a certain magic and muttered, “Don’t tell me…”

“I won’t let you disturb Kouki-kun!”

As she shouted so, Eri swung her hand like a baton and made the corpses of the Chimeras surround the Demon race woman.

“Tch! Necromancer, huh! I didn’t get such information!”

The Demon race woman had prior investigations before she waited in ambush for Kouki’s party. From the information, there’s no mention of someone capable using super difficult magic such as Necromancy, so this situation was completely unexpected. That was because, even though Eri had “Necromancer” as her cla.s.s, she was bad at it and never use Necromancy in actual combat, but now this fact worked in their favor.

Even if I am bad at it, I’ll just overcome it! Eri thought while she glared at the Demon race woman with a powerful gaze, and skillfully manipulated the Chimeras as though it wasn’t her first time doing it in actual combat. However, she was just going to buy time rather than defeating the Demon race woman.

In the meantime, Kaori used “Focus” and “Ten Thousand Heavens” on Suzu. Among the party members, Suzu was the one in the direst situation, which was why she decided on focusing healing Suzu first. “Ten Thousand Heavens” was a mid-ranked healing magic of the light element capable of curing abnormal statuses. However, the petrification magic was a considerably strong magic, and she couldn’t cured it all. Though the holes in her abdomen and arm were immediately recovered, she had lost a considerable amount of blood. She was in such a critical situation where needed immediate rest. It was also necessary to heal the hole in her leg the moment her petrification is undone.

Nomura, with a petrified left side of his body, had been diligently worked on to be released from his abnormal state by Tsuji Ayako. Tsuji Ayako had a high apt.i.tude for healing magic, but the fact that Nomura had high resistance against earth magic, made his recovery rate considerably faster. His petrified leg had already been cured.

However, even with that, Tsuji Ayako could only grit her teeth when she sneaked a peek at Kaori swinging her white wand. Although their cla.s.s was the same, “Healer,” Kaori was obviously above her in terms of capability. Kaori was using magic to simultaneously heal Suzu who had far more serious injuries than Nomura. In addition, she sometimes used healing magic on s.h.i.+zuku and Ryuutarou who were in battle to defend Kouki. It was a feat impossible to be mimicked by Ayako. She was mortified and felt miserable because she couldn’t heal all of her allies while being in a dire situation.

Although Nomura seemed to want to say something to Ayako in regards to what she was feeling, he thought it was not the right time, so he bore the pain and muttered an incantation.

With their fighting force deceased and Kouki out of the fight, Hiyama and Nakano were covered in wounds as they confronted many demonic beasts. On the other side, Nagayama’s party and Eri, who were protecting the two healers, noticed they had almost reached their limits. With the current flow, it would only be several minutes before they completely exhaust themselves.

Light gathered in Kouki’s Holy Sword, but Nakano, who was about to cry at any moment, panicked when she thought of this as a suicidal action. The party members anxiously waited for the time… which finally came.

“Here I go! “Heavenly Downpour”!”

One flas.h.i.+ng line fired from the thrusted up Holy Sword. The light exploded and scattered before the ceiling, pouring down towards the surrounding demonic beasts like meteors.

This “Heavenly Downpour” was an attack magic from light element where it flew above enemies, could pinpoint several enemies, and attacked them simultaneously. Its power wasn’t that high since its power was distributed among the scattered lights, and was originally used to clean up a lot of small fries. But in “Limit Break” state, this bombing-like magic was enough to clean up demonic beasts in 50th floor.

However, the abnormally strong demonic beasts brought by the demon race woman didn’t receive that much damage as expected, and at most, it only blew them away from his comrades as far as possible. But it was enough for Kouki. By creating a gap, his comrades would be able to retreat while the demon race woman was still occupied by the Chimera controlled by Eri.

Having confirmed so, Kouki demonstrated the characteristic of the magic which had a stupidly long chanting.

“”Converge”!”

As it pour down from the heaven, the rain of light that made the demonic beasts retreat temporarily, once again converged into the Holy Sword. The spectacle where the meteors converged as they left trails was quite a fantastic scene. Kouki thrusted the Holy Sword straight, and it shone as it cladded in light towards the demonic beasts that positioned themselves before the pa.s.sage the retreat path of him and his comrades. With a war cry, he pulled the last trigger from the a series of magic.

“”Heavenly Claws Downpour”!”

Immediately, numerous meteors shot like a bombardment when his thrusted the Holy Sword forward. Even though it looked the same as previous attack, it had far stronger power since Kouki used his trump card, “Heaven Might,” and naturally it swept away the demonic beasts that closed their retreat path.

Normally, even if he wanted to use “Heaven Might,” the chant was long and he didn’t want s.h.i.+zuku and Ryuutarou to protect him any longer than needed.

Even so, “Heavenly Claws Downpour” was the best technique he had in the current situation. The meteor-like torrent of lights went straight towards the demonic beasts blocking their retreat path, and caused numerous explosions simultaneously at the moment of impact. The bombardment that consisted of numerous light bullets exploded like the cl.u.s.ter bomb. The consecutive impacts resulted in the broken balance of the demonic beasts as they were being blown away.

“””ROOOOAR!!”””

The demonic beasts screamed as they closed their eyes. “Heavenly Claws Downpour” had an additional effect, blindness, caused by looking at the flash. The strong light generated in close proximity burnt their sights. Rubbing their eyes with their backhands, the demonic beasts blindly rampaged.

These demonic beasts were already out of Kouki’s party’s path of retreat. A way had opened straight to the pa.s.sage.

“Now! Let’s retreat!”

With Kouki’s order, everyone simultaneously moved. Nagayama had carried the petrified Kondou and Saitou on his shoulders while Endou shouldered the fainted Suzu. Even though his left arm was still petrified, Nomura stood up by himself, endured the acute pain, and began to run towards the pa.s.sage.

“Tch! Don’t let them escape! Capture them!”

While fighting the last two Chimeras, the demon race woman ordered the unharmed demonic beasts. The demonic beasts moved as instructed and began their pursuit at once. Chimeras, four-eyed wolves, and black cats, they were all swift-footed demonic beasts, and the distance between them and Kouki’s party was shortened in less than no time.

It was at that time Nomura turned around. With pained face, he thrusted out his right hand and revealed a fearless smile.

“Don’t ever think I’ll be defeated in earth magic! It’s my payback! “Final Prison”!”

The same swirling grey orb just like the demon race woman’s magic shot out from Nomura’s hand. The magic orb transmitting petrification smoke collided with the incoming demonic beasts. When the demon race woman activated “Final Prison” a while ago, even without her saying anything, the demonic beasts immediately distanced themselves. That’s why Nomura the demonic beasts could sense the danger that lies within the spell, and chanted it in preparation to use on the pursuer as he was retreating.

What Nomura concluded turned out to be true. The moment the grey orb shot out, the charging demonic beasts immediately slammed on their brakes and began to jumped back to distance themselves and return to their previous location. At the same time, the smoke became a smokescreen concealing the appearances of Kouki and his comrade as they were retreating.

In addition, Endou used magic to erase the remains of magic power and traces of their smells. Endou’s cla.s.s was an “a.s.sa.s.sin,” so he had natural talent in covert magic, and the demonic beasts were likely unable to pursue them.

The entrance of the previous room already looked smaller behind them, and maybe it was just their imagination, but mortified howls of demonic beasts seemed like it was resounding.

Kouki’s party felt mortified because of their ragged bodies and their comrades who could not open their eyes. However, they also feel glad they survived, and continued to run away without saying anything.

<script>