As the Holy Sword swung, Beast Mask moved.
The dance he had been performing was the shaman’s Spirit Invocation Dance.
In essence, it was the act of forcibly channeling the lingering ancestral spirits wandering the world, the obsessions of those who died in battle, or even more ancient entities into one's own body through shamanic rituals.
When he raised both arms, he was inviting the spirits to descend into his shell.
When he stomped his feet, he was grinding his own soul into the mud as an offering, clearing enough space for the spirits to inhabit him.
During Spirit Invocation, ancestral combat instincts would overwrite the mind, and the physical body would be drastically strengthened.
Beast Mask had immersed himself in this path for over a decade.
The role of the shaman had appeared long before the Era of Strife.
Countless generations of shamans had passed this craft down beside campfires, each generation adding new prayers, new steps, and new ways to communicate with ancestors upon the foundations of those before them.
He was one of the finest among them.
And the support spells from Remains were like adding wings to a tiger.
『Ancestral Wrist Wrap』, 『Spirit Bone Skinning』, and 『Dead Marrow Tendon Forging』.
Three high-level enhancement spells released by Remains and carried by the dark clouds were bestowed upon Beast Mask at the exact same moment.
Ancestral Wrist Wrap etched the combat memories of generations of shamans into his wrists, making every punch carry the skill equivalent to lifetimes of hard training by masters.
Spirit Bone Skinning condensed a translucent layer of bone film over his skin, granting him hardness comparable to refined armor.
Dead Marrow Tendon Forging acted directly on the depths of his muscle fibers, forcibly boosting the explosive power of his tendons to a level far exceeding physical limits.
And Remains continued to assist.
He knelt less than three paces behind Beast Mask, the old book spread across his knees. The pages flipped so fast they were a blur to the naked eye.
Runes swarmed from the paper, crawling across the ground to form a constantly shifting runic array beneath Beast Mask’s feet.
The moment each rune settled, the faint gray halo brought by Spirit Invocation on Beast Mask’s body brightened, as if someone were shoveling coal into a forge.
By shamanic standards, his melee prowess was indeed top-tier.
Spirit Invocation granted him beast-like intuition and combat instincts, while Remains strengthened his fists to the point of being able to shatter iron.
He did not fear injury because his sense of pain had been numbed by the spirit’s power; he did not consider defense because the ancestors who blazed trails through the primordial wilds had no word for retreat in their dictionary.
Two warlocks had managed to piece together a melee powerhouse with the raw stats of a peak Rank Six.
“Are you an idiot?”
Esper returned the Holy Sword to her waist.
『Storm』: ON.
Cyan electric arcs radiated from the crossguard, coiling around the blade several times before exploding into a tiny cyclone at the tip.
Two peak Rank Six warlocks had exhausted themselves to cobble together a single peak Rank Six melee fighter.
Wow, how impressive.
She was currently Rank Seven.
The Holy Sword slashed out like a thunderbolt.
The blade cut into the left side of Beast Mask’s neck, passing through the windpipe, carotid artery, and cervical vertebrae, before exiting cleanly from the right side.
The trajectory of the slash had no excess curve and no hesitant pause; it was as clean as a piece of cloth cut perfectly along a ruler’s edge.
The storm attached to the blade was not released outward but retracted inward, cauterizing and sealing the entire cross-section even as it opened the wound.
No blood sprayed out.
What surged from the severed surface was a large mass of thick, almost tangible black mist.
The mist lost its original shape the moment it touched the air, expanding rapidly like a punctured balloon and carrying a faint, lingering scent of burnt rot.
Then, Beast Mask’s entire body began to collapse inward from the cut.
First the neck, then the shoulders, torso, and limbs.
Every part reinforced by the dark green runes lost its support simultaneously, dissolving into black mist that drifted away.
The mask was the last to vanish. The beast-bone mask shattered into several pieces the moment it hit the mud, and the fragments turned into black mist upon touching the ground.
Remains raised his head in utter confusion.
He had no face, but Esper could read the emotion of bewilderment from his movements.
“Wait, how did you die?”
Remains was dazed for a split second.
The old book was still in his hands, but the pages had stopped turning.
The last unformed enhancement rune hovered at his fingertips, as he no longer knew who to strengthen.
Then, he snapped the old book shut, stood up, and began casting anew.
Green runes radiated from his palm, weaving into a constantly rotating circular array in mid-air. Dense, spike-like lights ignited on the inner side of the ring.
It was an offensive spell. The diameter of the ring expanded rapidly, and the light from the spikes grew brighter, beginning to emit a hissing sound similar to red-hot metal being plunged into cold water.
Esper did not wait for him to release the ring.
Winged King erupted from behind her right shoulder, propelling her forward.
She dragged the Holy Sword behind her to build momentum, then swung it upward in a rising slash less than two paces from Remains.
The blade cut straight through the center of the old book, slicing the entire volume—along with its spine, binding threads, yellowed pages, and all the unreleased runes—cleanly in half. The sword’s momentum did not slow, continuing upward to cut into Remains’s chest, slicing from his collarbone to his jaw.
The same black mist erupted from the cut. The two halves of the old book began turning into black mist before they even hit the ground. The text on the pages was swallowed from the edges to the center as if scorched by invisible flames. The green light flickered once more as the writing vanished, then went out completely.
Remains’s body, along with his worn gray cloak, collapsed into a shapeless mass of mist, scattered across the main road by the north wind.
Nothing was left behind. No corpse, no bloodstains, no scraps of paper from the old book. Even the soil where the runes had been carved returned to ordinary mud. It was as if the person standing there had never existed to begin with.
“...They can even replicate casting tools and equipment like that?” Esper remarked, watching the black mist dissipate.
Noelle clicked her tongue in her ear, her tone carrying undisguised disappointment.
“It seems so. This level of replication precision exceeds any known technology I’m aware of. I wonder if it’s some new method from the Abyss.
Every spell record in that old book was perfectly copied; even the trajectory of the falling dust as the pages turned was identical to the real thing. Sigh, the mastermind behind these guys is truly a troublesome individual...
But judging by current deductions, this replication technology has certain limitations... Well, after all, their performance doesn't seem comparable to the upper limits of the originals.”
“No, using two mages to forcibly cobble together a melee fighter of the same rank feels pretty pathetic no matter how you look at it. Would it be different if the real ones were here...?”
“...Noelle, can you track the location of the so-called originals?”
“Not yet. The black mist left behind after the puppets are destroyed doesn't have any magical traces that can be tracked. Forcing a link would only damage both of our consciousnesses.”
“...Fine then.”
Esper shook the residual mist off the Holy Sword and looked past the lingering haze toward the north.
The Northern Main Road curved just ahead, the view obscured by the shadows of trees.
That was the direction of the second outpost, and the direction where Eladia had disappeared.
“Leave things here to me. You just focus on charging ahead,” Yat’s voice rang out at that moment.
“...Got it.”
She broke into a run.
Rate on N.U.
