Pure weaponry. Pure brute force. Pure speed.
Lance, greatshield — the equipment nearly swallowed the girl's slender frame whole. Carried on a thunderclap of impact, Alfia — who had been directly in front of Heith just a moment before — was sent crashing sideways through the air.
Suppression achieved.
Ais had poured everything she had into completing her task at this moment.
So far, everything remained within the plan. And yet, when the woman's cool, clear voice reached the girl's ears, her heart gave an involuntary little tremor.
"Evangelium——"
Everything that attempted to close in on Alfia had to weather the trial of that invisible magic.
Fortunately, at the critical moment — Ryuu had already moved.
The elf girl appeared at the woman's back with unerring precision — or rather, directly in the path that Alfia was being steadily pushed along by Ais and her greatshield.
The [Moonlight Greatsword] rested across the elf girl's back. In her hands, [Arcs Ray] blazed with its characteristic roaring flames, brilliant as starlight. Around her, emerald spheres of light orbited in a constellation, keeping pace with the sweep of her blade — and with the scattering of deep-crimson sakura petals.
[Arcs Ray].
And.
[Luminous Wind].
Slash and magical detonation arrived simultaneously — unfolding with perfect precision the instant Alfia stepped into range before her.
And so the woman was forced to weather an assault from behind.
Forced to cut her own magic short and reactivate [Garden of Stillness] in its place.
All magical energy dissolved in an instant.
The invisible force that had been on the verge of hurling Ais — lance and shield in hand — out of the way also vanished in that same breath.
The golden-haired girl exhaled a small sigh of relief. Ryuu, for her part, had already sidestepped smoothly, clearing the path between them without further resistance. But the brief few seconds of delay had cost Alfia her footing — she was driven bodily into the wall at the temple's far side.
A boom. A crack.
Spiderwebbing fractures spread outward, and another massive crater was gouged into the stone.
Ais gave everything she had.
Her task was to keep pressing forward — to continue using the shield in her hands to hem in Alfia's movements.
An obvious challenge, that. Even with a belly full of Dragon-Glow Stamina Pills and similar elixirs, her base stats still fell short of her opponent's.
What had worked just now was a product of surprise, and of the tremendous momentum generated by her trump card. Nothing more.
Almost immediately, she began losing ground.
Even without a single spell cast.
Ais could feel it through the shield — an enormous force pressing from the other side. A howling gale that threatened to launch her clean off her feet.
Is it really fair for a mage to be this physically strong?!
She gritted her teeth and held on.
It didn't matter in the end. Three seconds later, Ais went flying.
But that was already enough —
Because. Isagi was back.
"Phase two — let's begin," the boy said quietly.
At this moment, the temple held only four: Isagi, Ryuu, Ais, and Heith.
Tiona, Lefiya, and Riveria had already been "taken out of the game" — outside, Haruhime was looking after them.
Oh, right — and little Saika.
The little jellyfish, wrapped in her bubble, had poked half her head in through the fog gate. He wasn't sure whether it was because of her "special nature," but the Dungeon's fog gate didn't seem to bar her passage at all. She could come and go as she pleased — was it possible the Dungeon simply didn't recognize Saika as an "adventurer"?
No time to think about that now.
This wasn't a matter of racing against the clock — it was that against Alfia, not even a single instant could be wasted. Every moment demanded total focus.
They had to stay locked in, and then — defeat her.
He reformed their positions.
Isagi now stood beside Heith. At a distance, Ais and Ryuu-senpai had each taken up positions in different directions, as though encircling Alfia from multiple angles.
At this moment, only scraps of fabric still clung to the woman's body.
She had originally been dressed in that magnificent black-and-white gown — but Isagi's self-detonation earlier had blown it apart. Again.
Charred tatters clung to the woman's pale skin in scattered patches, leaving her in what amounted to something resembling a thoroughly ruined underlayer.
Not that anyone present had the luxury of appreciating such a sight. No one was directing their thoughts anywhere near that.
What Isagi was thinking was:
[That self-detonation earlier didn't seem to do much.]
An explosion at such close range — and yet Alfia's body bore not a single visible wound. Could the woman's physical constitution really be that overwhelmingly tough?
It defied all common sense.
After all, logically speaking, it shouldn't have been that mage-robe absorbing the blast — according to their intelligence, the dress Alfia wore on a daily basis primarily served to suppress her own magical output. It had no meaningful defensive function.
A long exhale.
But the woman's extraordinary [Endurance] had never been the obstacle from Isagi's perspective.
Break through her defenses — and they could win.
And indeed, here and there across that pale skin, faint and minute wounds remained — proof that she was not entirely unscathed.
That was enough.
But unlike the earlier battle against the [Pale King], this time they couldn't afford to drag the fight out. They needed a swift, decisive finish.
For Isagi and the girls as things stood, that was of course a challenge — one that bordered on a paradox, in a sense.
Alfia completely ignored magical attacks.
And if they tried to bring her down through physical force alone, they would inevitably grind into a war of attrition — inescapable, given their current capabilities.
Because in this world.
Magical bombardment was the decisive tactic.
Buying time for the mages — allowing one's own side to land a single killing blow — that was the bread and butter of how adventurer parties fought monsters.
So then.
Could raw physical power alone produce a strike that surpassed magic?
The thing called an [Excelia] — a trump card.
Ais's trump card, Tiona's trump card — both were power born from a magical foundation, yet not magic itself in its entirety.
What a trump card truly was — at its core, it was the act of taking everything available to oneself and pushing it to an absolute extreme, until something arose naturally from that limit.
Just as Isagi, wielding the [Shadow of Pandora] that Asfi had forged for him, was thereby able to unleash those so-called "forbidden" techniques.
A trump card is not magic. It is the recognition and mastery of the self.
Skills, magic, equipment, technique.
Drawing everything one is capable of into a single unified whole — and from that synthesis, giving birth to a strike entirely one's own, utterly impossible for another to replicate — that was a trump card.
And now, the time had come to use one to settle things.
"We have roughly ten minutes left," he said.
Ten minutes — the remaining countdown on Haruhime's [Uchide's Mallet].
Because they were now at a distance from Alfia, the level-boosting magic that had been dispersed earlier had returned, resettling over everyone.
But it meant nothing.
The moment they drew close to Alfia, the effect would be stripped away.
And so Isagi's arrangement for what came next: he and Ryuu-senpai would handle close combat, while Ais and Heith provided cover.
Then — seize the one opportunity that might exist, and deliver the decisive blow to Alfia.
"Let's move."
The grappling hook shot out.
Isagi caught the [Moonlight Greatsword] Ryuu-senpai tossed to him from across the room. He swung it with one hand while his left hand produced the "shotgun" he had once used against Zard.
He had already switched his role card to [Land of Reeds].
With the Sword Saint's secret arts active, Isagi could now wield two entirely different weapons simultaneously, while massively amplifying weapon [Proficiency] across the board.
Weapon proficiency was a stat in its own right.
In a sense, it formed its own independent multiplier tier — an effect no less sweeping than the across-the-board base stat enhancement granted by the forbidden technique. And in certain situations, it was outright better. Such as right now, facing Alfia.
From the woman's perspective.
Everything before her had begun to warp and distort again — but that hardly mattered. A powerful adventurer could read the direction of an attack by sound alone, even if sight failed entirely——
Wait?!
An expression of rare consternation crossed Alfia's face.
She heard nothing.
Not that her hearing had been distorted — no, what was happening was that Isagi's greatsword was swinging in complete and utter silence. It was an act accomplished through pure technique alone, something bordering on the impossible.
A bonus granted by weapon [Proficiency]!
Blood bloomed in the air.
In the instant the blade grazed her body, Alfia felt something — a chill, and a small, sharp sting.
No matter how powerful the human body, being raked by a greatsword would always leave a mark.
And so.
In a certain sense — first blood. He'd drawn it.
____
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