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Translator: Kurehashi Aiko

 

Volume 3 Chapter 19: The Spirits Meeting

The figure that was blocking their path was the most bizarre thing.

At first glance, its hands and feet were all convoluted and out of place, and its head was coming out straight from the middle of its torso.

However, it had four feet and four hands, each hand twisted into scissors-like sharp blade.

The thing did not resemble any kind of normal living form, and it was clearly something that was leftover from experiments performed on monsters or demons. That is why its appearance was so revolting.

As soon as its red eyes spotted Nectar’s group, it launched itself at them.

Its body may have been massive, but its speed was so fast that no normal man would be able to react in time.

However, Senjiro was even faster.

Senjiro jumped forward, putting himself right in between the monster and his friends.

「Break.」

In but a single moment, he brandished his spear at the monster, releasing the explosive power hidden within it.

The strange monster was caught in the blast and was knocked backwards, crushing many smaller monsters with its huge mass along the way.

「Hooo~, nice job, Senjiro-san.」

「It’s an anti-magic technique. It accumulated the magic from the user’s body, sends it into the weapon and releases it in the form of a shockwave attack.」

「Nectar, let’s save the lecture for later, okay?!」

While Nectar was visibly excited to witness the new form of magic, Kyle was getting busy with blocking incoming magical attacks and responding in kind with his own.

The demon that was struck by Senjiro was already dead, and what came out of him was a huge chunk of magic stone.

Nectar also saw that, but then he felt a sharp rising of the magical power in the vicinity, and hurried to erect a protective barrier around his friends.

「Protect!」

Yet another magical shell was coming at them, on a collision course with Senjiro.

However, the shell collided with Nectar’s anti-magic barrier, and the shell exploded right there, leaving Senjiro unharmed.

「Thanks a lot!」

「Don’t worry about it. Just leave supporting role to me!」

Said Nectar to Senjiro, who already managed to dispose of one of the monsters, surprised that the monster attacks managed to put so much strain onto his protective barrier.

Magic bullets began to rain onto them from deeper into the corridor.

Nectar responded in kind, sending his own projectiles towards the monsters, wanting to create some window of opportunity for Kyle to attack.

Kyle wore a cloak of thunder across all of his body and rushed towards the monsters, so fast that they were unable to react.

Next, to dispose of the monster that was casting the projectiles, he gathered his magic and began to chant a spell.

「Electrocute!」

Shouting that, Kyle slammed his lightning covered staff into the ground.

The larger ones were instantly caught by the surging current.

However, the smaller ones were able to avoid it with ease.

Kyle managed to avoid all of their attacks by dodging them with unbelievable agility, all the while not letting his eyes off of the monsters.

They were holding small magical gun in their twisted hands, and sensing imminent threat they took their distance.

Even though the corridor was dimly lit, they could see a shadowy figure of someone small standing behind the monsters.

Seeing that person’s face made both Nectar and Kyle shocked beyond belief, even though the unusually cold expression was not the one that was in their memories.

The girl in the distance brushed her hair with a swift motion, the hair that was the same color as her eyes.

Overcome with a surge of conflicting emotions, Kyle finally managed to squeeze his voice out of his throat.

「Why, what are you doing here, in such a place!? Belga!!」

It was none other than Belga, one of Kyle’s former subordinates and later his beloved wife, Belga Slaggart.

Belga didn’t moved an inch, responding to Kyle’s words with an ice-cold voice.

「The defense mechanism did not activate, but I felt the scouting spell was used. We shall remove any obstacle that stands in our way.」

「Wait, Bell!」

However, she didn’t respond, instead putting her fingers onto the gun’s trigger.

Kyle swung his staff in response, managed to barely deflect the bullet.

At that moment, the woman raised her hand and in response the monsters attacked them all at once.

The structure of the dungeon proved to be surprisingly well-suited to withstand both magic and shock damage, but since the corridor was so narrow it was impossible to use any kind of large offensive spell. That fact alone was making monster fighting difficult, especially with their large numbers.

Nectar was forced to switch from supporting Kyle to Senjiro, who was having his hands full with fighting the horde of monsters at close quarters.

And judging from the sounds alone, Senjiro was also struggling quite a bit on his end.

The woman must have decided to take care of Kyle first, for she was firing a bullet after bullet at him.

While desperately dodging the bullets, Kyle turned his head towards his companions.

The recently produced magical guns had improved their performance by a tremendous degree, but fortunately the gun she was using was easily countered with a magician’s staff.

Even though she was adding a lot of her own magic to the bullets, Belga was unable to make them life-threatening or to cause any significant damage to the surroundings.

However, even though she fired so many shots at Kyle, she was still able to stand unfazed, probably matching Kyle in terms of stamina.

But above all else, her face was devoid of any emotion, even when she was being called by her name.

Was that perhaps someone else?

However, something was telling Kyle that wasn’t the case.

The way her body moved, the way in which she was fighting, it was all so familiar to him.

But above all else, her magical wave pattern was still of the good old Belga, no matter how much stronger they might have gotten now.

In that case, there was only one thing for Kyle to do.

When he reached that decision, he could feel a sudden surge of magic behind him.

「Shatter!!」

With Senjiro’s shout, the invisible wall of pressure between the two finally fell apart.

Kyle and Belga were fast enough to dodge the shockwave, but every other monster was hit by it and was sent flying to the sides of the corridors.

「I’m sorry, Nectar-dono!」

「Senjiroooooo!?」

Immediately after that, Nectar went flying through the corridor, avoiding all of the monsters.

Apparently, he was thrown by Senjiro.

Even though Nectar was a spirit and technically could adjust the weight of his body accordingly, it was a feature possible only thanks to Senjiro’s inhuman strength.

Nectar was sent next to where Belga stood, leaving him further down the corridor.

Belga turned towards Nectar and decided to change her target, but at that moment Kyle swung his staff at her, forcing her to shift her focus back at him.

While preventing Belga from targeting Nectar, Kyle yelled at him while he was slowly getting back onto his feet.

「Nectar, you go on ahead! We’ll try to keep her busy here!」

「Ugh…… Got it!」

Seeing Kyle’s expression made Nectar decide to leave his friends alone and push forward, so that he could finish what they came here for.

As Nectar pressed forward, Belga raised her hand, to which some of the monsters began to chase Nectar down the corridor.

However, Senjiro jumped right in front of them, blocking their path.

Then, Kyle shouted towards Senjiro who already began gathering magic in his spear again.

「Sorry, Senjiro! I’ll leave these guys to you!」

「That was the plan to begin with! I’ll leave fighting magicians to other magicians!」

Then the two man turned towards their respective opponents, Senjiro brandishing his spear against the monsters and Kyle getting his staff ready to go against his wife.

He sent a lightning strike towards her, a strike powerful enough to obliterate even the toughest of monsters.

Then, several bullets collided with the lightning, and all of them disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

「You, you are in the way.」

Both Kyle and Belga seemed untouched by their respective attacks, with Belga’s eyes being tinged with an ominous red glow.

Looking closely at her, another magical gun was floating in the air right beside her.

「Oi, oi, you can actually do something like that……?」

At that moment, Kyle’s expression darkened considerably.

「There are many things I would like to ask you, but something tells me that you won’t answer my questions willingly.」

Belga said nothing, only looking at Kyle with an expressionless face.

However, at the same time she attacked Kyle with bullets firing from both of her guns at the same time.

Kyle responded in kind with a strike of lightning from his staff.

***

After bypassing all of the monsters, Nectar found himself in a maze-like area of the dungeon, where he used his scouting magic as a navigation tool.

He was slightly worried about that Belga-looking person, but he knew that no matter what happened, Kyle wouldn’t just let himself be beaten without a fight.

In the end, Nectar came to a conclusion that destroying the facility was of the highest priority, and eventually he reached the place where the magical power was the most dense.

He came upon another door with a magic lock, where he was forced to break it. And as he went inside the next room, he suddenly came to a stop.

Here, not only the walls, but the floor and the ceiling of the dungeon were also covered in intricate magical symbols.

Having almost reflexively read all of the symbols, Nectar was stunned by the fact that many of them were strong blocking spells.

But in spite of there being so many symbols, there was little to no magic here and the spells were inactive.

Various speculations began to fill his mind, but more than that he was growing more and more concerned about the door at the back of the current passage. He needed to dispel the magic before he could get through.

Nectar began to analyze the situation.

He could sense something else was in here, crawling in the darkness. Something that was making his skin crawled in goose-bumps.

All of his senses seemed to be screaming right now, but the leylines didn’t seem to reach so deep into the dungeon, and so he was unable to scout the area ahead.

He had no other choice but to go further in.

Nectar made up his mind and took a step forward.

But before he could make more than ten steps ahead, a shadowy figure appeared in front of him.

「I won’t let you interrupt with us any further.」

It was a tall woman, who said that in a low and calm voice.

Her clothes and her skin were covered by stains of multi-colored paint, and she was holding paint brushes in her hands.

She looked like she was drawn from drawing a picture of some sort, but it only took Nectar a moment to realize that she was a spirit, much like himself.

He then realized that he forgot to scan Belga’s magical waves back there, but at this moment he was almost certain that she was a spirit as well.

It was strange. Unless it was a special case just like Nectar, spirits would usually not make any move or actions of their own, even if they developed an ego of their own.

Staying ever vigilant, Nectar asked the spirit a question, being uncertain as to what her goals and intentions might be.

「I want to fix the leylines that lies ahead. There are monsters residing here, many of them. I need to fix the leylines to get rid of them as fast as possible. Please, let me pass.」

Surprisingly enough, unlike Belga, this spirit blinked a few times and responded to his words.

「Fixing the flow of magic around here is a course of action I simply cannot allow. You must not disturb the breeding process in place.」

「What does that mean? And how could you possibly breed monsters and create artificial magic stones out of them? No matter how hard I think about it, it is something utterly impossible.」

「I don’t know and I’m not interested to find out, but I know that a lute is necessary.」

「Lute……?」

For a brief moment, an image of a certain youth cropped up in Nectar’s mind, but his thoughts were almost instantly brought back to reality when the woman raised her arms in the air.

「I was tasked with guarding this area. Should you become an obstacle to my task, I will have no other choice but to eliminate you.」

Said the woman with no sign of hostility in her voice, while moving the brushes in her hands.

Then, there was a few brush strokes slashing through space, and as soon as it finished, a door was drawn into an empty space, they materialized with a solid form.

There was no way that a normal magic would be able to produce such results without using chants of any kind.

So, in other words, it was a magic that was the characteristic of this spirit.

Then, the door in front of Nectar open, and before he could even react, tons of monsters began to run at him from behind the door.

They weren’t all that strong, since their magic waves were not dark and twisted, but still.

The fact that they were made of both organic and inorganic matter certainly didn’t encourage Nectar to feel any kind of pity towards them.

The time for talking was over.

The only thing left to do, was for Nectar to attack the monsters that were coming at him through the door.

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