Your Majesty, Dinner Is Ready. - Chapter 91
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 91: D-Tier Dungeon – Cherry Cherry Orchard (3)
Lucius drew his focus to its sharpest edge.
‘One moment’s hesitation, and it all ends.’
Lawless adventurers, drawn here by Kar’s meteoric rise in reputation.
Such creatures were like moths hurling themselves into flame—burn and destroy them as you might, they never stopped emerging.
To honor the spirit of one who shelters all humanity, they simply had to be dealt with.
‘…Kar.’
His hands trembled.
At the Sanctuary of Purification, he gave his left arm to protect the innocent; now once more he faced death without hesitation to shield his companions.
It was a noble self-sacrifice that made Seraphina’s bonds with the socialite perfectly understandable.
“Die, you filthy socialite scum!”
A demon whose lower body had warped into something like an undead steed came rushing at them in a panic.
Simultaneously, a crimson orc loosed a verdant arrow, and a snow wolf surged forward as well.
All of them had the same target: Kar.
Desperate to be of any use, Lucius hastily deployed a barrier.
Whoom!
Three layers of the grey-lit Protection’s Warmth unfurled around Kar.
Crack!
The arrow shattered the first barrier.
Boom!
The freezing breath pouring from the snow wolf Flonus’s jaws shattered the second and third barriers alike.
“Hyah!”
The demon warrior surging in from behind drove its blade straight at Kar’s face.
“Kar!”
Lucius flinched violently, moving to channel a Secret Art.
“Stop.”
Just as he was about to invoke the highest-Tier healing Secret Art, Bartimyr seized his wrist.
“A lower Tier will suffice. Conserve your Divine Power.”
“…What?”
The meaning of this peculiar demon’s words became clear soon enough.
“A rising prodigy with the Harmony Sect’s backing, or so they say—and yet, nothing so special after all….”
Mid-speech, the demon warrior’s expression hardened.
“…Are you laughing?”
“Hm….”
Kar let out a soft chuckle and drew the Full Moon Reaper across his own throat.
Splash!
A geyser of blood sprayed across the demon’s body.
The mohawk that was clearly his pride grew damp and drooped; both his human upper half and his undead bestial lower half were drenched in crimson.
“What mad fool’s—!”
The frowning demon reached for his blade only to freeze in place.
“Agh, ngh, gaaahhh…!”
Soon his body began to convulse, and he vomited a handful of blackened blood.
Deadly poison. He was poisoned.
– Growwwl!
“Urgh!”
The snow wolf brushed the cumbersome demon aside with its body and raked its claws across Kar’s face.
The already-pitifully gaunt half-elf staggered backward sharply.
“I shall protect!”
Lucius quickly invoked a healing Secret Art.
Following Bartimyr’s counsel, he used a lower Tier.
– Keeeeing….
The snow wolf, which had been savaging Kar against the sandy dune floor, began to writhe in agony.
It lasted longer than the demon had, but once Deadly Poison spread through a body, even a massive beast could not withstand it.
“Fall back.”
At the tamer’s command, the snow wolf retreated, and seven arrows came flying at once.
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk!
Arrows embedded themselves across Kar’s entire body as he tried to rise.
Then the demon warrior, who had fallen, laboriously got to his feet again and charged with brutal force, using the horse-like stability of his lower body to drive his blade across in a horizontal sweep.
Rip!
The blade cut across the half-elf socialite’s body.
Halfway.
Midway through his advance, Kar’s cutting speed had drastically slowed.
“Huh… Ahahahaha!”
Despite his grotesque condition, Kar laughed with his shoulders heaving.
Deliriously, joyfully, drunk with rapture.
He poured forth laughter as though he’d seized every happiness in the world.
“Now you understand why that Tier suffices?”
“…Yes, sir.”
A man who embraces hardship with gladness.
A man who fears no calamity but meets it with composure.
Lucius turned over in his mind the truth he’d grasped through deep conversation at the Sanctuary of Purification.
Kar was no ordinary person.
‘Artein, now I understand why you take notice of him.’
An ordinary creature like Lucius himself could never catch up to such a way of thinking.
“This insane Socialite bastard!”
The Mohawk demon-kin staggered and drew forth its power.
The shape of a bundled vine mass emerged behind its back.
Having cleansed the deadly poison with the power of another demonic beast absorbed into its soul, the demon-kin’s blade tore into Kar’s body.
Then it slowed, accelerated again with the beast’s power, and resumed its faltering rhythm as the poison took hold once more.
“Move aside! I can’t get a shot!”
The moment the Mohawk demon-kin shifted slightly at the orc’s irritable cry—
“Everyone.”
With his entire body ravaged by arrows and blade wounds, Kar spoke as though whispering.
“Let’s go.”
An order whose meaning was unclear.
While Lucius hesitated in confusion, the other squad members immediately obeyed their captain’s command.
Whoosh!
Hidden Blades shot forth from the tent in silence, embedding themselves simultaneously in the Mohawk demon-kin’s forehead, jaw, and heart.
Poisoned by the deadly toxin and unable to evade even a Level 2 Thief’s blade technique, the demon-kin took all three hits and pitched forward.
“…Kgh.”
Rosalia, who’d sprung from the shadows, drove a dagger into the beast-keeper’s back.
The beast-kin twisted his waist to evade, but couldn’t escape the blade punching a hole through his body.
“Now?”
Bartimyr grinned widely and shouted as he readied himself to charge.
“Counterattack, you bastards!”
***
Bartimyr fished a round stone from his breast pocket.
A Mana Core.
It reeked of the bloodlust of a golem that had escaped Golemopia.
Hup.
Pressing the Mana Core to his nose and breathing deeply, Bartimyr bounded forward with loose bandages unwound in both hands.
“Come on—!”
The distance closed in an instant.
The target: a schemer demon-kin, relatively frail.
Wrapped in demonic energy, the bandages had hardened and were being swung about.
Thwack!
But then a bow suddenly cut across the murky green-stained bandages.
A ranger orc who’d rushed over to block the attack shoved Bartimyr with his shoulder.
From the ground, Bartimyr swung his arm.
Slash!
Demonic energy flew in a crescent arc, cleaving the orc’s shoulder.
“Right on!”
Flow Coagulation Syndrome—a curse that hardens the vital energy flowing through the body.
Scattering Bankruptcy—a hex that prevents expelled energy from gathering and scatters it into the void.
Afflicted by both calamities ‘in sequence’, one could hurl ranged attacks like blade-energy.
“Die, you filthy wretch!”
Demonic energy flew forth in rapid succession, mimicking blade-energy.
The attack required a modest degree of finesse, but that was a flaw that sheer effort could overcome.
The orc’s sturdy bow was all that kept him busy defending.
“…Tch!”
Meanwhile, the beast tamer who had been trembling throughout his body from the sudden dagger strike whipped a hand axe behind his back in a desperate counterattack.
The blow was swift and vicious.
But Rosalia had no intention of taking it.
The nimble assassin bent her waist lightly to evade, then raised her right leg and brought her heel down toward his shoulder.
Bang!
The beast tamer rolled quickly to the side, and her heel strike pulverized nothing but an innocent pile of rock candy into dust.
The reaction speed was almost miraculous to witness.
‘At that level, she could have dodged the initial ambush without breaking a sweat.’
Had she simply been careless earlier and reacted just a moment too slow?
“…….”
“Don’t stare like that.”
The taciturn assassin rushed at the beast tamer.
Ting, cling!
Rosalia swung her dagger at an impossible speed, while the beast tamer blocked or evaded every strike with his hand axes.
An exchange of blows carried out with minimal motion—difficult for the eyes of a lowborn socialite to follow.
Direct combat truly was not an assassin’s domain.
Though it was also true that this beast’s physical abilities were far from ordinary.
– Grrrowl!
Flonus, the snow wolf that had been targeting only her, joined his master and opened his jaws wide.
Frost Breath erupted from his maw.
Why use that when he had Wolf Pack Blizzard, the superior variant Secret Art?
Though she found it somewhat puzzling, if that attack connected properly, it could indeed prove dangerous even for adventurers of Tier 6 and above.
“…….”
Well, as long as it didn’t land, that was fine.
At some point, Rosalia pushed the beast tamer back and leaped onto the snow wolf’s back.
Immediately, a red death rose bloomed from the assassin’s body—that lover of poison—scattering black poison dust everywhere.
Just simple Extreme Poison.
– Urrgh….
While the snow wolf whimpered in pain, Bartimyr suddenly hurled Demonic Energy.
Crack!
Blood fountained from the wolf-beast’s waist.
Yet with its superior recovery and durability, it endured, attempting to unleash breath at the demon who had struck it.
The limit of a low-intelligence beast.
To take its eyes off the assassin.
“Wida!”
The beast tamer gave a command and tried to hurl his hand axe.
It was already too late.
Thwuk!
Merlin’s Hidden Blade, seizing the second opening, embedded itself in the tamer’s shoulder.
At that very moment, Rosalia leaped upward with Mighty Leap and descended, swinging her dagger.
Following the assassin’s trajectory, a red arc was carved into the empty air.
Slash!
Extreme: Severance.
A simple, straightforward Secret Art of a Tier 5 assassin—merely cutting with tremendous force, yet formidable.
The wound that Bartimyr had carved earlier split wide open, and Flonus’s body was cleaved cleanly in two.
“…Kurgh.”
The beast tamer collapsed, spitting blood.
The recoil from his partner’s death.
“Damn it!”
The orc, who had been desperately blocking Bartimyr’s attacks alone without a vanguard, furrowed his brow and shouted.
“Marcent! What are you doing, you bastard!”
He was calling out to the Mohican demon.
As that demon was in a state of mind I could not speak of, I answered in his stead.
“That individual is unable to assist you. It appears he has lost his sight.”
“…What?”
Only then did the orc, turning his gaze toward where the Mohican demon lay, widen his eyes in shock.
– Caw caw!
The blind crow had pecked out both of the demon’s eyes completely, leaving empty sockets.
It was rather endearing, the way the beast-warrior writhed about, unable even to lose consciousness thanks to the creature’s characteristic tenacity.
“…That stupid bastard!”
The scheming demon gritted her teeth and hurled forward a blood-written earth clump.
A single-use cursed tool.
In an instant, a wall of earth rose up before us.
“Just crush that one too!”
“Right then!”
An orc drew back the bowstring with a sharp twang, and a single arrow wreathed in green light shot skyward.
Whoooosh—!
Hundreds of arrows split from the first, raining down like a tempest.
Rapid Downpour.
The mightiest Secret Art a Level 5 Ranger could wield.
“Artein, hear us.”
Ting.
A bell chimed.
A pure white circular shield materialized in the void, drawing in the entire deluge of arrows.
Though Lucius was only Tier 4, with the power of a holy artifact he could manifest Fragment of Clericium—a Tier 5 Secret Art.
A lower-grade version of the Buckler Holy Artifact that Seraphina wielded.
“Rain down your flame upon those who persecute the innocent.”
In answer to Lucius’s voice, the shield mark upon his chest grew hot.
The two Arteins were watching the battle unfold.
For the sake of the subscribers, I decided to step in for the finale.
I drew my trump card from the subspace.
– Where am I now?!
Even in repetition, that cheerful tone grated.
The Centaur-type Elite Golem Head—my rival from the fierce contest that unfolded when we both emerged from the Sanctuary of Purification.
It was an entity capable of absorbing the energy an opponent released and amplifying it before hurling it back.
“Lend me your strength for a moment.”
– What are you planning to do with me?!
Crackle-snap!
Black lightning surged into the speaker-like head.
Pouring in, unstinting, until every last arrow of Rapid Downpour was spent.
“Bartimyr!”
“On it—!”
Bartimyr, who had taken cover from the arrow rain, bolted forward, smashed through the earthen wall with a powerful knee strike, and tumbled nimbly past it.
The moment the Lawless Ones hiding behind it came into view, he hoisted the golem head high.
“Fire, comrade bound by heart to heart.”
– I don’t want to help, but if I don’t the head might explode, so I guess I have no choice…!
Kaaaaaa—!
Black lightning tore across the ground.
An overwhelming discharge—far beyond what I could produce at my current level.
Merlin’s fragile Socialite frame staggered backward, but Merlin rushed forward to steady her from behind.
“Hup!”
“…You bastard!”
The scheming demon showed no panic whatsoever. She drove her dagger into the orc’s thigh and turned to flee.
Sacrifice a comrade and run.
The basic instinct of a Lawless One.
Black lightning engulfed the orc ranger kneeling on one knee, spreading like a living thing.
Kaaaaaa—!
“Screeeeeech!”
A scream buried under thunder.
Once the golem had discharged every last bit of its black lightning, the orc stood there—charred completely black, quite dead.
Sizzle!
Swe rejoiced at the completion of the orc lightning skewer.
Her joy became mine as well.
“How is it? Would you care for a taste?”
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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