Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 700
Chapter 700: Evil Party (5)
The active ability of No. ????, Dragon Plate of Aegis was pretty flashy.
I am in awe every time I see it.
In particular, its effect was more overpowering than any ability or equipment I had ever seen before.
Shine!
The giant spirit warrior that had been summoned out of thin air behind my back swung his huge sword. It was powerful enough to destroy a fortress, and the target of that attack was the Fallen Scholar, Ruingenes. If I ignored the priest Jaina and that gramps disappeared, the battle would become a lot more manageable for me.
However, the problem was that the Gatekeeper Lek Aures was standing in my way.
Hmm, I guess it’s not actually a problem?
This situation was still within my expectations.
As Aures stood in front of Fallen Gramps with his gargantuan shield, dozens of thick mana plates formed over his shield.
A tank that protects the wizard, and the wizard who casts spells to protect said tank…
It was pretty awesome to see the synergy.
You’re wasting your time, though.
Nothing would change for them. I mean, really. Even if those two combined their strengths together, how could they defend against my attack? They hadn’t been able to block it properly when we were testing it either.
Crunch!
The mana plates that were formed by the wizard of the highest rank were ripped away like paper.
One plate, two, three, four…
It didn’t matter how many layers there were. The greatsword of this brutal warrior didn’t care about anything like that.
Crack!
The heavy strike of the greatsword smashed through the final layer and even flung away Aures who had been acting as the wall.
“Ack!”
Alright, then that was the tank taken care of.
Smack!
Baekho continued to attack me from behind, but I could just ignore him.
GM is just spectating…
And since Jaina couldn’t make any offerings outside the city walls, she didn’t have any way of stopping me either.
So, the only thing left to do was kill the Fallen Scholar who had expended all his defensive spells already.
“…Huh?”
At that point, something completely unexpected happened. What was even more surprising was that this thing was something good for me.
“Why…isn’t it disappearing?”
I didn’t notice it at first, but the spirit warrior summoned from the Dragon Plate of Aegis didn’t disappear even after attacking. In fact, rather than disappearing, it readied its sword again and took on its attack stance once more.
For some reason, this little moment was studied keenly by everyone, as if we were all watching it happen in slow motion.
“Huh…?”
Baekho let out a stupified sound as he momentarily forgot what he was doing. Jaina looked full of worry, and GM just stared in my direction with wide eyes.
“This is a problem,” Fallen Gramps noted, quickly trying to cast another spell.
As all the information I could possibly obtain at that moment through my five senses burned itself into my mind, I instinctively realized what had happened.
“So you get stacks every time you get hit, and depending on the stacks you have, it does a certain level of physical damage.”
Given the limitations of our experiment, we were only able to test up to stage 4 of the Dragon Plate of Aegis’s ability.
Because of that, I couldn’t know which stage this effect was being produced.
[The accumulated damage has exceeded a certain threshold. One more use has been given.]
Whatever the case, I just got a multi-attack.
Does that mean this will have more abilities if I get hit even more?
It was a sensible hypothesis, but I decided not to expect too much out of it. This alone was more than enough to categorize the Dragon Plate of Aegis as on the same level as a single-digit numbered item.
Boom!
As time accelerated back to normal, the spirit warrior’s greatsword swung directly down toward Fallen Gramps.
“La Ebiestuka Bieran.”
Fallen Gramps finished casting as a dark red barrier formed and surrounded his body. The barrier rippled too ominously for it to be a mere defensive barrier.
I don’t think I’ve seen this before.
I could tell at a glance that this was one of Fallen Gramps’s hidden tricks.
Well, I’d figure out its properties soon enough—
“…Huh?”
My eyes went from expectant and assessing to wide with surprise.
Things had progressed in a completely unexpected direction. I’d assumed that either the barrier would break or the greatsword would get deflected, and either of these outcomes would’ve been fine in my books.
Vwoong!
The greatsword disappeared as soon as it made contact with the barrier. No, honestly, it looked more like it got sucked in its entirety into the barrier. It was as if that barrier were a portal to another world.
Doesn’t this just make him invincible…?
That, and the fact that the casting time was so short too, left me with no choice but to think that it was a completely broken skill. However, I didn’t pout, complain, or do anything like that. I was cheating by using this broken item, Dragon Plate of Aegis, so it was only fair that this gramps had a trick up his sleeve himself.
And I don’t think it’s free to use either.
The story of great power requiring great responsibility was something that only appeared in movies. In the world we lived in, great power required a great cost instead, and I could tell Fallen Gramps had paid the price.
He was panting in heavy, rough breaths, as if he had mustered up his full power, even borrowing some from his future. His white hair, drenched in sweat, stuck to his skin, and he looked as if he would fall over at any moment.
Now that I think about it, is this the first time I’m seeing Gramps be pushed this far?
It felt like a pretty rare sight to witness, but I didn’t have time to spectate.
The barrier finally disappeared.
I pushed myself forward and dashed toward Fallen Gramps. When I went to swing down with my hammer, something else unexpected occurred.
Vwoong!
The hammer swung through empty air.
It took me a moment to realize what had happened as I stared, mind-boggled.
…He dodged it?
Fallen Gramps had dodged my attack.
No matter how low my Agility stat was, there was no way a wizard could dodge my attack. And it wasn’t that he got lucky either.
Vwoong!
He continued to dodge my attacks left and right. It looked as if he was using some weird martial art, and it was enough to make me flustered.
“Seems you didn’t know,” he began. “Magic is a school of learning that was developed on the battlefield. As a result, the wizards of old all trained in close-quarters combat. So that they could protect themselves even in melee.”
Damn it. If wizards could use martial arts as well, then what was the point of the rest of us?
I tried to narrow the distance between us just a little more, but Fallen Gramps unexpectedly didn’t run away from me but instead suddenly charged me.
He placed his right hand gently on my stomach.
Boom!
It felt like a bomb had gone off within my body.
I didn’t hear him chant nor did I feel any flow of mana.
“Ack!”
What was that? He got through the Mana Resistance of my dragon mode? And so easily?
My mind went blank, but it didn’t take long for me to realize what was going on. I had forgotten it because it had been so long since then, but this was a technique that I was already familiar with.
“You should be familiar with the trick. Our bodies touched temporarily. I connected the circuit then and completed the magic using your body as a medium.”
“Oh, so that’s why my Mana Resistance didn’t work.”
Despite his explanation, I still couldn’t understand its principles. However, one thing was certain. Fallen Gramps had used this technique before to deal damage to Baekho while bypassing his Mana Resistance.
Alright, so you’re saying you’re pretty good in melee even though you’re a wizard?
I could feel the blood trickling down my throat, but it wasn’t a huge issue for me. However, I concluded I needed some time to reevaluate the battle, so I put some distance between us.
It’s a bit of a shame I couldn’t get him in one hit after using all my stacks…
Still, I didn’t need to rush anything. I had even put that Aures guy out of commission, after all.
“Mr. Aures…!”
Well, it seemed that he was still alive, so he’d probably rejoin the fight after getting healed.
I needed to kill at least one of them on the first turn.
The situation wasn’t in my favor. And maybe knowing this as well, Baekho paused in his attacks and talked to me instead.
“You see that? Even if you go on a rampage, nothing will change.”
Hey, don’t get cocky. This isn’t over yet.
“So let’s just stop here. Hmm? We can just talk it out. Just tell me what you talked about with that old man. You don’t even have to tell the others, just me. Then we can stop all this. Okay?”
I eyed Baekho, who was acting as if he had already won and then grinned.
“Since you feel like running your mouth… Sounds like you’re tired?”
I wasn’t yet.
[You have cast Soul Dive. Soul Power has regenerated relative to missing points.]
Be it a street fight, a fight in the ring, a fight in the jungle, the oceans, or any other world, there was one truth that never changed.
“Behel—LAAAAA!”
In the end, the last one standing would be the victor.
***
One minute, two minutes, three minutes…
The battle continued.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes…
I rolled on the ground, spat out blood.
One hour, two hours, three hours…
Fell unconscious for a brief second before being brought back to consciousness from a piercing pain.
Four hours.
No, maybe a lot more time had passed.
Just like my teenage years that had passed a long time ago, this period of time felt both slow but also inescapably fast.
“Haa… Haa… Haa…”
It wasn’t just me either. I could hear the panting breaths of those all around me.
“B-Baron… can we just stop here…?”
Having been thrown out of the battle multiple times already, Aures pleaded with me as he stood in defense in front of the Fallen Scholar.
“You’re at your limit as well…”
Well, the ones who said such things were usually the ones who were at their limit first.
Standing at a distance, Jaina also commented on it.
“Monster.”
It was a quiet mumble as if she was sick of all this.
“Aha… Haah…” Baekho, standing opposite me in a defensive stance, wiped away a thick bead of sweat as he said, “So you did trust someone. I never expected it’d be yourself, though.”
Even in this situation, he was smiling brightly as if something was funny about all this.
“At this rate, I don’t think I’ll be too far off?”
It seemed that he was satisfied to see me having grown so powerful.
“It’s a shame that it’ll be difficult to control you…but your weaknesses are pretty obvious anyway, Baron.”
Maybe I was already used to it from him. I didn’t feel any flash of emotion even as he said that. And it wasn’t like I could hear properly at that point, anyway.
Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump!
The beating of my heart deafened my ears.
My vision was blurry from blood and sweat,
And my skin felt hot as if I were being cooked.
“Hehehe…”
I could only focus on those sensations and let out a wry chuckle.
I wasn’t laughing because it was funny. I was laughing because it leaked out of me.
“So this is what that passage in the book written by Peprok meant. About how warriors laugh when they are exhausted…”
Baekho tilted his head at the Fallen Scholar’s words. “The hell are you talking about?”
“It’s something he said in the past. I heard that it was very famous among adventurers. Do you not know?”
“How the hell would I?” Baekho snorted as he spat out some blood. “Anyway, then are you saying the baron is at his limit?”
From the look in Baekho’s eyes, I could tell that he would never back down. It was bad news for me. I mean, I probably wouldn’t be able to keep standing if this went on any longer.
“Hehehe…”
Well, it couldn’t be helped. I just needed to go as far as I could. There were some points in life where one needed the perseverance to keep going forward even when he knew the result.
“Hey, gramps. You done with your prep?”
“Ah, it is done.”
“Then let’s end this.”
I didn’t know what they had prepared, but it seemed that they were pulling some ultimate move. Then, a huge magic circle was created with the Fallen Scholar at its center.
I could tell it was nothing ordinary. So much so that for the first time in a while, I had a weak thought.
If I get the feeling I can’t block it, let’s get out of here…
I forced my eyes open and looked forward.
Crunch!
Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a watermelon exploding, and then the magic circle drawn on the ground lost its glow.
What happened?
I quickly turned to look, and I noticed two things.
First, the Fallen Scholar was flying through the air as if he had just been hit by something. And…
[Amelia Rainwales has cast Asura’s Kick.]
What? How was she here?
I wondered if I was hallucinating from the exhaustion, but then, Amelia actually spoke to me, all the while staring at Baekho.
“Captain, do we just need to kill them all?”
I just nodded, dazed.
“Yeah.”
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