Antagonist Protection Service

On one side of the chamber, its floor filled with dense fog roughly to the knees, the blond John Pierce clutched the truncated stump of his right shoulder, well on his way to grinding his teeth into dust, groaning unrestrainedly in inexplicable agony.

Leaning close to that same side, the Infected Yeti stood hunched, its four partially-crystallised arms flailing in an attempt to catch a pesky flying fish, swimming through the air and using the needle on its forehead to pester the monster further.

Elsewhere, hidden to even perceptive eyes below the fog, a faceless enemy lurked.

Additionally, were two others.

Upon witnessing their leader sustain such a fatal wound, and moreover one that appeared to affect him in such an unusually dire manner, it was as if a switch had been flipped.

For the instant that wound was inflicted, something severe occurred, and...

"John...!"

As if it were no more than an illusion, the fog had lifted, revealing all that lay beneath.

All lies were erased, and now, four individuals remain exposed in the chamber.

Despite calling his name, Sophie, freed from her illusory prison, did not rush to her party leader's injured side―Rather, the contrary.

Wielding dual katars, she wore an expression of utmost hatred that could even be said to resemble a demon, running the disguised enemy down with no consideration to anything else.

Arriving before him, standing still, she initiated with a thrust of one dagger towards the enemy's face, planning to follow up with the other at his chest.

CLANGG~!

"Bastard...!"

"..."

She was not as fast as before.

With a simple sway of his head to evade the first, the masked figure then raised his sword to deflect the second strike.

Retaliating forthright, he cleanly swept the blade at her neck, carving an arc of death through where she was just standing before ducking, attacking once more.

Clang-- Clangg~!

"?! Tch...!"

Strangely, both strikes only impacted an invisible, magical shield, just like the time they were falling through the air together.

Targeting precisely that moment of weakness, his blade fell onto her head――

Thud-!

"..."

Or at least, it would have done, if not for the fog magician's thick battlestaff intercepting the strike, the resulting sound resembling chopped wood.

Using the opportunity, Sophie hurriedly jumped to the side and out of the way of the blade's original path, then again towards its wielder with ferocity.

As she did so, the world around her slowed.

The enemy's movement of stepping back to gain some distance from the two was hardly faster than the stumbling of an old man, and even her teammate was as if he was frozen solid.

'Got you this time...!'

A toothy grin dominating her face, she thrusted the blades forward.

'This is for John!'

The first, directed at his abdomen, penetrated exceptionally deep, roughly three inches.

The second, directed at his detestable masked-veiled face, made contact―

Crack-- Shatter~!

"...!!"

―And immediately fractured, splintering into countless shards that fell to the ground.

'What?! The hell's that thing made of...?!'

She had more time than otherwise to contemplate it, but after all, contemplating wouldn't bring back a broken blade.

'I spent a fortune on these things...!'

Discarding the useless handle with great regret, Sophie withdrew the only remaining katar she wielded, however, it was as though the weapon itself was not real―the location she had stabbed left absolutely zero blood, or rather, the spot was utterly untouched, including even the outermost layers of fabric.

Still, she remained unperturbed. Thrusting her arm forward again, she continued to stab the slow-moving enemy's body in various places, each time going mercilessly deep, or at least as deep as that person's absurdly durable armour would allow.

In total, she managed to dish out twelve brief impalements, each and every one leaving no drops of blood or even any trace of damage at all before her head began to throb, signalling the inherent time limit on her ability.

Yet, the expression on her face was one of utmost satisfaction.

'He definitely won't be able to stand this-- Ngh!'

Before her condition got any worse, she released her ability, letting time flow freely as usual.

At the same time, she did not give chase to the still-retreating enemy, instead halting her movement before―

"Heh."

―She laughed.

"This..."

One second passed.

And then.

"Cough...!"

Thud, splatter-!

"...Is what you get."

All of a sudden, the disguised enemy fell to one knee, his black blade dropped to the ground beside him as a violent cough of blood expelled itself from behind the mask.

Drip, drip...

Countless droplets, no, streams of blood gushed down his frontside, staining his black outfit, riddled with holes, and then forming a small puddle on the crystallised floor beneath.

All of the accumulated strikes hit him at once.

"Reveal your identity, now. And don't even think about trying to use a health po-- Hey!?"

Despite the abrupt crippling of his physical state, the enemy did not pause for even a moment, interrupting Sophie's warning with her own exclamation through his action.

――Materialising from thin air, a black pistol appeared in his hand.

BANG, BANG, BANG-!

"Eek! Damn it, a gun?! Throw that thing away right now!"

The loud crack of the gun's repeated muzzle blast echoed endlessly throughout the chamber, a sound frankly impossible to ignore and one that would undoubtedly strike fear into any who heard it, at least in the times prior to the Tower's existence.

However, perhaps his terrible state was that much of a detriment to his aim, as a whopping total of zero of the total three fired shots managed to connect with her.

That didn't mean they had hit nothing, of course.

"Andy, you okay...?!"

Spinning around out of pure concern for her friend, her vision turned to find him visibly unharmed, although――

Thump thump thump--!!

"Watch it!"

"Aah!"

Charging directly towards her was the Infected Yeti. Had the enemy intentionally shot at the Area Boss to attack her, knowing he himself was rendered useless?

'Tsk, nice try, but it ain't going to work against me!'

That sort of last-ditch effort, maybe if the monster in question was something more threatening, but this thing?

'No chan-- Eh?'

Just as Sophie prepared herself to slide under the approaching giant's legs and skirt around it, the Yeti...

'It's... going straight for him?'

Surely, that wasn't how he had intended it. He was in that sort of sorry state, after all. Even if he was tremendously powerful, if he couldn't even stand properly, there was nothing he could do...

'...Right?'

Baffled nevertheless, Sophie couldn't bring herself to move towards them. Who was she to get in the way of one foe destroying another?

Rather than two birds with one stone, it was one bird hunting down the other.

No stones were even required, in fact!

――At least, that's how it should have been.

Eyes glued on as the Infected Yeti charged towards the clearly defenseless masked man, Sophie watched as he weakly picked up the dropped blade beside him, holding it in two shaky hands.

The strange black pistol had already vanished somewhere, but that wasn't important.

Happening all in a matter of moments, the towering monster reached him, raising all four arms into the air, the intent to crush the pest in one fell swoop palpable even from afar...

That's when he raised the black blade up, stabbing the Infected Yeti in its groin.

"GRAAAA--"

It was so feeble that it could barely be called an attack at all, just barely enough to pierce the outer layer of the monster's fur-covered flesh, and yet...

'That...?'

For just a moment, Sophie swore she noticed the dull purple, unfamiliar characters engraved in the blade begin to glow, like runes.

―SLAM, SLAM, SLAM---!!

That glimpse was abruptly annihilated, at least at a glance.

While the Yeti brought all of its clenched fists down like a rain of heavy meteor strikes, raising them back up just to crash them down again immediately after, what it was actually hitting was not the masked figure at all, but rather the magical shields he had repeatedly demonstrated until now.

SLAM-- SHATTER~!

SLAM-- SHATTER~!

SLAM-- SHATTER~!

Each and every time the Yeti unleashed its fury, the sound of heavy glass being smashed into nothingness resounded clearly, followed by the immediate summoning of a replacement.

At the very same time, whilst those magical barriers continued to form and break in an endless cycle, barely managing to protect their user inches away from death for a prolonged amount of time, the individual himself appeared nonetheless unperturbed.

Simply put, each time the Yeti slammed a fist down, failing to kill the human before it, that was an opportunity to retaliate, and so the black blade pushed ever-so-slightly further into the vulnerable groin of the monster.

Consequently, the purple runes along the length of the blade grew brighter and brighter.

As more and more blood was spilt onto the blade, the brighter, the more intense it became.

Moreover, that blood, rather than dripping to the ground, had not a single drop spill.

As if the blade was starved, it actively absorbed the monster's harvested lifeforce, hungrily devouring it.

Before long, the masked figure found the strength to rise to both feet, gaining the position to push the overly-aggressive monster back and pierce it even further, pouring more and more blood to greedily drink.

Once that threshold was reached, he didn't need the magical shields anymore.

On the other hand, the crystallisation of the Yeti's flesh did not act fast enough to prevent the blood from leaving its body, and now, it was already too late to make up for it.

'What's--?! His wounds...!'

By the time the perplexed onlookers finally realised what was happening, all of the deep stab wounds inflicted on the enemy were already beginning to fully recover.

Eventually, when it seemed enough blood had been soaked up to at least render him as fit for battle as he could ever be, the masked figure jumped back from both the Infected Yeti and the others, maintaining distance still.

Wasting no time, he summoned that black pistol in his left hand, aiming at a place past Sophie's head.

More precisely, towards John Pierce.

"Stop...!"

She moved, evidently panicked, but the pull of the trigger was inevitably faster.

BANG-!

Simultaneously as the gun went off, she activated her ability, immediately perceiving the world around her as slow.

Just one bullet, that was all there was, but it was threatening enough.

All she could do was block it somehow, but...

'But if I use this, it'll break... Grhh...!'

Even in this slowed world, she couldn't afford to waste a second.

A bullet was still supersonic, after all.

Fortunately due to the acute angle of the fired projectile, it wasn't as if she had to move far to block its path. Holding her arm out firmly in the bullet's path, she de-activated her ability―

"Gahhh-- hhff...!"

―Promptly facing the consequences.

Naturally, she clutched her arm. Somehow, this wasn't as powerful an attack as the one that took off John Pierce's arm, but she wouldn't complain about that.

Revolving, she glanced hastily where the aforementioned party leader should have been standing, and just as she hoped, he was untouched by the bullet.

However, that wasn't to say he was in the same state as earlier.

"Sophie...! Ghh, Phoenix! Pisces! Cervus!"

Summoning his three familiars at once, a white stag and a flying swordfish appeared on either side of him, and in his one remaining hand, a pair of crimson chakrams.

It was a welcome surprise for Sophie to see that Phoenix had already recovered to the extent that its equip form was usable.

Interrupting that brief elation, however, was a single, echoing sound.

BANG, BANG-! BANG-!

"Wa-- No...!"

Before her eyes, in both the stag and the fish, ominous black holes penetrated deep.