Hearing the bellowing, majestic roar, a gigantic serpent came to attack from right under Hajime who was in mid-air with its opened mouth.
Maybe because its whole body was clad in magma, neither heat perception nor sign perception noticed it in this place filled with magma. Moreover, the ocean magma itself was filled with magic power so magic power perception also didn’t notice it, so the gigantic Magma Serpent was able to completely make a surprise attack.
However, Hajime twisted his body using his superhuman reflex and was barely able to evade the mouth.
In the place Hajime was before, crunch, the Magma Serpent chomped and passed through. Hajime flipped his body in mid-air just like a cat, aimed the muzzles at the passing Magma Serpent’s head and fired. The flash with certain killing destructiveness didn’t miss its mark and hit the Magma Serpent’s head, blowing it away.
“What !?”
However, the raised voice was not the Magma Serpent’s death throes, but Hajime’s astonished voice.
Naturally, the cause was the Magma Serpent. After all, the Magma Serpent’s head was certainly hit and burst, but the thing scattered was only magma, none of the inside matter. He had seen demonic beasts cladded in magma in «Guryuu-en Great Volcano», but they were only wearing the magma, and had their own flesh. None was composed of only magma.
Hajime immediately recovered and tried to shoot the other parts of the creature to experiment. Numerous flashes mercilessly penetrated the Magma Serpent’s body, but as he thought, there’s no flesh at all. This Magma Serpent seemed to be composed of only Magma.
Though surprised, Hajime had immobilized the Magma Serpent for now by blowing all over of its body, so he once again jumped towards the middle island using “Aerodynamic”, passing by the serpent’s side.
However, the Magma Serpent’s attack hasn’t ended yet. At the moment Hajime passed through its side, it suddenly hurled its body towards Hajime even though it had lost its head and parts of its body.
Hajime made the shotshell in his artificial arm burst and barely succeeded to evade using its recoil. And at this time, a chill ran down Hajime’s spine. Following his instinct, Hajime burst out the shotshells in succession immediately and used “Aerodynamic” to withdraw from there in high speed.
One attack after another, the Magma Serpents came out of the ocean of magma, chasing after Hajime’s track. Those huge mouths crunch, crunch, chomped.
Retreating while rotating in the air, Hajime landed on a nearby foothold. Yue and the girls came to his side. The barrage of blazing masses temporarily stopped.
“… Hajime, are you unhurt?”
“Ah, no problem. More importantly, the real things finally appear.”
Yue, who was worried about his safety, touched his arm. Hajime returned her touch, and answered without looking away from the front. Fwuush With each sound, Magma Serpents appeared one after another before Hajime.
“As expected, that middle island is the last stop. Well thee seemth to say defeat us if thou want to pass.”
“But, the one Hajime-san shot before regenerated, you know? Are they beatable?”
Around 20 Magma Serpents appeared, glaring at Hajime’s party. Even the Magma Serpent that received gunfires from Hajime before had already restored to its former appearance as if nothing had happened.
Shia was frowning as she pointed that out. At Raisen Great Dungeon, she was confused by the regenerating knights, but now she was calmly thinking on how to pass this. It was shown by how her rabbit ears were restlessly moving about. Wryly smiling at Shia who became quite courageous, Hajime told them his guess.
“It might be similar to the Vachram from before, having a core, a magic stone, to form the magma body. Though my magic eye cannot specify the location because the obstruction from the magma… there’s nothing else but to destroy the core.”
Everyone nodded at Hajime’s words and they simultaneously attacked the 20 Magma Serpents.
The Magma Serpents rose like the solar flare shot out masses of flame from their mouth as they tensed. The twenty attacked from all direction. Normally, one would be swallowed by the numerous masses of magma without being able to escape.
“It hath been a long time since this one used this attack! So, taste all of it!”
A huge amount of black magic power appeared before Tio’s thrust her hands out. It then compressed in less than no time, and fired in the next moment. It was the Ryuujin tribe’s Breath.
Thus the black flash, whose dreadful power forced Hajime to defend with all of his might, eliminated all of the Magma Serpents in front of Tio without any trace left. Furthermore, she swung it as if it was a black colored flash blade and annihilated other Magma Serpents.
Immediately, eight Magma Serpents were annihilated, thus Hajime’s party dashed out from the hole of the encirclement.
As expected, by annihilating them without leaving a trace, the magic stone would also be annihilated no matter where the location was, but it was the Great Dungeon’s quality to not make it that easy.
The 12 remaining Magma Serpents instantly crushed the foothold where Hajime’s party were before, falling into the ocean of magma and disappeared, but their numbers went back up to 20 the next time they re-appeared.
“Oi oi, I’ve confirmed the disappearance of the magic stones, you know? Was defeating it not the condition to clear this trial?”
Hajime’s expression distorted from the doubt. Hajime had activated “Light Speed” at the time Tio’s breath was about to reach the Magma Serpent and he confirmed the moment when the magic stone inside Magma Serpent was annihilated by the Breath using his increased kinetic vision.
Hajime came to doubt the condition for conquering this dungeon, and Shia raised her voice while pointing at the middle island.
“Hajime-san! Look at that! The wall is shining!”
“What?”
When he looked at the middle island, it was indeed as Shia said. A part of the rockwall shot light as big as a fist. He didn’t notice it up until now, but the orange-colored light was coming from some kind of crystal buried under the wall of rock.
Hajime used “Farsight” to confirm it, but although it was difficult to confirm due to camouflage, he understood a large amount of similar crystals were buried on the rockwall of the middle island in orderly fashion. The middle island was cylindrical, so considering the interval between crystals and the island’s surface area, around 100 crystals were buried. And the crystals that currently shooting out light were eight… the same number of Magma Serpents Tio annihilated before.
“I see… so we need to defeat a hundred of these Magma Serpents to clear it, huh.”
“… In this heat, fighting a hundred of them… it matched the dungeon’s concept.”
Needless to say, having suffered from the heat and surprise attacks, the challengers were driven into the situation where they needed to concentrate the most in the very end; nastiness suitable for a Great Dungeon.
Indeed, even Hajime’s party were quite exhausted, mentally. However, their expressions didn’t show any exhaustion, they were wearing fearless smile because they had found out the method to conquer the dungeon.
They regained their spirit when they came to understand what they must do, and they once again attacked the Magma Serpents. Along with the downpouring masses of magma, the Magma Serpents made irregular movements to catch and burn their prey.
Hajime’s party spread out again and respectively began to counterattack.
With dragon wings grown out of her back, Tio floated using the wind she regenerated and used tornado along with vacuum blades to attack, bombarding the serpent. It was a wind element, mid-ranked offensive magic, “Imperial Cannon.”
“This is the ninth! Presently, this one is leading, Master! If this one defeated the most of them then this one wants a lot of rewards (punishments)! Of course, only two of us at night!”
Tio shouted while slashing the ninth Magma Serpents to pieces. Hajime tried to refuse with an amazed expression, but Shia interrupted him.