Shizuku wiped the sweat off her cheek which fell and created weird dripping sound. Kondou and the others replied while stammering and withdrew their arms. It was as though they got doused by cold water.
Having thought the crisis was through, everyone relaxed… and at that moment,
“ROOOOOOARRRRR!!!”
BOOOM!!!
The wall separating the hidden room and the outside was crushed to pieces along with a tremendous roar.
“Uwah!?”
“Kyaaaa!!”
The wall’s fragments were blown like bullets due to the impact into the hidden room, and hit Kondou and Yoshino who were in its trajectory. The two spontaneously fell flat on their butts as they raised screams.
In the next moment, before the dumbfounded Kouki’s party were the incoming blurred spaces whom they still didn’t want to meet.
“Prepare to fight!”
“Damn it! How did they find us!”
While ordering so, Kouki immediately drew and slashed the Chimeras with the Holy Sword. They didn’t move because they would lose sight of the enemies if they distanced themselves from them. As he cursed, Ryuutarou positioned himself before the passage connected to the outside, and tried to prevent the demonic beasts from invading any more than this.
However,
“RooOOoAR!!”
“GROoowwwWL!!”
A Brutal-look-alike immediately hurled its steel-like body like a cannonball into the room. Thus, it grappled into Ryuutarou with tremendous momentum and pushed him down.
Using that chance, tens of black cats dashed into the room and immediately fired tens of tentacles. Fired like a barrage, they mercilessly attacked Kondou and the others who remained on their spots. And though Kondou and the others immediately readied their weapons, the tentacles were too much in number and would skewer them as-is.
?????????? ??
“——”Heaven Interruption”!”
“——”Heaven Interruption”!”
15 shields of light slantly appeared in the space before Kondou and the others and managed to deviate the trajectories of the attacks. To be capable of activating the shields even with such short chants would make anyone marveled. Ten of the shields were Suzu’s, while the other five were Kaori’s.
However, even though they immediately cast them, Suzu’s physical condition was still in a bad shape while Kaori’s magic power was still exhausted. Those facts affected the strenght of the shields.
Whiiiish! Fwooosh! Whiiiish! Fwooosh! Whiiiish! Fwooosh!
They should’ve been able to change the trajectories and endure the impact, but vigorous attacks from the tentacles broke the shields one after another. Thus, several of the tentacles’ trajectories could not be changed by the crushed shields and attacked Nakano and Saitou. The two immediately bend their bodies. Since both were in the rear group, their physical strength weren’t that high. Because of that, even though they avoided mortal wound, Nakano shoulder and Saitou’s thigh were gouged, and they raised screams as they were thrown to the ground.
“Shinji! Yoshiki! Shit! Daisuke, help them!”
“… Ah, of course.”
Always brooding over something since they escaped into the hidden room, Hiyama did not pay much attention to what Kondou said. However, the situation didn’t let him say anything otherwise, so he dragged the wounded Nakano and Saitou towards Suzu’s side. Even though her physical condition was not good, the area around Suzu, whose magic power still had a lot remaining, was the safest. Besides, they would be easily healed by Kaori at Suzu’s side.
“Kuh, Kouki! Use “Limit Break” and get outside! We will do something about these guys inside this room!”
“But, Suzu and the others cannot move…”
“We will face them as-is! Please! Break through them and kill the Demon Race woman!”
“Kouki! Leave this place to us! I absolutely won’t let them die!”
“…Okay! I will leave this place to you! “Limit Break”!”
After thinking about Shizuku and Ryuutarou’s words for a moment, he thought it was certainly the only way to break through this situation. With a resolute expression, Kouki activated “Limit Break” for the second time today. The reason “Limit Break” must not be used for more than once a day was because it put considerable burden into the body. That’s why, “Limit Break” which usually had an eight minute limit, but it might be shorter now. Expecting that, Kouki would ignore the others and only concentrate on defeating the Demon Race woman, he went out of the hidden room.
Going out of the room into the huge octagonal room, before Kouki’s eyes were a large amount of demonic beasts. And within the stationary demonic beasts stood the Demon Race woman looking at him with cold eyes, and a white crow on her shoulder. The inside of Kouki’s mind was boiling with a sense of mission to save his comrades and anger that they were put into such a predicament. Thus, he glared straight at the Demon Race woman.
“Hmph, you made me waste too much time. I also have other missions too…”
“Shut up! I will surely defeat you! Prepare yourself!”
Declaring so, Kouki used short chant, and magic power was immediately sent into the Holy Sword. “Divine Might” would normally reach the Demon Race woman, but even so, he used the chant omission version of “Divine Might” since he believed it would be able to open a path for him.
However, the Demon Race woman showed a smile before the Holy Sword, whose radiance increased, and she ordered the Brutal-look-alike standing by near her to drag something from the back.
Kouki put a dubious expression at first which then turned into an aghast expression when he saw that “something.” He instinctively lowered the Holy Sword with eyes wide opened and called his name with a trembling voice.
“… M-Meld-san?”
That’s right, there was the dying Meld whose limbs were crushed and whole body drenched in blood being dragged by the Brutal-look-alike by the scruff of his neck. With a glance, his whole body was limp and seemed to have died, but sometimes small groans arose and demonstrated that he was alive.