Swamp Battle 2
Ankle-deep puddles and muddy land covered with water-absorbing vegetation.
The northern swamp was created by the combination of these two factors.
The cold, wet environment of the swamp preserves the carcasses of dead creatures for quite a long time.
As a result, it gave off a terrible stench, and it was unsanitary due to the germs that sprang up.
Mushrooms also appeared here and there, dispersing toxic spores into the air.
This also caused a strong odor.
The swamp fog, which smells like iron rust, is an unmistakable poison to ordinary creatures. However, Eltharion has grown up in the poisonous mist since childhood, and his body has not been affected by contact with germs or mushroom spores.
Rather, the elf's body had grown stronger in nature.
(My strength is returning. After all, it was the right decision to have the [Wood Woman] remove the ashes of the holy tree.)
Kicking the bottom of the water, bouncing off the droplets and mud, Eltharion ran through the white mist like a wolf.
His shoulders hardly move up and down, as if he were gliding or flying.
His golden hair flutters in the wind, and the white robe he wears is puffed up with air, giving him the silhouette of a white ghost.
(My legs move without any problems, but my left hand does not move at all from the wrist down.)
Eltharion looks down at his left wrist, where blue particles are multiplying in the wound.
(My right hand can barely move from the shoulder down. Neither the bone spear nor the bone sword can be used.)
The authority to slow down the enemy's perceived time seems to be usable for the time being.
But he can't stop time completely.
(No problem)
It can be activated while the opponent is running or flying, for example, to make them self-destruct. Even though it can't completely stop time, it can slow down the reaction. It is enough. It's good enough to be useful.
(Primary means of attack. Kick the enemy to death by mutating my legs into trees, or kill them by skewering them.)
His left hand can at least receive an enemy's attack.
On the other hand, his right hand is completely useless.
As long as he has an accurate grasp of his own body, he is at least good.
It is good as long as he doesn't end up in a situation where he thinks he can cut off the head with his right hand, but when he tries it, his right arm doesn't work, exposing a fatal gap.
(Swamp magic. Rock Spear, Root Hammer, Rock Crush)
Rock Crush can not only fire large rock chunks, but also can fire finely crushed rocks. If he wants to penetrate, he would choose a large shot. If he wanted to destroy a wide range from a short distance, he would fire it like a shotgun.
Both require needles made from mistletoe.
Also, if there are no oak trees on the battlefield, the spell will fail.
(If I mutate my legs and attack directly, the attack will be quicker and more powerful. Since swamp magic requires time to chant and the use of mistletoe, it cannot be activated immediately. In close combat On the other hand, when it comes to mid- to long-range combat, I can skewer or mow down a wide area with the [Rock Spear] and [Root Hammer], so I can use swamp magic as the axis. It's good to have a strategy.)
Eltharion has never fought a battle like this before.
There was no need for a proper fight, once the time was stopped, all that was left to do was to cut off the opponent's neck or skewer the torso with a bone spear.
Alternatively, he could use the power to grow plants to torture and kill the enemy before they approached.
There wouldn't even be a battle.
Werewolves, trolls, goblins, giant spiders, and manticores.
No monster in this forest could compete with Eltharion.
However, tonight, the authority that he had been relying upon could not be used as expected.
It is not possible to do a one-sided fight and abusing the use of the authority.
(The number of enemies is one. The contamination of the [Blue Ash] has not yet reached the depths of the forest. Unlike the previous four dirty scum, I don't sense any intention to trap me.)
If so, this will be his first battle.
(Interesting)
Eltharion stepped on moss growing on the bank of the swamp, lowered himself, kicked the foothold hard, and jumped over the swamp. His body took a temporary flight, breaking through the white mist that smelled of iron rust.
Next, he landed on a winding path that led to the depths of the northern forest.
In the distance, a series of wolves howl, and the shadows of several beasts appear at the entrance to the depths.
"I'm coming."
Eltharion whispers low to the wolves who start running side by side.
The forest was filled with noise.
The cold wind that blew through the trees had a distinct smell of blood.
The breath of the wolves running alongside him was laced with fear.
In contrast, Eltharion's heart was filled with elation and excitement.
The creature's innate fighting instinct.
Stronger than others.
Faster than others.
Kill your enemies, slurp their flesh and blood, and become stronger as a being.
A tremendous sound that pushes through the roots of grass at super high speed and shakes off the branches and leaves of shrubs.
Eltharion accelerates at once like a white snowy owl soaring through the jungle, leaving the wolves behind.
Power is transmitted from the ground where he stepped.
From the [world] that gave birth to the spirits, overwhelming power flows through the spiritual veins.
"I'm sorry. I'll take it."
He grabs a mistletoe that is growing on the branch of a six-month-old oak tree. It flies through the darkness of the forest. He crosses branches, ladders through ivy vines, and ignores all the bad paths.
Eventually, he landed in a forest clearing, his golden hair shaking in the air.
The smell of blood was strong.
Eltharion narrowed his eyes at the darkness of the trees in front of him.
"...Wolo?"
He called out to his best friend.
A few moments later, a large, white-haired werewolf emerged from the trees.
The smell was thick with blood.
Wolo was covered in blood.
"Wolo!"
"Sorry, Eltharion"
The werewolf spills blood.
Painful breath mixed in between the rough voice.
"I, everyone, can't protect."
"Wolo!"
Five silvery flashes of light.
From the head of the werewolf to the crotch.
A trajectory that cleaves the neck horizontally.
Each arm is sliced off.
Finally, the super-heavy steel obliterated both of the werewolf's legs.
"――――……"
The lump of flesh that was Wolo crumbled to the ground.
"…………!"
The assailant finally appears in front of Eltharion, who stands there without saying anything.
It is a woman.
She has red hair, held together with a hair band.
Her beautiful green eyes, like emeralds, shone brightly in the darkness.
Eltharion's instincts were alerting him.
Something human but not human.
There was no such woman in the report from the [Wood Woman].
There is the presence of a powerful spirit.
He can't immediately judge what the existence in front of him is.
"It's Eltharion, the [Mighty Star]."
The woman swung her shiny silver greataxe.
Wolo's blood, mixed with bits of flesh, is splattered once more on the red ground.
Eltharion bared his fangs.
"I will kill you"
× × ×
In the depths of the forest, Patricia came upon Eltharion, a blonde-haired elf man.
She had assumed that if she had killed enough monsters before reaching the swamp, he would come out from the other side, and she was right.
(Even though he received the holy sword, he hasn't died yet.)
Patricia observed the elf in front of her without care as she removed the blood on the great axe.
The left hand was dead from the wrist down.
The right hand seems to be immobile from the shoulder and hangs limply and weakly.
Both legs look fine.
She doesn't know if he can use his authority or not.
(I was right to go after him, after all. Somehow he seems to be in a lull. I'm going to behead him right here and crush all his brains and heart.)
Patricia grips the great axe with her right hand around its center of gravity and holds it with her left hand thirty centimeters from the stone butt.
The great axe she wields is a weapon known among warriors as a halberd or pole axe.
Generally, it is a long-handled weapon with a total length of two meters.
The blade of the axe part is 20 centimeters long, and a curved, sickle-shaped blade protrudes from the part opposite the axe blade. The sickle can be used to mow down the back of an opponent's knees and pull them to the ground.
The tip of the axe and sickle―― in other words, the tip of the weapon has a spearhead attached to it.
As the shape suggests, the spearhead is attached to the end of the weapon to skewer an enemy armed with a sword or other weapon from out of range.
Axe.
Sickle.
Spearhead.
A weapon with all three attached to its tip and a total length of about two meters is called a halberd or poleaxe.
A more precise classification would be――
A halberd is made by attaching the axe, sickle, and spearhead together from the beginning, while a poleaxe is made by creating the three parts separately and combining them later.
Patricia's great axe, however, is a pole axe, since its three parts are attached later.
However, the great axe of Patricia, who possesses extraordinary strength, does not have an axe that ends after 20 centimeters or so, as is the case with a regular pole axe.
The blade of the axe alone is one meter long.
The weight of the axe alone is 30 kilograms.
Whereas an ordinary pole axe is two meters long, Patricia's great axe is three meters long.
It was more than enough to kill a person.
When wielded by Patricia, even a werewolf with a strong body hair would be reduced to a piece of meat in an instant.
It is too vicious to be called a pole axe.
Hence, the great axe.
Patricia had made this great axe herself, combining leftovers from Netzel's private army.
On her back, she also carries a large mace, formally known as a Holy Water sprinkler―― as a backup weapon in case the great axe is crushed. She had no intention of using the Holy Water Sprinkler, since she planned to fight with her fists if the great axe was broken.
A number of wolves roared, and countless wolves appeared from behind Eltharion.
Maybe they were the minions of the werewolf she killed earlier.
If they were angry at Patricia because their leader had been killed, she hoped so, because she likes to crush such kind miserably.
"It's Eltharion, the [Mighty Star]."
She calls out to the blonde elf who is staring at the werewolf carcass.
Patricia gripped the center of gravity of the great axe with her right hand and the part thirty centimeters from the stone butt with her left, and with a sharp turn of her body, she shook off the blood on the great axe once more.
Eltharion's gaze turns toward her.
His green eyes were dyed golden.
"I will kill you"
A low voice.
There was no elegance in his voice, just a minimal declaration of the start of battle.
His golden eyes shone and he sank down.
The surrounding wolves bared their fangs in response.
Patricia held her great axe high in the air like the banner of her army.
The first move is given to Eltharion.
She would take her opponent's attack, catch it, and when she found an opening, she would smash it with a sharp counter.
In theory, one shouldn't be attacked by demons with inhuman strength, but Patricia is now a demon with inhuman strength.
Moreover, both of them are in human form.
If this is the case, then the defensive counterattack, which is the theory in human-on-human combat, should work.
Patricia opened her legs and began to sway her body, ready to strike at any moment.
Eltharion's golden eyes sparkle as he draws air into his lungs.
A moment later, the white-robed figure in front of her leaped into the sky, rolling up the black dirt.
× × ×
The woman raises her great axe.
She silently urged him to make the first move.
A moment later, the roots of an oak tree leap up from under Eltharion's feet.
Eltharion is an elf.
While in the forest, he receives benefits from the [World] through the forest.
Plants grow their stems and trunks just by thinking about them.
In other words, the forest was an extension of Eltharion's limbs.
"――――"
Leap.
No one can see it.
Neither the wolves nor the red-haired woman reacted.
Pushed by the power of the forest, Eltharion moved his body faster than anyone else on the spot.
He leaps over the branch of an oak tree ten meters from the ground.
In one swift movement, he plummeted down.
Mutating his legs into sharp, strong branches, Eltharion kicked his foot down, aiming for the woman's head.
"[World, sleep]"
The woman who avoided Eltharion by dodging her body to the right creates a fatal gap.
It's an authority, a modification of the time experience.
With his momentum intact, he rotates his body halfway vertically and places his swinging foot on the ground.
With that foot as the axis, he now rotates his body horizontally and aims at her neck with his other foot.
However, the blow to her neck was blocked by the handle of the great axe.
There was a loud metallic sound, and instantly the woman removed only her right hand from the long handle.
She seemed to intend to release the force in this way.
(Is the handle of that great axe made of iron instead of wood?)
Eltharion looks in amazement at the handle of the great axe, which bounces off his left foot without tipping over.
The handle of the great axe alone must have weighed several tens of kilograms.
If the handle was also made of metal, the entire weapon would weigh close to 60 kilograms. An ordinary person should be able to handle a weapon weighing two or three kilograms, but the woman in front of him was extraordinary.
She was no ordinary human being.
She did not appear to have had her physical abilities enhanced by the holy arts.
(Does she have the blood of a demon? But is it possible for demons and humans to interbreed? Or has she undergone some kind of remodeling surgery?)
No, don't think about unnecessary things now.
The enemy is monstrous.
The power of authority doesn't seem to be working either, whether it's a problem with him or she had resistance.
That's all he needs to know.
Eltharion retreated behind him, his chest deeply cut by a counterattack.
Rotten black blood spurts out.
Regeneration does not occur instantly.
But the wound seems to close up in seconds.
Meanwhile, the wolves attacked the woman one after another.
A silvery white afterglow runs through the darkness.
The woman is not in a hurry to attack from all directions, and she simultaneously cuts through the wolves' bodies as she dodges.
For example, at the same time as she ducked to the right, she placed the blade of her great-axe where she had been a moment before and pulled the blade toward her as soon as the wolves lunged at her. Repeating the process while changing her position: left, right, back, forward, and so on. With that, the wolves were cut off at the belly, neck, or legs, one after another rendering them incapable of fighting.
After tearing the seventh wolf apart, the woman took a big leap backward and landed in empty space.
With her great axe at her hip, she instantly turned to face the wolves that were chasing her.
"Stop!"
Eltharion shouted.
The woman's eyes widen wide, and the arm holding the large ax swells to nearly twice its size.
"Ooooh!"
The great axe swung sideways.
All the wolves that had been rushing toward her are smashed in half, right in front of him, and their body is blown to the side or behind him, causing them to jerk and twitch.
In the path of the great axe was a decades-old conifer trunk, but she tore even that apart as easily as if it were paperwork.
Just enormous violence.
She has skill, but more than that, she has too much power.
She is not an opponent that even a bunch of wolves can handle.
The remaining wolves cried out in fright and ran away at once.
Eltharion, who was left alone, bared his murderous intent in the center of the blood-soaked forest clearing.
"You bastard!"
"…………"
The woman sprays the blood again and closes the distance.
He decides that it is dangerous to strike each other at close range when he is wounded, and decides to respond with magic before she gets too close.
Eltharion launched [Rock Spear] and [Root Hammer] in rapid succession.
A large calcareous spear thrusts out from the ground in front of the woman, followed by the roots of an oak tree that rises up and strikes her in the legs, waist, and neck.
However, the [Rock Spear] was cut off with a swing of the great axe, and as for the [Root Hammer], neither the whipping to her legs nor the whipping to her waist seemed to have any effect at all.
The only blow aimed at the neck caused the woman to jerk her head to the side, but it still didn't seem to do any real damage.
Eltharion mutates both legs into tree roots while hardening his left arm.
"Tch"
(If only I could return to my original form)
He catches the great axe with his left arm and immediately bites his teeth while counterattacking with his foot.
The attack will not knock Eltharion down.
All he has to do is regenerate even if he is attacked.
However, the woman showed no sign of tiring even though he was fighting an endurance battle, which can be said to be the weak point of the human race. Like a golem, she continued to swing her great axe.
(Or kill her with poison.)
Eltharion swung his body widely and held out his right arm, which he could not use, to match the path of the great axe.
The blade of the axe still cuts off Eltharion's arm like paper.
Everything from the top of the elbow onward was gone.
It doesn't regenerate either, probably because it has been invaded by the ashes.
(This is fine)
Eltharion caught the axe swinging right next to him with his hardened left arm, while his right arm, which was cut off, was pointed at the woman's face.
Black rotten blood erupts and falls on the woman's face.
The blood looks like necrotic cells, but the toxicity contained in the blood should not have disappeared.
It is a neurotoxic poison, and even demons will not be safe if they come into contact with it.
" ᛉ "
The woman's mouth spins the magic words.
Then several orange-red stones fly out of the pouch at her waist and float in the air.
The black blood hit an invisible wall and was blocked.
Unlike the space-shifting barrier that the humans had used the last time, this one seemed to be a magic to construct an invisible wall.
With a flash of his foot, Eltharion broke the barrier, but by that time, the woman had taken a large leap backward and was looking at him with her great axe at the ready, as if in alarm.
(Does poison work? That's why she avoided it.)
Eltharion let the ivy vines grow and bound up the wound on his right arm.
He decided to kill his enemy with toxic blood, but if he spilled blood all the time, he would dry up and be unable to move. The blood will be released the moment the woman exposes a fatal gap.
(An eye or a hand)
Eltharion traces the woman's vital spot with his eyes.
If he seals the eyes, the woman cannot move.
If it invades her hand, she will not be able to wield her weapon.
After that, if he didn't put pressure on her and make her withdraw, she would be exhausted by the continuous damage from the poison.
"Hey, you. Why are you attacking the forest?"
He called out to catch her off guard.
But as soon as she saw that the blood had stopped, she lunged at him.
It was as if she didn't want to have a conversation.
The same thing could be said about the four men and women who attacked with the pseudo-holy sword two days ago, but the human race doesn't try to have a dialogue even though they possess language. One-sidedly, they unreasonably attack the forest, invade the trees and the ground, slaughter the beasts, and return home.
It is the work of demons.
For Eltharion, with a few exceptions, this is an existence that he will never be able to comprehend.
That was the human race.
"――――"
He ducked the axe that swung down from above his head.
Since the attack he saw earlier came again, he dodged it perfectly.
The woman seemed to be a skilled warrior, but because she was skilled, the axe technique she had developed through her blood-soaked efforts could be classified into several patterns.
It looks like nonsense, but it isn't.
The angle at which the axe is swung down is constant, and the point at which it lands can be predicted from the moment it is raised.
If one swings down, the next attack comes diagonally upward, but there is a momentary gap between them.
Eltharion stamped on the ax handle, driving the blade into the ground.
"Fool"
He releases the ivy.
The woman activates the rune stone again, but before she can do so, Eltharion bares his fangs and tries to bite the woman on the neck. She ducks and dodges, but black blood is splattered on her thigh.
Here, for the first time, the woman's body shakes.
The woman leans back and puts her hands on the ground and kicks her legs up.
Eltharion was about to bite her with her neck sticking out, when he was kicked in the jaw, sending his body into the air. He was then hit with a series of strikes to the abdomen.
His internal organs were destroyed and he felt blood pooling in his mouth.
Eltharion sprayed the woman with black blood from his mouth, then flew behind him and landed lightly on the ground.
"Guh..."
The woman groaned.
The first was on her thigh.
After that, black blood was sprayed on the woman's face.
The hairband melted off, the woman's white face bulged, and the internal tissue was destroyed, turning reddish-black.
The battle was won.
No matter how monstrous her strength was, no matter how good her fighting skills were.
He would not die even if slashed, but the woman dies if she is slashed, and if she is poisoned, her body will fall apart.
"Mistletoe, the root of power. Clump the earth together and shoot the enemy."
Chanting.
[Rock Crush]
Eltharion throws a needle of mistletoe around the woman, designating its range.
The golden eyes of the young elf shone, and several clumps of black ground floated in the air around her.
They became black bullets in the air, sharply pointed, and began to spin, aiming at the woman.
"[Rock Crush]!"
At Eltharion's command, rock bullets struck the woman from all around her.
"――――! …………"
No screams were heard.
The woman tried to protect her head with an axe, but such an all-range attack would not protect her.
She was hit in the back of the head and shot through the back, arms, and legs.
The woman did a strange dance on the spot, stood there stunned, and then collapsed.
(I did it.)
Eltharion let out a small sigh and lowered his left arm.
"Kuh..."
He used a little too much force.
His body was able to move now that he rested a little, but the erosion of the holy sword still continued.
When Eltharion coughed, black blood dripped down on the spot.
(I have to rest. Also, I have to tell the [Wood Woman] again to remove the blue ash.)
Staggering, he turned his back to the woman's corpse.
When he did, he could see that the chunks of meat that had been Wolo were mercilessly thrown out at his feet.
"Wolo..."
He lost another friend.
The human race is cruel.
A formidable enemy.
But... at this rate, the forest and swamp will perish.
Even if he left this land, if he doesn't do something about it, those left behind will be deprived of their habitat, and in the worst case, wiped out.
"A deal with Christopher――"
He muttered to himself.
He'll give Christopher more armaments from the swamp and tell him to make the monkeys leave.
He is a demon
If he asks for it, it won't go wrong.
Eltharion was about to start walking toward the swamp, dragging his heavy body―― and immediately jumped to the side when he felt a wind.
A heavy sensation runs through his torso.
"Wha――――"
His vision shifts.
A strong hand grabbed his head as he turned around.
In front of him was the face of the woman he was supposed to have killed.
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