Episode 34.5 – Interlude: The Hundred-Armed Knight
The 77th floor of Tohe.
There, a newly discovered room had appeared—the thirteenth room.
This room had manifested due to an internal shift, and now that fresh air had flowed in, its interior was brightly lit. The light came from stones shining on the ceiling—pillars of crystal-like stone emitting a glow so strong that the normally dark dungeon was as bright as day.
There was almost nothing in that space.
Aside from the doorway that connected this room to the other twelve, and the “stairs leading downward” visible at the back, the only thing present was the monster seated in the center.
Only one.
There was only a single monster in this room.
The monster did not move until prey arrived.
Unlike the monsters in Podie that wandered throughout the dungeon, and unlike the monsters in the other areas of Tohe that roamed their rooms or moved between them, this one simply remained there, motionless.
It simply existed in place, doing nothing at all.
It was humanoid in shape.
That alone was not unusual.
Humanoid monsters were common in this world. Tohe, in particular, was filled with such puppet-like monsters.
There were the Bronze Knights clad in bronze armor.
The Iron Knights clad in iron.
Winged Knights with feathered armor, and masked Iron Faces wearing eerie masks instead of helmets.
There were dual-blade wielders with two swords, and numerous other puppet-like monsters of varying forms. Most of them hid something terrifying—something not human—beneath their armor or clothing, though some lacked any insides at all and were merely animated suits of armor.
How they moved—whether they were even living beings—remained a matter scholars had yet to resolve.
And the monster standing in this thirteenth room, though sharing traits with the many puppet monsters found in Tohe, possessed a single characteristic that set it apart from all the others.
Its weapons.
Of course, a puppet monster carrying a weapon was nothing unusual.
Bronze Knights carried bronze swords, Iron Knights carried iron spears, and heavy warriors wielded massive axes. There were even adventurers who hunted these monsters specifically to strip and resell their weapons.
Yes.
Monsters carrying weapons were nothing strange. Many monsters in dungeons wielded arms. In the dungeon of Toro, skeleton monsters were famous for using swords and spears.
But the weapons this thirteenth-room monster carried had one dramatic, overwhelming difference.
—The sheer quantity strapped across its back.
On its back were halberds, polearms, tridents, greatswords, and even a giant scythe. There was also a longbow with a full quiver of arrows. At its waist, two swords hung at each side, and behind its waist was a crossbow along with bolts for it. Leather belts strapped across the metal armor on its chest held numerous—far too many—throwing knives.
It also carried pouches around its belt, likely stuffed with yet more weapons. On its thighs were additional armaments: a chain-sickle wrapped around the right leg, and a whip coiled around the left.
The number of weapons far exceeded ten or twenty—an arsenal of countless varieties, suited for both long-range and close combat. Its collection rivaled that of a well-stocked weapon shop.
The monster itself was larger than an ordinary human—perhaps around three meters tall. Its exact height wasn’t clear, but one could tell at a glance that it was noticeably larger than a person.
Its entire body was encased in metal armor. The armor had a sleek, streamlined shape, made from multiple overlapping plates designed to efficiently deflect enemy slashes.
Two modest horns protruded from its helmet, though the eye slits remained dark and empty.
And it was within this room that a group of unfortunate adventurers was about to enter.
From afar, voices reached the monster. They were shouting toward it—or rather, toward the newly discovered path in Tohe, whose internal layout was already largely known. It must have been the excited voices of adventurers celebrating the discovery.
Filled with restless anticipation, they approached—footsteps echoing toward the room, sounds the monster clearly heard.
The eyes within the helmet’s darkness glowed with an eerie blue light, and the monster slowly rose to its feet.
Keeping its gaze fixed on the entrance, it reached behind itself and selected a longbow from the arsenal strapped to its back.
The bow was absurdly large—easily over two meters long. The arrow that was nocked was a grotesque thing, about a meter and a half in length, its tip shaped like a drill.
Creaaak…
The sound came from the monster drawing the bowstring with the arrow nocked. It pulled back a tension that no human could possibly draw, yet did so with ease. The arrow aimed precisely and unwaveringly at the entrance door.
“Alright, we’re—here?”
And the door opened.
By the hands of a doomed adventurer.
The moment that the adventurer opened the door and tried to step inside, the monster’s massive arrow shot forward and pierced straight through the adventurer’s skull.
He had been the first, brimming with excitement, eager to set foot into a newly revealed room of Tohe—and before he even touched the floor, the force of the arrow blew him backward out of the room, leaving him motionless forever.
His companions realized too late what had happened and looked past the doorway he had opened.
There—stood the monster, bow lowered, maintaining its finishing posture after firing.
“NOOOOOOOOOO!”
One of the adventurers—a woman, black hair tied into a ponytail, wielding a longsword—screamed and charged toward the knight, keeping her blade raised. Perhaps she had been the dead man’s lover. Or his sister. Or something else. It was unclear, but his sudden death robbed her of any ability to make sound decisions. Rage consumed her, and she threw herself at a monster she had never seen before.
The monster moved to counter.
This time, instead of the bow, it pulled a halberd from its back.
The halberd itself had a standard form—the spear tip, the axe blade, and on the opposite side, a spike called a “pick”—a polearm designed for many situations. But though its shape was ordinary, its size was far beyond anything a human could wield. It was longer than the monster’s towering stature itself.
The monster swung it in a simple sweeping arc toward the charging adventurer.
But she leapt easily over the horizontal strike and brought her sword down from high above, aiming for its skull. In that instant, she saw something unbelievable—the monster had already discarded its halberd and drawn a longsword from its left hip, raising it to block her strike.
Their blades met, and she pressed with all her strength, but the monster didn’t budge.
Then—it happened.
She activated her Ability.
Green flames erupted along her sword, from the guard to the tip, and surged forward. The flames began eating into the monster’s blade.
The monster tried to pull away, but it was too late. Once the flames latched onto the monster’s sword, they continued burning even after separating from her, consuming the metal until the entire weapon was engulfed. The corrosion raced toward the monster itself—forcing it to quickly release the blade.
She seized the opening.
In an instant, she closed the distance again.
Her sword, still wreathed in green fire, slashed toward the monster once more.
The monster drew another sword, this one from its right hip, and met her strike.
Again, her flames gnawed into the monster’s weapon, corroding it. As it released that sword as well, the monster countered with a long kick to her abdomen, sending her staggering backward.
“Guh—!”
She groaned, but recovered her stance and moved to rush in—
But it was already too late.
She couldn’t move. Her body refused to advance. Her left leg felt nailed to the ground.
“Eh—?”
Confused, she looked down, trying to understand why her left leg wouldn’t move.
At some point, a throwing knife the monster had hurled had embedded itself in her foot, driven so deep into the ground that she could no longer move from that spot.
She immediately tried to burn it away, pouring green flames from her leg onto the knife.
But the monster, already having put distance between them, didn’t even bother to approach. Instead, it drew the massive scythe from its back and hurled it at her. The scythe flew cleanly through the air and neatly severed her neck, sending her head spinning into the air.
“Ah!”
The adventurers near the doorway cried out. While they hesitated—unsure whether to stop her or to rush in to help—she was killed.
With her death, the remaining adventurers, driven by the desire to avenge their fallen comrades, tried to enter the room. But before they could, the monster aimed at them—those still outside the doorway—and fired a bolt from a crossbow. The bolt was thinner and sharper than the massive arrows from before, and it buried itself instantly into one adventurer’s thigh.
Then it happened.
The adventurers saw the monster’s blue gaze. It once again drew the greatbow from its back and prepared another shot. The monster rose slightly off the ground, moving with flawless efficiency and the smallest necessary motions to hunt them. There was none of the ferocity common to other monsters. Instead, its detached precision made it seem almost intelligent—so much so that one could almost mistake it for a human.
Realizing this, the adventurers fled.
Their instincts screamed that stepping into the range of those massive arrows meant death.
A split second later, the monster’s giant arrow slammed into the ground where they had stood moments earlier.
And then—slam—the door that the first dead adventurer had opened swung shut.
The monster then turned the weapons it had thrown and the slain adventurers into small, shining stars of light and absorbed them back into its body. Immediately, the great scythe and longswords reappeared on its back and hips, just as before.
Once finished, it returned to the center of the room, seated itself as before, and waited for adventurers to open the door again.
All for the sake of hunting them.
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