Episode 46 – The Name of the Strongest XI
Corvo kept slashing at the right hand again and again with the arm enhanced by Ogre Slayer.
He wielded his longsword like a short sword, swinging at the unmoving hand without even trying to make it dodge.
The back of the hand—shallow. Only a little blood came out. The first joint of the index finger is hard. He reached the bone but didn’t sever it. He pulled his sword back once, then struck again, this time adding more speed. But it was hard. It didn’t cut. The sword didn’t even bite into the joint. He felt no response at all.
Then the right hand, which hadn’t moved until now, suddenly twitched sharply.
It was the finger.
The index finger snapped upward.
It shot toward Corvo like a headbutt. He stepped back to dodge.
Next, the middle finger flicked outward. It gouged the floor. Chunks of stone flew at Corvo, and one grazed his cheek, leaving a red line.
Corvo realized it—none of his attacks were working.
A sword that had once worked even against dragons wasn’t working now, and Corvo shouted in panic:
“—If we don’t stop this thing, forget exploring the dungeon!”
During that, the hand rose high into the air.
The right hand. It floated there.
Then it moved as if brushing away a tiny insect.
Corvo and Iris stepped back to avoid it, but they couldn’t avoid the wind pressure. They braced themselves as hard as they could. Just waving its hand produced this much force. Corvo shuddered, imagining what would happen if it hit them directly.
“Both of you—evade!”
Koroa thrust out her right hand and invoked her Gift.
“—O lord of lightning. Embodiment of my will. Great bloodline of mine. Grant me the power of the heavens. A power that in an instant incinerates all, destroys all, and is revered and feared by all. This is the great thunder, a fragment of my soul.”
A blinding flash swallowed Iris and Corvo’s vision.
A thunderous roar like the heavens themselves had grown enraged.
This lightning strike was the largest in scale and power among all the Gifts Koroa possessed.
Its area of effect was slightly inferior to Ameisha’s, but as a Gift-user, Koroa was among the academy’s elite. If it were an ordinary monster, this one blow would be enough to take it down. He had even felled a stray with a single blast in the past.
But inside the white radiance, the two hands remained unscathed.
Not a single scratch.
The left hand extended upward.
Even the forearm, from the wrist onward, crawled upward like a beast.
“Well then… what should we do?”
Iris muttered toward the two arms, which had taken Koroa’s Gift without suffering almost any damage and showed no sign of slowing.
Gifts didn’t work.
Iris’s rapier could pierce, and Corvo’s sword could cut—, but if you asked whether those attacks hurt it, neither could answer with confidence.
This stray’s movements were slow.
No matter how many times the hands moved, as long as they couldn’t accurately grasp the enemy's positions, they wouldn’t land a hit. Iris was confident she could dodge everything. No matter how the hands moved, she was certain she could avoid all attacks.
But—what about the opposite?
Iris could stab with her Ability. The iron armor was thin; even Iris’s rapier could slice through it. It could cut flesh too, surely. But would it deal damage? That question refused to disappear from her mind.
She couldn’t cut the bone.
Not even with her Ability and her sword.
If this stray manifested its full body in this room—Iris considered the chances of victory.
—They couldn’t win, she realized.
Iris quietly stopped attacking.
She still held her rapier, but she didn’t think of attacking the hands like Corvo did.
It felt pointless.
While Corvo continued dodging the right hand and swinging his sword without giving up, Iris neither moved to support him nor moved to attack the left hand.
As Iris was sinking into despair, Koroa noticed her.
“Iris!”
“It's impossible—”
Iris spoke with a mocking laugh.
“Why aren’t you trying to do anything—?”
“We can’t defeat it. Not that thing. I don’t see any method to kill it. Anything more would just be a waste of effort—”
Iris cut Koroa off.
“—You’re serious!?”
Corvo, still fighting alone in the distance, shouted from afar.
After hearing Iris’s words, Koroa had already stopped his attacks as well.
Seeing the two of them like that, Corvo stopped attacking once, then returned to them. Waiting there were Iris and Koroa, both with dark, grim expressions.
“Well then, what should we do? We can’t kill it. We can’t defeat it. And those hands aren’t even weaknesses to that monster in the first place.”
Iris spoke in a self-mocking tone.
“Yeah. I know that. But leaving it alone isn’t an option either!”
Koroa answered firmly.
“Iris, what do you think we should do?”
“Who knows—?”
Just as Iris was about to answer Corvo’s question, the ground trembled faintly.
The shaking grew stronger until the three of them could no longer keep their footing.
They’d felt this kind of shaking countless times inside the dungeon.
But it wasn’t the footsteps of the massive monster with the two arms, nor the rumble of anyone’s movement.
—It was an internal shift.
Iris quietly shifted her gaze toward Nada and the others. There lay Nada, collapsed alongside the knight without a head.
Iris realized that they had defeated that stray.
A smile almost broke across her face.
For an adventurer, defeating a strong monster is one of the highest honors, and she even regretted not having seen the moment with her own eyes.
“Iris, look at that—”
But Corvo’s voice pulled her gaze back to the two gigantic hands.
The hole from which the hands had emerged—along with countless monsters earlier—was beginning to close. Like tightening a noose, it was slowly, gradually shrinking.
“We can relax now— Wait, what is that?”
Koroa almost let out a sigh of relief, but then something strange happened as he looked at the hole.
The shrinking stopped midway. The two hands grabbed the edges of the hole and forced it open. In the dungeon, an internal shift is something neither adventurers nor monsters can resist—Yet those two hands were openly defying it.
The shaking in the floor subsided.
Then a new door had appeared in the back of the room.
But the one place still refusing to close was where the hands struggled. The dungeon itself was trying to seal the hole, yet the massive arms were desperately keeping it open. No one could tell which side would win.
But—If the monster won, Iris didn’t let her thoughts go that far. She stopped thinking about worst-case scenarios, and instead, her voice lightened, as if determination had finally sparked inside her.
“Hey, don’t you think pushing it back in is a whole lot easier than trying to kill it?”
Iris said, a smile forming at her lips.
“Yeah. I see. Even if we can’t kill it, we’ve reached a situation where we can still win.”
Corvo let out a sigh.
“Rather than aiming for the hands themselves, it’s better to target the floor, right? The internal shift is still happening. If we make those hands fall, that should do it.”
Saying that, Koroa began chanting his Gift.
At the same time, Iris and Corvo approached the hands again.
Iris moved toward the left hand, Corvo toward the right. It was the same formation as before, but their aim had changed.
Earlier, they’d tried to defeat the hands, but now, they were trying to push them back into the hole.
Their targets were the ground the hands were anchored to, and the flesh connected to it.
“Here I go—”
Corvo aimed first at the little finger of the right hand. He had already confirmed in the previous exchange that he could cut the flesh. So he lowered his stance and sliced to peel away the part touching the ground. Red blood splattered onto him.
Perhaps trying to resist Corvo, the right hand stretched forward all at once, trying to grab him, but Corvo desperately retreated to avoid it.
Because the right hand floated for a brief moment, it was pushed inward just a little.
“Huff—”
Iris attacked differently.
She showered the left hand with her rapier in a frantic barrage. The base of the index finger. The tip of the middle finger. The second joint of the ring finger. She stabbed the pinky, then sliced across the back of the hand as if brushing it.
Blood spurted.
Iris was soaked in red.
The hand itself likely took no real damage.
But the troublesome “insect” that Iris was to it finally drew the left hand’s attention.
It moved to swat her away.
Iris laughed.
In that instant, she withdrew completely without hesitation.
Because she’d stopped applying pressure, the hole shrank slightly. The left hand hurried to widen it again.
“Pull back!”
Nearby, Corvo was attacking the right hand.
Koroa made them retreat.
A split-second later, his lightning strike gouged the floor, making the hole shrink again.
By now, the hole had become small enough that only the index, middle, and ring fingers of both hands could fit through.
Iris approached one of those protruding fingers.
She cut into it.
She couldn’t sever the bone.
So she aimed for the flesh.
She put everything she had into shaving away its strength bit by bit.
Corvo did the same.
Their relentless assault—
And Koroa’s powerful lightning blasts fired intermittently—
Formed a pattern, and little by little, the fingers were pushed back as the hole widened.
Finally, when Koroa chanted his Gift once more, his lightning stopped the fingers for just a moment—And in that gap, the dungeon won. The hole was sealed completely.
Blood from the “stray” splattered everywhere, yet not a trace of its flesh remained.
Its true nature a mystery, the monster was swallowed by the hole and would never again appear in this room.
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