RMGCFW — Chapter 113 - Surprised Frieren — Steel and Blood

"What happened?"

"The dungeon... collapsed?"

"Did the raid team trigger a trap?"

The novice adventurers on the first and second floors quickly retreated to the clearing outside the dungeon entrance.

The ones on the upper floors were not so lucky.

A few warriors had tough enough bodies to jump down from the higher levels. Most of the rest were buried under the rubble when the dungeon caved in.

It happened without warning.

The upper-floor adventurers were virtually wiped out.

The sudden, catastrophic blow left the survivors staring back toward the dungeon in lingering shock.

Before long, the dust settled.

What sat at the center of the ruins rooted everyone to the spot.

Four grotesque golems stood with barriers raised between their hands, enclosing an enormous monster at the center, a seal, by every appearance.

"Military golems made by the Empire..." Frieren murmured softly.

Banxia looked at her.

The ancient elf seemed to know something.

"From the Unified Empire? A thousand years ago?"

"Yes." Frieren nodded. "A thousand years ago, the Empire's most renowned golem techniques came from the court mage, Flamme. Though... the golems in front of us weren't made by Flamme."

Flamme was the single greatest contributor to the development and everyday adoption of human magic, calling Flamme the founder of human magic was no exaggeration.

Anyone who had spent time with magical knowledge knew that much.

Banxia knew the relationship between Frieren and Flamme, so he didn't press her on how she knew all this.

There was a more pressing question right now.

"What's the deal with this monster?"

Four powerful golems, a barrier that looked steeped in ancient mystery, all of it deployed to seal the creature inside the dungeon rather than simply kill it.

"...I don't know about this monster either." Frieren shook her head.

Even she, with over a millennium of life behind her, didn't know.

That put the monster's origin before the founding of the Unified Empire, at the earliest.

In other words — yet another great monster out of the Mythological Era.

"Interesting." Banxia stepped forward, intending to get a closer look.

"We should leave quickly." Frieren said it without any particular urgency. "The collapse just now cracked the sealing barrier the golems are sustaining. It won't be long before this monster breaks free."

"Good."

"..." Frieren found she couldn't quite work out what this human was thinking.

"Frieren, your hunch was right. This dungeon is wrong in all the ways that matter. Looking at it now, it was clearly artificial — or more precisely, a trap left behind by the Unified Empire a thousand years ago. This monster..." Banxia stepped forward, walking up to the great monster under the stunned, wary gazes of every surviving adventurer. "...was probably kept alive on purpose."

The monster looked like a corrupted version of Cerberus.

Three heads, goat, wolf, turtle, and four limbs that didn't match anything in nature.

For something billed as a Mythological Era creature, it looked more like a patchwork stitched together from various beasts.

Blocked by the barrier, Banxia couldn't be bothered to knock on its head and wake it up.

"Let's say hello first." He mimed drawing a bow. An arrow of flame condensed at his fingertips instantly.

"Hey! Don't do something reckless!"

"You'll wake it up!"

The professional warriors who had just leapt down from the upper floors scrambled to stop him.

Banxia ignored them.

Mana Concealment lv.3 was a ludicrous skill, it compressed over two thousand years' worth of mana down to the apparent level of around two hundred years under normal conditions.

To every onlooker right now, he looked like a man staking his entire life savings on a single shot.

They were probably pegging him as one of those wild mages who did reckless things for fame.

While the spell was charging, he turned to address the crowd.

"Anyone who wants to live should clear out of this area now. Once the fight starts, I won't be watching out for you."

The arrow of flame in his hand kept growing as he spoke. Its presence was increasingly hard to ignore.

Everyone could tell he meant it. Even the high-level warriors who had just tried to warn him turned and ran, who knew what kind of catastrophe this lunatic was about to kick off?

Seeing the raid team flee, the novice adventurers didn't dare hang around for scraps. They scattered in a chaotic rush.

"Hey, Frieren, don't run!" Banxia called out, exasperated, watching the white-haired elf already making her exit.

"..."

"At least tell me where you're going. I'll need to find you after this — you still owe me for the rescue."

That made her stop. Frieren glanced back and said:

"If you survive, head north to find me... This whole situation is obviously a hassle. That monster was clearly designed to counter mages."

"...Designed to counter mages, huh." Banxia watched her keep running, turning it over in his mind.

The old fossil was surprisingly decent. Running away, but still didn't forget to share her read on the situation before she left.

Compared to these ancient masters of the magical arts, his own observational instincts still fell short, he hadn't picked up that this thing was specifically built to restrain mages.

"Wrath of Finality." Banxia raised the arrow of flame steady and level, aimed at the great monster, and let it fly.

The anticipated world-ending destruction did not come.

The arrow, carrying two hundred years' worth of mana, withered the moment it drew close to the sealing barrier.

Withered wasn't quite the right word. The impression Banxia got was that Wrath of Finality had fallen asleep.

The power inside hadn't diminished. It had simply lost the will to attack the instant it neared the monster.

While he was thinking it over, Frieren came jogging back.

"Something happened?" Banxia looked at her.

"We've been marked with a curse." Frieren walked up to him, unhurried. "Move too far from this dungeon and the curse triggers — knocks you unconscious."

She glanced at the Wrath of Finality he had fired.

"The curse seems to originate from this monster. And it can affect non-living things as well."

The powerful mana fluctuation from earlier had apparently been enough. The sealed monster was gradually stirring. Two of the four sealing golems had already gone dark.

"More troublesome than I expected..." Frieren let out a lazy yawn. "Those curses are just what it leaks out while still unconscious. Once it breaks the seal, we'll all be hit by the sleep curse in an instant."

"This is a curse?" Banxia scratched his head.

Honestly, he hadn't felt a thing.

Curses were a category of special magic native to monsters and demons. Some induced slumber. Others caused petrification. Most of them were beyond human magical analysis, some were flat-out impossible to decipher. They were the one class of magic that human mages had no reliable answer for.

His immunity came entirely from the curse resistance granted by Hundred-Forged Body lv.3.

Though the monster hadn't fully woken and shattered the seal yet. He still wasn't sure whether he could hold out against a full-powered sleep curse.

"This is hopeless... Against a monster at this level, without a high-ranking priest for support, there's no way to fight it." Frieren yawned again, just as lazily.

Her sleep was naturally deep and easy to come by. This kind of curse was her worst nightmare.

Another one of the remaining sealing golems went dark. Only the last one was still holding on.

"...We have to find somewhere to hide." Frieren lifted her staff slightly. "A curse like this — it would take at least two months just to figure out how to counter it. Hopefully this monster doesn't notice us when it wakes up..."

"I don't plan on hiding." Banxia looked at the white-haired elf, and without another word, swung his hand. A massive slash tore through the air toward the monster.

"Looks like you're going to owe me another favor, Frieren."

Under both their gazes, the slash did not fall asleep the way Wrath of Finality had. It punched straight through the sealing barrier and bit into the three-headed monster across its midsection.

The monster snapped awake in an instant of pain, all three heads screaming in a discordant roar.

The last sealing golem holding on was reduced to scrap beneath its claws a moment later.

"..." She had seen it once before, but Frieren still couldn't work out how this human male had produced that slash.

There was good news and bad news.

The good news: the monster's curse had no effect on the young man's slashes.

The bad news: the pain had made the monster furious, and the intensity of the curse spiked several notches in an instant.

"...Going to fall asleep."

"Go ahead. The fight will be over soon." Banxia waved a hand without looking back.

"Counting on you..." Frieren propped herself on her staff, found a comfortable patch of ground, and lay down.

It wasn't trust, exactly. It was simply that there was no other option left.

WHOOSH!

Before Banxia could respond, the monster's turtle head on the right spat out a torrent of water with crushing force behind it.

The concept was similar to the water magic Roxy had used against the Red Mirror Dragon, the execution was on an entirely different scale. If Roxy's attack registered at five points of power, the monster's water jet came in at least in the tens of thousands.

"Easy now, don't be in such a hurry to die." Without turning his head, the young man extended his palm and caught the spell.

The torrent looked like it could punch through anything. When it hit his palm, it did exactly what the Red Mirror Dragon's scales had done, kicked up a small splash and went quiet.

The physical defense from Hundred-Forged Body lv.3 wasn't something an offensive spell two thousand times Roxy's full strength could scratch.

"..."

The monster had just been beaten awake and was still carrying some morning crankiness. All three of its massive heads watched the scene unfold. Their pitch-black pupils contracted in unison.

The standoff held for a moment.

Banxia wasn't in any rush either. A thought crossed his mind: would a special magic like a curse be affected by Magic-Sealing Ore?

He walked over to where Frieren had lain down, reached out a finger, and poked the ancient fossil's cheek. Then gave it a pinch.

Don't misread the situation, he was purely checking whether the white-haired elf was actually asleep.

Satisfied, he reached into the spatial pocket in his abdomen and pulled out the Magic-Sealing Ore he had stowed earlier.

"...Ugh, so sleepy." Frieren lifted her head groggily, saw the young man staring straight down at her, and remembered what had just happened.

"You dealt with the monster?"

"Not yet."

"...Magic-Sealing Ore." Frieren looked at the three-headed monster in the distance, then at the blue crystal beside her, and understood everything.

"Magic-Sealing Ore can ward off the monster's sleep curse, but under these conditions, I still can't support you. The moment I step outside its effective range, I'll be asleep instantly."

"It's fine. I was just testing something." Banxia smiled, unbothered.

"...What did you do to that monster?" Frieren noticed the three-headed monster's behavior only now.

It was hunched low, putting out constant warning roars, like something had threatened its life.

"Nothing yet. I just blocked one of its spells."

"Is that so?" Frieren tilted her head. "And... why aren't you affected by the curse?"

"Because I put time into training my resistance against sleep curses."

"..."

Frieren found this human deeply strange, far beyond any human or monster she had ever encountered.

Even if Flamme were here, Flamme probably wouldn't understand this pureblood human's situation either.

In well under a century, he had cultivated a powerful physique while simultaneously building an astounding two hundred years' worth of mana, and had mastered Wrath of Finality, the ultimate fire magic created by her teacher.

He even had curse resistance so extreme it made a great monster afraid.

And then there was that slash she couldn't see through at all.

No mana spent. No Battle Aura used.

A discipline entirely his own.

Any single one of those things was an ultimate frontier that even the most gifted genius might spend a whole lifetime and still never reach.

And this was only what Frieren had managed to perceive across their brief time together.

The easy confidence on the young man's face said plainly that he had trump cards she hadn't seen yet.

For some reason, Frieren found herself thinking of her teacher's teacher, that petite elf, and what Serie had once said.

After Flamme pushed through the reform of human magic, the era of humanity would arrive within a thousand years.

Pureblood humans would ultimately surpass the elven race.

And when that time came, the one capable of killing her would be either the Demon King, or a human mage.

Frieren hadn't felt much about it back then. She had simply looked forward to whatever colorful new magical techniques the future would bring.

But now, looking at this pureblood human male, she understood, more or less, the grand spectacle of that coming era that Serie had seen.

"The era of humanity really has arrived."

The monster exhaled a hiss and attacked again.

This time, the water current was sharper than before, like it meant to cut through everything in the world.

"Sever!"

The young man didn't move an inch. He swung one hand and let a massive slash fly.

The two forces met. The air shook. The water current was crushed flat by the slash, which kept going without losing a step and bore down on the monster.

"Do your best to entertain me, monster!"

In Frieren's calm eyes, strikes carrying the same terrible weight as that first slash rained down on the monster, overwhelming, relentless, leaving it nowhere to go.

...

➤ Next: The Great Monster Presents Treasures