RMGCFW — Chapter 115 - Battle Against the Three Monsters

"Noisy."

Banxia's expression didn't change. Another knifehand chop.

"Human! You brought this on yourself!"

The fiercest words imaginable, delivered while sprinting in full retreat.

The three-headed monster clawed at the earth with everything it had, spraying mud and stone as its massive body crashed through the forest, flattening an entire row of bowl-thick saplings.

Banxia gave a soft chuckle and moved to give chase.

"Be careful." Frieren's voice came from beside him.

"A massive amount of mana is gathering on the turtle head. Whatever it's about to cast will be nothing like anything you've faced before.

Take this." She lifted the Magic-Sealing Ore and held it out with visible effort. "You might need it."

"Sure." Banxia didn't refuse. He took it one-handed, no strain at all.

The heavy blue crystal settled into his palm like an ordinary pebble.

Awkward to forge into weapons, maybe, but as a shield, it was practically the strongest barrier in existence.

"Foolish human! Farewell!" The monster's voice echoed back through the trees, arrogant and trailing.

"A provocation..." Frieren watched the young man calmly.

Banxia's face was unchanged. "I know."

"Oh." He had the look of a seasoned veteran who didn't fall for cheap tricks. She left it at that.

A whoosh, and Banxia was gone.

No boom. No shockwave. Even the fallen leaves barely stirred.

lv.2 basic fundamentals. Enough to let him sprint at full power without the thundering commotion he used to make.

His silhouette threaded through the tree shadows like a streak of black light skimming the ground, using every branch and jutting rock as a launching point. Wind roared in his ears. Everything in his vision flew backward.

"This guy's speed, it's fast!" The goat head twisted back for a glance, unease in its voice for the first time.

They'd already put so much distance between them, and yet the young man was closing it in a blink.

His silhouette cut a straight line between the trunks. The underbrush and branches along his path were sheared flat by an invisible force the instant he drew close, clearing an open lane through the forest. Wherever he passed, the vegetation folded to both sides, as if the trees themselves were stepping out of his way.

So it was exactly as they'd feared.

There was no leaving alive unless they dealt with him first.

Every word they'd shouted had been nothing more than cover, buying the turtle head those extra seconds to charge.

"Three more seconds," the turtle head said quietly.

A layer of frost nearing absolute zero had begun condensing on its forehead.

This technique was the ultimate secret of water-attribute magic, something that lay entirely beyond human comprehension.

The wolf head and goat head exchanged a glance.

The wolf head moved first.

"Human — die!"

Dense curse energy solidified into a physical arrow of darkness, trailing a churning wake of black mist as it shot toward the sprinting figure.

An ordinary person wouldn't even need to take a hit. Just getting close to that arrow would drop them unconscious on the spot.

"Boring." Banxia barely glanced at it. He raised his hand, caught the curse arrow, and crushed it with a single squeeze.

Six pupils contracted at once. Even their running stumbled half a beat.

It didn't matter.

As long as he was still a creature of this world, no one could survive the trump card they'd kept hidden until now.

"Stop wasting your effort."

The young man's speed erupted again.

One step shattered the rock beneath his foot. He launched like an arrow off a bowstring and landed directly in the monster's path.

His leg rose high and came down like a titan's battleaxe, tearing through the air with a piercing shriek.

It struck the wolf head dead center.

Tremendous force cascaded down. The wolf head didn't even manage a full wail before its skull was driven straight into the earth.

The monster's entire body lurched sideways, hurling up a storm of shattered dirt and snapped grass.

"ROARRR—!"

The whole forest shook.

The shockwave rolled out along the ground. Ten thousand meters away, Frieren was jolted off her feet and sat down hard.

She patted the dirt from her skirt without expression, looked toward the rising column of dust, and muttered:

"Master... in just a mere thousand years, can something like that really be born among humans?"

The adventurers who had escaped the curse's range and only just regained consciousness went pale. They scrambled and crawled and ran.

Meanwhile, at the center of it all.

The dust settled.

At the bottom of a massive crater, the wolf head had already burned to black ash, drifting away particle by particle on the wind.

[Ding. Slain monster 'Wolf'. Total lifespan: 15,000 years. Remaining lifespan: 8,000 years. Absorbed.]

"Hm?" Banxia wasn't sure whether to feel pleased or miserable.

Good news: the monster's lifespan was calculated separately per head.

Bad news: the wolf head had died before he could hit it with Rejuvenation. He'd stomped it a little too hard.

He'd assumed the thing was one unified creature. That was why he hadn't held back.

He hadn't considered that once the wolf head was dead, the goat head couldn't heal it back.

"Human!" The goat head's voice split with grief and fury, trembling raw.

But there was something it couldn't understand. This human had just killed the wolf, and yet his face now wore an expression of sorrow and pity.

Why?

Before it could work out an answer, the young man's large hand pressed down on top of its head.

"Rejuvenation."

Mana surged across Banxia's body. A warm green light bloomed in his palm and slowly seeped into the goat head's flesh.

The goat head's eyes went wide.

It could feel it clearly, the mana that had been completely drained was refilling at an impossible rate, and its entire body felt like it was growing younger.

On the side, the turtle head had been quietly charging this whole time. Seeing what was happening, it assumed the young man was about to deliver a killing blow to the goat head. It had no choice but to release the strike early, before the charge was complete.

If the goat head died too, there was no reason left to keep going.

"Human, die—!"

A spike of ice burst from the turtle head's mouth, aimed straight at the young man's face.

"Hm?" Banxia didn't stop casting Rejuvenation. He simply raised the Magic-Sealing Ore and held it up as a shield.

The turtle head saw his intention, and the worry that he might dodge evaporated instantly, replaced by a hideous, twisting grin.

Only it knew how terrifying the strike it had kept hidden for so long truly was.

Magic-Sealing Ore disrupted the casting of magic, yes, but it had no effect whatsoever on magical constructs already in existence.

Even if Magic-Sealing Ore was one of the hardest substances in the world, that did not mean it couldn't be pierced.

Mighty human. You'll die by your own arrogance.

The turtle head could already see it: the young man's body hitting the ground.

Then,

The ice spike punched straight through the Magic-Sealing Ore, drilling a small hole clean through.

And it didn't stop there. The frost spread outward from that opening, fractures webbing across the surface of the blue crystal with a rapid, delicate crackling.

Amid the turtle head's savage triumph and the young man's mild surprise,

THUD!

The ice spike settled into the young man's palm.

No, it hadn't even broken his skin. It had simply run out of force and come to rest there.

Both of them stared.

The turtle head looked at him. It couldn't form a single word. The wild joy in its pupils froze solid, as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over it from head to toe.

"..."

What made it even harder to bear: there was a trace of surprise in the young man's eyes too.

So.

What exactly were you surprised about?

Were you surprised that your own trump card turned out to be this weak?

"Why..." The turtle head sank into total despair.

"Hm?" Banxia considered it. "Probably because I've been training my body."

"..."

"Rejuvenation." x2

The green light surged again. The goat head's body de-aged further, its wool going soft and lustrous, its eyes growing noticeably clearer.

Then his hand rose and came down.

[Ding. Slain monster 'Goat'. Total lifespan: 16,500 years. Remaining lifespan: 9,500 years.]

"Rejuvenation." x3

The light flowed into the turtle head. But those clouded old eyes had already gone completely vacant, leaving behind only a hollow, fading question:

Why... why does something like this exist in this world...

[Ding. Slain monster 'Turtle'. Total lifespan: 16,800 years. Remaining lifespan: 9,800 years.]

[Held Monster Time: 32,000 years (Can Fuse) (Can Enhance)]

The forest went quiet again.

A breeze drifted over the massive crater, carrying off the last few wisps of black ash.

Banxia stood at the edge, looked down at the half-shattered ice spike in his palm, crushed it to powder, and dusted off his hands.

Thirty-two thousand years.

He took a slow breath. The corner of his mouth curved up, and this time he didn't bother fighting it.

And that wasn't all. The magical artifacts the monster had been carrying inside its body had all dropped out onto the ground.

The harvest from this trip...

Beyond anything he'd imagined.

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