Six meters. A length that would be merely seven or eight steps horizontally.
However, when it stood upright vertically, it felt almost like facing a castle wall.
“Grooooar!”
And not just any castle wall, but one that thrashed about wildly, swinging its tree trunk-like arms and legs like whips.
Crash!
Overwhelming destructive power. With just a casually swung punch, giant trees were uprooted and sent tumbling.
Watching that sight, I felt like the fighting spirit I had desperately gathered would be uprooted just like those trees.
Its attack method itself wasn’t any different from a wight’s, but just by being three or four times taller, it had become something transcendent, on a completely different level from a wight.
Was this karma for my contempt towards wights until now?
I was desperately throwing my body to dodge, but every time I heard the sound of air being ripped apart near my ears, I could barely endure the goosebumps all over my body.
It was fortunate that the monster didn’t seem to have the intelligence to use weapons. If it had uprooted a tree and swung it like a club, I wouldn’t have been able to hold out for long before being flattened.
“Graaaah!”
“Kuk…!”
The situation was so desperate that I couldn’t even find an opening for a counterattack, being too preoccupied with evasion.
I had no way of knowing what had happened to Friede who had launched herself towards the retreating Abyss Priest.
If I diverted my attention even for a brief moment, I felt I would instantly be hit by the undead giant’s arm and end up like a burst dumpling.
“Ignis Sagitta!”
Amy, who had retreated while riding on Gerda’s back, fired two flames. It was her favorite attack spell, 『Flame Arrow.』
However, the undead giant completely nullified Amy’s magic just by swinging its fist towards the flames.
The Flame Arrows that had shot out like cannonballs burst like fireworks upon contact with the giant’s fist, and the flames that caught on its hand were extinguished, smothered by the giant’s bodily fluids.
Flame Arrows that would have been more than enough to severely injure a wight. However, they were far from powerful enough to burn the undead giant.
“Tch…! Glacies Térĕbra!”
The ice spikes she fired next didn’t make much difference either.
They did pierce the undead giant’s body, but they were so small compared to its massive frame that it was embarrassing to even call them wounds.
For a human, it would be at most like being lightly stabbed with a dagger.
If it were a living creature, even that would cause it to bleed and cry out in pain, but this thing was just a corpse moving by magic. It was a being for which pain and bleeding held no meaning.
Amy’s magic was limited to momentarily diverting its attention in that direction, unable to inflict any real damage.
…Of course, for me, it was an invaluable assistance.
Although it was just a momentary opening, that time was enough for me to at least attempt a counterattack.
“Haap-!”
Launching my body as if slipping between its legs, I thrust my sword blade towards the exposed ankle.
A resistance like cutting through tough rubber. I slashed at its leg while desperately moving my feet to quickly escape in the opposite direction.
I couldn’t leave a deep wound.
Whether due to the toughness of the giant’s flesh or because my sword had lost its edge and become dull, cutting its body was more difficult than I had expected.
What about using <Iron Arm>, you ask?
Sure, with that I could probably cut off its ankle, bones and all. And in the next moment, I’d die like a squashed frog.
The method of lowering Iron Arm’s output to use it continuously was something I hadn’t properly mastered yet.
Even when practicing alone, I could barely succeed one out of five times. There was no way I could use such a technique in actual combat.
Even a beast’s heart has its limits; I couldn’t bet my life on a 20% chance.
“Grooooar!”
Anyway, after leaving a shallow cut on its ankle and slipping between its legs, I quickly turned around to face the giant again.
Woosh!
More precisely, to face the rock-like back of its hand flying towards me.
I threw my body sideways to barely dodge it, then pushed off the ground with my hand to leap and evade the following kick.
“Ugh…!”
My body rolled on the ground, pushed by the air pressure.
“Graaaah!”
Five giant, sharp claws swung down like the scythe of death, cleaving the air fiercely. Aiming at me as I tumbled, having lost my balance.
“Watch out! Magicae Obice!”
Three layers of curtains unfurled before my eyes, blocking the giant’s hand and shattering into pieces.
The magical barrier that Amy had cast, using up all her remaining casting attempts. Thanks to that desperate defense, I was barely able to find time to regain my posture.
“Really, this isn’t easy. Not at all…”
I quickly got up and pulled my body back to a distance out of reach of its claws, then let out a deep sigh to calm my increasingly desperate heart.
Thanks to Amy’s support, I was somehow holding out… but I couldn’t muster the courage to try anything beyond that.
In other words, the moment Amy’s magic was completely exhausted, our defeat would be certain. It was a troubling, even bleak situation.
‘…Should I try it?’
To the point where I was seriously considering the insane gamble of betting my life on a 20% chance.
* * *[ Friede ]* * *
While the three women continued their precarious fight against the undead giant, Friede fiercely pursued the Abyss Priest who was retreating from her.
Leaping and bounding using the densely standing giant trees like stepping stones, with a speed truly like that of a predator that had found its prey.
“This is… dangerous…!”
Even Hugh, who had put on airs of composure in front of Hilde, now had to desperately flee with a stiff face in front of her.
“Decay’s Touch. Grasp of the Dead. Chill of the Netherworld. Necromantic Explosion and temporary blindness… Oh, except for undead summoning, it’s quite ordinary. …And you can’t even hit me.”
None of the spells he cast could stop the great sword-wielding girl who combined monkey-like agility with hawk-like speed.
“…You’re slow and weak. Just like I used to be.”
“I can’t, hit…!”
Attacks that never hit no matter how many times he fired. All the magic he manifested failed to catch up with his opponent, vainly shattering only innocent trees.
For Hugh, it was a situation he had never even imagined possible.
“Hey, was it because of an inferiority complex that you showed off your strategies so much? I think… I understand that feeling. If your body is weak, you’d want to at least boast about your mind.”
Even laying out magic traps in advance to predict her charge route was meaningless. She changed direction and avoided them before the laid traps could even activate.
Astonishingly nimble movements. At this point, it seemed she might even surpass paladins.
“But you know… that’s of no use at all. In the end, if you lack strength, you can only lose.”
Moreover, curse magic didn’t work on her at all.
“…Like now.”
Ever since Friede, separated from her companions, had reached out into the air and drawn a slightly reddish golden greatsword.
“Kuk…!”
Hugh didn’t even have the presence of mind to react to her mocking provocations.
The situation he found himself in was not so lenient as to allow him to express anger at her sharp tongue, as biting as that of her companion.
The golden greatsword in Friede’s hand nullified all the curses Hugh cast.
“That sword, what on earth…!”
It was something utterly unbelievable, something he couldn’t bring himself to believe.
Reddish golden metal. Hugh too was well aware of the existence of such metal.
Amber steel.
A rare metal on par with elven silver. A metal worth several times more than gold of the same weight.
‘How on earth did she get such a sword…!’
It wasn’t something a mere copper token adventurer should be able to possess.
A greatsword made of amber steel. Moreover, one with spatial storage ability and imbued with anti-magic protection.
It was a legendary sword that even a royal knight couldn’t dream of possessing, right before his eyes.
In fact, even this was greatly underestimating the sword’s true value.
The greatsword in Friede’s hand was beyond the level of a legendary sword; it could be called a national treasure of a country.
Of course, how could he have guessed?
The situation where the holy sword of the Rhine Kingdom, Nibelung, was in the hands of an unheard-of adventurer girl.
Although the current Nibelung was nothing more than an empty shell that had used up its true power, even the basic abilities remaining in the shell were enough to call it a national treasure of a country.
“Looks like… you have nothing more to show… Well then, I’ll finish this soon. I need to go watch Hilde’s fight.”
Friede, who had finally closed to within a few meters of Hugh.
She grasped the hilt of Nibelung resting on her shoulder with both hands and swung it diagonally, cutting through the air.
At that moment-
Whoosh!
From the reddish-golden blade engraved with complex patterns, a golden stream of light shot out in the form of a crescent-shaped slash.
“What…!”
It was one of the basic powers engraved in Nibelung, the ability to create and shoot out blades of holy light.
‘As expected, I can use it now.’
Watching the golden arc fly out, cutting through everything in its path without resistance, Friede lifted the corners of her mouth in a smirk of exhilaration and joy.
It was an astonishing level of progress. Anyone who knew the incompetent hero Friet would have been amazed and doubted their own eyes.
A power that was impossible to activate with her previous body. But now she could use it so easily.
Why was that?
‘Is this also because I’ve become stronger than before?’
Friede pondered the reason for a moment as she approached the result of the slash she had created.
To the front of the old man who had fallen in the middle of a pile of diagonally cut trees, having lost both legs.
“Kuk…! Cough…!”
The Abyss Priest, Hugh Casvail, crawled on the ground, staining his beard with blood.
Shock, confusion, and extreme pain filled and muddled his mind. It felt as if his brain had been mashed into a thin porridge.
“Why, how…!”
It had been a perfect plan.
A plan he had begun to conceive the moment he witnessed the corpses abundantly scattered in a remote slash-and-burn farming village.
After gathering an army of undead, intentionally expose traces to lure in those who caught the scent, then annihilate them by dividing and conquering.
This had been perfectly realized. Thanks to the repeated tactics of division and deception, changing methods each time.
Even the task of summoning a powerful undead using their corpses as sacrifices had succeeded without issue.
So now, all that was left was to annihilate the remaining paladins with the summoned undead giant and then flee to another location.
Yet who could have thought that all his plans would be shattered by the hand of one of those he had dismissed as mere adventurers, albeit somewhat unusual ones.
It was something even Hugh couldn’t have anticipated.
It was like sticking a pole into a mole’s burrow only to have a polar bear suddenly leap out.
For Hugh, who had been wary only of Beckman, the captain of the Vespian branch of the Goddess Church’s Paladin Order, it was truly a painful misjudgment.
“It’s over.”
And it would be his final misjudgment as well.
“This… might hurt a bit, but please bear with it. Hilde said to kill you in a way that leaves no recognizable form.”
Barely managing to turn over his fallen body, glaring at the black-haired girl pointing the golden greatsword at him.
“Who on earth are you…!”
Hugh Casvail shouted as if spitting blood, his voice trembling.
Demanding the identity of this girl who was like a calamity, who had so easily shattered his plans that had been on the brink of success.
“I’m a hero.”
The answer that came back was shocking in itself.