ch281-ch300 · 299-ch299

Chapter 299: The Childhood Friend Is a Sword Saint Flag 【Sword Saint-chan】 Part 2

SIDE: Hoshino Chiharu ('Sword Saint-chan')

"You summoned me?...... Sakura, what are you doing? Step away."

There she is.

Watanabe Kasumi. The 【Spear King】.

I see—so she's no slouch on the surface either.

Crisp bearing, precise in her every movement.

According to what I've looked up, she was a student naginata champion?

On the surface, I might have a real match on my hands with her.

I want her all the more now.

For just an instant she glanced at me, and after that she's deliberately not looking my way......

"No, no, think nothing of it. Please pretend I'm not here and carry on."

The Chiba staffer answers while massaging Miyuki-san's feet.

The moment she served tea, she came out with some nonsense about "shall I rub your shoulders?"—and what shocked me more was that Miyuki-san accepted it as a matter of course.

......Right now she's moved on from shoulders to feet.

Called 'the Holy Maiden,' and yet behind the scenes she may well be ordering her juniors around like this.

I'm no one to talk, but I might need to rethink how I deal with this woman.

She gave me the creeps in the car, too......

"Thank you, Sakura-chan. I'm fine now. Well then, I have somewhere to be, so......"

"Wait. Where do you intend to go? And there seem to be very few people with you...... Where are your guards?"

Watanabe Kasumi stops Miyuki-san as she tries to rise.

Fair enough.

She declared she wanted to go to Chiba, so I brought her along in the flow of things, but I'd rather not have her leaving this room.

This woman is a 【Saint】.

For the sake of those rare recovery skills of hers, she's a kidnapping target for the whole world.

Besides, today's guard is just Kuma-chan, waiting outside the room......

There's the driver too, but he basically never leaves the car.

Kuma-chan is big, but easygoing by nature—she only noticed that Miyuki-san's guard hadn't followed after the car had already pulled out.

She's properly trained, and skilled enough, but one guard for her is honestly worrying.

I want her to stay away from me, is what I mean.

"Um, ......there aren't any."

"None? Don't tell me you slipped out? Sakura, contact headquarters. And have the SDF personnel stationed in the dungeon come here as well."

"If that's the case, wouldn't moving into the dungeon be better? Inside the dungeon we have 'Sword Saint-sama' as well—it should be safer there."

"Mmm-mmm-mmm. ......Very well, then. We shall move into the dungeon. We will hear this out there."

Right—the foot-rub staffer has a point.

Inside the dungeon, we'd be fine even if a tank showed up.

But being fussed over is its own problem, so I cut in.

"No need to contact headquarters. I came incognito, so I'll be leaving the same way, quietly. The staff here make too much of a fuss."

"I'm afraid I cannot allow that. If you're going home, go by yourself. Miyuki, we're leaving."

Watanabe Kasumi finally looks my way—and she seems to have hostile intent toward me.

She seems quite angry at Miyuki-san, too; it seems bringing the 'Holy Maiden' here without word was a mistake.

Should have left her behind......

"I'm coming too. I came today to speak with YOU."

"You—with me? With me alone?"

Watanabe Kasumi, who was on her way out of the room, turns around.

Amazing!

It prickles all over.

Clear killing intent, perceptible even outside the dungeon.

(Bullseye!)

I'd planned to start with her, but it seems I'll be able to find the other one too.

This is Chiba—and if that rumor is true......

There's no other reason to show killing intent this strong.

A secret she must protect even if it means killing me......

(She IS hiding something! The otherworlder!)

What appeared in the dreams I have in the dungeon was five enemies.

The first was an opponent using my own equipment, my own skills.

I only managed to beat it recently, but it was when 'Blue Shadow the Ninja' appeared next that I realized.

(This is a dream of Floor 50, isn't it......)

The dungeon does sometimes show an unfavorable future.

Since you know it's coming, it's usually avoided—but if no countermeasure is taken, it becomes a true dream.

The dungeon is said to be on humanity's side.

So when mortal danger draws near, it teaches you through dreams—that's the accepted picture of dungeon dreams, on the net and elsewhere.

I'd been shown nothing but bad dreams of the past for so long that I was only half-convinced—but I decided to conclude that thing was a dream of Floor 50, and act on it.

(The Floor 50 boss is copies of ourselves. Skeletons modeled on us.)

What I know so far are the copy skeletons of the five companions who will presumably challenge it with me......

I haven't beaten them all yet, but the enemies that have appeared are five skeletons, so that itself is the hint as to who my companions will be.

After I beat the Blue Shadow skeleton, out came a full-black-armored wielder of a jagged-bladed spear.

I recognized that jagged blade at a glance, so I knew right away who she was.

The 【Spear King】, from that time.

She wasn't as much trouble as my own copy skeleton, though.

Once the Blue Shadow skeleton's support was gone, she wasn't hard to beat.

More trouble than the black armor is the unseen magic user.

I haven't laid eyes on it, so I don't know who it is, but it uses the upper-tier fire spell 【Blast Ball】, so the job is probably something like a 【Blast Flame Mage】.

Except the power was impossible—so it might be that spell line's very highest tier.

Job name 'Blast Flame Saint,' or maybe 'Saint Flame Mage'?

It seems to be up in the air, so I wondered about Asuka-senpai for a moment—but Asuka-senpai can't use fire magic, after all.

I keep firing 【Flying Slash】 at where it should be, but I get no feedback at all, and I've never beaten it.

As long as I'm keeping it pinned, it doesn't use magic attacks—so if I can just finish off the remaining copy skeletons first......

(What's left is the most dangerous one of all. The naked skeleton.)

This one is simply fast.

Faster than the Blue Shadow skeleton, and while its attacks only graze me, they're fatal wounds all the same.

Even a thrown knife that merely grazed blew its leg clean off.

What's more, it starts out with no equipment at all, then uses one weapon after another, and before I know it, a shield is in its hands.

(That shield is the worst of it.)

Its reaction speed is abnormal—no matter what attack or feint I make, the shield is always there to meet it.

And when my sword touches that shield, I wake up.

I'm probably dead at that point, I suppose.

Even with my stats weighted into Endurance, it makes no difference.

I don't understand it.

Some kind of counter skill, presumably, but I can't get even a hint.

(What I can't accept above all is that my 【Dimension Slash】 couldn't cut it...... It was a 【Dimension Wall】.)

I've seen that in overseas videos.

The 【Wide-Area Shielder】's 50-skill-point technique.

I thought 【Dimension Slash】 was the strongest skill there is.

I swing my sword every day hoping to reach it someday—whether I'll ever touch 【Dimension Slash】 in my lifetime......

(And yet it was blocked.)

【Dimension Wall】—the strongest shield, so it's called.

Strongest spear versus strongest shield: the laurels went to the shield......

Maybe my skill is simply still unripe.

(Someday I WILL cut it!)

Besides, all I need to do is aim where the shield isn't......

But the naked skeleton moves far too fast to be the same 【Wide-Area Shielder】 as Kaito-senpai.

It clearly uses skills beyond 【Dimension Wall】 as well, so it must be stacking upper shield jobs that can learn 【Dimension Wall】.

Two 【Shield Saint】s stacked?

And it must be at a level beyond belief, too......

Just when I wondered if such a person could exist, the nakedness connected all the dots.

(The otherworlder!)

They say the otherworlder who appeared in Chiba was naked.

If it's an otherworlder, those unnatural movements and that wealth of skills all make sense.

And Watanabe Kasumi knows something.

But first......

"As I said before. I came today on business with you. Watanabe Kasumi, ......I want you."

"No way! Absolutely not!"

Miyuki-san wedges herself between us, waving both arms and blocking my view.

What is with this woman?

Should have left her behind after all......

"You mean, into 'Blue Ocean'? Or a new party? It seems the weekly article about our internal split was true, then."

Watanabe Kasumi answers without so much as a glance at Miyuki-san.

She already knows the contents of this week's magazine, it seems.

The killing intent stopped, but her hostility remains, it seems.

It seems she softened when she learned my interest wasn't the otherworlder but her, personally.

"Huh? That's what you thought I meant?"

What else would it mean?

"No way! Absolutely not! She belongs to Chiba exclusively! I will never hand her over! If you want to form a party, transfer to Chiba!"

The moment Miyuki-san froze, the foot-rub staffer cuts in this time.

What is with these people?