The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary

Ch. 94: Continuing Battle

It became that they gave the fairy chief the first hand, but their retaliation was swift and strong.

Lapis had stepped back to assess the situation, while Loren had stepped forward, pulling his great sword over his head, and slammed it down onto the giant hunk of meat.

It guessed that from what it looked like, it wouldn’t be too hard, but if it were reinforced by magic, that wouldn’t be the case.

So, Loren’s first blow had almost all his strength behind it.

“Giii…”

The sound coming from the chief didn’t sound like a scream.

But Loren’s blow still sunk deep into him, raising a splash of blood.

“Looks like our attacks go through…but…”

Loren immediately jumped back from the spot.

It was because the part of the flesh that Loren cut into was picked up and slammed into where he was standing a moment ago.

Along with a sound like hitting the floor with a wet rag, the wound that Loren inflicted opened wider and resulted in more flesh and blood scattering over the ground, but the chief showed no signs of flinching.

“His senses are deafened and his body’s so big it doesn’t seem like my attacks are doing anything.”

But he seemed to know that he was injured, as he started crawling across the ground away from Loren.

“He isn’t running away, right?”

“Maybe it’s that over there.”

Lapis pointed to a mountain near the chief’s body which was almost as large as it.

Loren hadn’t noticed it since the chief’s giant body had all his attention, but when he took a closer look he saw that the mountain consisted of the bodies animals living in the forest, as well as the bodies of elves, and it seemed that this was contributing to the stench along with the chief.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Feeling? He’s definitely going to do it.”

Lapis had a disgusted look on her face as well, but the chief didn’t take notice of them and continued crawling to the mountain, slammed his body onto it, and from where he stuck to it, Loren and Lapis could hear him chew on things that were soft, hard, and wet.

“He’s eating, right?”

“Definitely.”

Eating to recover injuries.

It was an understandable thing to do.

But it wasn’t something to do in front of enemies, so Loren looked at the chief disgustedly.

“I understand why you’re looking at him like that but…his wound is healing.”

Lapis chided at him.

The wound that Loren had inflicted was closing in an unbelievable speed, and eventually became larger than before.

“Would this guy not die as long as he’s eating?”

“I’m not sure. Well, it’s not like he has an infinite amount of food.”

Thinking that they would have to steadily shred through until the food ran out, Loren continued attacking the chief.

The blade of the great sword cut into his flesh and created new wounds, but while he was eating, the wounds closed, and the part became even larger than before.

Thinking that just cutting wouldn’t work, he switched to swiping the blade sideways after landing a blow.

This not only widened the wounds, but tore off chunks of flesh, which splattered onto the ground.

Loren thought that this would do more damage than just cutting, but when the chunks of flesh hit the ground, something unexpected happened.

The flesh split up into small pieces and suddenly became fairies that attacked Loren.

Since he didn’t expect fairies to come out from the flesh he had cut off, Loren couldn’t respond to their attacks fast enough.

He let his left hand go of the great sword and raised it in front of his face to at least protect his neck and eyes.

The newborn fairies lunged onto his arm.

‘Energy drain!’

Right when the fairies’ teeth were about to tear through Loren’s teeth.

Shayna unleashed her power as a no life king.

The fairies’ life energies were stolen in an instant, causing them to drop to the ground.

Loren back away from the spot and thanked Shayna.

“Turning into fairies if you cut part off. That’s annoying.”

“Swirl before my eyes, rage about, o crimson flames <<Fire Storm>>”

As Loren cursed, Lapis used the spell she had been preparing.

Flames erupted from the ground, engulfing the chief’s body, and Loren put his hand in front of his face to protect it from the heat.

On the other side of his hand, Lapis’ magic burned the chief, but Lapis muttered with a grim expression before it even ended.

“There’s too much moisture…it’s not going to burn completely.”

As Lapis had said, the chief’s large body was still there after the flames died.

The surface was burned and a part of it had crumbled into ashes, but from under it, new flesh bubbled up and soon the surface became slimy again.

“What do we do? Dice him up and crush the pieces?”

“Can Shayna do something with her energy drain?”

Lapis asked him.

It seemed possible that a no life king class energy drain could do something about the now even larger fairy chief by draining his life energy without wounding him any further.

‘I’d rather not, if possible.’

But Shayna disagreed with the suggestion, not wanting to use her energy drain at all.

‘I’ll keep using it to keep the fairies off like I did before…but I’m sorry Onii-san. I don’t want to energy drain the main body.’

Shayna told Loren in a weak thought.

As he blocked some bolts of fire that the chief shot while eating with the flat of his great sword, he asked Shayna why.

‘I found out when I sucked all the fairies just before, but…the life energy of this chief isn’t good at all. He tastes bad, actually.’

As the voice that only he could hear told him so, Loren wondered how to respond.

It was the first time he had heard that life energy had taste, and to a living being like Loren, he couldn’t imagine what bad tasting life energy tasted like.

‘This is a first for me as well, so how would I explain this…Umm, I can try my best to explain how it tastes.’

“It’s fine…”

No matter how good the explanation was, it would just tell him how bad it tasted, and nothing more.

But Loren was surprised that the fairy chief had life energy that tasted so bad that Shayna, who had become a no life king, would refuse to consume it.

“How is it Loren?”

Lapis couldn’t hear their conversation.

The only way she could communicate with Shayna was having Loren tell her the conclusion of his conversation with her.

“I’ll get straight to the point. This guy tastes really bad.”

“Ahh…Then I guess we can’t make her do it.”

Confused that Lapis gave up on Shayna’s energy drain so easily, Loren asked her.

“That convinced you?”

“Yes.”

The chief, who was still eating, continued to shoot bursts of fire at them, as if they were a nuisance.

Lapis quickly made a hand sign in front of her chest and said in a quiet voice.

“God of Knowledge, protect us from the power of magic <<Protection from Magic>>”

A dimly shining, transparent membrane enveloped them, and as the bolts of flame met it, they disappeared along with a sound like water dousing fire.

Watching the chief shake in frustration that his attacks weren’t going through, Lapis used another divine art in quick succession.

“Invisible fist of god, smite my enemies <<Force>>”

The shard of divine power that Lapis drew out.

The giant ball of pure energy that seemed to reflect the degree of her faith, slammed into the chief’s body.

It sunk deeply into him and sprayed blood all over, as if a god had come down and dealt the blow, but Lapis, who had initiated the attack, snorted in dissatisfaction.

“It wasn’t enough to crush him completely…I need to train more.”

“Is that divine art supposed to be something like that?”

Loren thought that it would take an enormous amount of power to crush a giant body like the one in front of him.

The chanting seemed too short, considered that it was something to control such a power.

“Of course not. This one usually only has the power of a buff young man punching with all his might.

“There’s no way you could crush the chief with something like that, you know?”

“I mean, my devout faith is the source, so.”

Wondering if she was in a position to say that, Loren continued to deal blow after blow to the chief.

Each blow inflicted wound after wound, but seeing them every one of them heal, he couldn’t help but think that his attempts were futile.

“I don’t think there are any priests that have such a deep faith to the Knowledge god as I do. What do you think?”

“…Well, I guess that’s kind of convincing.”

If he could keep in mind the fact that she just had a different nature than other priests of the Knowledge god, he could see that she could indeed be a devout follower.

“But if slicing or hitting doesn’t work, what to we do about him?”

“Well, if we go by the book, burning him would be the best, but…”

Lapis’ words became a murmur as she looked around.

As he wondered what she was doing, Loren swatted away another piece of the chief that was thrown at them away with his great sword.

“I wouldn’t hesitate to burn him if this were outside.”

“Yeah…this isn’t the best place.”

Although the place wasn’t completely sealed, they weren’t in a place that had good ventilation.

It was obvious that if they burned such a large hunk of meat, the heat and stagnation of the atmosphere would be a problem.

“Then how…huh?”

Loren stopped what he was saying.

When Lapis followed Loren’s gaze, wondering what happened, she saw that the mountain of food had almost depleted.

It was kind of impressive that he had managed to keep eating while dealing with them, but when it was gone completely there would only be one thing that he would turn his attention to.

“I don’t even need to guess that he’s going to try to eat us.”

“I really wish this is a dream.”

Until then, to the chief, he had been being injured by something, and healing them made him hungry, so he ate.

But now that the food was almost gone, it was obvious that since he would still be hungry from healing, he would think about eating whatever caught his eyes.

It meant that his attacks would get stronger, and to Loren and Lapis, who couldn’t find a breakthrough, it wasn’t a welcome turn of events.

“So, for real, what should we do?”

Sensing that the attention of the blob of meat, which they didn’t even know where the head was, was slowly turning towards them, Lapis said in an actual troubled voice as she looked up at the chief crawling towards them.