My arm is gone.
On top of that, my Purple Crimson disappeared somewhere when I unleashed Pile Regret.
Talk about adding insult to injury.
While internally complaining about how I could get damaged when I should have hit back with Pile Regret, I check my left hand, which I glimpse at.
My arm hangs limply, but I’ve managed to reinforce it with magic power and dragon blood, though it’s no use in combat.
It’s not a compound fracture, but it’s definitely broken, and I can’t put any strength into my left hand.
At the crucial moment, I made a huge mistake and, using a flying knee strike, I unleashed Pile Regret at the instructor, who looked a bit dejected, but it’s strange how he got up with a perfectly fine face.
That thing, a normal person would be pulverized, not even a trace left, it has that much power.
I can’t accept that results in a broken nose and nosebleed.
There doesn’t seem to be any damage to my brain.
My legs seem fine too, so I stand up as if nothing is wrong.
That’s why I was irritated and blustered, but honestly, if I’m pushed into a situation where my body isn’t perfect, my chances of winning are slim.
My available cards are limited, and more importantly, not being able to use one hand for defense is tough.
From here on out, I really need to fight with the mindset of sacrificing flesh to break bones if I want any chance.
“Let’s go!”
As if my feelings don’t matter, the instructor, who is attacking me, has what seems to be the most malicious smile I’ve ever seen.
Ah, damn it.
With that kind of face, giving up is impossible, isn’t it?
“Die!”
In desperation, I abandon courtesy and use all my strength to defeat this demon.
I don’t even know how much time is left at this point.
I can’t have any regrets if I don’t do everything I can.
Just spare me the ending of running out of time.
“It’s you who will!”
We’re both unforgiving.
I’ll be careful not to lose concentration, and from here on, it’s a slugfest.
I use my magic-enhanced forehead to headbutt the instructor’s fist, and even if the impact makes me dizzy, I instinctively tear at the instructor’s leg with the Ore Tree in my right hand.
“Shallow?!”
“Did you think you could cut my body with such pathetic strength!!”
But, fighting with one arm is tougher than I imagined.
Losing one arm has shifted the axis of my sword strokes, and the blade doesn’t enter cleanly.
The speed of my swings is also slightly reduced because I’m enduring the pain in my left arm.
I’ve unleashed full-powered slashes with worse injuries, but this current, half-baked damage is holding me back.
“Oi oi oi!! Where did your earlier bravado go!!”
“Not yet!!”
Even though I’m being pushed back unilaterally, I grit my teeth and try to move my aching body to win, but reality isn’t that kind.
“■■■■■■■■!?”
“Shit!?”
The White Snake Armor has finally reached its limit.
“You made me work for it! Breaking through the dimensional wall was quite a hassle!!”
My magic power disperses, and the spirit peels away.
The White Snake, which falls with a thud, disappears in an instant.
It’s not dead or annihilated, but with the accumulated damage, I won’t be able to summon it for a while.
From now on, I’ll have to defend with my own defenses, no question.
“Grit!!”
“Do you think willpower alone will solve anything!!”
Indeed, I’m hit with a follow-up attack as I’m blown away, and I block it with my one arm using the Ore Tree, but the impact is greater than when I was clad in the White Snake Armor.
The shock resonates to the core of my body. I somehow manage to prevent the damage from reaching my muscles and bones with body reinforcement, but my internal organs weren’t so lucky.
“Cough!”
I cough for a moment, tasting blood in my mouth.
This is bad, something internal is gone.
Is this what this impact does?
Even with future sight, if I don’t react the moment I see it, I can’t deal with it.
Only damage accumulates.
This is what happens the moment the balance breaks.
Damn.
The mountain is endlessly high.
I have no intention of giving up, but my mind and body are not in sync.
“Haa haa, haa, haa.”
“What’s wrong? Still can enjoy it, can’t you?”
“Of course.”
I’ve taken countless attacks from the instructor.
Just standing is precarious.
If I let my consciousness waver for even a moment, it’s bad.
I’m using my willpower to circulate magic power to heal my stamina and wounds, but it’s not keeping up at all.
I’m just holding on with the sheer will to win.
“Tch!”
I push forward, enduring the pain.
If I defend, I lose.
I need to attack, I think, and charge forward with all my might.
“Too slow!!”
My speed must have dropped to a pathetic level from the instructor’s perspective.
Easily dealt with and countered, my body is sent flying effortlessly.
“Kha!?”
The impact of hitting the ground expels air from my lungs, but I force my body to move, escaping the impact and leaping back up.
With the force of a meteor strike, the instructor kicks at the spot where he was just lying.
I don’t have time to break into a cold sweat realizing how dangerous that was.
The distance I leaped back has created a running start.
“!”
Then, I see something in the corner of my vision and think, this might be it.
Using an application of Pile Regret, I deploy a magic circle at my feet.
I also deploy a barrier in front of me.
Then I detonate the magic circle at my feet, accelerating with a focus solely on forward momentum.
“Going head-on!”
Naturally, the instructor reacts and tries to punch me.
With future sight, I can tell the trajectory of the instructor’s fist.
I’m processing information with thought acceleration, but after three days, the burden on my brain is significant and it’s getting tough.
But I can’t give up now.
I further increase the speed of my thought acceleration, activating my absolute limit.
My brain is burning, my body is creaking.
The sounds my ears pick up are deafening.
The more I accelerate, the more information my brain processes, and the greater the burden on my body.
But I can’t think of any other way to create an opportunity.
I urge my body to hold on and time my move. The world slows down.
Even in this world, I keep my eyes on the instructor’s movements, which are still much faster than mine, and process the information from my future sight.
He steps forward, the ground begins to crumble.
I see the air distorting visually, and the fist causing that distortion approaches my face.
But my body moves slowly in this world, and with this trajectory, the instructor’s fist will hit the barrier, but I’ll still be punched directly in the face.
Without the White Snake’s defense, taking that hit won’t end well.
So.
“What the—!?”
I was waiting for this timing.
It’s a razor-thin margin, whether I can make it within a thousandth of a second.
I won the gamble.
The direction I was blown away by the instructor’s previous attack was good.
The Purple Crimson I happened to be flung away landed in a direction, under the cover of the shattered rocks, where it was invisible to the instructor.
Furthermore, the chaotic magic in the surrounding area due to this battle meant the instructor couldn’t detect the Purple Crimson’s presence.
It’s a simple magic that only pulls things, but when mastered, it can pull them at speeds faster than bullets.
I can even pull them at a speed the instructor can barely react to.
I draw the instructor between myself and the Purple Crimson, and then, with this one move, I fling the Purple Crimson from behind.
I figured the instructor, being who he is, wouldn’t think twice about taking an attack of this magnitude and would ignore it.
At worst, if it wasn’t a vital point, the instructor would ignore the attack and focus on me.
But the Purple Crimson is not just a weapon.
It’s a magic sword forged by the Giant.
Its special ability is magic absorption.
The Purple Crimson plunges deeply near the shoulder blade.
That momentary attack drains its magic power, and the trajectory of the attacking fist is deviated.
A golden opportunity, I can’t afford to miss this.
I thrust the Ore Tree, held tightly in my right hand, at the instructor with all my might.
“Not bad! But!!”
Thanks to the Purple Crimson and my Ore Tree, I incapacitated the instructor’s right arm.
But I know this demon won’t give up that easily.
He immediately tries to punch me with his other hand, but I’ve gained another moment.
“Raiden!! Release!!”
I unleash the magic stored in the Ore Tree all at once.
“GaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?”
No matter how strong the instructor’s body is, being burned from the inside by high-level lightning magic will deal some damage.
And lightning magic can also disrupt muscle function, making it difficult for even the instructor to move easily.
“Ooooooooooooooooo!!”
Even so, the instructor tries to punch me, but his movements are clearly slower.
This immobile time is the key to victory.
I take out a scroll from my Magic Bag, enduring the pain.
“Activate!!”
It’s a hastily grabbed parchment scroll, but there’s only one type of scroll in there anyway.
So I haven’t made it random about what will activate.
“A Seal Formula!?”
“You got it!!”
The scroll activates, and black spell patterns run across the instructor’s body.
The instructor, recognizing its true nature, tries to break away from me immediately, but I saw that movement.
“Gravity Press!!”
“You’re dragging yourself into this too!?”
Suddenly, my body becomes incredibly heavy.
It’s a magic that creates a high-gravity space, involving me.
At this moment, my weight is actually 150 times normal.
A spell of wholehearted effort.
My weight is currently about 80 kilograms, so it’s now twelve tons.
And the instructor, with his giant physique, must be feeling several times heavier than me, possibly even over ten times.
“Let’s take it slooooowly.”
I force a grin, my body creaking audibly.
“Instructor!!”
I cast gravity magic again.
By stacking spells of the same type, the gravity spell is multiplied, making the space I’m in 300 times normal gravity.
My body, enduring gravity that feels like it’s crushing me even with magic reinforcement and dragon blood effects, sweats as I wait for the Seal Formula to complete.
But I won’t do that.
“You don’t intend to let me take it slowly!!”
I don’t believe I can win by waiting.
Outside the range affected by gravity magic, yes.
Specifically, countless magic circles deployed directly above me.
The number of magic circles deployed outside the gravity field, appearing before the instructor can escape, exceeds one hundred.
These are delayed spells I prepared during our constant fighting, kept on standby. I continued to accumulate them even after facing the instructor one-on-one, and stopped counting after they exceeded three hundred.
“Magic accelerated by gravity magic should reach the instructor’s body too, right?”
His body is gradually becoming immobile due to the Seal Formula, and he seems to be circulating magic power to resist it, but this scroll cost me two weeks’ worth of magic power. It’s a Seal Formula from Amelia’s library, modified by Valse-san’s supervision, used by the hero’s side.
Once it sticks, even the instructor won’t be able to remove it easily.
“So! Please enjoy it to your heart’s content!!”
And if this seal hits the instructor, I can execute this next move.
Using gravity magic as a gate, I will descend vertically, executing a mass carpet bombing with accelerated magic.
All the magic deployed in the sky above are top-tier Earth attribute spells.
Earth magic itself is powerful enough, but its speed is very inferior compared to other spells.
Therefore, it’s generally recognized as a magic used for defense or terrain creation.
However, rocks compressed to high purity by magic can generate incredible mass and strength beyond their apparent size.
I’m raining down an amount that can only be described as a downpour, and accelerating it with gravity magic to throw it at the instructor.
I initiate the magic circle, as if it doesn’t matter that I’m at the center.
A swarm of meteors is created simultaneously.
Since the gravity magic area is deployed nearby, this place becomes the epicenter of a meteor impact in less than a second.
“Valse-san!!”
I’ve made preparations to avoid being caught in it.
“Yes, yes!! I’ve been waiting!!”
I call out to Valse-san, who was maintaining the barrier, and have him teleport me along with my Ore Tree and Purple Crimson.
For a spirit that governs time and space, short-range teleportation magic is instantaneous.
I’m then teleported directly above the gravity magic, to a spot where I can see the place where I was just confronting the instructor.
As I materialized directly above the magic circle, I saw the instructor being engulfed by the meteors.
The successive meteors instantly reshape the terrain and emit roaring sounds like explosions, but the instructor shouldn’t be defeated by this alone.
“This spear, the spear that created the world.”
That’s why I follow up with a powerful strike here.
“May its drops give birth to the land from chaos and give the world its name.”
Rather than mixing in magic of other attributes, I refine pure Earth attribute magic.
“Layer upon layer, again and again, descending upon this land with its power.”
This time, I’m firing the Ore Tree itself as the medium.
The magic power consumed is not comparable to any previous spell.
“Release.”
And a single spear formed by magic completes around the Ore Tree.
It is said to be the spear used by Izanagi and Izanami in Japanese Mythology for the creation of the land.
“Ame-no-nuboko!!”
Without hesitation, I throw it towards the place where the instructor was standing. It plunges through the gravity magic area’s gate.
It silences sound, splits the earth, and then, with a delay, explodes with immense force.
Today’s word:
When you think the end is near, you can summon courage.
Thank you as always for your comments and reports of typos.
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Pandora Pandemic Panic: Pandora’s Box Has Been Opened Again, but We’re Fighting Back with Various Things at Our Secret Base!!
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