Ihoujin, Dungeon ni Moguru - Chapter 246: Memory II

I avoided the arm swung down at me, ran up it, and cleaved through the monster’s neck.

It was too shallow.

In mid-air, a place where evasion was impossible, I got smacked away as if I were an insect. I tumbled and rolled across the plain to blunt the impact, then leaped off the ground to slash at him once more.

『You’re just like a rat』

The monster’s impression of me is the same as the dragon’s. But I can’t think of this guy as being the same as that dragon, an immortal being who coexists with humankind. I don’t want to think of them as being the same.

I slash at him, aiming again and again for his neck and heart.

Even if I’m knocked aside and crushed, I’ll continue to slash at him over and over again.

How many times have I done this? Tens, hundreds, thousands of times? Maybe it’s the effect of my sharpened senses, but I have this weird feeling that the night is endless.

But so what?

My fighting spirit is unwavering.

It hasn’t wavered in the slightest.

Even if my body falls apart from the repeated regeneration, this fire will not be extinguished. The dark fire cannot be extinguished.

Even if my body becomes tattered and torn, even if my blade is chipped all over, I’ll continue to swing my katana for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, hundreds of millions, quadrillions, novemdecillions of times.

And that’s why……

「My god, O Misuranika, the dark fire!」

「Fufu」

I took the arm the snickering monster had swung at me head-on.

As if my body had exploded, blood spurted from every orifice. The damage was so great that no part of me was unharmed.

The regeneration was sluggish.

The time in which I can wield that unlimited power is nearing its end. No matter how strong that power is, I’m too small a vessel to contain it all. It spills out, flows away, and disappears.

And that’s why I’ve recited this chant over and over again to replenish it.

「I’m the one who devours the curses of people, uses it as food and turns it into power. I’m your one and only follower! Ra・Varuzu・Duin・Gargantua. We hate for eternity the origin of the blood of old!」

Black mist came into existence.

At the curse of death, the monster twisted his face into a smirk.

「By the echoes of resentment and the voices of curses, I call the beast. O goddess of the moon of misfortune, O Lycan, bestow upon me your power! O my God, cleanse away evil and forgive their sins! I harbor a beast while remaining in human form! I hunt beasts while remaining human!」

With my body filled with that power once again, I pushed the monster’s arm back with one hand.

「There is no night that doesn’t break into dawn, no dreams that one doesn’t awaken from. Someday, even the abominable blood of calamity will dry up and die out. Even so, now comes the night of the hunter!」

A free hand was raised.

The moment it was swung downward, the gigantic arm crashed to the ground some distance away.

「Izora・Romea・Wild Hunt!」

My body felt heavy, my joints stiff. The pain from my wounds lingered and refused to go away. Wracked with pain so intense that it made me want to scream, I crushed the arm of the monster that I had blocked.

It’s strange.

Something feels off.

About this tremendous arm strength and the power to distort even space.

My body’s movements seem slow and sluggish. No, the enemy is also moving slowly and sluggishly.

My senses have become too sharp. They’ve transcended time and my body. I can even perceive every drop of blood that splatters behind me, and I can even hear the creaking of my worn-out joints amid the pounding of my racing heart.

So much information was being sent to my brain that it was driving me out of my mind.

I gritted my bared teeth and fought to hold on to the consciousness that was threatening to slip away.

Each moment felt so long.

The moments stacked together, each moment a swing in the flurry of slashes I unleashed.

I cut off the big toe. Severed the ankles. Slashed crosswise at both knees. Stabbed both hip joints. Gouged out the internal organs. With a diagonal slash from shoulder to hip and a reversed slash in the opposite direction, I broke the ribs and cut away the flesh, exposing the heart.

As the enemy’s body slowly fell to the ground, I took aim at it.

I raised my katana over my head, then swung it downward.

It cleaved through the thick, writhing mass of flesh.

Time returned to normal and my entire body was bathed in scalding hot blood.

「Krrk」

The crack of the katana’s core breaking rang out. I heard the same sound from within my own body.

Not yet, don’t break just yet. It doesn’t matter what happens after this.

Just hold on for this one moment.

Move.

I suppressed the trembling with my strength. I held everything back by force.

I ordered myself to sever the head of the prone giant.

And I did indeed cut it off.

The price was my katana. Having fought the dragon, severed the nightmare, slain the hero, cut through the magic of the Final Flame, felled the beast-hunter prince, and beheaded the monster, it was then that my beloved katana bent―――――――and broke.

The head the size of a gigantic boulder rolled across the night plain.

I had destroyed his heart and decapitated him.

And yet……

「Dammit」

It’s no use.

This guy is “not dead yet”.

『I’ve never commended an enemy this much. Truly』

Having come to a stop, the head started to speak.

As if nothing had happened.

『Do you know? In the words of the foreign lands, the situation you’re in is called “having broken one’s sword and exhausted one’s arrows(having exhausted all available options)”』

「So what?」

He began to regenerate.

The monster’s torso and limbs emitted a stench as foul as sewage as they melted away. Next to change was his head, which started to re-grow the bones from the neck down. Nerves grew out, and flesh covered them. He would likely be back to normal in less than a minute.

But it’s still an opening.

A big opening.

But I also need to get myself back on my feet.

I can’t feel my left hand. No matter how hard I willed it, it wouldn’t even move a muscle. I’ve also lost sight in my left eye. No matter how wide I opened that eye, there was nothing but darkness.

Well, it’s a small price to pay for pushing past my limits over and over again.

My legs still work.

My right arm and eye are fine.

In that case, I can go one more round.

「Let me………teach you something good」

『What?』

「Beasts show their true colors when they’re wounded」

Once more, I put all my strength into my right arm and tightened my grip on the broken katana.

The fully-regenerated monster got to his feet, his huge body standing at his full height.

Taking stock of him once again, he sure is a huge enemy. He must be over 20 meters tall. A gigantic and unkillable monster. I couldn’t ask for a better foe to face as my final opponent.

This guy called me a rat. Unfortunately, I’m a wolf knight. I’ve decided to die in a way that befits that name.

If I’m going to die anyway, I’m going to do it falling forward. I’ll get one last shot in before I do. No, I’ll get two, or maybe even three. Not to ask for too much, but it would be nice if I could give him thousands to tens of thousands more.

『You’re a beast through and through, huh?』

Yeah, that’s right.

I’ll admit that much.

I’m fine with being a beast. I can accept the infamy of being the King of Beasts.

But I’ll have you know that my vassals are smart.

There’s a trick or mechanism to his immortality. Even for the undying spiders, there were ways to counteract them. Even if I’m unable to kill him, it’s good enough for me if I can leave some hints for future generations.

Makina is recording this entire battle.

The glasses are sturdy, and they’re even now transmitting information about the enemy to her. That information will then be transferred to an analog medium and spread all over so that the world will know of this guy’s abilities and his misdeeds.

It’ll probably get altered like Vindoobunikuru’s story was. But someone will eventually arrive at the truth. In every era, there have always been sharp-eyed people with good intuition.

It’s fine so long as someone notices.

It’s fine so long as someone spreads the word.

If someone carries on this fight, everything I’ve done will not have been in vain.

Shared knowledge will eventually become an immense force.

A force powerful enough to kill an immortal.

「You monster……………… Shut up, monster. You’re nothing more than an ugly monster. How ironic. You, who once defeated the King of Beasts, are now just a monster lower than beasts」

『Let me add to that. You, who will be crushed by such a monster, are nothing better than a worm』

The movements of the monster changed.

He appeared to be up to something again.

Picking up the broken-off blade of the katana, I held it in my mouth.

I’ll show you.

The fight of the wolf knight.

Until the very end.

Was what I was thinking when I felt a strange tremor from the broken blade.

An interruption literally came flying in from the side[1]. At first, I thought it was a cannonball that had hit the monster in the temple. The impact was so great that it even knocked that gigantic body off balance.

What was sticking out of his temple was a huge lance that was almost as thick as a small pillar. There was only one human who could have thrown something like that.

「What’s this guy?」

It’s reinforcements.

It’s His Majesty.

Even His Majesty, who had survived facing all 499 beasts, doesn’t appear to have come out of it completely unscathed. There are claw marks on his chest and left shoulder deep enough to have ripped through his armor. And this is the first time I’ve ever seen him breathing heavily.

The only weapon he has left is his beloved great-sword.

But he still exudes a powerful air.

And that’s why……

「Please fall back! This guy is still―――――――」

……I can’t let His Majesty fight him. This guy is still hiding something. It’s not too late to let them fight after I’ve exposed what it is.

A large shadow loomed over me.

The monster smashed me into the ground.

「Gahh」

With his hand pressing down on my back, I couldn’t move an inch.

I’ve messed up.

In this situation, with the enemy right in front of me, I neglected to stay on guard.

『What happened to my beasts, O King of Barbarians?』

「They were all returned to the earth. Not a single one was spared」

『………………I see』

There was a hint of emotion in the monster’s voice.

「What a hideous sight you are. So this is Elysium’s true colors, huh? You’re also one of them, I assume?」

『I’ll put you in the ground too. But after I’ve dealt with this rat』

The pressure exerted on me increased.

It felt like my internal organs were going to come out of my mouth.

「O Beast who’s probably a hero of Elysium. No, you’re the prince, aren’t you? You don’t seem to be interested in a fight among men nor care for a contest of skill. Fine. It’s fine then. It can’t be helped. I shall respond in kind」

「No frigging way」

I couldn’t help but blurt my disrespectful thoughts out loud.

Black winds swirled, obscuring His Majesty’s form. What appeared the next moment was a gigantic, black wolf.

A wolf 20 meters from its head to the tip of its tail that could be mistaken for a hill.

The fantastic beast, the【Old Ones】.

That’s what His Majesty, the descendant of the one who ate the corpse of a dragon, has become.

If I remember correctly, it’s said that it appeared at the turning point of Ashtalia’s history, and it also showed itself after the battle with Zamonglass. So………………that was His Majesty, huh?

『I knew it, you’re one too, O King of Barbarians! What a fitting appearance for a beast!』

The monster cried out in delight.

The fantastic beast bared his fangs and attacked the monster.

The darkness of night deepened, for the dawn was fast approaching.

[1] The Japanese phrase for “to butt in, interfere, interrupt, and so on” is 横槍を入れる, which literally means “sticking/thrusting a spear in from the side”. So yeah, the joke here is that the interference that occurred is literally a spear/lance flying in from the side, so I combined them so that it makes more sense in English.

Woah, did you see that coming?! His Majesty was the black wolf/fantastic beast from back then!!

Now, the author has kindly left us a clue to this back when the black wolf first appeared and the chapter after that(82 & 83.1). I urge you to go back and re-read them(including my afterword) so that you can facepalm like I did when I realized what the author did. To add insult to injury, the hint given is an ironic joke unto itself. My hint as to what the hint is: catchphrase.

Also, some of you have left comments about how alike Souya and His Majesty are. Remember what Galdvain’s kin thought of Souya? Yeah, they said he’s like a fantastic beast. And what do you know, the person he’s so similar to is, in fact, a fantastic beast… Are you starting to realize the genius with which this author buries hints? You’ll never make the connection the first time around but when you go back and re-read it, you’ll see it clear as day. And despite re-reading this story god knows how many times already, I’m still not confident I’ve caught all of them.

But well, Souya has been forced to use Wild Hunt many times now…this can’t be good…his bonds must now be…

How stories are passed down poorly and how people can be blinded by limited information has sorta been shown many times in this story. Now, we’ve heard Lumidia and Gladvain’s side of the story, which said that Lola was an evil woman who committed the great sin of eating a dragon’s corpse for power, but the spiders, the only ones who could attest to her side of the story, said she wasn’t a bad person and was actually defending the beastkin. I know the way Souya narrated it makes it sound like turning into the “old ones” is a power gained from eating the dragon but imo, that doesn’t make sense. Also, don’t forget that there has been at least one more person who has inherited the blood of the “old ones”, Rmir. Given that, it makes much more sense that Lola had inherited the blood just like Rmir, and had passed it down to His Majesty, doesn’t it? And if that’s the case, it’s not exactly as wrong or weird of Lola to eat corpses as it initially seemed since that’s what the “Old Ones” do after all… It’s pure speculation on my part, but I can’t help but think that the truth is something like this.

I love the last line, which is a reference to the famous line, “It’s always darkest before the dawn”. Will His Majesty be able to turn the tide? Stay tuned!