Chapter 227 : Chapter 227
Chapter 227
The first move came from Lucian’s attack.
Lucian’s blade grazed past Ouroboros’s scales, and when the attack was nullified, the damn snake openly sneered at us.
Fine, so this much isn’t even close.
But that was precisely Ouroboros’s fatal weakness.
An overwhelming strong being capable of one-sided trampling. That was Ouroboros’s essence and identity.
If it were Iris, she would never let her guard down even as an overwhelming strong being, but the monster before us was different.
It was a creature fully capable of carelessness.
And that would become the cornerstone of our victory.
Ouroboros lightly ignored our attacks and continued attacking me.
The way it didn’t care whether the people beside it attacked or not was almost like a berserker.
This attack couldn’t be dodged.
“Throw me!”
At my shout, Mordin threw my body with all his might, and I used Protective Magic on Mordin.
The thick shield melted into Ouroboros’s poison, and I flew far away.
Zephyros caught me.
“Oh, thanks.”
Though I was baggage again.
“You hopeless bastard.”
Yeah, that’s high praise.
When the attack aimed at me became meaningless, Ouroboros now tried to collapse the space by using its own body outright.
Not that the impact was anything significant.
A crack had formed in the flow of mana, but Professor Beatrice was still maintaining the space for now.
There was a gap between the time outside and the time here. Thanks to that, even if it fired a shockwave like before, this space wouldn’t suffer any particular problem!
How fortunate.
“Damn it, it’s pulling aggro this way.”
Along with Zephyros’s small mutter, scales as sharp as blades flew toward us in an instant.
It was a familiar pattern.
“Drive the scales downward!”
“Got it!”
Zephyros was a guy who understood things quickly.
THUNK-THUNK-THUNK—!
The scales were blown by the wind and lodged into the floor.
While being carried by him like baggage, I watched Ouroboros’s next movement.
The next pattern was probably⋯ poison fog!
“Laurel Sunbae! Close its mouth for a moment!”
Laurel Sunbae shot forward like a bullet and shut Ouroboros’s mouth.
“Fel, please take care of Laurel Sunbae for a moment!”
The word ‘please’ was enough to convey my meaning.
A sacred light gathered in Fel’s hand, and the pained expression on Sunbae’s face as her skin burned from the poison on the scales vanished in an instant.
BOOM—!
The poison fog burst inside Ouroboros’s mouth, and its body twisted violently.
But of course, this wasn’t enough to bring it down.
“Dodge!”
The moment the poison fog pattern ended, Laurel Sunbae moved back.
Laurel Sunbae didn’t get greedy and try to do anything more either. She fell back and wrapped layer after layer of bandage around her palm.
Ouroboros opened its massive mouth wide.
The range of the attack? It reached as far as Lilia Sunbae.
“It’s going to devour you!”
At that moment, Lilia Sunbae shouted Fel’s name with all her strength.
“Fel!!”
Aha, I understood.
There had been something like that in Lilia’s settings.
“Heal Lilia Sunbae!”
“Huh?! I don’t get it, but okay!”
Fel looked puzzled for a moment, then immediately began using healing power toward Lilia Sunbae.
As if that wasn’t enough, Lilia Sunbae gulped down the Elixir in her arms.
Ouroboros leapt up with its massive mouth open and swallowed a fixed area whole.
Lilia Sunbae was inside that range.
At the sudden act of predation, Lucian’s eyes widened, and just as he was about to attack, the nape of Ouroboros’s neck, where it had swallowed Lilia Sunbae, heated up.
BOOM!
At some point, its scales turned bright red, and at last, a massive explosion occurred, blasting flesh out from the nape of its neck.
It wasn’t exactly a pleasant sight to behold, so I briefly closed my eyes, then opened them with difficulty and slowly steadied my breathing.
While Ouroboros was disoriented by the sudden explosion, Laurel Sunbae hurriedly brought back Lilia Sunbae, who had burst out along with the explosion.
“Hey, you insane human being!”
The voice scolding Sunbae came as a bonus.
Yeah, she deserved to be scolded a hundred, a thousand times over.
I was nodding along when I suddenly felt Zephyros’s gaze.
“What? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He looked like he had a lot to say, but let’s just ignore it.
I subtly averted my gaze and looked at Ouroboros, whose body was writhing.
I’d like it to die like this, but that would be difficult.
While being carried like baggage, I calmly observed the attack pattern that followed.
The self-destruct attack Lilia Sunbae had used while risking her life shaved away Ouroboros’s HP in one blow.
Fortunately, thanks to healing through Holy Power and the Elixir, she avoided self-destruction.
But it was too early to celebrate just because its HP had been reduced significantly.
Because one of Ouroboros’s nastiest patterns, regeneration, was about to begin.
When its health dropped below 20%, it shed its skin and recovered its HP to 100%. Damn it!
“Everyone, stop it!”
The way to stop it was to shave off 5% of its HP within one minute.
But damage received during regeneration was reduced to 1/10, so in practice, we had to shave off 50% of its HP.
That’s exactly why I have the all-purpose Writer skill!
+++
Overt skill use before the snake that swallows the world is not recommended.
+++
I lightly swept aside the System window that once again packed my vision.
What else can I do! Letting it recover to 100% HP in this state is the most dangerous option.
It’s not like I’ve only been reckless for a day or two!
「Ouroboros’s damage reduction disappears.」
Completely stopping Ouroboros’s recovery was too much for this battered body.
Still, I could barely endure removing the damage reduction.
“Cough!”
Not that it wasn’t overdoing it.
“You damn bastard.”
“We have to attack now! If we don’t attack past a certain threshold, it’ll recover completely!”
I ignored Zephyros’s curses and shouted with all my might.
As soon as he heard my shout, Zephyros sharpened the wind like blades and began pouring it onto Ouroboros. Laurel Sunbae shoved another bottle of Elixir down Lilia Sunbae’s throat and rushed toward Ouroboros as well.
I briefly hesitated over whether I should send power into the attack too, but I only had enough mana left to use one skill, so I decided to conserve it for now.
Even Lilia Sunbae, who had recovered somewhat, joined the attack.
With that frequency of attacks, we had definitely shaved off 5%.
As if proving it, Ouroboros, which should originally have become whole through the recovery pattern, roared loudly.
What is this, an Invisible Dragon? It is kind of similar in that it’s a reptile⋯. That’s not what matters right now.
Honestly, I was scared.
In the game, not once had I ever passed this pattern of Ouroboros’s without consequences.
I always failed to shave off that 5% HP, and it recovered to 100%.
Of course it did. How were you supposed to shave off 5% in one minute when damage only went in at one-tenth?
No wonder the users cursed at it.
Even worse, whenever good characters or equipment came out and user specs went up, Ouroboros’s HP was raised like a ghost to match them.
Now that I thought about it, wasn’t the fact that Ouroboros was the monster that destroyed ancient times the thickest root forming the foundation of the Lapis Academy game worldview?
The pattern that followed was—
‘I knew it!’
It was berserk mode.
Usually, if you interrupted the recovery pattern of a boss mob that could restore HP, it went berserk.
It was a pattern where you could even feel the game company’s malice telling you to go screw yourself.
CRUMBLE.
The scattered scales shot up into the sky and began falling like rain.
Zephyros hurriedly tried to deflect them with wind, but unlike before, the scales didn’t bounce away. Instead, they rode the wind and poured down even more fiercely without end.
“What do we do about this?!”
Should I use the Writer skill now?
My eyes shook amid danger.
Judge, judge, judge!
What do I do?
Ah, there’s no way.
I squeezed my eyes shut in despair.
Then light flickered before my eyes.
What appeared above my head was a shield made of light, just large enough to protect one person.
“Lou!”
“Pyaaah!!!”
Lou screamed as if squeezing out every ounce of strength.
We were able to be protected from the sudden rain of scales, but I felt a persistent gaze on me.
Good! Now there’s one more thing we have to silence! Still, it’s better than dying in vain, so let’s call it a good thing!
After the rain of scales, I saw Ouroboros open its mouth wide.
Did we have to make it close its mouth like before? No.
“Cover your ears!”
I covered my ears, but that alone apparently wasn’t enough, because the shield Lou had just placed over me shattered.
Even with my ears covered, I couldn’t withstand the shockwave and nearly lost consciousness.
Is it insane?
What kind of shockwave breaks a barrier put up by a Light Spirit and nearly knocks me unconscious?
If I hadn’t bitten the tip of my tongue, I would have lost consciousness just like that.
Fortunately, it seemed the others had barely avoided losing consciousness too.
If Lou hadn’t been here, we might have already died from that shockwave.
That was when it happened.
I felt a persistent gaze.
Amid the sensation of goosebumps prickling across my skin, my eyes met Ouroboros’s exactly.
My fingertips went numb, and I had no choice but to realize it.
‘Ah, it’s a curse.’
This was a curse Ouroboros was placing on me.
Even if it scattered and disappeared in this moment, if the curse remained, that meant it would exist in the world forever.
It was a choice filled with obsession, made to track the ‘god’ attached to me to the very end.
An obsession strong enough to cling even to my soul? At this point, it’s a horror story!
Even as Ouroboros poured a curse onto me, the attacks continued.
Lucian’s strike in particular was even more fatal to Ouroboros.
At last, Lucian’s final blow finally struck down, and Ouroboros screamed loudly.
Ouroboros’s body began to collapse.
At the same time, my limit arrived.
My heart hurt.
It was difficult to maintain the space any longer.
The first skill I released was naturally the skill that had stretched a moment into eternity.
The time I could maintain the skill stabilizing the space increased a little, but it was nothing more than a temporary loophole.
“Run, now!!”
At my shout, everyone left the collapsing Ouroboros behind and began running at once.
While Zephyros carried me like baggage, I looked toward Ouroboros like someone possessed.
“Huh?”
A massive chunk of Ouroboros’s flesh tore away, and inside it, I saw Iris with her eyes closed as though exhausted.
The moment I reached out toward Iris Viden, Mordin suddenly began running in the exact opposite direction from us.
“Mordin?”
My voice came out clumsily, full of confusion.