## Chapter 310 – The King of Monsters (12)
Judging by the scattered, broken tables and the counters and cooking stations for preparing food, the building seemed to be a large pub.
As soon as they entered, the astonishing, chaotic spectacle unfolding before their eyes made even Anne’s eyes, along with Vivian’s, waver slightly.
A man was rushing at a girl, making a strange, uncomfortable sound.
“Guh… hic…!!”
“That’s not how it’s done…!! The waist, I mean!!
You gotta dig in with a ‘thwack’!! Like that!!”
“Thwack!!”
“You don’t have to say it!!
And then lift him up and throw him backward!!
Like you’re burying him in the ground!! That’s it!!”
Lani grabbed his waist from behind, lifted him high into the air, and then flipped him over her back, slamming him into the ground.
The sound of bone and floor cracking echoed as the man crashed onto the ground with a thud.
“That’s it!! Not bad, huh?
The form’s a little unstable, but it was a clean hit!!
You’ve got talent, wanna be my disciple?
Disciple!! You’ve got a friend!?”
“N-Nell unni…!! What are you doing…!!”
Vivian and Anne’s expressions were filled with indescribable astonishment as they watched Lani execute a perfect German suplex, while Polcinella, as if she were a director, clenched her fist and cheered.
Vivian, with that same expression, turned to Roxanne, who thought for a moment, then smiled with relief as if she’d found the answer, and gave a thumbs up.
“They’re fighting back, right…?”
“W-well… Directing is also a battle, I guess!!”
“Never mind…”
But no sooner had he been slammed into the ground than the man, as if he hadn’t taken any damage at all, slowly rose to his feet, steadying himself on the floor. Roxanne watched with admiration.
“Guh-uh… uh-ah…”
“He’s getting up again!! Wow~
The man staggered towards Lani, who was closest to him, reaching out his hand. This time, Lani grabbed his arm, spun him around in the air, and then threw him forcefully against the wall.
Even so, the man soon got up again, reaching out towards Lani.
He was practically a zombie, and Roxanne, culturally shocked, clicked her tongue in amazement.
“I don’t know how many times this is?
If commoners are this strong…
Are nobles even stronger?”
“There’s no way.
That man is clearly abnormal.”
“Is that so?”
“Normally, anyone would die from a hit like that.
Something’s clearly wrong with him…”
The current situation wasn’t exactly dire.
Considering that Roxanne had been thrown earlier, and taking into account that the man had thrown her while she was wearing heavy armor, it could be said that his strength was considerable, even if his speed was quite slow.
Therefore, Lani, who was quick, was essentially playing with the man.
She was tossing him around like a sandbag, testing how much he could endure, so there was no real danger.
But the real problem was how the man could take attacks that would be fatal and still get up and try to attack again.
“Step away from him now.
And I’m warning you.
Stop resisting and cooperate with the investigation.
If you don’t…”
Deborah walked towards the man and Lani, stopping Lani, and issued an ultimatum to the man, who was now approaching her after hearing her voice.
But, predictably, the man didn’t stop moving.
Just before his hand could grab the collar of Deborah’s uniform, his head was cleanly severed from his body with a ‘thwack’.
Not only did a fountain of blood erupt from the man’s headless body, but the blood was purple. Deborah instinctively stepped back, trying to avoid the spray.
“Kuh…!!”
The bizarre phenomenon was beyond suspicious, and the expressions of everyone watching turned grim.
“Ugh…!!”
Anne, her face pale at the sight of the man’s severed head, retreated, looking nauseous. Meanwhile, Polcinella looked down at the man’s corpse, humming to herself.
“Is it okay to kill him without arresting him?”
“He was given the chance to cooperate.”
“I suppose so… But, how should I put it…
Doesn’t it seem strange no matter how you look at it?”
Polcinella squatted down, turning the severed corpse over and over, and then, as if playing with a doll, freely moved its limbs.
Lani, watching the scene, had a dubious expression. Polcinella chuckled and replied to her question.
“Um… Are you okay watching this…?”
“You can’t survive on the front lines if you can’t stand seeing people die, you know?
Sometimes you have to fight while stepping on corpses in a field of bodies.
It’s so squishy… It’s hard to keep your balance…”
“Ugh… I don’t want to hear anymore…”
Even Lani, who had killed quite a few people herself, couldn’t imagine the heroic tales in her head, and she made a disgusted, nauseous face.
“Anyway, something’s definitely wrong.
There’s no bleeding… Has the blood dried up…?
No… More accurately, has it evaporated…?
Is this… an unknown disease…?”
“Did you hear something?”
Deborah ended up pulling out a card she had received from another investigator and showing it to them.
“As you know, this is confidential, so don’t leak it to the outside.
There’s a strange, unidentified disease going around.
And it’s among humans who have consumed this meat.
The meat is said to have quite a bit of magic power imbued in it.
Perhaps it’s a runaway phenomenon caused by excessive magic power.”
Basically, information from the Public Security Police Department was confidential.
However, Polcinella, at least among those currently working together, was in the position of conducting a joint investigation with a cooperation document, and the other students only needed to be kept quiet.
Deborah had failed to handle the problem alone, and as someone who needed to gather information by putting their heads together, she couldn’t afford to keep her cards hidden.
“Really? I don’t know much about magic power…
If it’s a disease, does that mean it’s poisonous?
I can think of a few things if it’s poison…
But I’ve never seen a poison that works like this…
Besides, none of them have wings, do they?”
“……..”
As soon as she heard the word ‘poison,’ Polcinella seemed to be racking her brain, carefully considering the things that came to mind.
Deborah’s expression gradually twisted with annoyance when even she, who had spent a lot of time on the front lines, couldn’t come up with a meaningful answer.
“It’s hard to believe in the existence of dragons from fairy tales…
But something is definitely going wrong.
It seems certain that it’s a new species that hasn’t been discovered before.
We need to proceed with the recovery operation as quickly as possible and prevent citizens from eating the meat…”
“But… What do you think that is…?”
– Kiryararak
“Don’t talk, just Vera first!!
Students, fall back!!”
As soon as the sound of a rattlesnake shaking its tail pierced her ears, Deborah quickly twisted her body to avoid the attack.
She dodged the attack once again, sliding sideways as if jumping horizontally, with a momentary burst of speed.
As if replacing her, Polcinella dashed past Deborah at high speed and slashed the neck of the suddenly appearing monster with a horizontal strike.
“That’s…”
“Ulfaifer!! It shouldn’t be here, though?”
The monster, resembling a hunting dog with a tail that whipped around sharply like a whip, had its head severed and its body, larger than a human, collapsed to the ground.
Polcinella seemed pleased to have encountered an opponent she had experienced before, but Deborah’s eyes narrowed with a strange sense of unease as she listened.
“You guys go back!!
From now on, this is beyond the students’ area.
What the hell is going on…?”
“From behind.”
And as she brushed past her, a monster ambushed Deborah from the shadows on the ceiling.
Deborah, turning to look at Vivian, who had torn the monster’s neck in a ragged manner, widened her eyes and pouted her lips.
“Since we’re doing it anyway, we’re going to do it right.”
“You’re trying so hard even though you won’t get any extra points.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, but stay sharp.
It seems too late to run away now.”
Sensing the gazes staring at them from all over the building, the Public Security Police Department team and the request experience team raised their weapons and prepared for battle.
.
.
.
“Magic power distortion, I’ve never seen anything like this before.
It directly contradicts [Palmoor’s Fusion Biomaeryology].”
“Fusion Biomaeryology? Palmoor, you say…”
“Basically, magic power has a natural, inherent flow, and living beings can intervene in the middle of that flow through intelligent thought, allowing the organism to control the magic power. That’s the basic principle…”
The Royal Magianalysis Bureau, where only the wisest magic researchers in Groden could enter.
Here, which included three of the most famous sages in Groden’s academic world, work was underway to roughly analyze the meat fragments that had been brought from Undenbrah and write a report.
At the words of a female researcher who was observing the meat fragment placed in the center of a magic circle, a man, an expert in another field, clapped his hands as if something had occurred to him.
According to Palmoor’s Fusion Biomaeryology, a master of biomaeryology 80 years ago, only a living organism with free will could control magic power, which basically has a natural flow.
In other words, it was only natural that a dead person could not control magic power.
“And above all, those few living beings with the intelligence to manipulate magic power…
So, if we take humans as an example… What was it…?
Ah!! Depending on the ‘Physical Maery Conversion Rate,’ there’s a limit to the amount of magic power that can be stored in the body…!!
And even if you try to draw magic power from the outside, that process requires high-dimensional thinking and concentration.
When you die, all the magic power in your body disappears within half a day.
But this meat fragment…”
“Isn’t it almost a week now?”
“That’s right. Even after a week…
Magic power remains in this dead lump of meat…!!
And… that magic power is actually starting to run wild…!!”
“Then those strange phenomena…”
“Even if something stranger happens than what’s happening now…
It wouldn’t be strange at all…
What on earth is this…?”
.
.
.
“Hmph…!! Euryahhh!!”
Lani pulled her sword back behind her waist, put her strength into it as if she were throwing a shot put, and then swung it forward, bisecting a monster.
Next to her, Roxanne, like a heavy-armored warrior, spun her enormous halberd, nearly twice her height, dodging what she could, blocking what she could, and single-handedly taking on several monsters.
‘This is easier than I thought?
I was a little worried since it’s my first time fighting monsters…’
Even Anne was holding a sword and somehow managing to protect herself. Vivian glanced at Polcinella and Deborah, who were also dealing with the monsters attacking from all directions.
Polcinella was smashing the attacking monsters with powerful sword strikes, while Deborah was avoiding the monsters’ attacks with precise distance control, accurately stabbing or slicing at their weak points, and maintaining a concise pace.
But a prolonged fight was something all swordsmen had to be wary of.
Polcinella and Deborah felt a sense of unease at the monsters that kept appearing from somewhere no matter how many they defeated, and they began to talk to each other while fighting, sensing that something was wrong.
“I don’t see any particularly dangerous ones yet?”
“But there’s no end to them.
What’s going on?
Can you think of anything?”
“Hmm… There is something that bothers me…
The problem is, I can’t confirm it like this…?”
“What if I handle this situation?”
“No matter what, that’s dangerous!? Hyah!!
That’s the most common mistake new Guardians make?
The front line!! Should be maintained as smoothly as possible so that it doesn’t break!!
There are a lot of people who go down trying to be heroes!!”
If the comrades waiting on the front lines heard that, they would shed tears of anger and point their fingers at her first.
Polcinella then held her sword to the side and swung it, knocking one of the monsters towards the other monsters as if she were playing baseball.
“But nothing will change if we stay like this.
There are students here, so we have to respond to something.”
“That’s true? Then where…!!
Can you somehow hold on for about a minute?”
“Yoo-hoo!! Reminds me of the old days!!
It was like that back then too!!
Deborah was the only one I could trust to watch my back!!
Why don’t you become a Guardian with me!!
Why did you go to a boring place like the Public Security Police Department!!”
“Stop talking nonsense and hurry up and go!!”
Deborah glared at Polcinella, who was walking a few steps ahead, splitting two monsters and smiling, and let out a hollow laugh. She lightly stabbed the neck of another monster and then took a backstep.
And as Deborah’s body turned, her slightly raised opposite foot powerfully kicked towards Polcinella at the same time.
As if she had been waiting for it, she jumped into the air and kicked off Deborah’s foot, as if stepping on it, and then began to fly forward like a rocket.
“I’ll be right back!!”
Seeing Polcinella’s disappearing back, Deborah turned around and began to give instructions.
While Polcinella, a powerful force, was gone, it was time to hold out.
Whether or not they knew their roles properly was an important factor in determining whether or not they could withstand that moment.
“Then from now on, we’ll reorganize the formation.
The paladin over there, cover a wide area with your polearm, just like you were doing.
The girl who’s just full of unnecessary strength, run around and disrupt the monsters.
The other two girls, defend the door.
Don’t let a single one out.”
“Understood!! Then come this way!!
I’ll show you the light of the heavenly god that destroys evil!!”
“Uh… So…
I just have to run around, right?
Yahoo!! Then I’m going…!!”
Roxanne slammed her halberd into the ground and began to emit a subtle light, while Lani, excited, raised her sword and cheered as she ran forward.
In contrast, Vivian, watching Deborah, who was giving instructions and standing like a mountain in front of them, tilted her head slightly forward.
‘I like that she’s rational…
But she’s still a dangerous enemy in the long run…
If both of us had been in good condition back then, I might have lost…’
But Vivian, knowing that there was no point in emitting killing intent early on, had no choice but to prioritize overcoming the current situation.
‘This is near Floraz.
I don’t know what’s going on…
But if we’re not careful, we’ll ruin the foundation of our business.
So right now… we have to stop it somehow…’
Her eyes, glancing slightly to the side, turned to a girl who was clenching a folding greatsword in her hand, her lips tightly closed.
Judging by the way she kept adjusting her grip on the sword, it was obvious that she was very nervous, but she didn’t seem to be trying to run away.
‘I don’t like it… but I can’t help it…’
Vivian, who had blown away the neck of a monster rushing towards her, snapped at Anne, who was startled and belatedly raised her sword.
“Snap out of it, Monehen.
Unless you want to die here.”
“Ah… Yeah…
Th-thank you, Vivi…”
Anne, who parried the monster’s attack with her sword and stabbed it, thanked Vivian.
Vivian, still frowning as if she didn’t like it, and Anne’s backs touched each other, and the monster hunt in the royal capital that wasn’t a date began.
