The action the flying eyeball took the moment Rei threw the Twilight Spear.
It halted every attack it had been directing at Rei and the others, committing fully to defense. To Rei, that reaction signaled both a troublesome opponent and a perfect opportunity.
"I'll draw the tentacles! You three hit the eyeball!"
He shouted as he pierced through the majority of the tentacles. Even so, the Twilight Spear remained buried among the countless tentacles that had sprouted to replace the ones destroyed. Recalling the weapon to his hand with its Special Ability, he called out again.
"Understood!"
"Got it!"
"Gruu!"
Elena, Marina, and Set.
The two people and one creature who had means of ranged attack each responded to Rei's words and sprang into action beside him as he hurled the returned Twilight Spear once more.
"Then I'll guard Rei for now."
Vihera, the only one among them without a ranged attack, took her place at Rei's side with a hint of disappointment in her murmur.
Glancing at Vihera, Rei silently stowed Death Scythe into his Misty Ring.
It went without saying that throwing a spear with one's dominant hand yielded greater power. The reason Rei had been throwing the Twilight Spear with his left hand was so he could intercept with Death Scythe if the tentacles chose to attack him rather than focus on defense.
But with Vihera guarding him, he had no qualms about leaving that role to her.
Rei found Vihera's personality—her love of combat—a slight concern, but he had absolutely no doubts about her ability. Since she was offering to protect him, choosing to focus entirely on offense was the natural call.
"Die!"
The Twilight Spear, charged with even more mana than before, shot straight toward the eyeball with tremendous speed, as though piercing through the very air itself.
Sensing the threat, the eyeball once again layered numerous tentacles into a shield.
"Don't forget about us!"
With those words, Elena generated a massive vortex of wind and launched it at the eyeball. What set this vortex apart from a tornado was that it moved freely through the air according to Elena's will. It was a strike of wind so intense it could easily be described as a giant spear of air.
"And while we're at it, how about this?"
Flipping her party dress, Marina activated her Spirit Magic. What materialized was a giant lion made of water.
The fact that it somehow reminded Rei of Set was probably because she spent so much time alongside him.
Though Rei had no idea how she did it, the water lion kicked off the air as though it were solid ground, surging toward the eyeball. And then...
"Gururururururururururu!"
Raising a war cry, Set dove from far above the altitude where the eyeball floated.
The Skill that amplified a single strike's power—Power Crush. The Bracelet of Herculean Strength that boosted physical might. And the sheer force of Set, whose body exceeded three meters in length, plunging downward. The combined attack could deliver a near-fatal blow to an ordinary monster—no, even to a fairly high-rank one.
"Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
But the instant those attacks were about to strike, the eyeball discharged intense lightning in all directions from its own body—not from the tentacles.
"Wha—!?"
The wind vortex and the water lion were instantly annihilated by the lightning. Cries of surprise escaped Elena and Marina.
However, they only sustained that much damage because they had been attacking from a distance.
In other words, Set, who had been diving straight at the eyeball...
"Kyan!"
Set, about to slam a Power Crush onto the eyeball from high above, took the full force of the sudden discharge and let out a scream.
Rei had hardly ever heard Set scream. Because of that, the sound froze him in place for an instant—but the next moment, his fury surged, and the mana poured into the Twilight Spike jumped by another degree.
"Take this!"
The released spear flew straight toward the airborne eyeball, clearly faster than any previous throw. Its speed and power were enough to effortlessly pierce through the multilayered shield of tentacles...
"Seems they won't just leave us alone either!"
The moment Rei threw the Twilight Spear, several tentacles extended toward him from both sides rather than reinforcing the shield. The eyeball must have realized that simply blocking forever would accomplish nothing, and decided to eliminate him.
But a mere few tentacles were nowhere near enough to deal with Vihera.
Magic claws extending from her Hand Gauntlets severed them with ease. The tentacles' elasticity offered some resistance when cut, but with Vihera's skill, that was no problem at all.
"Set!"
"Guru... Gurururu!"
Though struck by lightning, Set's lion body and feline instincts kicked in, allowing him to land feet-first on the ground. He had also flapped his wings to slow his descent, but that split-second response was truly worthy of Set.
Rei felt relieved seeing Set's condition, but furrowed his brows slightly.
The lightning the eyeball had discharged wasn't focused—it had been an omnidirectional burst centered on itself. Thanks to that, Set hadn't suffered a fatal wound, nor even any visible injury, but it was obvious at a glance that his legs were unsteady upon landing and his body was numb.
At the very least, under these conditions, Rei couldn't count Set as part of their combat power.
(The most painful loss is the drop in aerial combat power.)
Rei and Elena had Sleipnir boots that let them tread on air, but even those had limitations. Set, by contrast, could fly freely through the sky under his own power. What's more, the eyeball itself was floating by some unknown means. Set's absence in this situation was a severe disadvantage.
"For now, this tentacle shield is in the way!"
Rei recalled the Twilight Spear to his hand. It had pierced deeper into the shield than ever before, yet still failed to punch all the way through.
Whether because of the incident underground or simply because it sensed the Twilight Spear's power, Rei couldn't tell—but it was clear the eyeball was far more wary of him than anyone else.
...Such special treatment wasn't exactly pleasant for Rei, but it was still better than the others taking harm.
"Elena, Marina, stall for me! Vihera, guard me!"
Calling out sharply, Rei judged that things would go nowhere at this rate and began amplifying his mana.
What Rei was about to do was likely understood by the three he'd called out to, and by Set, who was still numb and immobilized from the lightning. Each of them immediately moved to support him.
Elena's Mirage took whip form and lashed toward the eyeball, while Marina loosed an arrow to cover her. At the same time, Vihera focused on intercepting several incoming tentacles.
During that interval, Rei highly compressed the mana within himself. What should normally be invisible gathered at such density that it became visible, and as a characteristic of Rei's mana, the surrounding temperature steadily rose.
The eyeball must have sensed the change. It swung the tentacles that had formed the shield and launched them at Rei.
But the others, tasked with covering him, were never going to allow that so easily. Elena's Mirage in particular succeeded in severing most of the tentacles aimed at him. Given that Mirage's strikes had previously been blocked by the tentacles surrounding the eyeball itself, it made more sense to focus on intercepting those directed at Rei.
"Goooooooooooooooooo!"
A scream erupted from the eyeball—Marina's doing. She had used Wind Spirit Magic to control the arrow's trajectory, threading it through gaps in the tentacles to strike the eyeball directly.
Considering that large-scale Spirit Magic might be intercepted by the eyeball's lightning or some other means, Marina had opted for this particular attack. Rather than something massive like the water lion, she simply used wind to guide the arrow's path.
It was a strike the eyeball found difficult to counter. From a bystander's perspective, it looked no different from an ordinary arrow.
Perhaps if the eyeball possessed some ability to perceive spirits, it might have understood what was happening. But fortunately for Marina, it had no such capability.
Of course, a single arrow wouldn't deal a fatal wound. For the eyeball, surprise had surely outweighed pain from that last strike. Even so, landing a hit on the eyeball itself was significant for Marina.
Above all, she had bought enough time for Rei to activate his trump card—the Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor.
"Phew... that's enough."
At Rei's words, Vihera, who had been fighting nearby, quickly leapt backward and yielded the battlefield.
Rei, still wreathed in crimson mana, took a step toward the tentacles. His demeanor showed no sign of caution whatsoever. Under normal reasoning, the eyeball could easily have judged him as an opponent it could attack without hesitation.
But... yes, but.
The instant Rei stepped forward, the tentacles approaching from both sides stopped dead. More than that—as if frightened, they actually retreated.
"What's wrong? You've been attacking nonstop this whole time. Pulling back now is a letdown. If you won't come to me, I'll go to you. You don't mind, do you?"
Muttering, Rei took another step forward—not toward the tentacles that had frozen on either side, but toward the floating shield of tentacles prepared to counter the Twilight Spear.
The eyeball must have sensed danger. It tried to attack Rei with the tentacles it had momentarily pulled back...
"Gururururururu!"
"Haaah!"
In that instant, the right tentacle was torn away by Set's strike, and simultaneously the left was severed mid-length by Elena's Mirage.
Set hadn't fully recovered from the lightning's effects, but he had recovered enough to move. And even in his current state, while the eyeball's main body was another matter entirely, dealing with the tentacles was no problem at all.
"Goooooo!"
At the movements of that one person and one creature, the floating eyeball let out an irritated cry...
"Wind, please!"
Marina activated Wind Spirit Magic, and a gale worthy of the name howled down from above, producing a phenomenon that could only be described as a hammer of wind.
What the hammer struck was not the eyeball, but the shield of tentacles it had prepared. The sheer force slammed the tentacle shield into the ground.
And the instant it hit, Rei was already standing before it. He swung Death Scythe in a wide arc—a strike so casual it was as if he were mowing grass.
But that strike slashed through the tentacle shield even more effortlessly than before. The next moment, he unleashed Deep Flame, hurling a portion of the Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor, and in an instant the shield was incinerated completely.
"Next."
Glancing at the tentacle shield now reduced to charcoal, Rei turned his gaze toward the eyeball.
The eyeball fired lightning at him. Not the omnidirectional burst it had used initially, but a spear of Purple Lightning aimed in a straight line directly at Rei.
That strike, moving at what could only be called lightning speed, was effortlessly burned away and slashed apart by Death Scythe in Rei's hand, clad in the Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor.
Just how absurd it was to burn and cut lightning—that much was clear from the expressions of Elena, Marina, and Vihera, who had been watching his entire series of actions.
But Rei, seemingly unbothered by what he had done and still wreathed in crimson mana—in the Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor—bared a ferocious grin at the airborne eyeball, which had lost its tentacle shield and was rapidly sprouting new tentacles from its body.
"What's wrong? Is that all you've got? Then... I'm coming to you next."
Whether it understood Rei's words or not was unclear, but the eyeball in the air—albeit only slightly—definitely retreated.