Every attack launched at the humanoid made of black dust scored a hit—the creature made no attempt to evade.
Death Scythe cleaved through it deeply, the Twilight Spear pierced its body, Mirage in its whip form slashed across it in a wide arc, and the Ice Arrows punched clean through its torso.
To any onlooker, it would have looked like a one-sided rout.
Yet from the feel of those strikes, Rei already knew he hadn't dealt a fatal blow.
The attacks he'd unleashed carried more than enough power to slaughter an ordinary monster of the kind you'd find anywhere.
Even so, the impact that traveled through Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear felt like swinging at empty air.
Elena, who had struck directly with her own hands just as Rei had, frowned, her finely shaped brows drawing together—the sensation relayed through Mirage was that of a strike hitting nothing at all.
The only exception was the Ice Arrows generated by Seto's skill, which hadn't been a direct physical attack and thus carried no such tactile feedback.
Before long, the portions of the black dust humanoid that had been scattered by the attacks drifted back through the air, filling in the missing pieces.
"This thing is—" Rei started to call it troublesome, but the black dust humanoid thrust its hand toward him.
"Tch!"
During the previous volley, Rei had put distance between himself and the creature so as not to block the Ice Arrows Seto had fired last.
A distance of roughly three meters.
The black dust humanoid, by contrast, stood about a hundred eighty centimeters tall.
Under normal circumstances, reaching toward Rei from that range would never have been enough to close the gap.
It shouldn't have been able to reach him... but this was hardly a normal circumstance.
The opponent wasn't an ordinary human—it was a figure composed of black dust.
The hand extended toward Rei stretched longer, thinning as it grew.
Whether the creature had judged Rei's attacks as the most powerful and identified him as its greatest threat, or whether it had simply targeted the nearest opponent—unfortunately, Rei couldn't tell.
Even so, he had no intention of standing there and taking the hit.
He sidestepped the black dust humanoid's lunge with ease and unleashed a counterstrike with Death Scythe.
But once again, there was no sensation of cutting through anything in his grip.
(Does this mean physical attacks won't work and I need to burn it?)
With that thought, he rolled the wrist gripping Death Scythe and delivered another strike.
This time, however, it wasn't an ordinary blow—it was one infused with mana.
The reason he could pull off such a maneuver with a weapon as massive as Death Scythe owed much to one of the scythe's inherent abilities: it rendered the weapon's weight nearly imperceptible.
The strike exploited that very ability, but...
"Tch, no good either!"
Even with a mana-infused strike, there was no sensation of severing the defilement.
Frustrated as he was, Rei found himself accepting the result as inevitable.
If mana-infused strikes were the answer, then Seto's Ice Arrows from moments ago were also magic—or if not strictly magic, they were at least a Skill activated through mana.
If those had proven ineffective, then a Death Scythe strike charged with mana would be equally pointless.
(What do I do?)
Rei weighed his options for dealing with the black dust humanoid, but no trace of panic accompanied his thoughts.
Their attacks being ineffective was certainly alarming—there was no denying that.
But the enemy's attacks were by no means powerful either.
No, to be precise, he couldn't even tell whether they were powerful or not.
It had reached toward him, yes, but the movement was anything but swift. Evading it hadn't been particularly difficult for him.
(Or maybe its capabilities depend on the original corpse that formed the black dust humanoid? That's certainly plausible.)
Against an opponent of this caliber, dodging its attacks was no great challenge.
At the same time, the inescapable fact remained that his own attacks were useless. Caught between those two realities, he hesitated over what to do... and ultimately settled on magic.
"I'm going to try magic on this thing! My magic might be able to do what weapons can't!"
At Rei's shout, Elena and Seto simultaneously backed away from the black dust humanoid.
Truth be told, they had already been attacking from a distance, so there was no real need for such caution... but the moment they heard "Rei's magic," growing wary was only natural.
Once he confirmed that Elena and Seto had cleared the area, Rei himself retreated from the creature and began chanting.
"Flame, thou shalt exist only within the domain I designate, and nowhere else mayst thou be. In exchange for thy brief life, feed upon my mana within that domain, and in an instant, sublime thy very existence."
As the incantation left his lips, red lines traced themselves across the ground, encircling the black dust humanoid.
The creature wasn't particularly large, so it didn't take long for the red lines to close the ring.
The lines then rose into a dome... and inside it, countless Earth Spirits in the shape of lizards materialized.
"Wild Dance of the Fire Spirits."
The moment the magic took effect, the lizard-shaped Earth Spirits within the red dome exploded—one detonation chaining into the next, each Earth Spirit detonating in sequence.
The red dome created by mana wasn't excessively large, given that the black dust humanoid was roughly human-sized.
Even so, the sheer number of Earth Spirits packed into that confined space meant the successive explosions and Explosive Flames within that limited area produced power far beyond anything conceivable.
"This is..."
Daskar's murmur reached Rei's ears from a distance.
What filled that voice was sheer awe.
Of course, Daskar already understood the extent of Rei's strength. He had witnessed it firsthand during the war with the Bestia Empire.
Even so, seeing Rei's magic from this close... what unfolded before him was a spectacle that beggared belief, even through Daskar's eyes.
For Daskar, being able to witness Rei's magic—and at full force, no less—likely held a certain satisfaction in its own right.
Though the primary objective here, of course, remained the matter of the defilement.
"Rei, what's the result?"
In response to Daskar's question, Rei paused a moment before answering.
"Until that barrier drops, I can't see what's happening inside. But... given the power behind that blast, I'm fairly confident it's been destroyed."
"You got it?"
No, don't jinx it.
Rei had been about to say as much, but given that the other party was Daskar, he held his tongue.
Even if he brought up flags and the like, he doubted the man would grasp the reference.
(If one of Daskar's subordinates were to chime in with something like "I'm getting married once this is all over"... what would I even do then?)
While such thoughts crossed his mind, the red dome gradually began to fade.
In an instant, a wave of intense heat spilled outward.
Until then, the heat had been sealed within the red dome. Now that the dome had vanished, that thermal energy flooded the surrounding area.
What's more, it was currently autumn—considerably cooler than summer—which made the blast of heat feel all the more intense.
Rei could see Daskar wiping sweat from his brow with his arm.
Had they been in some confined space it might have been a different story, but this was the middle of an open grassland.
Nothing occupied the area around them—just grassland stretching endlessly in every direction, though much of the grass was withered—and the heat released by the dome's disappearance dissipated almost immediately.
Had the thermal energy been more concentrated, the dead grass might well have caught fire.
Fortunately, under the present conditions, no such thing occurred... and where the red dome had stood, nothing remained.
In the most literal sense, everything was gone. Even the black dust that had formed the humanoid no longer existed in this place.
"Phew."
Knowing that a corpse corrupted by defilement—the black dust humanoid—could be annihilated with his magic, Rei let out a breath of relief.
Exactly what defilement was as an entity remained, unfortunately, something not even Rei could fully comprehend at this point.
Even so, learning that his magic could destroy it carried enormous significance.
(But... if Nielson finds out about this, she's going to have a field day complaining.)
The reason Nielson hadn't come to Gilm this time, from what he'd been told, was to handle the disposal of the defilement separated from Bob.
If she learned that Rei's magic could annihilate—no, incinerate—defilement, it would mean she'd had no real need to stick with the Chief at all.
It was true that Rei hadn't known his magic would work against defilement.
That was a fact. The real question was whether Nielson would accept that as an excuse.
If she found out, she would undoubtedly give him an earful.
"It's gone... then."
After the red dome vanished, Daskar muttered, confirming that no trace of the black dust humanoid remained.
Even from Daskar's perspective, the creature had been an aberrant existence.
After all, Rei, Elena, and Seto had thrown everything at it and failed to bring it down.
Only Rei's magic had finally managed to destroy the thing.
In that sense, there was no question it was a troublesome foe, even if it could ultimately be defeated.
"Rei, what was it like actually fighting the thing?"
"Strong... isn't quite the right word. I'd say 'persistent' is more accurate."
"What do you think would happen if a large number of enemies like that appeared at once?"
"I don't think we'd be able to win easily. Gilm does have skilled adventurers, though, and some of them pack serious attack power. If we built our strategy around those individuals, we could probably manage."
"Hmm. So it's a question of attack power. But if it comes to that, the complications would be considerable... It seems the best course of action after all is simply to avoid fighting the defilement."
"That would be the ideal. Saying 'fortunately' feels wrong under the circumstances, but for now the remaining nine corpses are stored in my Misty Ring. And if we dispose of the bodies before they're fully eroded by defilement, we might be able to handle things more easily."
The reason defeating the defilement-corrupted entity—the black dust humanoid—had taken so much effort ultimately boiled down to the fact that they had waited for the creature to be completely consumed by defilement before acting.
If they struck before the erosion was complete, the odds of managing the situation were far higher.
"Also, from what I saw, 'persistent' was certainly accurate, but in terms of attack power, it appeared to be severely lacking."
Elena interjected into the exchange between Rei and Daskar.
From Elena's vantage point, the black dust humanoid had shown no meaningful damage whether struck by her own attacks, Rei's, or Seto's.
There were moments when the black dust comprising its body was scattered into the air, but it reformed before much time had passed.
In that sense, "persistent" was undeniably apt—but when it came to offense, it was an entirely different story.
As far as actual attacks went... it had essentially just reached its hand out.
And even that was such a slow, languid gesture that the word "attack" scarcely fit.
What would actually happen if someone were touched by the hand the creature extended was, unfortunately, something Rei didn't know either.
Had he tested it, he might have learned the answer... but Rei had absolutely no desire to volunteer for such an experiment.
"In other words, even if defeating it is difficult, pinning it down is possible? But that black dust humanoid came after me relentlessly for some reason. If we can't determine why, that could create its own set of problems."
"I won't deny that. However... from what I observed, among everyone who attacked the black dust humanoid, Rei dealt the greatest damage. I believe the creature recognized that, which is why it singled him out."
The slightly—truly only slightly—irked expression on her face was likely because Elena's strike with Mirage had been judged as dealing less damage than Rei's blows—and since he had used both Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear, more accurately two strikes.
Apart from her feelings toward Rei, Elena possessed the pride befitting someone known as the Princess General.
Being deemed a less threatening opponent than Rei by the black dust humanoid was, understandably, galling.
"Which means that luring the enemy to a predetermined location wouldn't be all that difficult."
"It didn't appear to possess much intelligence, so as Lord Daskar says, drawing it out somewhere shouldn't be hard. And if we hit the spot where we've lured it with a powerful attack..."
He let the sentence hang there, and Rei's gaze drifted to where the black dust humanoid had stood... to the spot that had served as the epicenter of his magic.