A Woman Dripping with Blood

The Chimera's massive goat head came flying through the air at high speed.

Ramiza-san timed it perfectly and swung the mace with everything she had.

With a beautiful form and a dull whoosh of air, the mace and the goat head collided.

A sickening burst accompanied the spray of purple blood and gore.

"Whoa, I went and did it."

She'd pulverized the head that came flying at her.

Considering the size of that head, she must have needed an extraordinary amount of arm strength to reduce it to that.

Ramiza-san was unscathed, but she was now drenched head-to-toe in blood.

Elza-san accepted the blood-and-flesh-caked mace back with a strained smile.

"Azu, the tail's coming!"

I darted sideways at the sound of Alexia-san's voice.

When I looked, the tail-snake had its mouth open, lunging at me with venomous fangs.

Its movements were fast but linear, making it not too difficult to dodge.

The tail-snake swept past me, then turned its eyes back in my direction.

It began retracting immediately, so I kicked up from below to slam its jaw shut.

There was a metallic clang, as if its fangs had crashed into each other.

Robbing it of its means to strike back, I moved to sever its neck.

… The skin was tough. But not too tough to cut through.

"Hyah!"

With a shout, I put more force behind the blade and sliced the snake's head clean off.

Blood gushed from the severed stump of the tail.

Under cover of that spray, the decapitated snake head turned toward me and spewed out broken fangs and a toxic mist.

I reflexively deflected the fangs with my sword and shielded my face with my left hand.

Where the toxic mist touched my left hand, there was a sizzling sound and a searing pain like being burned.

I felt the strength draining from it. This probably wasn't good.

I shook my left hand to get as much of the mist off as possible and fell back.

"Azu-chan, come here. I'll heal you."

Elza-san rinsed my left hand with holy water.

When I checked the damage, the skin where the mist had touched was red like a burn.

It looked grotesque, but a healing miracle restored it to normal before my eyes.

"If you don't have poison countermeasures, the bodily fluids melt you like that, and once you're wounded, the toxin enters your system and things get dicey. Humans are weak to poison, after all."

"What a troublesome enemy. We fought one before and it was tough, but I don't remember it being this bad."

"Dungeon-born monsters might look the same, but you should think of them as completely different creatures from the ones you find on open ground."

I clenched and unclenched my left hand several times to check its condition.

Plenty of strength in it.

While I'd been getting treated, Alexia-san had been firing off spells without pause to keep the Chimera at bay.

"Come on, you need to finish it off soon or it'll start regenerating."

"I know."

Flesh was already bulging from the wound where the goat head had been.

Left alone, just as Ramiza-san said, the neck would grow back.

It was hardly our place to talk, given that Elza-san's healing miracles could mend our own wounds, but wasn't it a bit unfair for something to regrow its head after losing it?

The sheer vitality of this thing was staggering.

"Slash one of its limbs and throw it off balance. After that, I'll handle the rest."

"On it!"

Seeing Alexia-san begin charging a big spell, I kicked off the ground and dashed forward.

Perhaps sensing mortal danger, the Chimera's lion face let out a roar and lashed out with a massive forepaw.

I dodged that, and then it opened its jaws wide, trying to crush me in its teeth.

Straightforward use of its size advantage was far more frightening than any cheap trick.

Any of these attacks would mean broken bones at the very least. Potentially fatal.

I kicked the ground hard, leaped higher than the lion head, and landed on its back.

The remaining stump of the tail immediately swept at me, so I dropped flat and landed next to the Chimera's hind leg.

Before it could turn around, I poured the power of the Apostle into my blade and slashed horizontally with everything I had.

By also unleashing the Sealed Sword Grungaus's power, I didn't quite manage to sever the leg completely, but I cut through most of it.

The Chimera buckled to its knee, unable to move.

It tried to rise immediately, but there was no way Alexia-san would let that opening pass.

I threw myself backward at full speed, and as we passed each other, a lance of fire was hurled toward the Chimera.

The fire lance pierced the Chimera's chest, lifted its entire body off the ground, and pinned it to the wall like a crucifixion.

Then it detonated, incinerating the Chimera from the inside out.

Black smoke poured from the lion's mouth, and then the massive body crumpled to the ground.

It showed no sign of moving.

It seemed we'd finally killed it for good.

"I see. Nicely done. So as long as you finish it off like that, brute force works just fine. That sword you've got isn't ordinary either."

Ramiza-san applauded.

I was truly relieved we'd defeated it without anyone getting hurt.

Between the poison, the mental attacks, the claws, and the fangs, it had a diverse and troublesome arsenal.

If it had been able to use magic on top of all that, we might not have been able to handle it.

"I'm complimenting you, you know. Your balance of recovery, offense, and defense is excellent. If it were just me, I'd be dodging around while chipping away at it with this until it couldn't move anymore, then smashing its head. A pretty boring fight."

"Doesn't that mean you could solo it?"

I practically went limp.

Who exactly had the better balance here, I wondered.

"Go ahead and check the back while you can. This thing's probably been alive for a long time, so it's bound to have stockpiled all sorts of stuff. I'll butcher it in the meantime."

"Got it."

I moved with Alexia-san and the others toward the area behind where the Chimera had been sitting.

This was, in a sense, the most exciting part of any dungeon clear.

Around the core, the heart of the dungeon, you could find high-density magic stones, as well as ores refined within the dungeon and magical tools.

Just as Ramiza-san had said, there before us lay a breathtaking pile of gold, silver, and treasure.

"All right, let's stuff it all into bags."

"There's so much of it."

Apparently, collecting magic stones from the area near the core weakened the dungeon.

If we cleaned the place out, it should stay dormant for a while.

Fortunately, everything fit into our storage bags, so we didn't have to endure the ordeal that Alexia-san and the others had gone through before, hauling it all out in regular sacks.

When we returned to the main chamber, the Chimera's massive body had begun being absorbed by the dungeon.

More than half of it had already sunk into the floor.

Ramiza-san's arms were stained with Chimera blood, but she didn't seem to mind.

"Welcome back. How was the haul?"

"Pretty good, I think. We took everything, so this dungeon should stay quiet for a while."

"Nice. That's what adventuring's all about. I'm happy too. It's been a while since I got to collect Chimera blood."

She was holding a cloth sack about the size of a person's head, filled to the brim with liquid.

It was surely Chimera blood inside.

I wondered what she'd do with something like that, but I was a little too scared to ask.

"Let's head out, then. Now that the dungeon's gone dormant, the monsters probably won't attack us. See? The toxic smoke drifting through the dungeon has already thinned out."

"Oh, you're right."

The smoke that had been thick enough to obscure our vision had cleared considerably.

That had been a harrowing dungeon. I didn't want to think about what would have happened without Ramiza-san.

The importance of resistance and preparation really sank in.

Though we sensed the presence of monsters, they apparently had no desire to attack us after we'd slain their master, and we made it back to the entrance without a single fight.

"The ring's effect should be wearing off right about now."

"Ah, my whole body is starting to tingle…"

"Ha ha. Might be an aftereffect. Here, take a sip of this."

She handed me a green potion, and I drank it.

A refreshing coolness swept through me, drawing the poison out as it went.

I passed it to Elza-san, who drank and then handed it to Alexia-san.

"It's already night outside, so why don't we camp here and head back tomorrow?"

"Good idea. I don't have the energy to walk back from here…"

We used our remaining strength and stamina to set up camp.