bookbashuk #254 - Despair is a deadly disease
#254 - Despair is a deadly disease
It wasn't over yet!
Using the recoil from stomping on the White Whale, Wilhelm gracefully somersaulted in mid-air to the White Whale's head, brandishing his sharp longswords, slashing from its nose to its cheek, and finally thrusting at its massive eye.
He plunged both swords deep into the White Whale's left eye, then immediately abandoned them, drawing two new blades and slashing horizontally, followed by an upward thrust.
As a result, the White Whale's left eye was sliced into four pieces and fell out.
A fin and a left eye.
These were Zun Zun and Wilhelm's achievements.
With their tacit cooperation, the White Whale, being toyed with, could only resemble a fish on a chopping board, its combat power disparity unaffected by the overwhelming difference in size.
A pure punching bag.
Just as Zun Zun was wondering, 'Am I really unable to deal with the White Whale?', the giant whale's body trembled slightly, and after losing a fin and an eye, it seemed to accept this humiliating reality.
“Roar— — — — — —!”
An explosive roar erupted from the White Whale's mouth filled with dense teeth, nearly causing Zun Zun to fall over due to the uncontrollable Earth Dragon beneath him.
A fin was cut off, a single eye was gouged out.
Anger dyed the White Whale's remaining eye blood-red, its gaze forcing back the charging subjugation force. Then, trembling all over with hatred and rage, its flesh began to change.
Extremely sensitive to magical power, Zun Zun immediately realized it was about to unleash a big move.
“Flamme, retreat!”
“Yes!”
Ignoring her spoils of war, the maid steered the Earth Dragon in a 180° turn, quickly leaving the White Whale.
Wilhelm did the same, leaping off the whale's back while whistling, as a handsome Earth Dragon galloped over to carry him away.
Then, Zun Zun saw the White Whale open its mouth.
No, that's not an accurate description.
To be precise, every pit on the White Whale's body opened simultaneously, emitting a piercing sound.
“— — — — Ga!”
The shriek flooded their brains, an discordant sound unimaginable in this world, more grating than fingernails scraping a blackboard, polluting everyone's minds through their hearing.
The victims were not limited to humans; even the Earth Dragons, the riding beasts, cowered in instinctive fear.
This was a difference in hierarchy.
Like the absolute dominion of a dragon, the apex of creatures, over low-level beasts.
From the countless mouths emitting the piercing sound, an astonishing amount of white mist spewed out, instantly pouring onto the plains, turning the world illuminated by the Night-Banishing effect into a sea of white.
Vision was obscured, and bodies shrank back.
They subconsciously understood that the White Whale finally regarded the subjugation force as enemies.
Zun Zun was also becoming 'disoriented'.
The Crimson Demons were actually quite sensitive to magical power, and most of them used this ability to judge things and direction, but in streets shrouded in magic-filled mist, Zun Zun simply couldn't tell which way to go. He seemed to know why he couldn't defeat the White Whale.
The White Whale, with its enormous body roaming in the sky, flowed discordant sounds from the small mouths opened all over its body, as if sneering at these insignificant humans who dared to challenge it.
Originally, the damage dealt to the White Whale by the subjugation force led by Zun Zun and Wilhelm was definitely not small, cutting off one of its fins and gouging out one of its eyes. Even if they couldn't deliver the final blow, they could at least expect the results of it falling to the ground.
But now—
“This is bad, it's the mist!”
The White Mist, constantly emitting shrieks, spread mist from countless mouths, descending from the sky and accumulating, the range expanding beyond the road.
The field of vision gradually turned white.
The effect of the Night-Banishing magic stones gradually waned.
With the vision worsening, it was difficult for the subjugation force to cooperate closely on the plain covered in mist, and more importantly, the White Whale itself seemed to disappear into the sea of mist.
Zun Zun couldn't grasp its position at all.
“Lord Zun Zun!”
“It's alright! Trust my luck!”
Flamme was a little nervous and didn't know what to do. Zun Zun held her slender shoulders to encourage her, while the crown on his forehead began to contract, his luck constantly rising. He signaled his maid not to run around like a headless fly, but to rush straight in a certain direction.
And when the Earth Dragon started to flee from the spot, a layer of thick fog pounced over the place where they had just been standing. The passing mist came like a huge wave, and if they were even a moment late in dodging, they would be swallowed along with the Earth Dragon.
There's nothing to fear from mere mist.
Perhaps one could be dismissive without seeing the real thing, but once one saw it, one would recognize the horror of the mist.
The thick fog disintegrated the surface of the plain it touched as if dissolving it, and any substance it reached vanished into thin air. If one were directly swallowed by that mist, even the human body would not escape the same fate.
So that's how it is.
Zun Zun nodded knowingly.
The White Mist was no different from ordinary mist, the amount of magical power it contained was almost the same, and without the luck buff, one would definitely be swallowed by the White Mist with one careless move.
Natsuki Subaru's strange behavior could also be explained.
The White Whale, known as the Mist Beast.
The nature of its mist was roughly divided into two types: one was the diffusion type, like covering the entire street and expanding its roaming range; the other was the annihilation type, which just now made the entire earth disappear before their eyes.
The latter, the annihilation type with destructive properties, was an attack method that had never been seen before, and its threat could be understood with just one glance.
The destructive power goes without saying.
But the effect was not just that.
Crusch waved away the enveloping mist, wiping the sweat from her forehead and gasping for breath while surveying the assembled squads.
“How many people have we lost?”
“My squad had 12 people, now only… 3 remain.”
“Who is missing?”
“I don't know…!”
Faced with the Duchess's anxious questioning, the middle-aged captain squeezed out a response and shook his head. It wasn't just him.
“13 left!”
“6 people!”
“8 people!”
“…1 person.”
The same reports came one after another. Each squad leader couldn't say the names of their missing comrades, and even the squad leader who had only one person left bit his lower lip in pain. They were clearly fighting side by side just now, and in the blink of an eye, they couldn't even remember their comrades' names… What a joke!
“—Annihilation Mist!”
Otto's teeth chattered and his body trembled with fear.
As the name implied, the existence that disappeared after touching the mist would have their existence erased from the memories of others. The world would only be left with the fact that 'someone disappeared', but their existence would not exist in anyone's memory.
…No.
It would still remain in Natsuki Subaru's memory.
But he wasn't doing well either, equally frightened and at a loss. Natsuki Subaru finally knew the true face of the chilling fear he had tasted in previous loops.
Although one shouldn't do that in this situation, everyone still spontaneously calculated how many people had disappeared.
21 people.
In just the first wave of mist attacks, the subjugation force lost a squad of members, and they didn't even know their names, pasts, or experiences, and there was no way to erect a monument for them.
But—
“Don't be afraid!”
Crusch's voice pierced through the thick mist. She shouted loudly: “From now on is the crucial moment! Our attacks are effective against the White Whale, as proven by the feeling in your hands! It is indeed powerful and unexpected. If we die, in the worst case, we may not leave any traces! But—”
She drew her sword and raised it to the sky.
“For the sake of the dead whose names cannot even be left on tombstones, for the sake of the weak in the future world exposed to the threat of the mist, we must defeat it even if we sacrifice ourselves! Follow me!”
“Oh, oh, oh— — — —!” xN
Everyone raised their weapons to the sky and shouted.
At the same time, Ferris, under Crusch's command, stuffed a demon-banishing stone into the cannon barrel. As the explosion sounded, the magic stone was fired into the sky above the mist.
The shattered magic stone's brilliance in the sky eradicated the white mist that obscured vision in one fell swoop.
It didn't dispel all the mist filling the plains in all directions, but only reduced the concentration of the mist, eliminating the state where it was difficult to maintain visibility.
But even so, the effect was very significant.
The White Whale's mist was transformed from its vast magical power. In other words, it spread its vast magical power to form the mist.
And the original effect of the demon-banishing stone was to forcibly restore the surrounding magical power to non-attribute or nullify it, but this magic stone power could turn the magical power filled with mist into harmless and thus dispel it.
If the effect of the demon-banishing stone was too strong, they would have to risk weakening the power of Zun Zun and others' magic attacks, but since they could still see the remaining mist, there was no need to worry about that aspect.
It was just right for the current situation!
The moment Zun Zun noticed the mist had thinned and his senses were no longer interfered with by magical power, he suddenly locked onto the White Whale about 30 meters diagonally above him to his side.
“Light of Saber!”
“—Ga!”
Lightning shot out again, carving open the White Whale's massive body. The wound on its left fin had quietly healed, but the lost fin could no longer grow back.
Seeing his enemy, he was extremely furious.
The White Whale howled again with bloodshot eyes, its high-pitched cry like a woman's scream, the surge of disgust making people want to cover their ears. Like a roar and a laugh, the dimension was completely different and eerie, carrying the unpredictable mist back and forth, licking the plains.
“Ah… Ah…!”
Before he could react, Zun Zun noticed Flamme covering her ears in pain, her small face furrowed together as she kept slapping her ears, as if trying to slap something out of her brain.
“Flamme!?”
“It's something similar to magic power intoxication. The White Whale is probably using the sound just now, the mist is directly interfering with the mind!”
It was Rem who rushed over to explain to him, her expression also uncomfortable.
But compared to Rem and Flamme, the other soldiers were in even more pain. Some foamed at the mouth, rolled their eyes, and convulsed; some groaned and grabbed their hands hard; some gritted their teeth and kept smashing their heads against the ground.
The symptoms varied.
But what was certain was that madness would be transmitted through the mist as a medium.
Zun Zun looked at the white giant whale roaming in the sky and couldn't help but raise a middle finger at it, cursing loudly:
“Are you some kind of ultra-high school level despair!?”
“— — — — Ga!”
He didn't know if Zun Zun's curse reached the White Whale's ears, but it made him shout again with joyful emotions. Soon it found something wrong, and cast a humanized doubt at Zun Zun.
—Why (I) are you okay?
Coincidentally.
Zun Zun also had the same question.