After leaving Subaru behind to protect Aqua and getting some attribute boosts from her, Kazuma ran forward.
It was exhilarating. The air of the battlefield and the sound of its steel. The occasional discharge of flame magic or bombs exploding.
Kazuma never expected to find a bloodthirsty side in himself, but there was a magnetized eagerness pulling and pushing him simultaneously, right in direction of the battlefield. He'd worked hard for several days killing Giant Toads, bathing in their steaming-hot entrails and oily blood, and became stronger. He accepted the Accursed's transaction in order to transcend the feeble constraints of humanity and become someone meaningful.
This moment was the crystallization of that hard work; it was the magnum opus, the eleventh hour, the day of reckoning. It was time for all of his hard work to pay off. He would see how far he'd really pushed himself over these last couple of days and whether he could truly keep going in the face of adversity.
The Accursed's words rang in his head once again, reflecting and echoing in his skull over and over. He focused on them, and the well of determination that Kazuma drew on; the desire to no longer be pathetic, was replaced by something deeper.
If the earth hopes to confine you with gravity, strike beneath and create a world without the impudent earth.
The desire to succeed.
The battlefield ahead was huge and quickly expanding as the Demon Army reinforcements arrived to help the ambushed patrols. Axelian cavalry units met with the arachnid outriders of the Demon Army, riders on both sides knocked off with spears and colored swirl-lances. The mages at the front raised their staves and rods in unison and unleashed, mostly in something that resembled synchronicity, blasts of searing fire, forking lines of lightning, or blades of severing wind. At the very tip of their spear were Nastor and Kyouya, expertly fending off an entire platoon of enemies on their lonesome.
Kazuma was happy to let them have this. He kept running, outpacing even the spearhead's furthermost outcropping, and the front lines of the readied opponents - surprising everyone in the process. He kept sprinting and ignored the chasers who gave up only seconds after, reaching the reserve troops.
This led him right into a squad of waiting foes who clearly expected him to be easy pickings - a cocky newbie who got too sure of his own newfound power. Perhaps that was correct. They were about to find out.
Kazuma's eyes coldly assessed the enemies. A party of six hobgoblin fighters, medium armor; unprotected necks and poor combat stance; untrained levies. Two archers from some kind of tougher, taller, goblinoid species, but one that didn't have skin quite as thick or light as their fighter brethren. And finally, a human mage with a staff of gnarled oak wood, standing in the back and incanting a spell aimed at one of the flanks in total ignorance of Kazuma's approach.
The archers didn't have time to draw their arrows before he acted.
Kazuma created a utility pocket and fired off a wide buckshot-spray of minted Eris coins from an oblique angle, at a straight trajectory. This denied the backline enemies the cover and protection of their frontline peers, and in doing so, the coins pierced through their unprotected windpipes like bullets, instantly felling the mage and archers. The shock of this managed to lower the guard of the fighters even more than it already was; a loose guard was no guard at all, but a loose guard that had been shocked through an event was an absence of a guard so thorough it was practically inviting the opponent to take advantage.
Kazuma did. He raised his sword and slashed diagonally. The enchanted blade elongated into a form vastly longer than a spear, thicker than a bar of iron, and sharper than a katana. The swing of the blade carried through with the previous force, lobbing off the heads of three warriors at the front, before the sword once again snapped back to the size of a vegetable knife. Kazuma closed the three feet of distance and swung again, killing the other three.
It was effortless, the arterial spray not even reaching him. An entire combat squad dealt with in five seconds. He continued to run.
It was odd, but Kazuma's heart was surprisingly devoid of mercy. He expected to feel some kind of guilt at doing this, but there was nothing that he felt for the enemies he slew other than a vague sense of pity and the regret that it had to happen. No different from the sensation of having to kill an irritating mosquito.
He continued to sprint, out of the main battle lines and making a fast approach on the wall. Skeletal archers started to rain fire upon him, but Kazuma simply created a wide utility pocket around himself as a shield.
When he realized it blinded him, Kazuma suddenly had an idea. Utility pockets were completely vantablack and opaque, meaning that light was absorbed completely and with a hundred-percent efficiency, or close to it. Did that mean...?
As a test, he created an identical utility pocket on the reverse side and ordered it mentally to send through light from the one he was using as a shield. A moment later, the image manifested in a blurry inconsistent reflection, showing dark shapes on an abstractly painted blue-white sky approaching then fading. The rain of arrows.
It seemed like the transmission of light wasn't exact, because the pocket struggled to define photon images as a complete whole; he couldn't use utility pockets to record events, but he could use them as mirrors or bulletproof windows. That was interesting, but Kazuma continued running. The wall of the outpost was only a hundred meters off.
It would have been arguably safer to stay behind and provide artillery fire as considered during the meeting, but the enemy commander revealed himself; Kazuma would kill him and send the enemy army into disarray. With a single cut, slay the entire hydra and claim the spoils of glory, acclaim, and loot.
And he needed that, if he was to deal with the Brand of the Wretched on a wide scale. There was not a single Demon King's Army General that had been slain for the entire duration of the war, and it had been going on for years now; meanwhile, the Demon King's Army killed so many generals the King and his son were forced to directly involve himself in the conflict. This wasn't the same for Demon King's Army Lieutenants, who'd been slain before, but only in scant numbers. Kazuma could do this and reap the benefits involved.
The Demon Lieutenant, who'd been watching the adventurers - Kyouya and Nastor in particular - as they advanced, now turned to Kazuma as he approached. There was an impatience to his body language, as if he was eager to get over with the upstart running towards him. He ordered something to the archers, that Kazuma imagined was something close to, 'Just kill him already. Would you?'
Kazuma smiled. When the gormless skeleton archers were in between shooting, too occupied with reloading, he dropped the utility pockets for a second. Another utility pocket dropped the White-Bone Crossbow into his waiting arms.
Kazuma took aim, fired, and killed one skeleton. He reloaded, took aim, fired, and slew another, then raised back the utility pocket to protect himself from an avalanche of arrows. He repeated this pattern once more, when the Lieutenant decided to take the bait. As expected, he leaped off the wall and then used some kind of magic to glide across the air, landing only two dozen paces away. Kazuma dropped the crossbow to the ground; he'd pick it up later.
The Archdevil commander was imposing indeed. A suit of full-plate armor colored like midnight and covered in purple runes that oozed magic, with silvery chainmail underneath it. There was a pair of holes in his helmet, from which short white horns sprouted. The demon in question wielded a long spear with a banner of some kind, as well as a staff with an eight-pointed star surrounded by a wheel in the middle adorning its top. On top of his armor was a half-robe of sorts, golden on the exterior and black on the interior, glittering subtly as it swayed in an ephemeral wind.
"Mortal," the figure spoke, voice reverberating within itself, "You face Maddin, of the Choir of Ruin. If you have any last words-"
Talking was not a free action. A utility pocket appeared behind the idiot's head and Kazuma stabbed through with his sword. The demon took it admirably, helmet deflecting most of the cut and turning it into blunt damage. Nonetheless, he overbalanced forward and Kazuma used that momentary distraction; he opened a utility pocket behind his back, moved his hand there, took out a rock, and then incanted, "Earth Bullet!" Kazuma pitched.
The Lieutenant took the bait admirably, once again, and cast, "Counterspell!" His staff glowed brightly for a moment before diffusing as the completely mundane rock hit him in the face. "Ow, what- did- did you just throw a stone at me?!"
Kazuma wasn't going to stand there and make pleasant conversation with the enemy. He cast an Illusion spell to create a total of four arms sprouting from his shoulders, giving himself the image of an Asura in the process. He ran forward, not giving the Lieutenant even a second of breathing space, before three different swords fell upon him in different configurations.
The Lieutenant chose one at random to parry, but his spear phased through the ghostly sword, and the real one cut him across the chest a moment later and caused him to fall to the ground.
"Mold Earth!" Kazuma forced the soil to bubble forward and shroud the demon in a chrysalis. Knowing he'd probably dig his way out in less than a second, Kazuma used the opening and started casting, "Lightning Strike!"
By the moment he said the word, 'Strike,' the furious Lieutenant emerged rocketlike from the soil, and screamed, "You fool-"
Then a lightning bolt, naturally, fell upon him from the screaming clouds. The demon's speech arrested there; his entire body spasmed violently and then, steaming and charbroiled, his levitation ended and he fell to the earth like a swatted fly. It was a very powerful lightning bolt; Kazuma felt his bones rattle when it happened.
"Talking is not a free action," Kazuma repeated, just to really dig in how bad this guy was at fighting. "Either shut up and put in the effort to beat me or kill yourself."
"I will..." The demon managed to get up to his elbows and knees, breathing heavily. He didn't seem that imposing, honestly. A single lightning bolt and some blunt head trauma brought him this low?
Before the demon could speak again, Kazuma shook his head then chanted, "Lightning Strike."
"Wait, n-" The clouds roared. Everything flashed and there was a thundercrack, its depth and vibrations causing Kazuma's skeleton to oscillate.
When it ended, all semblance of force and life was gone from the demon's twitching body. What was his name again? Madden? How pathetic.
The Archdevil completely failed to strategize and consider his enemy's strengths and weaknesses. He seemed to believe he could actually win this coming in, despite not gathering any information on Kazuma or what he could do. If that wasn't the height of arrogance, Kazuma wasn't sure what else could be.
Nonetheless, the battle was not over until the kill was confirmed. Since the skeletons on the wall appeared to be doing nothing but staring, Kazuma assumed the Lieutenant was their controller, and now that he was dead, they didn't have any active input to animate them into action.
Kazuma walked up to the Lieutenant's steaming, hot body, then chopped off his head. Since his throat was actually protected with a chainmail coif, it was kind of hard to make the cut; he needed to fiddle with the man's armor for a while, and given that he was as hot as a freshly microwaved meal, that wasn't a particularly comfortable experience.
Finally, the head was off. Kazuma raised it for everyone to see, then magnified his voice with an Illusion spell, "The Demon Army's Commander is dead!"
At once, half of the forces in the enemy's backline turned back to observe. Their cold, disinterested assessment fell and then yawned open into colder, deeper shock as they saw their boss' head being held like a beachball in the hands of a Japanese boy. Soon after, Kazuma could hear yelling and proclamations of wild fear.
It didn't take long for almost half the army to rout, and without support, the frontline combatants of the Demon King's Army started to lose rapidly, pushed back and killed in entire droves by Kyouya and Nastor. Kazuma started to use Mold Earth to create a sort of crescent trench around himself; a perimeter to make the escaping forces have a much harder time falling back. When they started reaching his position, he sniped them by firing the arrows he'd captured with his utility pocket, and outright chasing and stabbing those who got too near him in the back.
A couple truly brave among them tried to contest Kazuma directly. He killed all of them, but at a later point, a smiling ogre in heavy armor and with a large morningstar approached him cockily; an enemy sergeant of some kind. Kazuma fought it as well.
The ogre was trickier than most and since it didn't talk or get distracted, it put up a much better fight than their arrogant commander. Its skin was repellent to steel in much the same way a magnet was to another magnet of the same polarity, so Kazuma cast Paralyze on him and then plucked out his eyes and smashed the primary joints. Aqua could offer to Heal them later in exchange for information on the enemy movements, and she wouldn't be as averse to healing an ogre as she would be to healing a demon.
With that, all that was left was to deal with the fortress. Kazuma used Earthshaker to collapse a portion of the wall for the attackers, and considered that to be his contribution. Those in the outpost fled some time ago, judging by the disarray in the camp.
---
Congratulations on defeating Maddin of the Choir of Ruin, an Archdevil so forgettable he might as well be Mitsuraki Kyouya!
You have acquired: Maddin's Helmet, Maddin's Armor, Maddin's Cape.
The helmet is a high-quality piece that grants the wearer the ability to cast Observe and Ascertain up to four times a day (which is all the more surprising given those are perception-type Skills,) while the Armor is a high-quality piece that reduces kinetic impacts by 10% and boosts mana regeneration by 5%. Maddin's Cape allows for controlled gliding and very limited flight based on an internal "propulsion charge" that can be renewed with life-force or mana absorbed from the user at a slightly inefficient rate.
It's pretty good loot, but I would suggest taking it to a blacksmith before you wear it - if Kazuma were to put it on right now as his daily adventuring gear, Misfortune and Wretched would all but ensure that someone mistakenly assumes he's a member of the Demon Army.
In addition, the Guild paid Kazuma 500,000 Eris, and a further 500,000 Eris due to his amazing contribution. Split three-ways, that's 330,000 Eris for Kazuma, on top of the million that Kyouya paid him earlier today for Aqua-involved expenses. You're officially wealthy.
Select one additional reward for defeating Maddin.
[ ] +1,500 EXP. This is going to level Kazuma up from Level 23 which he attained over the course of the battle to Level 24.
[ ] Maddin's Staff. It survived the battle! It's mundane but enhances spells with the 'Chaos' aspect by 50%. If you can find a collector or specialist, it can be worth immense quantities of money.
[ ] Maddin's Spear. It survived the battle! The spear contains a general damage enhancement and a blessing that lets it return when thrown.
Furthermore, spend 33 Skill Points. Spend 36 if you pick the EXP reward instead.
Name: Satou Kazuma
Class: Arch Wizard
Level: 23
[XP]: 500/1400
Skill Points: 33
Strength: 45
Endurance: 45
Constitution: 38
Dexterity: 51
Agility: 49
Intelligence: 57
Wits: 66
Magic Power: 78
Luck: -952
Ring of Rebellion Effect: +10 to all statistics, Luck is capped at -100.
Unstructured Magic
Basic Magic (Unlocked Spells: Freeze, Tinder, Create Water, Create Earth, Wind Breath, Spark, Illusion (+2), Counterspell (+1))
Intermediate Magic (Unlocked Spells: Freeze Gust, Fireball (+1), Hydrostream, Mold Earth, Blade of Wind (+1), Chain Lightning (+1), Teleport, Paralyze, Wind Curtain (+1))
Advanced Magic (Unlocked Spells: Crystal Prison, Inferno, Bottomless Swamp, Earthshaker, Tornado, Lightning Strike)
[ ] Save
[ ] Don't Save - In this case, what should Kazuma buy or focus on?
[ ] Fear - A mental spell that infuses the target with great fear, overcoming the effects of natural bravery. Upgrades to Terror, etc.
Basic Magic: Costs 2 SP to buy.
[ ] Charm - A mental spell that has a chance to cause a monster to consider the caster an ally. Upgrades to Charm Person, etc.
Basic Magic: Costs 2 SP to buy.
[ ] Courage - A mental spell that infuses the target with great courage, overcoming the effects of fear and cowardice, but not rendering them without logic. Upgrades to Berserk, etc.
Basic Magic: Costs 2 SP to buy.
[ ] Unlock & Lock - Never carry a lockpick around for anything. This spell lets the user open locks or break seals on objects; applies even to slightly abstract targets, but might not always be reliable in that case. It can also do the opposite with its antipode: Lock. Upgrades to Seal/Unseal, Animate Item, etc.
Intermediate Magic: Costs 4 SP to buy.
[ ] Light of Saber - Not to be confused with a "lightsaber," which is a form of high technology. This spell creates a curved beam of cutting light that sprouts from the user's palm and follows the arc of their hand movement. Often done in a "karate chop" style attack, Light of Saber can effortlessly pierce unenchanted armor and even the toughest of flesh as if one were using scissors on a sheet of paper.
Advanced Magic: Costs 8 SP to buy.
[ ] Upgrade - Upgrade a known spell. Pick which one.
The initial cost for upgrading Basic Magic is 1 SP, for Intermediate Magic is 2 SP, for Advanced Magic is 4 SP.
---
Rules for Upgrading Spells
Basic Magic: Per upgrade level, +1 SP cost. (1st Upgrade: 1 SP. 2nd Upgrade: 2 SP. 3rd Upgrade: 3 SP. 4th Upgrade: 4 SP.)
Intermediate Magic: Per upgrade level, +1 SP cost. Every two levels, +1 SP cost. (1st Upgrade: 2 SP. 2nd Upgrade: 4 SP. 3rd Upgrade: 5 SP. 4th Upgrade: 7 SP.)
Advanced Magic: Per upgrade level, +2 SP cost. (1st Upgrade: 4 SP. 2nd Upgrade: 6 SP. 3rd Upgrade: 8 SP. 4th Upgrade: 10 SP.)
This math only applies to Arch Wizard and (to a lesser extent,) Wizard Classes. Adventurers and other, miscellaneous jobs would see more difficulty in learning spells.
Rules for Upgrading Skills
Per upgrade level, +1 SP cost, unless the Skill isn't one that belongs to your Class, in which case +2 SP cost.
