Side Story 2: Undersea Dungeon 12

The boss of the sixth floor was a huge, translucent blue jellyfish with countless octopus-like tentacles.

「OROROOOOOO!」

『It’s covered in evil energy.』

「Nn.」

It radiated an overwhelming amount of mana with evil energy mixed in. Judging by that power, it should be around Threat Level A.

「Fran, Master! That is the Dungeon Master!」

「!」

『No way!』

Silent Sea said that a fiend was the Dungeon Master, so I didn’t expect it to be a feral monster. In the first place, it didn’t look nearly smart enough to design such a difficult dungeon…

「The Dungeon Master must have realized that we were coming to defeat it, so as a last resort, it fused itself with the boss of the final floor! The monster half seems to be in control, resulting in lowered intelligence, but do not let your guard down!」

That makes sense! So this is the original boss of the dungeon after absorbing the Dungeon Master’s fiendish powers. The Dungeon Master probably wasn’t strong enough to survive the fusion, so their mind disappeared.

Just like the goblin dungeon in Alessa, Dungeon Masters had the power to summon and control monsters stronger than itself.

Whether it did so on purpose or by accident was unknown, but either way, this boss was a force to be reckoned with.

「OROOROOO!」

『Damn, this is hard to dodge!』

The boss jelly swung its countless tentacles, firing water from their tips. These jets of water moved erratically as the tentacles lashed out at the surroundings.

We used teleportation to dodge, while striking back with magic.

「Fire Arrow!」

『Take this!』

Fran used fire magic, while I tried a combination of thunder and wind magic. Our spells blew through the water jets and landed a hit on the boss’s tentacles.

However, Fran’s magic failed to get through the evil energy coating it, and my spells only managed to inflict tiny wounds that regenerated almost immediately.

Its resistance to magic was far higher than I expected. I didn’t sense that much evil energy from it, so maybe it’s just using all of it for defense.

However, I applied my Evil Crusher skill to the wind magic, and the wounds from that were healing more slowly. At least that’s effective.

『Chipping away isn’t going to work! Let’s use Evil Crusher to deal a big blow!』

「Nn!」

Meanwhile, Silent Sea and Urushi shrank down and switched to long-range attacks.

「Pfft pfft! I feel like there’s a bunch of sand in my mouth!」

「Arf…!」

「Ugngh…! It’s preventing our bite attacks by making itself taste terrible…! What a nefarious trick!」

「Woof!」

Apparently, they took their distance not because close combat was disadvantageous, but because this thing tasted awful. Not that it could choose its flavor, of course.

Either way, Urushi and Silent Sea would have trouble fighting close with their fangs sealed.

『Fran. No more training. From here on, we go all out.』

「Nn! Got it.」

Fran leapt away from the boss jelly, took her stance, and quietly spoke the words.

「O sword of mine alone. Grant me power, hope, possibilities… And bring us victory! Divine Sword Release… Master!」

『Uwroooogh!』

A torrent of power flowed in, filling every corner of my body! Only in this state could I say it with confidence…

That I am a divine sword!

But just being in a released state didn’t mean I could use all of my powers.

『Like I suspected, Trail of Bonds and Evil God’s Shadow can’t be used against this guy. Still…』

「Nn! It’s fine. I can feel your power, Master.」

Trail of Bonds was the power to borrow strength from all those who’ve connected with Fran, and Evil God’s Shadow could manifest Jashin-chan from her seal to fight alongside us.

However, these were powers only to be used against an Evil God Fragment or something of their caliber. And Fran was strong enough to fight without them.

「O raging might of the godly beast lying dormant in my blood… Awaken now! Divine Beast Form!」

Because the power flowing from my divine sword form would resonate with the power in her blood. Now, both of us were ready to go all out.

「Nn. Jashin-chan is cheering us on too.」

『True.』

Though no one else would be able to tell, we were both connected to the Evil God’s Innocence. I could sense Jashin-chan supporting us by absorbing a portion of Fran’s recoil.

『I’ll handle the tentacles. You finish it off, Fran.』

「Roger.」

I activated the freshly acquired skill ‘Division’. To tell the truth, I’d tested this skill on the way here, and it had been pretty useless.

Rather than allowing you to duplicate yourself, Division was a skill for tearing off a piece of your body and temporarily turning it into a flesh golem for you to manipulate.

If you were a slime or something similar, you could probably have the pieces return to you for reabsorption. But for anyone else, it’s just a weird skill for producing weak body doubles.

In my case, Division allowed me to turn fragments of myself into miniature swords. But since they didn’t have my soul inside them, they couldn’t even act on their own. They were literally just chunks of metal for me to move around with telekinesis.

If I’m going to do that, I might as well bring out the rusty blades that we looted from random goblins during our travels. It’d probably be more efficient.

But for me in my current state…

『Morphing! Then, Division! Finally, Magic Supply!』

I’ve used the Morphing skill pretty extensively to enlargen my blade, or turn my decorative cords into a weapon. But by combining that with the Division and Magic Supply skills, I could move the detached blade fragments as if they were my own limbs.

『Just as I thought!』

I split off five blades from myself, levitating them around me under telekinetic control.

The amazing thing about these is that I can charge them with divine energy remotely. After all, they’re fragments of me, a divine sword!

Well, I probably couldn’t go that far outside of my released state.

『First, let’s cut off those annoying tentacles!』

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