A tremendous amount of magic power then erupted from the Magic Sword Zelyse, that Zelyse holds.
This magic power alone showed that he was an opponent to be reckoned with. But, of course, that was not all.
『Fran, the Magic Sword Zelyse must have quite a few skills. It must have all the skills that Zelyse had! Be careful!』
「Nn!」
The first thing we needed to watch out for would be the barrage of magic and skills. It was no exaggeration to say that this was a basic tactic for Fran and me.
The fact that the sword and the wielder could use the same skill meant that he could do something beyond that.
「Ahahah! Here I come!」
「Haa!」
「Haha! Great! You’re good enough to fight with that sword!」
Every time the magic sword Zelyse and I struck each other, our durability value whittled down. Even so, he was not destroyed by a single blow but continued to recover by self-repair. As a result, Fran and Zelyse were constantly clashing with each other.
Furthermore, their magic barrage was still flying to us in this state.
「Muh」
『I’ll block them. Fran, just focus on slashing!』
「Nn!」
I see now, facing a nasty enemy like this was really troublesome!
There was no sign that he was chanting, but suddenly, great magic was activated. It was as if he was not chanting at all.
Because of their stealth and concealment skills, it was also difficult for us to detect their magic flow. Even if we knew that the sword was going to release magic, we would still be caught off guard. But it was no surprise that we couldn’t dodge the magic attacks of an opponent we fought for the first time.
Moreover, their attack intervals are strange. Immediately after releasing a skill or great magic, his body will inevitably stiffen and his movements would slow down. However, it could be ignored as Zelyse and the magic sword repeatedly attacked in turn.
It was something we did all the time, but when it was done to us, we now understood how absurd it was.
As soon as he threw an obvious big move, he would throw the exact same big move without pause. It would be a nightmare for the opponent who thought they had a chance and went into it.
What was more troublesome was his permeability skill. Zelyse’s presence disappeared, and our attacks slipped through his body.
However, the way it was used was completely different from before. The on/off intervals must have been longer before.
Once he used this mysterious skill, he kept on using it for a while. And during that time, the other side didn’t attack us either. Maybe they couldn’t attack us while the skill was active.
But now it was different. They turned it on and off frequently and attacked hard.
It seemed that when he used the magic sword, Zelyse, he could now reduce some side effects of that skill.
「Come on! Come on!」
「Tsk!」
「Ahahah! You couldn’t kill me, huh? Too bad!」
On the other side, we had Fran and the grown-up Romio――or Sierra, but we were lacking in offense.
We were simply too exhausted. I was still in tatters from the after-effects of the Sword God Transformation, and Fran had consumed a lot of her magic power too.
Against a tricky opponent like Zelyse, she couldn’t be so careless as to use all of her remaining strength, and she ended up fighting by keeping an eye on his movements.
We were waiting to counter for the time when Zelyse’s skill was in cooldown, but he seemed to know our aim too. He was able to offset its timing and all our three attempts failed.
Sierra also showed no attempt of using that mysterious ability that made his skills disappear. I wonder is he concerned about us?
「Hey, Romi―… Sierra?」
「Just call me Sierra」
「Sierra, why don’t you use the power you just showed me before?」
「I can’t use it yet」
That was what I had expected. It must have been an ability that couldn’t be used successively. It seemed that it was either too exhausting or it came at a high cost.
It was such an ability. There was no way he could just use it multiple times.
Still, I had a strange feeling of discomfort as our fight with Zelyse continued.
So, this was what he meant, huh? He said it was just for a little experiment, but it didn’t seem like Zelyse was really planning to attack us. Of course, his attacks were fierce and if we were not careful, we might get hit.
But was this the best he could do after using an intelligence weapon, the magic sword Zelyse?
That was what didn’t make sense to me.
I thought that he was fighting lightly as a test run, but it seemed that this was not the case. Whenever we clashed, Zelyse repeatedly said and did provocative things, but now it seemed that he was even more conscious of provoking Fran and Sierra.
「Come on! Come on! Is that all you got! What a disappointment!」
「You can just run away, you know?」
「You still think you can kill me? Not a chance!」
「Why don’t you guys just run while you still can? I’ll even let you off scot-free if you just run away right now, you know?」
「Uwaah! That was a hell of an attack! As expected of you! But it’s too bad――!」
The things he said about letting us run away were lies. I was starting to get it. It seemed that he wanted to provoke Fran and Sierra to keep them here.
In other words, his real purpose was to stop us. He didn’t want us to go any further.
So, it would be better to go further than to deal with Zelyse here. I was sure it would all be over once we defeated Zelyse, but I didn’t know if we would be able to finish him off with any certainty since we couldn’t even use the Sword God Transformation right now.
(Then what should we do?)
『Ideally, I’d like to have Sierra stall Zelyse』
While he stalled Zelyse, we would go further with my dimension shift to check what was going on up ahead. Something terrible must be going on in there.
Fran approached Sierra and whispered to him.
「Can you stall him?」
「You want to do something?」
「Zelyse aims to stall us. So, I’m going to see what’s going on up ahead」
「I see…」
「Then?」
「Okay, I’ll use my trump card then」
Sierra said confidently.
In fact, we still didn’t know the depth of Sierra and his magic sword, Zelos Reed. Since he was so confident, we might as well just leave this to him then.
「I need you to distract him for a second」
「Okay」
After a brief discussion, Fran then lunged toward Zelyse.
By making it look like she was aiming for an obvious counterattack, she made it harder for Zelyse to attack as he was forced to focus his attention on Fran. There, we struck him with a series of time-space magic and dimension sword attacks.
A dimension sword in an over boosted state, with an excess of magic power, poured into it, was quite powerful.
We released twelve shots. They attacked Zelyse from all directions.
Ideally, he would have deactivated the permeability and tried to prevent it with a barrier or something―――.
But Zelyse stopped in place while still maintaining his permeability. He then swung his magic sword, Zelyse, to strike down the flying dimension swords one after another.
It seemed that he even had a space-time attribute.
But that was also within our expectations. Don’t underestimate an intelligence weapon!
Our real target was his feet.
「Groouf!」
「Kuh! Don’t tell me you were aiming for this!?」
The Dimensional Fangs from Urushi’s Shadow Transfer had swallowed both of Zelyse’s legs.
To his surprise, Urushi attacked just as he was caught in a barrage of dimension swords. Urushi emerged from the shadows and was hit by several Dimensional Swords.
But Urushi was also prepared for this. Although he had deep cuts in several places, he had certainly caught Zelyse with his fangs.
There, Sierra plunged in at once, with his jet-black sword clothed with a tremendous evil spirit.
「Ooooooo!」
The mass of evil energy released from Sierra’s hand sprang like a snake and entangled itself in Zelyse’s arm.
「Evil Binding, Black Chain!」
Well, it looked like a chain. Then, Zelyse suddenly lost his stance.
「Kuh! W-what is this…!?」
「It’s an evil chain. How’s that? Hard to keep your skills up, isn’t it?」
It seemed that the chain made of Evil Spirit has similar properties to the one he used earlier to cancel out the surrounding skills. It didn’t seem to cancel them out completely, but I guess it could last longer.
「Is this good enough?」
「Nn. I’ll leave him to you」
「Eh? Where are you going, Fran-san? Are you running away from me!? I haven’t seen you for a while, and you’ve become such a coward!」
「…Hmph」
「Ah! W-wait」
Seeing that Fran had ignored him and ran off to the center of the lake, Zelyse hurriedly tried to follow her. However, Sierra stood in front of him.
As long as there were evil chains, he couldn’t ignore Sierra and come after her.
「Oi, Zelyse. Your opponent is me」
「Shiii―t…!!」
