Chapter 134
Kiriya’s blade struck the icy-blue neck with a sharp crack.
The force behind the slash was heavy, but Amphisbaena’s thick scales ate most of the impact.
The sword bit three inches into flesh before it finally stopped, stuck fast.
"Tch. Yeah, that’s a Floor Boss, all right. Thick as hell."
Kiriya clicked his tongue, pulled the blade free, and immediately followed with a heavier swing.
"Hinokami Kagura: Clear Blue Sky."
The sword drew a wide arc through the air.
Kiriya turned his waist into the cut, driving his whole body behind the strike, and brought the blade down into the same wound.
The blade sank deep into the muscle of the Amphisbaena’s neck, opening a gash two feet deep, until it struck the neck bone.
For a smaller monster, a blow like that would have been an instant death sentence.
But the Amphisbaena was different—its enormous size gave it a huge margin for error, leaving it merely "wounded" rather than "gravely hurt."
’In the end I’m only Level 3. If I were Level 5—no, even just Level 4—that last strike would’ve been enough to take this thing’s head off,’ Kiriya thought with a sigh.
"RAAAGH—RAAAGH—RAAAGH—"
The Amphisbaena howled again and again, its cries loud enough to pierce the eardrums.
It writhed and twisted wildly, shaking its neck, trying to throw Kiriya off.
But as a ninja, how could Kiriya be shaken by such a small trick? His feet stuck fast to the great dragon’s neck as though they’d been glued there.
Even so, it left him getting flung back and forth like he was bungee jumping, and eventually he’d had enough.
He extended a wooden spike from his hand and drove it straight into the wound.
"Hehe—try this spiked club on for size." Kiriya grinned menacingly, then abruptly poured on more force.
Shk—shk—
Sharp wooden spikes kept sprouting all across the Amphisbaena’s neck, and a torrent of blood spilled out, staining a wide swath of the lake red.
"RAAAGH—RAAAGH—RAAAGH—"
The Amphisbaena roared at the top of its lungs, but it hadn’t lost its wits.
The purple head swung hard, driving off Ais and the others’ assault like a swinging meteor hammer, and seizing the opening, it spewed red mist to shroud its entire body!.
The mist even flowed like water down along the wounds in its neck and reached inside.
The wooden spikes Kiriya had made with his Forest of All Things melted away the instant they touched that mist, like snow doused in hot water and vanished without a trace.
’This red mist... what an overpower ability.’ Kiriya flickered back onto the surface of the water, clicking his tongue in amazement.
To have a magic-immunity skill in a world of magic—that was flat-out cheating.
"Whoa, handsome, you can actually walk on the water! How on earth are you doing that?" Landing on the shore and catching sight of it, Tiona immediately started making a fuss.
"She’s right—walking on water. Don’t tell me it’s magic?"
"Or maybe he’s been blessed by a water spirit?" Bete offered his own guess.
"Neither," Ais explained. "It’s just a basic application of something called chakra. As long as you attach the right amount of chakra to your feet, you can do it."
"So on the water floors, that basically makes it home turf for him." Tiona’s eyes filled with envy. "So nice! I want to learn that chakra-and-ninjutsu stuff too."
"Hmph, how shallow. Back before we know this ninjutsu or whatever-it-is, didn’t we take down the Amphisbaena just fine anyway?" Bete’s eyes stayed fixed on Kiriya’s feet as he gave a cold snort.
He wanted it too, of course, but he wasn’t about to say so!
And he wasn’t wrong, either—as an adventurer, you had to be able to adapt to any situation.
What was the point of always envying others?
With that thought, Bete didn’t hesitate any longer and charged straight in.
"Ha! What a smug jerk." Tiona grumbled a couple of complaints, then followed him in along with her sister Tione and Ais.
The icy-blue head recovered and immediately swept Blue Napalm across the battlefield again.
Ais and the others knew how dangerous the sticky flames were, so none of them tried to block it directly.
They scattered.
The blue fire slammed into the high ceiling instead, blasting apart stone and dead wood. Huge chunks came crashing down, forcing everyone to keep moving.
Kiriya looked at the giant logs now floating across the lake, then at the tunnel mouth half-blocked by fallen debris.
"Was that on purpose, or did it just trap itself with us?"
He honestly could not tell whether the dragon was clever or stupid.
"Well, it gave us footing. How nice of it."
Tiona landed on one of the fallen logs and sprinted across it, closing the distance before swinging her double blade down again.
A fresh wound split open along Amphisbaena’s body.
The dragon roared and forced her back with another blast of Blue Napalm.
After that, the fight fell into a rough rhythm.
Ais, Tiona, Tione, and Bete kept opening wounds across Amphisbaena’s body, but the Floor Boss was too sharp.
Every time they tried to press deeper, it forced them away before they could turn a wound into something decisive.
Still, it was plain enough that, given a little more time, they’d grind the monster down for sure.
"Tch. This thing’s annoying."
Bete was starting to get irritated.
His kicks were powerful, but against a monster this large and durable, he was probably doing the least damage out of everyone.
Seeing Tiona and Tione pull ahead did nothing good for his mood.
He was about to activate his magic when a sharp, high-pitched rush of air made him look over.
Kiriya stood there with a spiraling shuriken of wind in his hand, nearly a meter across.
Bete had no idea what the thing was, but every instinct in his body told him the same thing.
Do not get hit by that.
’Another new move?’
For a second, Bete felt genuinely tired with this guy bullshit.
"Everyone spread out, or you’ll get caught in it!"
Kiriya gave them a warning, then rushed straight toward Amphisbaena.
Ais and the Amazon sisters pulled away at once, leaving the dragon roaring at Kiriya alone.
Amphisbaena’s huge eyes locked onto him, or more accurately, onto the Wind Release: Rasenshuriken in his hand.
The monster clearly sensed the danger. Its purple head opened its mouth and released another cloud of red mist.
Kiriya grinned.
"Yeah, I was waiting for that."
Another Kiriya appeared beneath Amphisbaena, hands already moving through seals.
The lake surged upward in front of him, rising into a towering wall of water that rushed straight at the dragon.
"Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique."
On the Water Capital floors, his Water Release was amplified to a ridiculous degree. Even a simple technique became massive with this much water around him.
The wall of water crashed into the red mist, and both began canceling each other out. It did not reach Amphisbaena’s body, but it pinned down that troublesome mist long enough.
That was all Kiriya needed.
He appeared beneath Amphisbaena, leapt high, and drove the Rasenshuriken into the Floor Boss’s neck!
The impact hit like a hammer.
Amphisbaena’s icy-blue neck was forced backward inch by inch until it crashed into its own purple neck.
Then the Rasenshuriken expanded.
All the compressed wind chakra inside it detonated at once, blooming into a huge sphere of pale-blue storm.
Kiriya disappeared with Flying Thunder God before his own attack could catch him.
The explosion shook the floor.
The roar that followed felt like the cavern itself was collapsing. The soundwave hit Ais and the others hard enough to make their skulls ache.
Before they could recover, a violent gale slammed into them head-on.
Caught completely off guard, they were actually sent flying.
It was only thanks to their being tough Level 5 adventurers, with off-the-charts stamina and sharp reflexes, that they were spared the fate of getting battered black and blue.
As it was, they had to brace themselves hard against the wind while the lake water, blasted into the air by the explosion, poured down like heavy rain.
Through the storm and the spray, they forced their eyes open, trying to see what had happened.
At the very center of the blast, the Amphisbaena managed only a short, sharp scream before it cut off abruptly.
Its mighty, solid body was sliced again and again by millions of tiny blades formed from wind-natured chakra.
Even dragon scales, said to be the strongest defense there is, were useless against those all-pervading wind blades.
In just a few seconds, the inside of the Amphisbaena’s body had been reduced to pulp—the connections between tissue and tissue, down to the connections between the cells themselves, all severed by the chakra wind blades.
Not to mention its huge magic stone, which was sliced straight into dust.
"GRAAAGH—"
A single scream rang out, only to be swallowed up almost at once by the storm.
Tens of seconds later, the wind died and the rain stopped, and the group’s vision returned to normal.
They looked at the scene before them, and for a long while, no one said a word.
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