Ethan ran a hand over his jaw.
His interest had certainly been raised. But he had no intention of letting go of the initiative.
"I shall hear a little more and then consider it."
— ......Sly old snake of a wretch.
Pheon said it as though the whole thing set his teeth on edge, and then added a small explanation.
— Power obtained by a shortcut carries a price to match. That relic is no different. Keep taking the death energy of the dead and you will gradually lose your reason.
"I see."
— ......Is that the whole of your reaction?
"Well, nothing to be done about it."
Whatever the thing is, the price matching it has to be paid.
A penalty of losing his reason? Survival right now came before that.
Even if Ethan began mana training here and now, he would be late, far too late.
By the time Ethan had awakened mana to some degree and begun to stand out, the protagonist's party would already be running into the story's back half.
'And it's not as if there's no counter.'
Among the items the protagonist obtained there were some specialized in strengthening the mind.
He would have to revise his plan to a degree, but it was not an impossible thing.
Only a considerable nuisance.
— N-nngh!
As Ethan's reaction turned indifferent, Pheon poured out his indignation again.
— Having been told information of this order, ought you not to express gratitude to match!
"Ah, um...... my thanks."
— I-insolent thing! Hah, enough. There are limits even to bowing down to receive a bow...... But my words are no joke. That ability will certainly drive you to ruin......
'He talks a lot.'
That was his honest impression. Which was perhaps why Ethan's interest was slowly draining away.
Pheon seemed to feel it, and he stopped talking and eased out what he had actually come to say.
— ......Could you not take me with you?
"......Why, exactly?"
— W-why, exactly, he says......
Pheon shook with humiliation. In all his life, being handled like this was a first.
Pheon deliberated. Whether it was right to explain his own value here, grubbily, or whether it was right to meet extinction as he was.
He set the two choices on the scales and began to weigh them.
Presently Pheon reached his decision.
He had no pride left here worth holding on to, and besides, Pheon had a purpose.
— Left as I am, I am due to be extinguished before long. It was that relic's power that held me here, so the hour of my extinction will come faster still. I have no time. But there is something left I must do before I meet extinction here.
It was a voice with sincerity bled through it.
'Now that's more like it.'
Ethan's manner, which had been held high, changed at last.
"I shall help you. There is, however, a condition."
He had no intention of helping for nothing, of course.
***
WHAM!
Hugo drove the vampire back like an animal.
His already peerless spring and flexibility had doubled, and his tender spirit had turned into the feral nature of a wolf.
His lengthened claws cut solid rock like bean curd.
The vampire was reduced to defending with no resource left.
'And from a blood that low!'
He could tell it instinctively. The greenhorn in front of him was a half-blood. Being a vampire, which is to say the werewolf's sworn enemy, he could tell for certain.
'But for a half-blood......'
WHAM!
Hugo swiped at a wall and the shock rang through the place as if an earthquake had come. The hard cave wall was gouged deep.
Belmont the vampire let out a low groan.
He could tell instinctively. One graze and it is over.
For now he was keeping his life by pure defense, but before long the thing would be decided.
The result he could see without looking at it.
Belmont was failing to put any proper damage on Hugo.
Belmont was a vampire. But the power he held was shabby.
A vampire's physical ability is excellent too, but excellent at the level of comparison with a human.
A vampire's true worth lies in magic power and in beguilement. Only, Belmont had two problems.
First, Belmont had no magic he could presently work.
And second, the beguilement he did have some confidence in did not land on Hugo.
Mind-class magic like beguilement only works where the opponent's standing is lower than yours and his intelligence lower too.
But Hugo was in a state with no mind to speak of in terms of intelligence, and his standing did not fall short of Belmont's either.
As things stood there were no odds for him.
'Escape is impossible too.'
He had already lost every last henchman. There were several methods for withdrawing, but Hugo gave him no gap, driving Belmont roughly back.
There was not the smallest chance.
Belmont felt his windpipe closing.
Fury surged in him, and along with it a disgust at himself for being unable to make a proper counter.
'To a greenhorn like that!'
Hugo was not handling his own body properly.
He was plainly a young whelp who had woken the werewolf's blood no time at all ago.
And Belmont was losing to him.
Rage at his own self surged up.
Swish!
Then Hugo lunged in and swung an arm.
Belmont bent his upper body back, barely, and avoided the attack.
But the offense did not stop there. Hugo dropped low and set an arm on the floor.
With the planted arm as his axis, Hugo's body swung round large.
Centrifugal force rode Hugo's foot into Belmont's stomach.
"Hurgh!"
Thick blood welled up out of Belmont's mouth. One blow allowed, and he had taken considerable damage.
Hugo moved to lunge again rather than lose the opening.
"Stop, Hugo."
Just then a voice came from behind.
Hugo's yellow eyes turned toward the direction of it.
Ethan was walking up out of the far side of the cave.
There was ease in Ethan's stride.
— Oho, a werewolf. Quite a fine one.
"He's one I raised."
Ethan answered with pride in his voice.
He was not wrong. The Hugo of the original had not been able to bear his own power.
The feral shift wins enormous power, and it puts an enormous load on the body to match.
Because it pulls the potential of frame and muscle up to the maximum, most grades of durability cannot bear it.
But the punishing training alongside Ethan had made the body able to carry the load.
A carnivore knows how to hunt without being taught how to hunt.
With the body carrying the load, Hugo was rampaging like a thing gone mad.
Ethan looked at Hugo for a moment.
"Hm. He really doesn't recognize me, by the look of it."
He had not foreseen this. To think the man would grow to this extent.
"Well. There'll be a method, I take it?"
Ethan asked it of Pheon. At Ethan's optimistic manner, Pheon let out a breath.
— ......How did I come to be with a fellow like this......
At the sigh, which sounded like a man lamenting his lot, Ethan shrugged lightly.
"Looks like we're out of time."
Hugo narrowed his eyes. A gamy stink seemed to come off the yellow light in them.
Hugo was a predator. The strongest head of the pack in this whole area.
Ethan knew how to measure an opponent.
'Certain loss.'
He did not need to check it to see it.
However hard a child thrashes, it cannot beat a grown man.
This was worse than that.
Because Hugo was overwhelmingly stronger than an ordinary beast.
— Lend me the body a moment.
"I would rather not."
Ethan's face twisted up.
Handing over the initiative of his own body was not what Ethan wanted.
— ......Then what do you propose?
Pheon asked it in a voice of pure exasperation, and Ethan grinned and spoke.
"Lend me only the power, if you would."
Ethan could tell it instinctively.
Pheon was in a state close to a thought-form now, but the power held inside him was no small thing.
It was that power Ethan wanted.
— Insolent. Do you imagine a fellow who has not even awakened mana could handle it?
To Pheon, Ethan's fearless high spirits came across as insolence.
"If it displeases you, that is the end of it here."
Ethan did not back off. In the end Pheon ran up the white flag.
— Hah...... Very well. Only, the moment I judge you are in danger I shall intervene. Understand that.
"Agreed."
This time Ethan could assent too.
It was the most Pheon had conceded.
'I'm curious.'
Facing a Hugo with his feral nature awake, his body itched for the first time in a while.
— Be careful. There is no knowing whether the body will accept it.
Pheon's half-transparent hand settled on Ethan's shoulder.
Behind a cold sensation an energy of no identifiable kind pressed in and ran through Ethan's body.
— I am forcing my mana into you. By rights a rejection reaction would be the normal thing, but...... perhaps because the same blood runs in us, there appears to be no great side effect.
Pheon was speaking in a level tone, and inwardly he was greatly thrown.
Ethan was coveting Pheon's mana without end.
Pheon was one of the dead. Naturally most of the mana he had held was lost, and what remained was a mere fraction.
And even so, Ethan was a body that had not yet awakened mana.
However identical the blood running in them, accepting mana was another matter.
'Hm. So this is it.'
Ethan was taking in the strange sensation entering his body as keenly as he could.
'Close to the description in the original.'
The original had described it as the feeling of sensing the blood running in your body.
'I've got a rough feel for how to use it.'
The protagonist had used mana in a real engagement the moment he accepted it too.
He remembered the scene of everyone around him crying out in shock and praising it as a heaven-sent talent.
A strange will to compete rose in him.
"This much should do it."
— ......I was going to stop whether you said so or not, insolent wretch.
Pheon shook his head. He had nearly had the better part of his mana taken.
It was a temporary measure in any case and would not last long, but if all his mana were taken, Pheon would be unable to maintain his own existence.
Ethan rolled his head and loosened up.
"Don't run off."
Ethan looked at Belmont with a snort of a smile.
'Load the mana like this, is it?'
He gathered the energy in his foot and stepped down.
THUD!
The ground dented in, and Ethan closed on the fallen Belmont.
Belmont's eyes widened in alarm.
"Stay unconscious a while."
There was still something left to get out of this one.
Ethan took hold of Belmont's head and drove it straight into the floor.
WHAM!
With a great crash the face buried itself in the ground, and Belmont's body went limp.
'No time to put him under slowly with a choke.'
Even a glance showed signs of a man about to run, so he had used a slightly brutish method to knock him out.
GRRRR!
As Ethan came near, Hugo gave out a beast's cry and threw himself at him.
'Fast.'
FWISH!
For all that it looked like wild swinging, Hugo's movement was fairly efficient.
Ethan's body was not finished yet. He had borrowed Pheon's mana as a stopgap, and a stopgap was exactly what it was.
He had not grown together with mana slowly; it had been forced into the body and fitted by main strength.
Which is why Ethan's body was striking a discord now.
'Do it in moderation and it'll serve.'
This much was just right.
A moment ago he had thought it a certain loss, and now no such impression came to him at all.
Hugo's movement was fast and savage, and simple.
Honest, with no irregularity and no feints in it. The yellow light in his eyes attacked Ethan exactly where it was aimed.
Until a moment ago that had not been a weakness.
Because a simple attack is another matter once overwhelming speed is added to it.
It is the same logic as knowing where a muzzle is pointed and still being unable to dodge the bullet.
But now he could react to Hugo's movement.
FWISH!
Hugo swung the sharp claws without pause.
Ethan was avoiding the attacks with a single movement of his upper body.
Feeling the press of it, Hugo moved faster and closed in.
Hugo's upper body tipped toward Ethan and Ethan bent his own back.
And in the same motion he put out a foot. Ethan's front kick buried itself in Hugo's solar plexus.
"Hurgh!"
For the first time, a groan burst out of Hugo's mouth.