After confirming the leader’s location, Terlo headed straight for the top floor of the building.
Amid the silence, he heard a dull voice shouting.
“Did you properly take care of those two bastards from earlier?”
Following the voice, he saw the profile of a man holding a communicator.
The bottle beside him was nearly empty.
‘He’s been sitting here drinking in a situation like this?’
His face was bright red, his cheeks jiggling as though they might burst.
Judging by his appearance, he had been drinking for quite some time.
The battle outside the building was not actually over yet.
But if he was acting like this, he must have received a report that Terlo and Hook had been dealt with.
‘I can imagine how relieved he must’ve been.’
Terlo clicked his tongue, then announced himself to the shouting man.
“Hmm. Am I one of those two?”
The man looked as though he had seen a ghost.
But his face seemed strangely familiar.
Just as the statue covered in the caterpillar magic beast’s slime was about to come to mind,
FWOOSH—!
Several enormous black flames appeared without warning and rushed toward Terlo in an instant.
“…!”
He barely blocked them, but the heat passed straight through to him.
Part of the shield burned away as well.
He had never experienced such speed or power before. The flames were enormous, and the man had created several at once.
Even Hook had never cast so many simultaneously.
He had always fired them one after another.
Even as Terlo thought this, the enormous flames continued flying without pause.
FWOOSH—! FWOOSH—!
The more they struck, the more Terlo’s shield burned away.
It was holding only because his powerful compression had made it so thick. Otherwise, he would already have been reduced to ashes.
‘This is dangerous.’
For the first time, Terlo thought he might struggle against an opponent.
The instant he moved away or created another shield, he would undoubtedly be attacked.
But if this continued, he had no other choice.
He would have to endure what he could and wait for an opening.
Yet that lasted only briefly.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
The man’s enormous flames suddenly shrank and weakened.
He even hurriedly gulped down the liquor beside him.
Something appeared to have disrupted his mental strength.
The tension drained out of Terlo all at once.
His mental strength was inversely proportional to his ability.
“How disappointing. I expected more from the leader, but this is the extent of your ability….”
“W-What?”
Terlo once again realized how important mental strength was to a black mage.
The man had exposed an opening when he had been fully capable of pressing his advantage.
Perhaps it was because he was drunk, but if so, drinking in this situation had been the problem from the beginning.
Then,
“You insolent bastard…!”
ROOOOOOAR—!
A bizarre creature burst from the sphere the enraged leader had taken out.
Terlo could not help freezing in shock.
‘What? How…?’
The creature closely resembled the enormous snake he had encountered at the giant tree on the mountain behind the estate.
Of course, the creature before him was a bear.
But its pitch-black body and the ominous black smoke billowing from it were unmistakably the same.
‘That wasn’t something found only at the tree?’
The jet-black snake coiled around the tree as though guarding it had emerged from a fissure.
That meant it must have been a mechanism the recorder created to protect the space containing the records.
The recorder was a man who had taken a demon’s power and come to be called the Ruler of Souls.
How, then, had the leader of More summoned something identical to the recorder’s creation?
‘Could More be connected to the demon-worshiping cult?’
The moment that thought occurred to him,
The ferocious bear swung a forepaw at the leader, who had been laughing in delight.
A deafening crash rang out.
The leader was sent flying with his desk and slammed into the opposite wall.
Covered in blood within an instant, he could do nothing but groan and tremble, apparently unable to move.
‘Is this some new method of suicide?’
Why had he stood so confidently beside something he could not even control?
He had clearly never expected the bear to attack him.
Until that moment, he had been gleefully shouting at Terlo to die.
‘Judging by that, they don’t seem connected at all.’
Would he have been caught so defenselessly if he had ties to the demon-worshiping cult?
Even now, all he could do was tremble as the bear approached.
He would not knowingly have allowed himself to be attacked, so he must not have known anything about the sphere either.
And if there had been a connection, Terlo would have discovered something while interfering with More’s work.
‘But there wasn’t even the slightest point of contact.’
Then how did he obtain the sphere?
It was clear he had acquired it somewhere.
He had known exactly how to use it, so he could not have simply possessed it by chance.
‘Could one of the clients be connected…?’
Just then, something rolled to Terlo’s feet.
‘…A sphere!’
The fist-sized object was identical to the one the leader had been holding.
Since another had rolled over, there had apparently been more than one.
Terlo picked up the sphere at his feet.
He had thought it was simply a black sphere, but a viscous-looking black substance filled the transparent shell and rippled within it.
‘What is this?’
No matter how he looked at it, it was not dark mana.
Even condensed black energy did not possess this sticky quality.
Since it summoned an unknown living creature, it could not have been ordinary dark mana.
After examining it a little longer, Terlo placed the sphere into the subspace he had recently obtained.
The bear had roared again.
ROOOOOOAR—!
Having finished off the leader, the enormous bear was now looking at Terlo.
It stared at him intently and bared its teeth, as though selecting its next prey.
The sight reminded Terlo of his battle against the jet-black snake.
‘The connected skeleton’s attacks worked well back then.’
My own attacks barely affected it unless I kept them coming….
He would have to test it to be certain, but the bear before him was probably the same.
The two could be considered the same kind of creature.
One unfortunate difference was that no black form appeared beside either of them.
That was part of the reason Terlo had never imagined black forms would appear beside magic beasts.
‘They’re different species, even if they’re similar.’
This made one thing clear.
Magic beasts and creatures like this bear, with pitch-black bodies and smoke rising from them, were different species.
Even so, its existence was more than enough to pique Terlo’s interest.
It was the perfect opponent for training a connected skeleton.
<Vitalize.>
<Connect.>
Terlo summoned two skeletons, one holding a sword and the other a staff.
Then he cast Connect on the sword-wielding skeleton.
‘Unfortunately, I’ll have to fight with only these two.’
As his black magic improved, Terlo had become capable of summoning up to four skeletons.
He could also raise corpses as skeletons now.
But with no way of knowing when Hook might join him, he could not recklessly summon all four.
ROOOOOOAR—!
The bear roared even more savagely at the appearance of two skeletons.
Then it swung a forepaw toward an object beside it.
A large chest flew toward Terlo and the two skeletons.
‘Dodge!’
The bear began approaching while throwing every object it could find, as though they were engaged in a snowball fight.
Its enormous body made it slow, but the objects shattered on impact and scattered across a wide area.
Since it threw whatever its massive paws could grasp, the objects themselves were inevitably large.
That made attacking while dodging difficult.
‘I need to lure it out of the room.’
The enormous bear had its back to the wall.
Because of that, Terlo had no opportunity to turn its attention away.
No matter where he moved within the room, he remained in the bear’s line of sight.
Moving behind the bear would be like volunteering to become a mouse trapped inside a jar.
The bear would immediately swing a forepaw and send him flying.
Terlo attacked whenever an opening appeared and eventually drew the bear into the corridor.
‘Good.’
Once it was fully outside, Terlo had much more space to use.
But the same appeared to be true for the bear.
The instant it emerged, it lowered itself onto all fours.
Then it began running.
Its speed was entirely different from when it walked on two legs.
More importantly, when the enormous bear began to run, the entire building shook as though an earthquake had struck.
THUD. THUD. RUMBLE. BOOM.
As soon as its paws struck the ground, Terlo teleported behind the bear with the connected skeleton.
He left the staff-wielding skeleton where it stood as bait.
Then he commanded the connected skeleton.
‘Prickle at its right leg! Cut its left leg with your sword!’
[Right Prickle. Left cut.]
The skeleton’s low voice reverberated.
Understanding Terlo’s order, the skeleton first fired a blunt spike.
Then it began running with its sword in hand.
But at that moment, the bear stopped running and turned around.
‘How did it know…?!’
SQUELCH!
GRRRAAAGH!
Because of that, the spike struck the left side of the bear’s chest rather than its right leg.
The roaring bear swung its right forepaw.
“Raise a shield and duck as low as you can!”
[Shield. Duck.]
The connected skeleton had already run directly behind the bear.
At that distance, the forepaw would shatter it.
Terlo hurriedly fired a black whirlwind at the bear.
But it stopped the bear’s movement only briefly and caused no significant damage.
‘Damn it. If only I could summon all four!’
Even without that, he had seen and learned many black magic spells that day.
Using only Hook’s whip would have bought the skeleton enough time to evade.
But Terlo was not in a situation where he could freely use whatever black magic he wished.
As he considered several methods within that brief instant,
WHIP—!
The whip he had only imagined flew out and wrapped around the bear’s enormous forepaw, pulling it back.
“Young Master! I was delayed because I had quite a lot to deal with!”
“Boss Hook!”
Has Terlo ever been this glad to see Hook?
In truth, it would have been more advantageous if Hook had not been here at all.
But since he was present, his arrival could not have come at a better time.
After meeting Hook’s gaze, Terlo commanded the prone skeleton.
“Get up and cut it!”
CLATTER!
The skeleton sprang upright and raised its sword.
With the spike embedded in its chest and Hook’s whip restraining it, the bear’s throat was completely exposed.
But the bear had no intention of falling easily.
It slammed its head down toward the skeleton.
ROOOOOOAR—!
At that moment, two black tree stems erupted from the floor.
CRACK. CRACK-CRACK.
Hook had withdrawn the whip and cast another spell when the skeleton was about to be struck.
The tree stems split into several branches and pierced the bear’s eyes.
‘Oh. What’s that?’
The bear used its freed right forepaw to tear at the tree stems and unleashed a tremendous roar.
But the roar did not last long.
The skeleton used the opening Hook created to cut through the front of its neck.
“Black Ball at the cut!”
Immediately afterward, the connected skeleton’s black sphere struck the wound directly.
The bear’s head was left dangling, attached only by the back of its neck.
When Hook withdrew the tree stems, the bear collapsed to the floor.
RUMBLE.
Then its pitch-black body dissolved into the rising smoke and vanished into the air.
‘It disappears when it dies.’
The fact that it left no corpse was another difference from a magic beast.
Terlo looked at the connected skeleton and praised it inwardly.
It was still inexperienced, but he was proud that it could use both a sword and black magic.
And in practical terms, they had been able to bring down the bear because of the connected skeleton’s strength.
‘Though Boss Hook helped.’
Given the bear’s resistance to ordinary black magic, it would have been difficult to defeat without the connected skeleton.
Of course, Hook had no way of knowing that.
From his perspective, he would think he had been fully capable of defeating it himself but had given Terlo the opportunity instead.
As though revealing that very thought, Hook smiled and said,
“You have improved greatly, Young Master. With only a little assistance, you brought it down with ease. But what was that bear just now? It was neither an undead nor a magic beast. I have never seen anything like it.”
“I’m not sure…. It was my first time seeing one too. It was there when I entered the leader’s room.”
Terlo answered innocently.
Hook looked toward the devastated room ahead and asked,
“You mean the leader’s room over there? Did you meet him? If so, where did he escape—”
“He died.”
“Pardon? He died…? Do you mean you defeated him, Young Master?”
“No. He looked completely drunk, and that bear killed him a moment ago.”
“……?”
Hook stared blankly for a moment, unable to believe it, then moved toward the room.
When he saw the rag-like corpse covered in the bear’s claw marks, he sighed.
“This is unfortunate. I had many questions to ask him. The room is in such a state that finding anything will be difficult as well…. Let us go outside for now, Young Master. There should still be surviving organization members, so it would be best to capture and question them.”
“Yes. Still, there may be something in this room, so I’ll look around and follow you afterward. It would be good to take anything that might prove useful.”
“Hmm… will you be all right?”
As he asked, Hook swept his gaze around the room once more.
He appeared concerned about Terlo, but he was probably calculating whether there was anything he might lose.
Once his transparent calculations were complete, he continued.
“Then I will leave it to you, Young Master.”
“Of course.”
After Hook disappeared, a smile appeared on Terlo’s face.