WHRRRK!
A long line sharply cut through the air.
“Behind you, Ritak!”
Wer shouted.
I raised my arm by reflex.
SHNK.
A cold sound brushed past my ear.
Thud! Wriggle, wriggle.......
Did it feel pain?
The vine with its end cut off shrank back and withdrew.
The part that had fallen to the ground writhed for a long while before going still.
“It cuts well.”
The blade flashed in the torchlight.
The Kukri of Absorption I had won at the auction.
I had been thrown straight into actual battle without even testing it once.
At least its sharpness passed.
I clenched and unclenched the hand that had gripped the handle several times.
‘To think I couldn’t even feel the impact of that thing lunging at me.’
There was almost no sensation of cutting.
In other words, it had been severed the moment the blade touched it.
“It should be easy to break through to the main body.”
“Are you not going to wait for Yoanes?”
“How would I know when she’ll get here?”
The calamity’s domain was gradually expanding.
What if that thing extended its influence all the way to the surface of the city?
It would be a calamity in the truest sense.
Most of the citizens would not be able to pay the taxes.
“I should at least do some weeding ahead of time.”
I gave the legendary weapon a little flick.
‘Good thing its previous owner didn’t neglect its maintenance.’
Magic swords bearing special abilities were rare.
There was no need to say more when the ability was such a good match.
Snap!
I held the Kukri of Absorption out toward Wer.
At the blade suddenly approaching him, his shoulders flinched.
“Wh-What is it?”
“Why are you so startled?”
I waggled the tip of the blade.
“I’m asking you to open Lord Wer’s bag. There’s still a slime core left, right?”
“Use your words, your words!”
Could we not be the kind of partners who understood each other with a single gesture?
We had a long way to go.
“Here!”
Whoosh!
Wer threw the acidic slime core into the air as if flinging it away.
It was not something one should hold for long, so it was a good decision.
“Medicine Crafting, ingredients: one acidic slime core fragment and 50 ml of Tasty Water.”
Flash!
The selected ingredients shone.
The streams of light that mixed in the air shrank to the size of my thumbnail.
Where the light vanished, there was a glossy bead.
It looked just like a piece of acidic slime rounded into a ball.
-Solvent 3Lv. Grants 3 acid-attribute damage over time on contact.
The Solvent began to fall silently.
The Appraisal had not even finished.
‘The effect is disappointing since I used ordinary water, but......’
Click.
I turned the gem attached to the end of the handle.
Then the blade shone white.
“Eat.”
SPLASH!
The Solvent burst the moment it touched the blade.
Wer raised his voice prematurely.
“Ritak, what are you doing to that expensive blade!”
If one poured Solvent over an ordinary sword, it would be riddled with holes in no time.
Of course, my blade was different from a normal weapon.
-Kukri, legendary grade. Weapon tag: Absorption. Absorbs special effects upon contact. Can activate at a set chance for 30 minutes.
“For 47 vanus, that is nearly fifty skewers...... hm?”
Wer blinked several times.
The kukri was cleanly absorbing the Solvent.
“This thing is as much of a glutton as Lord Wer.”
It also resembled him in that it worked as much as it ate.
It would make good use of the Solvent’s effect.
The acid-attribute damage over time it had absorbed was 3.
Looking only at the number, it was a low amount of damage.
Still, there was nothing as nasty as damage over time.
It was damage that kept applying unless the cause was removed.
SWISH!
I placed the blade in the path where the calamity was reaching out.
Snap, thud-thud!
The charging vines were cut down helplessly on their own.
There was no need to go out of my way to swing the blade.
“Hm? Does that plant not look as if it is melting?”
“Yeah. It worked well.”
The weapon’s special effect had activated by luck.
Ssssss.......
The vines slowly corroded from the cut surfaces.
There were only two or so strands so far, still not many.
The weapon’s special effect activated at a low chance.
‘In any case, if I keep hitting it, the number will grow!’
Whoosh, slash!
-Taxes, taxes......!
“Fine, eat this!”
The money I had to offer to the calamity was one gold coin per minute, 1,000 vanus.
It was an amount painful enough to draw tears of blood if I took my time.
With the 100,000 vanus I had borrowed from Creed, I could not even last an hour.
I also had to account for Wer’s share.
Clink.
I put another handful of gold coins into the bag.
It was roughly 30,000 vanus’ worth.
‘My sense of money is getting more and more broken.’
I gritted my teeth and swung my arm again and again.
The calamity, which had been filling the waterway and spreading its domain like a jungle, shrank back.
As much as it withdrew, a path opened.
“Hah, this reminds me of going to tend the graves......!”
“Where did you say you went?”
“The mountains! When I stopped by once in a while, the trees would block the path just like this!”
At most, I went once or twice a year.
Each time I went, the overgrown trees were troublesome.
Vines as dense as grass that had grown for months.
A calamity truly was a calamity.
“Do you not need to clear all of it?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
There were no vines left behind me.
I was cutting all of them away as I advanced.
Of course, this was not pointless nonsense I was doing because I had time to spare.
If the path opened, it would be easier for the people coming after me.
‘I hope they arrive in time......’
Yoanes would definitely come.
It would be easy to deliver the news to her, and she would come running in a panic the moment she heard it.
But I could not guarantee John Doe.
To begin with, it would be fortunate if Creed even found him.
I also questioned whether that blunt bastard would readily come.
‘It’ll be a problem if the protagonist is missing.’
A calamity was not something extras could deal with by themselves.
Even the second calamity alone was trickier than the first.
“Well, this section is only a little annoying, but......”
Eventually, there would come a point when no one but the protagonist could defeat it.
That was why I had to raise him in advance.
It would be even better if he grew enough that I could hand everything over to him.
-Such insolence......!
The spite-filled voice trembled.
It seemed to be starting.
Slither!
The vines formed ranks.
Gone was the sight of them scattering in panic and fleeing.
The things that stopped with their heads raised all glared at me at once.
“......Whew. Come at me, bastard.”
The vines flew in from every direction at once as if bursting forth with the power they had gathered.
To be precise, from every direction except behind me.
Behind me, there were only grasses that had already been severed, melted, and rotted away.
I cut down the calamity that flew at me from the front alone.
SHNK! SLASH!
Now, it did not withdraw from ordinary slashes.
The rest of the severed vines kept reaching out.
Sssssss......!
The vines where acid-attribute damage over time activated drooped limply.
It worked about once every five or six strikes.
The ends of the limp vines melted away.
Unless it was washed off or burned away, the damage over time would keep eating into it.
If it was not dealt with quickly, it was damage that would reach the main body.
-Ghh! How dare you!
The voice began to carry even more anger.
Its refined demeanor had indeed been an act.
SWISH!
The calamity swung a vine sharply.
This time, the attack was not aimed at me.
Thud.......
The end of a vine fell to the floor and writhed.
“What a foolish thing, attacking itself!”
“If it doesn’t cut it off, it’ll keep melting like that.”
“Oh-ho? Then that means you can melt the flowerpot too.”
The calamity was not stupid enough to leave cancerous vines alone.
Still, it did not matter.
The vines were not infinite.
I pulled up the corner of my mouth.
“I’ll pull you out by the roots, you calamity bastard.”
***
How long had I been swinging the blade?
Before I knew it, a familiar space appeared.
The underground social club where the auction had been held.
A chandelier with half its lights gone out cast an eerie glow over the floor.
‘I really did some proper roadwork.’
Breaking through to the social club had been work in the most literal sense.
Cutting, melting, cutting, melting.
Behind me, there were vines’ remains everywhere.
Some of them were still wriggling.
“Haaah, whew.”
I roughly wiped the sweat running down my forehead.
My breathing simply would not settle.
With a body far removed from exercise, I had been swinging a blade over and over.
It was only natural that my throat stung and burned.
“Ritak, are you all right?”
“I can...... manage.”
In any case, swinging my arm so hard had been worth it.
The vines had grown sparse.
‘The fact that this thing has settled into my hand is a huge gain too.’
Clench.
I gripped the kukri.
The sensation of it wrapping pleasantly around my hand.
Now, it felt quite familiar.
-Ghh......!
The remaining vines began to undulate greatly.
Lady Detra, who had been swaying above the stage, rose high.
-Stop that rude bastard!
Scrape, scrape.
I heard the sound of dragging feet.
The group of participants who had been crushed by the calamity blocked my way.
There were six of them in total.
‘......That’s not enough.’
There had been around thirty people who bid on the calamity.
It was a number I could not mistake.
‘Did it eat the rest to replenish its stamina?’
For now, I had no choice but to deal with them.
The calamity’s servants were staggering toward me with blank eyes.
Their fearless faces were empty.
I leveled the kukri at them, and at that moment, Wer carefully grabbed the hem of my clothes.
“Ritak, do you intend to attack them?”
“They’re already dead.”
Had they not bid on the Primordial Snapdragon while stained by greed, only to be encroached upon by the calamity in the end?
They were people who could no longer return no matter what was done.
Clench.
I briefly closed my eyes, then opened them.
I looked carefully at their faces again, but I could not read any emotion from them.
“......Hoo.”
I thrust the blade sharply and cut the throat of the one who charged first.
THUD!
The body controlled by roots collapsed easily.
The remaining limbs of the calamity kept blocking my path even as they staggered.
They seemed completely unable to recognize pain.
Sssss!
Even with parts of their bodies melting, they charged persistently.
While I dealt with all six of them, the remaining vines steadily formed ranks.
“Haaah, hah!”
I roughly wiped my sweat with my sleeve.
There was no time to catch my breath.
The calamity no longer launched attacks recklessly.
Instead, it began throwing curveballs.
‘Did this bastard get the hang of fighting too?’
Vines bent in from outside my field of vision.
Worse, several flew in from different directions at the same time.
“This is too unfair......!”
No matter how sharp the blade was, I only had one hand to swing it with.
My skill was at a level where it was embarrassing to attach the word swordsmanship to it.
But even if someone was skilled, there was not much one could do against being mobbed, was there?
CLANG!
Red light dyed the social club.
Wer’s shield crumbled and scattered.
“Two remain!”
“I know!”
CLANG!
No sooner had I answered than red light burst in front of my eyes again.
The shield was being whittled away at a terrifying speed.
‘This is bad......’
Alarm bells rang in my head.
If even the last layer shattered, there would be no next one.
I would be standing before the calamity with nothing but my bare body.
‘But that thing has lost a lot of vines too.’
It looked meager compared to the moment it had sprouted.
The calamity’s domain had also shrunk quite a bit.
‘It’s close, but possible.’
Clench.
It was the moment I readjusted my grip on the blade’s handle.
The calamity of greed shouted as if making a final struggle.
-Hand over everything, everything!
It was a familiar line.
‘The late-phase transition line......!’
The first-half domain effect had been Collection.
The Phase 2 that followed was Confiscation.
It was an absurd effect that stole items or money every time one touched the creature.
It was essentially evolving from a thug into a robber.
The stage where I could pay it off reasonably was over, so I had to finish it as quickly as possible.
“R-Ritak.”
“I’m busy, so later......”
“This is an important matter!”
I turned my head.
“......There is no money.”
“What?”
I turned the bag upside down.
There was not a single gold coin, nor even one dark, grimy coin.
“Ack!”
Only Wer fell to the floor.
‘Is this where time runs out?’
My breath choked off.
It was not my imagination.
-If you cannot pay the price, you do not even have the right to breathe!
A piercing shriek of laughter drove itself into my head.
It was like the sound of nails scraping a chalkboard.
My head throbbed.
‘Damn it......’
My vision dimmed in an instant.
Clink!
But it cleared just as quickly.
Roll...... clack.
A gold coin that had rolled from somewhere reached my feet.