The full-color hand that shot out from within Han-eol's Image came down to the lower dimension in an instant and seized the demon beast's thorn-covered soul in a tight grip.
Perhaps because of the thorns, Han-eol's full-color fingers could not grasp the other's soul easily.
He barely managed to catch hold of it, but perhaps because the soul was connected to the tails, it would not come out easily either.
"!!!"
The instant its soul was caught in the full-color fingers, the demon beast flung its three eyes wide.
Six pupils shaking and trembling as if struck by sudden death.
Even in its panic, the demon beast aimed its eight tails at Han-eol. The thick needles loaded inside the holes at the tail tips held a chilling radiance.
Hwiyoooong―.
Above the demon beast's head, the black storm clouds churned, forming a spiral vortex.
Beneath the clouds, bright yellow charges spat flashes of light.
Photons emitted from the charges scattered like brilliant powdered glass, and they settled down softly like snowflakes to form a hexagram.
Before long the demon beast's body sank into a hexagram magic circle.
Next, a second hexagram magic circle formed layered over the first hexagram magic circle, protecting the entire airship the demon beast rode.
All of these phenomena were accomplished in an instant.
Strangely, Han-eol took in every one of these phenomena without missing a single thing.
The demon beast flinging its three eyes wide, aiming its tails at him, summoning the storm clouds and the charges: each scene of the process was stored in Han-eol's mind in sequence.
Next, Han-eol also observed the particles of light emitted from the charges, that is, the photons, forming two layers of hexagram to protect the demon beast and the airship.
'The moment this instant ends, I die.'
Within time slowed enormously, Han-eol was struck by this premonition.
'If I am going to live, I have to pull out that demon beast bastard's soul before the instant ends, somehow. Gyaaah.'
Han-eol curled his fingers with all his strength.
When Han-eol actually shaped both hands into hooks and curled them, the full-color hand within his Image also bent every finger joint with all its strength.
Ignoring the thorns sprouting from the demon beast's soul, it clenched tight.
"ζ!"
Just before dying, the demon beast let out a single short shriek.
At the same time, the demon beast fired all eight needles wildly in every direction.
Originally the demon beast had aimed all eight at Han-eol.
But because of the agony of having its soul pulled out, the needles went hopelessly wide of their target.
However, one of them passed by, grazing perilously close to Han-eol's left ear.
Han-eol did not even feel his earlobe come away.
At the same moment that the demon beast's eight shots came to nothing, the demon beast's soul was finally pulled out.
It had been a demon beast beyond comparison with the Snow Wolves, transcending their order entirely, and yet it lost its life absurdly to Han-eol's bizarre ability.
Had this demon beast attacked Han-eol from long range, Han-eol would have come near to being slaughtered without ever resisting.
And yet the demon beast, meaning to make Han-eol die in pain and terror, had drawn him close and in the end suffered the harm itself.
And it did not die gently, either.
When the full-color hand tore the demon beast's soul out by brute force, the two tails connected to that soul came dragging along hideously.
In actual fact, of the eight tails the demon beast possessed, the two yellowish-brown tails that had looked especially chilling bored through the demon beast's pelvis, were dragged in between the gaps of its internal organs, and then burst out bulging while smashing the ribs, the throat, and the maw in turn.
Because of that, the demon beast's three eyeballs could not withstand the pressure and burst as well.
The demon beast, its soul pulled out, toppled over in a ghastly state.
The demon beast, dead on the spot, falls from the airship.
Han-eol, held by the collar by the demon beast, falls along with it.
'No, no good.'
Han-eol screamed inwardly.
Han-eol did not have an iron body like a physical-category ability-holder.
Han-eol had no knack for making his body light with magic either.
Naturally, Han-eol had no wings.
Which meant there was no possibility of surviving a fall from this dizzying height where clouds are formed.
The situation a moment ago had been so urgent that Han-eol had attacked the other's soul first without thinking twice, and for the result to be death by falling, was this not too cruel?
***
Shwaaaang―.
As Han-eol descended at tremendous speed, wind rising from the ground battered his entire body.
His body stings.
It feels like skin being scrubbed raw with coarse stone and flayed off alive.
No, right now it is not his skin that is the problem; his heart feels as if it will stop.
Han-eol clung to life and thrashed. First Han-eol tried swinging the full-color hand to somehow catch his own falling body.
But it came to nothing.
The full-color hand could not catch Han-eol's body and passed emptily through it.
'Gyaargh. No good.'
Han-eol barely gathered his collapsing mental state and curled his body as round as possible. With both hands he wrapped his head.
Now Han-eol had no choice but to trust in the vest's defensive power. In that state, Han-eol gripped the A-grade recovery potion bottle in his mouth and worked his teeth and tongue to pry off the cap.
The potion's fragrance welling up in his mouth.
'I must not swallow yet. Not yet. Not yet either. Uwaaaaah!'
Han-eol put all his bodily senses on edge and gauged the timing of impact with the ground.
At the very instant his bones were crushed and his flesh pulped against the hard ground, he had to swallow the recovery potion down his throat.
Only then would there arise even the slightest possibility of Han-eol living.
Soon that timing came.
A searing sensation like a volley of thunderbolts driving down burned Han-eol away. A tremendous sound tore Han-eol's eardrums. The instant he was slammed against the ground, Han-eol's two legs were crushed first.
Fortunately Han-eol's spine was not shattered.
That was thanks in part to the A-grade vest's outstanding defensive power, but in addition, Han-eol's backpack served as something of a cushion.
Han-eol's head was not split open either.
It was thanks to Han-eol miraculously hunching his neck and tucking his head as deep into the vest as possible right before the violent impact reached the back of his skull.
Even so, the blow Han-eol took was considerable.
Under the influence of the shockwave transmitted through the A-grade vest, most of the ribs inside Han-eol's body snapped with a crack. As the back of Han-eol's skull bounced violently upward, his neck bones wrenched with a crunch. A severe concussion came over Han-eol.
Because of that, Han-eol's left eyeball popped out.
'Aaaah~.'
While gulping down the A-grade recovery potion held in his mouth, Han-eol somehow caught the dislodged eyeball and forced it back into the socket.
Fortunately the A-grade recovery potion's effect soon took hold.
His ruptured organs mend rapidly.
The bones crushed to pieces all over his body find their places again.
The concussion symptoms improve.
The optic nerve of the dislodged eyeball reconnects.
The earlobe that had been torn ragged partially regenerates as well.
But the aftereffects of falling from a dizzying height were too great. Despite Han-eol having swallowed the recovery potion at the precise moment, his consciousness grew hazy and dim.
"Krrrrgh―."
Han-eol writhed his whole body in unbearable pain.
Even so, Han-eol turned part of his consciousness to the full-color hand. Right now an astonishing change was taking place in the hand within Han-eol's Image.
Up to now Han-eol had faced a total of eight demon beasts.
Of these, the souls of the six Snow Wolves had all been absorbed clean into the full-color hand as soon as they separated from their bodies.
The soul of the demon beast that had ridden the disc walked the same path as the Snow Wolves as soon as it was pulled out.
Even after absorbing seven souls like this, there had been no change at all in Han-eol's full-color hand.
But today, at last, something peculiar occurred.
The moment Han-eol forcibly tore out the soul of the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast with the full-color hand, the demon beast's soul was sucked into the palm without fail.
But from this very moment, phenomena different from before arose.
The three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast's soul began to divide.
The demon beast's soul was composed of 'spirit,' 'psyche,' and 'anima.'
Of these, the 'spirit' and the 'psyche,' as with the other demon beasts before, floated upward and were absorbed as part of the full-color hand.
In the process, the size of the full-color hand grew slightly.
Up to this point there was nothing different from before.
But the 'anima' among the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast's psyche and anima gave rise to a peculiar phenomenon.
The demon beast's anima sank downward like sediment in a liquid. If the 'psyche' was like a clear liquid, then the 'anima' resembled turbid sediment.
Accordingly, the clear 'psyche' mixed with the demon beast's 'spirit' and was sucked into the full-color hand, but the sediment 'anima' clumped into a mass and sank downward, and finally protruded and hardened on the palm of the full-color hand like a pimple.
The three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast's 'anima,' having bulged out like that, turned into something like an eyeball after a little time had passed.
This was not merely eyeball-like in form; its actual behavior was no different from an eyeball's either.
Roll, roll.
The small eyeball bulging on the palm of the full-color hand looks this way and that around its surroundings.
Just as a newborn puppy that has only just opened its eyes rolls its eyes here and there in curiosity, the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast's 'anima' also observed its surroundings with curiously gleaming eyes.
Originally it was the way of living things to accumulate will in the 'psyche' and to store knowledge in the 'anima.'
Thus when that living thing died, it was the natural order that its thought and philosophy rose to the heavens together with the 'psyche,' while its knowledge and experience were held in the 'anima' and left behind on the earth.
This case was the same.
The eyeball sprouted on the full-color hand had lost all the will and thought the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast had possessed in life, but it had inherited most of its knowledge.
So in a sense, this was no different from having strained out only the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast's knowledge through a sieve and clumped it together in the form of an eyeball.
It was only that the eyeball had no will to make use of that knowledge, and moreover did not know that it had once been the owner of that knowledge.
***
A little time passed.
The dust storm that swept over the wasteland covered Han-eol's body in earth and dust.
Because Han-eol had fallen from a great height, a considerable portion of his body was buried in the ground.
With the dust storm laid over him on top of that, no trace of Han-eol could be found.
The same went for the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast's body.
The three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast was heavier than Han-eol, so the depth to which it was buried in the ground after the fall was correspondingly greater.
With the dust storm laid over it, no trace of the demon beast could be found from the surface.
Except for one thing.
The airship the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast had been riding descended through the sandstorm and landed lightly beside its master, that is, beside the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast's corpse.
The airship seemed unaware of its master's death.
The loyalty of the airship, silently guarding its master's side even amid the fiercely lashing dust storm, felt nothing if not admirable.
It was at that very moment that an anomaly occurred.
Tirik, tik, tik, tik, tik, tik.
Dozens of mana stones on the airship's lower section repeatedly switched on and off, showing abnormal behavior.
As it happened, the full-color hand―in reality the only being who could see the hand's form or color was Han-eol, and to the eyes of others it was neither visible nor perceptible as a hand or anything else―was gently covering and protecting Han-eol, who lay as if dead.
Even so, because this hand had no substance, it could not prevent the sand from pouring in and piling thickly over Han-eol's body.
At times like these the hand within the Image seemed to be of little help.
But just then, the small eyeball sprouted on the hand, rolling about surveying its surroundings, discovered the demon beast's airship.
The eyeball had no intellect.
Its memories had all vanished as well.
Accordingly, the eyeball did not even know what that airship was.
It was simply that the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast's knowledge contained within the eyeball came leaping out instinctively and attempted to communicate with the airship.
In life, the three-eyed, eight-tailed demon beast had controlled the airship with brainwaves.
The eyeball had no brain, but since it had the knowledge, it was possible for it to imitate a signal of exactly the same wavelength as the brainwaves of its living days.