For most playthroughs, Argos was the first boss players encountered.
She was simple and slow. All you had to do was watch which direction her eyes opened toward and dodge accordingly.
She was so much easier than anything that appeared afterward that Alex sometimes wondered if the developers had put her there as bait for the early game.
Since she was an unavoidable encounter that practically served as a mandatory part of progression, she had never once been marked as a Hidden Enemy.
“Is this… really how it’s supposed to be?”
Even under the overwhelming pressure of hundreds of eyes staring directly at her, Elizabeth only spoke in a displeased tone.
The Gold Maniac trait was itself a kind of madness, granting her resistance to ordinary fear.
Alex, on the other hand, was crushed beneath Argos' presence and found it difficult even to speak.
Forcing his trembling voice under control, Alex quietly said, “No. Change of plans.”
“Just say the word.”
But despite his instinctive fear, Alex did not spend long deliberating.
He had not prepared so poorly that a variable this small would stop him.
“First….”
He knew all of Argos' characteristics, so depending on how he combined and exploited them, there were dozens of possible strategies.
It was unfortunate that he could not use the simplest method, but that did not matter.
“There should be one yellow eye among them. That’s her weak point.”
Elizabeth, who had been concentrating on Alex’s explanation, looked somewhat sickened.
Hundreds of eyes resembling a pig’s, completely filled without even visible whites, stared at her without blinking.
Hundreds of them.
Right in front of her.
And he wanted her to find something among those?
“Don’t tell me only one of those eyeballs is yellow.”
“Unfortunately… yes. Only one.”
As their conversation continued, Argos' eyes all began blinking at once as though reacting to the sound.
Then she suddenly raised her massive body.
“…Now I understand why you called her the queen of the Orcs….”
Only when she stood fully upright did the shape resembling some grotesque fusion of human and pig reveal itself in full.
Every time her enormous split mouth opened and her long, drooping ears flapped, a foul stench spread through the air.
Elizabeth muttered in dismay at the sight, but goosebumps rose across Alex’s entire body.
This fucking goddamn difficulty!
“What kind of bullshit skips straight to Phase Two?!”
“What? What do you mean?”
Elizabeth did not understand what Alex was talking about, but unfortunately, he had no time to explain.
“Run!”
At Alex’s urgent shout, the dutiful Knight immediately sprinted without asking another question.
Alex knew the mill’s layout well, so he grabbed Elizabeth’s armor as she ran and pulled her to the right.
There was a ladder there for maintaining the mill’s enormous waterwheel.
“You go up! I’ll head to the far end!”
It would have been nice to explain more, but there was no time.
Argos, now standing upright, suddenly retched with a revolting noise and vomited something out.
Highly acidic liquid poured down over the spot where the two of them had been standing only moments earlier.
The moment the liquid touched the rows of Magical Beast corpses, they melted away at once.
“Aaagh!”
Elizabeth, already climbing the ladder as Alex had instructed, seemed to have seen it as well, judging by her horrified scream.
The mill’s structure was simple.
Its interior, built around a waterwheel that powered the millstone, was wide and open enough for a massive Magical Beast like Argos to occupy it.
“Damn it…!”
Which meant that if Alex wanted to avoid that disgusting acid, he at least had to cross the channel that normally carried water to the wheel.
The mill had not been maintained, so the waterway was blocked. For now, it would simply become a channel for the acid to drain through.
Shaking off the illusion that the back of his body was already stinging, Alex leapt over the channel with all his strength.
“Are you all right?!”
Elizabeth’s shout came at just the right moment.
At the sound, all of Argos' eyes shifted toward her simultaneously.
Argos relied primarily on her vision for her senses, but as those enormous ears suggested, her hearing was sensitive as well.
So did that mean they had to stay quiet?
“I’m fine! Shout louder!”
“What? What are you— Agh! All of those things are looking at me!”
It was the exact opposite.
Even if Argos had gained the ability to properly perceive her surroundings, she was probably still not fundamentally intelligent.
If Alex and Elizabeth, standing far apart from one another, took turns provoking the enormous Magical Beast, Argos was bound to lose track of what to do.
“Exactly! Keep her attention for a moment!”
And while she did that, Alex would….
“My lord!”
Elizabeth’s urgent shout reached Alex as he scanned the surrounding structures and worked through possibilities in his head.
Then he suddenly noticed the light above him disappearing.
Argos, who should have been confused between Alex and Elizabeth, was reaching a gigantic hand toward Alex.
‘Damn it….’
She was definitely different from the Argos he knew.
Apparently, she now possessed enough intelligence to establish priorities.
The worst of the worst.
As the situation continued to deteriorate, the oppressive presence of the enormous Magical Beast bore directly down on Alex’s entire body.
But this time, Alex forced his eyes wide open against the pressure descending upon him.
[Radiant Light Lv.2]
[Holy Sword Lv.3]
After all, the body he possessed belonged to the protagonist of this world.
No one knew this body’s growth potential better than Alex, who had raised it hundreds of times.
Biting the inside of his mouth to keep himself focused, Alex drew his sword and pushed the skills he possessed as far as he could.
He felt holy light infuse both his sword and his body at once.
[Will inhabits the synchronized body.]
THOOM—!
With a violent rush of displaced air, the massive hand stopped directly above Alex.
Within the mysterious light hazily surrounding him, Alex stared at the system windows flickering chaotically before his eyes.
[Resisting an impact beyond the body’s capacity.]
[A new skill manifests through noble will.]
A rounded barrier had formed from the tip of Alex’s sword, surrounding and protecting him.
The situation had come without warning, but Alex did not panic.
He had prepared himself so that he would be ready whenever a moment like this came.
There had been a reason he had gone out of his way to use divine power and raise his skill proficiency.
[Sanctuary (Lv.1) Acquired.]
[Forms a defensive barrier under God’s protection. The holy barrier absorbs various status effects and physical impacts.]
Having successfully acquired his next skill, Alex gritted his teeth but managed a faint smile.
Better yet, from within the hand pressing down on him, he finally found what he had been searching for.
A strangely distinct eye, bright yellow, with a horizontally elongated pupil like that of a goat.
‘There you are…!’
But his luck ended there.
Alex could not move at all.
If he released the barrier now, that enormous hand would immediately seize him and crush him.
“Get away from him, you fucking monster!”
Elizabeth shouted as she tried to draw Argos' attention away from Alex.
THUD—!
Argos violently swung her other arm at Elizabeth.
A deafening crash rang out as Argos' fist slammed into the wall of the old mill.
The entire building shook, and aged dust rained down from every direction.
“Ugh…!”
Argos appeared to have suddenly remembered that she had two hands.
She hesitated over which target to prioritize this time.
Depending on her decision, one of them could end up in serious danger.
‘Hurry…. Hurry…!’
Even in that desperate moment, Alex anxiously bit his lip as though waiting for something.
Then a loud horn suddenly sounded.
It was a deep, booming note, long and powerful enough to make his skull reverberate.
“Graaaaaaagh!”
Grabbing Alex.
Attacking Elizabeth.
Covering her ears.
The instant her number of choices increased, Argos lost the ability to decide and began roaring as though in agony.
‘Are you truly going there yourself?’
‘Yeah. Don’t worry about missing out. There’s plenty for you to do here, Hamilton.’
‘If the purpose is to show the residents what you are doing, my lord….’
‘No. That’s not all.’
Alex recalled the conversation he had shared with Hamilton before leaving the lord’s castle.
Knowing that there was a horn capable of producing a tremendous noise among the miscellaneous items in the lord’s castle’s underground storage was basic knowledge to Alex.
On lower difficulties, he had even used that horn to defeat Argos with nothing but basic guards.
‘Of course, that was when I had a certain amount of breathing room….’
Those comfortable days of sitting at a desk and clearing encounters from behind a screen were over.
Now he had to rack his brain, go into the field himself, and prepare for unpredictable situations that could erupt at any moment.
Perfect preparation that accounted for dozens of possible outcomes.
That alone had given Alex an opportunity.
“Elizabeth!”
Elizabeth’s durability once she entered combat was beyond imagination.
As though being hurled away by a Magical Beast had been nothing, her enormous sword immediately shot forward at Alex’s call.
Elizabeth swung upward into Argos' hand, severing two of the giant Magical Beast’s fingers in a single strike.
Freed at last, Alex released Sanctuary and readjusted his grip on his sword.
***
“Has something gone wrong?”
One of the newly hired guards asked as he lowered the horn.
But Hamilton could not answer and remained silent.
‘Blow this when the timing seems right.’
‘When exactly is… the right timing?’
‘Twenty minutes after we go in? Or when I need it, I’ll give you a signal.’
The words Alex had left before departing kept circling through Hamilton’s mind.
As instructed, Hamilton had been waiting to sound the horn exactly twenty minutes later.
But when he suddenly noticed the strange sight of the mill itself shaking, he had instinctively ordered the guard to blow it.
Had that really been the signal Alex meant?
Or had Hamilton misunderstood and made a mistake…?
“Dad! Dad! Did you see? The lord went swoosh! And then the Orc went swoosh! And…!”
Tommy, who had been deeply impressed by the sight of Alex killing the remaining lesser Magical Beasts on his way to the mill, chattered innocently away atop the castle wall.
Whether he understood Hamilton and the residents’ anxiety or not, the distant mill remained silent even after the horn stopped sounding.
There was no reaction whatsoever, as though Alex and Elizabeth had never entered it at all.
“W-we should probably… do something….”
“None of us can enter a sealed area and expect to come back alive anyway.”
Hamilton forced himself to speak calmly among the anxious residents.
What are we supposed to do if something really happened to the two people who are practically this domain’s only hope…?
Just as Hamilton’s worries were becoming increasingly grave, Tommy, who had been chattering away, suddenly squealed.
“Over there!”
Elizabeth kicked open the mill door and emerged, supporting Alex as they came out.
He appeared to be injured, but Alex was clearly conscious as well, staggering forward on his feet.
Cheers spread across the castle wall at the sight of Alex safely leaving the mill.
***
“Ah, ow, ow, ah…!”
Alex felt like he was dying as Elizabeth supported him out of the building.
She was so rough and absurdly strong that the shoulder she had lifted felt like it was about to pop out of its socket.
“Come on! Can’t you walk a little faster?”
“Didn’t you tell me to go as slowly as possible?”
“I mean, slowly and quickly without making it hurt….”
“What does that even— No, and another thing! Who plants their leg like that while swinging a sword? Are you even a Knight?!”
Alex had nothing to say in response to Elizabeth’s incredulous question.
Alex’s body might belong to a Knight, but the soul inside it was nothing more than an ordinary college student who loved games.
He had been so focused on striking the Magical Beast’s weak point that he had twisted his own ankle under the force of his attack.
In hindsight, it had almost been inevitable.
“…Being a Knight doesn’t mean I have a lot of real combat experience.”
Barely managing that excuse, Alex urged his unstable steps onward.
In the end, he crossed the dam looking more like Elizabeth was dragging him along.
The reservoir’s water level had fallen, leaving the current considerably calmer now.
“My lord!”
By the time they crossed the dam and entered the safe zone, Hamilton and the residents who had been watching from atop the castle walls had already come down.
Hamilton must have run all the way there, because his hair, normally arranged with almost frightening neatness, was disheveled.
This feels strangely awkward….
“It went well. Once we clean out the mill, we should be able to use it again.”
Alex frantically waved his hands as he hurriedly dismissed the system windows filling his vision.
Hamilton, who had been in the middle of getting emotional, was swept aside along with them.
But Alex had something far more urgent to worry about than this welcome.
[Hidden Enemy Defeated.]
[Farmland Liberation increased by 30%.]
[Coins : 150]
[Hidden Shop Location]
[Lord’s Office (00:13:11)]
“To the office. Hurry, hurry!”