The Return Of The Exiled Villain

[Are you confident in defeating it alone?]

Jasmine asked curiously.

’...One-hundred percent sure’, Gray nodded lightly.

’Although I don’t have my Emotionless Sword Intent, my current strength should be more than enough to deal with it.’

His eyes locked onto the vertical slites of the dungeon’s boss.

Its eyes were narrowed, seemingly analyzing after experiencing that hard slap that almost made it roll across the ground.

[...What was that amount of strength anyway? I was almost falling asleep until you did that, so I didn’t particularly see it.]

’It wasn’t strength... I merely compressed my mana into its maximum and released it against the serpent’s tail.’

[Mhm.]

Shing...!

Gray unsheathed his rapier... and this seemingly ordinary move caused the girls behind to instantly flush with excitement.

”Oh my god! He’s actually going to use a sword!”

”We didn’t have much time to analyze his duel against the princess... but now, against an Early King realm, we should have a lot of time!”

Gray sighed at their comments, but focused on the serpent who was currently hissing lightly, coiling herself, raising her head high.

Fwoop!

Suddenly, the big snake decided to move first!

Its body uncoiled from the floor in a single fluid motion, fifty meters of muscle and scale rising and spreading across the chamber.

The King Realm aura that flooded outward from it was a physical pressure, momentarily stunning Gray’s senses.

HSSSSSSSSS!!!

Then it opened its mouth, letting out a concetrated pressurized stream of a darkly luminous liquid that seemed to be poison, moving fast enough to leave a visible trail in the vapor behind it.

FWOOOOSH!!!

”Gray!!!” Several voices from behind him.

”[✧ Dream Mist ✧]”

His body dissolved at the edges first, then the center, pulling apart into a drifting silver-grey vapor that the poison stream passed directly through without finding anything to damage.

The mist hung in the air for exactly one breath, directionless and weightless, and then reformed six meters to the serpent’s left with Gray already mid-step and the rapier already moving.

Fwip, fwip, fwip!

Three shallow cuts along the scale joint behind the head, each one purposely targeting the weak point Ellen had specified.

The first deflected off a scale edge.

The second found the gap, while the third went deeper.

SHHHHK!!!

The serpent screamed.

SKREEEEE!!!

”HE TELEPORTED!!!” Vivienne’s voice cracked slightly.

”That was mist! He turned into mist! Darya grabbed Ysolde’s arm without realizing it.

”He’s already cutting it, look at where he’s hitting already!”” Reinette was on her toes, craning forward.

The serpent’s response was immediate and furious.

Its body twisted with a speed that compressed the air into an audible crack, the tail swinging back across the chamber in the opposite direction from its first strike, this time accompanied by a secondary technique that manifested as a ring of condensed poison mana expanding outward from its body in every direction simultaneously, low to the ground, designed to catch anything that had moved laterally to avoid the tail.

CRACK!

WHOOOOSH, BOOM!!!

The poison ring hit the chamber walls and ate into the stone, leaving dark, fuming channels carved into the floor where it passed.

”Huup!”

Gray stepped over it with a single step.

Clean over the ring’s upper edge at its highest point, his momentum carrying him forward rather than away, directly toward the serpent’s body.

”Does he have eyes in the back of his head?!” Sola shouted.

”He read the technique before it formed,” Seraph muttered quietly.

The serpent reared back, and its eyes suddenly changed color.

From crimson to black.

Grrrmmmmmmm...

The sound that built in its throat was different from anything before it.

The air in the chamber darkened in a ring around the serpent’s head.

Then shadows began moving against their light sources.

They peeled off the walls and the floor and converged toward a single point above the serpent’s open mouth, pulling together into a dense, swirling mass of dark mana that had a strange texture to it.

Looking at the strange texture, Gray’s eyes widened a little in surprise as he remembered one of the possible mutant abilities that a serpent could get.

Shadow Venom.

The mutation’s gift.

A technique that was neither purely poison nor purely darkness but something that existed in the space between both, capable of tracking mana signatures and following them through conventional avoidance.

Fwoop!

It launched in every direction, fragmenting into dozens of individual projectiles the moment it left the serpent’s mouth, each fragment curving independently in the air.

Each one had locked onto Gray’s mana signature with the patient, single-minded focus of something that had been built specifically to prevent escape.

CRACK.

CRACK.

CRACK.

CRACK.

CRACK!!!

”GRAY!!!”

The shouts from behind him overlapped into a single wall of sound.

”[Nullification.]”

His voice was conversational.

The mana field that expanded from his free hand was invisible, producing no light, no sound, no visible phenomenon of any kind.

It simply existed outward from his palm in a sphere that the Shadow Venom projectiles entered and then stopped being Shadow Venom inside of, their mana structure unwinding at the foundational level, the dark complex technique dissolving into harmless ambient particles before any individual fragment cleared the field’s boundary.

Dozens of projectiles...

...Gone in the matter of seconds.

The serpent’s black eyes stared at the space where its most powerful ranged technique had just ceased to exist.

Hssss...

”WHAT WAS THAT?!”

”Did he cancel them?!”

”Every single one without even moving?”

”What realm is he actually in?! It’s impossible for him to be just at the Master realm!” Darya’s voice had completely abandoned its usual composure.

Gray rolled his shoulder once and stepped forward.

[Do you need help?]

’No need for that,’ Gray replied immediately.

Hisss~

The serpent, for the first time since its breakthrough was completed, pulled its head back in complete wariness.

Its body moved into a full constriction posture, coils spreading across the chamber floor in a wide formation, preparing to wrap and compress rather than strike directly.

A technique designed for opponents who were faster and more mobile, trading speed for inevitability.

Once those coils closed around a target, strength and technique and mana became secondary to the simple physical reality of fifty meters of muscle contracting inward.

It launched the coils at six points simultaneously.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Each impact point detonated against the floor as the serpent’s body crashed down around Gray’s position in a closing ring, the chamber shaking hard enough that several girls stumbled, stone dust raining from the ceiling in a continuous shower.

GRRRMMMMM!!!

The coils tightened and then met each other in the center.

”...Gray?” Wren’s voice was very small, but he still heard it.

The coils shifted.

And Gray stepped out from between two of them on the serpent’s far side, his rapier resting casually against his shoulder, his coat slightly displaced by the air pressure but otherwise entirely undisturbed.

”[✧Swap✧]”

On the inside of the coils, where Gray had been standing a fraction of a second before they closed, a chunk of broken stone from the chamber floor sat in his place, already being crushed by the constriction pressure.

The serpent felt the difference immediately.

SKREEEEE!!!

The shriek it produced shook the vapor into visible ripples.

Behind the safety line, the Phoenix Class had collectively lost the ability to maintain any semblance of composed observation.

”HE SWAPPED HIMSELF WITH A ROCK!”

”FROM INSIDE THE COILS!

”HOW DOES HE EVEN...!!!”

”I cannot,” Darya said flatly, sitting down on the chamber floor.

”I physically cannot.”

Maelis was watching Gray with an expression that was several things at once, none of which she appeared to have any intention of displaying openly.

Her fingers were very still at her sides.

Cassandra had both hands over her mouth.

Not from fear.

She was hiding something that was either a smile or something adjacent to it, and she had enough composure left to prefer that no one confirm which.

Seraph watched the serpent thrash against its own coils, then watched Gray walking calmly along its outer edge toward the head, and something changed almost imperceptibly in her expression.

Not shock.

But... a type of admiration, and at the same time, disappointment.

However, that disappointment was towards herself.

After all, she had promised to protect Gray, and after witnessing what seemed to be his full strength, she got more and more disapppintment on herself for being so damn weak.

The serpent freed itself from its own constriction with a furious full-body surge, its King Realm aura detonating outward in a raw pressure wave that cracked the mana vents and sent several of the vapor streams backward against their direction of flow.

KRAAAABOOOOM!!!

It reached its maximum height, and then, its mouth opened widely.

THRUUUUMMM!

The mutation’s deepest ability began forming at the back of its throat, a condensed sphere of combined poison and shadow mana compressing into a density that warped the air around it visibly, a technique that had likely never been used inside the dungeon simply because nothing inside the dungeon had ever pushed it this far.

THRUUUUMMMM!!!

THRUUUUMMMM!!!

THRUUUUMMMM!!!

The sphere started pulsating strongly, causing countless shockwaves of wind to be sent in every direction.

One could see that it was a big move, and yet...

Gray took a strange stance, being face-to-face with the sphere.

He passed the rapier to his right hand and held it in a reverse grip, letting the rapier’s blade hang in a diagonal manner behind his back.

At the same time, his left hand formed some kind of claw, pointing to his right side.

”...Soul Chasing Extremities.”

The words escaped his mouth, and suddenly, the whole space was covered with his own killing intent, causing even the serpent’s eyes to widen as it started speeding up the charging process of the dark sphere.

”[Severing Pursuit.]”