Kuro no Maou

It was without a doubt the flashiest attack magic I had ever shown them. Personally, I didn’t think I’d get this much power out of it without even using one of its special bullets which were made out of the Sloth Gill’s fingers.

The test shot was a great success ― aaand yet,

“Kurono-san, I see that you’re in high spirits after shooting a somewhat flashy magic, but I do believe that you need to be better aware of your surroundings”

“I’m truly sorry”

I was now sitting on the snow, my head hung in a shameful seiza.

“What would’ve happened if there was someone below?”

“I got too excited, and I’m deeply reflecting on it”

I’d missed something very obvious.

Obviously, the overkill Plasma Blaster that smashed through the brittle snow whale would then explode into the snowy fields. A huge explosion, a gush of hot air. An avalanche obviously followed.

When I went, ‘Ah!?’ in realization, it was already too late. The snow field that seemed to be like the calm surface of a lake, came alive with a thunderous roar as billows of snow rose up. The snow surface swelled even more tempestuously than when the huge whale appeared, spouting dense, pure-white bursts of snow into the air while flowing towards the base of the mountain, simply obeying gravity.

Obviously, there’d be no way for us to stop the surging waves caused by mother nature.

Oh man, sure fucked that one up. I thought, so dumbfounded that I could only watch as the raging avalanche rampaged downwards.

And then began Fiona’s lecturing. My hype took a nose dive. This was the Hero of Iskia, a Rank 5 Adventurer. Can I cry now?

“However, you needn’t to worry too much, since avalanches are quite common in winter mountain dungeons. When I journeyed solo I didn’t mind causing them”

At the end of thoroughly lecturing me about not being a pain to others or adventurers’ etiquette and such, Fiona nonchalantly declared so.

“Wait, you don’t actually care!?”

“I’m a bit bad at controlling my magic, after all”

Fiona recounted of not only avalanches, but events such as landslides in mountain dungeons, collapsing ruins and caverns, and so on, all of them artificial calamity-class breaches of etiquette caused by her massive booms. And for some reason, she was talking about them as a matter of pride.

“Since now’s a good time, I’ll give it to you straight: No wonder no one partied with you”

“Right, because of that, I now try to pay attention to various things”

Aside from the danger to the party, once various cases of other adventurers and commoners getting injured by such calamities start showing up, they’d naturally receive some sort of reprimand from the guild. The party could end up being deprived of their guild cards, and worst case, jailed and subsequently sentenced to death by guillotine.

“We’re getting pretty famous now too, so we have to start being more careful”

Once again reflecting on my actions, we restarted our march up the snowy mountains.

Incidentally, hunting elemental type monsters was actually unprofitable. The reason being that they vanish like mist when defeated, which meant that we couldn’t collect a part that could be used as proof of subjugation.

In the case of high elementals though, they apparently did have crystallized mana inside them, much like a slime’s core, but it turned out to be impossible to collect that from the whale I beat just now. Either it got disintegrated by my plasma blast, or, if it did survive the onslaught, it’d now be far away due to the ensuing avalanche.

Not only did I lose the drop, I failed hard enough to get lectured about it too, but, I did get to test out my new toy, which makes it alright. Please, make it alright?

From there the dungeon was pretty easy. The monsters we encountered were anticipated, and none of our fights could be called difficult.

I smoothly bulldozed through any eis elemental snowmen, the winter variant dortuses were obliterated by Lily’s concentrated laser fire, and the white feathered harpies were cooked into roasted chicken by Fiona.

One time when a herd of white punpuns appeared, Lily figured, ‘Maybe they think I’m one of them?’ and slowly tried approaching them. That, ended up with her being driven away with a cruel pelting of snowballs. Needless to say, the punpuns were soon scattered everywhere, screaming, running for their lives and going back to hide in the coniferous forest, while Lily went crazy with her laser beams.

We sort of ended up having lots of monsters show up on the way. Despite the cold, mountain range climate, monsters still somehow thrived. And those punpuns, they’re supposed to be bears right? Not only were they not hibernating, they kept engaging us in snowball fights. What’s up with that? I swear, there’s gotta be people in costume among them.

Anyway, with so many of them, it might’ve been a good idea to pit Lily’s Living Dead guys against them. We were attempting this quest with just the three of us so we could get there faster, and since we’d be facing the Lust Rose, a rank 5 monster with practically no info on it, I figured we should use her Servants to mind the time-consuming routine fights so we can be ready to battle the boss in peak condition.

I voiced this idea in the tent after we decided to set down camp for the night, but since our destination was virtually a stone’s throw away, we decided against it.

I could sense a few monsters attempting to approach us in the night, but none of them attacked, and morning came without incident.

And the next day, the 24th of Frozen Soil, today was the day we would dive into the cave that housed the Lust Rose.

“Oh yeah, you said you fought succubi before, right Fiona?”

“Yes, a few times. Though rarely, they did appeare in the ruins type dungeons of Sinclair”

Just like how goblins or orcs, creatures only known in fantasy back on Earth, were commonly found in this world, the Succubus, a monster that inspired the male wonder and tickled at their hearts, existed as well.

What’s more, they even took the form of beautiful young women and the part about needing male semen? Had that too.

“While succubi have enough Charm to induce seduction on women too, the effect is greatly diminished compared to when they use it on men, so they weren’t that hard to beat. They’d run away as soon as they realized that I wasn’t falling under their control”

Succubi were known to be much more intelligent than the average wild monster in that they had the ability to avoid mindlessly attacking their prey. They were ranked 4 in difficulty by the guild.

Any news of them appearing would apparently cause dumb adventurers (male) to rush to the location, resulting in meaningless casualties. Every time.

“Mind control huh, I had my share of that stuff cast on me, but I still don’t really get it”

This also happened back in my human experiment days. I was, unfortunately, never tested against an actual succubus, but did face monsters like wraiths that used magic to try and mess up my senses, or manipulate my mind or other bizarre mind-fuckery.

Though there was the fact that those effects were never strong enough to make me unable to fight so I one-shot them all with pile-bunkers.

“All attacks on the mind, or those that have a noticeable effect at least, are categorized under mind control. They’re a type of negative status effect that include Charm or Dominate and the like. They’re best known for causing forced nightmares or illusions on the target”

Most of these mental attacks were actually weak to outside interference. Let’s take the example of forced nightmares. Even if it’s cast on you, a party member can easily snap you out of it through a bit of nudging or splashing water on your face.

This’d be harder if if the mind control is cast alongside a Siesta spell, but there were still ways around.

“What about Parasites?”

“They act similar to the type of mind control that manipulate the target’s body, but are actually categorized separately. Kurono-san, you said that the Sloth Gill itself went inside your body right? That type of control is magnitudes higher than any mind control”

“Yeah, I didn’t think I could get out of that one with force of will alone”

“The mental barriers in Kurono’s head are a lot harder to crack than the average Joe’s. If he couldn’t do it, I have no doubt it was strong. No wonder it was classed rank 5”

Lily suddenly joined the conversation, now in her adult mind mode. Maybe she was feeling a bit left out, she asserted that she was there too by tightly hugging the sleeve of my coat.

So cute, no uh, I was just about to ask her on something anyway.

“What about telepathy, also mind control?”

“It’s one of the fundamental forms actually. Don’t you hear stories about how past traumas are pulled back to the surface?”

Indeed, fiona nodded. I personally hadn’t experienced it, but it wasn’t hard to imagine. It sounds horrible. Especially for me, as I’d lived a long time undergoing cruel human experimentation and was made to kill my fellow countrymen. I really don’t want to get hit by one of those.

“You can do that, Lily?”

“I can’t, no. I do have high telepathic ability, but I didn’t specialize in that sort of usage. I can mostly read people’s emotions and look into their memories”

I mean, that’s nothing to scoff at. It’s like you have no privacy at all.

“Don’t worry, I can’t read your mind since your inherent barriers are so strong, and Fiona has Mind Protect active too”

“No well, I trust you, so I wouldn’t mind you reading me”

“Ufufu, thanks!!”

Lily hugged me from the side. She was adorable even in her adult mind mode. The rabbit ears on her hood were fluttering around too.

“But I’m still worried, you can’t actually see these attacks coming after all”

“We’ve done all we can to prepare for them, so thinking too much on it now is pointless”

Thinking, maybe if we had Nell, was probably too selfish of me. Regardless, Fiona was right, we had prepared to the best of our ability.

The Lust Rose has been killing adventurers left and right never once showing itself. Even when Jimmy-san first found the cave, the party of three he was guiding never said they were being attacked.

So I could imagine the monster having very high stealth capabilities. Strong enough to approach enemies without them noticing when their minds start getting played with.

“The problem with practically using mind control is that the spell caster needs to be very close to the target for it to take hold”

Mind control spells, like any other attack magic, could only induce a negative status on the target if it hits. Whether it be in liquid form like a sort of poison, or unseen like telepathy, the magic had to have a medium through which it would reach out and clash into the target.

The pink gas that the Lust Rose seems to release inside the cave was precisely that medium. Although, the reports did say that adventurers would go mad before the gas came into play, so it could also be a catalyst to strengthen the effects of the actual mind control spell.

“If we use my instincts and Lily’s telepathy, there’s no way it can close in on us without notice... right?”

Even if it could stealth as well as Sue-san, it likely still won’t avoid detection if we go full alert mode. Otherwise, if it has some sort of scifi optical camouflage, or even abilities that masked its presence from all 5 senses, my gut instincts won’t be fooled so easily.

“There’s also the issue where we might get caught in its control the instant we see it”

And we were also expecting the Lust Rose to use this sort of ability.

Other than mind control spells that needed to travel and hit, there were also hypnosis techniques that used visual or auditory cues that induced illusions or suggestions on the target.

If something like a camera flash can send us all to dream land instantly, we could all get done in by that instant surprise attack.

The worst possibility was if it was an instant effect sound type hypnotism. Though since this was a rank 5 monster, it should be prudent to expect that much.

“I bet the actual fight will end in an instant”

Basically, this was our strategy: First, Lily and I were to concentrate hard on sensing it as it approached. The moment one of us felt something off, we’d get Fiona to blast in that direction.

This didn’t insure that we’d hit it in one shot, but we were basically attempting to pile on the attacks so we hit the Lust Rose before it can get to us.

Since it was specialized in mental attacks, the Lust Rose itself should be weak. Succubi, who could be classified as beings with high mana like elves or vampires, were also like this, strong in their domination spells while their offensive spells went up to mid tier at most. That level of damage was nothing to the three of us, and if it came with a frontal assault, we’d happily take it down.

“――Ah! Kurono, there’s the cave!”

Lily who’d taken the lead, skating lightly across the snowfield with her Fairy Dance Shoes, reported that she’d discovered the target location.

With snow coming up to my knees, I also came beside Lily and looked to where she was pointing.

Over there was a wide vertical cliff-face standing firmly as if to block our path. The view was quite suitable for a snowy mountain range like this, with ice and snow completely shielding its surface. But we weren’t here to sight see.

The cave was right there too. It wasn’t big or small, and didn’t look any different from a normal one, but this was it. This was the only hole I could see going into the cliff.

The map we had also confirmed this sheer cliff as the correct location. This was where we would find the Lust Rose.

“Let’s head in then”