The echidna's attention was quickly averted away from Arthur as Bairon's magical energy spiked from his body. He was a walking time bomb as his mana output rapidly grew with each step he took, closing the distance between him and the magical beast.
'I'll end this quickly.'
He lunged forward, but it looked like he had just vanished in Arthur's eyes.
Slash*
In a second, the beast's right hand was instantly severed off after an attempt to evade his lightning-fast sword moves that were invisible to the human eye. It shrieked in agony before absorbing mana from the air and regrowing its severed limb immediately.
Bairon swiftly moved his blade through the air, and he could have severed the beast's head if it didn't suddenly create a wall of ice, barely surviving the edge of his blade. Then, he touched the wall and shattered it with lightning magic.
'Incredible. So this is what it means to be an A-ranked student.' Arthur observed the entire fight with disbelief in his eyes. This was his first time seeing a magical beast against a magic user. The mana coming from Bairon was intense as the fight continued.
To make it more clear, he was a beast disguised as a human. Arthur had no chance against a monster like that in the first place.
"Tsk. Why? Why does he have to be that strong?" Arthur gritted his teeth after feeling a weight in his chest. He had tried so hard to grow stronger over the past days, but seeing a fight of such spectacle shattered his faith. He hadn't grown at all.
"Dang it!" he cried, slamming his fist on the hard ground. He tensed and forced himself to stand up despite the pain from the beast's previous. Arthur wasn't going to let himself remain weak while those surrounding him grew stronger.
He picked up his sword, gripped the handle with trembling hands, and prepared to charge into the fight.
But his moment of courage was in vain, the monster had just received the final blow and was now disintegrating into black ash.
Bairon had driven a sword through its human-looking face and had activated a spell that had scorched it to a crisp.
"You're brutal," Arthur was shocked by the imagery, especially now that Bairon had a cold look in his eyes.
As far as he could tell, Bairon was a deviant user who had mastered lightning to its very perfection. Something like that would normally take one fifteen years of training, Bairon must have started his as soon as he awakened his abilities.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
Arthur was drawn back to reality by his colleague's voice. He sounded concerned like an older brother after saving his sibling from bullies.
"Yeah…yeah, I am fine. Just a few scratches…and probably dislocations," responded Arthur while trying to regain his balance. His body felt like it was on fire, but he could keep up with it as long as he didn't force it to a breaking point. Remember, magic users were better than normal humans and their bodies were almost superhuman because of the mana that flowed into their bodies. Because of that, they aged slower and could withstand most attacks, making them humanity's greatest weapons against demons and beasts.
Though in Arthur's case, his body wasn't so far from being that of a normal human.
"How did you get so good at magic like that?" he asked.
Bairon looked at him and winced, "It's a long story. One that might waste our time."
The grossed sadness on his partner's face made Arthur think that maybe this wasn't the right time to ask such a question.
"Okay…then we need to find Elizabeth. I feel like I've been walking forever, I can't find the exit to the next floor."
"You were close, floor bosses usually wait around exits to catch human prey. I never thought you would bump into a floor boss this quick, especially a magic-using echidna. They usually don't attack people of your level."
'Just say I'm weak!' Arthur growled at his statement.
Still disappointed, he sensed an overwhelming force of energy coming from what looked like an orb that was left behind by the magical beast. He picked it up with his hand and scanned it with curious eyes. It was a beast core, and it was overflowing with mana.
'Was it a Class S beast?'
He now saw why the guild paid highly for beast cores. This one would probably fetch him around 900,000 zeni, which was two thousand gold coins. Such a huge amount could pay for top-notch equipment. The core was flowing with a potent amount of ice mana, and with the right mages, the mana in it could be manipulated—granting a magic user the ability to use ice magic temporarily.
Arthur started getting some sneaky thoughts and giggled at them, 'If I sell this, I will two thousand gold…'
"If you're thinking of selling that core, then I suggest you don't. Echidnas are rare, and this one could use ice magic, making it super rare," Bairon explained.
"Selling? Me? Nah…." Arthur shook his head in denial of what his partner had just said. With his beaten body, he could still not move properly so shaking his head caused an ache in his collarbone.
"Hmm…" Bairon narrowed his eyes. He could see through Arthur's terrible lying. But he sighed and chose to play along with his lie. "Okay, keep it safe."
He then tossed him a ring with a red jewel on the top.
"Put it on and store the core in it," said Bairon.
Arthur was baffled. How was he going to put something the size of his hand into a ring so small?
"What is this?"
"A dimension ring, say 'store' with your hand on the core, and it will collect and store the item."
Bairon's explanation excited him. He put the ring over the middle finger on his left hand, placed it on the core and uttered one word with caution:
"Collect."
Then, spirals of blue light appeared out of the ring and pulled the core into the jewel. Its magical presence was also erased from the area.
"Cool," his green eyes shimmered with wonder, amused by the magic at work. He never knew that such inventions existed. He needed to get one of these for himself.
"Anyway, what floor do you think she might be on?" Bairon asked, looking around as he searched for any other caves or passages he might have missed on his way here.
"I have a hunch she's on a lower floor. The airflow here is a bit higher—meaning we're on a middle floor. My biggest estimate is that this dungeon has thirty to forty-ish floors. What monsters were on the floor you were on?"
"Goblins and an ogre," he answered.
Arthur froze, "An ogre? That's impossible…!"
"It's what I thought too, but it seems things have taken a drastic change. Before it died, it mentioned something about the demon candidate. It was sent to kill the demon candidate."
Arthur recalled being called a demon candidate by the purple-haired demon girl, "Kill the demon candidate?"
Hearing the word kill already made him feel disoriented. Thinking straight was going to become harder if they stayed on this topic.
"Yeah. Do you have any idea on what that is?"
"No…this is my first time hearing about this," he lied with a straight face. He had to hide what was happening until he found out what was going on with him.
"We should report this to professor Obsidian when we return to the surface," he suggested, hoping that they depart from a sensitive topic like this one.
Bairon sighed and agreed. "I guess that's better. So what floor are we on?"
"Ogres are Class B bosses, an echidna is a Class A," Arthur pondered, narrowing his round eyes in thought. "Twentieth floor, I haven't seen any students yet—we must be deep. It's a forty-floored dungeon, I think." He said.
"So it's best to assume that our leader is lower."
"Yes. We go low—" Arthur flinched at his wounds. He couldn't fight in this condition if they encountered any beasts on their way.
Bairon noticed and summoned his wand. The silver magical instrument appeared in his right hand. He was one of the few magic users that qualified for both the mage and Dark knight sectors. However, with a wand, Bairon could only use water magic.
Arthur was shocked by the sudden change. All this was new to him.
He began casting.
"Goddess of creation, bless my magic with your divine touch and heal your servants. Divine water!"
Suddenly, his wand glowed from the tip; and a ball of water appeared in the air once the incantation was finished. The water gleamed as pure mana flowed inside of it.
"Drink all of the water. It will heal all your wounds and recover some of your mana…" he stopped and immediately stumbled forward before gaining back his balance. High-level spells had a terrible effect on him. He hadn't fully developed as a mage-type magic user, so one high-level water spell cost him a lot of mana.
And while Arthur rushed to get some water, he opened his status card, focusing on only his mana status.
—status card—
Name: Bairon Crown
Mana: 600/ 5000
With a slight grunt, he closed it.
"Any more powerful water spells and we're screwed."