Kuro no Maou 424
Formation: Dragon Killer
A five-colored light shines over Galahad’s great castle walls and before the gigantic ancient weapons that are making their way there.
“Bursting red flames! Fervent flash! ‘Red Sword’!”
The young man with red hair and a red scarf lets out a battle cry as he prepares his deep crimson longsword.
“Freezing blue ice, chilling and serene… ‘Blue Spear’.”
The young elf with rebellious long blue hair and scarf wields a semi-transparent, light-blue ‘Charge Spear’, and a tower shield that looks like a snowflake both in color and shape.
“Abundant yellow earth… Raging, crushing billows, ‘Yellow Axe’!”
The giant cyclops turns over his yellow scarf, resting his golden great axe over his shoulder.
“Raging green winds! Gale, storm, ‘Green Knife’!”
The green goblin with a green scarf spins his dual knives, which shine with a light emerald glow.
“Always piercing your heart! Throbbing with pink love! Intense heartbeats! ‘Pink Arrow’!”
The woman wearing a shocking pink helmet, full suit, and scarf pulls the string of her heart-shaped bow. Her arrows are also pink, with their sharp tips also looking like hearts.
“We’re the blade of justice that will cut through tomorrow with courage and hope! Super Blade Squadron: ‘Blade Rangers’!”
As the five finish introducing themselves with a pose, an explosion occurs behind them, and smoke of their five colors –red, blue, yellow, green, and pink– bursts behind them
“…Those guys never change, do they?”
Nero grumbled with a sigh as he looked at them with a cold sidelong glance from afar.
The Rank-5 group of adventurers ‘Blade Rangers’ are famous for always performing their characteristic introduction before any battle. Whenever their opponents can listen to them, like when facing a band of thieves, their cool display fills every onlooker with courage and hope. But when the opponent is some sort of monster that cannot hear them, they still perform it while brutally assailing their opponents with breath and rush attacks.
Still, their self-introducing and posing, and their ability to create those multicolored explosions with their own magic, indicate that they are worthy of their Rank 5.
But Nero cannot help but express his honest opinion about them. They look so silly to him that they almost make Kai look like an intellectual.
“Okay, let’s go, guys! It’s time for our deadly ‘Five Blade Shot’!”
The other members cheerfully replied “Ok!”, dropped their poses — where they were holding their weapons upwards — and started chanting in unison as if they were part of a chorus.
“Hey, hey! Do you plan to use that special attack just like that?”
As each of them started to shine with their corresponding color, a strong magical power surges within them. Even people with no ability to feel elemental powers would feel goosebumps in anticipation of the destructive force that it’s about to be released by the five’s combined spell.
Nero’s face changes a bit from its stunned expression into surprise as he begins to guess just how powerful that will be –Wait…
“If you use that, won’t you all be out of magical power? What in the world are you thinking?”
They’re probably not thinking at all. That was what surprised Nero the most.
However, despite Nero’s opinion, the Blade Rangers’ special move was already completed.
The magical power that the five had gathered turns into a ball of light of about 50 centimeters in diameter and slowly aligns itself with Red Sword, who is standing in the middle. Fire, water, earth, wind, and an unknown pink-colored element mix together in perfect harmony as the shining ball of multicolored light waits to be shot.
“The five lights which shine upon Spada! Take this! Deadly attack! ‘Five Blade Shot’!
Then, with a spirited battle cry, Red Sword finally shoots the shining ball formed by their combined magical power.
Leaving behind traces of light in five colors, their special attack flies in a straight line, hitting an ancient golem that was a mere 300 meters away from reaching the castle walls.
The moment that ball of light struck the golem’s steel body, it exploded into a dazzling gleam of colors as if it were a rainbow. The resulting thunderous roar and raging heatwave indicate its fierce explosive power.
And then, after the great explosion of light was over, all that remained was an ancient golem with a seriously wrecked torso. A huge hole is now where its abdomen used to be, and the steel plating on its chest has been destroyed, or rather, molten away.
The terrible scars of destruction make the golem look like a crumbling tower. Nevertheless, it continues to slowly march onwards. It’s now 200 meters away from the castle walls.
“I guess it wasn’t enough after all…”
The golem, who even with a half-broken body still wasn’t knocked down, continues walking with little to no issues. On the other hand, the Blade Rangers, who had used up their well-reserved trump card, were lying on the floor like starfishes drying under the sun. They had exhausted every last bit of their magical power, just like Nero had seen on a previous quest. Apparently, the problem with the amount of magical power their ‘Five Blade Shot’ consumes has yet to be resolved.
Heaving an even deeper sigh, Nero decided not to care about them anymore as he sees them being carried away by some Spada knights.
Though their attack wasn’t enough to destroy the golem, but it did deal a tremendous amount of damage, so perhaps another attack would be able to finish it off. And it would be great if he could leave that to the Spada knights or some other adventurers.
“Well then, we should be able to take care of at least one of them.”
That’s right. ‘Wing Road’, or rather, ‘Alter Face’, is too influential to let itself target a weakened enemy, and should instead focus on unharmed golems.
“All right! It’s my turn now!”
Kai seems to be very excited about it. It might even be worth his while to defeat such a gigantic opponent.
“Okay, so how shall we go about it?”
The girl with the cat mask, Charlotte, asks that question to Nero while twitching her cat ears and tail.
If it weren’t for that mask, you could probably see her looking at him with those puppy-eyes of hers, but Nero doesn’t really miss them. He had stared at his childhood friend’s face long enough.
“We’ll be using our formation: ‘Dragon Killer’, but with a slight change.”
“The experience from that quest we did the other day, ‘Runaway Ancient Golem’ is going to come in handy today, huh?”
Nero nods at Safi’s comment.
That Rank 5 quest, ‘Runaway Ancient Golem’ was one they received shortly after the Battle of Iskia.
In a vast underground cave inside the Rank 4 dungeon, ‘Petra Underground Lake’, which is not too far away from Spada, an ancient golem suddenly began running amok shortly after being excavated from the ruins.
The golem from that time was too small to even try to compare with the ones drawing near the castle walls today, but even then it was a little over 5 meters tall. It was like some sort of small giant. It had a bulky steel armor and a tremendous power, far surpassing that of its kind. It wasn’t exactly fast, as one would expect, and it could not use magical skills. But it was still a very strong and resilient foe, worthy of rank 5.
Of course, ‘Wing Road’ was able to put an end to its rampage, but it wasn’t easy to face such a terrible foe then. At the very least, Nero and Kai weren’t able to simply slice it in half with their swords.
“Hey! I wasn’t there when you did that quest…”
Charlotte puffs her cheeks simply because she doesn’t like seeing Nero and Safi talking to each other eye to eye. It’s not very difficult for Nero to guess just what kind of face is she doing under that cat mask.
“Well, it’s not going to be that hard. ‘S’ will take care of the finishing blow. Just leave it to her.”
“…’S’? Who is S?
“Hey…”
“A…Ah! Yes, yes! Leave it to S!”
The words “Charlotte, have you forgotten your codename already?” had reached his throat, but he did not dare to say them.
It’s a fact that among all of the team members, Kai is the number one idiot, but Charlotte is a hard contender for the position. Nero has always thought she was a little slow, but now he’s genuinely concerned about her childhood friend’s future. Who was going to take care of this tomboyish nobleman’s daughter? Him? Just thinking about it makes Nero feel anxious.