The Return Of The Exiled Villain-Chapter 257: Sword Festival (X)
Twenty minutes passed, and yet, Gray calmly awaited.
'...Tsk. I guess I should try to leave now, even though the worm is probably still waiting for me to come out,' he clicked his tongue.
He silently grabbed his rapier and walked out of the worm's mouth, making a small stepping sound as he got out of its mouth.
Then... he stopped right there on the spot.
[...Gray. It was nice meeting you.]
'...Above me, right?'
[Yup.]
"Fucking hell."
THRUUUUUM!
The ceiling suddenly collapsed as the giant worm appeared, its wide mouth quivering with what could be saliva.
Its position was directly on top of Gray, ready to swallow him in one go.
SPLURT!
He was swallowed whole, his body being completely devoured by its sharp teeth.
[...The Phantom Loop Earrings have been activated!]
.
.
.
"...These earrings really are useful, huh?" Gray held his head slighly, as he looked at a familiar place that was none other than the worm's offspring's insides.
"Generally speaking... It's impossible for me to get out of here alive unless I find a way to break the anti-mana zone," he mumbled to himself.
He looked at the walls.
"But for that... I need to find the medium that blocks the usage of mana in here."
'Jasmine... Where do you think the medium is?'
[Honestly?]
She paused.
[I've been thinking about it since we fell in here. The anti-mana zone is too consistent. A fixed inscription node in the walls would have gaps, areas where the field weakens depending on distance from the source.]
'But this one doesn't have gaps.'
[No. It's uniform in every direction. Which means the source isn't stationary.]
Gray went still.
'...It's on the worm,' he sighed.
[That's my best guess.]
[A Saint-level creature with sentience that has been living in this territory for decades. It's entirely possible that it absorbed the medium or carries it somewhere on its body. The green patches, specifically, have been bothering me.]
'The bioluminescent ones.'
[They pulsed when it was near the offspring. They changed rhythm when it was stationary versus moving... they're doing something, although I don't know what.]
'So, you think the medium is embedded in the plating around those patches?
[I think the medium IS those patches.]
[Or something underneath them. The suppression field moved with the worm when it repositioned. I tracked it and instantly noticed that it didn't stay centered on a fixed point. It moved with the creature.]
Gray looked at the gap between the tooth rings.
'I need to get close enough to those green patches to destroy whatever is underneath them,' he said.
'The only way to do that is to get close to the worm. The only way to survive getting close to the worm long enough to do anything useful is to learn its movement patterns. And the only way to learn its movement patterns is repeated exposure.
[...You're going to let it kill you on purpose. Multiple times.]
'Do you have a better plan?'
[I guess not...]
With that in mind, Gray was already moving toward the gap.
...
Attempt One!
He came out of the maw low and fast, rolled left, got three meters toward the green patches before the worm came through the ceiling exactly where it had come through before.
SPLURT!
He died instantly.
"...Phew. It's a relief that it's on the same entry point, so I'll know that it will come from above every single time."
"But how much time did I have?" he asked Jasmine curiously.
[About two seconds between exit and impact.]
"That's not enough to reach the patches."
[Not even close.]
"...Well, onto Attempt two!"
Swish!
He came out of the maw, rolled left again, this time continuing the roll all the way to the wall instead of stopping, pressing his back against it.
The worm came through the ceiling.
At the location, he had been rolling through.
It hit the chamber floor, and its head swept immediately toward the wall where he was standing, the green patches pulsing rapidly.
He had approximately one second of clear observation before it reached him.
The patches were concentrated along three specific plate segments behind the head.
The tissue between those plates was visibly different from the rest, thicker, the seams there darker rather than lighter.
SPLURT!
Dead for the second time.
"...There are three segments behind its head, huh? It seems that I'll need to go through the plate itself."
[Without mana?]
"Yes."
[...How?]
"Working on it."
Attempt Three.
He made a few adjustments and went right instead of left, and the worm quickly adjusted to his movements.
It was faster adjusting right than left.
That meant... no rolling to the right.
...Attempt Seven.
He made it to six meters from the patches before the head came around.
He looked at the plate's surface over the green tissue.
The plating there was thicker than the surrounding segments. But at its lower edge, where it met the chamber floor when the worm was fully lowered, there was a ridge.
A structural gap between the plate and the floor contact point. He noted that point on his mind instantly.
SPLURT!
Attempt Fifteen...
Fwish!
He drove the rapier into the ridge at the plate's lower edge with everything his arm could produce without mana behind it.
The blade went in two inches.
The worm's entire body contracted simultaneously, and Gray left the ground without choosing to.
He hit the far wall.
The impact was substantial.
SPLURT!!!
"...Ugh. I'm getting closer to killing it," he stretched his head.
Fortunately, he had a high-emperor grade rapier, because if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to pierce the worm's body that easily.
[We finally found the entry point.]
Jasmine spoke in an almost relieved tone, as she was practically bored of watching Gray kill himself a dozen times just to get little bits of information.
[Two inches of penetration without mana reinforcement. If you can get the full blade depth through that ridge, you'll reach the tissue underneath.]
"The problem is the contraction," he stretched his arms above his head. "The moment the blade makes contact, it responds. I won't have time to drive it deeper."
[You need something to hold the plate open while you drive the rapier in.]
Gray thought about that.
"The dead offspring..."
[...What about it?]
"Its teeth. If I break one of the inner tooth rings loose and use it as a wedge to hold the plate ridge open, I have a window to drive the rapier through before the contraction closes it."
Jasmine was quiet for a moment.
[That might actually work.]
She nodded and sounded genuinely surprised about it.
"I know..."
[You need to break a tooth off a dead Saint-level worm's offspring from the inside first.]
"I know that too."
He turned back toward the inner wall of the offspring and started looking for the tooth ring with the loosest mounting.
And this resulted in attempt sixteen.
It was twenty minutes of Gray working a broken inner tooth loose from the offspring's maw with his rapier as a lever, the tooth approximately the length of his forearm and considerably heavier than it looked, the mounting root requiring more effort to break free than he had estimated.
The tooth came loose eventually.
He held it up.
[That's disgusting...]
"Don't I know it?" his eyes flashed with complete disgust.
Then, he slowly walked to the exit of the offspring's mouth and prepared to do the same thing he did in the fifteenth attempt.
Fwish!
Wedge the tooth into the ridge gap first, using his body weight to drive it in as an anchor, then the rapier into the opening the wedge created.
He got the tooth in.
The worm contracted.
The tooth held the gap open a little.
The rapier went in four inches before the contraction force snapped the tooth and closed the gap on the blade.
He couldn't pull it free in time.
SPLURT!!!
"... Its length isn't enough."
Gray was completely disappointed by the result.
[Indeed... You need maybe six inches to reach the tissue. Possibly seven.]
So, in attempt seventeen...
He used two teeth.
Took forty minutes to break the second one free.
Came out of the maw, went left, went low, drove both teeth into the ridge gap in sequence, one immediately after the other, the second one driven in at an angle that forced the gap wider than the first one alone could hold.
The rapier went in.
Five and a half inches.
The green patch beneath the plate pulsed once, bright and reactive, and the entire worm shuddered differently from the contraction shudder, something deeper and more fundamental moving through its body.
He was one inch short.
SPLURT!
[ONE INCH!!!]
Jasmine practically shouted in complete madness.
[Gray that was ONE INCH—]
"I know..."
He was breathing harder than usual.
"I know exactly what I need to do differently."
[What?]
He looked at the two tooth stumps still in the offspring's inner wall, where he had been using them as reference points.
"I've been driving the rapier with one hand."
"Because I've been using the other hand to hold the second wedge in place." He looked at his hands.
"If I pre-set both wedges before I exit the maw, both hands are free when I reach the ridge."
[You'd have to carry both teeth out with you and set them simultaneously on arrival.]
"Yes."
[While a fifty-meter Saint-level worm is dropping on your position from the ceiling.]
"I'll be faster than last time."
[You have approximately two seconds of window from exit to impact.]
"I know... but I don't have a better plan right now."
[...Fine.]
