Welcome to the Impregnable Demon King Castle

31 – The Mysterious Robed Man does Something (Part 2)

They rush towards me at the same time.

Besides the Hero, I apply Speed Down on three of them just enough to not be noticeable and I apply it heavily on the Paladin.

The already slow Paladin is left behind and the Hero is the only one rushing ahead.

And he’s not stopping.

「H-hey, hold on! My body isn’t moving like it shou-waaaaargh!」

Several Hellhounds, who were kept invisible until the closest possible distance, charge at the isolated Paladin.

「What should we do?! Go back and help him?!」

「Leave’em! He’s a Paladin! He can take 5 or 6 Hellhounds!」

He’s right. The selling point of a Paladin is his ability to tank the damage from several sources at once in a fight with his high defense.

It isn’t a strange decision to leave him be for a little while.

Turning down the instruction-seeking Warrior A, the Hero sprints ahead. Widening the gap between him and his allies.

「D-dammit. What is this? Why it so hard to move.」

Now, the fact that I am Lemegeton must not be exposed today. I don’t want the information about a powerful Black Sorcerer to get out.

So I didn’t make a mistake there either.

The paladin somehow repels one of the Hellhounds.

It seems that he realized at that moment.

「Black robes…?! A Black Magic-user is in the mix?」

In the name of entertainment, Adventurers and Monsters alike need to have an appearance that is easily understandable.

It is recommended to have an appearance where your Job and race can be recognized at a glance and battle strategies can be made based on it.

If you’re a Black Sorcerer, you wear black robes.

However, this isn’t absolute. There is no rule that says you can’t put on equipment related to another Job and there are some Adventurers who freely wear equipment simply to stand out.

Like a Warrior who wears bikini armor.

「Even if that were the case, to be able to reduce our speed by this much…there’s gotta be more than one or two of them!」

The truth is that there’s only me, but the Paladin is making conjectures based on the information given to him.

That there are many Black Magic users amongst the invisible Hellhounds. The number of Monsters allowed in a Clear isn’t limited, so a lot of weak Black Magic spells overlapping each other can spell trouble for them.

Paladins can resist magic but it is difficult when they are moving so violently, and even though they have a higher aptitude towards magic than a Warrior, they are no match for Jobs that specialize in magic.

As time goes on, I am becoming exhausted. The best-case scenario would be for me to defeat him with Black Magic.

And so, I burdened his thoughts.

Originally, he was supposed to just defeat the Hellhounds.

But he ended up prioritizing the robed enemy over the other enemies.

Hit by Black Magic of unexpected strength, he is in a state where he is prioritizing invisible enemies out of impatience.

Distracted by that, he is unable to give his best performance.

「Ohcrapohcrapohcrap…!」

Surrounded by invisible enemies, the Paladin gets his sword arm bitten off after failing to handle a simultaneous attack. When they became visible, he was able to fend off a few of them with his shield, but this was the end for him.

His arm dances in the air, turning into magic particles.

Magical Energy leaked from the wound.

「What is this? What’s happening?! This isn’t at all like the 4th ranked party’s video…unless… did they cut out the unattractive parts? Dammit, of course, they did! There’s nothing attractive about Black Magic-slinging enemies!」

Misunderstanding the situation beautifully, sharp fangs bite into the Paladin’s feet.

「Everyone! It’s a trap! There’s a swarm of Black Magic users! They’re trying to isolate each of us!」

He warns his allies and swings his shield down at the Hellhound biting his foot.

Even though he’s alone, he still lowers his body in order to defeat one of his enemies.

While he does that, a Hellhound bites onto his neck.

「-ack.」

He drops his shield and uses his remaining arm to beat the enemy.

A hole was opened on his neck when the enemy let go, he tried to apply pressure on the wound with his hand but…he was defeated.

「Hey, that guy got taken out!」

「He said it was a trap, but it looks like we’re already caught in it…!」

「How do I shoot invisible enemies?!」

Warrior A, B, and the Hunter three, huddle together as they deal with the Hellhounds.

Only the Hero, separated from everyone else, rushes towards the shadow of the boulder where I am luring him towards.

Ah, not going to help your allies, huh?

Either from all the blood rushing to his head or just by nature, the Hero searches for me with a demon-like angry expression, but I have already turned invisible and put distance between us.

Already, they have deviated from Fenix and Party’s Clear method of「Huddle together and advance」.

If his allies are defeated, he thinks he can compensate that disadvantage by taking me out, huh?

「Come out, ya damn Majin! I’ll kill ya!」

Screams the Hero after arriving. Isn’t he too vulgar?

Now then, the Hellhounds have played their part with the four others well enough.

Most of the success of this plan is actually thanks to the contributions of our Hero here.

First, I’ll send some Hellhounds to instigate the Hero.

I instruct them to not press the attack. Once they enter his line of sight, I’ll make them withdraw and repeat.

The Hero swung his sword countless times at nothing, his anger grew more and more and exploded.

「Are ya makin’ fun of me, little mutts! Fine then, I’ll kill all’o’ya! Eat this!」

He spreads his arms wide and strikes the ground, causing yellow lightning to zig-zag from his hands. A few of the Hellhounds are defeated following a short yelp, the magic particles are transmitted to him.

「…huh?」

I was able to predict his actions.

The few Hellhounds that perished were due to his area of effect being larger than I thought.

The other Hellhounds withdrew and succeeded in avoiding the attack.

The Hero started to get angry at how little enemies were actually defeated by the attack but before that could happen, he was assaulted by a shadow.

With wings of a bird of prey on a body large enough to be mistaken for a wolf.

It was The Invisible Slaughterer Glasha-Labolas.

Leaving his teammates behind in order to chase me and releasing a large magic attack to attack invisible enemies.

It’s rare to find someone whose actions can be so easily predicted by his personality.

Magic is invoked by using the trained Magical Energy within the body.

If large scale magic is used, you need to start recharging your Magical Energy.

I already researched their past videos. At this rate, he shouldn’t be able to use any high power magic attacks.

「Wha-?!」

I obstructed his thoughts and applied Darkness on him.

How do you like magic from a dead duck Black Sorcerer?

To an outsider, it’ll look as if his reaction was delayed due to being surprised.

The Hero was grabbed by his forelegs with great force.

Tossed high into the air, the Hero was torn to pieces by Gla-la’s talons.

Magic particles were sprinkled everywhere, his Avatar breaking apart before hitting the ground, which scattered its Magical Energies to the surroundings.

The other members were shaken by their leader’s defeat and before long, they were defeated by the Hellhounds.

「Alright. Looks like it’s over.」

With a party wipe, the 249th Party’s Dungeon Clear is over.

Gla-la flew close to me.

He nuzzles against me with a happy look on his face.

「Thank you very much. Your magic is truly amazing.」

He licked my face.

Seeing that, the pack of Hellhounds gather and surround me. They came close to me expecting something so I tried petting one of them. As soon as I did that, each one of them started jumping on me as if to say「Me too, me too! Pet me!」.

「Whoa…haha, please calm down. If my hand will suffice, I’ll properly pet all of you.」

After a petting for a good long while, we head over to the Link Room.

When I returned, all the Hellhounds that were defeated in the battle ran up to me and requested pats as well.

After satisfying them, I saw Cashew not too far in the distance with an envious look. I made sure to give her plenty of head pats as well.

Using this and that, I was able to lead the Monsters to victory.

My first job finished with success.