A phantom species monster that appeared without warning.
A Beast Tamer of the Prison Realm.
The tactic the three adopted against this opponent was simple.
Ermes would take the vanguard, Sara the midline, Katia the rearguard.
First, Ermes—who excelled in close-range combat—would step forward and absorb Kerberos's attacks.
Then Katia, while reading the flow of battle, would use the **Netherworld of Salvation** to deploy phantom soldiers and disrupt Kerberos's focus.
Sara played the support role. Alternating between the **Spirit Veil** and the **Star Corolla**, she would block Kerberos's powerful strikes while providing cover as insurance for any injuries.
And Ermes would pour every opening the two created into the **Meteor Throne**—the one attack that could, in all likelihood, deal real damage.
If they could overwhelm it, Ermes's side would win. If someone fell before they managed that, they would lose.
With their offensive options so limited, this was the one and best formation.
The battle began under that judgment—
"Guh…!"
"—!"
"I can't…!"
—And naturally, Ermes and the others were on the back foot.
All three were giving everything they had. Their coordination was flawless—their communication and timing were so seamless they hardly seemed like a hastily assembled trio.
But even with Ermes fending off attacks, Katia disrupting, and Sara shielding—
"I can't find an opening…!"
They were managing, barely, to hold their ground. That was all. They had their hands full just blocking incoming attacks, let alone finding the gap to land a decisive blow.
They tried slipping into blind spots, but abandoned the idea almost immediately.
Because Kerberos had three heads.
Those three heads moved in concert, covering each other's blind spots, transforming what was already a flawless fighting style into something utterly airtight.
Moreover, this monster had been targeting Ermes alone from the very start.
It knew. It understood. It recognized that Ermes was the only one capable of delivering a blow that could actually hurt it.
As long as Ermes was kept too busy defending, there was no losing path—and indeed, its strategy was working perfectly. Whether it sensed this instinctively or calculated it deliberately, either way, this was a terrifyingly clever monster.
The foreleg that had put Aster down in a single strike hurtled toward them.
"—!"
The speed was absurd. There was no dodging it at that trajectory.
Reading that in an instant, Ermes immediately conjured a magic bullet and infused it into his left leg. Borrowing the explosive propulsion, he barely managed to evacuate from the lethal range.
Even so, the tips of the claws grazed his cheek, and cold sweat ran down his face once more.
The final blow, however, was this.
A body durable enough to shrug off even a **Magic Inscription Liberation** strike, paired with high intelligence.
And above all else, this monster was—quite simply—
Physically superior beyond all measure.
Even with Sara's defenses and Katia's disruptions, Ermes had to push the high-speed mobility derived from the **Magic Bullet Archer** to its limits just to barely evade. This monster was likely an individual that had pushed physical performance to an extreme specialization.
This was a **Phantom Species**—a being at the very apex of monsters.
Ermes and the others could only defend against that overwhelming capability. There was no time to launch anything major; their magic power was being chipped away with nothing they could do about it—
(…Stay calm.)
He forced down his impatience and carved out a single breath in the gaps between the onslaught.
A quick glance at the two supporting him showed both looking back at him with the same composure.
They still believed in their victory. He could see it in their eyes.
He was grateful.
He looked at Kerberos before him once more.
A terrifying monster. It wielded abilities befitting a phantom species to their fullest, and to top it off, it employed real intelligence to crush their chances.
But—
"…Using your head is supposed to be our specialty."
With that declaration, offense and defense resumed.
The pattern was the same as before—Ermes and the others struggling to parry Kerberos's relentless assault. But after a stretch of that, at one particular moment—
"…I can see it."
Ermes murmured, and in the same instant, dismissed every magic bullet behind him simultaneously.
**"All of heaven and earth is made clear to see; the eyes are a spring, the skull is a sacrifice; know that my rank is the summit."**
He sang. The one magic that could deal real damage to Kerberos.
Sensing the surge of magic power, Kerberos attacked with even greater ferocity than before.
Bloodline Magic was an extraordinarily advanced discipline. While Ermes could handle multiple bloodline magics, wielding several **simultaneously** was impossible at his current level.
Which meant that in this very moment, he could not use the **Magic Bullet Archer**. Stripped of his bullet-powered high-speed movement, he had no means of defending against Kerberos's offensive—
Or so it should have been, up to this exact instant.
"Gwoh!?"
Kerberos let out a cry that sounded almost like astonishment.
And no wonder. Ermes, whose movements had clearly slowed compared to moments ago, had just evaded every single one of Kerberos's attacks with paper-thin, minimal movement.
And then—
"Formula Replay—**Meteor Throne**!"
A rain of light struck true.
Kerberos screamed. For the first time since the opening hit, they had managed to land a proper blow.
"—El!"
Seeing the attack connect, Katia called out to him.
"…So you can make it work?"
"Yes. Sorry to have kept you waiting."
To her question—born from having seen through what Ermes had done—he nodded in reply.
"I've read its attacks. This is where we counterattack."
"GROOOOOAAAR!!"
Enraged by the blow it had taken, Kerberos let out a piercing howl and charged again.
Ermes met it the same way as before—dodging without using the **Magic Bullet Archer**.
He could feel Kerberos's shock.
Naturally, Ermes's mobility had dropped drastically compared to before.
Yet he was still evading because, as he had just stated, he had **read it**.
Through everything that had come before, patterns of Kerberos's movement had accumulated in his mind. Using those as a basis, he predicted the next action in fine detail, responded accordingly, sometimes even baiting and redirecting to escape the reach of attacks with precision.
Observe the target, analyze it, devise an appropriate countermeasure, and implement it to improve.
This was, in essence, exactly what he had always done with magic. Ermes's signature approach.
If your speed can't keep up, then predict.
If you can't react after seeing, then dodge before you even look.
If a hit is inevitable, then manipulate the opponent's trajectory and bend the future.
Trying to outclass them by using their heads—Ermes wished they wouldn't underestimate him so.
"OOOOOH!!"
Ermes's **Meteor Throne** blasts struck Kerberos one after another.
But even with his strongest magic, the damage inflicted on Kerberos—with its beyond-spec physical resilience—was negligible.
Which meant that this was finally an even match. From here on, it was a war of attrition.
Would Kerberos's stamina run out first?
Or would Ermes's magic power or concentration be exhausted, leaving him open to a killing blow?
Naturally, he had no intention of losing. After all, the patient accumulation of incremental progress was also one of Ermes's strong suits.
He steeled himself, raising his concentration to push the magic's rotation rate even higher, and raised his hand to unleash more beams of light than ever before—
That was when it happened.
"!"
Kerberos stepped back.
The first retreat since the battle began. But—that could only work in their favor.
It was still well within the **Meteor Throne**'s range. If anything, if it stopped attacking, they could hit it at will.
Seizing the opportunity—but never dropping his guard—Ermes adjusted his spell's aim and was about to bring his hand down when—
"—GWOOOO×××××──────N"
Kerberos **wailed**.
The source of the sound was the central head, with its silver-white eye.
The cry was different from before. It held a strange, eerie resonance—a dissonant note.
As if to confirm that premonition, silver light materialized around that head and cascaded down over its body.
Every wound Kerberos had sustained up to that point sealed shut.
"…………Hah?"
It was too—
Far too clear and cruel a picture of despair.
The dozens of light blasts they had desperately fired. The accumulated damage that had been unmistakable proof they were closing in on victory.
All of it, healed without a trace. What greeted their eyes was the same jet-black fur—so beautiful it inspired fear—as before the battle had begun.
"—**Meteor Throne**!"
Ermes's decision was instant.
Then he would not give it the chance. From here on, he would fire relentlessly, never allowing it to recover, and chip it down.
With that thought, he unleashed the largest rain of light yet.
But—
"——GWOO◇◇◇◇◇NNN────"
The second wail came from the head on the right, with its burning copper eye.
At the same moment, a red semi-transparent wall deployed overhead.
It blocked every last ray of light without letting a single one through.
"——"
"…No way."
"That's—"
Even Katia and Sara, who had believed in victory until now, couldn't help but blanch at this outcome.
Even Ermes's mind went blank for an instant at the scene—it seemed like a bad joke.
And before all three of them—
The final head—the golden-eyed one on the left—opened its mouth.
Monsters were magical creatures. Superior monster species could possess unique magic of their own.
This was old news to Ermes, who had encountered countless monsters in dungeons.
So naturally, the possibility that Kerberos might use magic had been accounted for.
But they had not factored it into their battle plan.
Why?
Because if it did—
They could never win.
This monster had already overwhelmed them with raw physical ability alone. If it now brought powerful magic to bear as well—
They knew that in that case, no matter what they did, their odds of victory dropped to zero.
So they had deliberately ignored it.
Rather than worrying endlessly about a scenario where defeat was guaranteed, it was more constructive to pour their mental energy into maximizing their chances of winning in the scenarios where victory was possible.
That was the reasoning. In a sense, they had bet everything on the premise that "Kerberos would not use magic," and beneath that gamble, they had honed their analysis and tactics.
And now.
Ermes and the others had lost even that foundational bet.
"——GAOOOO■■■■■────N"
As if mocking them, the final head—above it, terrifying magic power converged and rose skyward.
As if repaying every blow they had rained down from above, it climbed high into the sky—and detonated.
A golden divine punishment
engulfed Ermes and the others.