I couldn't tell what had just happened.
The Dragon Zombie I thought I had defeated was still alive — it fired off a breath attack.
The breath swallowed Father and the others whole, wiping out everyone who had gathered there.
A moment later, the breath was aimed away from me and fired once more.
Screams rose again.
The wall was already in ruins.
It seemed I had fallen into the moat. Slowly, I pushed myself up and crawled out. From where I'd climbed out, I could see the Dragon Zombie. Our eyes happened to meet.
The distance had to be less than three hundred meters. The thing looked like it was grinning — as if I were some prey that had foolishly crawled right in front of it.
The Dragon Zombie shifted its body and locked its aim onto me. It was ready to spit breath at any moment.
I couldn't move. No — I didn't have the will to move.
I thought it would be fine to just die. Father and the others had died right before my eyes. I told myself I'd been happy enough, having spent time with people I could call family in this world.
But then I remembered the words Father and the others had said to me: "Live."
Once I remembered, I noticed the Dragon Zombie was wearing a vile, contemptuous grin.
In that instant — just as the breath was about to fire — I raised my hand without thinking.
As if answering my gesture, roughly a hundred walls — each two meters thick and about five meters on each side — erupted from the ground between me and the Dragon Zombie.
The Dragon Zombie unleashed its breath without hesitation, but before it could even destroy fifty of them, the breath fizzled out.
"I'll kill you..."
"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill..."
"I'll kill youuuuu! You rotten lizard!" I started running.
There was only one thing to do—destroy the
Dragon
Zombie
standing right in front of me.
The Dragon Zombie was stunned. A wall had suddenly materialized before it, blocking its breath attack, and on top of that, the prey it thought it had was now charging toward it with a shout. It must have been one unexpected thing after another.
But as expected of a former dragon, it immediately tried to unleash a counter-breath attack.
Seeing that, I launched an oversized Earth Needle straight at the Dragon Zombie's jaw. The Earth Needle struck the jaw head-on just as it opened to release its breath.
Hit by a powerful impact from below at the very moment it was about to breathe, the Dragon Zombie was forced to clamp its mouth shut.
As a result, the breath had nowhere to go and tore apart the Dragon Zombie's lower jaw.
The Dragon Zombie writhed in agony. In that opening, I closed in while firing off a barrage of Fire Bullets.
One shot… five shots… ten shots… twenty shots… thirty shots… Had I managed to land a hundred? When it was right in front of me, I leaped into the air and drew my sword.
I charged the blade with Magic Power and swung at the Dragon Zombie's back. That single empowered strike became a massive slash that tore through the Dragon Zombie's spine—though it only cut about a quarter of the way through its body, that was still considerable given the zombie's enormous size.
But slowly, the wound began to close. The injuries from the initial Fire Bullets had almost completely healed.
"Damn it—it has regeneration?!"
As I was about to land, the Dragon Zombie's tail came sweeping toward me. I hovered to shift my timing, dodged it, and touched down—but this time its forelegs lunged at me.
I swung my sword the same way I had split its back.
The Dragon Zombie lost everything from the elbow down on its right foreleg.
"AGYAAAAAAH!"
As the Dragon Zombie screamed, I swung at its face—but the moment I sliced through its right eye, the blade snapped.
Off-balance from the broken sword, I was hammered by the Dragon Zombie's remaining right foreleg. I hastily raised a barrier with magic, but its momentum was too great to kill—I was slammed into the ground.
I rolled for another twenty to thirty meters before my momentum finally stopped, but even with the barrier cushioning the impact, the damage was severe.
I quickly used a potion to heal my injuries and restore my Magic Power. The Dragon Zombie didn't seem to have recovered its jaw in time, so it didn't breathe fire but charged straight at me instead.
I fired an Earth Needle at its left foreleg. The Dragon Zombie lost its balance and drove its face into the ground.
In that opening, I sprinted to the forest and hid myself.
The Dragon Zombie, blinded by rage, had eyes only for me and pursued immediately.
It thrashed about, destroying trees as it searched for me. Watching it, I began to formulate a specific spell.
After about five minutes of rampaging, the Dragon Zombie spotted me hovering in the air. I descended straight into the forest about two hundred meters ahead of it.
Enraged, the Dragon Zombie advanced, crushing trees as it came toward me.
When the distance between us closed to about a hundred meters, I activated a spell.
'Tempest'
The instant I spoke, a colossal tornado centered on Tenma erupted. The Dragon Zombie happened to be on the outer edge of the vortex and, though it braced itself to avoid being blown away, it was gradually drawn closer to me. Countless cuts began to appear on its body.
'Tempest F3'
Tenma intensified the spell. The Dragon Zombie stopped advancing and was on the verge of being swept up, blood spraying from all over its body, yet it still endured.
'Tempest F4'
Finally, the Dragon Zombie's body was lifted into the air, flailing. Trees caught in the vortex slammed into it, widening its wounds. Cuts also began to appear on Tenma's body.
'Tempest F5'
The Dragon Zombie's body, now completely airborne, could not withstand the gale and was torn apart.
'GYAGYAGYAGYAGYAAAAAAA'
A dozen seconds after I cast Tempest F5, the tornado vanished along with the Dragon Zombie's death cry. Tenma, drenched in blood, collapsed to its knees and lost consciousness.
The survivors in the fortress had been stunned and terrified by the colossal tornado, but strangely, once it subsided, about half of the zombies that had been closing in on the fortress collapsed on the spot, lifeless. The zombies still moving showed no inclination to attack; they simply wandered aimlessly. Most headed toward the forest, and among the remainder, some collided with the walls or bumped into other zombies and crumbled.
The Golem Tenma had created had crumbled as well. Mark spotted it and moved to go find Tenma, but as he was about to exit the south gate, he found Celia and the others buried under rubble.
"Celia! Someone, give me a hand!"
Over a dozen people, including the unharmed Martha, gathered at Mark's call.
"Carefully clear away the rubble! Bring someone who can use healing magic! Hurry, we need them now!"
Under Mark's direction, the debris was removed piece by piece. Within about ten minutes, Celia was pulled free from the rubble. Nearby, Merlin and Ricardo were uncovered as well.
Merlin was in critical condition, but Ricardo had already drawn his last breath.
"Celia, hey, can you hear me? Celia, open your eyes!"
Clutched in Martha's arms, Celia responded to Mark's voice and barely cracked her eyes open. But to anyone watching, her state was dire.
"Mark, Martha... Is Tenma..."
Mark couldn't bring himself to say that Tenma was missing, so on the spot he —
"Tenma took down the Dragon Zombie. It was incredible! But he drove it deep into the forest, so he hasn't made it back here yet. He should be along any moment now."
— told a lie. He had no doubt Tenma had defeated the Dragon Zombie, but there had been no way to confirm whether he was alive or dead.
"That's... good... He did his best... I need to praise him..."
Celia's words grew fainter and fainter. Mark and Martha desperately tried to keep her talking.
"Stay with us! Tenma's coming back any second now!"
"That's right! Welcoming him with a smile is a mother's job — that's your job!"
But Celia slowly shook her head.
"I don't have much longer... so Mark, Martha — take this to Tenma for me, and tell him how proud I am of him..."
With that, she pulled her guild card from inside her clothing and pressed it into Martha's hands.
"Don't say things like that!"
However, Celia's consciousness had begun to cloud, and she didn't seem to hear.
"It's Tenma! Celia, Tenma's come back! Look, he's running this way!"
Mark blurted out. No one stopped him.
"Oh... Tenma... you came back... You did so well, I'm so proud... Ricardo was there too... Now we can all live peacefully together as a family again..."
With those words, the strength drained from Celia's body—
"Celia? Hey, Celia! Stay with me!"
Martha shook her body, but Celia—
"I love you... Tenma..."
...whispered, and drew her last breath.
The F4.5 in the story may not be used in quite the same way in practice, but please treat it as a level-based system.