She had just waltzed in… He had missed an easy chance to get out of this dreaded room. Veloth stared intently at the new arrival.

She was human, clearly female, about five and a half feet tall, a moderate chest size and wide hips. She had a well-toned body and wore leather armor that did not cover or restrict her joints. Her hair was waist-length and was a silky black, tied in a ponytail.

Her face was angular and her cheekbones were high and pronounced. Her eyes were a soft emerald color, even in the flickering candlelight. Her skin appeared to be tanned and smooth.

“A b-beast is this floor’s guardian?” she stuttered aloud after taking stock of her surroundings.

[Did she really just call me a floor guardian? So. Damn. Cliché.] Holding his emotions in check, Veloth created a mental link. There was no resistance to the link, though he had expected some.

“Tell me, human, how did you open that wall?” Veloth must discover how she did it if he was to get out of this place.

The woman jumped at his voice and peered more intently into the flickering darkness of the room, looking for the owner of the voice. All the woman found was smashed furniture, and corpses impaled with multiple dark ice spears, no more than a few hours dead.

“Y-you can speak, beast?” The woman asked him in a baffled manner.

“Telepathically, yes. Also my name is Veloth. Yours?” At that, the woman seemed to regain her composure and slowly drew the short sword her hand had been on since entering the room.

“Veloth… My name is Tara, and I will be the one to defeat you and move on to achieve my revenge against the demon king!”

“…Chunnibyou and cliché…” Veloth unintentionally muttered telepathically.

“Eh?” Tara appeared to be truly baffled by his slip. Veloth guessed they didn’t have a term like chuunibyou on this world.

“…Forget it. So tell me how you entered this room?”

“I used light mana of course.” Tara stated it as though it was matter-of-fact.

“Light… mana…?” Veloth inquired further. Mana. Another cliché term. He knew what he had referred to as power all along was mana, but he did not want to admit it. There also seemed to be different types of mana.

Veloth looked inside himself, at his bottomless mana well. It was as though it was tainted with darkness. Darkness swirled and stagnated within his mana well, but did not fully mix in, as though a drop of black die had been dripped into a glass of water and frozen. So this is where his mana problem was?

“Yes, this room is sealed by a powerful light mana barrier. Even the strongest dark mana would have trouble breaking through, light mana however, would be a different story.” Tara continued to explain as she poured light mana into her sword.

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Tara kept the beast, or Veloth as it called itself, occupied with her chatter as she prepared for battle and channeled light mana into her blade. She had never seen such a peculiar beast before. It seemed to be the most powerful enemy she has yet to come across, based on appearance alone. It radiated massive amounts of dark mana as though it were an endless commodity.

Tara had undergone strict training to detect dark mana. It had caught her off guard when it spoke telepathically. She did not sense even the faintest mist of dark mana when it had spoken. This is also the first time Tara had come across a demon war beast capable of any type of speech. Disconcerting.

The war beast Veloth appeared to be occupied thinking of something, so Tara made the first move. Still at a distance of about eight feet where the beast sat in the center of the room, Tara made a horizontal slash in the before her. Following Tara’s slash, the light mana she had stored into her blade moments before poured out in a blinding flash, as though the slash of her sword flew forward.

Following the wake of her slash, Tara dashed forward before it had even reached the target. War beast Veloth tilted its head, as though curious. The beast did nothing to counter Tara’s light mana slash, and as it connected, it warped around the beast and broke. The dark mana that seeped out of the creature had completely protected it from harm, as though a barrier.

Veloth’s eyes widened in surprise as though it had not seen the attack. Could such a powerful beast not see light mana? Had Tara overestimated its ability?

As Tara pondered this, the beasts’ dark mana poured forth in even greater quantities, almost like a tsunami of darkness. That tsunami frothed and tore itself apart and quickly, formed a great minefield of ice spears around and above the center of the room. Every spear of ice looked as though darkness itself had frozen over and they all oriented themselves in Tara’s direction.

Three seconds had passed as the battle had started and Tara at last had the beast within reach of her short sword. A puff of chilling breath snaked its way out from Tara’s supple lips as she attempted a high diagonal strike and Veloth back-handed the blade aside with the intimidating claws of its left paw, quickly followed by a spear of ice launched from Tara’s left, at her thigh.

Tara had been accumulating light mana within her during her charge and released it as a protective film over her body. Dark mana ice spear meets the protective light mana film, and the spear dissipates. Tara felt a prick at her thigh, and immediately leapt back to her starting position.

Taking a fraction of a second to glance at her thigh, she saw an ice spear, small in diameter and about a foot in length of a deep blue color, impaled into her thigh.

[A very strange fighting style. The beasts’ mana formation is wild, wasted, unrefined, but still massive. He throws it around like there is no end to it. And then there is this in my thigh. Was it made with mana?]

She could not sense it at all but she could see it with her own eyes and the cold throbbing pain in her thigh told her it was certainly there.

Tara was no expert on a beasts’ expressions, but its brows were definitely furrowed right now.

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