“Eh?” Emilia blinked as her lover vanished from her side, a heaving mass of muscle and magical energy appearing in his place. “Christoph?”

His legs kicked feebly in the dust, and she drew her knives as a wet gasp reached her ears. Right now, Christoph needed her protection. Slicing through the sash at her waist, she tore open the leather bag of lethal poison, coating her blades in the toxin within. The thick oily liquid splashed over her fur as she took her stance, running in rivulets down her leg to the floor below. Black rather than yellow, this substance was something she had trained since birth to be able to resist.

“You…” Swiping out at the dragon, Emilia forced him onto the defensive. Her first blow was caught by the rock-hard flesh of its forearm, her second smashed away by its wrist as she slashed towards its face. If she couldn’t penetrate its hide, she could at least shift her aim towards its eyes. “Christoph?”

Was he healing the damage he had taken? If she could keep Meteor Hammer on the back foot, blinding the creature wouldn’t be an impossible task. Ah, if only she had a bow!

“Get back!”

The beast-woman felt a tug at the back of her new vest, limbs jerking out as she was yanked backward by the collar. The creaking of the leather was almost enough to distract her from the sudden onrush of air in front of her face, a dark-skinned fist passing her by as she fell.

“You can’t fight this one,” Christoph said, forming a shield-like gauntlet from the crystals on his left hand. “I’ll try to pull him out of the cave, so make sure Edward is there with his men.”

Christoph saw the way Emilia’s face twisted as he sent her away, but that was the best course of action right now. It was the plan they had discussed and agreed upon, the plan they had intended to carry out from the very start. She might not like it, but she didn’t have the strength to truly pressure Meteor Hammer, nor the resilience to survive even a single punch. Christoph would put her safety first, even if it meant she would resent him for it afterward.

“I’ll be fine, just go!” Catching an attack on his gauntlet, Christoph tried to ignore the feeling of his flesh pulping inside the gemstone ‘shield’. He had wanted to make it to the treasure before engaging the monster, but-

Meteor Hammer’s left fist cracked the very air as it barreled towards him. Twisting his body, Christoph braced his left arm with his right, backing out of the blow as much he could. Still, he was launched across the tunnel, bouncing off of one wall and almost into the other. Still, he felt his arm explode within the crystal sheath, his right wrist cracking where it had taken a portion of the impact. Still, he was blown away with almost no chance of resisting the attack.

“I’ll be fine,” Christoph repeated, staggering to his feet once more. “Just fine.”

Glancing back at where the light of his companion’s crystal was slowly disappearing into the darkness, the dragonslayer distanced himself from the great wyrm as best he could. This power was not something he could handle head-on. Even the great claws of the leviathan had not been able to crack his bones, and they had grown far stronger since then. Just how big was the difference between young and old dragons in this world? No, he had seen the difference himself, both in size and sheer power. The dragon might have shrunk down to the size of a large lizard-man, but it’s roiling energy was almost painful to behold, and if he received even a single blow it would undoubtedly spell his end.

“Are you a person inside there?” Christoph asked, watching carefully for the dragon’s next move. “Or are you just another crystal monster in the end?”

If Meteor Hammer could understand his words, its only reply was another charging straight, the scaled fist barely missing Christoph’s shoulder as he leaped to the side. Forming his right-hand crystals into an axe, he attempted to hack at the outstretched arm before it could withdraw but was somehow stopped by the monster’s left arm.

“I thought you couldn’t move that quickly,” Christoph said. From the way that the dragon paused between its attacks, he hadn’t been expecting it to block his strike just then. If it could move normally, why wasn’t it attacking him properly? If it came at his with consecutive attacks at that speed then he would be hard pressed to match it. “Is this just a part of what you are?”

Meteor Hammer ignored his words, mana gathering in its fists as he tried to speak to it. Shifting its feet, it moved into a traditional martial arts stance, left arm and leg turned forward while its right side was poised ready to strike. Light flared at the dragon’s left fist a moment before it made its move, its fist blazing out towards its target.

“What?!” A mana wave attack! Christoph dodged to the side, but even though he was out of range of the dragon’s fist the ball of condensed energy still caught him on the shoulder. Wrenching his body around, the force of the blow blasted the dragonslayer clean through the wall behind and down to the treasure chamber below.

…

Emilia held the illumination crystal in her left hand, one of her daggers clutched in her right. The adventurer’s clothes that Christoph had bought her pulled tightly at her fur, the shoes he had given her thumping against the dirt as she ran. Christoph, her ‘slave’. Now, it was he was the one who gave her the orders, he who held the money and made the plans. How had he gotten so much stronger than her in such a short amount of time?

Rushing past the various crystal monsters that lurked in the cave, the beast-woman broke through into the light beyond. Pausing for a moment to catch her breath, she looked around for signs of that annoyingly persistent dwarf and his men. This time, though, the warrior’s camp was empty, tents fluttering in the wind as the fires lay cold. They weren’t there? She had joked with Christoph about them not being there earlier, but no matter what they weren’t supposed to leave. How could they possibly hope to complete the plan without half of their offensive force?

“Where did they-” Emilia cut her words short as she caught sight of the tracks on the earthy ground. Several wagons had passed through here, dozens of booted feet following them… into Meteor Hammer’s lair? How had she missed them on the way out? More importantly, why had they entered the mountain themselves?

…

Christoph’s hand clenched around a warmly glowing crystal, his teeth crunching into the pulsing gemstone as Meteor Hammer landed some distance away. The fall hadn’t been able to cause any major damage to his crystal-clad body, but the great wyrm’s attack had drained his mana with the injuries it had caused.

“So we’re fighting down here, are we?” Re-forming his weapons, Christoph prepared for the dragon’s next attack. “Come on, then!”

Holding up his shield, the adventurer used its glimmering surface to catch the massive mana wave. With this, he’d be able to absorb the energy and use the increased power to strike back at-

“Ah?!” Instead of dissipating into his body, the energy pummelled into Christoph’s shield and he was sent flying yet again. “What just-”

No, this wasn’t entirely unexpected. Although attacks like the sand leviathan’s mana breath would be absorbed entirely, it was different when the magic had an intent to it. Cliff’s mana waves behaved in much the same way, cleaving through his body instead of being devoured by it. It was the difference between catching a dagger mid-air or trying to wrestle it from the enemy’s hands. In this case, though, it was more like a greatsword than a knife.

Clambering to his feet yet again, Christoph dodged past the second mana wave, lashing out with his axe to slice it in two. Even with the crystal blade, the amount of mana he was able to absorb was minuscule.

“Tch.” Sprinting forwards, Christoph swept his eyes over the piles of treasure scattered around the room as he ran. It seemed that Edward was right in saying Meteor Hammer would take nothing but the weapons. There was no gold and no jewels, only weapons, mountains of weapons of all shapes and sizes. Even the crystal he had eaten earlier had been pried from the hilt of a sword he’d found. “Looks like I’ll have to rely on the treasure to regenerate myself.”

Diving behind a pile of weapons twice as tall as he was, Christoph snatched up a gemstone-studded wand and peered through the stack of glowing crystals at where Meteor Hammer was holding its stance. This close to the dragon, he could see its energy signature clearly even through the solid metal and flaring mana crystals within. Chomping at the top of the wand, he swallowed the ‘edible’ parts and discarded the metal portion as someone else would do to a bone.

In any case, he didn’t need to see the next attack to know when it was coming. Even without feeling the energy course through the air, he had a feel for the timing of the attacks by now. Was Meteor Hammer really the kind of existence that would attack at set intervals for as long as it had an enemy? What sort of god was the Ouroboros, to have created monsters such as this? He felt the dark hands of the deity at work behind the scenes of the continent itself, and the slimy machinations reminded him of home.

“You’re almost like a doll,” Christoph said, stepping out from behind the tower of treasure as the dragon made its next attack. Diving under the blast, he came out of his roll with a leaping slash of his axe. Now that he’d made the connection, he could see it clearly. The way its head swiveled to track him as he moved, the automatic defense against his attacks, the delay between movements of its own. The sand wyrm had been bestial, but Meteor Hammer was almost robotic. “Do any of the dragons have a soul at all?”

Pushed back by the left fist as he attacked, Christoph avoided the dragons counter, battering his axe against the monster’s guard yet again. Although it seemed unarmed, Meteor Hammer’s weapons were its arms indeed, spiked fists lashing in both offense and defense where necessary. Forcing himself to move faster yet, Christoph felt a smile creep over his face as he landed a slash on the dragon’s face, blood welling up to trickle down the great wyrm’s jaw. Disengaging for the moment, the dragonslayer focused his efforts on defense while he fought to catch his breath. As long as he knew the timing, dodging the dragon’s attacks was a simple matter after-

“Hey.” Christoph’s skin crawled as he took a stance of his own. Instead of releasing its mana, Meteor Hammer had continued to let it build. Whenever the next attack came, he wasn’t sure he would be able to avoid it. “What are you… ah?”

All around the chamber, weapons had begun to rise from their positions atop the pillars of treasure. Swords and axes, hammers, spears, and bows all floated up to the dragon’s head-height, tips tilting down to face towards their master’s current opponent.

“I see,” Christoph said, shifting his axe into a sword for now. “I should have timed the mana waves and fled long ago.”

There was a blink of flashing steel, and Meteor Hammer made its first move. Dashing towards its target, the dragon held out a hand and pulled a hammer towards it, smashing Christoph aside before landing on a shield that was floating nearby. Rather than give him a chance to recover, the great wyrm sprung out again, this time armed with a spear that had been inexplicably drawn into its arms. Twisting his body mid-air, Christoph deflected the spear with his shield, only to find Meteor Hammer hurtling towards him with a sword this time.

Harnessing the force of the dragon’s next blow, Christoph leaped across the chamber, slashing out at the floating weapons’ crystals as he went. Although he was satisfied to see the priceless artifacts fall to the ground with his attacks, his expression fell as more rose up to take their place.

…

“Well well,” Edward said from high above. Behind him, a multitude of dwarves scurried around between several overloaded wagons. “Looks like he got it to the second form already. Get the cannon ready, then. We’ll see how well Chrissy does with the rest of the fight, won’t we lads?”