Chapter 395, A Truth Revealed

Translator: Barnnn

Editor: Silavin

 

“Garm, do you have a minute?”

 

“…What is it?”

 

Garm, after seeing Diniel off as she departed for the Guild for her team’s attempt on the hundredth layer, turned at the sound of Tsutomu’s voice. The young man had been loitering nearby, clearly waiting for the right moment to speak. Garm tried to answer with his usual stoicism, but something in Tsutomu’s gaze made his words feel strangely hollow.

 

Tsutomu gave a weary smile and shook his head.

 

“We’re both terrible at hiding things. Let’s talk somewhere more private.”

 

“…”

 

Without waiting for a reply, Tsutomu slipped a hand into his Magic Bag and began walking toward the guest room. Garm followed with cautious footsteps.

 

Once inside the silent guest room, Tsutomu took a seat on the sofa and pulled out what appeared to be a thin, glowing paper card. He offered it to Garm.

 

“Don’t read it out loud, all right?”

 

“…”

 

Garm was literate and educated enough to pass the Guild’s entry exams, and more importantly, the words came to him with uncanny ease. The card’s contents, however, made his heart pound. The more he read, piecing together Tsutomu’s background and the item’s true purpose, the more his hands began to tremble.

 

“…Is this real?”

 

“It is. It was part of the reward for our victory on the hundredth layer. Amy was the one who got it, and she appraised it right then. The reason you’ve been watching us so closely… it was because you sensed that something was up between us, wasn’t it?”

 

“…”

 

Garm couldn’t answer. He lowered his gaze back to the card, rereading the same lines as if hoping they might make more sense the second time around. Tsutomu waited patiently, silently, giving him space to process the information. After nearly five minutes, when Garm finally lifted his head again, Tsutomu spoke,

 

“Listen, I HAVE to go back to my world. I know it’s selfish, but I need you to keep this card safe until then.”

 

“Y-you want me to do it?”

 

“There are people who’ll oppose my return. Diniel, Leleia… maybe even Amy, if she changes her mind. If they tried to stop me by force, I wouldn’t stand a chance. That’s why I need your help. Not your approval, necessarily, just your support.”

 

“…”

 

With that, Tsutomu lowered his head in a deep bow. Garm could only stare, stunned into silence. It took a long moment for him to snap out of it, finally managing to force out words from his tightening throat.

 

“I… I can’t answer right away. I want to help, but… well…”

 

“Of course,” Tsutomu replied, raising his head. “I wasn’t expecting an answer now. Take until tomorrow to think it over. Just… please don’t tell the others yet.”

 

“That much, I can promise…”

 

“Thanks. I’ll be heading out to watch the Pedestals for now. Oh, and… here,” Tsutomu said, placing a spare Magic Bag on the table, “keep the card in this.”

 

“…All right.”

 

With that, Tsutomu quietly left the room, leaving Garm alone with the card. After reading through it several more times, he finally, and with the care of someone handling a live explosive, slipped it into the bag and sealed it shut.

 

▽▽

 

“<<Stream Arrow>>!”

 

“<<Count Full Buster>>!!”

 

Hannah’s strike landed with the accumulated might of her combos, delivering a devastating burst of damage to the Corroded Elder Dragon’s heart. The sheer impact stilled its beat. Almost simultaneously, Diniel’s barrage of arrows rained down like meteors, making a porcupine out of the organ.

 

“<<Spread Arrow>>!”

 

Maintaining the precise range at which her shots struck hardest, Diniel shifted focus from power to precision. Rather than widening the wound, she targeted the congealed blood clots, halting the Dragon’s hemorrhaging and choking off its lifeblood. When the blood weapons turned on her, drawn by the shifting of aggro levels, she darted nimbly aside, her golden ponytail snapping through the air as she loosed counter-shots.

 

Diniel’s combat style had crystallized into near-perfection over the years since the emergence of God’s Dungeon. Her stats and skills, too, had always been honed with every update to her level cap on her path to the ninetieth layer. But from the moment Tsutomu branded her ‘second-rate’, she began to reconstruct her entire approach.

 

What she focused on most was not strength, but perspective. At first, she had tried to cultivate a never-give-up attitude, but such sentiments were not so easily grown in a mind shaped over a hundred years. Instead, she began to dissect the moments when she would normally give in, and in doing so, tried to adopt Tsutomu’s breadth of vision. He was not the type to win by sheer willpower either, which made his clarity of judgment feel familiar and attainable.

 

She reviewed everything: her skill timing, positioning, targeting… And when it came time to face the Corroded Elder Dragon, she had already spent weeks analyzing it. Now, even when it turned its wrath on her, she could dance alone in its fury and not fall.

 

“Eyes over here, dumbass!!”

 

When the Corroded Elder Dragon’s attention lingered too long on Diniel, Hannah flared with indignation. She crushed an Inferno Magic Stone in her palm, unleashing a heat wave so intense it nearly seared the Dragon’s blood weapons into slag. Her flushed face gleamed with the thrill of battle as she shouted, dragging the aggro back to herself.

 

Diniel’s current style placed her close to an evasion-based Tank in all but name, and Hannah could not help but feel competitive. Her desire to keep pace sharpened her instincts, and as if in recognition, her contracted Sylph cast a tailwind at her back, boosting her speed.

 

“At this rate, we might actually manage to destroy its heart a second time,” Leleia murmured, drinking a Blue Potion to counteract the Sylph’s rapid mental energy drain. “Though only because we’ve got two monsters in the party.”

 

“Ha… ha ha…” Korinna could only offer a weary smile as she clutched her talisman and channeled a <<Ray of Solace>> toward the fighters.

 

Unlike a White Mage’s <<Medic>>, the <<Ray of Solace>> required precise timing due to its delayed effect. She waited for just the right moment to channel it, syncing with the two frontliners.

 

Their strategy diverged from Tsutomu’s team. After destroying the Corroded Elder Dragon’s regenerative liver, they were now testing a bold plan: to rupture its heart a second time, and fast.

 

Diniel’s exceptional performance inspired confidence. Leleia and Xeno both backed this aggressive approach; relying on her strength now had a higher chance of success than sticking to Tsutomu’s more orthodox method.

 

“<<Enchant Holy>>!!”

 

Diniel and Hannah were effectively acting as evasion-based Tanks, unleashing relentless firepower concentrated solely on the monster’s heart and liver, while the remaining three members focused entirely on support. With the liver completely destroyed and the heart already shattered once, the battle had stabilized. Even the undead transformation that typically followed was accounted for, thanks to Xeno’s Paladin skills, as well as Korinna’s ability to create holy water, nullifying the threat.

 

“Now, it’s my turn, you two! Ease off your strikes and let me take the stage!”

 

As the signs of undeath strengthened and the blood weapons grew more vicious, not even Diniel and Hannah could sustain their rhythm. At that point, Xeno stepped in, absorbing the aggro in full force, holding the line until the Corroded Elder Dragon sacrificed its heart.

 

With Xeno’s voice as the cue, Korinna eased the tempo of her support. Leleia, too, began to reel in the mental energy she had funneled into the Sylph, hoping to prevent the pair from burning themselves out. Especially Hannah, who had a habit of running too far ahead of herself.

 

[Still need to tune the angle of my <<Power Arrow>> a little… But the <<Ray of Grace>> doesn’t get in the way anymore. That’s good.]

 

To any outsider, Diniel now seemed like the ace of the party, perhaps on the level of someone blessed with a unique skill. Yet her thoughts were far from self-congratulatory. No longer idle or half-hearted, her attention remained on the battle, even as she rubbed her numbed fingers, strained from overdrawn shots.

 

She stayed humble not from modesty, but because there was still one person she had yet to surpass. Since she first picked up a bow at age twenty, she had outstripped rival after rival — from the hunters in her neighborhood to anyone foolish enough to think they could match her. And now that she was over a hundred years old, there were few left worth chasing.

 

[I’m not letting you win. You’re not staying ahead of me.]

 

For the past ten years, none had given her a decent challenge. But now, she had found prey worth the chase, and she would not let it get away. Ignoring the tingling in her fingers, she gripped her bowstring once more, ready to shoot again.