The World After the Bad Ending

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Mini forest guardians born from fallen fruits.

Their name is Mini.

In reality, they’re at least a head taller than your average adult man.

Forest Guardian Phase 2.

This is the revival pattern of the guardian.

If we can’t take down all the guardians born from the fruits within the given time,

the guardian will revert back to Phase 1.

This can essentially be considered a failure in our attempt to tackle the guardians.

There’s no way a party that has already exhausted their strength in Phase 1 can capture the guardians again.

Thus, we must stop the Phase 2 revival pattern at all costs.

“Everyone, listen up.”

I pointed to the fallen fruits.

“The guardians that are born from these fruits grow stronger the more we defeat them. So we’ll take out the ones on the outside first and then take down the one in the center last.”

Given the urgency of the situation, I made sure to relay only the key points.

Everyone nodded in understanding.

“Poara, focus on healing from now on. There will be a moment when we need to unleash firepower again, and the same goes for you, Saint.”

“Yes!”

“Understood.”

The remaining guardians will have to be dealt with by Seron, Aisha, and me.

“Hey, how do you know how to deal with a cardinal you’ve never seen before?”

Seron, gripping his axe, asked me. Is that really what you want to know right now?

“I studied.”

At times like this, one must be brazen.

“…I went to the academy and studied, but I have no clue.”

“Well, then you probably just didn’t study enough.”

I ran ahead before Seron could get even more annoyed.

Since the battle was taking longer than expected, many gray zones had formed.

If you step on one, you’ll lose a big chunk of health, so I had to run with as much caution as possible.

The reason I insisted on dealing with the outer ones was due to these gray zones. If we tackled the inner ones first and the guardian ran inside, it would be a hassle.

Thankfully, everyone seemed to understand this without me needing to say more.

In the distance, Aisha and Seron had begun their assault on the guardian.

Aisha was to be expected, but Seron had his complaints, yet his skills were top-notch.

Once I saw the two facing off against the guardian, I lifted my gaze.

There was the forest guardian, its tendrils sprawling out from its body.

It had four sturdy legs and two arms, with vines wrapping around its body.

These vines were poisonous, so touching them would cause your skin to melt away.

Whirr!

Swish!

However, that was all irrelevant to me, with my steel skin.

I severed the incoming tendril with my hand and gripped my shield.

Boom!

At that moment, a rocky bullet shot out from the tendril, hitting my shield.

This was the guardian’s basic pattern.

Attack with poisonous vines and then fire rocky bullets.

The guardian was moving according to my memories.

If that’s the case, we can proceed with the existing strategies.

I took a deep breath.

I moved my body to prevent stiffness from causing any mistakes.

This was my first real battle.

I would be fighting countless cards to avoid a bad ending.

This battle was nothing less than the first step against such cards.

“Honestly speaking…”

I was scared too. I was charging towards a monster that was a head taller than me.

The pressure felt nothing like the mock battle.

In the mock battle, there were professors and assistants around to save our lives.

But now it was the real deal.

In this place, you had to be in charge of your own life.

That place was the Magung Academy.

Because of that, I couldn’t afford to be scared.

If I let fear take over, my muscles would retract, my vision would narrow, and my mind would spiral into panic.

Be bolder.

Be more certain.

Recall every strategy that could take down the cardinal and win.

I sliced through another incoming tendril with my hand.

The pulled shield blocked the rocky bullet.

Before I knew it, only about 2 meters separated me from the guardian.

Realizing this, the guardian stopped swinging its tendrils.

Instead, it began to swing its muscular arms, reminiscent of a gorilla.

If those arms collided with me, I would sustain grievous injuries.

My body, which I had been sprinting forward with, suddenly dipped low.

As if to say that all the training with Aisha hadn’t been in vain.

With my extended legs expertly lowered, the guardian’s arm missed me entirely.

I dodged the first close attack.

But I wasn’t relaxed just yet.

“One more time.”

Bam!

A bursting sound echoed from the tip of the guardian’s swinging arm.

It was the sound of a heat fruit exploding that had been embedded at the end of its arm.

Alongside the explosion of the heat fruit, the guardian’s arm swung fiercely back toward me.

Even after dodging one attack, it followed up with a second one.

The arm, bigger than my own head, came flying at me.

I planted myself into the ground, crashing down hard.

Crash!

The guardian’s arm was aimed at my lowered body, swinging low.

I leapt to evade and stomped on the guardian’s shoulder that was right in front of me.

I tightened my grip on my hand.

The guardian’s head blankly stared at me.

Though it realized its mistake, it was too late.

Slash!

With all my might, my hand pierced into the guardian’s head.

My hand pierced through the guardian’s thick outer shell and delved inside.

A nasty foreign sensation washed over me from within.

With that, I twisted my hand further to stir around inside the guardian’s head before pulling it out.

My hand was drenched in purple blood and brain matter.

There wasn’t even time to feel disgusted.

As the guardian’s body began to collapse, I landed not in the gray zone but on solid ground.

“Phew.”

A short breath escaped my lips.

I was grateful for Bickamon’s body.

If it hadn’t been for Bickamon’s body, I wouldn’t have been able to carry out my thoughts as I envisioned.

Of course, I had prepared some countermeasures for mistakes.

That’s why I was able to move so recklessly.

Always prepare for anything.

“Now, there’s just one left.”

The guardians were still numerous.

There was no time to stop.

I had to keep going.

*

Thanks to the teamwork of Aisha, Seron, and me, the fruit guardians were quickly dwindling down.

However, after crossing the halfway point, that speed began to slow down steadily.

As mentioned before, as the number of guardians decreased, the remaining ones grew stronger.

So, the time it took to handle these guardians, who were now twice as strong as before, began to increase.

The patterns of the guardians started to diversify.

The last guardian we faced would exhibit all of these patterns.

It was good to experience them physically during this battle.

“Heck, hey, are you guys not getting tired!?”

Seron shouted at us after taking down a guardian with his explosive axe.

If he had the energy to shout, I wish he’d put in a bit more effort.

Aisha and I charged forward without a care on our faces, aiming to take down the next guardian.

“Compared to the daily stamina training…”

“This much is easy.”

Aisha provided a comment, and I responded.

Through the never-ending hellish training with Aisha, I had grown stronger.

No need to mention Aisha, who devised our training course.

“Hmm, should I call us the Great Sword Iron Man and the Hand Blade Iron Man?”

Sirmiel, who was watching us from a distance, smiled kindly.

At this rate, I might just end up being called by such nicknames for real.

“Hanon, the roots are moving again!”

Just then, Poara pointed at a root on the dark clouds above.

As she said, the root began to stir again.

This was a notice that the revival pattern was progressing.

‘More rushed than I thought.’

It was consuming too much time to avoid the gray zones while taking down the guardians.

Unlike in a game, this is reality.

I had to pay attention to the ground beneath my feet and the guardians at the same time.

With my attention divided like this, a lot of time was wasted.

‘Should I have saved some of Poara’s firepower for later?’

It’s better to get through the first phase even if someone gets injured, and I did pull out the hidden card of the Spirit Sovereign.

But the revival phase was also proving to be quite a headache.

“Seron, there’s no time to rest! Get up and take down at least one more!”

“Ugh, I know already!”

Seron groaned but still got up and started sprinting towards the guardian.

“Senpai.”

In the meantime, Aisha had approached me.

“This is getting late.”

“…Yeah, it does seem like it might be.”

Aisha nodded.

“Senpai, the main reason we’re falling behind in taking down the guardians is because of those gray zones, right?”

That was absolutely true.

Taking down the guardian itself wasn’t that hard.

But due to the gray zones underfoot,

it was consuming way too much time.

“Just once.”

Aisha tightened her grip on her great sword.

“I can make it so you don’t have to pay attention to the gray zones. How about it? Can you handle it inside?”

My eyes slowly opened.

I caught on to what Aisha was planning.

“Leave it to me.”

I quickly distanced myself from Aisha and ran towards Poara.

In that time, Aisha lowered her stance with the great sword in hand.

Coincidentally, I captured a guardian that Seron had taken down.

“Hey, hey, what’re you doing!”

“Poara! Can you attach a low-level wind spirit to me?”

“Yes, yes, I can manage that!”

I yelled at Poara without answering Seron.

Poara hurriedly summoned the low-level wind spirit and attached it to my back.

The little butterfly-like spirit fluttered its wings.

I threw Seron between Poara and Sirmiel.

“Saint, a great wind is coming soon.”

I glanced back at Aisha, who was lowered into her position.

“Can you avoid getting caught up in it?”

“Of course.”

Sirmiel prepared the defensive blessing alongside her prayers.

In the meantime, Aisha began to spin in a seated position.

Broom, broom, broom, broom—

The spinning speed began to increase dramatically.

Not long after, wind began to swirl around Aisha.

All the winds were drawn to Aisha.

The fierce wind began pulling even the guardian into the air.

“…Is she really one of us?”

Not a Spirit Sovereign or anything.

Seron looked aghast at the forest guardian being caught up by the wind Aisha conjured.

Certainly, Aisha was operating at inhuman levels.

But that made her the most reassuring in this moment.

Sirmiel cast a defensive blessing here.

Thanks to that, we were not swept away by the wind.

“Poara, get ready!”

I began to run towards Aisha, stepping out of the defensive blessing.

It was coming.

The wind was coming.

At the moment the fierce wind blew around Aisha,

the gigantic great sword she was wielding lifted above her head and was slammed down towards the ground.

Boom!

And then, a storm hit the ground.

Boom!

In an instant, a storm erupted from the ground.

Everything on the surface flew into the air.

The guardians, caught unprepared, got tangled amongst themselves, swept away by Aisha’s wind.

Seeing this, I charged forward with my hand outstretched, calling for Poara.

“Launch me!”

As my shout echoed, Poara propelled me into the air with the wind spirit.

My body shot up into the sky.

But rushing in blindly would amount to nothing more than being a steel projectile.

Right now, at this moment.

I had to become the bomb that would blow the guardians away.

Thus, I brought forth the trump card I had stored away.

On my skin.

Magical inscriptions began to rise, glowing all at once.

Magic Inscription

A technique I learned from Sharine.

Normally, magical inscriptions are supposed to be inscribed onto tools, not on a person’s skin.

But my skin?

It’s tougher than ordinary armor.

So, I directly etched the magical inscriptions onto my own skin.

As long as I used bandages to conceal the appearance of the magical inscriptions, no one would know they existed until they were activated.

Heat began to rise from my body as flames ignited.

This was the ultimate technique I had prepared for days like today.

The magic inscription I had placed was an explosive magic.

That was a magic that Sharine herself helped me inscribe.

‘A human bomb.’

As my body reached the gathered guardians, it was enveloped in light.

The late struggles of the guardians were utterly meaningless.

‘Enjoy this.’

KA-BOOM!

It was the moment an unprecedented explosion erupted from the first layer of the gray forest.