Half a month had passed, and Jhin's terrifying rate of growth left the spectating monsters clicking their tongues in disbelief.
At first, not a single monster had believed he could survive amid such high-intensity combat. Even if he'd managed to scrape out a few lucky wins, they figured it was only thanks to those bizarre, outlandish methods of attack.
Once they'd figured out his fighting style, the monsters assumed they could naturally tear him to shreds or swallow him whole. Clearly, they had thought wrong.
Not only did Jhin's attacks fail to run dry as the number of battles increased, they instead grew even more uncanny and unpredictable, as if at any given moment he could pull out a weapon or a method of attack they had never seen before.
Even when a monster beat him until he was covered in wounds and that pitch-black war plate was on the verge of shattering, he could produce a small emerald-green knife rimmed with red—one so familiar it terrified the monsters—and stab it into himself, after which he would spring back to full vigor and keep on fighting.
Even so, not one of the monsters who had followed the Red Dragon here wanted to drop out of the wheel-battle rotation against Jhin. Setting aside the dragon's blood the Red Dragon had promised, simply being able to devour this human—whose life force was nearly limitless—could send their own strength soaring. It wasn't out of the question that one might even ascend to overlord-tier in a single leap.
What mattered was who would become the victor to swallow him into their belly.
Today marked the nineteenth lord-tier monster to fall at Jhin's feet. He skillfully sliced open the monster's corpse, extracted the most delicious cut of meat and stowed it into his storage space, then gathered up the special materials as well. He could sense the appetite lurking in the monsters' eyes as they looked at him—and in return, he found himself just as ravenous when he looked at them.
The Nine-Tailed Savage Bull, the Thunderbolt Wyvern, the Golden-Rock Venom Scorpion, the Magma Bubble Shark—each of them a lord-tier monster of renown on the Monster Gourmet Rankings—all stood before him. Defeat them, and he could feast to his heart's content. There was nothing that could make a foodie's blood boil more than a condition like this.
If Pecorine were here too, she'd probably be even more fired up about the fight than I am.
The image of that adorable glutton puffing out her chest, gripping her greatsword and shouting "I'll take on ten of them!" surfaced in his mind, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of Jhin's mouth. He was no saint; in these high-intensity, life-or-death duels his spirit would grow weary too—one of the negative effects that life force could not soothe away.
Whenever this happened, he would always think of Hitori Gotoh pouting and squirming as she nestled coyly in his arms, of Kazami Kazuki's exasperated yet utterly doting expression, and of his companions in this world.
With those girls around, he could unleash the strength of a hundred men.
The fatigue was swept clean away by the warmth welling up in his heart. His once-weary eyes turned bright and piercing again, as though a flame that would never be extinguished was burning within them.
A-again! Here we go again!
The other spectating monsters wailed inwardly. No matter how hard they racked their brains, they couldn't understand how it was that this human's stamina was practically limitless—and even setting that aside, why his spirit could likewise stay eternally tireless through some unknown means.
After each round of battle, Jhin was given one minute to handle his spoils and rest—a rule set by the Red Dragon. Yet even within that brief span, the monsters had already witnessed countless times the sight of him recovering from grievous wounds.
The five-kilometer-diameter ring of monsters was like an enormous furnace, the special ingredients its various enhancement materials, and Jhin the very weapon within that furnace, hammered relentlessly by the great mallet known as the "wheel battle"—a blade forged to its utmost so it might bring the volcano's master the death he yearned for.
The notion that this Red Dragon had merely brought monsters here for its amusement was overturned by Jhin. In recent days, he had constantly felt a faint, almost imperceptible gaze upon him. The moments this feeling appeared were mostly concentrated during his battles, and it vanished the instant the day's wheel battle ended—as though it were interested solely in his fighting.
Combined with the inexplicable way this Red Dragon had stopped him in the first place and its accommodating attitude, Jhin had ample reason to suspect that all of this was being orchestrated by the mutated Red Dragon—Letishi.
But why it was doing this, and whether it knew his true purpose, he couldn't yet make out—nor did he intend to lay his cards on the table with it. A golden opportunity like this, with Lord-rank monsters gathered together to fight him to the death, would never come again if he let it slip. When it came time to lay his cards bare, it would have to wait until he was certain he could break through the encirclement.
After all, the life force on Kokkoro could only be sustained for three months, and nearly a month had already gone by. He had to make it back to replenish it before the life force ran out.
Maybe by then I could ask the Red Dragon for leave, go back to top off my life force, and then return. Or should I just bring the others over here?
Better not to do that—the risk is too great. If Letishi suddenly turned on me, they'd all be in even greater danger.
As his mind was busy planning out what came next, by the time Jhin snapped back to attention the twentieth lord-tier monster had already been slain by him, purple blood dripping down the blade of the [Resplendent Blade].
From battling three lord-tier monsters a day at the very start to twenty a day now, Jhin had constantly switched weapons throughout so that the monsters could never fully see through his fighting style. In the end, his weapon-mastery skills—[Sword Mastery], [Spear Mastery], and so on—had fused into a single skill: [All Weapons Mastery Lv3].
On top of that, there was another skill, [Combat Instinct Lv7]. This skill let him instinctively respond to all manner of attacks and deliver a counterstrike—which was precisely why he could now cut down lord-tier monsters even while zoning out.
That said, his responsiveness had its limits. For attack methods he had never seen before, the most his mental early-warning could do was alert him to dodge; it couldn't manage a timely counter. Even so, that was already formidable enough.
He dismembered the monster's corpse with practiced ease. Since this was the last one of the day, Jhin didn't stow all the meat into his storage space—he kept a portion, and carried it as he headed toward a small stone-brick hut in the distance.
This was a house he had built using earth element. Under the Red Dragon's overwhelming pressure, even if he used wind element inside to cool the place down, no other death-courting monsters would come to attack—perfect for him and Kyaru to rest in.
Jhin carried the bright red slabs of meat into the kitchen. Kyaru, already wearing an apron, had been bustling away inside for a good while. When the Red Dragon had first blocked their path, she'd been utterly despondent, convinced the two of them were done for. But now she had grown accustomed to these days of watching Jhin battle monsters from the little hut each day and then preparing his meals afterward.
As he liked to tease her, she really was starting to look more and more like a virtuous wife these days—even if Kyaru's cooking skills had made not the slightest progress beyond simple grilled meat and stewed soup.
"Practicing your knife work again?"
"Mm... I can't very well let you eat grilled meat every single day, can I?"
"I honestly wouldn't mind that." Coating his hand in life force, Jhin took hold of Kyaru's cut left hand to heal her wound. "As long as you don't put in sugar instead of salt like you did the first time."
Kyaru's little face flushed crimson in an instant. "I-I already told you that was just a slip-up! Whose fault is it for putting those two seasonings so close together!"
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