Log Horizon - Volume 9 - Chapter 5.2

2 
“Wha—?!” 
Elias looked up, mouth hanging open. He was watching two dragons intersect with each other like leaves dancing in the wind. 
The echoing roars were enough to shake the ravine. 
A dark mass fell from the two tangling spirals, racing toward him through the sky like a meteor. It approached Elias’s group, crossing the sky over the ravine, then fell, shaking the treetops. 
“There is a high probability that those are the enemy leaders.” 
Elias had sensed that as well, without being prompted by Coppélia’s words. His eyes had clearly seen Leonardo slam into the robed man and the girl who were riding the Black Dragon, then fall along with them. 
“Kanami!” 
“I knooow. Wow. Croakanardo, that’s fantastic! So he wanted the best part all to himself, huh? Well, well! If that’s what that was, I wish—he’d said something!” 
Even as Kanami spoke, she slammed a fist into the side of a gnoll who’d swung a rusty sword at her. Just before the gnoll whose attack she’d deflected could start to rampage, she jammed a pretty leg into it, exhaling sharply. 
The monster flew as if it had been hit by a big dump truck, and Elias ran after it. 
There was no way he was going to ignore the gap that had opened in the battlefield. Elias swung his crystal broadsword, which was nearly the size of a surfboard. 
Elias’s curse prevented him from defeating them. He couldn’t finish them off. However, his attack power was immense, and the gnolls had lost the majority of their HP to it. 
He seemed to be swinging his great sword haphazardly as he ran, but countless currents of water wrapped around its blade, rearing their heads like snakes with their sights set on prey. This was Tributary Blade, one of Elias’s unique special skills. Even the gnolls who’d avoided the broadsword were unable to block the blades of water that attacked them from their blind spots. 
Even if they didn’t lose their lives, the beast-men were run through or had their arms and legs slashed apart, and their movements grew sluggish, as if they’d been pinned in place by a ferocious look. 
“I’m going!” 
“Yep, leave it to me!” 
Kanami had also broken into a run, following Elias. 
Moving on feet as nimble as a cat’s, she destroyed the enemies to her right and left. As the gnolls’ heads suggested, their behavior was close to that of hyenas or jackals. In other words, they moved in groups and used teamwork to hunt their prey. Now that Elias had slashed his way through their pack, it was in chaos. Under the circumstances, Kanami’s individual kills produced maximum results. 
However, Kanami was a Monk, and her class characteristics were different from Elias the Blademancer’s. Having been designed as a true hero, Elias could use both sword techniques and magic, but Monks were lacking in range attacks. 
To make up for that shortcoming, Kanami raced around the battlefield at high speed. If Elias was a silver-blue sword that slashed the gnoll pack apart, Kanami was a streak of spring-green lightning. 
“I have cast Reactive Heal and Slash Block on you, Master.” 
“Roger that, Coppé-cat! That means I wiiiin!” 
In order to provide backup to the hyperactive Kanami, Coppélia was advancing as well. Spells had a range; if she let herself get separated from Elias and Kanami, it was possible that her recovery spells wouldn’t reach them. 
Even more than that, Coppélia was a Cleric. Since she was a Recovery class, her destructive abilities weren’t high. If she ended up alone on the battlefield, she’d probably wind up in deep trouble. Moving together, the three of them advanced far into the enemy’s ranks. 
A disturbing cracking sound was coming from the deep green trees into which Leonardo seemed to have fallen. They didn’t know what was about to come bursting out of there, but they wanted to finish off as many gnolls as possible before that crucial moment arrived. 
Elias’s misgivings proved to be correct. 
“What is that?!” 
Kanami’s astonishment was entirely understandable. The thing that had appeared was bizarre. One might have called it a human set in a wooden frame; it was probably what had broken the trees in the grove. It was a skeletal die, constructed from trees that were about as thick as a human torso. It was about two meters to a side, and inside it was a man in a robe. 
“Master. Lord Elias. The object in front of us is—” 
“We know!” 

—It wasn’t human. 
It couldn’t possibly be human. 
The robed figure was stooped and limp, as if it was exhausted. 
Countless nauseating tentacles of a color somewhere between indigo and brown squirmed from that hollow figure, latching on to the wooden frame that surrounded the shape. Or rather, the wooden frame itself was being held together by those tentacles. 
“Level 89, Normal rank. Name: Papus.” 
Coppélia murmured the words as if to confirm them. 
It seemed out of place, but the sound of the mountain stream reached them very clearly. 
The grotesque shape that had emerged from the woods seemed to have overawed the gnolls, as well as Elias’s group. 
“So you read my name. That must be the current special ability.” 
“?!” 
With that one comment, Elias knew. 
The mass of tentacles in front of him was one of their kind. 
“He’s a…” 
“—Genius!!” 
“You know that name, do you, survivor?” 
The calm voice was a feint. Or, no, it might not have been consciously intended as a feint. That was the sort of beings they were. Contact, conversation, and hostility were connected almost seamlessly; they made no distinction between them. A lunacy with a type of life that corroded you if you so much as touched it. 
Along with the mild question, tentacles as sharp as spears were thrust out at Elias. It would have been easy to knock them aside, but the Ancient didn’t really want to. 
“Aqua Soliton!!” 
A thin stream ran over the ground from the great sword that had been stuck into it. Row upon row of wave-shaped spears of water shot up out of that clear stream. The ranks of spears that stuck up from the ground intercepted the tentacles that flew through the air. 
They writhed, spewing out filthy liquid that scattered white smoke around the area. The severed tentacles were leaking strong acid. Acrid smoke rose up, stinging their eyes. 
As Elias squinted against that haze, he saw Kanami charge into the white smoke, whipping up a wind. 
“I call dibs! He’s mine!” 
Although there was no telling when she’d gotten over there, Kanami used the tops of the evergreens to perform a triangle jump, then sent a twisting kick into the tentacled apparition. 
“Yeeek?!” 
“What’s wrong?!” 
“Th-this thing! He’s all squishy! That’s disgusting!” 
It wasn’t clear whether Kanami’s attack had had any effect, but the monster rotated the wooden frame that surrounded it. She jumped back in a move like a leaping fish in order to avoid getting caught up in the sharp rotation. 
“What a curious combination, Ancient. I must not let any of you live. Rank 2. I will prevail.” 
No sooner had the monster Papus made that declaration than a flood of tentacles poured down over Elias and Kanami. 
Enemy of my friends. Elias’s soul was quaking with emotion, but he bit it back. 
This being was an invader who had come to steal the world. Unleashing his anger would have to wait. 
Wagering the Ancients’ entire reason for existence, Elias intercepted Papus.