Chapter Text
The Hunter Association's waiting lounge had been designed to be calming. The lighting was soft, the chairs were beige, and in the corner a fish tank burbled away, filled with fat orange carp that drifted back and forth.
It was not working on Nakahara Chuuya.
"Ten members," he said, flattening both palms on the officer's desk. "Minimum."
"Per party, yes. The rule is effective immediately." The officer did not look up from his paperwork. "After the casualty report last quarter, the board decided—"
"Absolutely not."
"Nakahara-san—"
"We've been a two-person party for three years, and nobody's died."
"Nobody's died yet." The officer finally met his eyes, wearing a rehearsed smile on his face. He had read the file on the Hunters before him.
Nakahara Chuuya.
[Awakened Class: Healer, S-rank]
Dazai Osamu.
[Awakened Class: Mage Tank, S-rank]
Successful Dungeon Clears: 147
The officer rubbed his temples. S-ranks were usually allowed some leeway, given the power they carried, but these two were a special case. They had awakened terribly young, at the age of 15, and even now they were still considered young enough that the higher-ups would drag their feet on elevating them from trainees to proper Hunter status.
The whole country had been in an uproar the day they awakened. Two new S-ranks where the national roster could be counted on one's fingers had felt like a gift from heaven. People had expected great things from them.
However, the great things never came. Their training results were lackluster, neither of them managed to join a party in the end, and the public's attention soon drifted elsewhere. The two faded into obscurity, and nobody thought to ask what they were doing with their time.
What they had been doing, as it turned out, was clearing dungeons. Just the two of them.
The moment the Association found out, it quickly put a stop to it. Whatever they had or hadn't shown so far, they were still young S-rankers who might yet grow into their potential, and no one wanted them dead before they could.
"Nakahara-san," the officer said tiredly, "with all due respect, you're a Healer and your partner is a Tank. Do you not see the problem?"
"No," Chuuya gritted out.
"A Healer and a Tank," the officer emphasized. Setting aside the absence of every other essential role, the two roles didn't even complement each other. A Tank took damage and a Healer repaired it, and the arrangement only worked if there was someone else to actually kill things.
Chuuya's eye twitched. He had heard the word "Healer" said in that tone so many times that it had worn a groove in his brain.
At 15, he had awakened in front of cameras and a hall full of Association officials, and the crystal had flared a blinding S. The whole country had held its breath. Then his class reading came back: Healer.
Beside him, Dazai Osamu, also 15 and also S-rank, had been read out as Mage Tank.
What he had felt then curdled into something worse than disappointment once he understood that no party would ever let a Healer onto the front line.
Behind them, in the row of waiting chairs, Dazai was sprawled across four seats with his coat draped over his face like a corpse.
"Dazai," Chuuya snapped over his shoulder. "A little help?"
"Mm." The coat did not move. "Is it over? Can we go home?"
"They want us to take on eight more people."
"Eight." Dazai lifted one corner of the coat and squinted up at the harsh ceiling lights. "That's so many names to learn. Hard pass." The coat fell back over his face.
Chuuya turned back to the officer, jaw set. "Look, we don't need more people in our party—"
The officer closed his eyes. "As I said, you cannot continue entering registered dungeons as a two-person party."
"No one had a problem with it before,” Chuuya argued. “We've been doing it for years."
"Which the Association is now aware of."
Chuuya crossed his arms. “That just sounds like a you problem."
"It's a safety regulation."
"Sounds even more like a you problem."
Dazai finally stirred, the coat slipping from his face as he sat up. "Chuuya."
"What?"
"Stop arguing with that man."
Chuuya eyed him suspiciously. Dazai smiled, which was never a good sign. "We should simply agree."
The officer brightened. After an hour of relentless deadlock, he'd have welcomed any help. "Really?"
"Yes." Dazai leaned back, half-lidded eyes settling on the officer's. "Agree that your regulation is unreasonable and deeply inconvenient to my lifestyle."
The officer's face fell, and Chuuya snorted. He knew it. Dazai was an ass through and through.
Dazai's contribution changed nothing, and the officer held his ground. "You still need a minimum of ten Hunters to enter a dungeon."
"Our raid's scheduled for tomorrow. Where are we supposed to find eight other Hunters by then?"
The officer cleared his throat. "There's a compromise. The Association will assign eight of its own Hunters to your party as a temporary measure. If you demonstrate that you can handle yourselves, the board will, ah, reconsider your status."
Chuuya ground his teeth until his jaw ached. "Fine," he said, standing. "How temporary?"
The officer smiled, visibly relieved. "Until the Association is satisfied that your party can operate safely." It was the kind of sentence people said when they wanted to placate you.
Dazai looked horrified by that. “So, forever.”
The eight Hunters were waiting at the dungeon gate the next morning, and they were professional about it. Nobody said anything cruel. They knew exactly why they had been sent there. To babysit.
The leader was Kuroda, a broad-shouldered A-rank swordsman with a scar cutting through one eyebrow. He looked at Chuuya, small and ginger-haired, hands in his pockets, then at Dazai, slouched against the gate pillar, thin as a coat rack with bandaged wrists poking out of his sleeves.
Every other Hunter present had come in full kit: armour, weapons, reinforced boots. Dazai and Chuuya looked downright underdressed beside them. Chuuya, at least, had put on a leather chest piece. Dazai had turned up in a hoodie, as though he were out for a stroll.
"Right," Kuroda said. "The formation's simple. Tank in front, the rest of us flank, Healer in the back. Stay behind us, Nakahara-san. We'll handle the damage."
Chuuya gave him a smile that was all teeth. "Sure."
The gate soon swallowed them in a wash of pale blue light as they entered.
Inside, the air was cold and damp. Stone tunnels stretched ahead, lit by guttering torches, and somewhere far off came the dry scrabble of claws. The Hunters had barely stopped to check their gear when Chuuya, to everyone's mounting alarm, pulled out a storage pouch and upended it onto the ground.
A clatter of weapons spilled out. Swords, daggers, axes etc. There was even a metal bat.
It looked like some newbie's idea of preparation, the kind of thinking that said more weapons, more safety, when any experienced Hunter knew the opposite was true. Specialize in one weapon and you got results. Carry everything and you were master of nothing.
Chuuya crouched over the pile and sifted through it, eventually settling on a large war hammer. He swung it a few times, tested the balance, and nodded, satisfied.
The Hunters exchanged looks. It was terribly rookie-like. Anyone with real experience sorted out their equipment before the gate because danger might come anytime once inside the dungeon.
And a Healer choosing a war hammer?
Kuroda opened his mouth to say something diplomatic, but Chuuya had already started marching deeper into the dungeon with Dazai trailing behind him.
"Let's go."
Kuroda swallowed his words and followed.
When they reached a wide clearing, Dazai stopped.
[Taunt activated]
A wave of pressure rolled out from him, invisible and vast, and the tunnels answered. Shrieks echoed from every direction, and goblins poured out of the dark in a green, snarling flood, scores of them, every one locked onto Dazai.
"Positions!" Kuroda barked. "Form up on the Tank!"
The Association Hunters raised their weapons as one.
"Warn us next time," the party's mage told the two tersely, tensing as the horde filled the space around them, drawn in by the aggro.
Kuroda was already calling orders. "Tanks, keep them occupied. Knights, on the—"
But Chuuya had already charged.
"Nakahara!" Kuroda shouted. "Get back! We can't cover you!"
Breaking formation was one of the fastest ways to get killed, and a Healer running into the fray was suicide. Did he have a death wish? Seeing the ginger-haired figure already far ahead, Kuroda whipped toward Dazai. "Call your teammate back before he gets himself killed! Wait—where are you going?!"
Dazai had turned and begun to walk away from the group.
"Looking for somewhere to sit," he answered casually. "This is going to take a while."
"You can't be serious!"
Dazai ignored him. He had found a large, flat rock and was circling it, examining it from several angles. Then he moved on to another rock and did the same. After surveying a handful, he returned to the first one and sat down on it, apparently satisfied.
Kuroda's eye twitched. "Dazai!"
Dazai raised a hand, and a translucent golden shield bloomed around him, perfectly spherical, enclosing him completely. Then he leaned back against the rock, pulled a game console out of his pocket, and switched it on.
The raid party's jaws dropped.
This was an active raid. This was not the place to relax!
Kuroda stalked over, jaw tight. "Dazai-san! You're the Tank! Your job is to hold the line!"
Dazai did not look up, switching on the game console. "I am holding the line."
"How?!"
Dazai pointed lazily in Chuuya's direction, and Kuroda turned to watch, braced to see a Healer being torn apart.
What he saw instead was a Healer who had slammed directly into the monster horde. The hammer came down and a goblin ceased to be a goblin. Chuuya spun and punched another across the jaw, sending it flying into three more. He moved through the horde as if it were a choreographed dance, ducking, pivoting, the hammer flashing among the crowd like a silver pendulum, and he wore a feral grin as he tore through the wave of monsters.
Kuroda stared in disbelief. "What the..."
If he hadn't read the brief, he'd have sworn Chuuya was the Tank.
Dazai flicked through his game selection, unconcerned. "You see, if I'm blocking everything, then nothing can reach Chuuya."
"That's not how tanking works," Kuroda said distractedly, unable to tear his eyes from the fight.
"It is if Chuuya kills everything first."
And that did seem to be the case. Nothing had managed to slip past the hurricane that was Nakahara Chuuya, who was enjoying himself far too much.
At the back of the horde, a cluster of goblins hurled a volley of spears. Chuuya noticed and swung the hammer, batting most of them aside. One slipped through and struck his shoulder. He stumbled back, and the goblins screeched, emboldened.
"The Healer!" Kuroda's face drained of colour. "Not good!" He turned to rally the others for support, but Dazai only shifted into a more comfortable position, cheerful console music tinkling absurdly in the dungeon. "Don't bother," he advised helpfully, still not taking his eyes off his game.
At the front, Chuuya scowled at the spear in his shoulder and yanked it out. There was a small flash of light, and the wound closed. A slow smirk spread across his face as he stared down the goblins, who had begun to hesitate. With nimble fingers he flipped the spear around, leaned back, and hurled it with all his might at the spot it had come from.
It hit its target. The goblins nearby scattered from their fallen kin, and their formation broke apart.
"He's... healing himself," the mage breathed.
Of course Chuuya could heal. He was a Healer. But no one ever thought of Healers healing themselves. Healers stayed at the back, protected, supporting the attack team ahead of them. They did not stand in the middle of a goblin horde and tank it with their own flesh.
They watched Chuuya deliver a casual roundhouse kick to another goblin, breaking its ribs and sending it flying back into its kind, while healing light flashed across a gash that had torn open his arm. The gash was gone before the goblin hit the ground.
It made them doubt themselves.
Were Healers always this strong?
Everything the Hunters had ever believed about Healers cracked quietly in half.
By the end of the first hour, the Association Hunters had learned three things.
First, Nakahara Chuuya might be from the Healer class, but he was definitely not a support.
Second, Dazai Osamu was absolutely useless, having refused to lift a single finger throughout.
Third, the two of them had apparently been doing this for years.
"How is he still going?" one of the Hunters asked, staring at Chuuya in awe. The Healer had been fighting nonstop for nearly an hour. There was blood on his leather armor, most of it belonging to the monsters and some of it probably his own, but it didn't matter. Whenever something landed a hit, healing light immediately flashed over his body and the injury disappeared. Broken bones set themselves, wounds sealed, and bruises faded. He simply kept going.
It was exhausting just to watch.
"Look at him, he's not even slowing down," another Hunter muttered, worried. "The mana cost alone..."
"Don't worry," Dazai called from where he was now sprawled across the stone. "His mana reserves are monstrous."
It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either. Chuuya's healing didn't just restore his body. It could restore his mana pool too. In theory, he could fight nonstop without rest or damage, like some kind of undying creature. Dazai had no idea how that information would be received outside their little arrangement, so he kept it close to his chest.
The brunet sighed and finally paused his game. He should probably rein his partner in before he got carried away. It was almost time anyway. He checked his watch, then looked toward the battlefield.
"Chuuya," he called, his voice drifting lazily across the cavern.
"What?" Chuuya didn't turn around. He was busy ducking a goblin's rusted cleaver and putting his boot through its ribs.
"It's been an hour."
"So?"
"The crab restaurant will be opening soon," Dazai complained. "They only seat so many people for the lunch course. So could you please finish already?"
"I'm working here!"
"You're playing. There's a difference."
Chuuya didn't dignify that with an answer. He vaulted off a goblin's shoulders, slammed a boot into the nearest one's chest, and kicked off it to land a few meters away, hammer resting on his shoulder as he surveyed the cavern.
Dozens of monsters remained, an ugly green sea of them, shrieking and milling about. If he kept taking them one at a time it would be another 20 minutes at least, which meant another 20 minutes of Dazai whining that the crabs would be gone.
He clicked his tongue and wiped a smear of blood off his cheek with the back of his glove. "Fine. Have it your way."
He raised one hand.
Magic rolled out across the battlefield in a wide, glowing ring. Every monster within its radius was wrapped in a soft, warm green light, and every cut, bruise, and chipped fang on them began to knit itself shut.
The Association Hunters stared.
"Is he..." Kuroda started.
"He's healing them," said the archer, aghast. "Why is he healing the monsters?"
"Is it a mistake? Did he misfire?"
"He's an S-rank, he doesn't misfire!"
Chuuya ignored the clamor behind him, all of his focus bent on the mana pouring out of his palm.
[Healing Effect Applied]
[Healing Effect Applied]
[Healing Effect Applied]
What the Hunters didn't understand, what almost nobody did, was that healing had never only been healing.
The theory was simple enough that everyone knew it. Healing magic accelerates the body's natural regeneration. It stimulates healthy cells, increases blood production, and repairs damaged tissue, forcing the body to recover faster than it ever could by itself. That was the whole of it.
It was why high-ranking Healers were so coveted. A good one in the right place could decide whether an entire party walked out of a dungeon or was carried out of it. And because mana was life in the field, Healers were trained to be frugal. They cast only when someone was hurt, because casting on the uninjured was a waste, and no one wasted mana in a dungeon when every drop might be the difference between living and dying.
Everyone also believed that healing a person who was already at full health did nothing. Like in games, you couldn't heal past a full HP because there was nothing left to restore.
But this was not a game.
There was no health bar, no invisible cap that stopped the spell at full health. The magic did not care whether a body needed it. It simply did what it was built to do. It told cells to multiply, and they multiplied. It told blood to flow, and it flowed.
So what happened when you forced healthy cells and healthy blood to keep multiplying inside a body that was already whole?
Eventually, the body ran out of room.
And the Association Hunters were about to witness this.
Chuuya's spell intensified. The green light turned bright, then blinding, so fierce that the Hunters raised their arms against it. Within the glow, the goblins began to twitch and swell.
Skin stretched taut over bloating limbs, eyes bulged, and black veins surged up their throats and across their faces like ink spilled in water. For a moment, they hung there, straining against themselves.
And then they burst.
The light died, and one after another, the goblins collapsed in wet, heavy heaps, blood pouring from their mouths and noses, the cavern falling quiet except for the slow patter of it hitting the stone.
Chuuya lowered his hand and rolled his shoulders, utterly unbothered.
“He over-healed them,” the mage whispered, staring wide-eyed at the scene. “He over-healed them. He's using healing magic as a weapon, that’s...” He swallowed. “That’s brilliant!”
A pause.
“And fucked up,” he amended faintly. “Absolutely fucked up. But still... genius.” He looked like a man torn between wonder and the urge to be sick.
“Oh my god,” muttered another hunter, backing away from the nearest corpse. “Mages. I swear to god, mages.”
Behind them, the shimmering dome around Dazai winked out. He stood, tucked the console into his pocket, and strolled past the stunned Hunters without a glance, stopping in front of Chuuya. He surveyed the cavern, now empty of everything but silence and wreckage.
"Finished?"
"Yeah." Chuuya hefted the hammer onto his shoulder. "Happy now?"
"Ecstatic," Dazai said, tone perfectly flat. "If we hurry, we might still catch the lunch course."
"You're the one who didn't do anything!"
"And you're the one who took an hour," said Dazai serenely, already heading for the tunnel. "I'll have the snow crab. You're paying."
He ignored the cursing behind him.
They hadn't started out like this.
When they first awakened, Chuuya had been furious. He was an S-rank. He could feel the power coiling under his skin, restless and enormous, but the world had looked at him and said Healer. Thus, he was destined to stay in the back.
No party would put a Healer at the front, and he understood the logic, which only made it worse. An injured Healer puts the entire party at risk. If the Healer goes down, everyone goes down with him. So Chuuya had been handed a role built around standing still and watching other people have the fun, and he had hated every second of it.
Dazai had the opposite problem.
He hated pain. He hated sweat, too, and found the entire concept of fighting to be an astonishing amount of effort for very little reward. A Tank was supposed to charge the front line, absorb blows, and bleed for the team. Dazai could think of nothing he would rather do less.
Naturally, no party wanted either of them. A Healer who kept trying to run into battle was a liability. A Tank who didn't want to fight was an insult. Despite their S-rank status, they were passed from roster to roster like unwanted furniture, until one afternoon, lying on a bench outside yet another rejection, Dazai had stared up at the ceiling and said, "We should just forget everybody else."
"What?" Chuuya had been stewing beside him, still smarting from being told off for even picking up a sword.
"Make our own team. Just us." Dazai had yawned. "You get to fight whatever you want. I get to stay at the back. Nobody telling us what to do."
Chuuya had opened his mouth to argue, purely out of habit, and found nothing to argue with. He closed it again and thought hard. It was a dangerous idea Dazai was proposing, venturing out on their own at 15 when they were still technically underage. But the possibilities...
In the end, it worked. It worked so well it was almost embarrassing. Chuuya charged in and Dazai held the aggro, and the two of them cleared gates efficiently. Better still, every core and every drop of dungeon spoils only had to be split two ways instead of across a whole roster. Dazai considered that a very pleasant bonus.
The trouble came later, when the gates got bigger.
Large-scale dungeons meant hordes. Hordes meant numbers, and numbers, even for Chuuya, meant that sooner or later there would be more enemies than hammer swings. Dazai had watched it happen a few times: Chuuya buried under a wave of claws, healing furiously, every spell burning through mana faster than the last. They had made it out each time with a few close calls, and Dazai did not like that. The chance of one of them getting hurt kept rising, so he had started to think.
He spent weeks watching Chuuya heal himself in the field, over and over, the green light flickering across torn skin. He watched the way it knit flesh together, the way it surged when the wound was deep, the way it fizzled out when there was nothing left to mend. It was a force, he realised. A very specific, very powerful force, aimed entirely inward.
What happens, he had wondered, if you point it the other way?
"You want me to heal the monsters," Chuuya had said flatly when Dazai explained it.
"Very much. Past what they can take."
"That's not how healing works."
"Who decides how it works?" Dazai said. "You've been doing it to yourself for years. You know exactly how much a body can handle before it stops helping and starts hurting. Better than anyone alive."
That was the part that had made Chuuya go quiet, because it was true. Every day since he awakened, he had been pushing his own limits, patching himself past the edge of what should have been survivable and learning, wound by wound, exactly where that edge was. He knew how much healing magic flesh could tolerate, which meant he also knew how to make it break.
They tested it first on slimes, then on a very unlucky wolf, then on a small and indignant goblin who, in hindsight, had not deserved any of it. It took weeks of trial and error. There were failures and one deeply unpleasant afternoon involving a giant serpent that neither of them ever discussed again.
But eventually, it worked. Chuuya poured mana into the spell until the creature's body simply could not hold what he was giving it. It swelled, strained, and burst. When enough of them were packed together, the burst could even take a few others down with it. Bones, as it turned out, made excellent shrapnel.
Thus, a healing spell had become a weapon.
Dazai had watched the first clean detonation from behind a rock, popcorn in hand, and decided it was the best idea he had ever had.
Chuuya, for his part, had been ecstatic.
He now had a crowd-clearing spell in his arsenal.
"Oi," Chuuya called now, pulling Dazai out of his thoughts. He twirled the war hammer in one hand. "Only the boss left." He couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice.
Dazai rolled his eyes at his battle-maniac of a partner as they walked side by side toward the boss room.
Behind them, the eight Association Hunters trailed in silence, still staring at the ginger-haired Healer who had just turned a goblin horde inside out. Nobody quite knew what to say, so nobody said anything at all.
Up ahead the tunnel yawned wider, and somewhere deep inside, something very large began to stir. The boss doors rose out of the dark at the end of the corridor, twice the height of a house and carved with a leering goblin crown. Chuuya hummed as he approached, steps light, the hammer swinging idly from one hand. He had taken a handful of daggers from his pack and was strapping them to his belt and thighs as he walked.
"Make it quick," Dazai reminded him, trailing a few paces behind. "I'm hungry."
"Stop nagging." Chuuya flapped a hand without looking back. "It'll be over before you know it."
They stopped in front of the doors. Behind them, the rest of the party came to a halt in a tense, uncertain cluster. Kuroda cleared his throat.
"So," he said cautiously. "What's the strategy?"
Chuuya glanced up from his buckles. "I'll go in and attack it."
"I'll shield from behind," Dazai added.
A pause followed, in which nothing else came.
"...And the rest of us?" Kuroda asked.
Dazai shrugged, loose and careless. "Do whatever you want."
The doors groaned open.
They did exactly as they'd said.
Chuuya went in like a thrown knife. Dazai strolled to a quiet corner of the chamber and sat down on the stone floor, and a sphere of bright golden light closed around him. The Hunters hovered uselessly in the doorway, weapons half-raised, as the goblin king surged up from its throne of bones.
It was enormous. A hulking, green-skinned brute with a crown of fused tusks and a club carved from what looked like an entire tree. When it bellowed, it’s roar rolled across the chamber like a physical blow. Rocks blasted loose from the ceiling. Debris sprayed in every direction, sharp as shrapnel, and every piece that flew toward Dazai bounced off his shield without so much as a scratch.
Kuroda felt a muscle in his temple begin to throb.
He had hoped, truly, that the Tank would finally contribute something. Instead Dazai was shielding himself, and only himself, while his partner fought a goblin king alone. The shield was extraordinary, he had to admit. It had taken a boss-class impact without a flicker, and it was strange that nobody had ever heard of a Tank who could do that. Half the guilds in the country would have been scrambling to recruit him.
If only its owner were willing to use it for anyone but himself.
Across the chamber, Chuuya danced around the goblin king's swings, his hammer ringing off its armor. He was clearly the stronger of the two, and it showed, but Kuroda also saw how often green light flickered over the Healer's body, patching new cuts as fast as they opened. It was a constant, relentless drain.
"Isn't he your partner?" Kuroda finally said, unable to hold it back. "Why aren't you helping him?"
Dazai, still sitting on the floor, was rolling a glowing mana stone between his fingers, one of the many dropped by the goblins earlier. He yawned.
"With what?" He gestured vaguely at himself, tall and lanky, bandaged to the wrists. "Do you think I can take a hit? One of those would kill me."
On cue, the goblin king swung its club, and Chuuya ducked it by a breath, the weapon smashing a stone pillar into powder.
Kuroda looked at Dazai again. The teenager was right, in a way. Tanks were supposed to be broad and heavy, built like walls. Dazai looked like he'd lose to a strong gust of wind. The reality was that not everyone's class fit them.
"Even so," one of the Hunters muttered behind him. "If he doesn't want to fight, he could at least cast a shield to protect his teammate."
Kuroda shot the man a sharp look, but privately, he agreed. It was infuriating to see someone so selfish inside a dungeon. This was how parties died, when the people in them cared only about themselves. But this wasn't their party. It wasn't their place to tell another team how to run itself.
Dazai didn't seem to care. He tilted his head back to study the cavern ceiling and said lightly, "Besides Taunt, I can only cast one shield. That's it. Nothing else."
That silenced them.
It made terrible sense. The shield was the only thing keeping Dazai alive, given how fragile he was. If he cast it on himself, he couldn't cast it on anyone else. With a limitation like that, no wonder every party had passed on him. Hunters were expected to have a handful of skills and spells for the moments when a dungeon turned unpredictable, and the more versatile the Hunter, the better the balance of the team. One skill, however powerful, was little better than dead weight.
An awkward quiet settled over the group. They exchanged glances, none of them sure what to say. In the stillness, Kuroda slowly realised something was wrong.
It was too quiet. There was no roaring or crashing behind them anymore.
Wait. What happened to the fight?
"Geez," said a voice at his elbow. "Why do you all look like someone died?"
Every Hunter jumped. Chuuya was standing right beside them with his hammer on his shoulder, flecked with blood and without a scratch on him. None of them had heard him approach. Behind him, in the middle of the chamber, the goblin king lay in a heap, its crown of tusks cracked in two.
"Because someone is," Dazai grumbled, hauling himself up from the floor as his shield vanished. "I'm dying of starvation. That's how slow you are."
"Me?" Chuuya rolled his eyes. "You're the lazy bastard who didn't do anything."
"You said it'd be over before I knew it."
"It was, you argumentative prick!"
They had barely stepped out of the boss room when the dungeon shook.
Every Hunter froze. A cold, ominous feeling settled over the air. In the distance, a low rumble rolled through the corridor, deep in the stone, and Kuroda's expression changed. The boss was dead and the dungeon should have been over, so only one thing could explain a tremor like that.
"Hidden dungeon," he said.
The floor trembled. From the darkness ahead came a sound like a tide rising, hundreds of claws scraping, hundreds of throats shrieking, and then the monsters began to pour out, a seething wall of them filling the corridor and spilling into the wide clearing beyond.
Hidden dungeons were killers. They came when a party was winded and bleeding from the boss, and more Hunters died to them than to the main dungeon itself. Kuroda was grateful, at least, that his people were still in peak condition.
"Formation!" he barked.
The Hunters snapped into position, weapons up. Then, almost without meaning to, every one of them glanced toward Chuuya. After the goblins and the boss, they expected the Healer to leap in with that wild grin of his, weapon swinging.
But Chuuya wasn't moving. He stood with his hands in his pockets, relaxed, his war hammer already stored away. When he noticed the stares, he raised an eyebrow. "Why's everyone looking at me? I'm not the one in a hurry."
"What?" Kuroda said, confused.
Chuuya tipped his head sideways. Beside him, Dazai was staring at the incoming horde with a terrible expression, muttering under his breath, something about stupid monsters and crabs.
He stalked forward, and the hunters parted hastily from his path. None of them quite knew why, but they didn’t want to be the one standing in his way.
Dazai flicked his fingers, and a shield bloomed in front of him. It wasn't the sphere from before. This one unfolded outward and kept unfolding, wide as the corridor, wider than the clearing, until it was a vast, shimmering slab of gold that blotted out the cavern ceiling. It was a barrier, not a bubble, and it hung in the air, flat and horizontal, above the heads of everyone in the room.
It was enormous and astonishing.
It also made no sense.
"Why is the shield above us?" one of the Hunters whispered. It wasn't blocking anything. It wasn't between them and the monsters. It was just floating up there like a ceiling.
Dazai didn't bother to explain. He simply lowered his hand.
The barrier descended, slowly at first, then faster. The monsters in the clearing looked up. Their shrieks hitched in their throats.
It was too late.
Dazai pushed his hand down without hesitation.
BOOM.
The slab slammed into the floor, and the whole cavern shook. Dust rained from the ceiling. Every monster beneath the barrier was gone in a single instant, crushed flat between the golden light and the stone. For several long seconds, the shield stayed pressed against the ground, glowing and silent, as though the world was holding its breath.
Then Dazai opened his fingers, and it winked out.
The clearing was empty except for the gruesome smear on the floor.
Dazai dusted off his hands and turned, ignoring the stunned faces of the Association Hunters entirely. He called over his shoulder in a voice that was almost a whine. "Chuuya! Hurry up!"
Chuuya rolled his eyes and fell into step with him, unfazed by the carnage. "Quit whining already."
Behind them, the Hunters stood in the quiet, looking from the backs of the retreating pair to the flattened ruin of the horde. Kuroda's sword hung limply at his side, his expression caught somewhere between awe and terror.
Somewhere ahead, Dazai's voice floated back to them, mournful and distant.
"If there are no crabs left, I'm blaming you."