Confident now, the demon threw himself at her.
Fran met him and gave the blows back, and knocked his teeth out of his head.
She landed several more strikes while he stood there, confused, wondering why the theft had not worked — and the sword understood why. The enemy's skill did not touch borrowed skills. Everything Fran fought with, she fought with because he shared it with her, and there was nothing there for the demon to take.
Watching this, the dungeon master decided its champion was useless and summoned more goblins to cause havoc of its own. But when the goblins moved on the adventurers, the demon destroyed them himself, and told the dungeon master that if it interfered again he would kill it.
Then the demon's horns began to grow.
A huge wave of dark energy exploded through the cave and struck Fran full in the face.
Out beyond the door, Donadron and his team felt the shudder run through the rock and began to fear for her. Donadron tried to break the door with a shock wave, and it did not move at all, and he ordered every man there to tear the thing down — while inside, Fran lay unconscious on the floor.
She came back up slowly, injured and exhausted.
The sword made up his mind to use the teleportation feather; she could not fight in this condition. The girl agreed with him. But she also knew what would happen next: if the demon reached Alessa, he would level it and kill everyone in it.
The faces of the people in that town went past behind her eyes — and she asked to borrow her sword's power.
The demon opened up with his darkness spear and came on hard, and Fran ran, dodging.
And Teacher finally understood her. She did not want to be strong only in order to evolve. She wanted to be strong enough to protect other people. He decided he would not hold her back again.
So he agreed to lend her everything he had.
The demon attacked, and the girl kept dodging. Looking at the enemy's stats, the sword knew that sword skills alone would never be enough, and he began hunting for a weakness. The demon kept coming. Explosions bloomed through the whole cave. He followed with a darkness bolt, the electricity crackling off the walls, and it caught her.
The sword woke her as the next attack came in. She ran again, and the enemy kept swinging without the slightest care for what he hit.
And right then the sword noticed something: the demon was avoiding the dungeon master. He was careful about it, and he was consistent.
Teacher tried to make sense of it, and then remembered Donadron's lecture.
He put a fire arrow at the dungeon master, and the demon threw himself in front of it and blocked the shot — which confirmed the theory exactly.
Fran remembered it too. Donadron had told her that defeating a dungeon master halts the dungeon and every monster in it perishes. That was the demon's weakness.
She turned everything she had on the dungeon master, fire and more fire. The attacks came in, and the demon threw a barrier up around the creature to save it. She kept going, chaining attack into attack, and the demon was surprised in spite of himself.
The sword saw the truth of it: yes, they had stopped the demon's offence, but the barrier meant he was still unharmed, and this exchange would only run their mana dry. So he decided to stake everything on one move, and with Fran's permission he laid out the plan.
The attacks stopped. Fran leapt at the enemy. The demon came at her with darkness magic and she kept dodging.
Earlier in the fight, the sword had noticed that the demon needed three seconds to recharge after every attack. He told his wielder to use those three seconds to throw him at the enemy on a wind spell, and he would do the rest.
So when the demon paused to gather his mana, Fran took the moment and threw her sword away.
The demon stared at her, unable to understand why she had just discarded her own weapon.
She kept attacking him with fire while the sword flew on his own. Then the demon saw through it and struck him with a blast — and as the beam closed in, the sword waited for it, patiently, and at the last instant turned aside and went for the real target.
He went straight for the crystal in the demon's chest. The demon caught him and held him off, inches short.
The sword pushed harder, pouring in everything he had left, and the demon's shock showed on his face. He cut through the chest with the last of his mana behind him, blasted the crystal out of it, and broke it.
The demon perished. The sword fell out of the air and shattered completely apart, every drop of his mana spent.
Fran started to cry, seeing him fall — and then he absorbed the crystal, and the mana came back into him. He told his wielder he could recover with his own magic and his own mana, and she calmed down.
Meanwhile the dungeon master saw its chance while the girl was distracted and tried to call more demons up. Fran picked up the demon's sword and destroyed its staff. The dungeon master crowed that killing it was pointless while it wore the sacrificial bracelet, because it would simply come back — so Fran chopped off its hand.
She moved in to finish it, and the sword told her not to bother. It was already dead.
The core went dark. The dungeon vanished around them, and that was her first dungeon clearance.
The other adventurers came rushing in to see whether the little girl was alive. They were astonished to find she had killed a dungeon master by herself, and rather more astonished by the corpse of the B-rank greater demon lying beside her.
Donadron was glad she was safe. Then he began to scold her for running in alone, and went on scolding her until she was entirely drained.
But by the end of it Fran had reached level twenty-five. She had entered the dungeon at twelve. She came out of it with new skills and raised stats and, in practical terms, was now a match for Donadron himself.