Book 15 Chapter 51
Sea monster of the deep,
30,000 li to find an artifact!
The next task was decided according to Preede's materialistic desires.
And that was!
To subjugate sea monsters so that a shipwreck buried somewhere on the seabed could be salvaged.
“Lin can use detection magic.”
“Really? This little kid?”
“Can’t use it here. The range is too wide, and even if I concentrate it in a straight line, it probably won’t reach the seabed.”
“Truly useless.”
“Are you one to talk?”
“Looks like I really need to establish some discipline. Want to spar?”
“Bring it on. I’ll trash you like a dog.”
Then Leesta smiled brightly.
“You weren’t actually trying to fight just now, were you? I must have misunderstood, right?”
Lin and Preede immediately put their arms around each other’s shoulders and began to laugh amiably.
“Hahaha, fight? Us? What are you talking about? We’re so close.”
“Hmph, the strongest mage doesn’t even fight opponents not worth fighting. Just Like a Lion not giving its all when hunting a Rabbit.”
“What, you punk? Are you done talking now?”
“Of course I’m done if my words ended, do you think it would end if I wasn’t done?”
“That’s not what I’m asking! Why am I, a great person, a rabbit, and you, a mere nobody, a lion? This won’t do. Let’s establish some discipline.”
Leesta clapped her hands brightly and smiled radiantly.
“Both of you, get down. I’ll give you 3 seconds.”
While Preede and Lin trembled, holding a push-up position, Leesta spoke with Kyes.
“How about it, Kyes? As the best archer, you can find it easily, right?”
Kyes nodded, then chugged his beer mug in one go.
And the moment he closed his eyes and then opened them wide, an invisible wave penetrated deep into the sea.
“Detection” is a technique for detecting enemies.
It is said that at its peak, one can roughly grasp not only the enemy’s location but also the terrain leading to their coordinates.
And Kyes was at the pinnacle of anything related to archery.
[(ㅇ*ㅇ)!!]
“You found it?”
[(*ㅇ*)!!]
“But it’s too far?”
[(;ㅅ;)…]
The general manager, with thoughts of leaving work shimmering before his eyes, couldn't miss this opportunity, so he quickly racked his brain and found a solution.
“Ah, now that you mention it, that creature seems to really love alcohol.”
“Alcohol?”
“Yes, when a supply ship carrying alcohol would arrive, it would know like a ghost and surface rapidly, devouring the entire ship. Since then, alcohol has been completely removed from the supply list.”
“Using alcohol as bait… If that’s the case, our Kyes has an ancient artifact gourd. It’s an ancient relic that can hold several barrels of alcohol. Couldn’t we use that as bait?”
As if sensing his alcohol was in danger, Kyes uncorked the gourd and began pouring all that alcohol into his mouth!
“Ah, oh…”
As the general manager sighed, Leesta smiled sweetly.
“If it can smell so well, it must also smell internal alcohol concentration well, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“Lin, Preede. Attention.”
Lin and Preede sprang to their feet.
“Attention.”
They never forgot to place their hands on both thighs, aligning their posture.
“Cast a barrier on Kyes. Both of you, one each, making it a double layer. Put air inside so he can breathe.”
[(ㅇㅁㅇ)?!]
“Done? Then use telekinesis and throw him deep into the sea.”
Kyes, encircled by magical air on the outside and ritual flames on the inside, disappeared into the sea with a silent (truly silent) death rattle.
[(ㅠㅅㅠ)!!!]
Splash…!
Gurgle…
Gazing at the sea surface where ripples and bubbles arose, Lin and Preede mourned their comrade who had died, carrying the mad hero’s insanity instead of them.
“Kyes was a good archer…”
“We’ll have to find a new archer…”
The moment the Great Holy Sword Shirpen and the Golden Spirit Bell began to weep was almost simultaneous.
Shirpen brilliantly spewed out a sword light, and two of the Golden Spirit Bell’s six rings clanged dazzlingly, pointing towards the depths below the sea.
This was a detection of the Abyssal aura. Since even the Golden Spirit Bell reacted, it meant there was even a [Fragment of the King].
“Everyone get ready, it’s coming…!”
The moment Leesta muttered that and unwrapped the bandages from Shirpen’s blade, the sea before them rose up like a pure white cliff.
“Th-that’s it! It’s even bigger than when we saw it before!”
It was Leptocephalus, a monster with a danger ranking of A+ set by the mercenary guild!
“Ugh, we’re all dead!”
“Hee, we might all die!”
“Ugh, everyone but me is going to die!”
In contrast to the general manager and the workers trembling all over in fear, Preede chuckled and Lin smiled.
“Kyah, it’s damn huge!”
“Damn huge, damn huge, damn huge.”
“Hmph, the [Strongest Moray Eel], huh? That size makes it worth a fight.”
Surprisingly, Kyes was levitating above that moray eel!
In fact, if you looked closely, it wasn’t levitation.
One could only see the arduous effort of him repeatedly grabbing the new shoots extending upwards from the White Spear Bow, continuously pulling his body higher.
“Osarius-style hand seal, 3rd star.”
The first to open fire was, as expected, the mage Lin, who played the role of the ‘main cannon of the hero’s party’.
‘Hmm?’
He was about to use ice magic, but Sbal wasn’t visible, strangely.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t been seen all day.
This had happened a few times before.
‘Then I’ll just use a different magic.’
3rd star, Flame Binding Array (炎緊列).
A magic that creates an Array (列) that Binds (緊) a target with Flames (炎).
It was famous as one of the few instant-kill suppression arcane magic unveiled to academia by the Rivendell School, pioneers in flame magic research.
Chwa-reureureureuk…!
Around the hand seal formed by his left hand, the Osarius rosary brilliantly unfurled like a constellation in the night sky, aiding the insufficient formulas.
…Hwarureureureuk!
The length of the Flame Binding Array’s flames is determined by the caster’s magic power. The Flame Binding Array Lin created at that time was long enough to entangle the entire monster moray eel and then some.
“Fire Dragon Shot (投火龍彈), Incantation Abbreviation!”
Fire Dragon Shot was a powerful flame spell belonging to the 3rd star in the Witch’s Association’s spell system. Like other 3rd-star or higher flame spells, its origin is said to mimic the power of red dragons.
It is characterized by spitting out over a dozen impact-volatile flames from the mouth, and its typical usage was to concentrate power in one spot to amplify explosive force, fitting this characteristic.
However, Preede widely scattered these Fire Dragon Shots at the location where the moray eel’s internal organs were presumed to be. The reason was the pre-existing Flame Binding Array from Lin. What a crazy combo!
Pwaaaaaaaaaaaaaang─────!
The temperature of the fiercely raging firestorm could not be withstood even by the monster’s outer skin’s boiling point. Its pale scales burned and melted, and beyond them, enormous squirming internal organs became visible!
“Pipi!”
Pipi leaped, spreading wings of flame, then charged in a flash, tearing at the internal organs with fiery claws. Immediately, the [Fragment of the King] parasitizing the organs became visible to Leesta.
So what about Leesta?
She had already deployed dozens of magic footholds in the air, reaching high above, at the very edge of the moray eel’s ascending trajectory… She created a final foothold above her head, roughly kicked off its surface until it cracked, and swung Shirpen’s blade.
All her strength until now…!
A sword strike that imbued the blade with all the inertia generated in reaching this point, and the inverse power that forcefully reversed that inertia.
“Cut (斬)─────!”
The dazzlingly blooming divine blade did not stop until it had sliced from the tip of the moray eel’s snout to the end of its enormous tail… and its momentum only barely ceased after shattering six footholds created at her landing spot.
[(@*@)!!!]
Meanwhile, Kyes continued to ascend into the sky, clinging to the fresh green growth of the White Spear Bow. Lin shielded his eyes from the sun with the brim of his straw hat, looked up at him, and asked.
“But where’s he going?”
Preede replied, elegantly puffing smoke from her pipe.
“Sometimes, adults just want to escape from the world. Just Like a duck flies.”
It was Preede, elegantly wrapping up nonsense she didn't even understand herself, while inwardly thinking, ‘Where the hell is he really going?’
* * *
The shipwreck was not a warship used by the <Those Who Came> but a small communication vessel.
The fact that navigation was possible with a ship whose framework was made of steel always felt like a mystery.
The artifact Preede had been searching for could be found in the bridge. The problem, however, was that it was broken.
It was an artifact with no attack function, or magic\/divine power amplification, only a light point flickering in the center of a spherical core. Preede and Pipi despaired.
“My moment of happiness… the moment of cute cuddles amidst the smiles of handsome oppas…!”
“Corn, corn, corn.”
But Lin soon felt there was some pattern to the flickering.
How should I put it, the repetition of long and short flickers seemed just like a voice?
Lin analyzed it and soon found the beginning and end of the flickering.
Preede, who had even been shedding tears, was utterly astonished to see it. It was Morse code.
“Morse code?”
“It’s an emergency communication method of the <Those Who Came>, using light or electricity. I’ve only seen it in books myself…”
She said that the number of each blink indicated the consonants and vowels of letters.
“If we interpret this corresponding to the language of the <Those Who Came>… it says, ‘Abyssal factor approaching Ark coordinates, rescue signal confirmed, relay this rescue signal to Rondel at the shortest distance,’ right?”
“What does that even mean? What’s an Ark, and what’s a Rondel?”
“How should I know? It’s a shipwreck. It must be a signal sent long ago.”
No matter how they looked at it, it seemed unlikely that a signal sent long ago would still be continuing until now.
That prediction was correct, but since there was no way to know it then, they had no choice but to return the artifact to the excavation team.
While Lin and Preede watched the communication vessel being salvaged, Leesta and Kyes were talking with the general manager.
“The upper part of the continental coast bordering the White Sea is the Republic’s ruin city of <Kerknoode>, and below it is the territory of the Hosen Kingdom. The Hosen Kingdom is currently a battlefield. If you are heading that way, it would be wise to be careful. Originally, many ships traveled to and from this place, but now most ships only come through <Kerknoode>, and there are virtually no ships coming from the Hosen Kingdom.”
“War? What kind of war?”
“I’m not a war operative, so I don’t know the details… but what I’ve heard is that all core forces under the First Special Operations Division stationed on the Akrad continent and the Golden Children’s Vice Director have been deployed, and even a Glados (4-star) mage has been dispatched. I even saw three yellow wyverns flying that way in this situation.”
Leesta frowned at the unusual situation.
“While we were away at the True Iron Islands, this happened… Kyes, we should head straight to the south coast as well. Just seeing that Elder Yosuhar dispatched three wyverns tells me the gravity of the situation.”
[(ㅇ-ㅇ)…]
“Let’s prepare ourselves. A fight quite different from previous Fragment holders is expected. Should I call it intuition rather than expectation?”
Her intuition was correct.
Because this very news was the first harbinger of a fierce, all-out war with the [Seven Souls (漆昏)], a direct organization under the Black Church’s Second Pillar.
* * *
The deafening roar of massive iron walls shattering echoed amidst a torrential downpour.
The humidity even subdued the afterglow of the explosion, clearly illuminating those who should have been obscured by a dust storm.
The robust middle-aged man who first entered view was Bulken.
Dean of the Chyhak School, a member of the Seven Great Schools, and one of the current generation’s Glados (4-star) mages.
Strong (强).
The power of Body Spirit Enhancement, a secret art of the Chyhak School, flickered throughout his entire body.
Body Spirit Enhancement is a primary enchantment technique that strengthens the body with magic power.
It is the secret art that made the Chyhak School mages into Wing-type mages and masters of close-quarters combat.
“Hup, huff, huuph…!”
The Chyhak School’s robes took their form from the martial arts uniform of the Republic’s Murim. But these robes were torn to shreds, and fresh blood flowed endlessly from his muscular skin.
“Lord Bulken!”
Someone shouted urgently.
A man with healthy light brown hair, reminiscent of mud exposed as mountain snow melts in spring.
Sieta Warden, Head of the Special Operations Division. The eldest son of the Warden Margrave family, a prominent magic-wielding family in the East, and an Atlas (3-star) mage who reached the finals of the [4-star Selection].
“I am… fine… You all, quickly take the King… to a safe place!”
There’s a saying that a torrential downpour swallows all sounds. But this downpour was not just that.
This rain, imbued with the properties of the Abyss (深淵), eroded and corrupted organic and inorganic matter indiscriminately.
The scattered corpses of the King’s Royal Guard, Chyhak School mages, and Special Operations Division members rapidly decayed, emitting a foul odor.
“A safe place?”
Amidst the torrential rain, as if the downpour itself had spoken, the sound was both alien and distinct.
The owner of that voice suddenly appeared from beyond, as if the raindrops had intertwined into a human form.
Direct subordinate of the Black Church’s Second Pillar, [Seven Souls]… Dajesus of Heavy Rain (沛雨). The rune granted by the leader was [Water (水)].
“Do you seriously think that if someone like you buys time, those nobodies can escape my torrential downpour?”
He wore an imposing robe over his tall stature, like his comrades, but was distinctively overlaid with old, rusted plate armor.
He wore a skeletal helmet over his deeply drawn hood, adding to his weighty presence.
The blades of the short sword in his left hand and the long sword in his right appeared more like a collection of raven feathers than iron, and the abyssal aura emanating from them was extraordinary.
“Ugh, why are you asking such a thing again, as if it’s new?”
A woman, nonchalantly playing with a jackstone on top of a crumbling spire, rotting in the downpour, said.
She was also a Black Mage of the [Seven Souls].
However, she had torn off the right sleeve of her formal robe, and its length, which originally reached her thighs, was ripped off at the waist, making her look wild in contrast to other members.
“It’s not like the Chyhak guys being more like gorillas than mages is new.”
She even tore off the hood attached to her robe, calling it cumbersome.
This style of clothing, which prioritized extreme mobility, resembled the traditional attire of the Empire’s eastern mountainous regions.
For that reason, her light brown hair was briefly visible beyond the rain, and its color was not just similar to Sieta Warden’s but identical. Sieta’s eyes widened.
“No, you…?”
The black mage chuckled, seeing his bewildered eyes. The rune embroidered on her back was [Earth (地)], her alias was Earth-Eater (食土), and her true name was Hayezri.
“Hello~ long time no see, young master of the main family. I’ve wanted to kill you every time we met~ and today, I finally get my wish. Good, good.”