Devil of the Sea
The devil of the sea. The ship had already been delayed by three days. The Dullahan priestess seemed too shocked to move.
"...It's fine... The All Gods Temple will have handled it," she said, suggesting they head to the guild first. She moved off again at that impossibly quick pace for someone so hard to keep up with, insisting there would be letters waiting there. Noksu had mentioned her before—the B-rank adventurer she'd wanted to introduce me to was none other than this Dullahan priestess. She might be a bit airheaded, but her skills and sense of responsibility were top-notch. Airheaded to this degree, though? That was beyond excessive.
"Any letters for me?" she asked the guild staff. They pulled them out with the weary look of someone thinking, Finally. Not one, but two letters. The first asked to get in touch if there were any scheduling issues. The second was a request saying they'd expected as much, so just bring her along.
Was three days really just a blink of an eye to a long-lived species that had endured five centuries? She slowly adjusted her glasses and read the letters twice, her face falling into a glum expression. She glanced around at the party members, then bowed her torso at the waist in apology.
"I'm sorry. I was later than expected."
"Any later and we'd have dragged you out of your coffin."
"Larirarion!"
Why? It's not wrong. She scowled and snapped about when they'd ever get another ship. As an apology, the Dullahan priestess offered to cover everyone else's fares too.
Hiacinth muttered under his breath upon hearing that, "Guess there wasn't one for ours, then."
Well, yeah—she'd come to pick me up, not the two of us. "Of course," Larirarion said, flicking Hiacinth on the crown of his head.
"A ship to the All Gods Temple? Don't even mention it, priestess miss. The place is in an uproar with witches this and curses that. Sea monsters are swarming, so ships to that side are all canceled."
"...Why is that?"
"You know the Voleph Kingdom got wiped out by those mumbling flesh-lumps, right?"
"Pardon? There?"
This Dullahan girl was painfully slow even with the news. The trade port was still functioning, but only because enough ships were armed to fight off sea monsters. Regular passenger vessels couldn't afford that kind of investment. The same went for the regular routes to the All Gods Temple. With the sea monster threat, no ships could set sail right now—there simply wasn't a way to go.
And those sea monsters had fled here to escape the mumbling flesh-lumps. The Voleph Kingdom had been the frontline holding them back and hunting them down. With the castle gates smashed, other kingdoms were probably hurting too. The ticket guy said to relax and wait for the Union to sort it out, since who knew how long it'd take.
"Doesn't the king here have any plans?"
"Probably hire adventurers to deal with it."
Everything always boiled down to adventurers in the end. I blinked at the massive black shadow gliding beneath the sea. Wait, was that some kind of whale? And that counted as a sea monster? There had to be adventurers who specialized in sea combat. We debated staying in the kingdom until a ship came or heading back to the Mongrel Kingdom.
Larirarion suggested, since there were gates anyway, why not swing by the Trust Union and see Po'runga while we're at it.
"That's surprising. Don't you hate Po'runga?"
"She hates that she couldn't breastfeed during co-parenting."
"Ah, yeah, I get that."
"Am I the only one who doesn't get it right now?"
Radamu could do whatever, but since their species were different, she couldn't nurse the kid properly, so co-parenting went to hell—that was Larirarion's beef with Po'runga. It was pragmatic, sure, but didn't my feelings factor in at all?
Hiacinth chimed in, "Brother's human, so he probably has at least twenty wives as a baseline, right?" Like it was the most obvious common sense.
Common sense? This world's common sense? The goddess must've said to abandon my ethics for my mental health.
"Haa..."
The vast blue sky and the seagulls crying caw-caw overhead made my worries feel trivial. Since we were here anyway, why not hit the beach? Buy some swimsuits and show off sis's sexy bod, or whatever. Larirarion was talking nonsense like that, but insisted on going to see Po'runga.
"So you'll decorate the polished gems and call it a day! That's too much!"
"Come on, priestess, chin up. Let's just wait it out for now."
She huffed about how badly I wanted to see another woman and turned away sharply—but she didn't let go of my hand. Hiacinth was still staring into space, shocked that the ship was three days late and the Temple's response had basically been, "We figured you'd screw up, so just drag her here."
Her head might've checked out, but her body followed us just fine when we called. We prepped to gate to the Trust Union. I figured I'd scout for new magic tools there. Grabbing an extra Memorize Spellbook as backup sounded smart too. You never knew when you'd burn through all thirty pages.
How long had we waited for the warp gate to open? A crackling, ominous noise leaked from it. The technician managing it fumbled with the controls in panic, but nothing worked—his bewildered shouts just grew louder.
Bad feeling. Every adventurer here probably felt it. The gate's magic circle warped with a crunch. Sparks flew everywhere as it linked somewhere and flared with light.
A cacophony of garbled noises blended into a chaotic roar. Chunks of human flesh spilled from the gate. Eyes and teeth in place of lips on mouth-like orifices, mumbling as they flickered in and out of existence.
"A monster rode the gate through!"
The adventurers' response was lightning-fast. A barrage of attacks collapsed the gate entirely. The monster trying to crawl through stretched, then rotted away without doing a thing.
"Monsters riding gates?"
Shock lasted only a moment. Screams erupted from the alleys. Flesh-lumps lunged from the shadows, pouncing on street civilians. They poured from the city gates, the sewers below. The kingdom was being overrun from every direction.
"—So that's how that kingdom fell too!"
Larirarion gasped and backpedaled in horror. Neutralize the gate, seal the exits, and they still came from everywhere in the city. No number of adventurers could cover that.
One shouted to lead civilians to the sea for evacuation.
Divine Shield!
The Dullahan priestess Nex raised her stone staff and chanted. A pristine white barrier blocked the surging flesh-lumps, sealing off an entire alley to create an evacuation route to the shore. Adventurers toppled buildings to block monster paths. Mages froze sewer lids on sight; technicians welded them shut with skills. Everyone moved like pros in a crisis they'd seen before.
Flash of Glory!
She slammed her staff down. Flames rained from the sky. The white blaze engulfed adventurers and civilians alike in a boom—but wounds from bites healed on the fallen. The mumbling flesh-lumps burned away in the holy fire.
"Hurry! Move it!"
Ships loaded castle folk and civilians first, then set sail. Adventurers boarded after. Nex followed us aboard, and the vessel shoved off from the harbor in haste. Was that it? The flesh-lumps couldn't enter the sea, just thrashed and mumbled on the shore.
"No way this is over!" Larirarion yelled, shovel in hand.
Voleph had been full of sea-monster-hunting specialists. For a night raid to leave not one survivor? Impossible. Her hunch appeared right before us. The sea rose up. That black shadow I'd glimpsed surfaced—a colossal whale-thing baring teeth. Adventurers unloaded attacks, but the tattered corpse didn't budge.
It was already dead. A massive tentacle gripped the rising monster. A grotesque organism with blade-mouthed suckers on every one.
"A Kraken...?" one adventurer muttered, eyeing a tentacle coiling toward civilian ships. Those vessels veered away, combat abandoned.
The beast revealed itself bit by bit. Dozens of tentacles blotted half the sea, massive enough to eclipse the sun. Barnacles on a sea turtle's shell sprouted the tentacles.
"The shell... It's the sea evil god Jeboim!"
The captain's frantic scream echoed. Sea evil god? Island-sized. Too vast to take in. One tentacle made ships look like toys. This was an evil god? The one heroes had sealed?
"Ridiculous."
The sea evil god flicked a fin. Massive waves swallowed the kingdom, erasing civilization. The evil god, merely stretching after breaking free, yawned and sank beneath the waves. Black thunderclouds gathered; lightning cracked. The churning coast turned black in whirlwinds.
The ships survived only because it ignored us—until the storm claimed them, wrecking us all.