Ice Horror (3)
｢Ssss?｣
The Ice Horror seemed genuinely confused by the newcomer's sudden interruption. It must have been wondering how it had failed to notice something like this.
The reason was simple.
Because I'd scrambled its focus.
Ever since it realized I was no pushover, the beast had poured every one of its senses into watching me. If I had fought cautiously, keeping my distance, it would have had room to breathe — and it would have caught the kids coming from a mile away.
The Ice Horror possessed tremendous physical power, but at its core it was an ambush hunter. The moment it judged that it could no longer control the environment to its advantage, it would retreat without hesitation.
We can't let that happen.
We needed this thing. I needed its head, the Mother of the Sky needed its heart — and the rest of us needed every scrap of its flesh besides.
It dies here.
｢Grrrrrrrr｣
At my growl, the beast's gaze flicked back and forth between me and No. 26.
Of all the enemies gathered here, the most immediate threat to it was me. I was the one who had shattered the carapace over its abdomen, after all.
But its instincts were giving it a different answer — it could feel the presence of the Sea Demon, a predator that stood above even the Ice Horror itself.
No. 26 made a habit of keeping her psychic power from leaking out of her body, out of consideration for Adhai, whose senses were so sensitive to it. Had I not already been wounded, she would have kept hiding it even now.
She's properly furious.
Countless eyes rippled across No. 26's body like flowing water — the eyes conjured by her Fear of the Deep Sea trait, all of them glaring down at the Ice Horror. An intense psychic pressure was pouring out of her pink, violet-tinged body, filling the entire cavern to its brim.
The one mercy was that none of that power was spilling out of the cavern itself. She was deliberately containing it, knowing full well that the Gallagons would sense it the moment it escaped.
In other words, to sum up No. 26's current state of mind: cold, controlled rage.
Which is somehow even scarier.
｢Sssssssss｣
Swamped by the psychic pressure, the Ice Horror looked at a loss for where to direct its attention. Its antennae wandered aimlessly, betraying its master's scattered consciousness.
If its focus drifted anywhere else, we were in trouble. I rose up on my remaining unbroken combat arms.
And I let loose a thunderous roar.
｢▓▓▓▓▓▓▓!｣
My cry left the cavern and rolled out far and wide across the darkness. Ice shards and stone fragments around me were blasted into the air by the shockwave, scattering like shrapnel. The beast, feeling the killing intent packed into that roar, flinched hard enough to make its antennae shudder.
｢Suaaaaaah!｣
｢▓▓▓▓▓!｣
The Ice Horror roared back just as loud. Abandoning its attention on No. 26, it threw itself at me — and I launched off the ground to meet it head-on.
We charged each other across the collapsed ice floor, leaving craters of footprints behind us. The moment we collided again, the cavern shuddered with the impact.
Ugh!
My combat arms and back arms were broken, and the carapace over my skull was cracked. Energy was being burned just knitting my shattered bones back together, and I had nowhere near the strength I'd shown earlier.
The beast, on the other hand, showed no sign of tiring, flaunting its monstrous strength without pause. It was a top-tier APEX, I supposed — raw stats alone carried it far.
Actually, that works in our favor.
It was a cunning predator. Facing an enemy it still thought it could handle at its leisure, it wouldn't be thinking about fleeing. So long as it stayed confident, we could quietly keep binding it, tightening the noose.
While I held it in place, the kids made their move.
The Mother of the Sky, transformed into her griffon beastman form, climbed onto Adhai's back with the High Priest's Golden Spear in hand. Carrying her, Adhai sliced through the near-total darkness and closed the distance to the Ice Horror's back in the blink of an eye.
She flew in so close that her wingtips nearly brushed the beast's dorsal carapace, and the Mother of the Sky stretched her spear out long to carve a line across its spine. Perhaps aided by the momentum of her high-speed flight, the blade left a thin gash in the dorsal armor.
｢Sssssss｣
Struck mid-power-struggle with me, the beast hissed in irritation. Its tail began to rise, intent on clearing away the annoying pests.
Even in this underground space where not a single mote of light existed, my remarkably developed auxiliary organs let me see it clearly. The tail rising to swat Adhai loomed like a colossal wall.
Like heroes of myth riding winged horses into battle against legendary monsters, Adhai and the Mother of the Sky evaded it cleanly. Adhai's flying had improved by leaps and bounds, and she wove through the relatively cramped cavern without the slightest difficulty.
The Mother of the Sky devoted herself entirely to driving her spear home; Adhai twisted and banked, dodging the sweeping tail and the thrashing bulk.
While the two of them coordinated their assault, No. 26 readied her own attack.
She waved the tentacles sprouting from her body like a conductor's baton, and the debris scattered across the cavern floor rose up all at once.
Demon Crash — a signature technique unique to the Sea Demon. Those fragments, now saturated with psychic energy, had become the shells of a psychic artillery.
A portion of the floating debris hurtled forward like cannon shells and slammed into the Ice Horror's body.
｢Ssssss!｣
The Ice Horror seemed genuinely torn over where to focus. With its attention fractured, the jaws that had been pressing down on me slackened ever so slightly.
Now!
I seized the opening without hesitation and tightened my erosion tentacles around its jaw and head. For the first time since the fight had begun, the beast was shoved backward.
｢Ssss?!｣
Caught off guard, it failed to react properly. I pressed the advantage and drove it back hard. The floor, crumbled and uneven from the earlier collapse, made its massive body lurch.
And with that lurch, the shattered abdominal carapace I had created earlier was left wide open.
The flustered beast tried to twist its body upright — and suddenly froze. A net of psychic power, stretching hundreds of meters, had snared its colossal frame.
The one who had cast that net was No. 26. She had unleashed her Binding once again.
[Zzzz (Now!)]
Hearing my shout, Adhai dove in at a terrifying speed. The Mother of the Sky on her back hurled her spear with everything she had.
The spearhead punched through the broken carapace and into the raw flesh beneath. The weapon sank deep into the beast's body without resistance.
｢Suaaaaaah!｣
With the High Priest's Golden Spear buried in it, the Ice Horror shrieked and thrashed in agony. When something over a hundred meters long went berserk like that, it wasn't just the cavern that shook — it felt like the entire underground expanse was trembling.
｢Watch out!｣
｢Understood.｣
The beast's body and tail whipped through the air like a roller coaster gone off its rails, and Adhai threaded the gaps with aerobatic grace.
Still not enough.
The High Priest's Golden Spear had been driven in clear up to its haft, but the target's body was simply too massive — it was nowhere near a fatal wound.
I clambered on top of the rampaging beast atop the collapsed floor, and split my lower jaw in two, aiming for the cracked carapace.
｢Sssssss!｣
Writhing like an earthworm doused in salt, the beast somehow sensed exactly what I was going for and flipped itself over in a flash.
My strike missed. What I bit down on wasn't soft, yielding flesh, but the rock-hard carapace plating along its flank.
Tch.
Teeth that could chew through starship hulls struck the Ice Horror's armor and crumpled uselessly. For the first time since arriving in this world, I had broken a tooth — I cursed under my breath.
｢Ssss｣
Worse, that failed attack had told the beast exactly what I was after. Knowing I would keep targeting its wound, it coiled its body to bury the weak point.
Adhai, the fastest of any of us, darted back and forth raining down Purple Lightning, but it was useless.
This was a creature that had shrugged off a direct Psychic Breath with nothing but a scratch. Purple Lightning, weaker by far, couldn't hope to hurt it.
｢Too hard!｣
｢Little Baby! Get clear!｣
Seeing that, No. 26 exerted her strength once more. The psychic power pouring from her body congealed, glowing as it took on physical form.
Then the debris hanging in the air gathered before her and began to rotate, slowly at first.
The instant I understood what she intended, I locked every erosion tentacle and combat arm I had around the Ice Horror and held it fast.
｢Ssssssssss｣
｢Grrrr｣
As it happened, the beast had apparently decided it needed to finish me off quickly and escape this place. Its thick, serpentine body wound around me like a snake. Its carapace ground against the Synthetic Scales covering my body, spraying sparks.
Its strength was on another level compared to mine. If it truly committed to the constriction, I wouldn't last long.
Proof of that came as the message Pain Mitigation activated flickered up before my eyes, one after another.
Barely enduring the agony through the trait's effect, I seized one of my broken back arms with an erosion tentacle — and ripped it clean off.
Agh!
Pain beyond anything I'd felt when it had merely broken lanced straight into the core of my skull.
I hadn't gone mad and torn off my own limb. My back arms, shaped like a mantis's forelegs, bore the sharpest bone blades on my entire body.
Arms whose bones were all shattered and immobile. I meant to use them as weapons.
If it's this —!
I caught the severed arm in my combat arms, swung it like an axe, and slammed it down on the beast's exposed weak point.
｢Sssssssss!｣
With the High Priest's Golden Spear already embedded in its flesh, my bone blade plunging in on top of it tore a scream out of the beast.
Powerful predators are used to trampling others — and utterly intolerant of their own pain. This one was no different.
The coils crushing me went slack. The Ice Horror was trying to pull away from me, desperate to hide its wound. And it was to that beast that I revealed one more weapon I'd been holding in reserve.
The five faces embedded in my head carapace opened their mouths all at once.
From those Human-Faced Beast mouths poured a barrage of ultrasonic waves — sound that could paralyze any enemy — straight into its skull.
｢-----!｣ ｢-----!｣ ｢-----!｣ ｢-----!｣ ｢-----!｣
｢Sss?!｣
The paralysis wave caught the beast's head dead-on, and its body went rigid. At almost the same moment, No. 26's weapon finished charging.
[Zzzzzzzz (Now!)]
｢Yeah!｣
A psychic drill — psychic power fused with a massive chunk of ice — tore through the air as it flew.
Its tip was aimed at the Ice Horror's shattered carapace — the weak point we had spent this entire fight carving into it.
The distilled essence of pure psychic power and spinning ice fragments began shredding the beast's exposed flesh to ribbons.
｢Suaaaaaagh!｣
The Psychic Drill — the Sea Demon's weapon, no, No. 26's weapon — was devastating. Bone and flesh were ground together inside the carapace into paste, and its intestines were being sucked into the rotation, threatening to be pulled right out of the wound.
Unable to bear the agony of its organs being severed, the Ice Horror howled at a deafening volume.
But that was the limit.
The drill had been spinning with enough force to halve the creature outright, but punching through the full thickness of its carapace proved too much. After gouging the wound open far wider, the psychic energy composing the drill dispersed into the air.
｢My strength's drained….｣
｢Big Adult. ｣ ｢Danger. ｣
Having burned through far too much psychic power, No. 26's body shrank down. Adhai scooped up the fifty-centimeter No. 26 — now no bigger than when she normally rode on my head — onto her back.
｢Ssssss….｣
The Ice Horror's antennae trembled uneasily. How many times in its life could a predator this mighty have suffered wounds this grave? Probably not since it was a hatchling.
It seemed to have decided nothing more could be done, and began digging into the floor to burrow away and hide.
Where do you think you're going?
You may come as you please, but you don't get to leave the same way. I grabbed the fleeing beast from behind and hauled it back.
｢Grrrr｣
｢Ssss?!｣
And then I drove my head straight into its wound. Warm blood seeped into my sealed mouth.
I pried the wound open with my combat arms and erosion tentacles, and forced my head in even deeper — horn and jaw blades gouging through the beast's innards as I went.
It clamped its jaws onto my tail and yanked, trying to tear me out. The harder it pulled, the more fiercely I gripped the ragged wound and held on.
Even when the pincer at the tip of my tail, the carapace plates and legs along it were caught in the beast's jaws and torn away, I did not let go.
How much time passed like that, I couldn't say. When I finally shoved aside something like a hard wall and cold air washed over my head carapace, I realized it — I had bored straight through the beast's entire body.
The moment that understanding landed, the enemy gave its dying rattle.
｢Ssssss…ssss…sss….｣
An Ice Horror that might have lived for hundreds — no, thousands — of years.
The ancient beast let out one low, quiet cry, and fell.