Chapter 159: A Massive Irregularity
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 159: A Massive Irregularity
“Run! Run!!”
“Wooooo-hoooo!!!”
“Ugh...! Father! How much did you eat?!”
“Uuugh... Drive better, young man... I feel like the Bear Fish I had for lunch is about to come back up....”
We were running away.
I wasn't exactly sure what we were fleeing from, but it seemed Gerick’s excellent Sound Detection skill had picked up some kind of danger.
Beside me, the cat—shrouded in Gadel’s Wind Cutting Magic—was sprinting for its life with three people on its back. Meanwhile, I was flying as fast as I could, clutching Father in my arms.
I don't know what he gorged himself on, but Father’s belly was so bulging that he felt heavier than ever before.
“Gerick! What’s going on?!”
“A living tsunami is coming this way!!”
“A living tsunami...?!”
As I flew forward, I gained a bit of altitude. We had traveled quite a distance, and the area was now surrounded by healthy, intact trees. From my elevated vantage point, I finally saw it.
‘Holy shit...! It’s real...!’
A massive mass of liquid was approaching as if with deliberate intent. It was a surging wave of something that pulverized ancient trees like a tsunami as it advanced. A storm raged above it, and the shredded remains of trees were being tossed into the sky by the gale.
“W-what is that, Father?!”
“It’s the 3rd Stratum Boss, the Megido Serpent. It looks like an Irregular entity.”
“Ha, another Irregular...!”
The Labyrinth’s whims were truly horrific. An Irregular entity refers to an individual that is anywhere from 1.5 times to several times stronger than a normal specimen. It was rare for an Irregular to appear as a Boss entity.
The Direwolf Alpha was one, and the 1st Stratum Boss I encountered was also an Irregular. Both had combat power far exceeding the standard, and the Orc Chieftain had even led three times the usual number of Orc Warriors.
They say the Labyrinth has a will of its own, and I was starting to believe it.
‘It’s determined to kill me...!’
Normally, the Megido Serpent only stays within its own lake. Its combat power is said to be high enough to rival a 5th Stratum Boss despite being on the 3rd, but now an Irregular version had appeared. By simple calculation, that would put it at the 10th Stratum... No, that’s an exaggeration.
‘Fortunately, we’re gaining distance.’
It wasn't moving that fast. Or perhaps our own speed was just exceptionally high. Regardless, we couldn't just keep running forever.
“Father, can’t we take that thing down?!”
“It won't be easy. But there is a way.”
Father wiggled out of my arms and peeked his head over my shoulder.
“Ssssp... Haaa....”
Father squeezed his eyes shut and then snapped them open. As a red energy tinted the center of his light-green irises, he nodded.
“Its mana is depleting. At this rate, it’ll collapse on its own.”
“How long will that take?!”
“About three years.”
“Are you kidding me?!!”
Is that cat supposed to run forever? We couldn't keep sprinting for three years like Father suggested. Should we just keep running until we lose it and head to the upper floor?
“Young man, let’s take it down.”
“Father...?!”
Father continued to stare intently at the Megido Serpent. The creature was intentionally tracking the location of the Labyrinth Portal and pushing us away from it, preventing our escape.
In the end, the only way to get back alive was to kill it.
“Sigh... Fine, I get it.”
“Hey, Gadel!! Mask your presence as much as possible and get far away!”
“Roland! What are you planning to do?!”
“Young man, put me down.”
“Father?!”
“I’ll drain as much of its strength as I can. In the meantime, watch for an opening and memorize it. You should be able to read it.”
Wiggling his body, he quickly slipped from my grasp and threw himself toward the ground.
‘He landed perfectly.’
“Phew, nothing else for it.”
I quickly spread my wings wide to catch the wind and slow down. Then, I turned around to face the Megido Serpent.
“How the hell am I supposed to kill that thing....”
* * *
What is a Poltergeist?
Commonly, it refers to haunted objects—like kitchen knives or plates—moving on their own to kill people. Or, it refers to a type of necro-type monster that causes such phenomena.
“Restriction Overload.”
As Roland drew the sword from his right hip and whispered the words, the skill circuits embedded around his thin neck began to glow red.
One of his skills, ‘Restriction Overload,’ had the ability to temporarily break the ‘limitations’ of most other skills.
For instance, his ‘Portal’ skill, which he used effectively in combat. It allowed him to exceed the 1-meter size limit and open much wider portals. Or, it could bypass the 300-meter range limit, allowing him to create portals much further away.
—Saaaa...
A violet aura flickered along the Reverse Blade Mail held in Roland’s small hand. After creating a small portal to his right, Roland thrust his right hand, holding the sword in a reverse grip, into the portal.
—Crrrack..!
The base of a massive straight-necked tree nearby—70 meters tall and 3.3 meters in diameter—was instantly severed horizontally. He swung his arm a few more times to trim the branches, leaving only a straight, solid pillar.
Having created a wooden stake weighing approximately 15 tons in an instant, Roland opened a portal and suspended it in the sky. As the log fell, it entered another portal below it and was summoned back to the sky.
Falling, then teleporting back up. As it repeated this infinite loop, it eventually reached its terminal velocity of approximately 950 m/s, hitting the limit of gravitational acceleration.
The moment this object struck the ground and transferred its impact, it would record an impulse of approximately 44,460,000 Newton-seconds, or 44.5 Megajoules of energy.
Roland’s eyes narrowed as he aimed precisely at the center of the Megido Serpent’s forehead, which was currently submerged in the murky lake water.
“Fire.”
In a split second, Roland’s portal appeared right above the Megido Serpent’s brow, and the massive wooden stake slammed into it.
—BOOM!!
But Roland had no intention of stopping. While that impact was significant, it was obviously not enough to kill the current Megido Serpent.
Fortunately, the momentum of the tsunami the Megido Serpent had raised was dampened. Roland continued to move, creating several more wooden stakes just like the first one.
The lake water currently swirling around the Megido Serpent’s body acted like a shapeless metal grinder fueled by its mana. Any wood caught in the powerful vortex was effortlessly shredded into powder, meaning he couldn't reuse the stakes he had already fired.
—Thump!
—BOOM!!
Twenty years ago in Roanmarie, there was a case where a greedy rich man, who had seized power in a poor village and ruthlessly exploited the residents, was found dead in his sleep—impaled through his bed by a streetlamp.
On another day, a gang of eight thugs who had raped a poor innkeeper were found with their heads crushed by cement road paving that had fallen from the sky while they were stumbling home drunk.
Unnoticed by some, yet known to all.
During a time when villains were dying one by one at the hands of haunted objects, people in Roanmarie whispered that there was a Poltergeist that only killed the wicked.
“Fire.”
—KABOOM!!
* * *
“This is Cobalt Grade...?”
No matter how I looked at it, Father was not Cobalt Grade. If he was, then did that mean Raya Delbaheim, a Palladium Grade, could fire atomic bombs from her hands?
The Megido Serpent’s momentum had clearly been dampened... no, it had been cut down significantly. It seemed dizzy; instead of charging in one direction, it was now thrashing about aimlessly, unable to regain its senses.
—Flop
“F-Father..?”
“My head is spinning.”
About ten minutes had passed. After slamming fourteen massive wooden stakes into the Megido Serpent’s forehead, Father appeared through a portal in mid-air and leaned against my shoulder.
“Father, your nose is bleeding...!”
“It’s the backlash from the skill. I’ve used up almost all my mana.”
“In that case....”
“I trust you’ll handle the rest, young man. Where did that fellow Bontes run off to? I’d like him to take me away now.”
Bontes’s cat had likely already flown far away. For now, this was the perfect opportunity while the Megido Serpent was still disoriented. I moved as fast as I could, hanging Father like laundry over the branch of an exceptionally tall tree in the distance before flying back toward the Megido Serpent.
“Father, please try to recover your strength.”
“Sure, I will. Don’t worry about me. It looks like Gadel has figured out my location.”
“That’s a relief.”
Father leaned his back against the branch, breathing heavily. The blood trickling from his nose and his pale complexion spoke volumes about his condition. I knew there were flying monsters around, but fortunately, the Megido Serpent’s rampage had scared off most of the creatures in the vicinity.
I just needed to maintain my distance from where Father was resting while I finished off the Megido Serpent.
‘Shit, how am I supposed to do this?’
First, there was the water. Billions of tons of lake water surrounded the Megido Serpent. Even from a distance, I could feel the intense vortex; any rocks or trees that touched it were instantly pulverized. Since I couldn't gauge the force of the impact, approaching recklessly was out of the question.
Should I use a beam or a Fireball? No, scratch that. This wasn't a problem that could be solved with something like that. I needed something that could effectively reach and attack the creature, like Father’s portals...
—ROAAAAAAR!!!!
The Megido Serpent, looking absolutely livid, thrust its bleeding head out of the water and let out a monstrous screech. As if it had overcome the previous shocks, it began drawing the water toward me once again.
Its eyes glowed with a sinister blue light as it channeled mana throughout its entire body. I had seen this somewhere before.
‘The Red Ogre Warchief’s Berserk state...?!’
I had to increase the distance and make sure I didn't get swept up in its magic...!
“Ugh...!?”
A sudden, powerful wind began to blow. Feeling as if I were being sucked into a black hole, I turned my head toward the Megido Serpent.
‘What a massive storm...!’
The lake water surrounding its body gathered in one place, becoming a colossal storm that uprooted deep-seated trees with wind pressure alone.
My wings couldn't withstand this. They were only meant for flapping to lift my body. Since I didn't know any magic to change the direction of the wind...!
‘Should I retract my wings and curl up to minimize air resistance...?!’
No, that wouldn't be enough. Seeing rocks deeply embedded in the ground being helplessly dragged away, I knew that wouldn't work. It was a good thing I had left Father further away; with his light body, he would have been blown away like laundry in this gale.
If it was going to be like this, I had no choice. Fortunately, a wind I could resist was better than an incompressible liquid grinder.
—Flap!
I quickly extended my wings and allowed myself to be pulled into the storm the creature was drawing in. Uprooted trees and shattered rocks battered my entire body from all directions, accumulating damage.
The destructive force was enough to leave scars even on Queen Arachne’s powerful exoskeleton. Just maintaining muscle tension to prevent my internal joints from twisting in the wrong direction consumed calories at an alarming rate.
Eventually, I was sucked into the eye of the storm and slammed helplessly into the lake water, where another massive barrier awaited.
‘I can’t breathe...!’
The sensation of my body being torn apart by a powerful grinder made of water—which, unlike air, does not compress. The oxygen levels in my body plummeted, and my strength began to fail.
At that moment.
‘Found it.’
I instantly stored my water-logged lungs that filled my abdominal cavity and pulled something out of my Subspace to fill my belly and sides.
‘Bear Fish gills. I’m glad I didn't throw them away.’
Eight pairs of gills from the Bear Fish—the large fish I had eaten recently—instantly sprouted along my ribs. As I began to supply oxygen through underwater breathing and pumped my heart to circulate blood through my body...
The Lich’s Mana Core embedded in my chest began to absorb mana from the countless corpses contained within the Megido Serpent’s lake water.
—Whoosh..!
Tenebrax’s violet flames, which do not extinguish even underwater, began to burn around my horns once more.
I took in a full breath through the gills of eight large fish. The over-accumulated oxygen made my head swim and hammered at my muscle fibers as if they were about to burst.
Memories flashed through my mind like a kaleidoscope, naturally rearranging my body and influencing my skills.
Four new hearts sprouted within my ribcage, and the Mana Core and Dragon Heart took in the pure energy gathered from the corpses, shrouding my entire body in a refined aura.
I added a new skeletal structure to my tail and attached a thin but sturdy membrane to turn it into a fin.
‘You piece of shit. Now I can finally breathe.’
* * *
In the center of the lake water, murky with crushed stone and wood fragments, the image of the Megido Serpent—glaring at him with flashing blue eyes—was reflected in Yoo Eon’s vision.
—Saaaa...
In truth, the Dragon Heart of Tenebrax that Theodora had prepared was an item used for research purposes. It had been half a year since the Dragon Heart had been separated from its body, and while it was still noble, it had lost much of its original power.
Furthermore, Yoo Eon’s body was of a grade far too low to draw out the full power of even a weakened Dragon Heart. Naturally, even after embedding the Dragon Heart into a living body, his mana was far too lacking compared to the original.
However, by absorbing the vast amount of mana sap from an Ether Tree, the Dragon Heart had eventually swallowed all that mana. It had recovered its original might and was now demonstrating its true value.
—Grrrr..!
The Megido Serpent noticed it.
It saw dark, heavy mana beginning to bleed into the vast lake water that was its home, as if violet ink had been poured into it.
Within the water, which had become so dark that one couldn't see an inch ahead, the Megido Serpent realized the massive transformation occurring in the strange creature it had targeted as prey.
Direwolves gather more mana from moonlight.
Lizardmen from water. Wisps from the forest. Liches from corpses.
In a ‘specific environment’ where their respective conditions are met, creatures can obtain even more mana.
And now.
—Grrrrrrr..!!
The Dragon Heart of Tenebrax embedded in Yoo Eon’s chest began to plunder mana from the ‘creature harboring hostility.’