25. The Nine-Headed Snake (4)
25. The Nine-Headed Snake (4)
"Yohan, this is incredible. I watched you build it with my own eyes, but I still can't believe it..."
"We'll need at least this much to catch that bastard."
Karina stared at the traps I'd set up in the clearing, her mouth hanging open.
She was cute. The expression made her look a little dopey, but on a beautiful woman, even that only looked adorable.
Her figure was not cute at all, though. I forced my gaze away from Karina and took one last look at the traps I'd constructed.
These massive traps were meant to capture the enormous Hydra. I'd cut down every tree in the area, gathered the timber, driven in countless sharpened stakes, and wedged sharp bear-bone hooks into every gap. It looked as though merely grazing the trap would inflict a fatal wound. On top of that, just in case, I'd rigged a log trap between two great trees.
If the traps worked as intended, catching Hydra would be simple.
Once the Hydra was dead, I could say goodbye to those damn snake bastards forever. The acidic poison had probably wiped out most of the other snakes already, so after I killed the Hydra, there would be no dangerous enemies left on the island apart from the dungeon.
"...No telling when Reni will get here."
I stared in the direction Reni would come dashing from. The wide-open path was silent.
When would she show up?
I raised my gaze. The weather was clear. Peaceful sunlight, utterly at odds with the day of our decisive battle, stabbed at my eyes. Normally, I'd have yawned contentedly and found somewhere to laze around, or worked in the shade, but now I had to wait quietly for the Hydra to attack.
That left enough breathing room for a short rest.
I leaned against a tree, deciding to enjoy a very short break. I had no intention of closing my eyes... I shouldn't let my guard down too much. But I also shouldn't be too tense.
"Merciful Kalon..."
My head naturally turned toward the clear voice beside me.
Of course, it was Karina.
After all, the only people in this forest who could speak were Karina, Reni—who was probably luring the Hydra here by now—and me. I saw Karina pray often, but today the sight felt different. Instead of the priestly robes she had painstakingly mended stitch by stitch, she wore armor suited to a warrior.
Watching her pray with her helmet off made her look like a paladin from a game. Strictly speaking, Reni fit the role of a paladin better, but honestly, I doubted she had much faith. Kalon or no Kalon, Reni was all about Karina.
Even if Kalon descended in person and excommunicated Karina, Reni would still take her side.
She was quite literally a loyal dog.
To her enemies, though, she was a mad dog.
"I'd better loosen up a bit."
It seemed best to limber up lightly before the final showdown with Hydra. If I launched into battle with my body still stiff from resting halfheartedly, I wouldn't be able to fight properly. I got up from my spot and started doing light stretches.
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"That's terrifying."
The air trembled.
The air probably wasn't actually trembling, but it felt as though it were. I adjusted my grip on the shovel as the Hydra’s eight heads began to appear in the distance. The battle would begin soon. I looked at Karina, who had risen with her hands clasped tightly together.
Her hands were shaking.
Her fear showed between the strands of swaying pink hair. She might have been the Saintess, but at heart she was still a girl who had never faced anything like this. Of course she was afraid.
I approached her, patted her on the shoulder, and spoke.
"Don’t be afraid. It should be over without much trouble."
Every piece had been meticulously set in place for this operation. If no unexpected variable appeared, this was my chance to bring ten years of fighting to a clean end.
"...This is my first time with something like this, so I'm very uneasy."
The pink-haired Saintess looked up at me. Our eyes met. Heterochromia. Gold had seeped into irises that should have been pink. Was she gathering her Divine Power?
"Don't overthink it. Just do your part, and this will end easily."
"What if things go wrong?"
"Then we die."
Yeah. We'd die.
I didn't plan on dying, but the result of a failed operation would be fatal.
In the worst-case scenario, it could truly mean death.
So I intended to give this fight everything I had.
"You're so calm, Yohan..."
"I've been through this sort of thing countless times."
"You've endured a lot of hardship."
Hardship.
I'd endured a goddamn mountain of it.
Considering everything I had endured, this operation was practically overflowing with hope. At least there were three of us this time. If someone made a mistake or an unexpected variable appeared, someone else could cover for them. When I had lived alone, any such problem immediately turned into a gamble with my life as the stake.
Die or survive.
Those had been days when both sides staked their lives and danced on the edge of a blade. I had always emerged the winner, but never without wounds.
The rough scars carved into my whole body were proof of just how dangerous this hellish island was.
...Whew. I should stop thinking about it.
I needed to focus on the battle now.
I pulled myself together and looked at Karina again. Karina's trembling had also stopped, as if our conversation had eased her tension.
"...It’s getting close."
"Yes. The moment it falls into the trap, I use the purification spell, right?"
"...Right. Use it the instant it's caught."
That alone would complete the first plan.
If it ended here, it would be so easy it would feel almost hollow. But if Hydra was still alive after that, we'd have to move on to the next plan. I repeatedly tightened and loosened my grip on the shovel, relaxing my hand.
The ground shook.
And then Reni and Hydra came into view, sprinting this way.
The operation was about to begin.
"Stand back. You might fall."
Karina nodded at my words, took a few steps back, clasped her hands tightly, and raised them to her chest. I turned my eyes away from that sight and looked ahead again.
The distance was closing.
I raised my hand—the signal Reni and I'd arranged beforehand. The moment she saw it, she cleared the trap in a single leap with monstrous leg strength. Jumping a twenty-meter-wide pit in one bound was incredible. As I admired her silently, I triggered the present I'd prepared for the Hydra as one of its heads stretched toward Reni.
The ground shuddered.
It signaled the activation of the massive, twenty-meter-wide trap.
The Hydra’s head, which had been so high that looking up at it hurt the back of my neck, rushed closer. The trap had worked. I shouted at once.
"Now!"
"Almighty Kalon... please purify this wicked evil with the power of light."
The moment Karina finished speaking, a blinding light forced me to shield my eyes. Squinting against a radiance even more dazzling than I'd expected, I watched the Hydra writhe.
Smoke rose from the Hydra’s body. Pieces of flesh sloughed away as holy magic forcibly purified its zombified body. It twisted violently as if trying to escape, but my trap was not weak enough to let it get away so easily.
The countless stakes and bone hooks embedded in the trap held the Hydra fast. Some would break, but I'd never expected them to last indefinitely. They only needed to hold until Karina’s purification spell ended.
Damn, was that the power of a Saintess? The effect was incredible.
"!@*()$(&)!*)$!(*!"
"Ugh, my ears... This is brutal."
Clutching her ears as if pained by Hydra's shrieking, Reni grumbled. I wanted to plug my ears too, but I couldn't. If Hydra wasn't completely dead, it would counterattack, so I had to be ready for that.
But the counterattack I feared never came. All eight heads, which had been thrashing wildly, crashed to the ground hard enough to shake it. We staggered but kept our guard up.
Because I didn't believe that Hydra bastard was truly down.
I needed to make sure it was dead.
I glanced over to check on Karina, who had collapsed to the ground, then looked back at the motionless Hydra. Compared with the ten years it had tormented me, the end felt absurdly anticlimactic. I hadn't expected victory to come this easily.
I walked toward the motionless Hydra. Naturally, I kept my shovel in hand.
I climbed onto one of the fallen Hydra’s heads, raised my shovel, and brought it down with all my strength where its brain should have been. The blow only scratched the hide. I kept swinging until I tore through the skin, exposed the skull, shattered it, and pulped the brain. By the time I'd ripped the brain matter apart, sweat was pouring off me like rain.
Damn, it was tough.
"What are you doing?"
"We have to smash all the heads."
"Ah, right."
Reni joined me in the head-smashing task. With two of us, the work became considerably easier.
Unlike me, Reni drove her sword in with a single thrust, stirred the brain by wrenching it around, pulled it free, and repeated the process. Her strength was enviable. It wasn't something that should have been that easy.
One, two, three, four... After destroying the seventh head, I headed toward the last one. The closer I came, the more memories surfaced of everything that bastard had put me through.
Each time I retraced that long history of bloody battles, the murderous intent buried inside me rose closer to the surface.
Those dogshit days.
This fucking snake bastard.
In the end, I was the one who won, you worthless piece of shit.
The end was in sight.
The end of this long, foul entanglement.
I raised my shovel, drenched with brain matter. Those shut eyes would never open again now.
That was when it happened.
Suddenly, the world flipped upside down.
"You fucking..."
"Yohan!"
"...Yohan!"
My whole body hurt as if it were being torn apart. That was the first thought I had, amidst a horrifying sensation of floating.
The Hydra’s last head receded into the distance, staring at me while flicking its tongue in a way that made my skin crawl.
Eyes overflowing with sly cunning.
Wounds that were gradually healing.
Hydra had revived.