26. The Nine-Headed Snake (5)
26. The Nine-Headed Snake (5)
...You fucking bastard.
I clenched my teeth and forced my pain-wracked body upright.
Absurdly enough, Karina’s purification magic had apparently benefited the Hydra. By forcibly undoing its zombification, the spell seemed to have restored its sanity.
"So you would have felt cheated if it ended like that, is that it?"
I had considered the possibility, but playing dead until seven of its heads were gone... Damn, it was vicious. Truly vicious.
I clicked my tongue at the Hydra’s scheme: it had waited until its own life was hanging by a thread before striking me from behind. I gasped for breath. Breathing was difficult, and the moment I tried to move, pain like a red-hot brand seared through my chest.
Broken ribs, probably.
I didn't know how many ribs had broken, but the situation was clearly bad.
I was no superhuman like Reni, so there was no way I could fight properly with broken bones. I needed Karina’s help. My eyes darted around in search of the pink-haired Saintess, and fortunately, I found her quickly.
Good thing I had reinforced my armor. It seemed to have saved me from a fatal injury, though several ribs were probably broken. I glanced at Karina and Reni some distance away, then adjusted my grip on the shovel. My chest throbbed.
I didn't want to move. No matter how accustomed someone was to pain, unless they were a masochist, nobody wanted to force their body to move through it. But I had to move.
Because this time, I had to put an end to my resurrected nemesis's life for good.
Fortunately, the situation wasn't utterly hopeless.
First, Karina could heal me, and Reni could fight beside me. The Hydra couldn't be in good condition either. No matter how powerful its regeneration was, restoring its body to its original state in an instant could not have been easy.
On top of that, the Hydra’s body was impaled on wooden stakes and hooks made from bear bones. With dozens of sharp points buried in it, even the Hydra could not escape.
The Hydra probably knew that. There was no way the smartest monster on the island had failed to notice the problem. If it had charged into the trap anyway... the most likely explanation was that it had been unable to control its own body.
Even now, it had regained control but was still unable to move.
...Checkmate.
For me, too.
And for that bastard.
I endured the throbbing pain and forced one foot in front of the other. Dust swirled with every movement of the Hydra. Explosions. Flesh tearing. Reni shouting.
"Karina! Get back!"
Ah, fuck. This hurt like hell.
The ground shook when a snake head severed by Reni’s sword crashed down. Watching the incompletely regenerated head fall, I could only click my tongue.
Doing that would just multiply the enemies, though.
Cutting off its heads was pointless. Whether a new body regenerated from the severed head or a new head grew from the neck, the Hydra wouldn't suffer any meaningful damage.
"Karina! Get over here!"
"Yohan?!"
Karina’s bewildered voice reached me from afar. Even in this emergency, it pulled at my attention. I forced myself to look away and checked the fallen snake head. Fortunately, its brain had been thoroughly scrambled, and the head no longer seemed alive.
"Yohan! Are you all right? Your body..."
"Use your healing magic, now!"
"Y-yes!"
With a startled expression, Karina reached her hand out toward me. Soon, her hand was bathed in a golden light. As that light, warm like the sunshine of a spring day, shimmered before my eyes, the pain clamping down on my chest began to ease—and after a moment, it faded entirely.
So this was why they called her the Saintess. Broken ribs qualified as a serious injury, yet she healed them in an instant. I thanked Karina with a glance, turned, and looked up at the Hydra still fighting Reni.
The heads, thrashing wildly as they tried to bite Reni to death, were gradually regaining their proper forms. The sight of the severed neck stumps writhing with an unnatural vigor was truly grotesque.
"Karina. You stay hidden."
"...Yes!"
I liked that she knew when to step in and when to get out of the way. I watched Karina disappear into the distant forest, then checked the trap.
Fortunately, the traps were still doing their job. But if I gave it time, that Hydra bastard was clearly going to break free.
No way I could let that happen.
"Reni! Buy me some time!"
"What?"
"I need time!"
"Got it! I can't hold out for long, so whatever you're doing, do it fast!"
I jumped straight onto the Hydra’s slick torso. Its smooth, tough hide looked impossible to pierce with any ordinary tool. After landing, I searched first for the stakes impaling its body.
Specifically, I chose the nearest stake and landed on it where it pierced roughly halfway along the torso, then activated my Skill.
"Dismantle."
The stake broke apart into countless pieces of wood and fell to the ground. To avoid falling and being flattened like a pancake against the Hydra’s body, I thrust my hand into the empty hole and hung on. The wound was regenerating quickly, but it was still large enough for me to enter. I forced my body inside.
"I really end up doing the damnedest things."
Where exactly was I? I pulled a small lamp from my leather pouch. I'd brought it to start fires and move around at night, never expecting it to become useful like this. I struck a match cobbled together from assorted materials. It caught with a burnt smell and lit the lamp’s wick, revealing the dark space around me.
The intestines?
Or the stomach?
It was definitely a space between the internal organs.
I stabbed the shovel into the flesh around me over and over as I moved about searching for the spot I wanted.
It was by no means an easy task.
The floor repeatedly clenched and relaxed as if trying to trap my feet, while the whole space shook like a deranged amusement ride. If I hadn't driven the shovel into the organs to brace myself, I might have been badly injured or killed, rendering Karina’s healing pointless.
Not that I wasn’t already risking my life shoveling around in here.
Ah, there it was.
I looked up above my head. A white object, barely visible amidst the pink-tinged viscera.
Naturally, it was bone.
The Hydra's bone.
Was this roughly the middle of its spine?
"You fucking bastard. Let's see you tank this, too."
I drove my shovel in between the vertebrae.
The shovel, made from material harder than the Hydra’s vertebrae, forced its way between them when I put my weight behind it. Marrow-like fluid seeped from around the blade, which was buried halfway in.
"Dismantle."
The armor around my body reverted to its component materials. Once the armor protecting me vanished, I felt a stinging sensation I hadn't noticed before. Were even this bastard Hydra’s marrow and mucus acidic?
If so, I didn't have much time.
I immediately scraped together the bones that had fallen from the armor. There was quite a lot. They came from the Alpha Bear, so they should have been tough enough to rival the Hydra’s bones.
If not, I was dead.
"Craft."
The bear bones came together to form a sharp spear. It should have been enough to pierce the vertebra.
I pulled out the shovel and, in that instant, quickly jammed the spear made of bear bone into the gap.
Perhaps because it was even sharper than the shovel, the bear-bone spear sank in deep, over half of it embedding itself. When I wiggled the spear slightly, the tip felt soft, as if it had pierced through the vertebra and entered the space housing the spinal cord.
That should have been enough preparation.
I gripped the bone spear and activated my skill.
"Craft."
The bear-bone spear transformed inside the spine. Normally, attempting this would only have shattered the material, but if the bear bone was harder than the Hydra’s vertebrae... it should have been enough...
Crack.
A crack ran through the vertebra. I swiftly jammed the shovel into it and twisted, widening the fracture. The crack repeatedly widened and narrowed as it tried to regenerate.
Now came the fun part: mining.
I started prying at the spine with my shovel like a madman.
Until the vertebra shattered and broke away.
My arms hurt so badly they felt ready to fall off.
How long had I been prying at the fissure with my shovel?
The bone finally broke and fell beneath my feet. A hole gaped in the vertebra. When I held the lamp close, I saw a bundle of nerves.
Yeah. That was it.
The spinal cord.
The spinal cord had been my objective.
No matter how powerful its regeneration was, as long as it was a vertebrate, destroying the spinal cord would leave it unable to control its body. I picked up a skull-sized fragment of Hydra bone from the floor, pressed it to the vertebra, and used my Skill.
"Craft."
The Hydra bone became a blade and pierced the spinal cord. Lodged through it, the bone plugged the channel and prevented the cord from regenerating.
No matter how good your regeneration was, you wouldn’t be able to move with your spinal cord destroyed.
Even if it tried to regenerate, it could not with the channel where the spinal cord belonged completely blocked.
No matter how absurdly powerful its regeneration, in the end, it was still just a living creature.
"Life really is all about payback."
So I only had to do this three more times.
After everything I'd suffered for ten years, I had to repay it double.
I moved toward a higher spot.
--------------------------
"Ha, what a persistent bastard."
Reni spat out the blood pooling in her mouth onto the ground and glared at the Hydra, which was eagerly watching for an opening. Because she'd kept fighting in a body that wasn't yet fully healed, it was screaming out in pain. But there was no time to rest.
There was no way the enemy right in front of her, waiting to strike, would cut her any slack.
A snake with a horrific regenerative ability.
The heads had recovered completely despite having their brains scrambled, making them a nightmarish headache. Of all the enemies Reni had faced, the Hydra ranked among the most troublesome. She tightened her grip on her sword, anxiety on her face.
'At this rate, my sword would break soon too.'
Even a sword made of excellent material would eventually break with enough use. Reni gritted her teeth at the ever-worsening situation. She had to hold out, like Yohan said, but even so, without a weapon...
That was when it happened.
The Hydra's movements abruptly grew noticeably sluggish.
A bewildered cry followed. The Hydra’s upper body listed to one side and collapsed. Its eyes darted around in confusion at the unexpected turn.
An unforeseen turn of events.
Reni instinctively realized this was her chance.
'Whatever he had done, this was my chance!'
The Mad Dog pushed off hard and leaped. Her targets were the remaining heads. Even when Reni charged openly, the Hydra offered almost no resistance.
She cleaved through one of the Hydra’s heads lying on the ground in a single stroke. The fifth head came free.
Three heads remained.
Reni pulled back and assessed the situation.
"...What the hell did he do?"
The Hydra couldn't control its body, though Reni had no idea what he'd done to it. What mattered was that it could not move.
Not missing her chance, Reni lunged in like a predator that had spotted a weak point.
Three.
Two.
One...
Terror filled the Hydra’s eyes.
Because it had never anticipated this sort of ending.
The Hydra had tried to toy with its opponent on a meticulously prepared board, but now its final head was moments from being severed. It thrashed desperately, yet nothing below the neck would move.
With its spinal cord severed and its body paralyzed, the Hydra could do nothing but accept the death slowly creeping closer.
There was no way out.
"This feels a little anticlimactic..."
Reni looked down at the final head she'd severed—the snake head cut cleanly away, its brain destroyed so thoroughly that it could never regenerate again.
Just what kind of stunt had he pulled?
Just as Reni's curiosity was swelling, she heard a familiar voice behind her.
"You held out well."
"What the—when did you get out... Ugh. What is that smell?"
"Things happened."
Yohan was drenched in the Hydra’s blood, excrement, and stomach acid. With his armor gone, the fluids clinging to his skin stung, but he approached the snake as though he didn't care.
Yohan looked down with a strange expression at the king of the snakes that had threatened his life for ten years.
To think the long struggle would end like this. Yohan approached the head that had sent him flying—the final head, now incapable of regenerating. He kicked the Hydra’s snout twice, then stepped back.
Then, with a complicated look on his face, he stared at the Hydra.
To think the ten-year struggle would end like this.
His lips parted and closed several times.
Yohan offered a final farewell to the monster that had been his nemesis.
"Goodbye."