The Calamity of the Sea
Ancient monsters loved to eat.
One might ask, don't all species enjoy food? But for them, it was a passion beyond measure.
Pharaoh had once been an emperor who ruled a vast desert, a gourmand who savored cuisine from every corner of the world through relayed trade routes. I, too, had visited his empire for meals on occasion, and even in an age where spicy dishes were almost unheard of, the food was masterful enough that I ate quite well.
Rasty, for her part, was said to have demanded the royal chef's cooking as the very first order of business after conquering a human kingdom. The other ancient monsters were all different in temperament, but when it came to fine dining, they shared a fascination without equal.
"Mm, mm. I suppose it's Mythic-grade food for a reason. The effect is better than I imagined."
The Heavenly Skewer held five pieces of meat in total. Of those, what Minoa had eaten wasn't even one — a mere 0.7 pieces or so — and yet the monster that had been testing him wailed in agony before granting him passage through his trial.
"Thank you... thank you..."
Minoa, too, shed tears as he offered his gratitude. Whether he was thanking me for lifting his curse or for letting him taste the skewer, I couldn't quite say. Judging by his reaction, I'd wager it leaned toward the latter.
I turned to look at Leo, deliberately savoring the lingering aftertaste on my tongue.
Leo sat perfectly still, cheeks stuffed, her eyes swollen to slits from crying — and she couldn't even swallow. There was no way she'd actually choked on it.
"What are you doing?"
"...Mmmm refusing to swallow."
"Pardon?"
"She doesn't *want* to swallow it. Must be that delicious, mrow."
Yena answered bluntly from beside her. But even as she spoke, she turned her body away as if she'd forgotten all about it, while her eyes kept darting sidelong glances at the skewer.
She was sulking.
"Are you sulking?"
"No. It's my nature, that's all..."
"Shall I give you some?"
"Miss Lily. I'm not a beggar, you know."
Hmph.
"Fine then. I have no intention of forcing it on someone who'd rather I didn't offer. Deoen has plenty of delicious food, after all."
"Really?"
"Yes. So therefore..."
"Here. Just kidding."
I held out the skewer.
One full serving's worth of mouthwatering size. The last remaining piece had to be analyzed separately to see whether a mass-produced version was possible, so realistically, this was the final one. And I was giving that one-of-a-kind treasure to Yena.
Yena's eyes wavered violently.
"So then...!"
"If you don't eat it, me or Leo will."
"......."
"Five. Four. Three..."
Chomp!
"Ah... waaah..."
She eats well, at least.
Yena leaned forward, mouth working furiously. Because I'd pulled the skewer back slightly right as she bit, she was frozen in a rather comical pose. She could have toppled over entirely, but a ranker of Yena's caliber could hold a pose far stranger than this without blinking.
I smiled and patted her head.
"Good girl."
Yena's face flushed crimson. So it really was that delicious, huh.
"Nnnnnghh..."
"Tasty, isn't it?"
"Ish sho good..."
Yena burst into tears.
Still a food beyond my comprehension.
When I analyzed the Heavenly Skewer, it turned out to be a kind of authority, after all. Meat born of a special source, combined with a unique authority, to create a skewer that was literally heavenly — a food that granted the taste of the heavens itself. Replicating it was tantamount to impossible.
"At best, we'd get a copycat. Maybe five percent of the original?"
It wouldn't stun every soul who took a bite into tears the way the real thing did, but I figured we could manage something close enough to make people crave it for years afterward.
"You *can* make it, right? Right?!"
"We'll see..."
Yena, who had been mentally absent for a solid thirty minutes, only came back to herself after Minoa finished his explanation of the Multicolored Successor and vanished with a promise that he would help whenever the chance arose.
"If I get stronger, or if I manage to find this ingredient, then it might be possible."
The meat in that skewer was no ordinary meat, either. At the very least, its flavor could never be reproduced with commonplace livestock like beef or pork. Perhaps the creature that meat came from had itself been a being born of some special authority.
"Fuhaha... so it's all finished now, yes?"
"Yes."
"Then... I'll be going nowww..."
Leo staggered toward the World Tree's gate. Partly the skewer's influence, admittedly, but she had also been logged into Deoen continuously for nearly four days straight.
With the penalty lifted, Deoen's own systems were protecting her mind, but when your consciousness flickers back and forth like a trampoline, the exhaustion is going to be brutal.
"Hold on."
"Yesh?"
"We still have one thing left to settle, don't we?"
"What... eeek."
Squish.
I walked straight up to Leo and grabbed her cheeks. Those plump, springy cheeks remained as impressive as ever.
After roughly five minutes of kneading, Leo was released from my hands in an even softer state than before.
"Ueeeeng..."
"Take care going in. Contact me if anything feels off."
"Yeshhh..."
Leo waved her hand and logged out on the spot.
Now only Yena and I remained, just the two of us.
"You're actually going to use it?"
"Yes."
"Mm... isn't that a little dangerous?"
Yena, her wits finally returned, put on a somewhat serious expression. Minoa had failed his trial and been trapped in that place for a full two years. Granted, as a user he hadn't literally spent every moment of those two years there, but being unable to go anywhere else, hunt, or travel — just sitting still for that long — would have been agonizing.
And I was a streamer, obligated to keep delivering content to my viewers. For a streamer to sit idle for months, possibly years, would be a devastating penalty.
"You don't have the Mythic skewer anymore either. I'm worried you're pushing yourself too hard..."
"It's fine. The only reason I couldn't help Minoa directly was concern for his safety."
Of course I could have done it myself. The reason I hadn't, the reason I'd borrowed the skewer's power instead, was the fear that Minoa's soul might somehow be damaged in the process.
But if it was my own soul put up as collateral, there would be no great problem.
"I'm the one doing this, so I'm the one who bears the consequences. I can handle it."
"...Something about that doesn't reassure me."
"Don't worry. It'll be over quickly."
"Mm... if anything goes wrong, I'll crack open random boxes until I get a skewer, whatever it costs. And then I'll eat four and give you just one."
Yena said that with a smile, and I answered her smile in kind as I draped the necklace around my neck.
"I'll be waiting."
With the light of the Multicolored Successor.
My vision went dark.
Purple.
The waves heaved.
A sea filled not with blue light, but with deep, impenetrable darkness. The black night sky hung heavy with foreboding, brooding and bleak, and from the ruined harbor came the voices of the dead.
Wandering spirits — souls too damaged to pass into their next life, adrift across the world. The sea answered them only with the sound of still, unmoving waves, as if laughing at their plight.
CRASH!
The sea moved.
No — that was an illusion.
Kuuuuuuum...
The sea did not move.
More precisely, something that possessed enough majesty to be called a 'sea' in its own right was rising up from the deep ocean floor, breaching the surface of the water.
The black roots of the World Tree, which I had seen so recently, were practically child's play by comparison.
Eight colossal purple 'legs', each one coiling around the sea itself, revealed their forms. Between those legs and a body beyond all comparison in size, six eyes brimming with light fixed their gaze upon the ocean.
Merely by looking, it subdued every living thing in the sea with overwhelming force.
"Kraken."
Kraken. The ill-fated ancient monster torn apart and slain by the High Angels. And among the countless ancient monsters I had seen, one of the five strongest of them all.
A walking island. The terror of the sea. The collector of lost souls... Kraken bore many titles, but only one epithet truly captured what it was.
The Calamity of the Sea.
A monster powerful enough to crush even a mid-tier Celestial within its own ocean was now looking down at me. Until Kraken's death, even I had never held absolute certainty of victory against it.
The odds were even. Either I would win, or Kraken would win. It came down to one of the two.
Of course, after Kraken died, I grew far, far stronger — but this time, the circumstances were different.
"A Celestial... Lily Elbrit..."
Kraken was roughly as it had always been, while I had grown incomparably weaker than back then. Fortunately, this place straddled the border of a mental world, so I could wield a portion of my strength —
But Kraken knows that just as well as I do.
Kraken and I shared a long, tangled history, after all.
"Do you remember me?"
"Half-blooded... Celestial... I will tear you apart...!"
One of Kraken's eight legs blotted out the sky.
And then it came crashing down on me.
KWAAAAAANG!!!
The sea roiled, and a monstrous tsunami swallowed the ruined harbor whole. The Spear of Divinity I had hastily summoned trembled faintly in my grip.
The odds were ambiguous. But I could win.
I tore violently through the leg and soared high into the sky — and two of the six eyes turned to fix upon me.
Clunk! My body froze mid-air. Kraken, its lights dimming, quietly sank beneath the waves.
No.
It was already too late.
"When that day arrives, I shall awaken once more..."
Guuuururururu!
The day the seasons turn. The world would be swallowed by the sea, and the monster slumbering beneath its surface would tear through the angels of light and emerge into the world beyond.
Bathed in the blood of angels, the monster would stain the world with its light.
To annihilate every living thing.
"......"
The sea fell silent.
"Miss Lily?"
"...We're done for."
Kraken would awaken soon.
Kraken, in its complete form.