Rival? (3)
Three years ago, a monster appeared in Baidu, the city they called a capital of magic and wealth.
Those who witnessed the creature that arrived without any warning all gave the same testimony: it was as if a mountain had begun to walk.
They said so because the thing was vast beyond reason. Calling it a mountain was exaggeration, of course—enormous as it was, it did not literally rival a peak. But anyone who actually stood before it felt a presence that crushed the spirit the way a mountain crushes the skyline.
Thirty meters high. Forty-five meters from head to tail. When it took a step, the earth itself groaned. When it roared, birds dropped from the air as if the sky had gone hollow.
Its carapace was a deep navy, like the shell of some colossal beetle, and it threw the light back so fiercely that keeping one's eyes open in front of it was nearly impossible. Four legs and three long tails pulverized whatever they touched under sheer, overwhelming mass. Its maw, nearly ten meters across, was the mouth of a scorpion; stone and steel alike vanished down that throat.
The antennae jutting from either side of its head were long and keen as spears, and there was nothing they could not pierce. Its eyes, wrapped in black membrane, looked like something that had crawled up out of hell.
The first thought of everyone who saw this nightmare was that a mountain was moving. The second was that the world was ending.
It left only ruins in its wake. Nothing living remained. It had devoured so many people and animals that every exhalation carried the stench of rotting corpses.
This monster named Kutlanka had no equal—as if it were a messenger the gods themselves had sent to punish a race of humans who had never, in all their long years, stopped making war.
But just as there are skies beyond the sky, there existed a being stronger than this seemingly unmatched monster. And that being was human.
Oscal Goldenheire
The great wielder of magic stood in its path.
The seven fairies who guarded the Queen bought their master the time she needed to work her spell. And when every preparation was complete, a magic that stunned the world was unleashed.
Before the Witch Queen's magic, Kutlanka's armored shell was no better than tofu. Its venom-laden blood was no more than droplets waiting to evaporate. Unmade, and unmade again, the horror that had made an entire people tremble was annihilated.
And yet even the Witch Queen's magic failed to destroy one thing: its bones. As if, even in death, it had been determined to leave proof that it had lived, those bones could not be broken or erased by any spell. Worse, some great enchantment had been laid upon them—Kutlanka's skeleton would not move. Neither brute force nor sorcery could carry the spoils away.
In the end, the Witch Queen abandoned the trophy and returned to her sanctuary.
Time passed. People came to look upon the giant bones of Kutlanka, and the place where they lay naturally came to be called by a name of its own.
🏛 Type: Skeletal Remains / Ruins
☠ Hazard: Airborne Toxin
📍 Origin: Bones of the raid boss Kutlanka
💀 Status: Abandoned
And human greed, as it always does, produced people who wanted to turn the Kutlanka Ruins into a source of coin. Without so much as asking the Witch Queen's leave, they occupied the site as they pleased and charged visitors for the privilege of using it.
The affair could easily have been read as a challenge to the Witch Queen's authority. She had no need to answer it herself. The people who had seized the Kutlanka Ruins collapsed one by one, coughing blood—poisoned by an invisible toxin pouring off the bones.
Once that fact became known, no one sought the Kutlanka Ruins anymore.
"It's a place people no longer visit, so of course it's easy to hide there. Ideal for concealing a large number of bodies, really. The airborne poison is a problem, of course... but if you have a potion that can neutralize the toxin secreted by the bones, or a skill or trait that resists poison, even that ceases to be a limitation."
"....."
"Besides, in the vicinity of Baidu, that is the only place the Snake Bandits could reasonably use as a hideout. Every region but the west is already locked down by other bandit crews. Even the Snake Bandits can't move freely there."
Plasma laid out, with considerable energy, exactly why he was so certain the Kutlanka Ruins were the Snake Bandits' den.
Not a word of it was reaching my ears.
Ah, shit. I've got a bad feeling about this...
Call it instinct. The moment Kutlanka's name surfaced in my mind, a nameless unease settled over me. I knew far more about Kutlanka than Plasma did—and I had every reason to. Kutlanka was an event boss in Fairy Masters.
Fairy Masters had everything a game like that was supposed to have, including guilds. Among the event bosses, Kutlanka was the one built for guild raids. From low level to high, guild members hunted the Kutlanka that matched the levels of their main fairies.
Between my whale main account and my F2P alt, how many Kutlankas had I put in the ground? I knew everything—its attributes, its weaknesses, its attack patterns, its skills.
And the reason I was uneasy now came down to a single fact: this Kutlanka was an undead reduced to nothing but bone.
In Fairy Masters, it had appeared as a skeleton undead too. And here, likewise, only the bones remained?
That's a resurrection flag if I've ever seen one.
Shit. No matter how I turned it over, this was a setup for Bone Kutlanka to come back to life. I had already confirmed that the event dungeon from the game—the Relay Dungeon—existed in this world. If the Relay Dungeon was here, there was no law that said a raid monster like Kutlanka couldn't show up too.
And if it does show... what level is it going to be?
I knew the strategy. Fighting it wouldn't be hard. The problem was Kutlanka's level. The boss that appeared in the biweekly guild raid started at level 30 and climbed by tens, all the way up to a ceiling of 300. The range was all over the place.
If a Kutlanka scaled to our suppression force spawned, we could hunt it without much trouble. Even if the level ran a little high, we had Plasma on this side—a 7-Star monster of a fighter.
Plasma was well-disposed toward me and toward the 4-Star mage Chae Gillard. The difference in his attitude, his eyes, his tone when he spoke to us versus when he spoke to the other Masters was obvious. His intent might as well have been written on his forehead. He wanted to recruit me.
And if the recruitment target put on a display of command so sharp it made Plasma's eyes go round while we took down a resurrected Kutlanka?
Plasma's favorability toward me would smash straight through the damage meter. I might even land a key post in Baidu overnight. Joining the Witch Queen's banner wouldn't be a bad play, either. Baidu was lousy with dungeons that could feed our party's growth.
Of course, all of that was only if the Kutlanka that was nothing but bones decided to get back up.
"Sir...?"
"....."
"Master Han?"
"Yes? Ah, forgive me. Did you call me?"
"What were you thinking about so intently?"
"I was thinking about what we should do, now that you've said the air itself is poisoned. I was listening to everything you said, though."
His voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I had been half-worried he would take offense at being ignored mid-briefing, but the smile on Plasma's face held no trace of it.
"Hahaha. Don't trouble yourself over that. After it became known that poison had spread through the Kutlanka Ruins, Her Grace the Witch Queen developed an antidote capable of treating it. We have more than enough for the entire suppression force."
"Is that so? Haha. I was worrying over nothing, then. Thank you for telling me, Plasma."
"Not at all. Was there anything else you wanted to know?"
"No, I'm fine."
I shook my head, offered him a polite farewell, and went back to my party.
After a brief rest that felt like a gift, the suppression force took up the march again. The desert day had been hot enough to scorch skin, but night brought the exact opposite. People shivered in the cold air and built campfires.
There was no telling when we would meet the Snake Bandits in a decisive fight. Marching through the night without sleep would have been suicide. After supper, the company gathered in clusters around the fires, posted sentries, and tried to sleep.
The mood in the camp had just begun to loosen when it happened.
Ssssshk—!
"...Hm?"
The vipers that had been sitting quietly inside my coat poked their heads out past the lapel. Walking around with venomous snakes on me was a fine way to get mistaken for one of the Snake Bandits, but leaving them behind in Baidu had never been an option. They weren't exactly a secret weapon, but they could still become the foothold for a reversal in a dangerous enough situation. I had even sewn extra inner pockets into the coat so they would have somewhere to go.
Ssshk— ssssshk—!
"What's wrong? You can't come out. Get back in."
Ssssshk— ssssssshk—!
"Huh?"
I tried to hustle the vipers back inside the coat, but they slipped my hands, lifted their heads high, and started scanning the dark.
"...What."
The abnormal reaction told me something was happening. I checked the surroundings first, in case anyone was watching me, then caught Number One—was that even its name?—and made it look me in the eyes.
"....."
A viper was a beast. It was not going to speak human language. And yet—maybe it was the Uroboros's Avatar class—when I locked eyes with them like this, I could read what they were thinking.
Ah, for fuck's sake. Couldn't these bastards let us sleep through the night?
Number One, meeting my gaze, told me exactly what I did not want to hear. Assailants steeped in murderous intent had appeared.
"Aquaril. Up. Kanisia, Abraham!"
"Nnnh... Master?"
"What is it, is it morning already... wait, the sun hasn't even gone down. Why are you waking us up already?"
"....."
I shook them until they sat up, rubbing their eyes, still thick with sleep, and I told them what they needed to hear.
"Attackers. Looks like the Snake Bandits are hitting us."
"....."
"What? Attackers? Where? I don't see anyone."
"Hrm... Lord Alan?"
Aquaril had her sword out and was already watching the dark. Kanisia and Abraham swept the camp with their eyes. But the only thing wrapping the bivouac was silence. No enemy. No scream.
Kanisia and Abraham looked at me as if I had lost my mind. I ignored them and kept scanning. There was no world in which my vipers fed me bad information.
"Hey, did you have a nightmare or something? Where are these attackers supposed to be—"
—...urk!
"....."
"You heard that."
"Yeah."
In the hush, someone drew a sharp, ragged breath. It might have been a death-rattle forced down behind clenched teeth. The camp was so quiet that even that small sound carried.
Kanisia and Abraham finally understood that something was wrong, and their weapons came up.
And then, not long after—
BOOOOOOOOM—!
A massive explosion tore open the night some distance from the camp.
"W-what? What was that?"
The roar yanked people out of a dead sleep. Faces still slack with confusion turned toward the blast.
And from far off, a voice none of us knew.
"Dammit! We've been spotted! Attack!"
WAAAAAAAGH—!
The order dropped, and people erupted out of the sand and came pounding toward the camp. Scimitars flashed in their hands, and the howls they threw at us had a strange madness mixed through them.
It did not take long to understand what this sudden midnight chaos meant.
"Enemies! The enemy is here!"
A soldier shouted it into the dark.