From the Beginning (4)
“Is that a human?”
The pirate who had boarded the ship ready to die let the words slip out unbidden. He could hardly help it.
“Does that mean… we might actually live?”
The churchman weaving a barrier vast enough to swallow the bay. The man soaring wingless through the sky, butchering every devil of the air.
Neither of them looked human.
And because they did not look human, the pirates wanted to believe in them.
“That damn church bastard…”
“Ha. On any other day I’d be cursing whoever let him aboard.”
They watched the figure who gripped his mace tight and prayed. The pillar of light driven down from above and the gold that rolled and shimmered around him looked, for all their loathing, pure and sacred. Had it not been for their long, bitter history with the Church, they might well have clasped their hands and prayed alongside him.
Slash!
“Ah—the ship!”
“We’re sinking…”
In the meantime another miracle was unfolding elsewhere.
The man who had been trampling flying demons and racing across the open sky had just sent an entire vessel to the bottom. It was a display of martial skill no knight they could name would ever match.
“Who the hell is that man?”
“What faction is he with?”
At first, when black energy that reeked of demons had poured from the man’s blade, the impression had been pure ill omen.
But the moment that savage power cleaved not only demons but the enemy ships closing in on them, they accepted it.
No one was going to look unkindly on a man who not only dragged them back from the brink of death but wiped out every enemy in sight.
“This is outside my expectations. I’m almost impressed.”
“C-Captain.”
Then Outlaw Chimawa stepped up beside him. The face said to be the most beautiful among living pirates curved into a soft, smiling look as he regarded him.
“You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”
“No, sir.”
How could he be? The golden veil spun by the priest’s prayer barred not only demonic attacks but entry itself.
In short, the structure of the thing made it impossible for a single wound to land on their bodies.
“Well, anyone who managed to get hurt under this would have to be a complete idiot!”
Reading his mood, the Outlaw threw his head back and laughed with abandon. The boisterous cheer did not match that delicate face—yet a visage that already exceeded all measure of beauty swallowed even that, and made it lovely.
Pirates of other crews, those not riding the Outlaw’s ship, flushed red.
BOOM!
In the meantime another vessel came apart.
From a distance they could see sail and mast split on the diagonal, the hull itself cleaved in two. Water rushed in through the severed cross-section.
“Ahahaha. I’ve never once thought Brother Suriya’s luck with people was any good—but from now on I’ll have to take that back.”
“Was he someone Baramson brought?”
“Most likely.”
“Then that priest too…?”
“Wouldn’t you say so?”
“Why…?”
“That I don’t know. But he’s helping us right this second, isn’t he? Isn’t that enough?”
KA-BOOM!
Yet another ship went under. Plenty of monsters still wheeled through the sky, but compared to the start, roughly half of them were gone.
“Of course. What wouldn’t a man do to live? Grudge this, blood-feud that—once you’re dead, none of it means a damn thing.”
That was not wrong.
He agreed with the captain. His parents, his neighbors, the village elders—every last one of them had painted the Church as madmen you must never deal with… but he had no desire to follow that teaching when his life hung by a thread in the present moment.
His own life, the present of his friends and comrades and lover, mattered more than the grudges of grandparents whose faces he had never even seen.
“So personally, I rather like that priest—”
Rrrrrumble—!
For an instant, the whole world seemed to shake.
Far off, the sea began to part.
I spat a mouthful of bloody water and froze mid-motion, eyes going round. Something like a black shadow had been rising from under the sea—and that, in the end, was why the ocean had split open.
Rumble!
As something heaved upward, the water shoved aside in every direction threw up white foam. What kept surging through that spray was a set of four legs.
“An octopus?”
As if answering me, a notification window threw up an info panel.
I hadn’t expected anything useful.
Thud
Kyaaaaaah!
I swung astride the back of a harpy that happened to be flying past and took stock. The harpy shrieked and beat its wings in a frenzy. Having a creature roughly its own weight added on top had apparently set off its survival alarms.
Not that I cared whether the harpy fell or not.
I fixed my eyes on the four—no, make that five—tentacles now thrashing as they rose into open air. Even at this distance their girth looked substantial.
Proof that the other party was, once again, rather large. Not Sea Dragon–class, but big enough to wrap a ship, I would guess.
“Kraken, then.”
After the Sea Dragon, a kraken? We were maybe halfway through the episode, so a boss like this showing up wasn’t that strange—but still.
“Cthulhu, for real…!”
If it was going to be like this, I’d rather face the Sea Dragon again. With that one you only had to dodge the head and the tail; a kraken had eight arms to avoid—or more!
On top of that, the Sea Dragon’s scales had been rough; this thing looked smooth as glass just to look at. Even trying to run along its body would be hell. Worst case scenario.
“Big octopuses are all rubber and no flavor!”
Taking full advantage of the fact that no one could hear me, I poured out every last complaint and then simply dropped off the harpy.
Slash!
My body flipped through a midair somersault, took the head off a gargoyle that had been aiming for me, and kept falling.
Kyaaaah!
Thud!
I twisted past the teeth of a wyvern that tried to bite my legs and climbed onto its back instead. My blade sank into the nape of its neck.
Shhhhk!
I sprinted the length of the wyvern’s body and stamped all the way out to the tip of its tail. The edge of the sword carved through hide as I went, and only when I reached the end did I finally stop.
My body launched into open air again.
Crash!
“U-uwaah! F-from the sky!”
“Draw your blades!”
How many meters had I fallen? My boots found the yard of the mainmast. A heavy impact jarred up through my feet, solid and hard.
Luckily there was no pain and no injury penalty. That was enough.
“Kill him!”
Meanwhile the pirates perched on the fighting top and the yards of the mainmast raised their weapons and charged me. My hand snapped the wyvern-bloodied sword through a rapid arc.
A silver trajectory was etched across the world—and a second later it fractured and came apart.
A spray of blood fanned out in several streams and fell.
“Fuck, what is this. Red rain?”
“L-look up, you idiot!”
“Enemy on board!”
“Ghost of a man!”
Whoosh—!
Just then one of the kraken’s arms, which had been a fair distance off, seemed to sink under the water—then, with an octopus’s particular style of movement, it cut through the waves and closed in.
The seawater shoved aside by the kraken’s bulk became a wave that ran against the surface and came for the ship I was standing on.
Crash!
The ship rolled and heeled under the heavy surge.
Not ideal when you were standing on a horizontal cylindrical spar. If I hadn’t driven my sword into the mast and hung on, I would have slid right off.
“W-what is that thing! Why is it coming this way!”
The ones who had been climbing the rigging to get at me shouted.
Ally-summoned creature or not, a monster was a monster. They seemed to be feeling a purely physiological terror at its approach. Honestly, just looking at it, it did look like it was about to attack this ship.
Whoosh!
BOOM!
…No, it really was trying to attack us?
What the hell—aren’t you on the same side? I thought you people called it!
Crunch!
Ramming the ship once apparently wasn’t enough for the kraken.
Several arms that had broken the surface began to coil around the hull. The railings and the planking along the sides started to splinter and crush.
“Fuck, why is the octopus bastards attacking us!”
“They said we’d be fine—goddamn devil-worshippers!”
“All hands! Stations! Prepare for battle!”
“What’s all the racket!”
Conversations like that began to drift up from the lower deck. From where I stood, these people hadn’t seen this coming either.
“I should’ve boarded a ship that actually had devil-worshippers on it!”
They even said that.
I didn’t know about the ships I’d already cut down, but at least this one seemed free of cultists. Not a bad thing.
Crunch, crack!
And the fact that the kraken was attacking this ship was good news for me as well. I now had a tank that would serve as bait while I put in the damage.
I yanked free the sword I had driven in as a support and still hadn’t drawn yet. Pop! It came free, spraying wood chips. Ssslick. My body began to slide.
Flutter—thud!
My falling body turned of its own accord, following my intent, and settled into stance. Landing in the middle of the deck, I sheathed the scimitar, then slowly reached behind my back.
“……!”
“Th-that bastard…!”
Shhhk. A faint rasp of friction sounded at my ear, and the True Two-Hander of Destruction came free.
“Victory to my blade, glory to the heavens above…”
Pitch-black mana boiled and layered itself over the blade.
“And ruin to the demons.”
My body shot forward and cut through one of the kraken’s arms. Softer than the Sea Dragon, a little more yielding—like slicing through jelly—the sensation thudded heavily into my wrist.
Thud!
Even after being severed, the enormous octopus arm twitched and rolled.
“He cut it!”
“He landed one!”
Men who were, strictly speaking, my enemies cheered for a moment as if we were on the same side. I had not expected to experience “the enemy of my enemy is a temporary ally” right here.
Wooooooong—!!
Right after that, a strange cry shuddered through the sea. The kraken’s arms all at once fell away from the ship and thrashed, undulating.
The deck was a little cramped, but it really did feel like a standard boss fight—or a proper raid.
BOOM!
Yes. The way it just slammed multiple arms down, and the fact that there was still room to dodge in between!
“Uwaaagh!”
Of course, just as I’d expected from the Sea Dragon raid, masts and outer planking got smashed. A few pirates got crushed to death for free, too.
But I would have sent them to the bottom anyway, so it hardly mattered, right?
Before the tentacles driven into the deck could pull free, I swung hard. Three tentacles were cut in succession, leaving their marks across the boards.
The last one was only half-severed and dangled, but even that was enough for the moment. Surely it wouldn’t attack with that. And even if it did, it wouldn’t do much.
Wooooong…
My thoughts were immediately proven wrong.
“Th-the monster’s arm!”
“It’s regenerating…?”
Right. Octopuses regenerate severed parts…
I watched bubbles froth and seethe at the cut surface, and then the lost tentacle grow back, and I was left speechless.
Worse, with the arm that hadn’t been fully cut, a new one sprouted, collided with the existing one, and then simply fused. In other words, it had grown into a Y-shape.
This game was completely insane!!
If you’re going to do this, at least show me the enemy’s HP!
KA-BOOM!
The kraken’s arms began to hammer the ship with a new, obsessive focus on me.
Until a moment ago they had only been smashing the deck; now the patterns multiplied—smashing through the hull, seizing things, and swinging them down at me.
“Tch.”
What now. Dodging wasn’t hard for the moment, but after the ship sank it would be different. The second I hit the water, game over was a 98% certainty.
Or did I have to rely on skills and instinct again, and fight while trampling the kraken’s legs? My chest was already tight just thinking about it.
I dodged a mast that came slamming down at me and stepped onto one of the kraken’s tentacles. Even through my boot-heels I felt that slick, mucus-coated surface, wet beyond mere water. This was a sliding angle if ever there was one.
Thuck!
I drove my sword in in a hurry. Ssshhk. My body slid downward, carving a wound into the tentacle as it went.
Tak.
Even so, it bought time—the mast punched into the ship. I used it as a stepping stone and vaulted hard upward.
No matter how I thought about it, fighting while running along the kraken’s body was impossible. Not without something like crampons.
So what now? Was there no way?
Kyaaaah!
As I let my eyes go still over the ship, which had already settled lower in the water than before, a scrap of hope came flying toward me.
Kyaah!
A gargoyle.
“……!”
…I’ve decided on you, gargoyle!
I triggered Survival Instinct first, confirmed an escape route, then smashed through the mast and jumped with everything I had. Tentacles that had been hunting me crashed in from every side, but it was fine.
Mid-jump, like a high-jumper, I rotated my body a half-turn so my back faced down. I hadn’t been trying for any special height, but a cool, slick sensation brushed past beneath my back.
And what followed was heat. The fire the gargoyle spat heated the air and fanned out in every direction. What warmed my back was that heated air.
But if this worked, a little heat was nothing.
I twisted my body again. If the last spin had been a twist of the waist, the next move was to put my legs where my head had been and my head where my legs had been.
Shhhk!
My feet slid from the gargoyle’s head along the nape and down the spine. In the instant when I might have lost balance and fallen sideways, or hit the thinning tail and dropped, my sword punched through the gargoyle’s back.
Kyaaaah!
The gargoyle screamed and writhed. Naturally its flight path changed, and it began to flap and climb.
With my weight added on, its altitude wavered—but that very unsteadiness meant the kraken’s tentacles couldn’t catch me.
The gargoyle climbed higher. High enough for harpies and wyverns to be flying.
“What kind of game makes the player build his own platforms.”
By way of thanks to the gargoyle that had lifted me, I swung my sword until its guts tore.
Slash!
Jets of blood and scraps of flesh sprayed through the air. My body went with them.
Kyaah?!
I slammed into a wyvern’s torso, settled onto its back, and started another round of aerial combat.
The goal: a tour of the ships. If the kraken really had its aggro locked on me, I would use it to sink the remaining four vessels as well, then finish the kraken last.
Operation name, for example: Use the Enemy to Defeat the Enemy.