Chapter 67
Chapter 67
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 67
Chapter Title: Dirtier Than It Looks
-----------------------------------------------------------------
67. It’s dirtier inside than I thought?
"Wheeeeeee━━━━!!!"
I plummeted from a dizzying height down a water slide made of pink flesh.
-Splat.
And landed right on my ass.
"Ugh! Fuck!"
What kind of amusement park ride has no safety features?
What were they thinking, having me fall at this speed without any water at the bottom?
No consideration for the customer at all.
I’ll have to leave a one-star review later.
"Sigh, why is it so dark in here?"
I couldn't see a thing in front of me.
Then again, I suppose it's only natural that it'd be dark.
It only looks bright in things like anime.
In reality, that's all done for the reader's convenience.
I took some oil from my inventory and poured it on myself.
Then, when I lit it with a match, the area around me glowed brightly.
"Good. Now I can see."
If my stomach gets pierced now and a little brother in a straw hat starts wailing in front of me, it'll be a perfect reenactment of the original.
But enough of that bullshit.
There was no way there'd be any treasure in here, but it was still fascinating to see the inside of a living creature with my own two eyes.
I took a few steps and ventured deeper inside.
-Squish. Sizzle. Squish. Sizzle.
With every squishy step, I could hear the sound of flesh cooking from the fire on my feet.
Looking back, a trail of bright red, burn-like marks remained where I had walked.
-Kyaaaaaaahk!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Aha."
No wonder I kept hearing that loud noise every time I walked.
So I absentmindedly ran around in circles inside.
Like back when I was a kid, leaving footprints on a fresh white canvas of snow.
The only difference was that this wasn't snow, but the flesh of a living creature.
Anyway, after leaving a trail of red marks as I went deeper, I saw it.
"Oh shit, what's this?"
A bubbling, boiling green liquid came into view.
If it had been any darker, I would have realized it only after I'd already taken a dip.
"Stomach acid?"
I took a piece of popcorn from my inventory and tossed it in.
-Sizzzz...
Guess it was stomach acid.
The path ahead of me was like a sea of green stomach acid, so it looked impossible to go any further.
I had no choice but to light a fire nearby to illuminate my surroundings.
I did this by wrapping an oil-soaked cloth around a wooden stick to make a torch.
-Fwoosh.
I lit the torch and stuck it into the fleshy ceiling.
-Kyaaaaaaahk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After sticking about eight of them up there, I had lighting that could rival a chandelier.
"It's dirtier inside than I thought?"
The interior was now brightly lit.
If I said it was clean, that would be a death flag, so I said it was dirty.
And it's not like the inside of a body would be clean anyway.
"Hmm~ Time to farm."
The stomach acid in front of me seemed like it would be a good hunting tool, so I took out a flask from my inventory and filled it.
Then I took out some branches, built a small pyre, and lit a fire.
"Let's have some seafood for the first time in a while."
I hadn't eaten seafood once since I was transmigrated.
I was never a huge fan of seafood, but it wasn't like I hated it, either.
Not having it for so long made me crave it at least once.
'A sea monster should count as seafood, right?'
First, I went to the nearby fleshy wall and sliced off a small piece with my knife.
-Kyaaaaaaahk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At that, the inside began to shake violently.
The sudden tremor made me accidentally drop the meat I was holding.
"Ah, shit. Why's it shaking so much? What are they doing out there?"
First, I sliced it thin and tried it as sashimi.
[Status Effect Resistance (B+) has activated. Purifying deadly poison.]
"Looks like it was poisonous."
Is it a type of pufferfish?
My stomach rumbled a bit. A moment later, it settled down again.
"But it tastes like salmon?"
It did.
It was poisonous, but it had no effect on me.
I guess this is that so-called immunity to all poisons.
"...It tastes like crap."
It tasted like salmon, but it was bad salmon.
Usually, poisonous creatures are fucking delicious once you remove the poison, but this thing was just poisonous and tasted like salmon on the verge of going bad.
"Ah, tsk. If it was tasty, I was going to scrape it clean and take everything but the skin."
I wouldn't eat this even if you paid me.
Or maybe not? Actually, that makes it even better, doesn't it?
I sliced off a large chunk of flesh and put it in my inventory.
It would be a lot of fun to make some disgusting food with this.
Later, if someone pisses me off, I'll have to make them a special dish using this.
"One star for now."
I took out my sword from my inventory and carved into the wall, like a caveman leaving a mural.
-Luke was here.
You know how some snack bars have walls completely covered in writing?
I started scribbling all over, just like that.
"Hehehe. You son of a bitch. I'll teach you what happens when you pick up and eat random things off the street."
A monster's insides are different from a normal creature's.
I didn't know how deep I'd gone, but if I looked up a bit, I could see its internal organs.
I headed for the nearest organ.
It wasn't like I'd know which organ was which just by looking, so I planned to open them all up.
I stopped in front of a wrinkled piece of flesh with blood vessels protruding from it. I didn't know what it was, but I cut a vessel and poured in some alcohol I had in my inventory.
Don't they say the liver breaks down alcohol?
So what happens if you pour alcohol directly into the liver?
I didn't know which one was the liver, so I just poured alcohol into every vessel I saw.
"Drinking alone is boring. Here, have some snacks. You should be grateful."
Where's the best place for drinking snacks closest to the sea?
A sashimi restaurant, of course.
I cut the Sea Serpent sashimi I'd prepared earlier into small pieces and stuffed them into the blood vessel.
At that, blood spurted from the severed vessel like a fountain.
"What? No spicy dipping sauce?"
You picky bastard.
Sorry, I don't have any red chili paste right now, so I can't make you any.
So I took out a container of chili powder instead.
"I'll give you some chili powder instead. Here, eat up."
Amused by the fussy vessel, I let the chili powder flow into its bloodstream.
***
Meanwhile, outside.
"Uh... Miss Luna, what do we do?!"
"I-I don't know..."
After Luke had been eaten.
Luna and Yui were staring blankly at the spot where he had disappeared.
What were they supposed to do now?
They couldn't just follow him in to see if he was alive.
"He's probably alive and doing something weird in there anyway... right? Maybe."
They hadn't seen him get chewed to death, so he was probably swallowed whole and doing something strange inside.
"For now, let's do what we have to do."
"Yes!"
Everyone here had come prepared to die, so an unexpected situation like this wouldn't halt the raid or make a rescue the top priority.
Even though things had been going smoothly so far, an A-rank monster was no different from a natural disaster like an earthquake or a typhoon.
If anything, he'd be remembered as a noble sacrifice after the raid was over.
"Fire!!"
-Boom! Boom! Boom!
The second volley.
They had taken the opportunity while Luke was being eaten to quickly regroup and attack.
-Kyaaaaaaahk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All its other attacks had been blocked, and its breath weapon had been canceled.
The Sea Serpent, having been continuously attacked, was visibly accumulating more and more wounds from the damage.
Red blood flowed from various spots on its blue body, and the fins on its back were tattered like torn paper.
The adventurers, for their part, were not unscathed.
For starters, a small part of the ship had been torn off when Luke was eaten. In the subsequent exchanges, they had failed to block completely, resulting in various scrapes from flying ice shards.
Furthermore, the prolonged battle seemed to be pushing the adventurers to their physical limits.
It was time to bring this battle to a close.
At this kill-or-be-killed juncture, both sides played their trump cards.
The Sea Serpent struck first.
It acted as if it were gathering its breath, opening its mouth, but instead, it launched a blue orb toward the sky.
The blue orb then burst with a *pop*, scattering chunks of ice in every direction.
Each chunk of ice was large enough to be the tip of an iceberg.
"Everyone, spread out in pairs! Defend your positions and block the falling ice! If even one gets through, we're all dead!"
The adventurers moved in perfect sync, spreading out evenly across the deck to defend their positions.
Yui and Luna also moved to an open spot to block the falling ice.
The falling chunks of ice were so large that it took at least two B-rank or higher adventurers to shoot one down.
If it weren't for a strong adventurer like Hazel, who could handle two chunks of ice on her own, this raid would have been annihilated long ago.
The ice that didn't fall on the deck crashed into the nearby sea.
The impact created massive waves that violently rocked the ship.
"Grab onto anything, a railing or a pillar! If you fall, consider yourself dead!"
While everyone was struggling to keep their balance, grabbing onto something on Hazel's command,
the Sea Serpent seized the opportunity and began to gather its breath.
"That son of a bitch...! Everyone, prepare to defend—"
But then.
-Kyaaaaaaahk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
""...?""
It sprayed its breath in a strange direction, away from the ship, and when it finished, the Sea Serpent's eyes were bloodshot.
'...Sir Luke. Just what in the world are you doing in there...?'
***
"Heave-ho."
I was a mountain climber now.
Like someone scaling an ice wall, I'd sharpened the end of a blunt piece of wood to use as a makeshift ice axe.
I was climbing back up the way I'd fallen, driving wooden stakes into the fleshy wall. As I went, I also set up a domino chain of bombs.
I'd finished farming below, and there was nothing else to see, so I was on my way up.
-BOOM!!
-Kyaaaaaaahk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Oh, shit."
A sudden impact shook the insides violently.
'I almost got sent back to the starting town.'
If that had happened, I'd have been so pissed I might have stopped climbing and just become a human drill to burst through the monster's stomach.
When I reached a point where I could see its tongue, I could glimpse the situation outside every time the Sea Serpent bared its teeth.
"Ooh..."
Is this the protagonist's point of view from inside a robot in a sentai show?
It's fun, like I'm controlling this giant body.
"Hmm~ What to do now?"
There were a lot of things I'd like to try, but why waste so much effort on something that was going to die anyway?
Since I went to the trouble of visiting, I should at least leave a present behind.
I headed for the Sea Serpent's uvula.
Just like its body, the uvula was huge.
At this size, punching it obviously wouldn't even make it blink.
I took some bombs from my inventory and tied them to both sides of the uvula with rope.
"Just one would be no fun! Here, a taste of true Korean generosity!"
I tied another bomb.
"Two? Just giving two is no fun either!"
Here, have three bombs!
After completely wrapping the uvula with bombs, I stuck a note on top.
[BarksAtBadFood.
★☆☆☆☆ Date: I-dunno-I-dunno-I-dunno
Woof woof woof woof grrr woof woof woof woof grrr woof woof woof woof woof woof]
Then I connected it to the domino chain and lit the fuse.
"Pop pop~ Tropicana~"
A fizzy, popping, bomb-flavored carbonated drink.
It's delicious if you drink it.
After some time, when the fuse had burned all the way down,
-BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!!
The carbonation 'exploded' inside the Sea Serpent's mouth.
-Kieeeeeeehk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Sea Serpent roared in agony.
I was thrown out of the Sea Serpent's mouth by the force of the explosion.
"Sir Luke!?"
"L-Luke!?"
I heard the voices of Luna and Yui as I flew through the air.
I pulled off ten somersaults in mid-air and landed gracefully on the deck.
With my feet together and my arms spread out in a Y-shape.
The two of them came running over, panting.
"Sir Luke! Are you all right?!"
"Luke, are you okay...?"
"Oh. Luna, Yui. I brought back a souvenir from my trip."
I took out the chunk of flesh I'd cut off earlier from my inventory.
"Want to try some? It's Sea Serpent sashimi, straight from the source."
"No... I'm fine, thank you."
"M-me too..."
What the.
And here I went through all that trouble to get it for them.
"This is the last one, you bastards!! Don't leave a single drop of mana, pour it all in!!"
Just then, I heard Hazel's voice.
Come to think of it, I hadn't gotten any experience points yet, so I guess the raid wasn't over.
-Boom! Boom! Boom!
The sound of cannons.
The sound of magic flying through the air.
And...
[Level Up! Check your status!]
[Level Up! Check your status!]
[Level Up! Check your status!]
[Level Up! Check your...]
The sound of level-up notifications.
The Sea Serpent slammed its head down onto the surface of the sea.
Afterward, its long body floated to the surface, bringing the raid to an end.
The experience from an A-rank raid monster was...
In a word.
"Amazing! Incredible!"