The Lord of the Sea Wakes
At the same moment.
Four monsters were swimming through the test zone off Kizen's outer coast.
They were Harddiles — 4th-Grade Danger reptilian monsters reminiscent of saltwater crocodiles.
In truth, the being controlling them was someone else entirely.
[Plan A initiated. Avenge Brother Thalaze. Mission must be completed.]
It was Alaze, one of the Ancient Undead of Legion Commander Magnus.
Alaze possessed the power to freely command any monster or undead that had consumed its flesh.
[Gwaegong lair located. Operation begins.]
The crocodile monsters made for the deep sea, toward a massive underwater cave that yawned there. In unison, the monsters poured into the tunnel.
GUWOOOOOOOOOOM!
The entire cave began to shake violently, as though an undersea earthquake had struck.
[Hold.]
Alaze ordered the monsters to stand by.
From the black depths at the tunnel's endless end, something enormous was emerging, so vast it seemed to fill the passage whole — like a train appearing out of a tunnel of darkness.
KWAAAAAAM!
A gigantic maw burst from within and swallowed the saltwater crocodiles whole in a single bite.
Crunch. Crunch.
With every movement of its jaw muscles came the wet sounds of flesh tearing and bones snapping.
The monster finished its meal and slid back into the undersea cave without a sound.
All that remained in the sea was stillness, and the faint red residue of drifting blood.
"Alright! While we take a short break, let's refresh everyone's memory on the rules of the 3rd BMAT!"
At the Kizen campus, where a huge crowd had gathered, the announcer was shouting into a voice-amplification crystal.
"As you've all seen, the early portion of the exam was a coin scramble! But from the mid-to-late stages, the battlefield expands dramatically — because the oceanic monster hunt and the point competition are about to begin!"
When he spread his arms in a signal, the main screen displayed a nautical chart. At the chart's center was drawn a circle, with a small gap punched into one side of it. Beyond the circle stretched an endless expanse of sea.
"The circle you see in the center is the 'Inner Sea,' where the coin scramble took place! It's shallow enough for students to move freely along the seabed! And once you pass beyond the circle, you reach the true ocean — the 'Outer Sea' — teeming with marine monsters! Hunt monsters there to earn points, and collaboration between students is permitted as well!"
The main screen changed. Students who had ventured into the Outer Sea could be seen hunting monsters, every one of them riding some kind of small wooden boat.
"Of course, there's no footing out in the Outer Sea! But pay 500 points with your Tongue Pad, and Kizen will drop a small one-person wooden boat from the sky for you! With that, you can rest even in the open water and manage your pace! Kizen has clearly gone to great lengths to help students focus on the exam! Now, next up — a look at the monster species of the Outer Sea!"
On the screen beside the main display, the types of monsters and their point values scrolled past in a shimmering list.
"The waters host everything from 2nd-Grade Danger monsters all the way up to 5th-Grade Danger monsters — a tremendous variety! Ah, Professor Jane! What is that one?"
The announcer pointed at the monster at the very top of the screen. Jane raised her own amplification crystal.
"That is the 5th-Grade Danger super-large monster, the Gwaegong. It only leaves its cave for about two hours a year. You won't encounter it during the exam, so you may disregard it."
Having said that much, Jane let out a deep sigh.
She couldn't think of it as anything but Kizen headquarters playing a prank, putting a monster students could never possibly catch on the list in the first place. It wasn't as if anyone could even confirm whether the Gwaegong was in these waters at all.
"Ooooh! A hundred thousand points?! Incredible!! Ordinary 2nd- and 3rd-Grade monsters are worth 100 to 500 points — and this thing is worth a hundred thousand! Take that one down, and first place is guaranteed, no questions asked!"
Meanwhile, Simon was conserving his strength in the Inner Sea, where the coin scramble was underway.
The exam lasted four hours. Even at its longest, Deimos's usable time was barely two.
He had to fight while managing his pace as carefully as possible.
He wanted, above all, to avoid the worst-case scenario: exhausting his power late in the exam, only for his rivals to come swarming after a Simon who sat high on the rankings.
Checking his Tongue Pad, he saw that plenty of students had already headed out to the Outer Sea to hunt monsters. The rankings were flickering up and down.
Well then, I suppose it's about time I got going too.
At last, Simon drew his sword. Roughly two hours of exam time remained — it seemed the right moment to head for the Outer Sea.
Simon mounted Deimos and raced across the water.
Hup!
Activating his air magic circle, he plunged into the water in one breath — and beneath the waves, poison-spewing squid known as Pulpas were swarming.
Simon gripped Deimos's body tight with both legs and aimed the Bone Armour — Handgun fitted to his right hand.
POW! POW!
One shot, one kill. He cut his way through the Pulpas. At 300 points apiece, they were decently rewarding. Naturally, their poisonous attacks did Simon no harm whatsoever.
I hope this BMAT improves people's image of Professor Byeolya a little.
Having cleared away several Pulpas, Simon rose back to the surface. The Outer Sea was just ahead. The monsters there paid out far more generous points.
There it is!
The Inner Sea where Simon stood and the Outer Sea beyond differed from the very color of the water. The Inner Sea, ringed by Kizen's safety barriers, was a clear, transparent emerald through which the seabed was visible — while the Outer Sea was simply a deep, dark blue.
Staring at it too long made him feel as though the sea might swallow him whole.
"?"
And yet, in the stretch between the Inner Sea and the Outer, boats were clustered thick as a fleet.
The students who had bought boats for 500 points were hovering in place instead of pressing on into the Outer Sea.
Simon drifted closer.
Several students on the small wooden boats looked at the skeleton whale he was riding with eyes full of envy.
Simon moved forward slowly, scanning for a familiar face.
Fortunately, there was one.
"Toto!"
Toto whirled around at the sound of his name, his face going slack with shock.
"S-Simon?! What is that thing?!"
"Ah."
Simon gave an awkward smile.
"A skeleton made from a Deimos."
Toto let out a gasp, gazing back and forth between Simon and Deimos with a look half admiration, half envy.
"Amazing! You're pushing Summoning even out at sea!"
Then, having shouted that, Toto's face suddenly fell and he hung his head.
"When they said it was ocean-themed, I switched over to Jet-Black Mechanics right away."
"Haha, I don't think there's a right answer to a question like that. You prepared smartly — that's what counts."
Toto seemed to be itching to touch Deimos, but the whale held itself in a wary stance, so he only fluttered his hand hesitantly near it.
"By the way, Toto — why is everyone stopped here? What's going on?"
"Ah, that's……"
Toto pointed ahead with a frightened expression.
"There's something…… out there, I think."
"Something?"
Just then, one male student could be seen boldly steering his boat out toward the Outer Sea.
He glanced back at his teammates, who were hovering in a terrified standby, and called out.
"Geez, you cowards! I told you, it's fine, right? I'll just go take a look myself, so——!"
FWOOOOOOSH!
That was the boy's last word.
His body dropped into the sea and vanished without a trace.
"HUUURK!"
"What the hell! What HAS that been this whole time?!"
Several students who had witnessed it shrieked and began wheeling their boats around.
"Forget it — better to just farm points in the Inner Sea."
"R-Right!"
The students began turning back one after another. Toto did the same, swinging his bow around.
"Simon, there's definitely something out there. You should pull back too, and come back in an hour or——"
It happened then.
Beneath the fleeing students, something jet-black fell over the sea like a shadow.
"!"
The outline was so enormous that even covering every boat-riding student in the vicinity would have left it to spare.
Simon felt every hair on his body stand on end.
The other students' faces drained bone-white with terror. They began to flee, shrieking bloodcurdling screams.
Run, Deimos!
Simon's Deimos shot forward at maximum speed. And then—
FWOOOOOOOOOOSH!
The sea rose up like a mountain, and the gaping maw of a colossal monster burst through it.
"AAAAAAAH!"
"HURK!"
Several students slid straight into the monster's open mouth, and the creature snapped its jaws shut with a tremendous clap. From all around came the sound of teleportation charms triggering.
Simon and Deimos dodged by a hair's breadth and plunged into the sea, then fled swiftly across the surface.
[KHAHAHAHA! Now this is fun! Very fun indeed! This unhinged madness — now THAT'S Kizen for you!]
Personally, I'm not having any fun at all!
Just then, he saw the monster's head turning.
The great vertical pupil of a reptilian beast — something between a sea lizard and a dragon — fixed itself on Simon.
You've got to be kidding me.
FWOOOOOOOOOOSH!
The monster cut across the water and began chasing after Simon. Students caught in its path had chunks carved straight out of their Barrier Gauges.
"Deimos! Into the water!"
With his air magic circle active, Simon stroked Deimos's head and gave the order, and Deimos dove straight down.
'!'
Seen from beneath the waves, his mouth fell open in disbelief.
A monstrous mass of flesh was swimming along, churning its limbs, so enormous that — to put it mildly — the entire ocean seemed to narrow around it.
No doubt about it.
Simon's eyes went wide.
That's the very top of the list — the 100,000-point monster. The Gwaegong.
Pier's boisterous laughter rang out.
[KHAHAHA! Kizen went and woke the thing up on purpose and released it into the exam grounds!]
A-Are you serious? Kizen couldn't possibly be that reckless.
[Why else would they slap points on a thing like that? It's a dare — catch it if you can!]
Then, behind him, a brilliant light was flashing.
When Simon looked back, energy was gathering in the monster's gaping maw.
A breath attack? That's just cheating!
Simon instantly fired an Absolute Order into Deimos, who had been swimming forward. The whale's trajectory wrenched sharply downward, and almost in the same breath, the incoming blast roared past Simon and detonated into a colossal explosion.
'……Whoa.'
Simon's soul nearly left his body. It was as if a hole had been punched clean through the sea.
They seriously want us to hunt that thing?
In truth, since the Gwaegong lived only in the undersea caves at the bottom of the ocean, it posed almost no threat to humans.
Humans had simply classified it as Danger Grade 5 on their own authority — its actual strength was on an entirely different plane from the other Grade 5s.
For now — let's just run as far as we can.
WAAAAAAAH!
The crowd's cheers hit a fever pitch at the colossal event that had erupted without warning.
A showdown between the super-large monster Gwaegong and Simon.
"Simon's Deimos is astonishingly fast too! On par with — or even a hair faster than — the Gwaegong's speed! Who else could hold out against that monster like this?! And furthermore——!"
The announcer flung out an arm and shouted in a voice thick with emotion.
"If the Gwaegong reaches the Inner Sea, it will be utter carnage! But look! Simon is luring that monster out into the Outer Sea all by himself! Sacrificing his own safety to protect ordinary students! This is noblesse oblige! The dignity of Special Admission No. 1!!"
While the announcer spun his own embellishments and the spectators cheered over Simon's "heroic posture" as they pleased, Jane alone kept her head.
They actually think this is a lure? The Gwaegong's appearance is strange enough as it is — and now it's chasing Simon and Simon alone, relentlessly.
It was exactly as she said.
Simon was too busy running for his life to think of anything else, and the Gwaegong kept unleashing breath after breath.
Each time, the sea split open and surged skyward — it was madness. Fish and monsters caught in the onslaught drifted belly-up, bobbing lifeless in the water.
Jane drew a new communication crystal from her robes.
"This is Jane."
- Yes! Exam headquarters!
"A hundred thousand points aside, I believe we need to kill the Gwaegong before the damage spreads across the entire exam."
- I'll relay that to the Head Proctor immediately.
Under ordinary circumstances, Jane would have dispatched agents on her own authority, but she was currently doubling as a first-year professor, which stripped her of any right to interfere with the exam. The BMAT was solely the headquarters' domain.
A short while later, the reply came back.
- The Head Proctor says we should observe a little longer.
"I'm sorry — what? Are they in their right mind right now?"
- Ah. That is……
The voice through the communication crystal hesitated for a moment, then continued.
- That student, Simon Polentia…… It looks like he's actually trying to fight the Gwaegong?
"What?"
Jane's eyes snapped to the screen.