Dragon Catcher (1)
The moment I slipped beyond the barrier that radiated outward from the cruise ship, I felt countless marine monsters fix their gazes on me.
“Hup…!”
A black tentacle shot from my fingertips and skewered a jellyfish-like beast. Its durability was so pitiful that piercing the outer membrane took almost no effort—but what came next was the real problem.
Regeneration?
The collapsed flesh began knitting itself back together at terrifying speed. In less than twenty seconds the jellyfish-monster had restored its original form.
This one’s going to be a pain…
Ordinary physical attacks clearly wouldn’t be enough.
Shuuuk—!
A tentacle lashed out from the creature and streaked toward me. Darwin’s superior dynamic vision—honed by devouring every sort of monster and animal—kicked in at once, and I barely managed to intercept the strike.
The force behind the tentacle wasn’t overwhelming; Darwin’s own appendages stopped it without much trouble. If anything, we held the advantage. Having absorbed demon genes, Darwin’s tentacles could hoist several tons with ease.
Good. We can push through like this.
Darwin read my intent and tried to unfurl dozens more black tentacles from my back. Yet something went wrong; the body began thrashing and twisting as if the limbs refused to obey.
Huh…? Wait—
I suddenly remembered the jellyfish’s most infamous trait.
Paralytic venom?
Countless tiny stingers coating the monster’s pale tentacles were pumping neurotoxin straight into Darwin’s flesh. The dose was more than enough to freeze even Darwin’s body, at least for a short while.
But if that’s all you’ve got, I’m almost disappointed.
Exposed to the toxin, Darwin’s cells raced to adapt. Enzymes that neutralized the paralytic poison flooded every corner of the body, breaking the venom down almost as fast as it entered.
There’s a reason they call Darwin a perfect organism.
Beyond the ability to absorb and rewrite foreign genes, Darwin possessed another signature power: damage adaptation. When struck by a particular form of attack, the body learned from the experience and thereafter either ignored the same threat or countered it with ruthless efficiency—a kind of real-time evolution. Pure blunt force could not be adapted to, but toxins and viruses were met with near-perfect immunity.
After only a brief moment Darwin moved again, fully resistant.
Kwachik—!
Tentacles reshaped into crushing grips seized the jellyfish-monster at a dozen points and tore it into dozens of ragged pieces. Before regeneration could begin, one of those tentacles ballooned into a massive maw and swallowed every translucent scrap of flesh.
Let’s see… what did we pick up this time?
Absorbing genes was one thing; how Darwin would actually express them was always a gamble. Harmful sequences were filtered out automatically, yet even useful ones sometimes proved structurally difficult to implement at once.
The instant the jellyfish genes settled into Darwin’s body, I smiled.
Hyper-regeneration and paralytic venom.
The wounds left by the monster’s stingers sealed over in seconds. Across the newly healed surface, microscopic barbs sprouted—too fine for the naked eye—and began secreting a venom potent enough to drop an elephant.
Hyper-regeneration was a must-have ability I had been waiting for; its utility was endless. The paralytic toxin was equally versatile.
Hunting them myself really is the most efficient way.
With that thought I reshaped several of Darwin’s tentacles into mantis-like blades—genes taken from a mantis-monster I had felled during the earlier fight with the demon. After reinforcing my arms with Darwin’s strength, I swung at a nearby octopus-like beast. Blood sprayed into the current and bloomed outward in every direction.
I waved a hand through the thick iron scent that now filled the water. The drifting blood instantly hardened into razor-sharp spikes that punched clean through the monster’s body.
Something like this, maybe.
I was starting to feel genuinely strong. Each of these creatures looked at least C-class, yet I was cutting them down with almost casual ease.
So I just have to keep this up for five days?
The voyage would last four nights and five days. Reaching the destination that quickly aboard an ordinary ship would have been nearly impossible, but near-omnipotent magical engineering made it trivial—some method of reducing water resistance to boost speed. Not that the details mattered right now.
Five days of harvesting genes like this would be more than enough to push Darwin’s capabilities to an entirely new level.
Ah—right. I still have to keep up with the ship.
I turned the tentacles into fins and swam hard after the cruise liner that had pulled ahead during the underwater skirmish. Just as I was about to re-enter the barrier’s range, a black silhouette rose from the depths and my eyes flew wide.
That is—!
My body slid aside on pure instinct, escaping the attack zone by a hair. A towering column of water erupted skyward, then collapsed into a rain of droplets. From within that curtain a single monster revealed itself, and I could not help shouting its name.
It was one of the legendary beasts whose very title was used as a rank within Leviathan itself.
“Sea Serpent!”
A subspecies of sea dragon, the terror of ancient sailors. A single specimen had once half-sunk a destroyer. An ultra-large marine monster of the highest order.
“Ugh…!”
Kwagwagwagwa—!
The sea twisted into a whirlpool no ordinary creature could escape. The Sea Serpent’s massive body rode the current and brushed past me so closely that spray exploded in every direction.
I never saw this coming…!
Sea Serpents were common enough in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. They weren’t unheard of in the Pacific either, but finding one on the very first day of the voyage was pure bad luck.
Tentacles erupted from my body and stabbed into the serpent’s hide. Piercing those scales was no easy feat, yet every creature has a weakness. The reverse scale—the so-called reverse scale—offered far less protection than the rest.
Paralytic venom flooded through the embedded tentacles. The colossal sea-snake’s body began to stiffen in real time. Still, thirty meters of muscle could not be put to sleep with a single dose.
Fine. If the quantity isn’t enough, I’ll just make more.
Darwin’s tentacles multiplied, each new strand boring into the serpent’s flesh and pumping more toxin. The creature’s movements grew noticeably sluggish. Realizing it was under attack, it thrashed violently. It possessed no special magical abilities, yet a thirty-meter body was a weapon in its own right.
“Ugh…!”
Caught in the miniature currents generated by its thrashing, my body was flung sideways before I barely recovered my balance.
No wonder they rate these things A-class…!
Depending on size, Sea Serpents ranged from B-class to A-class. I couldn’t pin the exact rank, but this one was clearly well-grown.
Judging by size, it appears to be between a sub-adult and a near-adult. Converted to threat rank: high B-class, or a low A-class at best if we are generous.
The moment Laplace’s assessment reached me, my mind spun into overdrive.
High B-class—maybe low A-class if I was lucky. Could I win?
Darwin had fought a demon to a standstill before, but that demon’s personal combat power had been modest. Had the creature relied on pure physical might instead of monster control, Darwin’s body would have been shredded before it could regenerate.
Still, I had reasons to believe this fight was winnable.
Darwin’s grown a lot since then. We’ve learned plenty of new attack methods.
Back then the only defense had been an insect’s exoskeleton. Now we possessed multiple layers of protection, and the arsenal of offensive options had expanded considerably.
This is doable.
A full adult would have been another story, but this specimen hovered between sub-adult and near-adult. Its scales—said to shrug off light torpedoes—were not yet fully hardened. And with paralytic venom already circulating, its body was steadily locking up.
Dozens of tentacles flayed the serpent’s hide. Even immature dragon scales, however, remained dragon scales; aside from a few shallow scratches, the damage was negligible.
The creature raised its razor-edged scales, sliced through the restraining tentacles, then opened a cavernous maw and lunged straight at me.
Those fangs looked ready to snap me in half—yet the moment felt like an opening.
Six tentacles fused together, their surfaces hardening into layered exoskeleton. The resulting spear—a harpoon forged from Darwin’s own flesh—aimed dead at the serpent’s throat.
“Time for a dragon hunt!”
With the same grim resolve my ancestors once felt when they sailed into open ocean after whales, I gripped the living harpoon. Darwin’s power flooded my muscles, and I hurled the weapon forward with every ounce of strength I possessed.