Dragon Hunter (2)
Thwack—!
The harpoon drove true between the Sea-Serpent’s jaws, punching halfway through its soft throat and locking itself in place so the beast could not simply thrash free and flee.
Kyaaaaak—!
The Sea-Serpent’s violent thrashing yanked my body along by the connecting tentacles as if I weighed nothing.
“Urgh—this thing’s ridiculously strong!”
I spread the tentacles wide and tried to haul it the opposite way the way an octopus moves, but the hundreds-fold difference in mass was not something I could overcome so easily.
Watch your flank!
Huh? Flank? What do you mean by—khh…!
Crunch—!
The Sea-Serpent’s thrashing tail smashed into my right arm with a deafening boom and hurled me several meters backward. Even though the blow only grazed me, the impact was enough to pulverize ribs. If Darwin had not instantly sheathed the collision zone in exoskeleton, I would have blacked out on the spot.
Harder than I expected…!
It might not have reached full adulthood, but a sub-dragon was still a sub-dragon. Even with its dragon blood diluted to the point it had forgotten how to fly, the creature’s savagery and raw physical power remained pure copies of the original.
Rumble—rumble—!
The current twisted in a strange, unnatural way, bending in a direction completely different from before. I realized at once that the beast was trying to finish me off.
Breath…!
The most powerful weapon and symbol of the dragonkin. It would not reduce a kingdom to ash the way the dragons of myth could, yet a Sea-Serpent’s breath still packed terrifying force—especially underwater.
Darwin must have sensed the wrongness in the current as well; she reeled in every tentacle she could and simply severed the ones too far to recover. An instant later my body was plated in exoskeleton, bracing for the coming shock.
The chaotic currents that had been thrashing the surroundings collapsed into a single tiny point inside the Sea-Serpent’s maw. Then, with a blue bioluminescent flash, the condensed force shot straight at me.
The shockwave hammered the exoskeleton. Cracks spider-webbed across the carapace. The sheer force of the impact made me feel as though I might lose consciousness for a moment.
Master…! Your unique ability…!
I thought I heard Laplace’s voice, but my head refused to work properly. My body felt strangely comfortable—was this a dream?
Oxygen must be supplied…
Dizzy. I felt like I had been doing something important…
Place your hand over your heart!
Huh? Heart…?
I had no idea what she meant, yet something told me I should obey.
Good. Now slowly circulate the blood flow.
Circulate the blood…?
Ah—like this…
Oxygen reached my brain and consciousness flooded back.
“Khuh…!”
Only then did I realize a full third of Darwin’s body had been blasted away. The exoskeleton that had taken the breath head-on was cracked and ruined beyond any further use. Yet I felt no real worry. The hyper-regeneration I had taken from the magical beast could restore shattered armor without trouble.
Leaving the rapidly mending body behind, I looked at the Sea-Serpent—which now almost seemed pitiful. After unleashing its breath, its body was hardening at terrifying speed. The paralytic toxin I had injected the day before seized the opening left by the massive energy expenditure and raced through its flesh. Fully half of the creature had already turned to stone.
Kyaaaaak—!
The Sea-Serpent bared its needle-sharp fangs in defiance. Knowing that every second worked against it, the beast dragged its half-frozen body forward and charged.
I could not help a flicker of surprise. Even after so much time under an extreme toxin, it still managed this much movement—its resistance to poison must have been monstrous. Even so, its body was weakened to the limit. Darwin was still regenerating and far from peak condition, yet she was still better off than the serpent. And we still had a hidden card.
Darwin. Let’s do that.
Darwin’s reaction carried a clear note of reluctance. Last time she had shown a pretty violent physiological rejection. Still, no better idea presented itself, so she began reshaping her body into something new.
Detaching from her parasitic form for the first time in a while, Darwin twisted and split into two. Two became four, four became eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four… The geometric fission continued until more than a thousand separate bodies swam free. That was not even her true limit; she simply lacked enough organic mass to go further.
Each fragment was small enough to rest on a palm, yet their power was anything but small. The swarm took the shape of giant water bugs and, recognizing their target, surged toward the Sea-Serpent.
A four-digit tide of insects rushing at it made the serpent flinch in open panic. Individually they were tiny enough to crush in an instant, but as a mass they felt like a whale bearing down on it.
The Sea-Serpent lashed its tail. Dozens of the little lives were snuffed out in a single blow, yet the loss was negligible against the whole. Darwin’s swarm closed in, driving their mandibles between the scales and chewing into living flesh.
While the serpent’s vision was blocked, its orientation scrambled, and its body continued to petrify, I used the remaining tentacles inside me to forge a final harpoon.
Perfect.
I gripped the black harpoon in my right hand, closed one eye, and took aim. Target: the Sea-Serpent’s skull. While it was distracted by Darwin, this was the perfect moment for the finishing blow.
“Hup…!”
Whoosh—!
The black harpoon sliced through the water. Under normal circumstances the serpent might have dodged easily, but Darwin’s swarm had blinded it; it never even registered the attack in time.
Thud—!
The tentacle-forged harpoon punched clean through the Sea-Serpent’s head. Once inside, it unraveled into multiple tentacles that tore the skull apart from within.
And then—
Grrrk—
With a final, feeble death rattle, the Sea-Serpent’s corpse drifted in the deep. Crimson dragon blood bloomed through the water, announcing the victor of the duel. Only then did the tension drain from my body.
Got it…
It had been a hard fight in more ways than one.
Darwin began recombining her thousand-plus fragments. The pieces that had been destroyed regenerated by devouring the Sea-Serpent’s carcass. When she finally returned to her original form, I stroked her body and thought about the fission ability.
Instant birth and instant reproduction… It’s definitely a powerful ability.
If I ever released Darwin into an ecosystem with the intent of ending the world, and assuming no human interference, she would swallow the planet in under a month. Maybe even a week.
That thought made me a little uneasy.
She’s only a year old—honestly, all I did for that first year was feed her a few rare species. This is only her second real battle, and she already took down a Sea-Serpent. Can that even be called a normal growth rate?
I should hold back on the fission for a while.
If I split her into dozens of pieces right now and sent them out to harvest genes, her growth would leap to an entirely different dimension. Whether I could still control a Darwin that had grown that way was another question entirely.
And Darwin herself doesn’t seem to enjoy splitting that much.
She had been designed from the start to be capable of fission, yet the very act of becoming many seemed to trigger deep discomfort; every time she split she showed clear rejection. From the standpoint of managing her stress, fission did not look like a good option.
Ah, crap—I still have to catch the ship.
I shot upward, broke the surface, and finally released the breath I had been holding.
“Pwah!”
Even with Darwin’s help I could perform cutaneous respiration, but breathing with lungs still felt more natural. I scanned the direction the cruise ship had vanished and was relieved to see it had not yet pulled completely out of reach—maybe an hour of hard swimming would close the gap.
While preparing to swim, I felt something alien at my rear.
“This is…”
Something both familiar and completely new had grown from my backside.
“A tail…?”
It resembled a snake’s yet also carried subtle echoes of the Sea-Serpent’s own tail, and it was already propelling me forward with easy strokes. That was not all. Black scales had sprouted across my body, almost identical to the ones on the creature I had just slain.
It took only a moment to realize who was responsible.
“Darwin, is this you?”
Until now Darwin’s body had changed countless times, but mine never had. While I was still puzzling over it, she simply drew the tail and scales back inside as if to say there was nothing to worry about.
“Uh… so this is a new ability we just gained, right?”
Darwin gave an affirmative pulse and extended the tail and scales again. Only then did I understand why she had done it.
“This… my swimming speed is completely different from before.”
The scales covering my body cut water resistance with ruthless efficiency, while the new Sea-Serpent tail acted as a perfect fin. Add the tentacles and I could outswim most fish without breaking a sweat.
Shall we test it?
With Darwin’s help I began to move. Within moments I realized I was swimming far faster than I had imagined—fast enough to casually overtake a cruise ship doing more than thirty knots.
“This… is seriously amazing.”
Just like Darwin’s tentacles, the Sea-Serpent’s tail and scales could be summoned whenever needed.
“You really left me a lot of gifts.”
I offered a brief word of thanks toward the Sea-Serpent’s corpse already sinking into the abyss, then climbed aboard the cruise ship.
Even though it was well past midnight, guards were still on deck.
“I’m telling you, some girl jumped off the deck!”
“No way. If it was a girl she’d be an Academy freshman—are you saying she tried to kill herself?”
“How should I know?!”
I slipped past the arguing guards, returned to my cabin, and let the hot shower wash every trace of salt from my skin.
“Heh-heh~ Today turned out pretty productive. Hope tomorrow’s the same.”
I wish you another fine day tomorrow.
“Thanks, Laplace. Good night.”
I threw myself onto the bed. Tomorrow’s me still had a great deal of work to do.