Named Monster Raid (3)
The carriage ride had been a bit bumpy and chaotic, but we finally arrived at the zone infested with the A-rank monster Tentacle Lilith.
"Are all those things over there Tentacle Liliths?" Unia asked, gripping her staff with both hands and pointing ahead.
A veritable "forest" stretched out before us, and from the entrance onward, an unsettling aura hung thick in the air, making one's skin crawl.
"Miss Unia, it's an A-rank monster, and it's a plant type. Wouldn't it be nice if all those countless trees right in front of us were the boss specimens?"
"So they’re all separate individuals?"
"Exactly. Just like the pack of wind wolves that wolf boy kept around, those are all Tentacle Lilith offspring."
"Eek...."
Trees two to three meters tall towered toward the sky. If there was one thing making Unia recoil, it was that the skyward-reaching trunks weren't barren branches without leaves—instead, thick stems protruded like thorns.
"Do you know what those are, Miss Unia?"
"S-Senior?!"
Yurha sidled up behind Unia and whispered into her ear.
"Why do you think they’re leaving those Tentacle Lilith offspring alone like that?"
"W-Well...."
"With so many individuals clustered together, monsters that could threaten anyone who gets too close—why let them grow wild in that area unchecked?"
"Because... they’re not a threat?"
Unia leveled her staff forward in response to Yurha's question.
"No matter how much they cluster, they can’t cross the Great Wall, and they’re rooted in place, unable to move."
"Exactly. That’s the reason."
Plant-type monsters. Since they root themselves firmly to the ground and can’t move, they’re far easier for hunters to deal with than animal types.
"You can just bombard them from afar and wipe out an entire area easily. Whether it’s explosive magic or wide-area debilitation spells, against stationary targets, a bit of firepower lets you farm cores with ridiculous ease."
"Farming cores...."
"Killing monsters matters, but massive quantities of mana stones are essential for advancing mana engineering and improving human civilization’s convenience. Didn’t you say you took the mana train to get to the academy, Miss Unia?"
"I did transfer from the train to a bus...."
"To put it extremely, if we had twice as many cores as we do now, we could double the routes, shorten intervals, create more jobs. More cores mean more resources."
It wasn’t wrong. This Breadcademy world, infused with the game developer’s ego, was undeniably steeped in capitalism. In capitalism, money and resources make life convenient. If there’s an easy way to make money in the market—as long as you can control the mortal risk—anyone would dip their toes in.
"Hunting plant-types like these, which are easier than most monsters, and farming their cores? We call that ‘mining.’"
Cores, indeed.
"It’s like the feeling of a miner digging gems from a quarry. The mine could collapse anytime, accidents happen, but once you extract, sort, and realize it’s a gem or mana stone? Everyone cheers. That colony over there’s the same."
Yurha pointed toward the forest entrance.
"What do you think is the biggest difference between where we’re standing now and the wild growth zone where those Tentacle Lilith offspring thrive?"
"...Starting with the obvious, the grass height is different."
Unia gave the first correct answer.
"Why’s that?"
"Because the monster side looks like it’s been burned once."
"Why do you think there are burn marks?"
"...They must’ve done something like this, right?"
Unia responded to Yurha’s rapid-fire questions by aiming her mana staff forward.
"Plant-types are weak to fire, so if you blast flame magic over there, you could incinerate them all, roots and all."
And then she’d unleash fire magic to sweep them away in one go—but
"Don’t do that, Miss Unia."
"Mr. Phoenix?"
"If you set fire there, you’ll regret it big time."
I stopped her from casting Flame Storm by grabbing the hand holding her staff and pulling it down.
"Fire magic happens to be their extreme weakness. They won’t just burn—their cores will melt or empty out completely."
"Spot on, Mr. Phoenix."
Yurha extended her hand into the air, traced a circle, then clenched her other fist and mimed popping it.
"Cores have affinities with mana attributes. You special class folks should know this well. Fire beats wind, wind beats earth, earth beats water, water beats fire."
"Isn’t that basic knowledge before even enrolling? Fundamentals of mana attribute theory."
"Yes, exactly, Miss Unia. So keeping that in mind, trying to burn all those wind-attribute plant monsters would mean no cores for you. Fire magic would vaporize the mana in those wind-infused cores, scattering it back to nature."
"...Doesn’t that contradict itself? There are burn marks on the ground from fire, but now you’re saying not to use fire magic."
Unia extended one hand sideways, conjuring a fireball. She looked ready to hurl it and torch everything if given the word, but she kept glancing between the other teammates, Instructor Esta, and me, holding back.
"Miss Unia."
Rydmila stepped forward, drawing her spear.
"Those burn marks on the ground happened after processing—after extracting all the cores, when they cremated the monster corpses."
"...So we have to deal with them up close to extract the cores?"
"Affirmative."
"Those tentacles?"
"Harvesting always requires hands-on work."
"Eek...!"
Unia recoiled and clung to me.
"We have to handle things like that too...!"
No matter how you sliced it, they looked just like those, but we had no choice but to face these tentacle trees directly.
Yeah. They were thick, sure, but those stems shooting straight up from base to tip, rounding off into long rods—
"Each tree has dozens of finger-like protrusions, making them look grotesque, but that’s just how some monsters are, Miss Unia."
Like human fingers.
Huh? Wasn’t it something else? No way. Tentacles, right? If tentacles implied something lewd, the academy wouldn’t have picked this as a training site.
These monsters were born from ones infused with the angels’ will, after all.
Tentacle Lilith. At its root, it’s a "lily."
Though my knowledge paled compared to Rydmila or Yurha, as someone with 100% clear save data from Breadcademy, I could infer the ecology well enough.
Those finger-like stems are all stamens and pistils. Petals and sepals have been culled away, leaving only the organs needed for pollination—like the fingers angels use to toy with women.
Lily flowers blooming in the monster zone, corrupted by angel power, twisted into this form. Otherwise, we’d be seeing a lily garden like a forest, and if they were pure lilies instead of monsters, they’d transplant them before the Great Wall into a breathtaking lily field viewed from above.
But angel power replaced the petals with countless finger-like tendrils shooting out like dandelions.
Any woman caught by those finger-stems gets transported to the Tentacle Lilith main body for... that sort of treatment.
Come to think of it, stamens and pistils for a flower are—
"Time to plan our strategy."
As I pondered, Instructor Esta checked the clock on her mana panel and drew our attention.
"This generation’s Tentacle Lilith we need to hunt is 1,800 meters ahead. It’s hiding among the trees it’s spawned, same height and build as the others."
"This generation...."
Unia murmured softly, shaping the words with her lips.
This generation implied previous ones existed—and possibly future ones. A Tentacle Lilith-led tentacle tree cluster.
It had to be. No one was abandoning them; C-rank offspring grew over time into full Tentacle Liliths, forming their own forces.
So the best way to clear this area’s clusters was to wipe everything—cores be damned.
But that wasn’t what Unia or the others wanted.
"Anyone have a good plan?"
"Yes, I do."
At least until full-blown apocalypse hit, until people realized they needed to purge the angel power infesting that Tentacle Lilith horde—farming cores was my best contribution.
"As long as it’s not fire magic, right? A wide-area wipe that doesn’t damage the cores."
Anything but fire attribute worked, and our team had a member with area-denial as devastating as Unia’s explosions.
"We’ll use Wind Fart here."