Named Monster Raid (5): Awakening the Turbulence
Ever since the first Wind Fart incident—that is, after becoming aware of the potential slumbering within her, Turbulence—Rydmila Lionheart had spent every night desperately trying to awaken it. To put it more bluntly, she was searching for ways to make herself Wind Fart.
And she realized something. The method to awaken and harness the mana accumulated in her belly on her own was, ironically, something she could never do in front of others. Of course, there were ways to use it publicly. But if she did, Rydmila as a social entity would never be able to show her face again, and in beastkin society, she would be condemned to live alone in the wilds.
Was there no other way besides social suicide? The answer had been there from the start. Seek help from the being who had awakened the potential inside her. If she didn't know how to control it, just entrust her body to someone who did.
"Hoo."
She steadied her breathing calmly. Below her outstretched hand toward the front, a spear of mana took shape, and mana began to gather there one by one.
And then Rydmila heard a very low chuckle.
A voice different from Phoenix's. It was absurd to even perceive it as a voice, since all her ears picked up was the sound of wind. Yet it rang so clearly because of the opponent's distinctive speech pattern—or rather, because the opponent had appeared right in front of her.
The unidentified entity began to slowly reveal itself. A small giant. Smaller in stature than her, but the beastkin senses, the mana in her heart's core, and the lump of dormant mana in her belly all instinctively told her through every sense.
A god?
"Quiet."
Rydmila shivered at the low, dissonant male voice rumbling from behind the entity that called itself the Wind Magic God.
Rydmila immediately understood what to focus on. But intellect and emotion were different matters. The hand gripping her felt unfamiliar. It was clearly a person wearing clothes, yet it carried a strange aura. As if disguised in human form.
The voice was dissonant too. Deeper than his usual tone, not playful but solemn, flowing not just into her ears but through her entire body.
Phoenix slowly pulled her hand from below, guiding the mana. Though his touch felt utterly foreign compared to before, Rydmila decided to focus on the sensation rising from her lower abdomen.
No matter what phenomenon this was. No matter what Phoenix or this so-called Wind Magic God truly were.
The refreshing sensation filling her lungs made Rydmila nod briefly, then spin the mana spear once.
The entity calling itself the Wind Spirit—a girl with black hair and green bridge piercings on her cat ears—created a mana spear just like hers. Whoosh! Formless wind howled fiercely. It flowed back and forth, endlessly creating air currents, and the girl seized the wind and hurled it forward massively.
No sound. But Rydmila could see it. The area where the tentacle trees had taken root being torn apart by the storm. The wind shredded everything blocking its path, advanced, and turned into the eye of the storm in the enemy's midst, sweeping all away.
Was it real? No. An illusion. The goal she must chase, the path she must follow.
He whispered to her.
His hands no longer gripped her. No contact, but Rydmila entrusted her body to the solid sensation at her back. Whether it was a false sense or real.
The one guarding her back was her classmate, comrade-in-arms, and trusted ally.
"...Do you know that?"
Before throwing the spear, Rydmila slowly voiced the words in her heart.
"Mercenary bands are groups bound by money. Hunters are the same."
Rydmila asked herself. Up until now, how many could she truly entrust her life to on the battlefield? Not blood kin, not bound by money, how many times had she been able to place such faith in a complete stranger?
Never, at least not for A-rank hunter Gale.
But Rydmila Lionheart, student of the academy, was different.
"Not as a mercenary, but as your classmate."
Rydmila hurled the spear forward with force.
"I'll fight alongside you."
For her comrades.
The Wind Spirit winked at Rydmila with a grin.
Heh.
"......"
Rydmila gripped the spear tightly.
"That will never happen."
No matter what the opponent was, Rydmila steeled her resolve. The strong will flowing from her heart.
"Whoa, as expected of Rydmila."
I stepped back from her and pointed to the tentacle tree forest ahead.
"The tentacles are just exploding left and right."
"Ah, aaah, aaaah!!"
Screams erupted from behind. From someone who didn't seem the type to scream, staring ahead in utter panic, tearing at her hair.
"No, my cores!!"
Yurha Silverstar let out a despair-filled shriek. And understandably so—visually, it looked like all the cores were obliterated by Rydmila's Turbulence, turning the tentacle tree forest into a wasteland. Like a hurricane-ravaged area in America, the kind with damage so massive it makes headlines.
Most tentacle trees were sliced clean like sugarcane, leaving only stumps on the ground, their debris soaring sky-high in the hurricane unleashed by Rydmila's mana.
"Senior Yurha. How is that your cores?"
"What?"
"The one who hunted and recovered the monster owns the core, right?"
"The cores are all destroyed—wait."
Yurha, about to argue, stopped mid-sentence.
"Why are you talking like the cores are obviously intact?"
"Because they obviously are. All of them."
"Huh?"
"It just looks like everything's shredded. Oh, don't touch Rydmila."
Rydmila still stood with her hand outstretched ahead. But the mana emanating from her body was far stronger than a typical A-rank, and anyone could see she was controlling the 50-meter tornado ravaging the tentacle tree forest.
"Just wait a bit. Then... ah, it's falling."
Whoosh!
Something began bursting out from atop the tornado. The things that rose to the top finally escaped the vortex and scattered around.
"Debris...!"
"The tentacle tree corpses...!"
Chunks the size of human heads scattered everywhere. A bit grotesque in shape, but I lightly stopped one rolling toward us with my foot like a soccer ball.
"Feel it inside?"
"...A core?"
"You could call it the heart of the tentacle tree. To cut to the chase, Rydmila is currently carving out just the hearts of the tentacle trees like this. With that razor wind, Turbulence."
"........"
Yurha swallowed hard. Her fidgeting fingers suggested she was mentally calculating the economic value of Rydmila's technique.
"Just... picking out the cores...?"
"Yes. The rest are still being shredded inside that tornado. The razor wind chops and slices the tentacle tree bodies, lifting only the core-laden chunks with the updraft and ejecting them outside."
Ideally, you'd keep the cores in the eye of the storm and grind the corpses down to atomic or molecular level. But that's Gale stage, not Rydmila's moniker Gale—wait, her current Gale stage.
"In three minutes, all the minion tentacle trees will be shredded. Then only the boss mob left."
"......You're saying you'll 100% hunt and farm the boss along with the trash mobs?"
"Of course."
As an RPG gamer, this was non-negotiable. If a field has a set number of mobs, farming every resource and EXP until stage clear is gamer law, right?
"Instructor Esta. I have a proposal."
"Speak. I'll hear it if it's not ridiculous."
"For the Tentacle Lily raid—the strategy to conquer Tentacle Release—could you fudge the details appropriately?"
"...What, got a great method that's hard to share publicly?"
Instructor Esta immediately placed her hand on her magic panel.
"A weakness unique to Tentacle Release, or know-how that industry folks would pay through the nose for?"
"Yes. Specifically, a technique that works only on that lily-obsessed bastard over there, not Tentacle Release in general."
I pulled Unia and Evangeline close, one on each side.
"With a combined technique from us three, we can make Tentacle Release commit suicide."
"...Suicide?"
"Yes."
A strategy usable only on angel-infected monsters whose core is angelic power.
"We'll create a massive illusion."
Operation name: Bochoo.
"A beautiful girl illusion."
"Then...."
"It'll be thrilled to have the lilies all to itself, regardless of its offspring."
Thinking it's female, it'll try to rub against the lilies.
"Unaware that beneath it lies the deadliest poison for itself."
The angel, mistaking it for a lily, will touch it. A massive hole—not a halo. Big, hard, thick. The devil's horn.