The Monster in the Deep Forest, Part 3
"Win?"
I held my phone right up to my face and watched the minions fighting the mercenaries who had come to hunt my avatar—especially Lena’s battle.
The one fighting her, swinging a sword while she lashed out with claws and tentacles, was the mercenary captain named Zack. He carried something different from the others—something special.
Lena seemed to be pushing him back with brute force, yet in the end he held out against her onslaught and was counterattacking with inhuman strength.
"Do you see that his name is a different color? That means he’s not like the others. It means he has mana within him."
"Mana?"
"Why don’t you find out what it is for yourself, in the game?"
I was growing impatient, but Agares remained as calm as ever, and no help at all. The Grand Lord was still growing inside its cocoon.
If Lena lost here, everything would be over.
"Hmm. Look at that. The gap in experience seems to be fairly large."
And then, with a sigh from Agares, my eyes widened. Lena, who had been slowly retreating while parrying the enemy’s attacks, had her arm severed and sent spinning through the air.
Lena is enraged.
Would you like to encourage Lena?
📍 Location:
🎁 Reward:
At the same time, the yes-or-no choice appeared once again. At this point, my answer was obviously yes.
Of course, I couldn’t be sure whether my encouragement would be of any real help to her right now.
"What matters is knowing your people well. What sort of temperament the important figures in your faction have. There’s an old saying: one kind word repays a thousand in debt."
That was when Agares left me with a meaningful remark.
He wouldn’t have said something like that for no reason, so I stared at the phone with even more tension than before.
"You’re pretty strong."
"Don’t get cocky, you little monster bitch. This world is full of strong people. A guy like me can’t even be compared to them."
Lena, blackish-red fluid dripping from her severed arm, only gave a faint smile as though she weren’t in pain at all.
But Zack kept his sword leveled at her, his face stiff.
"Cocky? The cocky one is you."
Using a tentacle to pick up her severed arm, she laughed at him all the harder. Around them, everything had already gone quiet.
The five mercenaries who had failed to awaken mana had been brutally slaughtered by the minions.
"You don’t even know what we are."
"What, then? Revolting tentacle monsters?"
What the hell is this girl...
Zack watched Lena press the severed arm against the stump. The cut end twitched, began to mutate, and then the two surfaces slapped together and started regenerating as one.
He had tried to stay composed while provoking her, but cold sweat was beading down his back. Lena looked at her arm, now completely restored, and twisted the corners of her mouth.
"Like you said, we may not be that strong right now. But we won’t stay that way. We’ll keep getting stronger. More and more."
"Nonsense."
"You know how we get stronger? By devouring enemies like you and growing from them!"
The moment Zack angled his blade, Lena’s red eyes flared and her teeth bared. She stamped the ground and lunged forward with a shout.
"Keep fighting me. Cut me again."
"As you wish."
Her murderous red eyes flashed as she twisted her body with inhuman speed, driving him back from every direction.
But Zack also drew up the power sleeping inside him with all his strength. It was crude mana—far too meager to get him into any respectable knight order—but mana all the same.
He, too, swung his sword with speed and force beyond an ordinary man, blocking Lena’s attacks, deflecting them, and even trying to counterattack.
Lena’s fury was certainly destructive, but the difference in experience was huge.
"Aaah!"
His sword cut down one of Lena’s tentacles and slashed a long line across her chest. With a scream, her carapace shattered and fluid sprayed out.
"Kkgh... you crazy—"
"Ha, hahah!"
And yet, even after landing a solid hit, Zack couldn’t finish her off. The instant he was splashed with her fluid—or rather, the instant he inhaled the vaporized fluid—his head swam and his vision wavered.
Eliminate the mercenary captain, Zack.
📍 Location:
🎁 Reward:
At the same time, another incomprehensible message floated up into the air.
"What a dirty trick!"
"Cutting my body and breathing in the poison was your choice."
Using her signature regeneration, Lena began healing the wound in her chest and laughed at the man staggering before her. One of Ascalas’s traits—along with the tentacles—was poison.
It couldn’t compare to the Grand Lord’s, but there was now a meaningful toxin flowing through her blood as well.
"Even so, that won’t be enough."
"Good. Don’t go dying from it. I’m the one who’s going to take you down."
Lena actually liked the fact that he was showing resolve. For someone who had lived her entire life as the weak, preying on others, crushing them, and growing stronger from it was an irresistible temptation—an all-consuming desire.
Having accepted fighting and killing as the default means of proving herself, she had become a battle maniac in pursuit of that electrifying sensation of growth.
That was why she simply kept the other minions who obeyed her orders standing there like scenery.
"Ghk..."
The two clashed again.
This time Zack no longer had any room to spare, and he barely managed to parry her attacks while struggling to counter.
"Did you think you’d win? No. I survived this twisted world, enduring a life even an arrogant brat like you can’t begin to imagine."
"I’ve survived this disgusting, shitty world too!"
Once again, her shoulder was cut open. Then the kick he drove in, bursting with shockwave force, slammed into her abdomen, pulverizing her armor and sending her entrails lurching.
He’s encouraging me!
But Lena, after coughing up a mouthful of blood, only grinned. She had received something unspoken. He was watching this scene right now.
He was cheering for her.
He wanted her to win.
That was enough. From now on, she would live only for that. That was Lena—the loyal warrior of Ascalas.
"You bitch..."
"I won. I won!"
Lena, willing to take the cut and knock aside Zack’s sword, suddenly drew the writhing tentacles rising from her back into her body. Then something shot out from the tip of her outstretched hand, curved sharply, and pierced Zack’s chest in a single instant.
The tentacle, extending straight like a spear, split into four midway through and drove through his throat and four other places in his body.
The light left Zack’s eyes in an instant, and Lena, battered to pieces, pulled the spear free with a crooked smile.
Your avatar has awakened after absorbing experience and growing stronger.
It was late at night, when only the moon lit the darkness. Thanks to Lena and the minions’ struggle, the Grand Lord’s cocoon finished its growth without further interference, and with a cracking sound it split open.
You have gained an additional 100 stat points. Where would you like to invest them?
"Invest them in Insight. The others will handle the fighting from now on."
He put the 100 points into Insight rather than into any other stat. He understood the nature of the Grand Lord.
"Your avatar has achieved growth for the first time. It seems stat points are being awarded as a reward for completing achievements."
"100 into Martial Power and 100 into Insight."
He finished redistributing the Grand Lord’s additional stats as well.
And it wasn’t only the numbers that had changed. Having torn free from the cocoon, the Grand Lord had grown stronger than before.
Now about the size of a city bus, the Grand Lord was armored with larger fangs and a darker, harder exoskeleton, its eight red eyes gleaming in the darkness.
"Ah... Grand Lord."
Then Lena, who had been watching all this, staggered forward. She came on her knees, looking up at the grown Grand Lord with an expression so rapturous it was as if she found it breathtakingly beautiful.
"Please continue. I’d say you’ve finally shed every last trace of being a newbie. As a celebration, let me tell you about a newly updated function."
Agares introduced him to one of the features. The icon that appeared at the top of the screen was none other than a change of perspective.
"This is..."
"From now on, you can view the world through your avatar’s eyes."
The perspective shifted, and he froze. He had been watching the giant spider and the girl kneeling before it from above as though he were a third party, but now he was looking down through the spider’s eyes at the girl kneeling at his feet, gazing up at him.
For some reason, he hesitated for a moment—then did not switch the screen back.
Devour
"Unfortunately, all the prisoners are dead. In truth, this fight was so brutal that it was hard to worry about something like that."
Doesn’t matter. This confirms that ordinary humans aren’t all that useful.
The Grand Lord devoured all the corpses of the mercenaries killed by Lena and the minions.
[Mana. Mana is a miracle that beings of this world can harbor. This miraculous force, which grants the power to surpass limitations, can itself be used to create an extremely high-purity essence of Ascalas.]
[Though faint, it contains mana. The mana circulates through the heart, using the blood vessels as its path in an extremely simple circulation method.]
Only the last corpse—the body of the mercenary captain, Zack—was a little special. With his sharply increased Insight, the Grand Lord analyzed it.
1. Store the essence.
2. Grant part of the absorbed essence to Lena.
📍 Location:
🎁 Reward:
And then, a choice appeared.