Shining Gold (14): How Dare You Use Summoning Magic in Front of Me
Splash! The submersible carrying two pirates was hauled up from the depths. Through the small window, their faces were frozen in pure terror.
Holding the vessel aloft with both hands, Serpina called out, "You coming out on your own, or do I have to break it open?"
Then she realized they probably couldn't hear anything from outside in there. She was already considering just smashing the thing when a commotion erupted inside. Clank, clank. The cramped space made proper movement nearly impossible, yet it rattled violently for a while before the hatch finally popped open with a loud clack.
"We're out! We're out already! Don't break it!"
"Oh. You actually heard me? I figured the sound wouldn't carry."
"We couldn't hear a damn thing! But your face looked absolutely terrifying!"
"Hey, hey! Shut up! If that woman—no, that person gets angry, we're finished!"
They were saying all of this loud enough for her to hear every word. Serpina let out a soft snort of laughter at the idiotic exchange. Taking any of it seriously suddenly felt equally stupid.
She extended her hand and got straight to business. "Whatever. Just hand over what you stole."
"Ah…."
The pirates' bickering died instantly. They stared at each other, cold sweat pouring down their faces.
"What are you doing? I said hand it over."
They kept their mouths shut and fought a desperate battle with their eyes. Finally the losing subordinate spoke, voice strained.
"Um, well, the thing is…"
"Spit it out. Quickly. Before I turn this thing into scrap."
Serpina rapped her knuckles against the submersible's hull. Seeing the clear palm-shaped dents left on its pressure-resistant surface, the pirate squeezed his eyes shut and confessed.
"We left it behind in the submarine we abandoned earlier!"
"What?"
Serpina turned to look at the discarded submarine. With its cockpit submersible gone, the empty hull had lost buoyancy and was sinking fast. A faint golden gleam flickered from inside it.
To Serpina, it looked exactly like a merchant ship loaded with gold coins plunging to the bottom of the sea.
"My gold!"
She hurled the submersible she was holding.
"Aaaagh!"
A scream burst from the open-hatched vessel as it crashed into the water. They were mages too; they could figure something out. Ignoring them completely, Serpina chased after the sinking solar magic crystal. The submarine had already descended so deep that only a hazy black silhouette remained. Still, with magic it wasn't beyond her reach.
Just as she cast a spell on herself and prepared to dive after it…
"…?"
A second black silhouette had appeared. The newcomer approached the sinking submarine and extended long tentacles, rummaging through it. One tentacle emerged holding the magic crystal that radiated golden light.
The crystal's glow revealed the creature's true form: a rounded head, enormous eyes, and thick tentacles lined with suckers. A giant octopus. It was even larger than the colossal squids that lived in the abyss. No ordinary octopus grew that big. It had to be a magic beast.
Serpina remembered what Heerin had said a few days earlier. The dolphins had been fleeing from something. When she'd seen the pirates' submarine, she'd wondered if that was the threat, but it looked like her first guess had been correct.
The octopus wriggled its tentacles and brought the glowing crystal toward its mouth…
"…!"
Serpina was stunned. She hadn't expected it to swallow the thing outright like some baby shoving everything it grabbed into its mouth. Of course she wasn't going to let that happen.
Magic surged from her outstretched hand. A torpedo-shaped projectile similar to the one the pirate had fired took shape. But this one moved far faster, slicing through the water's resistance like a missile launched on land as it streaked toward the giant octopus.
- BOOOOM!!
The explosion sent a massive shockwave ripping outward in every direction. Even Serpina's body tumbled through the churning water. Yet once the bubbles cleared, the result was bitterly disappointing. A single tentacle, torn to ragged shreds, drifted in the current. In other words, the giant octopus had used one of its own limbs as a shield to block her attack.
Too weak? Serpina frowned. Still, a stronger strike risked destroying the magic crystal along with the beast, so that had been the best she could manage for now.
Even as she thought this, the giant octopus never stopped moving. Before she could prepare her next spell, the magic crystal vanished down its gullet.
And then—
- BOOOOOOOOM!!
The shockwave that erupted from the giant octopus made her previous attack seem like a gentle breeze. Caught in the blast, Serpina was launched straight to the surface. She quickly invoked a flight spell, saving herself from a humiliating plunge.
On the surface, Ayoung had brought a boat and was busy rescuing the fainted or mana-drained mages, pulling them aboard. After Serpina had rushed off alone to chase the pirates, Ayoung had scrambled to secure the vessel.
Tracking down the alliance members assigned to escort and monitor her, explaining the situation, borrowing the alliance's influence to arrange an immediate boat, and sailing it all the way out here had been an enormous amount of work. In a web novel it would have easily eaten up three thousand characters.
Ayoung, seeing Serpina suddenly burst from the sea, raised her voice in alarm.
"Senior! Are you okay?!"
"Yeah. I'm fine. I just got pushed up here, that's all."
It was simply because she hadn't had enough mass to absorb the impact. Other than her mood being ruined, there wasn't a single problem.
The real problem was still down below. The thing now rising toward the surface.
- Grooooooan…….
Its already enormous body had grown even larger after swallowing the magic crystal. It wouldn't be strange at all to call it the legendary sea monster known as the kraken.
- Groooooan….
The kraken's cry was low like a whale's yet powerful enough to vibrate through bone. To the mages who had already burned through much of their mana brawling with the pirates, it sounded like the voice of the grim reaper.
Even now the kraken continued to swell. The sun's mana was far too violent for humans to handle, but… for a magic beast there was a chance it could endure.
Yet this wasn't ordinary solar mana. It was a crystal formed from power that had accumulated and condensed over time. No matter how large the magic beast, it could only withstand it for a moment. Left alone, it would fail to control the energy, its body bloating larger and larger until it finally burst.
At first the kraken had tried to suppress the mana, but it soon realized the truth. And like any beast driven by instinct, it would do anything to avoid death.
The method it chose was to expend the overflowing mana. Since excess was the root of the problem, it was also the most direct solution.
- Grooooooooooan……….
The kraken instinctively used magic. Or rather, it was too crude and simplistic to even call it magic. There was no refined flow of power, no structured formula. It simply wielded mana according to the instincts of a mana-handling beast.
It was the kind of brute-force approach where you could still reach the correct answer by repeating addition even if you didn't know multiplication tables. The result was the same; it simply demanded an absurd amount of time and effort. In the same way, the magic manifested by covering every inefficiency with overwhelming quantities of mana.
- Splash, splash, splash, splash….
Fish began raining from the sky. The spell it had cast was a summoning spell—one that created things from nothing. The classic example was magic that formed a golem from bare earth. Naturally, such spells consumed far more mana than ordinary summoning while producing inferior results. Under normal circumstances there would be zero reason to ever use it.
But for the kraken, which desperately needed to shed its excess mana, it was the perfect solution.
The fish it summoned were no ordinary fish. They possessed razor-sharp teeth like piranhas and tried to bite everything around them. They attacked passing jellyfish and floating debris, and humans were obviously no exception.
"Aaaack! It bit me!"
"I can't feel my lower body…!!"
"Don't let them onto the boat!"
The sight of fish falling from the sky, flopping on the deck yet still baring their teeth at people, was enough to send a chill through even these hardened mages.
The mages, who had been solely focused on claiming the magic crystal for themselves, now joined forces to drive back the fish.
"Haa!"
- Thwack!
"Th-thank you!"
"If you're out of mana, get below deck!"
Ayoung stood on the deck as well, swinging a wooden training rod to knock away the falling fish and kicking those that leaped from the water to attack the hull.
- Crunch.
"Ugh! You little—!"
She slammed the fish gnawing on her rod against the deck and crushed its head under her foot. The fish with its skull shattered dissolved into mana and vanished.
"Miss Ayoung! Duck!"
Ayoung quickly lowered her head at Taein's shout from behind.
- Whoooosh… BOOOOOOM!!
The thick mana beam that flew over Ayoung's head swept away the fish in front in a single strike. It was an attack spell from Taein, who was aboard the same boat.
They had eliminated a large number at once, but neither of their expressions looked bright. The rain of fish pouring from the sky still showed no sign of stopping.
"Miss Ayoung! This isn't sustainable! Shouldn't we pull back, get proper weapons, and return?!"
"But! Senior is still…!"
While fending off another wave of fish, Ayoung glanced toward where Serpina had been. She didn't think for a second that Serpina would be hurt by mere toothed fish, but she couldn't help worrying.
"Senior…?"
Yet something about Serpina's aura seemed strange. Fish were pouring down from above with teeth bared, yet she paid them no attention whatsoever. She simply glared at the kraken and muttered.