Chapter 394: Kraken (5)

“He cut that off in one strike?!”

“It is the kind of axe that could do it.”

Weapons wieldable by humans had their limits. Fighting giant monsters inevitably devolved into hacking and slashing. The knights were stunned by the smooth cross-section that defied that common sense.

‘The strength is there, but the muscle isn’t tough.’

Eugene recalled the strange sensation from the previous cut and licked his lips. The cutting feel was the best among all the monsters he’d hunted so far.

Among the knights participating in the Kraken subjugation, Eugene was among the youngest, countable on one hand.

But while everyone fought in a state of extreme excitement, only Eugene maintained his composure. Somewhere along the way, his heart had begun responding only to physical activity like the rhythm or intensity of combat. The scale of the enemy or the level of threat couldn’t disturb his steady pulse.

‘Rather than going for the vital point right away, it’s better to cut off the intact tentacles first.’

Eugene changed his plan, watching the idol’s curse that was still holding.

The Kraken was straining to break free from its bonds, but it was difficult. Its strength came from its tentacles. To escape, it needed to anchor the untethered tentacles deep into the ground and pull its body free.

“One leg may have been taken by His Majesty, but the head is mine!”

The problem was the knights who charged like heat-driven beasts, gripping enormous lances. To protect its head from these hounds, the Kraken had to allocate tentacles to combat as well.

With fewer tentacles available for extraction, it couldn’t apply its full strength. That was why losing one to Eugene couldn’t be considered a minor wound.

“Ugh.”

“Korala! I’ll save you right away!”

A knight was wrapped in a tentacle dripping blue blood, and his comrade from the same training academy charged forward.

A secret lance technique that delivered three consecutive stabs in an instant was unleashed, and luckily, one struck a nerve, loosening the tentacle.

“Thanks!”

“Don’t mention it, it’s what friends are for…”

The knight named Korala, struggling to rise, was about to respond to his benefactor and friend’s voice when it suddenly cut off. He looked up.

“!!!”

Inside the tentacle, a large sucker. The face of his friend was being sucked into one of them.

What you had to watch out for in the Kraken’s attacks wasn’t just the physical swinging or squeezing. Each sucker, large enough to engulf a human head, was a vicious trap.

The knight had let his guard down momentarily because the tentacle had slowed after being stabbed in a nerve by the two-handed axe, and that had brought death.

“Damn it!”

The knight thrust his lance to save his friend, who was struggling in the air. As a fellow academy graduate, he also used the same triple-stab technique, digging deeper into the wound his friend had opened.

Squelch.

It seemed to work, as the sucker’s grip loosened and his friend fell to the ground.

“Hey! Are you okay?”

The moment he urgently turned his friend over, Korala gasped.

Tremble.

Twitch.

The intense suction of the sucker had deformed his friend’s face. Like a scallop’s flesh.

Eyes, nose, and mouth were all caved in and enclosed, with bleeding trapped inside giving a reddish hue. It was a truly horrific sight, and since he was still alive, the pain was beyond imagination.

“I’m sorry!”

This was a battle against the Kraken, the disaster of the sea, and the two knights had made a promise to each other. Korala drew his sword and struck his friend’s neck. To reduce his suffering, even for a moment.

[Anger shall soon become power.]

The External God praised that decision and turned its gaze to Eugene and Might. The Kraken, too, hadn’t missed the approach of its most dangerous enemy.

Shoooo-!”

“Watch out!”

“It’s going to spray ink again!”

Knights who had experienced it before immediately warned when they saw the Kraken’s body swell and change color.

But the Kraken wasn’t targeting the knights. It didn’t have enough ink remaining for that. It sprayed ink onto the tentacles that were stuck to the idol.

“What?”

The Kraken’s ink was a deadly weapon possessing both viscosity and slipperiness simultaneously. It hindered enemy movement and greatly reduced the force of weapon swings.

It was also useful for extracting a body that had gotten stuck. Like spraying soapy water on a ring that wouldn’t come off, the Kraken attempted the same thing.

“That thing is really smart, isn’t it? Just as His Majesty said, octopuses are quite intelligent.”

“Even so, it won’t come off, tsk.”

The archer unit mobilized from the city reacted with amusement but scoffed. Even the ignorant among them knew that the power holding the Kraken came from magic. Making it slippery wouldn’t make it come loose.

“Oh no!”

“Your Majesty! Knights! Hurry! The curse is breaking!”

But the Eastern mages who had prepared the curse were horrified. They had detected the restraining power imbued in the idol being disrupted.

The Kraken’s ink contained enormous amounts of melanin and was packed with proteins, minerals, and dozens of amino acids. It might not rival blood, but it was the second most concentrated body fluid.

And the restraining curse acted on the target’s physical body. When a body fluid ‘concentrated close to the source’ like blood or ink was applied, the curse became confused. It mistook the fluid for something that also needed to be restrained.

Naturally, this property was a domain only those who had deeply studied magic would know.

The Eastern mages had never heard of or seen a case where a monster used its own blood to break a restraint. Such a thing required large quantities of blood, making it nearly impossible to occur by chance.

That was why they hadn’t anticipated the Kraken spraying its body fluids to free itself.

Naturally, the Kraken hadn’t known this either. It had simply sprayed ink to gain slipperiness, as it always did when entangled in underwater ruins. That had, by sheer luck, brought salvation.

“Stop! Fall back!”

Eugene too had been watching the idol’s curse weaken. In fact, one tentacle that had been held throughout had broken free from its bonds.

“Strike before it’s too late!”

“If we don’t kill it now, we never will!”

“I’ll avenge the fallen knights!”

But the knights attacked even more fiercely. They were human too and not without fear, but the octopus’s head was right before their eyes.

The soft, vulnerable body practically advertised ‘This is the weak point — stab here and it dies!’ It was within striking distance of one of the upper echelon monsters among giants, where a well-placed hand thrust could kill.

They were all like gamblers who had bet their entire fortune, unable to retreat even if they wanted to.

“Didn’t I order a retreat?!”

For Eugene, it was just irritating.

The knights had been fighting advantageously because half the tentacles were bound. If the Kraken gained more freedom and responded calmly, the knights would start dying in droves.

Hooooom!

Another tentacle broke free, and the Kraken’s attacks became far more precise than before.

“Dodged…”

One knight dodged by throwing himself aside, but a second tentacle, flying in with a time delay, sent him crashing down in a spray of blood.

[Pride brings death, and feints are not the exclusive property of humans.]

The External God saw the human soul. It knew how much effort and talent had gone into crafting each and every knight here as a treasure. It felt ecstasy on this battlefield where such precious lives were being extinguished needlessly.

Boom!

The Kraken gathered two tentacles like a person cupping water with both hands and scooped up sand like a shovel.

“Fall back! Fall back unconditionally!”

“If you stand still, you die.”

The knights, bombarded by wet sand, lost visibility of the front and retreated in a hurry. It was far more effective than Eugene’s shouting.

But retreating from only one face of a semi-encirclement put the knights on the other side in sudden danger.

“Argh!”

A knight screamed as he was coiled and squeezed by a tentacle. He was wearing a family heirloom helm. The magic steel plate had momentarily blocked the Kraken’s crushing force, but it was quickly destroyed.

[Dazed. Heartbeats echo in the eardrums. Blood vessels signal death.]

Just before his organs ruptured, the tentacle’s grip suddenly went limp.

Sliiiiice!

The cleanly severed tentacle rolled on the ground, and a few meters away, Might landed. The Kraken, in a rare mistake, had momentarily forgotten Eugene while venting the fury of being pummeled.

“Hah…”

A hand wearing a dark elf gauntlet caught the knight, who had been falling defenselessly to the ground.

“Th-thank you!”

“Can you walk?”

“I’ll crawl if I have to, rather than be a hindrance to Your Majesty.”

“I said go back, not forward.”

Eugene grabbed the knight trying to return to the fray with his incomplete movements and threw him to the other side.

The cross-section of the first severed tentacle still hadn’t stopped bleeding, and the second had been cut even deeper. The Kraken’s blood gushed out copiously, turning the ground blue.

“Dragon Hunter! Dragon Hunter!”

“Follow His Majesty!”

The knights, whose morale had been flagging, roared and charged again.

[A big body is just a big blood bag. It’s entertaining to watch, so that’s a plus.]

The most excited of all was Hassan’s patron.

“Damn it! I said fall back!”

Only Eugene was furious on the battlefield. He had told Cassandra he didn’t care if the Eastern knights lived or died, but watching them die before his eyes still made him uncomfortable.

They were virtuous people who had joined the fight against a monster threatening humanity, even if advancement was their goal. When judging those who undertook good deeds, you weren’t supposed to question their motives.

“The curse has broken!”

At the mage’s cry, the Kraken’s last tentacle broke free.

Riiip!

But at that moment, yet another tentacle rolled on the ground. With three of eight severed, the Kraken seemed to sense the crisis. It abandoned defense and used all five remaining legs to attempt escape to the shoreline.

Might chased after it, but the Kraken had already reached the water’s edge. For an instant, the thought ‘Did we lose it?’ flashed through Eugene’s mind.

[In the slaughterhouse, there is only the butcher and the meat! Kill the champion, or die yourself!]

The External God, who had been in a state of enjoyment throughout, erupted in anger for the first time.

From beneath the dark sea surface, even darker tentacles surged up to block the Kraken’s path. They resembled the Kraken’s legs in form but had a texture and color as ominous as congealed petroleum.

Thousands upon thousands of bubbles flowed from the tentacles. Among them, hundreds of flickering things could be seen. Like living eyes.

Those eyes all glared at the Kraken and cast spells. They were far weaker than the gaze of terror Hassan wielded, but there were hundreds of them. A knight might be stronger than a goblin, but being surrounded by hundreds of goblins was a different story.

Keeeeeeaaaaah-!!!

The Kraken screamed horribly and scrambled back toward land. And then it was too late in noticing the steel tip bearing down on it ferociously from the front. The Predator Lance, pre-positioned near the idol.

Thwuuuuuuush!!!

The magic lance, refined from a screech owl’s soul, pierced between the Kraken’s eyes without sound or presence. It tore through the brain, ripped the liver, ruptured the heart, and punctured through the back of the head.

As if struck by a colossal lightning bolt, the Kraken went rigid. It was an assassination in the middle of a battlefield.

“Back.”

As Might leaped backward in a huge bound, Eugene pulled out the lance and swung it.

Shliiiice!

Blue blood sprayed in a semicircle spanning dozens of meters. The lance was that long.

“…”

“…”

“…”

Despite their victory, the knights and archers didn’t cheer. They froze.

The knight who had been trading axe blows with the monster had transformed in an instant into something like a ghost assassin. They felt as though they were witnessing a being thoroughly optimized for killing.

‘So this is what it means to be someone who can kill a dragon.’

That was the unanimous sentiment. There was something special here that couldn’t be achieved by being merely strong and skilled with a blade. They had caught a glimpse of that fragment.

Kuuuuum!

Their reverie was shattered as the Kraken’s massive corpse toppled sideways.

“Haha… hahaha.”

Laughter finally erupted one by one at the sight of the sprawling body and the earth-shaking tremors.

[How many tides must wash over this shore before it is pure again? But it’s good that it remains stained. If it commemorates today’s great victory.]

The External God’s voice, dripping with satisfaction and pleasant exhaustion, announced the end of battle.

* * *

The term External God was, as it literally meant, a general designation for beings exercising divine power from beyond this world.

And humans had a natural tendency to classify everything within their comprehension. Beings that exerted positive influence by human standards were called principal gods, while the opposite were called evil gods.

The former was exemplified by the goddess Vanas, whom Eugene was vigorously branding. Doctrine, symbol — there was no more convenient church for proselytizing.

By championing tolerance as a virtue, it was easy to win the hearts of weaker factions, and it didn’t demand stringent duties or restrictions.

For an evil god, there was Kalash, the patron of the Bloodletting Dagger that Eugene often used.

End of the Second Era. The period when the Ancient Kingdom collapsed and split into dozens of minor kingdoms.

-Follow me! To the west, there are only weak, divided flocks of sheep. Shouldn’t it be our duty to hunt and violate them?

A nomadic warlord known by the epithet ‘The Destroyer’ unified his army with powerful charisma. He invaded the Western world for large-scale plundering.

-These invaders are punishment from God. We must willingly endure this scourge.

-If it’s God’s punishment, losing our homeland should be sufficient. I will drive out these savages even if I have to walk through heresy.

And in a minor kingdom corresponding to eastern Roman in the present day, they borrowed Kalash’s power to resist.

They spread what would later be called the Red Plague, a livestock epidemic. They hoped to kill all the invading nomads’ warhorses with this and achieve peace.

-Wh-what is this?

-Horses of heaven! What did we do wrong?

-Divine punishment! God is displeased with this expedition!

It actually succeeded. When the horses died en masse, the nomads sacrificed the Warlord Destroyer as an offering and retreated.

The problem was that this Red Plague had also spread to Western nations, causing mass livestock death.

Whether this was Kalash’s greed or simply an accident, no one knew. If it had only killed the nomads’ warhorses and stopped, perhaps the ‘evil god’ label wouldn’t have been attached today.

-I can’t endure this any longer. There are no oxen to plow with, and the people starve and cry out. Please, save us.

-Let us join forces.

The kingdoms hit directly by the Red Plague abandoned separatism and united, which became the foundation of the Third Era’s superpower, Rome.

In a sense, Kalash held a considerable stake in Rome’s founding.

Finally, those with ambiguous boundaries like Hassan’s patron were simply called External Gods. Since ‘External God’ itself encompassed both principal and evil gods, it wasn’t a strictly enforced distinction.

“The patron left, satisfied.”

“I can see why it’s called magic beyond human reach. It was a magnificent assist.”

“Shall I pass along those words?”

“That would be good.”

Eugene offered Hassan, whose throat looked parched, a cup of warm honey water.

“Thank you!”

“I should be the one thanking you. From the beginning to the end of the subjugation, I received your help.”

Hassan had handled the idol’s creation and luring, while the External God had blocked the Kraken’s escape. However, there was one problem.

“I’ll need to lay low for a while. And hire bodyguards too.”

“…That seems necessary.”

The knights who had fought on the front lines regarded Hassan with decidedly unfriendly looks. While they had been fighting tooth and nail, he had been cheerfully commentating from the rear — it was impossible not to feel some resentment.

“This isn’t Lord Occultist’s fault! Without his dedication, we wouldn’t have been able to lure the Kraken out in the first place.”

However, the more rational knights eventually came to Hassan’s defense. They argued that his contribution from the start to the end of the design couldn’t be denied.

“No one may treat Lord Hassan disrespectfully! Anyone who insults my benefactor will face me in a duel!”

The knight who had been knocked unconscious and fallen into the sea before being rescued was particularly fervent. He was the third son of a famous family in the Eastern Empire’s capital. Among the knights gathered here, he had the strongest voice.

The Kraken’s corpse was already surrounded by throngs. Knights, archers, workers drenched in sweat dragging siege weapons, and spectators from afar — everyone had converged.

“Is this thing really dead?”

Among the onlookers, some looked around nervously. It seemed as if the Kraken might rise and rampage at any moment. But most watched with ease.

“It was pierced clean through from the front of the head to the back. It’s definitely dead.”

The Predator Lance that had pierced the Kraken’s head gave a sense of security. Eugene had stabbed it once more for a confirmatory kill but left the lance in place.

-For both meetings and great deeds, first impressions matter. Leave the lance planted so that everyone etches Your Majesty’s achievement into their minds.

-That’s a good idea.

It was Cassandra’s advice.

All the knights who participated in this subjugation would share the glory, but there always had to be a protagonist. The lance that had skewered and killed the Kraken made for an excellent story.

“The remaining question is how to dispose of the corpse.”

“If we leave it as is to rot, the smell will reach the city.”

“Forget the smell — won’t monsters be attracted to it too?”

People poked and prodded the Kraken while discussing disposal. One adventurer among them subtly approached the Kraken’s mouth.

The Kraken’s mouth had dozens of hooked teeth arranged in a circle. Those on the outside were larger than a palm, but those inside were short, about the length of a forearm.

‘Everything else will rot, but what about the teeth?’

The adventurer figured he could make a fortune just by secretly pocketing one.

Creaaak!

But his attempt failed. Might, who had been watching from behind, clamped down on the adventurer from head to chest and flung him outside.

“Gack!”

The adventurer, struggling to rise, was immediately dragged backward by a whip coiled around his neck.

“Already attracting flies.”

Cassandra, her expression cold, pulled the whip taut.

As the adventurer had demonstrated, the most enjoyable time after a great subjugation was over had arrived. The time for harvesting loot.