Chapter 419 - The Weakest Monster IV
“Let’s stop for a bit of a break.”
Allegra’s voice cut through the crisp winter morning. Dressed in an enchanted, cold-resistant robe, she called out to the rest of the party from atop a wayward stump.
They were twelve kilometers north of Amrinia, standing at the base of the mountain range that stood beyond Cadria’s domain. The outermost regions were only about as dangerous as the foothills that surrounded them, and aesthetically, they appeared to be painted by many of the same brushes. The evergreen forests continued well into the sky, decorating nearly every part of the slopes visible beneath the clouds.
The main differences came from the ambiance. The magic had grown thicker with every step north they took. And at the base of the mountains, it was dense enough to hinder their movements.
“Is there anyone who has yet to review the reading material?” Allegra spoke again as she scanned the party, smiling in satisfaction as its members voiced their affirmations and nodded their heads in turn. Her gaze continued until it landed on the final member—the only one who remained with her eyes on their destination. “Claire?”
The lyrkress didn’t respond. Keeping her gaze forward, she bent her legs and summoned Boris straight into her hand.
“Claire, wait! You can't just rush in!” Allegra sprinted over and reached for her pupil’s coattails, but it was far too late.
Claire had already launched herself off her ground and towards the incoming target—a clear sign that she had failed to read any of the documentation that Allegra had provided.
“Should we chase her down?” asked Jules.
“No, let's not,” said Allegra. “This will be a good lesson for her.”
“Uhmmm, are you sure?” asked Sylvia, with a tilt of the head. “She's probably gonna kick that thing’s butt.”
“I see you haven't done any reading either.” The rabbit sighed.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we aren’t getting much further today.” Shaking her head, Allegra pulled out her wand as she watched over Claire’s advance. “Get ready to fight. There will most likely be more where this came from.”
The fully armoured lyrkress practically glided across the snowscape. Her feet barely dug into the glistening powder, leaving only the faintest prints. Her target was just as stealthy. Its sole fin was entirely devoid of tracks. If not for the fact that it protruded above the ground, it would have been undetectable.
It burst from within the snow as it closed the distance, revealing a bizarre form that was as fish-like as it was anthropomorphic. Its shoulders sported a pair of ridiculously muscular arms and a set of similarly built legs grew from beneath its pelvis. The rest of its body was a mix of fishy and shark-like. It had scales instead of rough skin, but its wide face featured a jaw lined with rows upon rows of sharpened teeth.
In its hand, it held a long spear, fashioned from what looked to be a series of bones tied together with a makeshift rope. Its necklace was the same. Hooked directly into its gills was a metal chain featuring a series of strung-up teeth. If not for its incoherent, bestial cries, it almost would have looked sentient, like it belonged to some sort of indigenous tribe in spite of its exposed genitalia.
Claire struck at the abomination without a moment of hesitation. Finally digging her feet into the snow, she twisted her hips and drove Boris towards the shark-man’s chest with his mass raised to its maximum value.
It was a heavy, crushing blow. And yet, the shark parried. He caught Boris’ face with the tip of his spear and perfectly deflected him off course. It seemed like it shouldn’t have been possible with his spear as flimsy as it was. And yet, it was unbroken, remaining only as dirty and cracked as it was at the time of his arrival.
Claire twisted her wrist and immediately followed with another attack. The shark moved to parry again, but she seized his body with her vectors and dragged him off balance.
Boris sank straight into his neck. The lizard’s unaltered shape allowed him to strike at both the jaw and the spine at once, rattling the shark-man’s brain whilst severing his nerves. And with how far his face was dislodged, as well as the ear-splitting crack that had accompanied the blow, it seemed like the battle was well over.
But there was no such thing as a Langgbjern monster that would fall to a blow so shallow.
The shark cracked its head back into position with a roar and returned a ferocious punch. Claire lightly pushed the first attack out of the way and blocked the tail swipe that followed. She ducked under the ensuing bite as well. The teeth never touched her. They were a solid twenty centimeters away at their closest. And yet, her shoulder was ripped apart.
A large chunk was taken out of her flesh and armour alike, leaving only her icy bones intact.
There was a mix of creaking and squelching as the shark chewed on everything he stole, but while he tried to grin, and show off his freshly bloodied teeth, he found a tail driven into his jaw.
Not pausing for a moment, Claire turned Boris into a sword and buried him straight through the enemy’s chest. The attack was repeated a dozen times and followed with an uppercut that rammed the shark’s teeth into his skull and an accompanying tail smash that hammered his upper jaw through its lower counterpart.
She backed off when he fell to his knees, though not because she thought he was dead. He had taken another bite out of her body when she forced his jaws closed and ripped the flesh right off of her face. Again, it was an impossible attack. His mouth was never shut of his own accord, and Claire had been even further away.
And yet, her blood was drawn.
But while certainly somewhat bizarre, so too was its method irrelevant. Claire grabbed its face with her vectors and tore the tendons that allowed its lips to move.
With the threat of the strange remote attacks removed, she kicked off the ground and approached it again, only to suddenly find a cut across her stomach. And with it, a creeping darkness. It started at the corners of her vision, a black, pulsating mass that crept its way forward with every sickening throb. It ate the world around her, stealing it in much the same manner as Arciel’s blinding curse. Even her resistance against it worked the same way. She couldn’t negate it outright, but repeated exposure had made it so the process was no longer instant.
It was only then, as the shark thrust its spear into the air and somehow nailed her gut again, that she recognized the other trick. It was Krail’s—the ability to ensure that one’s attacks would land on target.
Somehow, the monster was using her companions’ abilities.
Its next distant slash was followed by an explosion. Both her front legs were ripped from their sockets. The accompanying radiation basked her body in a burning heat, but she ignored it and pressed on. Backing off was a mistake. Rather than securing a means to victory, she had only opened herself up to its continued assault.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
And yet, she was far from frustrated.
The monster wasn’t simply annoying her like the ones that had filled the abyssal god’s dungeon, nor was it almost entirely trivial, like the others they had slain on the way.
While it still did rely on a silly gimmick, the shark itself was tough enough that she was willing to give it credit. It held out even with its body all ruined and continued an aggressive assault. It was the type of creature that she had hoped to fight ever since they embarked on their training—something that would offer a genuine challenge.
Ignoring the pain that accompanied the wound, she returned to a two-legged form, grew out her wings and bolstered her speed. And then, finally, upon closing the distance, she delivered a strike with her lizard.
Again, the weapon was deflected, but Claire summoned another in her free hand and stabbed the shark right through the throat. The shark threw an immediate counter, but having long predicted the action, she released her blade, grabbed its wrist, and threw the attack off course. It was as much of a counter as it was a hypothesis. And upon receiving no damage, she found her proposition answered.
Just like the punch and the tail swipe it had thrown much earlier, its most recent strike had missed precisely because it relied on the concept it did.
Krail’s ability was to ensure that an arrow would land, but it would only take hold if he was able to release the projectile in question. An interrupted attack, something that she parried or misguided prematurely, was unable to trigger the requisite condition.
The only problem was a spike in the difficulty of reading its moves. The darkness had claimed the rest of her vision. She could no longer watch the shark’s eyes or follow the twitching of his muscles. Were they both much lower level, all would still have been fine, but it wasn’t possible to rely solely on her hearing when her opponent’s movements easily exceeded the speed of sound. The locations her ears reported were almost always out of date.
Were she more like her father, she likely could have fixed the problem by relying on her sense of touch, but Claire was not quite as sensitive. What she did have, however, were her vectors.
She lifted her foe into the sky before she lost track of his position and mangled him with an array of magical forces. It was a veritable storm. She grabbed random bits of flesh and tore them in equally random directions. His howling was the only reason she had the faintest clue as to its relative effectiveness. And by all means, it sounded like she was on the cusp of victory.
Until the sounds suddenly went away.
She stopped hearing the wind as it howled through the Langgbjerns. The heartbeats and comments left by her allies were suddenly nowhere to be found, and even her foe somehow disappeared. The only thing that she could still hear was a roaring snowstorm.
It didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t there before.
And yet, there was something about it that tickled the back of her mind—something about the whole situation that was oddly familiar.
She felt strangely cold, and as she stepped forward, she realised that she was on an incline. It wasn’t too steep. In the first place, she already had to trudge through the snow to get much of anywhere at all. For some odd reason, it had gone from ankle to hip deep. Another sensation that seemed so oddly familiar.
The cold got colder as the storm continued to blow. She felt the chill all the way through to her bones, even though she wasn’t supposed to feel much of the cold at all.
It didn’t make sense.
At least not until the pieces suddenly clicked into place.
They were in her realm. Her opponent had mimicked the ability and used it against her, even though she herself lacked the means to call upon it.
She could have easily ripped it apart. She had always been able to grab the realm itself with her vectors, and she was confident that she could produce enough force to tear a hole and escape unharmed. But that would have been taking the easy way out, and Claire had no intention of backing down. Not in the face of her own trump card.
She had spent quite a long time considering how one might beat the realm, but she had few chances to put her theories to action. Prior to her third ascension, she had lacked the mana to maintain it for long. And after it, she had lost the ability to cast it at all.
Her forked tongue flickering in delight, she raised her ears overhead and prepared for the shark-man’s approach.
He had to attack. He had no other choice.
The concept that drove the realm was that of disorder. Within its bounds, energy was more easily dispersed. It would naturally move from concentrations of high to low, escaping the targets’ bodies and flooding the artificial environment instead. Any target that was drained completely dry would be frozen solid, for like mana, divinity, and motion, heat was also a form of energy, and its absence spelled a position at the bottom of the relevant index.
Of course, the stolen energy would not simply go to waste. The caster could freely manipulate it in whatever way they pleased, with Claire having often absorbed it as a means of compensating for the spell’s ridiculous cost. But even then, it wasn’t enough. No matter how many targets she found, no matter how much mana she stole, the realm’s consumption was always far greater, for the cost of the magic grew proportionally with the rate at which her opponents’ was drained.
In that sense, the caster was not immune to the realm’s effect. They too would be shifted towards a zeroed state, albeit not in quite as many dimensions.
And even with the mana it stole from her person, the snow shark’s pool was far too small to outlast her. The only chance it had was to rush her down and take advantage of her neutered speed.
It was a foregone conclusion, almost as obvious as its rear-end approach.
Spinning around with a grin, the still-blinded lyrkress parried an obvious, overhand swing and returned a dagger to the monster’s throat. It followed with a sweep of the tail, but she caught that as well and crushed the extra limb in her talons.
From there, it was checkmate. She grabbed the shark with her vectors again and restored the previous status quo. Just a few seconds was all it took, even with her vectors slowed and weakened, to tear off enough of its flesh to end its desperate struggle.
Log Entry 884781
You have slain a level 1042 Langgbjern Mirror Herring.
This feat has earned you the following bonus rewards:
- 30 points of agility
- 1375 points of spirit
- 19 points of strength
- 673 points of vitality
- 46 points of wisdom
Log Entry 884782
You have leveled up. Your health and mana have been partially restored.
Your racial class, Caldriess, has reached level 644.
You have gained 444 ability points.
Her vision returned as the realm came apart. One snowscape vanished and gave way to another, as she raised her arms overhead and gave her body a stretch. It wasn’t quite as cooperative as she would have liked.
Whatever the case, the battle was won. Satisfied with her handiwork, Claire turned towards the hill where everyone was stationed and found Allegra shaking her head.
“Is there a problem?” asked Claire. She floated back to the group. Walking was still a little more painful than she would have liked.
“There are many,” said Allegra, with a sigh. “But, congratulations, I guess. You’ve managed to kill the weakest monster that inhabits these mountains.”
“Wait a second.” Sylvia blinked. “That was the weakest?”
“They’re a common prey species, and they’re often found in schools over a thousand members strong,” said Allegra.
“Then how come this one was by itself?” asked Sylvia.
“If you read the encyclopedia, you’d have known that they are only facultative schoolers,” said the rabbit. “They’ll often venture off alone to feed, but tend to stay together for safety in their downtime, given their propensity to being eaten. Even when gathered together for protection, they’re unable to prevent their predators from picking them off,” she said. “This is why I said we weren’t ready for the Langgbjerns just yet.”
“We’ll be fine,” said Claire. She grabbed Chloe by the waistband and lifted her into the air as she spoke.
“Uh, Claire? What are you doing?” asked the maid.
“There are more coming,” said the lyrkress, with a small smile. “And you need levels.”
“Wait, wait, wait! That doesn’t mean you should just throw me in! Don’t you see how many of them there are!?”
“You’ll be fine,” said Claire. She flashed Chloe a kind, almost saintly smile. “Didn’t you hear what Allegra just said? These things are the weakest monsters in the Langgbjerns.”
“That doesn’t mean you can just throw me in! I’m not reaslkdjflkasdjflkdasfkhsd!”
And so, the maid was made into a missile that learned to appreciate life anew.