The night was clear, and the water was calm, and the Kraken was nowhere in sight. I realized shortly after I began my search that finding the Kraken might turn out to be a fool’s errand. Even if it was strong enough to govern an entire section of the ocean, it couldn’t be everywhere at once. For all I knew, it could have been hunting somewhere on the norther border of its territory, hundreds of miles from me. Or it could have been sleeping on the sea floor, two miles deep. And with my luck, wherever I went to search for it, it would be about as far away from that point as possible.
I decided that there was no point in continuing my aimless hunt, and that I would have much better luck if I instead tried to lure it out. Using the relative location of the ship, I located the approximate center of the Kraken’s territory, and sank into the water. When the light disappeared, I decided that I had gone deep enough, and began setting my bait. I formed a pocket of air in the water and started charging up a condensed [Explosion] spell. I held it as long as I could, continuously pouring mana into it until I reached my limit, then teleported back above the water as the shockwave rippled outward.
Then, I waited. And waited. When two hours passed with nothing noticeable happening, I repeated my explosion trick. Then I did it again two hours later. And again two hours after that. At some point, I made a boat out of ice to sit in while I waited, and started fiddling with my illusions. Soon, the sky began to turn from black to gray, then orange as the sun rose, still with no sign of the Kraken.
I was in the middle of trying to recreate Lord of the Rings from memory with my illusions when I felt my [Proximity Alarm] that I had placed on the door to my room go off. I quickly shifted my perspective to that of my decoy, which was currently pretending to be asleep.
“Are you up?” said an unfamiliar gruff voice.
“What is it?” I said from my illusion’s mouth.
“S’breakfast time,” said the voice. “Cap says you already has food, but if yer willin’ t’pay, we have plenty.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Ok. I’ll let Cap know.”
I listened to the sound of heavy footsteps retreating from the door before returning my focus back to my paused movie. It was not quite a perfect rendition of the film, but it was fairly close, and I took the liberty of adding a few scenes from the book that I had always wished had been included.
When I was halfway through the Two Towers, a subtle sense of unease began to creep up on me, so I paused my illusion and set to locating the source. The sky was still as clear as always, and the water was just calm as it was when I first left the ship. I could not sense anything dangerous within my half mile range of detection. I couldn’t detect anything else either, I suddenly realized. Nothing living at least.
The schools of fish and other creatures that had been swimming about below me had all vanished. I hadn’t been paying them much mind, since they were all small, and constantly moving, so keeping track of them would have been mentally exhausting, but because of that, I didn’t notice when they all swam away. I could only think of one reason for them all to have suddenly left the area like they had: the Kraken.
I shut off my illusion, and dove into the water so that I could have a better view of my surroundings. For a few minutes, there was nothing. Then, a dark shadow appeared in the east, rapidly approaching, and I went forward to meet it. The thing grew larger and larger, and soon, I could vaguely see its shape, constantly growing and shrinking, like a balloon being inflated and let go.
I didn’t waste any time waiting for it to attack, accelerating forward as I prepared my first spell. I had decided that electric attacks were probably the best way to deal with an aquatic creature, not because of any elemental reasons, but simply because it was a monster, and probably had very tough skin, and other than space, lightning was the best element for bypassing physical defenses. The fact that we were in the water posed a minor issue, as the sea water was highly conductive, but that was easily solved with a bit of earth and water magic to create a tube lined with distilled water between myself and the monster through which the lightning could travel without dispersing.
I released the spell as soon as the Kraken got within range, and even through my shut eyelids, I could see the bright flash of the beam of pure plasma shot forward. I opened my eyes to find the Kraken largely unharmed, as I had been half-expecting, but my spell had made it pause, and it was now regarding me with a pair of enormous eyes.
The Kraken was very clearly an octopus, rather than a squid, which I found mildly surprising, given its usual portrayals in earth media. It had a large, bulbous head with slit-pupiled eyes, and only eight tentacles. Its skin was constantly shifting, red with brown one moment, and white with black the next, though there was a small blackened spot in between its eyes where my spell had struck it that didn’t change with the rest. The Kraken was enormous; it was by far the largest living creature I had seen in this world. Each of its arms was easily hundreds of feet long, and as thick as a school bus at their base, and their suckers were so large that I would be able to sit inside one of them comfortably.
We stared at each other for a few seconds before it sent out one of its arms almost lazily in my direction. Lazy as it was though, it was still quite dangerous. The attack didn’t seem to be slowed at all by the water around, and I hardly had any time to get my shield up to block it. The arm smashed into my shield, shattering the first layer, and greatly straining the second before it reeled its arm back in, and stared at me in apparent confusion. I grinned at it, baring my fangs, then swam forward, and the real battle began.
Six of its arms flew forward to meet me, creating a near inescapable net around where I was, but by the time they reached me, I was already gone. I used [Blink] to close the distance in an instant, reappearing between its eyes. I dove toward its skin, placed my hands on the rough surface, and once again cast [Lightning]. The beast shuddered, then seemed to suddenly inflate, and I was thrown off, and sent tumbling backward.
I used [Blink] again to get above the Kraken and then immediately had to use it again to get even higher when its arms came for me again. After that, its attacks seemed to double in speed, and I was forced to retreat even further as I considered my next move.
I could try an even stronger lightning attack, but I doubted it would be any more effective than my previous one. It had obviously been painful, based on its reaction, but by its movements, I hadn’t inflicted any real damage. I teleported in again, and struck it with a [Greater Magic Missile] as a test, but, as expected it did even less than the electric attacks. When the missile struck its skin, the skin bent inward slightly, but other than that, there was no reaction.
I returned to my spatial dance between the flailing limbs while mentally going over my options. I would most likely have to bring it up to the surface. The water was a severe limiter on my options. If I could get back into open air, I would have more spells available to me, and I would be able to maneuver more efficiently, since I wouldn’t be working against the water. There was one last thing I could try though before giving up on fighting it underwater.
I teleported in for a third time, this time right above its left eye, and cast [Rend]. [Rend] was my only spatial attribute attack spell, and it was by far the least mana-efficient and least destructive of them all. However, because it was spatial magic, it had the benefit of completely ignoring physical defenses, because, after all, space is space, no matter what is occupying it.
For the first time, I finally did visible damage to the beast. A section of eye about as tall and wide as I was vanished, and blue blood welled out of the injury as the Kraken shuddered. I grinned and started to cast the spell again. It would take a while, but as long as I could damage it like that, I would eventually be able to win.
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My hopes were dashed however, when the hole started shrinking, and the eye flesh started knitting itself back together. My second spell landed, and just like the first, took out a sizable chunk, but before I could cast a third, the first was nearly fully recovered.
“Fuck!” I shouted, bubbles rising from my mouth.
It flung me off again, and this time, rather than staying in range, I blinked all the way back above the water. It was still a few hundred feet down, frantically looking around for me, giving me a brief respite while I tried to think of a way to kill it. It’s regeneration was incredibly powerful, nearly at the level of Wrath’s. Any non-fatal damage I did would just get healed off. In fact, it was likely that that was exactly what had happened with my first two lightning attacks. I would need to kill it in one attack, but I didn’t know if I had any spells strong enough to do that. Even [Railgun] might not work, since the projectile might be too small to do fatal damage.
Lightning was still probably my best option, since it would affect its entire body at once, but to get a lightning strike powerful enough… I only had one spell that might be able to get the job done, but it took a long time to cast, and would cost me nearly all my [MP], and even then, its success wasn’t guaranteed. But I didn’t really have any other options, and I as long as I kept enough [MP] to get away, I didn’t really have anything to lose.
The Kraken was still darting around beneath the waves searching for me. I didn’t want it to swim away, thinking I had left, so I dipped back into the water to get its attention. As soon as my feet hit the ocean’s surface, it turned and darted toward me. I flew back up as its arms emerged from the water, trying to swat me down. Now without the resistance of water, its attacks were even faster than before, but so was I, and as its altitude was limited, I was able to easily avoid its attacks while preparing my last resort spell.
[Hurricane], I thought.
Water droplets flew upward like rainfall in reverse, and high overhead, a thick cloud cover began to form in an ominous spiral. I stayed just on the edge of the Kraken’s range, taunting it while the clouds expanded outward, blotting out the sun and the wind picked up, whipping my hair about my face. Soon, the rain reversed again, and started falling back into the ocean as the formation stage of the spell was completed.
It was not a true hurricane; it was far too small, and it would eventually peter out without traveling very far, but the charge that was building up in between the cloud layers was very real, and was the true purpose behind my casting of the spell. Magic was very versatile tool, and it could be used for a great many purposes, but in some cases, it just could not compare to the laws of nature. Lightning was one of those cases. No matter how much mana I poured into the spell, the charge differential I could make with my own will would pale in comparison to that that formed naturally in the clouds.
My own pseudo-storm was not quite as good at it as a real hurricane would have been, but at the same time, a real hurricane wouldn’t be able to direct all of it’s electric potential to a single point like I was about to do with mine. I stopped toying with the giant octopus and flew up out of its range so that I could focus more deeply on my goal.
I had to keep the lightning from forming naturally in the clouds, so that I could build up as much potential as possible before I unleashed it on the Kraken. I just had to hope it wouldn’t lose interest, or sense the danger before I could finally release it. Fortunately, the Kraken was not an intelligent creature, and even though I was clearly out of its reach, it never stopped trying, fruitlessly waving its arms around below my feet.
When I felt that I could no longer hold back the lightning anymore, I conducted the last step of my plan, summoning a long sword from my inventory and sending it down toward the Kraken. It was just an ordinary, though well made sword, devoid of even the most basic of enchantments, but that didn’t matter. I wasn’t using it to attack the Kraken. I just needed to use it as a beacon for the lightning.
The Kraken ignored it as it flew past its arms toward its body and landed the skin above its eye. In the final seconds before the lightning grew too much for me to hold back, I loaded the steel sword with as much negative charge as I could, closed my eyes, and turned away as I released the tension.
I realized too late that I had forgotten to shield my ears as well, and my eardrums exploded from the thunder. With blood flowing from my ears, I looked back down at the water below me. The Kraken was limp, and half its face was a charred, smoking mess. The life was gone from its one remaining eye, and as I watched, it started slowly sinking into the water. I shouted triumphantly, while [Rapid Regeneration] healed my ears, then flew down and used the remainder of my [MP] to form some ice around the corpse to keep it from sinking before checking my System notifications.
You have defeated [Kraken] lvl 158
User lvl 75->90
Class lvl 15->90
[Lightning] lvl 60->72
[Rend] lvl 65->68
[Dive] lvl 51->62
[Hurricane] lvl 31->67
You have learned a new spell, [Nature’s Wrath]!
[Nature’s Wrath] lvl 1->57
For reaching class level 50, you’ve learned a new skill [Divine Eye of Pride]
2250 stat points available
Curious about what the new skills I had learned were, I focused on them to see their descriptions.
[Nature’s Wrath] lvl 57
You have an intimate understanding of the laws of nature, allowing you to achieve power that others only dream of.
[Divine Eye of Pride] lvl MAX
Your pride is immeasurable. You always look down at others, seeing only their flaws and comparing them to yourself. Well, now you can do that even better. Just look at someone, and you’ll be able to see their weaknesses, no matter how well they hide them.
[Nature’s Wrath] was obviously the skill I had earned for my trick with the lightning, but [Divine Eye of Pride] must have been the skill that Pride had promised me when they were picking out my skills. I didn’t like the description much, but it seemed like it would be a useful skill. Maybe with this, I would finally be able to figure out how to kill Wrath. I could probably teleport back to Maradona once my [MP] was recovered.
Setting that thought aside, I turned my attention to the Kraken’s corpse. My [Greater Inventory] had become quite large, but it wasn’t big enough to hold the entire monster like I would have liked. At most, I could take the tentacles, and maybe a part of its main body. Looking at it again, though, the rest of it probably wasn’t worth taking. The lightning had destroyed a large portion of the skin on its main body, and most of its internal organs. So there wasn’t really anything I could salvage from there.
I formed another small ice boat, and mediated until my [MP] recovered, then set to cleaning my kill. Its skin was still just as tough as it had been in life, but since it was no longer resisting, I was able to cut through it, though not easily. I cut off and stored its intact eye, as well as its beak, its arms, and as much of its skin as I could fit. As I did so, [Greater Inventory] leveled up a few times, no longer limited to 75, which allowed me to carry more than I originally thought I could have.
The sun was beginning to set and my storm had long since dissipated when I finally finished. All that remained in the water were the burnt parts, and a few pieces of skin that I wasn’t able to fit. I dispelled the ice holding them up, and watched them sink slowly into the dark depths, then returned to the ship, just in time for my proximity alarm on my door to go off again.