Anagin Chronicles

Chapter 85. The Dolls (1)

“Wahahahahaha!”

Riding atop the Giant’s Bed, Anagin burst into manic laughter as he was carried downstream by the raging torrent.

The flood, created by destroying the dam, swallowed everything in its path with savage ferocity, as if venting all the pent-up resentment it had held back until now.

“R-run away!!”

The vicious band of mercenaries spoken of by the Merchant Makon.

“Uaaaah— gurgle...!”

A practitioner with a bit of local fame.

“What in the world is going on?!”

Famous treasure hunters were no exception; none were spared.

Thus, the massive current swept away most of the people who had been scattered around the Ruin like an ant colony.

To be precise, the reason it was “most” and not “all” was because, though few, there were those who managed to respond to the flood Anagin had caused.

[O spirit of the river, lend me your aid now.]

A treasure hunter, his body laden with various magical tools, shouted toward a water stone carved in the likeness of a fish. It shone, and a translucent blue fish was summoned.

The summoned fish carried the treasure hunter on its back, shielding him from the crashing waters.

And it wasn’t only treasure hunters who responded.

“Kraaaagh-!”

A gigantic man who appeared to be a Gigant lifted a massive boulder and braced himself against the torrent, while another practitioner floated his body into the air, escaping the floodwaters.

Each had a different method, but all could be called high-level responses.

After all, they were doing their best to protect themselves against the sudden deluge.

Unfortunately, those efforts soon became meaningless.

Anagin, who had been riding the flood down on the Giant’s Bed, acted as if he had anticipated exactly this.

From the rope wrapped around his body, Anagin drew a knife and hurled it at the fish spirit summoned by the treasure hunter.

The knife flew straight, striking the fish spirit squarely on the head.

The fish spirit flopped once and vanished, and naturally, the treasure hunter riding atop it was swept away by the current.

“Skuum!”

The treasure hunter cried out the fish’s name, tears streaming, just before disappearing.

For a fleeting moment, the pitiful sight stirred a trace of sympathy—but the opponent was a professional aiming for the Ruin.

Out of respect for a fellow professional, Anagin set aside any pointless compassion and focused on his work.

Anagin drew his mace and threw it at the practitioner floating in midair, striking him in the head.

Hit by the mace, the practitioner couldn’t even let out a scream before losing consciousness and being swept away by the torrent.

Then Anagin drove the Giant’s Bed he was riding straight toward the Gigant who was using a boulder as a shield.

“Shit, wait—!”

Seeing Anagin charging at him, the Gigant panicked, but Anagin ignored him completely.

He rammed the Giant’s Bed straight into the boulder.

Kwaang!

The massive rock was no match for the Giant’s Bed; it shattered with a heavy crash, and the Gigant who had been bracing against the flood with it was swept away and vanished below.

“Gurgle—!”

Just before being carried off by the water, the Gigant glared at Anagin and shouted something unintelligible.

It almost sounded like a curse aimed at Anagin.

“It’s not like a curse, it is a curse!”

The cat-shaped Sphinx perched on Anagin’s shoulder shouted in a shrill voice.

Perhaps because she had turned into a cat, her voice sounded like one, too.

“Why me?”

“You just screwed everyone over by destroying the dam out of the blue!”

Screwed everyone over.

It was a crude expression, but at the same time, the most accurate one.

After painstakingly building up their forces and standing off while waiting for an opportunity, someone who hadn’t even been there a full day arrived and turned everything into nothing with a flood. Calling it getting screwed over was hardly an exaggeration.

Just look now.

Even while talking with Sphinx, Anagin was indiscriminately attacking the Ruin visitors who were desperately struggling to survive.

Throwing the weapons strapped to his body, running them over with the Giant’s Bed, smashing them with his hammer....

It was a truly horrific sight, but Anagin’s position—riding the flood—was overwhelmingly advantageous, leaving his victims with no option but to be beaten one-sidedly.

It could only be called despicable.

“I told you I was going to do this. Why are you complaining now?”

Anagin protested to Sphinx, who was treating him like a villain.

She apologized because he wasn’t wrong.

“Sorry. It’s just… seeing it in person is too horrifying.”

Watching the watery disaster that swallowed everything whole, Sphinx spoke carefully.

Hearing about something and seeing it with your own eyes were entirely different experiences.

Anagin’s method—destroying the dam and sweeping away the tangled mass of Ruin visitors in one go—was effective, but it was also excessively extreme.

Not only the people aiming for the Ruin, but also the merchants supplying them with food and the laborers providing manpower had all been swept away.

But Anagin didn’t listen at all.

“So what. If they planned to make money there, they should’ve been prepared for this level of risk.”

Anagin said it sincerely.

It was a harsh statement, but also a correct one.

The area around the Ruin was profitable precisely because it was dangerous.

Battles between practitioners, raiders scavenging for scraps, thieves, and all kinds of calamities lurking inside the Ruin—everything was part of the deal.

Everyone doing business near the Ruin knew this, and if they didn’t, they were idiots.

From that perspective, Anagin’s words were sound logic. Each person bore their own share of the risk.

Of course, it sounded especially unpleasant coming from the one who caused the flood, but Anagin didn’t care in the slightest.

With this method, he had wiped out all the flies swarming around the Ruin in one sweep—especially the mages occupying them.

Those doll mages who supposedly boasted great versatility seemed to have no special answer to a flood either, as they were cleanly washed away.

At this rate, it looked like he’d be able to enter the Ruin without much trouble.

That was when it happened.

From beneath Anagin’s feet, as he sped straight toward the Ruin atop the flood, something surged upward and flung him into the air.

Puahahahat—! A pillar of water erupted.

Suspended in midair, Anagin could see what had burst up beneath him.

It was a gigantic fish, as if clad in scales like armor.

“Armored Catfish!”

Clinging tightly with her claws so as not to fall from Anagin’s shoulder, Sphinx shouted.

That seemed to be the name of the enormous fish.

So the doll mages really were well-prepared—they’d even made dolls out of fish.

How could he tell?

“Was it you?! You’re the one who caused all this chaos!!”

Because a doll mage was riding atop the armored catfish, controlling it.

Instead of answering, Anagin mounted the Giant’s Bed and landed back on the surface of the water.

His balance wavered for a moment, but soon stabilized.

“Nice!”

“What do you mean, nice! This just gave them a more advantageous environment!!”

Clinging tightly to Anagin’s shoulder, Sphinx shouted.

Anagin was making decent use of the torrent with the Giant’s Bed, but it was nothing compared to the doll mage’s fish doll.

If anything, he had cleared out their competitors and provided them with an even better battlefield—doing them a favor.

As if to prove it, there wasn’t just one or two doll mages who had adapted to the flood.

“There he is! Aim for that bastard!”

Not only the armored catfish that had ambushed Anagin from below earlier, but also doll mages riding snakeheads, octopuses, barracudas, and gigantic eels appeared, surrounding Anagin.

At a glance, they looked vicious and dangerous—and it wasn’t just for show. Despite the rapid current, they moved with surprising freedom.

It was a clear indication of the doll mages’ level.

Yet even in that situation, Anagin was busy talking nonsense.

“Now that I think about it, I kind of helped the doll mages. Do you think they’d accept it if I asked to make peace?”

“As if they would!”

Sphinx flatly rejected Anagin’s bullshit.

Anagin then turned around and blamed her instead.

“Come to think of it, this feels like your fault, Pinku Pinku. You should have anticipated this situation and advised me sooner that there might be fish dolls. Apologize to me.”

Faced with even worse nonsense than before, Sphinx didn’t bother arguing back—she simply dug her claws in deeper as she clung to Anagin.

After venting her irritation that way, she finally asked,

“So what now? The Ruin is right there.”

As she said, they would reach the Ruin in just a moment.

The fast-moving current was guiding Anagin straight to it.

The problem was that the doll mages trying to drown him were slowly closing in.

“We’ll drown you first and turn you into a doll!”

“You’ll repay the damage with your body!”

Octopus tentacles, snakehead fangs, catfish whiskers, eel tails—everything reached out, trying to grab Anagin’s limbs and drag him underwater.

Anagin swung his hammer in retaliation, but on the water, the fish were just a bit faster.

They dodged away before the hammer could connect, then waited for another opening. With the advantage and superior numbers on their side, they seemed in no hurry.

“Want me to help? If we reach the Ruin like this, it’ll just get more annoying.”

The entrance to the Ruin was a massive fissure, like a pit.

Naturally, water would be pooling inside it. It was obvious that things would only get more troublesome if they went in like this.

If possible, it was best to shake off the doll mages right here.

“Do you want to fight?”

“...It’s not like I want to. You fight because you have to.”

Sphinx answered in an unenthusiastic voice.

As mentioned before, she didn’t desire combat itself.

“Then forget it.”

“This isn’t the time to be stubborn—”

Before Sphinx could finish her sentence, Anagin raised his hammer high and smashed it down onto the surface of the water.

Kwaang!

He struck so hard that it sounded as if he’d hit solid ground. A massive splash erupted, and the surrounding doll mages and their dolls were launched into the air.

Because it was flowing water, not all of them were thrown evenly—but for Anagin, that was more than enough.

He swung his hammer to smash the nearest doll mage, then hurled the weapons strapped to his body at those knocked farther away.

Every attack landed.

The doll mages who had been trying to drown Anagin just moments before were knocked off from their dolls and swallowed by the current.

The tide of battle flipped in an instant.

As if to celebrate Anagin’s success, they arrived right in front of the Ruin’s entrance.

Kugugugugugu-!

The interior must have been vast, because the river was still being sucked into the fissure.

The crack greedily and threateningly swallowed the water in a swirling vortex, but Anagin didn’t care and rode the current straight down into the Ruin.

If he were scared of this much, he wouldn’t have come in the first place.

The inside was deeper than expected, but not bottomless.

After descending some distance, he reached a floor where the water had pooled.

‘It’s not rising any further. Is there a place where the water drains out?’

Anagin speculated, seeing that the water level did not drop below a certain height.

“Hoo—!”

Splash!

After taking a deep breath, Anagin plunged into the water.

When he opened his eyes, he saw walls dotted with traces of artificial construction.

But what caught his eye most was the gigantic structure directly beneath his feet.

‘Is this really a door?’

Anagin thought as he looked down at what was far too large to be called a door.

The structure, made of interlocking circular mechanisms, looked more like floor decoration than an entrance.

It was enormous—and far too sturdy for a door.

Splash...! Splash...!

Then, through ears dulled by the water, he heard an irritating sound.

Looking around, he saw corpse dolls stitched together from animal carcasses and brick golems approaching him underwater.

The dolls guarding the area around the Ruin’s entrance.

He’d thought they’d been destroyed by the flood, but they had been hiding underwater.

‘Are there doll mages hiding nearby?’

Judging by the number of dolls, there seemed to be several, but unfortunately, he couldn’t sense any presence.

Perhaps his senses were dulled by being underwater.

Meanwhile, the dolls were closing in, surrounding Anagin.

They’d been annoying him above with fish dolls, and now they were annoying him below, too.

Just as Sphinx had said, doll mages were truly irritating opponents.

‘Dragging this out won’t do me any good....’

At that moment, Anagin met Sphinx's gaze on his shoulder.

In her cat form, holding her breath, she looked at him as if asking what he planned to do.

Fight, or retreat outside for now.

But it was neither.

Despite being underwater and surrounded by dolls, Anagin raised his hammer high and slammed it straight down onto the Ruin’s entrance beneath his feet.

Thoom...!

A dull sound echoed through the water.

Of course, the door didn’t even crack, let alone break.

The water sapped his strength, and the door’s durability far exceeded expectations.

Just as he wondered if he should’ve bought a bigger hammer—

Kiiiiiing.......

A grating, ear-scratching sound rang out, and the door opened—no, it broke apart.

The two interlocked circular mechanisms came undone, nails scattered everywhere, and the door disassembled like a shattered puzzle.

As the barrier that had been sealing it off suddenly collapsed, the massive volume of water piled above poured down all at once, dragging Anagin with it.

As he fell, Anagin flashed a rotten grin at Sphinx on his shoulder and said,

“Told you I was amazing, didn’t I?”