Chapter 664: Overwhelming Monstrosity - Shipwrecked?!
Chapter 664: Overwhelming Monstrosity – Shipwrecked?!
Martha and the Dragon Knights hovered above the water, holstering their crossbows and grasping long black harpoons with curved tips.
“Ready yourselves, when it surfaces, give it a volley of black steel!” She led her knights with a more rowdy and aggressive nature, like mercenaries. But the women chosen came from the small villages and port towns of Grigor and happily followed.
Woosh!
Thirty harpoons of enchanted black steel cut through the misty sky like dark bolts of death, trailing with streaks of mana as they plunged towards the churning sea.
The women held their breath while watching the massive monstrosity coiling beneath them.
A moment of silence passed.
KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-KRAK!
Explosions of salty brine and steaming metal tore through the waves as the harpoons lanced through the beast’s soft, flubber.
Several embedded deep into the creature’s squirming bulk pale, slimy flesh ripping open with sizzling black blood that sprayed upward like geysers. The beast howled in a deeper, more unnatural bellow that warped the air and made the sea spread apart.
“There it is! Fire again!” Martha pointed with a shout. Her heart tightened upon seeing the inhuman monstrosity.
The Behemoth burst from the depths like a living mountain. Its body was a grotesque blend of eel and kraken, long and coiled, its skin covered in glyph-like scars and tumour-like growths. The tendrils slashed through the air, dripping steaming black ichor from where harpoons had landed. Eyes! Dozens of them all opened across its crown, glowing with red malice.
“AVOID IT!”
“Argggh!”
The waves made it difficult to manoeuvre the ships, with some reaching ten feet or taller.
“Support my wife! Hold on, we can win!” Brando’s muscles bulged as he cranked his heavy crossbow, closer to a ballista at this point. His veins were swelling with each groan.
“Second volley!” Martha roared, wings flaring behind her as she drew her war spear from her back and hurled it with lethal grace.
The Dragon Knights followed Marth, devoid of fear.
They were elegant and yet brutal.
Born of salt and wind, raised among reefs and ruined coasts, they moved like sharks. Harpoons flew again, enchanted tips glowing with demonic fire and anchored binding spells. This time, several found their mark along the beast’s upper body, piercing into muscle and cracking scale.
A moment later, the enchanted harpoons flashed back in the knight’s dominant hand, using the return spell engraved along the haft.
“Fire the Chain Shot!”
“Chain Shot Firing!”
BOOM!
Chains burst from the secondary cannons with huge black anchors, howling through the air, the sharp hooks impaling the massive beasts, tentacles and dragging them away from the beast’s maw.
“Hurry! Attack now, with everything we’ve got!”
All the remaining fleet locked the beast in place, dozens of muscular men holding the huge chains, locking it in place around the central mast.
“We hold or die!”
“HOLD OR DIE!”
“AYE AYE, CAPTAIN!”
“Drag it up!” cried their lieutenant, a scarred woman with a shark-tooth necklace.
The runes glowed brighter, forming a web across the ocean’s surface. The beast thrashed, its massive tail whipping into the sky like a tower collapsing. Water exploded as it slammed back down, sending shockwaves into the fleet.
Ships buckled from the pressure, their wooden hulls creaking.
Sails tore from the sharp claws inside the tendrils’ suckers.
Yet they held!
“Now!” Martha switched to a two-handed spear, like a spiralling lance and dove like a meteor. She shot down with both wings, the Dragon knights following her, dodging the sharp fins and flailing tentacles that slammed past.
Martha’s spear struck the beast. A blur of steel clashing into the creature’s soft hide with the force of a main cannon. It pierced between the thick layers of blubber and corrupted flesh, creating a fountain of black ichor.
Her wings fluttered before spreading as she shot back up, flipping in the air to avoid a retaliating tendril that nearly caught her midair. A moment after the sound of twenty or more spears gouging the abomination’s forehead.
“Direct Hit!”
“Pull back!” she commanded, with a clear and focused voice. “Aim for the soft eyes!”
The dragon knights swarmed the beast like bees, ruthless and precise in their attacks. Their formation broke into flanking lines, spiralling around the beast like hunting falcons performing tricks.
Bolts, spears and harpoons.
Whatever the women could use, they hurled it, flung it as their assault rained down from above, detonating on impact with bursts of compressed mana.
For a moment, they became lax.
“We’re winning!”
“Hah! It’s just big, there’s no skill.”
“Fufu, like a useless cock!”
Dozens of red eyes exploded under the barrage. But something changed with each wound… the monstrosity seemed to be watching them. The monster wailed, a guttural, shrieking roar that made the very ocean churn. Its tendrils writhed violently, ripping through sails and carving gouges across the water with each sweep.
One ship snapped upward, dragged into the air by two tendrils that penetrated the hull, and dozens of men went overboard into the maelstrom. The sharp wood then impaled two knights, slow to avoid the sudden blow.
“Damn it…” Below, Brando unleashed another massive bolt. His crossbow creaked with a magical hum, and the bolt exploded into dozens of smaller shards mid-flight, all filled with explosive powder, something Asmodeus called Napalm.
The moment it popped open… the flames exploded like a volcano erupting.
“What!?”
“How can the ocean burn?”
The beast reared, a throbbing mass of hatred and pain, and a ripple surged from its body as a wave of cursed energy that cracked the sea surface like glass.
“MAGIC BARRIER!” Martha shouted, creating a shield of overlapping crimson hexes.
The knights echoed her, forming an overlapping network of arcane sigils that absorbed the wave, though several screamed as the shock blew them back toward the ships.
But what they thought was an attack…
It was a distress call.
However, they could only press the attack, unsure of what the monster was doing.
Dozens of tendrils burst out from under the surface, larger, longer and pitch black… the surface covered in rotten black sores and strange wounds. In the blink of an eye, four ships vanished.
“What the hell… another?!”
“Captain, we have to flee! That thing isn’t something we can fight!”
“….Haa….” Brando’s eyes widened as blood poured down his forehead from a stray metal shard that had torn through his face.
He watched the sea burning, as his wife and twenty knights fought hundreds of tentacles… and a towering, unbeatable titan more than twice the size of the first monster. “Haa…. what the….”
Despite the strength and trust Asmodeus gave him, Brando wasn’t a hero. He was but a brave merchant, and this monster was beyond his power. He couldn’t sacrifice his people.
“Sound the Claxon! We’re retreating. Our ship will safeguard the fleet! Call back the knights and send them to protect the other ships!”
“But Captain…”
“I know!” Brando shouted back at the talented merchant on land and the first mate at sea. “We cannot abandon our men! I will remain, escape to other boats.”
“Captain Brando!?”
He looked back as the ship violently shook, fifty blade men, with the same tattoo as him on their chests. “You guys… don’t you remember back then?” Their faces darkened. “So? Tell me, did I manage to overcome my status? Have I grown sea legs?”
“GGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAA!” The scream of the second monster burst the ears of most men. A vile, ear-destroying wailing shriek.
“We must retreat!”
“The Emperor must know of this.”
“….understood, captain.”
‘These guys truly grew on me… how terrifying. Asmodeus, is this the sight you face when fighting alone?’ The monster’s figure, only half visible, grew to the height of a small mountain, bigger than the citadel Brando visited two months earlier.
Before he could adjust, the men all returned to their posts and remained silent beside him.
“You idiots…”
The gigantic beast’s eyes all focused.
Different from the smaller monster with dozens at most… this one had had thousands of tiny black eyes… all focused on the ships. Then a strange, distorted noise, almost like human words, echoed in the back of Brando’s mind.
“I.S.E.E.Y.O.U!”
“What the hell!?”
“…”
Its beak… something like a bird opened wide, and within the swirling ocean appeared. ‘How can an ocean… exist within an ocean!?’ That’s when a strange energy began to gather at the tip of the abomination’s beak.
A sudden silence fell, enveloping the sea in a deafening and unnatural atmosphere. Every sailor, every knight, even the wind itself seemed to hold its breath.
Brando stared into the monster’s yawning beak, heart hammering in his chest.
“What can man do against such reckless… hate?”
“What is that…?” one of the Dragon Knights whispered, her voice drowned out by the rising hum that vibrated through every bone in their bodies.
“Everyone… brace for impact!” Brando roared, eyes wide in horror. He didn’t know what was coming. He knew that this wasn’t an attack meant to kill a ship, or even a fleet. “Do whatever you can to survive!!! Martha! AVOID IT!”
It wanted to annihilate them.
The swirling energy condensed into a single star-like orb within the creature’s mouth.
A dark sun born from countless nightmares.
And with a sound like heaven just collapsed.
It fired.