Chapter 80 - Fishfolk (2)

Standing aloof atop the frozen sea of blood, Alon let out a quiet sigh.

'Did we manage it somehow?'

Looking around, he saw frozen ground forming and spreading endlessly outward from where he stood. Of course, that continuous expansion was not Alon's doing. It was only possible because Penia had complied with his request.

'... She can do this much?'

From aboard the ship, Penia was extending the Bitter Cold he had manifested, freezing the surrounding sea in an instant with no more than a slightly strained expression. His quiet admiration lasted only a moment before he turned his gaze toward Tertogan, standing on a deck soaked in pirates' blood.

CRUNCH—CRUNCH!

The Tertogan who had still possessed a human form mere moments ago no longer existed. All that remained was a green egg spewing strange bodily fluids, Tertogan's hand protruding above it, and the bizarre object resting on that hand.

Yet even that was enough to make Alon's face harden. He knew what that egg was.

CRACK!

An unpleasant sound reached him just as he raised his arm in recognition.

"..."

Turning his gaze, he saw the fishfolk that had been working beneath the surface to sink the ships crawling onto the ice one after another. Their staggering numbers swelled from dozens to hundreds in an instant.

Just as Alon clicked his tongue—

CRUNCH!

The fishfolk clambering onto the ice were pulverized in an instant.

"Big Brother!"

Radan appeared.

Bursting out of the sea, Radan did more than pulverize the fishfolk about to rush Alon.

"Hah!"

He drove his foot down hard against the ice.

CRACK!

His foot punched through the ice and reached the seawater.

Then—

ROOOOAR!

The frozen sea became a sea of broken ice, erupting into a colossal wave with a sudden thunderous roar and sweeping away every fishfolk surging toward Alon.

"Hup!"

As though that were not enough, Radan immediately plunged his spear into the middle of the sea.

RUMBLE!

An enormous whirlpool formed in an instant, drawing in the swept-away fishfolk and the sunken ships. Though no one was more at home in the sea than they were, the fishfolk could not even control their bodies in that tremendous current. They were mangled amid the wreckage of the sunken ships, turning the whirlpool red in moments.

"I-I knew it...!"

"The boss is on another level...!"

Hope spread among the pirates.

"... That's just ridiculous."

"No kidding."

"Hah, I don't know if I could ever beat him."

Indescribable awe spread even among the pirate lords. The might Radan had displayed was so great that it was hard to believe a single individual had accomplished it.

But that lasted only a moment.

GURGLE!

At the distinct sound, everyone's eyes turned toward the Blue Wolf's central deck. Tertogan's hand, which had protruded above the green egg, had vanished as though it had never been there.

And then—

CRUNCH—CRRUNCH—CRUNCH!

An impossibly enormous hand was emerging from that little egg.

Everyone stared blankly at it—a hand covered in green scales and bodily fluids.

It appeared in the world, blocking the sunset that had shone upon the pirates as though extinguishing their hope, and pulsed as if alive. Bringing terror in place of hope, it slammed down upon the whirlpool.

BOOOOOOM!

With a deafening crash, the whirlpool that had swallowed everything vanished at once.

Then, from that little egg, it awakened.

CRRRUNCH!

The hand that had destroyed the whirlpool braced itself against one of the Sea Wolf's ships as the other hand emerged and seized another vessel.

A giant had appeared from that tiny egg. The sight was eerily horrifying, eating away at the hope of everyone present.

Following its arms, the enormous head of a fishfolk emerged from the egg, stealing their hope. Its body, large enough to reduce ships to mere toys, robbed them of their awe. It shattered the ship that had held the egg and blocked even the sunset, stealing the light.

"Ah..."

It had descended.

####

Its size was overwhelming. And the immense strength born of that overwhelming size was unimaginably terrifying.

BOOOOOOM!

With only its upper body visible above the sea, it slowly moved its hand and crushed a ship beneath it. Spray erupted. There was not so much as a single scream.

Before anyone could even recoil at the shattered vessel—

CRRRASH!

A single sweep of that massive hand from left to right destroyed more than ten ships. Such horrifying strength came from its overwhelming size.

And that was not all.

"Fucking hell!"

The fishfolk, which had remained motionless moments earlier as though worshipping the giant's birth, resumed their assault, plunging the pirates into panic.

'What the hell is this—!'

Radan frowned as he looked up at the immense giant with the sunset at its back.

"Radan."

He heard a voice. Alon's voice, speaking with utter detachment, without a trace of emotion even amid this chaos.

"I'll leave the fishfolk to you."

Radan looked blank for a moment.

"Understood, Big Brother."

With his answer, he retrieved the trident that had been drawn into the sea. After checking the fishfolk emerging all around them, Alon looked toward the creature slowly raising its enormous hand.

"Whew..."

Alon let out a low sigh and surveyed the situation. It could not be called favorable by any stretch of the imagination. Though Radan and the pirate lords were slaughtering fishfolk like mad, their numbers showed no sign of diminishing. They kept emerging to kill the pirates, while the enormous hand rose skyward once more, poised to unleash despair upon them.

Yet even in this dire situation, Alon did not consider defeat. Rather, he was relieved, thinking that things were not yet at their worst.

After all, the thing before him was not an Outer God.

'To be precise, it's a by-product.'

The Outer God Kalak-Kul could see through all creation merely by opening its eye of truth, and possessed the absurd ability to drown anyone regardless of whether water was present. The moment it descended, calamity began.

But the creature before him, Gal-Gik, was not an Outer God. It was merely a by-product and guardian bearing the Outer God's reincarnation egg, protecting Kalak-Kul until its descent.

At this stage, eliminating it would still prevent the Outer God's descent.

So Alon opened his mouth without hesitation.

"Arrangement of Thunder—"

The conditions were in place.

CRACKLE!

Blue sparks crackled outward and began flowing across the frozen sea of blood.

"Decomposition."

At his words, the sparks instantly became tiny particles, spreading in every direction. The blue particles glowed in the darkness that obscured the sunset.

"Fusion."

With the next phrase, they began streaming into Alon's wavering body as though being absorbed. His figure began glowing blue.

By then, Gal-Gik had been raising its hand to smash dozens of ships.

■■■■■■■■—!

Letting out a strange, incomprehensible roar, it tried to bring its hand down upon Alon's head as though eliminating a threat it sensed instinctively.

RUMBLE!

The immense sound of air being torn apart seemed to bear down upon the entire sea.

"All Things Flow."

Yet even then, Alon raised his index and middle fingers to form a hand sign.

"Form of the Thunder God."

The instant he uttered the final phrase—

CRACKLE!

He became lightning.

ZIP!

He shot straight forward.

BOOOOM!

The icy sea where Alon had just stood shattered as though an explosion had erupted there, and he hurtled toward Gal-Gik.

Gal-Gik's heart lay wide open before him. At the sight, he instinctively realized that simply shooting forward as he was would not pierce its outer hide.

Yet he could still advance without hesitation thanks to the Blindfolded One's Contract Token, one of the artifacts the Identifier had recently appraised.

The artifact's effect allowed him to conceal just one of the constraints he had pledged to uphold. With it, Alon escaped the constraint that had weakened his magic all this time—the world-law-warping constraint he had imposed when facing Ultultus, the great god of duels, with magic.

There was one more reason. He had learned how to use Form of the Thunder God.

The blue lightning hurtling toward Gal-Gik changed from its human shape. Centering the mana arrangement on the tip of his forward trajectory, he twisted and crushed his own body, now mana itself, to give it form.

And so the unmistakable spiral Alon had devised—

CRRRACKLE!

Dyed the world darkened by Gal-Gik blue and shot forward as though cleaving the world itself.

ZIP!

With that small sound—

■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■—!!!!!

Blue sparks engulfed the world.

####

After the blue sparks blanketing the world faded, an enormous hole in Gal-Gik's heart filled everyone's vision, along with Count Pallatio, visible through that hole.

"... Hah."

Speechless, all they could do was stare at that one man.

Meanwhile, Alon stood upon a wrecked ship, receiving everyone's stares.

'Stop staring and save me...!'

He was, in fact, in desperate danger. The deck beneath his feet was slowly sinking. It was not especially obvious, but it was slipping beneath the water little by little.

The reason Alon remained silent on that collapsing deck was the Form of the Thunder God he had used.

'I should be more accustomed to it than last time.'

Unlike before, he had made no major mistakes this time. Through repeated investigation and research, he had honed the spell to a certain degree. Thanks to that, he was fine apart from some tiny wounds on his arms and legs.

The problem was mana.

'I never imagined that simply moving the arrangement in Form of the Thunder God would consume such an absurd amount of mana.'

His research had given him some inkling, but the spell's mana consumption was truly ridiculous. When he first used it in Coloni, it had emptied his mana, yet he had still been able to walk around normally. Now, merely changing the mana arrangement had brought on bodily rigidity, one of the symptoms of mana depletion.

Consequently, he was sinking with the ship, unable to move or utter a word even as the deck went under.

'I can't swim!'

Just as Alon screamed silently, unable even to open his mouth—

BOOM!

Green scales burst from the sea, which had been calm only moments before.

CRUNCH!

Before there was time to react, the scaled appendage seized Radan and dragged him straight into the sea.

Alon had no time to think again. Seeing Radan dragged under before his eyes, he hurled himself from the deck into the sea.

At least, that was how it looked to the pirates.

... In reality, the green-scaled appendage had merely struck the deck he was standing on.

Plunged into the sea as a result, Alon grimaced. Fortunately, the bodily rigidity caused by mana depletion was gradually easing, so it seemed he could reach the surface before he suffocated.

But that was not the problem. The problem was the enormous eye now filling his vision.

'Kalak-Kul?!'

Alon was horrified.

Though the sky above the sea was still in twilight, the sun not yet set, beneath the surface it was as dark as the depths of the ocean. And there, in that darkness, was an enormous eye.

It was indeed the eye he had seen so many times in the game—the eye that drowned everyone who met its gaze.

'It shouldn't have manifested—!'

Confusion seized him. As far as he knew, killing Gal-Gik should have prevented the Outer God's manifestation.

Yet the Outer God had descended. It had descended intact and was watching him.

Far below.

In the deep sea where nothing else could be seen.

Silent and aloof.