Chapter 18 | The Assassin Flees from the Earth Dragon
I was surrounded by countless mucus-covered tentacles, each one resembling a giant earthworm.
The pink fog they were releasing was dangerous. It was dissolving the nearby corpses and the stone edifices of the ruined town. The vapor must have been heavier than air, as it was steadily filling the hole and blocking my paths of escape.
I had ingested many poisons from a young age in order to build up immunities as part of my assassin training, but I couldn’t imagine it would be safe for me to inhale a demon’s toxin.
I began an incantation, then summoned wind and used it to blow the pink fog away.
“That’ll never work, never work! There’s no point, no point in resisting me. I’m watching you.”
The tentacles lashed out at me as the voice spoke. They were fast.
Each one moved like a whip wielded by a master of the weapon. The point of a whip could exceed the speed of sound, and each of the limbs moved swifter than that as they attacked with complex and coordinated movements.
Their mass was overwhelming, and keeping track of their curving trajectories was difficult.
But not all hope was lost.
“I’ll find a way out of this.”
I poured mana into my Tuatha Dé eyes and used wind magic in addition to defensive martial arts skills to avoid getting hit. I must have appeared like an acrobat as I dodged the incoming blows.
I threw a knife, and it stabbed into one of the tentacles. The thing was thicker than my body, so piercing it with a knife wasn’t going to cause any pain.
This wasn’t a normal blade, however. An explosion severed the tentacle entirely and sent it flying.
The knife was a revamped version of a WASP knife that I’d created. The weapon itself didn’t burst. Instead, the tip of the blade injected gas into the tentacle, which caused rapid expansion within the target.
It was extremely effective against living organisms. I’d developed it as a toy simply to kill time, but it proved very useful against this opponent.
I hope it felt at least a little pain…
“Yeah, didn’t think so.”
The demon neither screamed nor faltered, and the remaining tentacles attacked me one after another. Naturally, the one I’d destroyed quickly regenerated.
I clicked my tongue in frustration and used a wind spell to lift myself into the air.
To put it bluntly, there was nothing I could do. I wasn’t going to learn anything useful from messing around here—I needed to retreat.
I jumped high and used magic to continue rising. This demon could not have been a worse matchup for us. It would be significantly more difficult to handle than Liogel.
I eventually rose out of reach of the tentacles, but I knew I couldn’t let my guard down. It wasn’t going to let me escape that easily.
“Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk!”
The ground shook as its peculiar high laugh sounded. The ground began to shake violently enough to cause buildings to crumble.
Then the demon appeared. It was humongous and creepy and resembled a reddish-brown caterpillar. Its length easily surpassed one hundred meters.
Those pink tentacles that had been chasing me writhed within its maw. The monstrous creature leaped at me with unbelievable force, despite its enormous frame. It was as big as a skyscraper yet was steadily gaining on me.
Should I use a Fahr Stone to counter it? No, it’s too close. I would get caught in the blast.
It felt like a bit of a waste, but I decided to use one of my most powerful attacks.
“Cannon Volley!”
I quickly produced dozens of artillery guns from my Leather Crane Bag and fired them simultaneously. Normally, I would spike the cannons into the ground to prevent them from being knocked back by the recoil. I used magnetism to try to keep them in place this time, but my mana was unable to fully negate the kick of so many heavy shots at once.
The backfire caused the cannons to blast upward through the air, but the shots still flew in the desired direction. Admittedly, I’d shot with minimal accuracy, but the demon’s massive size meant I needed only to aim down.
Cannonballs rained down on the demon, each one piercing its body.
“Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk.”
It continued its charge unbothered. Its wounds wriggled, and tentacles like the ones in the demon’s mouth grew out of each one. It was a repulsive sight.
My attack didn’t do any damage, but the overpowering kinetic energy of it slowed my enemy. I thought that would be enough for me to escape.
However, the farthest-reaching tentacles birthed thinner ones that reached upward and wrapped around my legs. The appendages dripped with mucus, and even my special combat clothes made with monster membranes began to melt. If I had been wearing ordinary garments, they would have dissolved immediately, and my legs would have liquefied down to the bone.
I dispelled the wind armor around my body and used it to rocket upward. The explosive acceleration tore the tentacles grasping my legs right off the demon.
I finally managed to crawl out of the hole and onto the surface. I looked back into the crater just in time to see the brown caterpillar shoot out of it and fling itself into the air. It resembled a breaching whale before it fell back down.
“Hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-hyuk. Too bad, too bad. Please come again. I must return, return.”
A few seconds later, the gigantic demon collided with the ground, causing the earth to cry and shake.
Then it went shockingly silent. The demon apparently killed all who entered its lair but left anyone beyond alone.
I peered into the darkness below and saw that it had already disappeared underground.
“This is really bad. I have a big disadvantage against this demon.”
That was being kind. I couldn’t think of a single way to defeat it with my present capabilities.
I carefully unraveled the thin tentacles wrapped around my legs and bottled them. There was a good chance that studying them might reveal something useful.
I decided against going back into the hole and instead joined up with Tarte and Dia. I would have been discovered immediately if I went after the demon, and there was no point trying to fight it right now anyway. I couldn’t defeat it, and engaging wouldn’t teach me anything more, either.
“I’m back,” I announced.
“That thing is unbelievably big. We could see it from here,” said Dia.
Tarte offered me a glass. “Welcome back, my lord. Here’s some lemonade for you.”
“Thank you.”
I took the lemonade and quenched my thirst.
The combination of sweet and sour hit the spot.
“How’d it go? Did you discover a way to defeat it?” Dia inquired.
“Actually…I’m kind of at a loss,” I admitted.
I had been able to come up with a decent strategy for each of the demons thus far, but I was drawing a blank on this one.
“Yeah, me too… I mean, it’s gigantic. Demonkiller would never work.”
“You’re right. It’s over one hundred meters long, while Demonkiller’s range is a few meters at best. We need to find the Crimson Heart, and if it turns out it’s in the middle of its body, we’ll never reach it.”
Demons were difficult to kill because they repeatedly healed if we didn’t use a spell called Demonkiller to materialize their Crimson Hearts, which housed their power of existence, and then smash them. Given the caterpillar’s enormous size, however, there was a high chance we wouldn’t be able to reach the Crimson Heart.
“We can’t follow it underground, either,” said Tarte.
“Yeah, it can escape whenever it wants by burrowing into the earth. And it’s too big to hold in place,” I agreed.
Burrowing gave it a huge advantage. Any time we cornered it, the demon could just dig away and regroup. It also worked as a great defense. For example, I considered smoking it out using Fahr Stone explosions like we did with the beetle demon, but that wouldn’t have much effect if it was deep below the surface. That ruled out Gungnir, too.
I was also concerned by how it didn’t pursue me very far after I left the hole. That was proof that it was prioritizing completing the Fruit of Life over killing me. Undoubtedly, it would flee at the first sign of danger.
“Oh yeah, I wonder which demon that is,” said Dia.
“There’s only one of the remaining four demons it could be. It looks like a caterpillar, but it must be the dragon,” I answered.
“I thought dragons were supposed to be cooler than that,” said Tarte.
“…Sure. But only a dragon could be that big.”
There were legends of something called an earth dragon. Apparently, one had swallowed an entire town from below once.
“Hmm, is there anything in legend that says how heroes in the past managed to defeat it? There’s no way they didn’t struggle with the earth dragon, too. There’s nothing they could do about it hiding underground,” Dia remarked.
“One story has it that the earth dragon ate the hero and returned below the earth, but the hero killed it from within its stomach,” I explained.
“We can probably replicate that. Once inside its body, it wouldn’t matter if it went underground, and we’d be able to reach the Crimson Heart.”
“Yeah… The problem is, it spews poison gas that can melt stone. I’d really rather not get swallowed.”
“Darn, we’d be melted in an instant.”
We needed to find an edge. I’d hoped that looking to legend for hints would reveal something. At least we knew that this was an earth dragon.
Now that I thought about it, I recalled reading that a previous hero had a rough fight and was ready to accept defeat when a storm suddenly swept over the area and slowed the earth dragon’s movement. Perhaps there was something to that.
“…Might as well try it.”
“What are you doing with those Fahr Stones, Lugh?” asked Dia.
“I thought I’d harass our opponent a little before giving up,” I answered.
This was just an idea, but it was worth the attempt. I could use the bottled tentacles to perform a test.
Retreating would be the smartest option rather than taking any risks. Epona wasn’t liable to get here in time, but withdrawing would at least let us request her assistance. I expected she’d be able to beat this demon.
Still, I didn’t want to take that gamble. If we didn’t stop the demon here, not only would the Demon King be that much closer to reviving, but another town would likely suffer the same fate as this one.
There was always a chance Tuatha Dé, Milteu, or another place with people important to me could be next. That was why I was going to do my best to stop this. This wasn’t for justice—I simply wanted to protect those I cared about.
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