Chapter 25
1.
While the Dragon bought time by fighting the Leviathans with blasts of its breath, Dojin and the Sword Saint had moved elsewhere to destroy the nest.
But there was a problem.
"It's inside an underwater cave?"
"—And a dormant volcano lies above it."
If someone asked whether he could pierce through more than fifty kilometers with a thrust from a distance, the Sword Saint would have answered, 'I'd just have to try.'
If they asked whether he'd ever actually done it, he'd have said he hadn't. But if his sword wouldn't do the job, the Sword Saint could use a spear instead.
That was only if there were no obstacles—or if he could afford not to worry about them... A slash was just a slash, not a car that could drift around corners however it pleased.
"Nothing's going right."
The Sword Saint sighed and settled down over the sea. He mainly used mana for physical enhancement, but he could still make footholds out of mana.
The Sword Saint weighed his options for a moment. If he pierced straight through the dormant volcano and destroyed the nest, what kind of damage would the underwater volcano's eruption cause?
...Even a supercomputer probably couldn't calculate that. And even if it could, there'd be no guarantee its answer would be 100% accurate.
The result might be more than a simple change in sea level. If the dormant volcano erupted and its contents contaminated the sea, humanity would be on the fast track to extinction.
Above all, a thrust wouldn't be powerful enough to destroy the nest producing the Leviathans in one strike. A thrust focused on piercing power had a narrow attack range. The Leviathan nest was probably as tall as an ordinary high-rise and as wide as a sports field.
No matter how powerful the thrust was, it couldn't destroy all that in a single blow.
"Dojin, you can move the sea out of the way, right?"
"If it's about thirty kilometers."
Even then, he'd have to use nearly all his strength. If Dojin expended that much power in a place teeming with breeding Leviathans, it would be hard to guarantee his survival.
The Dragon in the distance looked drenched, with blood running through the water coating its body.
It seemed that, due to its lack of experience, it couldn't properly manifest a dragon's defensive strength.
If it were a real Gold Dragon, gleaming gold like that, it would be tearing Leviathans apart one-handed, like ripping apart loaches.
"We need to catch our breath first. A temporary retreat..."
-KROOOAAH!!
The Dragon unleashed its breath again, burning four or five Leviathans to ash. The seawater vaporized by its breath surged skyward, then fell as rain.
Had it done that out of frustration? Or had it lost its reason from fighting too hard? In the Sword Saint's eyes, it was probably the latter.
The problem now was that the Dragon had lost the intelligence to understand the meaning of a strategic retreat. It was being swallowed up by the wild instincts of its own power.
A dragon's instincts were as ferocious as its reason was steadfast. If it couldn't control them properly, there'd be nothing strange about calling it a villain.
The Sword Saint was the one who looked after it. Whenever the Dragon was swallowed by such ferocious instincts that it lost its reason, the Sword Saint would 'fillet' it to bring it under control.
Though that was a little difficult out here on the sea.
"Sigh. What an immature brat."
The Sword Saint sighed, and Dojin swung his hand. Along the path of his swing, a series of explosions sent seawater soaring dozens of meters into the air.
The endless geysers of seawater had turned what had been clear skies into a region of heavy rain, blanketed with gloomy clouds.
"Hup. Hah!"
With a short shout, the Sword Saint swung his sword in a wide arc. At the same time, the Leviathans within several kilometers of him were sliced in half.
Even after slaughtering dozens of them like this, the Leviathans kept appearing.
"Looks like there's a boss."
A boss was also called a nest guardian. It was a term for an especially powerful individual protecting a nest.
As long as the nest existed, a boss could regenerate almost without limit, making it a particularly troublesome foe.
A common trait among them was their ability—almost a miracle—to continually produce and revive monsters created within the nest.
There certainly seemed to be too few Leviathan corpses for the number they'd killed.
"There does seem to be one."
Dojin had no choice but to nod. He'd taken down more than a dozen Leviathans himself, and the Dragon and the Sword Saint had killed more than a dozen between them as well.
By a rough count, over thirty Leviathans had died. It made no sense that they were still appearing.
"We have no chance here. We'll have to bring the A-ranks."
"What are we going to do about the Dragon?"
"We'll take it with us."
The Three Heroes were plenty strong. Even if a hundred Leviathans had really appeared, it wasn't as if they couldn't beat them.
But they weren't foolish enough to waste their strength fighting an enemy whose numbers kept replenishing.
And then...
"Dojin!"
"Eek, it's the Three Heroes!"
The fools were the mayfly-like idiots who showed up without even realizing they were in a place where they could easily die.
The Sword Saint thought so as he frowned.
He'd thought well of Lapis. Dojin was practically like a son to him, so he'd genuinely looked at her through the eyes of a father-in-law.
He'd also trusted that Dojin would make the right choice on his own, but all things considered, he was practically Dojin's father, so he couldn't help seeing her that way, too.
He'd thought rather highly of Lapis, and yet here she was, showing up in a place like this.
"Dojin, take her with you first. I'll take care of the Dragon."
"No, Uncle. We have her."
"...What do you mean?"
The Sword Saint gave him a look that asked, What do you mean, you have her?
"Lapis can get us down to fifty kilometers underwater."
"Oh, yes! I can control water, after all."
"...Really?"
Usually, a water-manipulation ability only let someone control water they'd created themselves with mana.
Given Dojin's mana sight and his usual personality, she probably wasn't lying.
And Lapis had answered with complete confidence.
"Even so, we still need a few more people. First of all, we don't have any light."
"I can do that! Me! Ribel!"
Ribel, clad in a blue steel suit, bounced up and down as she answered. The wings on her back were still keeping her aloft with jets of light.
The Sword Saint was quite familiar with that suit. He didn't have to look far; the company he'd commissioned had asked him to test a few prototypes.
The fact that she had a suit like that made it easy to guess who Ribel was.
"Right, Miss Ohbyeol. All the more reason for you to stay out of it. That's a real hell down there."
The journey down to fifty kilometers was no exaggeration to call a real hell.
The deep sea was under pressure no human could withstand, and they'd have to press on through its darkness while being attacked by Leviathans from all sides.
Even for the Sword Saint, that would be difficult to handle.
"The same goes for Lapis. You can make a path, but can you guarantee you'll pass through it safely?"
"...I don't think I can guarantee that... Yes, you're right, Sword Saint. The most I can do is make the path."
Just making a path might sound simple, but at a distance of about fifty kilometers, it was a different story.
Even opening a path that far was beyond the realm of ordinary humans.
"I'll go with them."
Dojin stepped forward. He probably didn't want to embarrass Lapis or make her feel awkward.
The Sword Saint was actually pleased to see them sharing such innocent young love.
Then he thought it over.
It might work.
The light could come from the lights built into Ribel's suit, for example.
Lapis could open a path to the nest.
And if Dojin went with them to protect them on the way...
As long as there were no flaws in the theory, it would be perfect...
'The boss is the problem.'
The boss's ability bothered him. If it was the boss of a nest producing Leviathans, then it had to be stronger than the Leviathans themselves.
Lapis, who would have used up all her strength reaching the deep sea, and Ribel, who had no weapons effective in the deep sea.
In the end, Dojin would have to defeat the boss alone and deal with the nest, too.
If Dojin were in peak condition, the Sword Saint might have considered it. But Dojin had already used up quite a bit of his strength.
The Sword Saint finished weighing the options and put the thought aside.
If it couldn't be done, it couldn't be done.
"No. We know too little about the boss."
"Uncle!"
"No means no. We need to retreat for now and regroup..."
The Sword Saint turned to look at the Dragon.
And the Dragon...
-KROOOAAAH!!
It unleashed a blast of breath at the sea, drawing on all the strength in its body.
KWA-BOOOOM!!
In the end, more than ten kilometers' worth of seawater beneath the Dragon evaporated all at once.
The Leviathans might be called the calamity of the sea, but they were still deep-sea creatures. They couldn't survive without water.
The Leviathans hurriedly fled the space left behind by the evaporated seawater, throwing themselves back into the sea.
"Let's go now!"
Dojin took Lapis and Ribel with him and disappeared in a teleport.
The Sword Saint sighed.
The kid had always listened, even if his words were a little sharp. But now that he had a girlfriend, it seemed he'd developed the urge to do things his own way.
It was like watching a boy finally reach puberty.
"Good grief."
The Sword Saint kicked the air two or three times and reached the space beneath the Dragon in an instant.
Apparently, it could no longer even maintain its form. It gradually shrank, transformed into a human, and fluttered down.
"Ugh..."
"This one and that one..."
Honestly, those kids were impossible to get to listen.
The Sword Saint sighed, hoisted the Dragon onto his back, and secured it tightly with the belt that held his sword sheath.
The sheath was in the way, so he tossed it aside.
Dojin, Lapis, and Ribel were already inside, nowhere to be seen.
If so, there was only one thing the Sword Saint could do.
Draw as much aggro as possible and get as many Leviathans as he could to come after him.
"Secret Technique: Heaven-Splitting."
His slash cleaved the sea once more.
2.
"It's dark..."
Ribel had already deactivated her Nano Suit and was clinging to me as if she were hugging me.
The three of us—Dojin, Ribel, and me—were inside a bubble, gradually making our way into the deep sea.
First, I'd opened a broad, cylindrical passage to relieve the pressure. Then we traveled through it inside the bubble.
Small bubbles floated around us, carrying the components of Ribel's wings. They were serving as flares.
"Keep going straight."
Dojin was beside me, his golden mystic eye shining as he guided me along the path.
By my estimate, we'd already gone about ten kilometers down.
"Gnh...!"
I felt several Leviathans ramming themselves against the cylinder, trying to force their way inside.
Did they know instinctively? Was it because the currents were different from usual? Or was there some being watching the whole situation and giving them orders?
Any of those theories seemed plausible, but there probably wasn't any evidence to prove one of them.
No.
There was a boss.
"Dojin, what's a boss?"
"You don't even know what a boss is? Have you only taken on low-level nests?"
"...I was asking Dojin..."
Ribel had latched onto me, apparently trying to answer my question. It was nice to get along, but wasn't she standing a little too close?
"Wow, you're really pretty. Have you ever thought about sleeping with a woman...?"
"No. I'm not into that."
"Hehe, call me if you change your mind~"
Seriously, what's with this woman? Is she a lesbian?
How annoying.
"A boss is a guardian that protects the nest. It's especially powerful because it's linked to the nest, and it has the power to revive monsters created inside it."
Ribel answered before Dojin could.
She was annoying, but she explained things well.
"This is getting troublesome."
I could understand what the Sword Saint had meant when he said the boss was a concern.
Dojin was the only one who could properly fight right now.
"It's fine. I can do it."
Dojin said it confidently.
I believed Dojin could do it.