“One-shotting a GREAT KRAKEN… you people really are monsters…”
The captain said it with his are-these-people-serious face at maximum intensity.
“Out of curiosity — the Great Kraken bounty?”
“Two thousand gold, thereabouts.”
So this expedition closes deep in the black.
With the palm-top rabbits on hunting restrictions lately, it’s a very welcome windfall.
“Overhunting depletes the monster resource base” remains a wild sentence, but for Cornelia it’s a livelihood issue — and good neighbors respect livelihood issues.
Though to be fair, today’s harvest was only possible because this sea has become a literal monster nest.
“Right — eyeball collection duty, then.”
The words had barely left me before Atomu-kun was in the rowboat, speeding toward the site.
Yes. This boy is a genuinely ELITE errand-runner.
“So why DID the krakens multiply badly enough to kill the shipping trade?”
“The sovereign of the sea… Leviathan.”
At that word, Cornelia’s ears gave a distinct twitch.
“Leviathan? Meaning what?”
“Apex of all sea monsters. The Sea Emperor Leviathan took up residence in nearby waters, and the local monsters fled in sheer terror — the krakens crowded into THIS sea to escape it.”
Cornelia’s ears kept twitching through all of this.
Listening hard, clearly — while pretending to be uninvolved in the conversation…
“Anyway… about time we headed back, yeah? Business is concluded.”
We recovered Atomu-kun and his boatful of eyeballs — mission fully cleared.
“Right you are. ALL HANDS! Set course for port — WEIGH ANCHOR!”
The ship began to move — and at that exact moment—
—a roar of thunder from beyond the horizon.
We looked: spray… no — the sea was PARTING, Ten-Commandments style, two pillars of water racing toward us.
And at the center of the twin pillars — a colossal dragon.
“THAT IS TOO BIG BY ANY STANDARD!”
A sea-serpent-shaped dragon, body towering past three hundred meters.
The trunk alone… seventy meters radius? Am I really seeing that?
And it was closing at horrifying speed.
The captain’s mouth flapped open and shut, and his legs quit beneath him.
“L… L… Leva… Leviath…”
Impeccable timing, universe. So THAT’S the famous Leviathan.
“Oh no…”
Ouroboros and Maria had both gone paper-white.
“Run awaaay, run awaaay~♪”
“Ufufu~ a scary one has come~♪ Fleeing time~♪”
“Full-speed dash~♪”
The palm-top rabbits took off sprinting toward the side of the ship opposite Leviathan.
They pattered along in their tiny sprint — reached the far railing, the dead end — and went collectively teary-eyed.
“We can’t flee, we’re on a SHIP~!”
“What do we do, what do we do~?”
“We can’t swiiim~”
Full panic, as described.
And Sonya?
“On LAND I could manage one good bite~. But we’re at sea, so it’s hopeless~♪ We shall simply become flotsam, as fate wills~♪”
Reading between the lines: on land, she rates herself a fighting chance against THAT. Noted, and terrifying.
And our Demon Lord?
“LONG has it been, LEVIATHAN! No greeting — and already in battle stance, as I see it! VERY WELL! Thy challenge is ACCEPTED!”
Oh!
Acquaintances after all. Called it.
Cornelia drew in an enormous breath and bellowed:
“FUHAHA! That no little sister ever born surpasses her elder — I shall carve the lesson into thy HIDE!”
“IT’S YOUR SISTER?!”
And Cornelia leapt skyward, beginning her metamorphosis into the Dark Evil Dragon.
”…Enormous.”
My first time seeing Cornelia’s true dragon form — and it is SERIOUSLY enormous.
Height around two hundred fifty meters, trunk maybe sixty meters radius.
A jet-black form with an obsidian sheen — wings spread, the span must run three hundred meters.
Opposing her: Leviathan, three-hundred-plus meters tall.
Trunk around seventy meters radius, as established.
The little sister is… bigger, apparently.
Leviathan burst from the sea into the sky, and an aerial slugfest commenced.
An uppercut-angle claw strike from Leviathan’s foreleg launched Cornelia straight up.
—Oi oi, she just got punched ABOVE THE CLOUDS. Is she okay?
Moments later, Cornelia came screaming back down — wrapped in a glowing RED aura, at meteoric speed.
Um… that’s… the atmospheric-reentry friction glow? The one from satellite footage?
Nothing about any of this is okay.
—ZGYOSHOOOON!
With a boom like the world ending, Cornelia’s dragon axe-kick connected clean with airborne Leviathan’s face.
Leviathan was driven straight down into the sea — birthing a wave a hundred meters tall.
Oi oi — if THAT wave reaches us, this ship is a rounding error.
[Skill: Farm Labor Resistance Level 10, activated.]
An aura of light wrapped the ship.
The mega-wave PARTED around the light, as though our patch of ocean had been surgically disconnected from the rest of reality.
Not even a rocking motion. A perfect island of calm amid armageddon.
…Cornelia’s side of the family is broken, but Skill Level 10 is broken in its own special way.
“This is… a full kaiju title match, huh.”
Cornelia pressed the attack and dove after Leviathan.
An underwater grapple-brawl ensued, spawning wave after towering wave.
Then both dragons surfaced and rose into the sky again.
Wings beating, they opened distance — and both opened their jaws wide.
Particles of light streamed into two mouths — and two energy-particle cannons fired, nearly simultaneously, each at the other.
The beams interfered mid-flight, warped off course — and both attacks missed clean.
Cornelia’s shot sailed over the ocean horizon.
Leviathan’s shot sailed the other way — and struck the largest mountain in this kingdom, dead center.
—ZDDDDDDDDOOOOM!
Correction to my earlier report.
I said the axe-kick sounded like the world ending. THIS was the sound of the world ending.
”…The mountain… is GONE.”
The top half of the mountain had simply ceased to exist. Oi. Oi.
”…This isn’t the energy wave from the nationally beloved manga where vegetable-named aliens go blond… except it literally is…”
Genuinely — the battle is AT that power scale.
And I’m supposed to be Cornelia’s equal — is that assessment still live?
If one of those beams hit ME, surely I’m gone in one shot.
[Farm Labor Resistance Level 10 would juuust barely manage it.]
IT WOULD?!
[Around five shots would be juuust barely manageable.]
FIVE?!
Well then. Somewhere along the way, I apparently resigned from the human race entirely, without filing the paperwork.
And there, Ouroboros spoke, awe and dread mixed in equal parts:
“The Dark Roar and the Levia-Roar… both have deployed their final weapons as dragonkind. The conclusion… draws near.”