3 bar menu

Volume 5 Prologue Part 12

「Now, now, there is no need to panic so much just yet, so calm down, would you. . . Alma, do you have any idea what that thing is? Something from the Greek Mythology?」

「No, I am afraid that I do not know for sure, although the fact that it possesses tentacles growing out of its corpus cavernosum would make it somewhat similar to the sea monster Charybdis, but I do not know if it is just in terms of how their bodies are build or if there are any more similarities.」

Maybe it was Asuka’s imagination, but she thought that Alma was unusually evasive with her answer just now.

Lamia peeked out from behind their cover just like Asuka did, and nodded her head as soon as she saw it.

「Hmmm. . .yup, that is definitely a sea beast holding a Divinity. Good thing that it is not a genuine Divine Beast though, or we would have been screwed otherwise.」

「Divine Beast?」

「Yeah. In other words, a type of low-ranked Divine Spirit. Charybdis is a offspring of the Earth Goddess Gaia, right? So if this underground lake is indeed some kind of a sacred place, then it would not be all that strange for it to be invited to be its guardian.」

Charybdis, the monster of the sea spoken of in Greek Mythology. Originally born as a daughter of the Earth Goddess Gaia and the Sea God Poseidon, she has been turned into a water devouring monster by the Chief God Zeus for committing the sins of greed and gluttony. From then on, she was tasked with guarding the Strait of Messina in Italy as punishment for her transgressions, a duty that she was supposed to perform together with Scylla by blocking the strait with a gigantic maelstrom of water that would swallow up and all heroes who would dare to try and cross it.

(Even though it is a Divine Beast related to Gaia, I wonder if it is more or less the same as Cerberus is? Well, whatever the case wit it might be, this is not my enemy.)

Lamia was pondering about what she should do. If only she felt like it, then defeating that kind of enemy would be a piece of cake for her, because she had more than enough power to achieve such a feat pretty much effortlessly, and it is all thanks to her being one of the Pureblood Vampires, who are fundamentally different from their counterparts present in the minds of the people from the Outer World. They have a number of weaknesses, which include garlic, having their hearts pierced with a wooden stake, being unable to enter buildings unless they are invited to do so and being unable to cross the bodies of flowing water. In that sense, it would be more accurate to say that Lamia has nothing to do with them, since her only weakness is a direct exposure to sunlight, so dealing with the amount of water that was in the lake right now would not pose any kind of issue to her.

However. . . while it is true that she could have defeated that monster faster than it would take her to snap her fingers, would it really be okay for her, one of the key figures in one of the Sub Communities of the {Uroboros Demon Lord Alliance} to be showing off her entire hand like that? Maybe it would be better for her to keep her hand to herself for now and see what the others are capable off for the time being? Especially. . .

「Almathea. . . should it not be easy for you to defeat an opponent of that calliber?」

「Ah, uhm. . .you see, the thing is. . . 」

「Having Alma fight that thing would not amount to much, because even if she were to strike the surface of the lake with lightning, it would simply scatter without doing any kind of real damage, or at best it would force that beast to retreat, but little else than that. You know how nothing happens whenever there are lightning storms at the sea, and even if the fish were to be hit by it they would not outright die, correct? Well, it is the same principal here.」

One of the properties of the salt water fliing the seas and oceans is that it has extremely high conductivity, so even if the surface of the ocean would be struck by lightning, it would simply scatter along the water’s surface without penetrating any deeper. That is exactly the reason why lightning strikes, even if they are frequent on the seas during the storms, rarely kill fish and other kinds of marine life. In short, it does not matter if you are in the sea, beneath its surface or surrounded by it. As long as the seawater is involved, the lightning’s destructive capabilities are going to be rendered mostly ineffective.

「Well, it would have been an altogether different story if we were to blow the entire lake up sky high. . .  but if this monster right there is the same one as the Charybdis from the Greek folklore, then I am afraid that even that might not be enough to bring it down. The way things are looking up now, defeating it might prove to be a more than a little problematic, even more so since I have to admit that I do feel a little bit sorry for it, because that thing was not born a monster. Just like Scylla, she is a human who was turned into a monster simply because Gods ruled it so. . . . . . 」

Asuka’s expression immediately became more unpleasant, as if she was disgusted by something as she placed her hand on the handle of the katana that she was holding on her waist and looked at the beast in the lake with solemn eyes.

「So yeah. . . it looks like the time has finally come for me to take the center stage, huh?」

「Master, I am sorry that I cannot fight together with you, but I have to stay in this form in order to protect Miss Suzuka. Even so. . . . . . . . . . . will you be all right on your own?」

「Yes, I should be fine by myself, so it would be great if Miss Suzuka and Lamia stayed behind cover at all time and did not try to interfere. Just wait until I am done with that thing. I will try not to take too long.」

When Asuka left the safety of the cover created by Alma with light steps, Suzuka could not help it and shouted in astonishment:

「W-Wait! Wait just a minute, Miss Asuka! Are you really going to fight it all by yourself?!」

But by the time she was finished, Asuka was already too far to reply to her. Moving past the  stalactites that continued to rain down from the ceiling, she closed the distance between herself and the lake in the blink of an eye. She took out a flute and blew it, and when she did, fragments of the earth beneath her were pulled high into the air, acting as her shield from the debris that she would have been unable to avoid otherwise.

When Charybdis saw that her attacks thus far have been ineffective, she decided to change her attack strategy. She stopped crushing the stalactites on the ceiling, and instead created a huge vortex right in the middle of the underground lake, exposing the rest of her body in the process. In her entirety, Charybdis looked like a giant jellyfish with a myriad of long tentacles which were all covered with what looked like fangs at their tips. Asuka inadvertently laughed bitterly, because to her, the appearance of the enemy before her was very much similar to the Orochi from Japanese legends. If she allows any of these tentacles to catch her, there was no doubt in her mind that she would end up devoured in a matter of seconds. However. . .that is only under the assumption that she allows herself to get caught by them in the first place.