Murmur, murmur.
When I went outside the inn, I saw people gathered in the middle of the village.
“What’s going on?”
“Did a fight break out or something?”
As I approached the crowd, I could hear the residents clamoring.
-“What the hell is this?”
-“Why would something like that fall from the sky?”
‘The sky?’
I pushed my way through the crowd and moved forward.
And at the sight that entered my vision, my feet froze.
It was not a living, moving monster.
It was the corpse of a monster, its limbs already twisted in death.
Where it had flown in from, no one knew. The corpse had been embedded upright, but unable to withstand its own weight, it had crashed down into the middle of the village square.
The stone pavement split apart, dust billowed up, and a terrible fishy stench spread in every direction.
Its body resembled that of a deep-sea angler, but its eyes had already burst, hanging hideously loose.
“Ugh…!”
Screams erupted among the residents.
-“It’s… dead, right?”
-“How does something like that fall from the sky?”
-“Those things only came out of the sea, so why all the way here…”
I gripped my staff and stared at the collapsed corpse.
The rotten fishy stink was already stabbing at the tip of my nose.
‘…So the reason those bastards keep pouring onto the island isn’t simply because of the sea.’
The monster corpse that had fallen from the sky seemed like an ominous sign revealing what was happening on this island.
“Where did it fly in from?”
Baldik voiced the fundamental question.
“Wouldn’t it be the sea?”
Sileon said, but Baldik’s brow remained furrowed.
“If it came from the sea… that’s too far. No matter how you look at it, even if it’s a deep-sea angler, it doesn’t make sense for a wingless thing to glide this far.”
From the village to the sea was roughly fifty paces away—no, even farther than that.
For a monster of that weight to have flown here on its own was, by common sense, impossible.
Of course, in this world, there were plenty of times when judging by common sense alone felt meaningless.
“It was dead to begin with.”
Ranson continued in a low voice.
“It didn’t fly here on its own… someone sent it flying.”
In an instant, everyone’s gaze froze.
“You’re saying there’s a monster that can fling something that heavy?”
Sileon said, his voice thick with fear.
I quietly looked at the place where the monster’s corpse had crashed down. The cracked stone pavement, the shattered pieces of wood, and the grotesque corpse sprawled in the middle of it all.
‘…Someone did it intentionally.’
That meant there might be someone else behind turning this island into a monster-infested ground.
“What happened with asking around for a ship?”
“Well…”
It wasn’t as if we intended to stay trapped on this island forever either.
We had already been searching through various routes for a way to return to the continent.
But the answers that came back were bleak.
“It looks like the rumors have already spread. There aren’t any new ships coming in at all.”
“…Then what about the ships the residents have?”
“A lot of people have already escaped. After that, everything got placed under control, and they say they can’t find a single proper ship.”
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
‘So getting out by boat is a dead end.’
“Then we should hurry and swim out if we have to—”
“Shit, if that’s what you want, you go by yourself.”
“S-still, we can’t keep fighting forever.”
“…Tch.”
The faces of my companions already showed clear signs of utter exhaustion.
As for me, I could simply stay in the back and fire off magic, but standing on the front line and clashing with monsters every single day was their role.
Seeing the person beside you get dragged away by tentacles and torn to pieces alive would have been difficult to endure, both mentally and physically.
That didn’t mean I was comfortable either.
When too many monsters swarmed in, I also had to draw my mana to its limits.
Each time, a sickening headache and a pain digging into my heart followed.
‘My lifespan might have been shortened by a month on this island alone.’
There were things we had gained, too.
First of all, Baldik and Sileon.
Both of their combat senses had improved noticeably compared to before.
Baldik now moved boldly enough that anyone would call him a seasoned mercenary, and the scars etched across his face had increased just as much.
It reminded me of what Drek had looked like when I first met him.
I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing. At least Baldik seemed satisfied.
Sileon was still just as timid as ever, but he had become capable of doing at least one man’s share on the front line.
If Baldik hadn’t been beside him, he might have died several times already, but compared to before, it was still tremendous progress.
Besides them, even Ranson and Hain, who had been far removed from combat at first, now gave off a somewhat mercenary-like air.
The saying that a single real battle was more effective than tens of thousands of practices hadn’t come out of nowhere.
And then, me.
In truth, if I had to be honest, the one who had changed the most might have been me, who had been in the rear.
Normally, rear personnel didn’t even get opportunities to build combat experience, so there would have been almost nothing to gain.
But I was different.
Large-scale battles that kept coming without end, and magical bombardments I poured out to my heart’s content from a stable position.
For me, this was practically an experience-burning event.
As a result, in barely over a week, I had managed to level up three times.
Once could perhaps be brushed off as accumulated experience finally catching up, but I had leveled up two more times in succession after that.
It showed all too clearly just how fierce and urgent the fighting had been.
‘And besides…’
Since the pachinko had spun three times, the abilities I obtained from it were nothing to scoff at either.
Perhaps thanks to that, despite our reduced forces, we had been able to endure the waves until now.
Before that thought could even finish.
Ruuuuumble—!
The ground began to shake.
Bwooooooo—!
The sound of a horn that shook the entire island cut through the air and spread.
In an instant, everyone in the square froze, and Baldik sprang up from his seat with a grimace.
“Damn it.”
Without a word, Sileon gripped his bow and looked out toward the beach with a pale face.
Far off along the shore, murky foam began to rise with columns of water, and black dots started crawling up onto the sand.
“Just how many of those damned things are there?”
“I’m sick of this. Damn sick of it.”
Baldik ground his teeth and tapped his shoulder, while Sileon fidgeted with his bowstring and shook his head.
It was fucking infuriating that they didn’t keep their promise, and it was fucking infuriating to fight every day.
But that didn’t mean we could leave these monsters alone and run.
“If they don’t keep their promise today either…”
Sileon lowered his voice.
“We’re going through with that plan, right?”
I drew in a short breath.
Here, a single word could carry the price of a life.
“…Yeah.”
The moment I nodded, Baldik, Sileon, and even Ranson all rose from their seats as if accustomed to it and moved to their respective positions.
We had repeated it so many times that there was no need to separately instruct who should go where; a glance was enough.
The sound of a spearhead scraping over the sand, the sound of a bowstring being drawn taut, and the mana slowly rising from my fingertips.
‘If today is the same as always, then this time we’ll be the ones to flip the board first.’
We had already steeled ourselves.
***
“To the rear!”
“Pull the front line in! Don’t fall back yet!”
The noncommissioned officer’s shout rode the wind up to the watchtower.
A scene that had now become halfway familiar.
Standing atop the watchtower, what unfolded below my vision was, as always, a battlefield soaked in blood and saltwater.
A swarm of monsters with black tentacles tangled together, and soldiers and mercenaries in armor scattered among them.
The beach that had sparkled golden when I first set foot here was gone.
Mixed with blood, seawater, and the fluids of rotting monsters, it had turned into a dull earth-brown.
“…They’ve already been pushed all the way to that end.”
At some point, the number of soldiers had noticeably decreased, and the thinned front line was now barely clinging to the edge of the beach.
The shoulders of the soldiers holding up their spears trembled, and anxious expressions leaked through the gaps between shields.
The sea breeze was already thick with the smell of blood.
The fact that I was now so used to it that even breathing it in no longer turned my stomach was, if anything, more horrifying.
‘As expected, at this rate, they won’t last long.’
In just three or four more days, it was obvious the monsters would be pushed all the way to the checkpoint.
No matter how equipped and trained the soldiers were, the numerical advantage of those things had no end in sight.
There was a limit to the arms that swung spears, and fatigue accumulated in the shoulders that held up shields.
If wounded, they had to rest, and muscles would eventually tire and collapse.
In front of those monsters endlessly crawling out no matter how many were killed, those limits became even clearer.
I took a deep breath and drew mana up from within my chest.
Splash!
A large wooden tub placed below the watchtower, now part of my combat preparations.
The water inside rose up as though it had been waiting for me, tracing a strange curve.
The current vibrated together with the air as it broke apart, responding to my fingertips, and soon a large sphere began to pulse in midair.
As I rapidly compressed the sphere, the water hummed as if pounding against a heart.
I turned its direction with my fingertips and nodded to the signalman beside the watchtower.
Immediately, a flag shot up.
“Magic! Front line, fall back!”
As the heavy shout cut across the beach, the soldiers stepped away and drew their shields back.
The monsters’ tentacles twitched through the sand and thrashed in the air for a moment, and without missing that opening, I whispered.
[Water Bomb]
Shwaaaaaak—!
The blue sphere, launched with tremendous pressure, slammed into the middle of the front line where deep-sea anglers were densely swarming.
Kwaaaaaang!
The water sphere that exploded first crashed through them like an underwater wave, sweeping away the monsters.
In an instant, their grotesque bodies covered in coral shattered to pieces and scattered through the air.
Kwaaaaaang!
Immediately after, another explosion burst out in succession, adding to the tremor. It caused two explosions.
With two Water Bombs, roughly ten of them were blown apart and scattered.
Blood and entrails mixed into the waves and flew away, but their numbers were still overwhelmingly high.
After enduring the shock of the explosion, the monsters crawled over the corpses of their own kind and approached, trying to break through the steam-filled beach.
The moment they tried to push through the thick steam,
Chiiiiiiiik—!
The monsters’ skin began to cook crisp.
The coral covering them like armor flaked off, and their black skin split apart, spewing steam.
‘Now it even smells like grilled fish…’
The monsters, turned medium-rare in an instant, thrashed about before collapsing into the sand.
This was one of the new abilities I had obtained.
To be precise, an enhancement.
When my level reached 20, it was an ability I could choose as my final level-up reward.
I had always felt that Water Bomb’s power was lacking, so I invested in strengthening it without hesitation.
The additional effect that resulted was [Steam Imbuement].
It was exactly as the name suggested.
An effect that left high-temperature steam where Water Bomb exploded.
For monsters swarming onto the shore like now, it was truly a hellish trap.
An explosion in an instant, followed by scalding steam.
At this point, it was no longer just Water Bomb; it would not be lacking to simply call it a bomb.
“They’re flanking! Stop them!”
“Block them on the left and right!!”
As if those things weren’t entirely unintelligent, they tried to avoid the steam-filled blast zone and dig in from the left and right.
But only those who had survived after fighting for several days and learning the habits of the deep-sea anglers remained.
Spearheads pierced the monsters’ tentacles one after another, and shields and swords swept over the sand, cutting off their movements.
In the end, the monsters unable to break through the formation prepared in advance fell one by one.
The magic poured down afterward and the stubborn resistance of the front line finally drove them back.
When even the last of the roaring ones retreated, only the thick stench of blood and dense steam settled over the beach.
Unable to relax, I looked down for a long while, and only then did the strength leave my legs, making me slump down onto the floor of the watchtower.
When I pressed my back against the heated wooden floor, it felt as though it overlapped with the heat of my own body, caught up in battle, making it even harder to breathe.
‘I used myself down to the bottom again today.’
The last few days had always been the same.
Not once had I had any mana left after a battle ended.
At least on days without fighting, I soaked myself in the tub brought from the inn and forced my mana recovery by drawing the sensation of water-body unity to the extreme.
I endured while feeling my mana return, however faintly, as if a pulse were spreading through the water.
But even such days were rare.
Most of the time, I had to prepare for the next wave on the bloodstained sand, suffering from severe mana deficiency and headaches.
The sensation of my head throbbing and my heart beating heavily had long since become familiar.
As I lay on the floor of the watchtower like that, catching my breath for a moment,
the sound of someone climbing the ladder struck the back of my head.
“You were resting. You worked hard again today.”
“Ah, yes.”
It was Sergeant Jackson, the noncommissioned officer who always greeted me.
Even in this hellish situation, he always kept his manners.
“Today as well…”
His words cut off for a moment, and his expression darkened.
“It seems things have turned out that way. I’m sorry…”
That meant there would be no inspection today either.
I closed my eyes and exhaled briefly.
Sergeant Jackson bowed his head in their stead, but the commander bastard who actually gave the orders didn’t even show his face.
‘…Now he doesn’t even come to make excuses in person?’
“Was there no explanation at all?”
When I asked in a low voice, Jackson shook his head bitterly.
“He only said that it couldn’t be helped because the higher-ups were controlling things.”
Orders from above.
Now, they were covering everything up with the vague word “control.”
At their complacency and deception, anger boiled up from deep within my chest.
“…I understand.”
When I accepted it more calmly than expected, Sergeant Jackson looked puzzled for a moment.
But soon he bowed deeply once more and carefully climbed down the ladder.
I was left alone atop the watchtower.
The sea breeze brushed my face, spraying salty moisture, but my head grew heavier and heavier.
‘…Now we really have no choice but to move according to that plan.’
It was a card I didn’t want to use if possible.
There had been many times when my heart wavered as I watched soldiers die.
But if we kept letting ourselves be dragged along like this, we would never escape and would simply rot away along with this island.
There was no longer any reason to stay, nor any drive left to endure.
All that remained was an extreme plan.
***
Late that dawn.
We carefully slipped out of the inn.