-Lake Purification Work
First, I gulped in a breath.
“Master Mage! Are you all right?”
“Oudin! You’re alive, right? Ah! Thank goodness.”
Gil and Cheon Danbi were anxiously calling out to me from the lakeshore, stamping their feet. It seemed they had grown worried when a column of water shot up while I was underwater.
I waved to them to show I was fine, then began swimming toward the shore. I intended to back off a little and assess the situation.
But the tentacle monster had no intention of leaving me alone.
A tentacle that had stretched out sideways beneath the water had, at some point, wrapped around my leg. However, because of the shield surrounding me, it couldn’t touch my body directly and was merely coiled around, blocking me in.
The upper part of the tentacle that had surged upward with the column of water bent its body and looked down at me.
“Ah! Master Mage! Be careful!”
Gil shouted.
I had thought he wouldn’t be able to see the tentacle monster because it was transparent, but it seemed he had detected it through its mana waves. Though he probably hadn’t grasped my situation below the surface.
I steadied my breathing and considered what magic I should use to attack.
I was in the water, and that thing was in the water as well. Not only that, but from what I had glimpsed through a brief detection spell, the tentacle monster’s composition also seemed to be almost entirely water.
‘Fire magic and lightning magic aren’t suitable. Freezing magic will be difficult to use too. I’m not outside the water, after all.’
The tentacle was steadily tightening its pressure. The shield was holding it back, but bit by bit, the force was getting through. It was tremendously strong. If I did nothing, it felt as though the shield would burst apart.
First, I had to cut off the tentacle wrapped around my leg. I thought it would be good if I could slice it away with a blade.
‘Right. Let’s make a blade. I can combine it with spatial magic.’
I had to define the area precisely. After all, I was also underwater.
In order to focus on spatial magic, I decided to make the material for the blade with the freezing magic I could use most proficiently.
I gripped a handful of water in my hand and began freezing it while moving it in a straight line from side to side. I adjusted it so that the freezing magic would apply only to the exact space I needed.
As intended, the two spells combined well. A sharp ice blade was held in my hand.
‘Be cut apart!’
I brought the ice blade down straight toward the tentacle pressing against my leg.
The ice blade was also made of water, so there was no resistance as it cut through the water. The tentacle’s body, too, was mostly made of water, but even if the composition was the same, the structure was different.
The tentacle was split cleanly in half and torn apart by the ice blade.
[Keeeeeeeeee!]
A sound that seemed like both a scream and an enraged roar rang deafeningly inside my head. It wasn’t a sound emitted outward through a mouth, but one transmitted directly into my mind.
I felt like covering my ears, but covering them wouldn’t solve anything.
I forced myself to ignore the sound and continued what I had been doing. I brought the ice blade down again and again on various parts of the tentacle.
I dove underwater, followed the protruding length of the tentacle, and sliced all the way to the core of its main body.
[Keeeeeeeeee!]
At last, the lower part of the tentacle’s core split wide open. Then black corpses like internal organs came pouring out from within.
A black liquid tinged with green spread through the surrounding water. The tentacle monster’s blood and the things that had been inside its stomach were flowing out mixed together.
‘Ugh……!’
I quickly kicked the water and rose above the surface. I didn’t want my head underwater any longer.
It was horribly disgusting.
So those black chunks of flesh that had drifted to the lakeshore must have been things the tentacle monster had swallowed and then spat back out.
“Master Mage! Are you all right?”
“Hurry, get over here!”
Once I emerged from the water, Gil and Cheon Danbi’s voices reached me again.
I had already been planning to do just that.
All I wanted was to get out of the lake as fast as possible.
I wrapped mana around my body to accelerate and swam quickly toward the shore. In an instant, I was able to reach the water’s edge.
“Hurry up and climb out!”
“Here!”
Cheon Danbi and Gil both reached out their hands, each trying to help me first. Of course I could have climbed out on my own, but I gladly took their hands and came up onto land.
As soon as I set foot on the ground, I turned back and saw the tentacle monster thrashing in the middle of the lake. The lake churned violently, and thick corpses were being swept along with the waves.
“What is that? There’s something over there, right? Is it a lake monster?”
“It’s a tentacle monster. It’s transparent like water, so it’s hard to see.”
While I caught my breath, Cheon Danbi asked and Gil answered.
Cheon Danbi seemed to have sensed that something was there, but she hadn’t recognized it the way Gil had. It was more surprising that Gil had identified the thing so accurately.
“You saw it well. That’s right. It’s a transparent tentacle monster. Its tentacles stretched out underwater too and wrapped around my leg. So I cut them away with an ice blade. When I cut all the way into its core, those corpses came pouring out from inside its body.”
When I explained, Cheon Danbi shuddered.
“So all those thick, black corpses came out of the tentacle monster’s stomach? No wonder they looked half-rotten. Now that I see it, they were half-digested.”
“What should we do now? The tentacle monster isn’t dead yet and is still thrashing around. Master Mage, what are you going to do?”
Gil calmly asked me.
I turned my head to look at the child’s face and asked back.
“What do you think we should do?”
“Shouldn’t we get rid of it completely? It’s polluting the lake. I think it’ll harm the people living nearby too.”
His reaction was quite different from when we had encountered the tentacle monster last time, and I felt proud of him.
Back then, I had been worried because he seemed to empathize with the tentacle far too much, but now that he was judging whether a strange life-form would harm people, it seemed he had found a sense of balance.
“That’s right. The lake is dying because of that monster. If we leave it alone, the corpses will make the water rot. We have to get rid of it immediately.”
Cheon Danbi agreed.
“Yeah. Let’s get rid of it quickly.”
The moment I answered the two of them like that, the tentacle monster began moving toward us, as though it had realized its fate had just been decided.
The lake heaved greatly. A transparent column of water approached the shore, sending ripples in every direction.
As the tentacle monster moved, corpses from inside its stomach poured out through the wound that had opened. The surface of the lake looked almost black.
“Gil! We’re attacking with lightning magic. Most of the components making up the tentacle monster’s body are the same as water. If we fire lightning at it, the damage should be huge. You can do it, right?”
“Yes. I’ll try!”
The situation was different from a moment ago. Now that I was out of the water, I could use lightning magic as much as I wanted.
This time as well, I decided to try combining it with spatial magic. It wasn’t a situation where the combination was absolutely necessary, but it was important to test it multiple times in actual combat.
“Watch the space I define carefully. Concentrate the lightning there.”
“Yes!”
After instructing Gil, I defined a space around the approaching tentacle monster.
I hollowed out the surrounding space so the lightning could pour directly into it, and I designed the gravity so it would concentrate through the empty space toward the creature’s core.
Then I gathered mana at my fingertips once more.
Holding my breath, I focused the energy between my brows.
“Now! Attack!”
Gil and I raised our wills at the same time and thrust out our hands.
‘Lightning!’
‘Pour down, aiming for the core!’
The clear blue sky flashed pure white for an instant.
The net of mana waves extending from our fingertips drew the circuit of lightning magic and resonated with the lightning in the sky.
A massive bolt of lightning surged across the air and fell straight toward the tentacle monster’s core.
Rumble rumble rumble!
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-boom!
The enormous lightning gathered into the tentacle monster’s body without the slightest waste. It concentrated exactly as I had designed with spatial magic. It was a success.
[Keeeeeeeeeeee!]
A scream that shook my mind rang out.
A wave as large as a house rose on the lake, then subsided in an instant.
The transparent column of water vanished without a trace. The tentacle monster had been dismantled.
Then, before long, a burning smell began spreading across the lake. It was even savory, like the smell of fat burning.
“What’s that smell? We got rid of the tentacle monster, right?”
Gil asked while looking over the lake.
“Yeah. The tentacle monster has been dismantled. It was mostly made of transparent water components, but the remaining parts must have been fatty. They burned up in an instant from the lightning and left this smell behind.”
“It smells just like grilling pork belly. Now I’m getting hungry for no reason.”
Beside me, Cheon Danbi said something ridiculous.
The tentacle monster had broken down and disappeared, but the smell spread. The lake was still full of the black corpses it had left behind.
It seemed the lake needed purification work.
I gave a faint laugh and raised my hand, casting decomposition magic.
‘Decompose!’
First, I decomposed the smell of burning fat, then decomposed all the corpses floating on the lake as well. Gradually, the ash-gray energy lingering around us disappeared.
“Ah! You’re purifying it? I’ll handle the finishing touches.”
Cheon Danbi, realizing that I was purifying the lake, stepped forward.
“Sure. I’ll leave it to you.”
Purification work could be called a druid’s specialty. I comfortably left the rest to her and took a step back.
Cheon Danbi closed both eyes and focused her mind. A moment later, she stretched out both arms and slowly waved them as though stroking the lake.
At that very instant, a refreshing energy spread out. It felt as though every sense in my body was sparkling. So this was purification, I thought.
It felt as though the lake had returned to how it was on a clear, bright day. After seeing those black corpses, it had felt as if my entire body were wrapped in ash-gray energy, gloomy and sticky.
“Wow, it feels so refreshing. It’s like my life force is being replenished.”
“I think it’s done. The lake is already clean. The ash-gray energy the black mages had scattered has disappeared without a trace.”
Gil and I praised her enthusiastically.
“That should do it, right? Many of the fish and creatures that lived in the lake must have died by now, but with time, it’ll return to how it was before.”
Cheon Danbi said with a satisfied expression.
Only then were we all able to look at the lake in peace.
The lake had regained its tranquility.
“But did the black mages simply dump the tentacle monster and the corpses here? Or were they experimenting here? Did the people living nearby not know anything?”
Gil voiced the remaining questions.
Now that I heard that, it bothered me all over again that there was no one around.
It was a beautiful lake that tourists would have had every reason to visit, and there should have been people out for walks, yet no one was here.
Not only while we had been fighting the tentacle monster—we hadn’t encountered anyone from the very beginning.
On top of that, the black mages hadn’t shown themselves either.
“The corpses were probably dumped here, but it seems like they were raising the tentacle monster here. Isn’t it strange that the black mages didn’t appear even after we caused all this commotion?”
“You’re right. From their perspective, it must have been a valuable test subject.”
Just as Gil and I were tilting our heads, both feeling that something was off, Cheon Danbi abruptly held out potions in front of us and said,
“Here, drink a bottle of potion each. You worked hard, so drink first, and since we’re hungry, let’s hurry and go eat lunch. After smelling pork belly grilling, I’m even hungrier. We can find a restaurant and ask the residents about this and that.”
That was a good idea too.
The residents might know something about the lake and the black mages.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
First, we each drained a potion in one go, and then we set out to find a restaurant.