By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 15 - Chapter 4

Chapter 9, Episode 13: Monsters in the Sea of Trees

I slept in a little longer the next morning, which helped me feel well and refreshed. Not even the residents of the base on the Edge seemed to venture this deep into the forest. There were no signs of a path, and I often had to slice my way through vines and tall grass. It would take a lot more time and effort to cover the second half of my journey. Still, the monsters of the Sea of Trees did not relent.

I raised my guard at an ugly squawk in the distance. My magic detection picked up a monster sprinting towards me, followed by countless raptors.

“Is that a—?” Just as I guessed its identity, the ostrichlike monster burst out of the trees, bolting right past me. Naturally, the raptors in pursuit of it would take notice of their new prey very soon.

“Paralyzing Mist. Spark Ball.” Before they could reach me, I cast both a Poison and Lightning spell into the air. Paralyzing Mist created a cloud of fast-acting poison that immobilized whatever inhaled it, and Spark Ball was condensed electricity that would shock everything in its vicinity on impact.

The raptors ran into the wall of magic I’d cast, but the spells weren’t as effective as I’d hoped. Through magic detection, I observed the raptors were slowed but not entirely incapacitated by the mist. Those affected by the poison were unable to dodge the sparks, though.

All that, and only three tenths of them went down, I noted. Spark Ball is plenty effective against humans, but a little underpowered against monsters. 

There was a benefit to taking down a decent chunk of the raptors off the bat. The rear half of the pack—composed of the relatively less berserk raptors—turned and ran.

I can handle the two tenths left, as long as I don’t get sloppy. 

I took care of raptor after raptor, trying my best to kill each of them quickly and painlessly. By the time I took care of the last one, the entire area was covered in their carcasses, the air permeated by the smell of blood.

“Phew... That’s about fifty of them dead,” I counted. “I wonder how many there were in total, all chasing that one luring ostrich.”

Luring ostriches were native to the Sea of Trees but had no way of fighting off their dangerous predators. Instead, these bolting birds outran them. In fact, a luring ostrich used powerful pheromones to attract carnivorous monsters to chase its tail, only to run past its prey so the pack of monsters chasing it would turn their attention to the unsuspecting victim.

The luring ostrich was commonly described as the weakest but nastiest monster in the Sea of Trees. After being attacked by that flash flood of a raptor pack, I could see why. If I had let the incoming stampede unnerve me, I could have easily been trampled.

“I hate to waste them, but I should probably get moving without cleaning these raptors,” I decided. Luring ostriches always returned to the scene of the crime to feed on their prey. The last thing I wanted was for it to bring back another raptor pack when it did.

***

I’d walked without stopping until it was an hour or two after noon when I found a particularly large, natural boulder.

I consulted the directions to Korumi that the gods had written out for me. “Walking southeast from here should take me to a lake...”

After walking a while longer, every bit of vegetation except heatwood vanished from the forest shortly before I arrived at a clearing. What lay ahead of me had to be the “lake” that the gods had mentioned.

“I’d call this more of a swamp,” I said. There were muddy pockets here and there hosting aquatic weeds, but this general area needed a lot more water for me to call it a lake.

Still, it’s not easy terrain to walk in. Even now, the mud goes up to my ankles when I take a step. One wrong move, and I could get stuck. Better safe than sorry... I pulled out some mud slimes and the small boat I’d used to snowplow Gimul over winter, along with tools and supplies I was sure to need in this area.

“And we’re ready! All systems go!” Casting slime magic through the mud slimes, I used a torrent of mud to propel the boat. The boat wasn’t going as fast as it did when it was powered by water slimes, but it was smooth enough sailing for me. “I could go as fast as a race boat when I used water slimes, and now it’s like riding a normal motorboat... However fast that is.”

Either way, I was going much faster than slogging through mud on foot. With plenty of magic recovery potions onboard, I could sail right through the swamp. Of course, my experience in the forest so far told me that nothing about this journey would go as expected.

Sure enough, I detected something huge approaching me head-on through the mud. “It can never be easy, can it?!” I immediately swerved left, and an enormous jaw full of teeth—each the size of a human arm—appeared out of the muck, followed by the creature’s head and body. A gator about four meters long—the C-rank gallow moss alligator—swam at me. Horror stories were told of this monster and its jaws powerful enough to tear through adventurers and their heavy armor.

When it turned too quickly for its big stature and tried to chomp down on me, I teleported myself and the boat to safety, leaving behind one of the sticky bombs I’d made for this very purpose. It went off when the gator closed its mouth, gluing it shut as the monster chewed on the substance. Its bellow muffled, the gator began thrashing. While a gator’s jaw closed with devastating force, its opening strength was weaker. There was a chance that the sticky bomb wouldn’t have been effective had the gator swallowed it whole, or had its saliva diluted the sticky solution. Lucky for me, it worked exactly as intended. Now that the gator was confused and lying still, I teleported above its head and plunged my sword into it. A gallow moss alligator wasn’t a threat as long as I could pull this sequence off.

In the end, I made it out of the swamp in four hours, including the time spent cleaning the gator. I decided to call it a day at the edge of the swamp.

***

The next morning, I walked for about an hour and came to another swamp. Apparently, the patch of dry land I had made camp on was a sort of islet in the muddy, so-called lake.

I feel like an explorer traveling up the Amazon river... Not that I have any firsthand experience. Actually, “exploring” the Sea of Trees means either traveling endlessly or taking on monsters. 

I mud-sailed for another two hours to, hopefully, make it out of the swamp for good. After beaching on solid ground, I moved to stow my boat when I sensed something. I leapt back a step without hesitating. With a rustling of leaves, something fell out of the tree and landed on my boat, splattering mud all over.

“This really isn’t my lucky week...” I grumbled.

The fallen object slithered atop the boat—a green snakelike monster as thick as a tree trunk. There were several snake monsters native to the Sea of Trees, but only one grew big enough to swallow several men whole in one gulp—the A-rank immortal snake.

I shouldn’t be in their habitat yet. I’d have to walk another week towards the center of the forest to get there, I calculated pointlessly.

“Chalk it up to bad luck,” I muttered.

Reacting to my voice, the snake leapt off the boat and slithered right at me. It lifted its head, striking me like a whip. It was even faster than the gator, but I could deal with that. Dodging its bite, I slashed at its underbelly.

I clicked my tongue in frustration seeing that my blade had barely cut its flesh. The immortal snake’s resilience and healing would be much more difficult to contend with. With no sign of the cut slowing it down, the serpent began to coil. With an energy-boosted leap, I escaped what would be a death grip. Shifting energy into my blade, I brought it down upon the snake as I landed, marking a much deeper cut than the first. Yet, the monster immediately countered with the whip of its tail. In the brief moment I spent dodging the tailwhip, the snake’s wound almost entirely healed.

This one’s a lot trickier. But I can take it down. “Cutting Tornado.” The spell tore down trees and brushes, giving me a more open battleground. While I was at it, I made sure to mark a nearby tree so I could return to this place if the battle took me off course.

The snake hissed, going for another bite. It wasn’t difficult to dodge the attack a second time and counter with an Ice-coated swing of the blade. Despite not cutting as deep as the last one, the freezing blade proved far more effective. The snake let out a raging hiss, slithering into position. It no longer saw me as prey, but a threat. Enraged, the immortal snake moved faster than ever: leaping, biting, coiling, and slithering in and out of the heatwood trees. I couldn’t deny it had the home field advantage.

I continued to avoid its attacks and inflict icy cuts on its body, but none proved lethal. At most, the magic merely slowed its healing.

If slicing its body won’t do any good... 

I waited for the right moment: when the snake started to coil right after a bite. With all my strength, I brought my sword down onto the snake’s head. Pumping energy into the blade, I pushed through and managed to sever its head from the rest of the body. But the immortal snake still didn’t die. More violently than ever, the snake head hissed at me, making me jump. Its body, too, writhed uncontrollably like an earthworm on scorching asphalt. I wanted to destroy its head as quickly as possible, but I had to put some distance between me and the thrashing body.

“How does that even work?” I blurted out, watching the snake regrow its body from its severed head. Surviving decapitation for a while would have been one thing, but this was utterly bizarre. Maybe this thing’s not a snake but a planarian, I wondered.

A monster’s difference in rank signified a drastic difference in threat level, especially for C-rank and above. The last A-rank monster I’d encountered was Reinbach’s ignis dragon, so A-ranks really seemed like a cut above the rest.

In a few moments, the immortal snake had regrown its body and tail. At least the tail didn’t regrow a head. Still, I was fighting a losing battle.

“Exchange.” I sheathed my sword and used the Space spell to summon a new weapon into my hand. This silver lance a little under a meter and a half long was a special iron slime I had kept in the Dimension Home. It was something of a trump card—no creature in this world would survive it. “Sorry,” I told the snake. “I don’t have all day.”

The monster stopped moving as if it instinctively sensed the lance’s lethality. It remained silent, but it was brimming with anger and wariness. It didn’t slither away. Instead, it lifted its head, swayed to and fro, then made its final attack.

I avoided the rapid strike, countering with the lance. Once the lance pierced the snake, I let go of it. The snake stared at the spear in its belly, then me, before rolling belly-up and starting to twitch. That reaction told me that my secret weapon had been effective.

After waiting until I was sure the immortal snake was dead, I retrieved the lance. “Great job,” I told it, and the iron slime reverted to its true form as bloody slimes gushed from the snake’s wound.

I’d concocted a brutal weapon, if I do say so myself. The iron slime lance had a hollow core that I had stuffed with bloody slimes that would suck the target’s blood dry after impact. Nothing with blood in its veins, human or monster, would survive it. As powerful as this weapon was, I’d have to handle it with care. Besides, I didn’t plan to over rely on it and let myself get rusty.

“I’ll only reach for you when I need you,” I said.

This also meant that I couldn’t take on an A-rank monster in a fair fight yet. I moved towards the immortal snake to try and clean it when I sensed something approaching from the woods. Immediately, I braced myself for another battle as a figure emerged.

“You’re—” I started.

“Hey, kid. I know that face,” a familiar, red-haired hulk greeted me.